the heart. Lasamer is young enough so that I’m not worried about that, but I don’t think he has the emotional stability to deal with that kind of power. The psionine should tell us something. If his paranoia persists, I’ll know it has nothing to do with his telepathy.”
“And if it does not persist?” Karoly d’Branin said.
Agatha Marij-Black smiled wickedly at him. “If Lasamer becomes quiescent, and stops babbling about danger? Why, that would mean he was no longer picking up anything, wouldn’t it? And that would mean there had been something to pick up, that he’d been right all along.”
At dinner that night, Thale Lasamer was quiet and distracted, eating in a rhythmic, mechanical sort of way, with a cloudy look in his blue eyes. Afterwards he excused himself and went straight to bed, falling into exhausted slumber almost immediately.
“What did you do to him?” Lommie Thorne asked Marij-Black.
“I shut off that prying mind of his,” she replied.
“You should have done it two weeks ago,” Lindran said. “Docile, he’s a lot easier to take.”
Karoly d’Branin hardly touched his food.
False night came, and Royd’s wraith materialized while Karoly d’Branin sat brooding over his chocolate. “Karoly,” the apparition said, “would it be possible to tie in the computer your team brought on board with my shipboard system? Your volcryn stories fascinate me, and I would like to be able to study them further at my leisure. I assume the details of your investigation are in storage.”
“Certainly,” d’Branin replied in an offhand, distracted manner. “Our system is up now. Patching it into the Nightflyer should present no problem. I will tell Lommie to attend to it tomorrow.”
Silence hung in the room heavily. Karoly d’Branin sipped at his chocolate and stared off into the darkness, almost unaware of Royd.
“You are troubled,” Royd said after a time.
“Eh? Oh, yes.” D’Branin looked up. “Forgive me, my friend. I have much on my mind.”
“It concerns Thale Lasamer, does it not?”
Karoly d’Branin looked at the pale, luminescent figure across from him for a long time before he finally managed a stiff nod. “Yes. Might I ask how you knew that?”
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