"How did Sea get the ship?" 3TC asked. Sitting next to Shishia, 3TC was lavishing courtesies on her, careful that her glass was always full. Unable to gag her mom, forlornly Eve watched her cunning questioning, her hosts catching every syllable of Sishia's chatter. "Yes, the Galaxy wonders how you managed to get a battleship able to defeat the Bloody Dawn. It should be a story worthy of an epic!" Lord Gray whispered in a hesitant, heavily accented Earthener. "The prince is honouring you speaking Earthener." Flaw said. "Pity, JS commands languages so easily and speaks Gray to perfection." Sishia stepped in. "Yes, he is silver-tongued." Lady Gray noted. "Jay Sea... why did he chose this name?" Flaw mumbled, than added aloud: "Tell us about the ship!" "Oh, I can't talk about it!" Sishia cried garrulously. "Eve gave the Gift to Jay so he could summon the ship! Eve tell our friends how it happened!" It was then that Eve blessed the day JS ordered her not to say a thing to anyone. 'Don't tell anyone I'm telepathic, Eve, not even your own family!' 'Not even my mom?' 'No. We have too many enemies, let's not provide them more weapons. If they know what the Gift is, they'll quarter us in a lab.' To stress the point he had put on a 'Loose Talks Cost Lives' T-shirt.' Eve had complied. Now she thanked her good sense. "The gift?" insisted Eros Flaw and touched her arm to emphasize the urgency of his question. Eve withdrew her arm suddenly. The man's skin, cold and clammy, left on her hand a sensation of damp that reminded her not of sweat but the fluid of a corpse. Eve was sure that if she had the stamina to sniff the spot, it'd reek. Yet during the contact she realized Flaw's thoughts were as clear as if he had no thought-blocker. Steeling herself she touched the man's hand and smiled: "I'm still on edge! The Gift? Oh, it's a poetic way to indicate the marriage between the Naga and the Chosen One." "Really, tell us!" Lady Cyper insisted. From the reactions of her hosts it seemed that no one had noticed that physical contact made the thought-jammer ineffective. Eve took her courage in both hands. 'Lie! It's a spy's capital rule and the more you lie, the more you become good at it.' This was JS's first spook lesson. So she kept to the version JS had doctored and went on flooding them with lies: "In fact the Naga probes the candidates' minds to make sure they're strong enough to endure the contact the ship establishes through her. The ship makes contact through the Naga with her captain starting their unique relationship. Ships can speak, you know? The gift represents the marriage. This way the ship joins the Naga's clan and can't become another clan's booty." "So the captain is not a telepath?" Flaw asked. "OMG, no!" Eve laughed. "How could he be? If the captains were telepaths, there would be no need of the Nagas, right?" and she went on lying: "Maurr also became captain and S-Nikki and other Rasharr and none of them is a telepath, believe me." "Yes, none of them is telepathic!" Sishia confirmed. As she spoke, her hand in fleeting contact with Flaw's one, as if by accident, Eve felt man's obsession for JS. Flaw wanted JS desperately, as if it were a question of life or death. "What a story!" Lady Cyfer summed. "Maybe we should tell JS that Eve is here with us." "Yes, we have to capture him to ... treat him." Lord Gray stated. "Sea is unstable," Flaw shook his head. "First we have to be sure that he can't do harm to himself and to the people he loves." "Our fleet is available." the Gray princess croaked. "A war fleet to treat a person?" Eve thought and got enough nerve up to grab Flaw's hand winning the repulsion his clammy skin gave her: "Will you really help him?" "We'll do everything to bring him here intact." Flaw said. Eve felt the man was speaking about JS's body, his sheer body. Suddenly Lady Gray stated: "The guy is Mr. Flaw's son, you know? Of course he's very concerned about him."