X.
While Kathryn Kinnison was working with her father in the hyperspatial tube and with Mentor of Arisia, and while Camilla and Tregonsee were sleuthing the inscrutable "X", Constance was also at work. Although she lay flat upon her back, not moving a muscle, she was working as she had never worked before. Long since she had put her indetectable speedster into the control of a director-by-chance. Now, knowing nothing and caring less of where she and her vessel might be or might go, physically completely relaxed, she drove her "sensories" out to the full limit of their prodigious range and held them there for hour after hour. Worsel-like, she was not consciously listening for any particular thing; she was merely increasing her already incredibly vast store of knowledge. One hundred percent receptive, attached to and concerned with only the brain of her physical body, her mind sped at large sampling, testing, analyzing, cataloguing every item with which its most tenuous fringe came in contact. Through thousands of solar systems that mind went; millions upon millions of entities either did or did not contribute something worth while.
Suddenly there came something that jarred her into physical movement—a burst of thought upon a band so high that it was practically always vacant. She shook herself, got up, lighted an Alsakanite cigarette, and made herself a pot of coffee.
"This is important, I think," she mused. "I'd better get to work on it while it's fresh."
She sent out a thought tuned to Worsel, and was surprised when it went unanswered. She investigated, finding that the Velantian's screens were full up and held hard—he was fighting Overlords so savagely that he had not felt her thought. Should she take a hand in this brawl? She should not, she decided, and grinned fleetingly. Her erstwhile tutor would need no help in that comparatively minor chore. She would wait, rest up a bit, and eat, before she called him.
"Worsel! Con calling. What goes on there, fellow old snake?" She finally launched her thought. "You've stuck that sharp tail of yours into some of my business—I hope."
"I hope so," Worsel sent back. "Been quite a while since I saw you close up—how about coming aboard?"
"Coming at max," and she did.
Before entering the Velan, however, she put on a personal gravity damper, set at nine hundred eighty centimeters. Strong, tough, and supple as she was she did not relish the thought of the atrocious accelerations used and enjoyed by Velantians everywhere.
"What did you make of that burst of thought?" she asked by way of greeting. "Or were you having so much fun that you missed it?"