Athanora sat back from her desk with a small, satisfied sigh and rubbed her eyes, forcing her vision back into its normal mode. The tiny electronic computer board she'd been repairing-- and improving-- was finished. The ship's triad of a crew would either love her, or hate her: love her, because she'd just managed to repair something they had been wrestling with for a week; or hate her, because she had just managed to repair something they had been wrestling with for a week. The technical part of the small Searcher ship Dyr aSashyn were not partial to being shown up.

Picking up her glasses and perching them back onto her nose-- though her magic could make it possible for her to see perfectly fine, should she choose to exert herself, she preferred not to waste power on something as small as perfect vision-- Athanora stood and carefully picked up the circuit board, holding it at the edges. Though her workroom was carefully controlled to reduce static electricity as much as possible, it still paid to be careful. She carried it over to the small elevator-like chute between her room on the Searchers' deck, and the smaller crew's deck at the bottom of the wedge-shaped ship. Not all Searcher ships had such things; but then, not all Searchers would be happy joining the actual crew of a ship.

Maybe after I've raised a kid, I'll do just that, she thought idly, setting the circuit board down. A few keyboard taps later, the door to the little chute slid closed, and the platform whisked off down below-decks for the crew to fuss over and reinstall. She didn't get a return-message, but then, she didn't really expect one.

Athanora looked around her workroom, one of the rooms in her private suite, and found nothing in particular she wanted to pick up and work on. In fact, she felt a little restless; she'd been cooped up inside for too long. Cooped up inside this damn ship for too long, she thought with mild annoyance. Maybe she shouldn't take a position as ship-crew... she might start to feel claustrophobic in the darker technical deck.

Then again, she amended to herself, with a pair of people more like me, who respected my abilities and didn't think I was dead boring, maybe I wouldn't.

She paced out into the rest of the suite, the door to the workroom whispering open before her and shut behind her. The living room didn't look particularly lived in; but then, she rarely lived in it. It was for entertaining rare visitors, not sitting around stupidly in. Instead, she was always either in her workroom, working on something, or in her bedroom, lounging in bed with a laptop and a snack, getting crumbs in the sheets and not caring.

Speaking of people who think I'm dead boring, maybe I should check on my fiance. Athanora was engaged-- a purely economic and political marriage, for there didn't seem to be any affection between her and her intended-- to a young man just one year her senior, named Thyravon Vraanabotha. He was handsome enough-- too handsome, in fact, given he could easily have his way with anyone willing, on the various planets they'd been to, and sometimes had-- but not too bright. That, for Athanora, was enough to keep her from warming to him immediately. The fact that he virtually ignored her, except for times when they were forced to work together or "encouraged"-- also forced, though in a less obvious fashion-- to "get to know each other" by Thyravon's father Aavayl, didn't help, either.

It was really too bad that Aavayl Vraanabotha was so old. Athanora had no trouble liking him.

As she stepped out of her suite, the door opening on its own again to admit her, she found the old man coming down the hall towards her door. What a coincidence. I was just thinking about you.

Not that it was much of a coincidence to run into one of the only two other people who ever saw her face on this tiny ship, really, but since Athanora's rooms were the only ones on this side of the ship that had occupants, he was probably coming to see her. Unless he was just walking aimlessly; there weren't many places to do that, on Dyr aSashyn, unless one just circled the ship. Even that couldn't be a full mile's walk. Probably not even half a mile's walk. Probably not even a quarter mile's walk, now that she thought about it.

Shurdunor, maybe I shouldn't take a ship's job, she thought wryly, I'd turn into something resembling a pillow from lack of exercise! "Rosura sythvaa, Aayayl," she greeted him with half a smile. "Good morning. Is there something I can do for you, or are you just passing through?"

"Rosura sythvaa, Athanora," he replied, smiling thinly. Aavayl didn't smile much; when he did, either out of true happiness or just in an attempt to be friendly, it looked odd on his seamed face. "Would that I was just passing through. Might I have your presence on the top deck?"

"All right," she agreed, and followed him to the front of the little ship, right up the stairs. The hallway was fairly long, for all it was probably barely a quarter mile all the way around. After all, it not only was lined with the spacious rooms for the Searcher team, spares for a guest Searcher team, and an extra six sets of rooms for whatever Searched they might pick up along the way, it also encircled the central kitchens and recreation rooms. Not that there was much in the way of "recreation" to be had in it, as it was closer to a gym than somewhere to relax or have fun.

Not that I would probably use it, even if it were for "recreation", she thought. Recreation, to Athanora, was in the workroom, or in bed with a computer or a good book, not sitting with a small hoard of others and talking, playing games, or watching popular memory-films. Perhaps, if she had someone more like her, closer to her own age, aboard the Dyr aSashyn, she might be persuaded to, but with only Thyravon and Aavayl for company-- usually together-- she frankly preferred her own company. Aavayl could visit her in her own chambers, as could Thyravon, if he actually deigned to.

They climbed the short ladder up to the top deck, the smallest deck, with only the operational bridge, meeting room, and captain's office to its name, and stepped out onto the bridge. It really wasn't much of an operational center, since such a small ship with such a small crew hardly needed much: it sported a seat and console for each Searcher, a forward viewscreen for visual messages and displays that took up the whole wall, and panel of more monitors with various information on them on each of the other walls. Aavayl, the captain, as it were, of the Searchers on the Dyr aSashyn, took the central seat and console, tapped in a few commands, and the viewscreen came to life.

"Take a look at this; what do you know of it?" he asked, motioning to the planet and readout on that planet which now filled the viewscreen. Athanora, hands clasped behind her back, paced up for a closer look.

"Planet Vaa-syr-som, saar-sor quadrant," she read the planet's designation. "Kartyn, to the natives. Typical sythaa-class planet, not particularly big, no space-travel capability. Multiple species, rampant magic. Sounds interesting. Not striking any chords, though, I don't think I've heard of it."

"Interesting, you say?" Aavayl asked shrewdly, and when she looked over her shoulder at him, he was looking at her, not the image and its basic information. She just shrugged in response. "You're the most empathic and intuitive of the three of us, 'Nora," he explained with another thin smile. "If you believe it to be 'interesting', I am tempted to take a visit to see what you would find so interesting. There might be someone to be Searched."

"I didn't say that interesting," Athanora protested warningly. "I mean, wyrsythu, they don't even have computers yet!"

The way his little smile turned into a faint smirk told her he didn't believe her. She frowned at him, then went back to the image. Truth be told, it did sound interesting-- oddly so. Her own magic, though faint, was rarely wrong: there was, she thought, something out of balance there that needed to be rebalanced. What that might be, though, she had no idea; for all she knew, it was just herself that was out of balance, and thinking of going somewhere with fresh air and room to stretch her legs-- or get away from her fiance for a while-- would be the way to bring herself back into equilibrium. If that was the case, she didn't care if it was selfish: it was very tempting.

She read down the list of species: Atlantri, Sharians, Fools, those ever-popular humans, Samanayrs, Enkeyn... Enkeyn. Her eyes stayed there for a moment, curiously. There wasn't any information on them at all, except that they were basically a mammalian-draconian sort of species, and stood rarely more than six feet tall, twenty feet in length.

Well, selfish or not, vague or not, if Aavayl was going to take her random, curious impulses seriously, then she would take him up on it. "All right, let's go see what Kartyn is like, then."

"Very well. We should arrive in seven hours, sixteen minutes." Aaah, Aavayl, always precise. "Why don't you go inform Thyravon?"

Athanora sighed. "Is that an order?"

After a pause, Aavayl shrugged. "You might as well, child."

With a sigh, Athanora turned and started descending the ladder again, heading for Thyravon's room. She would make the conversation brief; Thyravon would appreciate that. Then she could hole up in her room and spend a relaxing few hours finding out what else past explorers knew about "Enkeyn".

Chapter Two

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