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Valdi.
    “What lies has he been feeding you about crystal singing? What glamorous tales has he used to lure you there?” Valdi whirled toward Killashandra, his stocky figure trembling with outrage.
    “I asked to go.”
    Valdi’s wild expression hardened into disbelief at her calm answer.
    “You
asked
to go?”
    “Yes.
He
didn’t ask
me.”
She caught Carrik’s smile.
    “You heard her, Valdi,” Carrik said, then glanced at the officials witnessing the admission.
    The maestro’s shoulders sagged. “So, he’s done his recruiting with a master’s skill.” His tone registered resignation, he even managed to effect a slight break in his voice.
    “I don’t think so,” Killashandra said.
    Maestro Valdi inhaled deeply, obviously to support one last attempt to dissuade the misguided girl. “Did he tell you about . . . the mach storms?”
    She nodded, hiding her amusement at his theatricality.
    “The storms that scramble the brain and reduce the mind to a vegetable existence?”
    She nodded dutifully.
    “Did he fill your mind with garbage about mountains returning symphonies of sound? Crystalline choruses? Valleys that echo arpeggios?” His body rippled upward in an effort to express the desired effect of ridicule.
    “No,” she replied in a bored tone. “Nor did he feed me pap that all I needed was hard work and time.”
    Esmond Valdi, maestro, drew himself up, more than ever in an exaggeration of a classical operatic pose.
    “Did he also tell you that once you start cutting crystal, you can never stop? And that staying too long away from Ballybran produces disastrous convulsions?”
    “I know that.”
    “Do you also
know
”—Valdi rocked back on his heels—“that something in the water of Ballybran, in its very soil, in those crystals, affects your mind? That you don’t
re-mem-ber
?” He separated the verb carefully into syllables.
    “That could be a distinct advantage,” Killashandra replied, staring back at the little man until he broke eye contact.
    She was the first of the three to feel a peculiar itch behind her ears in the mastoid bone; an itch that rapidly became a wrenching nauseating pain. She grabbed Carrik by the arm just as the subsonic noise touched him and as Esmond Valdi lifted protecting bands to his ears.
    “The fools!” Carrik cried as panic contorted his features. He threw aside the door panel, running as fast as he could for the control-tower entrance. Killashandra scurried after him.
    Carrik vaulted the decorative barrier and landed in a restricted area, where he was deterred by a hastily engaged force curtain. “Stop it! Stop it!” he screamed, rocking in anguish and clawing at the curtain, oblivious to the sparks flying from his fingers.
    Though the pain was no less bearable for Killashandra, she had presence of mind enough to bang on the nearest communit, to strike the fire buttons, press the battery of emergency signals. “The shuttle coming in—something’s wrong—it’s dangerous!” she yelled at the top of her operatically trained lungs. She was barely conscious of the panic in the vast reception hall resulting from her all too audible warning.
    The possibility of a stampede by a hysterical mob was evident to those in the control tower, where someone, in reflex action, slapped on the abort signal to warn off all in-transit craft. Moments later, while the communit demanded an explanation from Killashandra or from anyone who could make himself heard over the bedlam in the reception area, a nova blossomed in the sky and rained molten fragments on the spaceport below. The control tower was unable to contain the destruction within the grappling field, and soon parts of the shuttle were scattered over several kilometers of the Port Authority and the heavily populated business district.
    Apart from bruises, lacerations, and a broken arm, there were only two serious casualties. A technician on the tarmac was killed, and Carrik would have been better off dead. The final