Crystal Singer by Anne McCaffrey

Killashandra more was that the Guild woman did not pay any attention, her head remaining bent over the module. The angry space worker repeated her question, sharp enough now for Killashandra to hear that the woman was demanding to be taken immediately for testing as a Guild candidate.
    Suddenly, one of the Guildsmen, excusing himself from his conversation with a buyer, touched the programmer on her arm, directing her gaze to the now irate space worker. Another angry spate of words jarred the crystal drops, although the Guild programmer seemed not the least disturbed either by her discourtesy or the space worker’s ire. In the next moment, the panel at the back of the room opened again, and the space worker moved toward it, her head set at an aggressive angle, her stride jarring her slender frame. The panel closed behind her.
    A sigh attracted Killashandra’s attention, and she turned to find a young man standing beside her. He would have deserved a second look anywhere, for be possessed close-curled red hair, a recessive trait rarer now than the true blond. He had evidently watched the interchange between the space worker and the Guild programmer as if he had anticipated such a confrontation. His sigh had been one of relief.
    “She made it,” he murmured under his breath, and then, noticing Killashandra, smiled at her. His unusually light-green eyes twinkled in mischief. The antipathy Killashandra had instinctively felt for the space worker was replaced by an instant affinity to the young man. “She’s been in a snit, that one, the whole journey here. Thought she’d go through the debarkation arch like a projectile when it started laying on the formality. And after all that . . .” He spread his hands wide to express his astonishment at her ease.
    “There’s more to it than going through a doorway,” Killashandra said.
    “Don’t I just know it, but there was no telling Carigana. For starters, she was annoyed that I got to do the prelim at Yarro on Beta VI. As if it were a personal affront to her that she had to come all the way here.” He stepped closer to Killashandra as a knot of people, buyers from their varied manner of dress, entered. “Have you taken the plunge yet?” And then he held up his hand, grinning so winningly when Killashandra stiffened at such a flagrant breach of privacy that she couldn’t, after all, take offense. “I’m from Scartine, you know, and I keep forgetting manners. Besides, you don’t look like a buyer”—his comment was complimentary for he gestured with good-humored contempt at the finery of most of the other occupants of the hall—“and transients would never venture further than the catering area, so you must be interested in crystal singing . . .” He raised his eyebrows as well as the tone of his voice in question.
    It would have taken a far more punctilious person than Killashandra to depress his ingenuous manner, but she answered with the briefest of smiles and a nod.
    “Well, because I’ve been through the prelim, I’ve only to report my presence, but if I were you, though I’m not, and it’s certainly not my wish to invade your privacy, I’d give Carigana a chance to get organized before I followed her in.” Then he cocked his head, grinning with a sparkle at odds with his guilelessness. “Unless you’re hanging back with second thoughts.”
    “I’ve thoughts but none of them seconds,” Killashandra said. “You did the prelim at Yarro?”
    “Yes, you know the tests.”
    “SG-1’s, I hear.”
    He shrugged diffidently. “Medigear feels the same for all levels, and if you’re adjusted, the psych is nothing. Aptitude’s aptitude and a fast one, but you look like you’ve done tertiary studies, so what’s to knot your hair over?” His expression was sharp as his eyes flicked to the wall through which Carigana had passed. “If you’ve got hair!”
    “Those tests—they’re not complicated, or painful, or anything?. . .” The tall