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trauma about it. Of course, it never occurred to
her
to find out why. So she went a little crazy on the subject, and
who
trained all the other Primes?”
    â€œSiglen . . . Oh, Deneb, you mean? . . .”
    Raven grinned. “Yes, I do. She passed on the trauma to every one of you. The Curse of Talent! The Great Fear! The great bushwah! But agoraphobia, or a middle-ear imbalance, is not a stigma of Talent. Siglen never trained
me.”
He laughed with wicked boyish delight and opened his mind to the Rowan. Warmth and reassurance passed between them. Her careful conditioning began to wither in that warmth. Her eyes shone.
    Now come live with me and be my love, Rowan. Reidinger says you can commute from here to Deneb every day.
    â€œCommute?” She said it aloud, conscious of the overall value of Siglen’s training, but already questioning every aspect.
    â€œCertainly,” Jeff said, approving her thoughts. “You’re still a working T-1 under contract to FT & T. And so, my love, am I.”
    â€œI guess I do know my bosses, don’t I?” she said with a chuckle.
    â€œWell, the terms were fair. Reidinger didn’t haggle for a second after I walked into his private office at eleven this morning.”
    â€œCommuting to Callisto?” the Rowan repeated dazedly.
    â€œAll finished here for the day?” Raven asked Ackerman, who shook his head after a glance at the launching racks.
    â€œC’mon, gal. Take me to your ivory tower and we’ll finish up in a jiffy. Then we’ll go home. With two of us working in our spare time, Deneb’ll be put to rights in no time . . .
And when we’ve finished that . . .
    Jeff Raven smiled wickedly at the Rowan and pressed her hand to his lips in the age-old gesture of courtliness. The Rowan’s smile answered his with blinding joy.
    The others were respectfully silent as the two Talents made their way up the stairs to the once-lonely tower.
    Afra broke the tableau by taking the burning cigarette from Ackerman’s motionless hand. He took a deep drag that turned his skin a deeper green. It wasn’t the cigarette smoke that caused his eyes to water so profusely.
    â€œNot that that pair needs much of our help, people,” he said, “but we can add a certain flourish and speed them on their way.”

 
    Â 
    A Meeting of Minds
    I OTA A URIGAE WAS a blaze at zenith, to Damia’s left, glinting off her tiny personal capsule. Capella’s light, from the right nadir, was a pulsing blue-white. Starlight from the Milky Way bathed her, too, but the only sound was her even breathing as she allowed her mind to open fully to the mindless, echo-freedom of deep space.
    It was as if she could feel the separate cerebral muscles relaxing, expanding, just as her tall slender body went gradually limp. But it was primarily the mental relief that Damia sought so far away from her control Tower at the Federated Telepath and Teleport installation on Aurigae. It was the utter peace of deep space she required as anodyne to the constant demands of her position as Psionic Prime, responsible for the flow of commerce and communication in this Sector of Federated Worlds, the Nine-Star League. She was young, true, barely twenty; but age is relative, particularly when the need is great, and her mental talents were unusually mature. Furthermore, she was of the Raven Clan, born into a tremendously talented family, carefully indoctrinated and trained to assume an executive role as the influence of Federated Worlds expanded into new star systems, needing more Prime Talents.
    Occasionally, even her young mind felt the strain and required respite from the insistent murmur of broadcasting thoughts that beat, beat, beat against hers: little minds which could not conceive the forces that Damia, Aurigan Prime, could marshall in gestalt with the mighty dynamos of the Tower.
    With a flick of a finger, Damia screened