Free No Other Love by Flora Speer Page B

would
make him believe something other than the truth. Nor would he stop
asking questions. Just as his touches and his kisses would continue
and increase with the passage of time, so would his questions
besiege her mind and her heart. The advice she had been given just
before leaving Oressia was correct. The slightest opening, the
least breach of secrecy, would lead others to pry more and more
deeply, would make those others eager for the truth.
    So it would be with Herne. He would not stop
until he knew everything. And when he knew, he would never again
look at her with tenderness, or take her face in his hands, or put
his mouth on hers. To him, she would be an abomination.
    Merin stood in the dark, fighting the tears
that ran down her cheeks in salty betrayal of all she ought to be,
searching for the peace she had known as a Young One, a peace that
could never more be hers.
     
    * * * * *
     
    During the next few days the solar flares
increased in size and frequency. As the electrified particles
emitted by the flares streamed toward Dulan’s Planet, the upper
atmosphere began to glow. The resulting auroral displays were
visible from the Kalina. When her duties permitted, Merin
left as many bridge lights off as she could and sat watching the
curtains of light sway and change color from green or blue to
pearly white and back to green again. So entranced was she by the
show that she was only momentarily distracted when Herne slid into
the seat next to hers.
    “Magnificent,” he breathed, his face glowing
with reflected light. “Look there. And there.”
    “It is tempting to forget one’s duties,”
Merin agreed. “You are early, Herne. You aren’t required to be on
the bridge for another half hour.”
    “I couldn’t sleep. Perhaps I sensed what is
going on out here.” He waved a hand toward the rippling curtains of
light.
    “I have noticed some minor instrument
malfunctions, which are to be expected under the circumstances,”
she told him. “Tarik is growing a bit concerned about the increased
solar activity.”
    “The atmosphere will protect the planet,”
Herne said, “and the Kalina is well shielded. We should be
safe enough.”
    “But not in the shuttlecraft, which has less
shielding. We may have to remain on board for more than the usual
four days.” Merin’s distaste for that possibility sounded in her
voice. “Tarik has also suggested that if there is a chance of the
more sensitive instruments here being damaged, we ought to take the Kalina out of orbit and travel elsewhere for a while until
the sun calms down.”
    “Lost in a solar storm,” Herne murmured.
“Adrift on a sea of ions.”
    “Your humor is misplaced,” she said. “Since
neither of us is an experienced pilot, a forced departure from
Dulan’s Planet is not a pleasant prospect.”
    “I have piloted this ship before, several
times,” he replied, grinning. “So, if Tarik decides he wants us to
leave orbit, you will just have to trust me, won’t you? I promise
to trust you, whether you have ever acted as pilot on a large ship,
or not.”
    Refusing to respond to what she regarded as a
deliberate provocation on his part, which was designed to lure her
into revealing something more about herself, Merin did not answer.
She flipped a couple of switches, reset a dial, than stood and made
ready to leave the bridge.
    “It’s your watch, Herne.” With that, she
officially turned the ship over to him for the next eight
hours.
    “See that you eat something,” he called after
her. “You have been starving yourself.”
    Again, she did not answer. She knew he had
been monitoring her food consumption, but she did not care.
    She moved easily through the ship,
comfortable in the confinement of its black and grey walls, secure
in the knowledge that so long as Herne was on the bridge she would
meet no other person. In the galley she poured a cup of hot qahf.
Herne had left a tray of pastries on the counter. He had a tendency
to eat sweets when