Free Get Off the Unicorn by Anne McCaffrey

captain said, and stiffened to a rigid attention. The unashamed tears in his eyes and his very crisp salute expressed wordlessly his pride, his sympathy, and his sorrow.
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    Struggling against a will determined to keep her asleep, Damia fought her way to semi-consciousness.
    â€œI can’t keep her under. She’s resisting,” a remote voice called to someone.
    As distant as the sound was, like a far echo in a subterranean cavern, each syllable fell like a hammer on her exposed nerves. Sobbing, Damia struggled for consciousness, sanity, and a release from her agony. She couldn’t seem to trigger the reflexes that would divert pain, and an effort to call Afra to help her met with not only the resistance of increased agony but a vast blankness. Her mind was as stiff as iron, holding each thought firmly to it as though magnetized.
    â€œDamia, do not reach. Do not use your mind,” a voice said in her ear. The sound was like a blessing and the reassurance it gave her wavering sanity was reinforced by the touch of . . . Isthia’s hands on hers.
    Damia focused her eyes on the woman’s face and clutched Isthia’s hands to her temples in an unconscious plea for relief of pain.
    â€œWhat happened? Why can’t I control my head?” cried Damia, tears of weakness streaming down her face.
    â€œYou overreached yourself, destroying Sodan,” Isthia said.
    â€œI can’t remember,” Damia groaned, blinking away the tears so she could at least see clearly.
    â€œEvery rating in FT & T does.”
    â€œOh, my head. It’s all a blank and there’s something I have got to do and I can’t remember what it is.”
    â€œYou will, you will. But you’re very tired, dear,” Isthia said crooningly as she stroked her forehead with cool hands. Each caress seemed to lessen the terrible pain.
    Damia felt the coolness of an injection pop into her arm.
    â€œI’m putting you back to sleep, Damia. We’re very proud of you but you must allow your mind to heal in sleep.”
    â€œ ‘Great nature’s second course, that knits the ravelled sleeve of care.’ What’s knitting, Isthia? I’ve never known,” Damia heard herself babbling with a cool scalliony taste in her throat as the drug spread.
    Again, after what seemed no passage of time at all, Damia was inexorably forced to consciousness by her indefinable but relentless need.
    â€œI can’t understand it,” came Isthia’s voice. This time it did not reverberate across Damia’s pained mind like tympany in a small room. “I gave her enough to put a city to sleep.”
    â€œShe’s worrying at something and probably won’t rest until she’s resolved it. Let’s wake her up and get the agony over.”
    Damia forced her mind to concentrate on identifying the second voice. With a grateful smile she labelled it “Jeff.” She felt her face gently slapped and, opening her eyes, saw Jeff’s face swimming out of the blurred mass about her.
    â€œJeff,” she pleaded, not because he had slapped her but because she had to make him understand.
    â€œDear Damia,” he said with such loving pride she almost lost the tenuous thought she tried to hold from him.
    Her body strained with the effort to reach out only a few inches a mind that once had blithely coursed light-years, but she soon managed to communicate her crime.
    I burned out Larak and Afra. I killed them. I linked to the Larak-focus and killed them to destroy Sodan. 1 saved myself and killed them.
    Behind Jeff she heard Rowan’s cry and Isthia’s exclamation.
    â€œNo, no,” Jeff said gently, shaking his head. He placed her hands on his forehead to let her feel the honesty of his denial. “In the first place, you couldn’t. You don’t
use
others. You sort of shift gears into high speed to make other minds work on a higher level. You drew power from the