Description:

Two novels in one large volume, both set in the same universe as The Ship Who Sang: The Ship Who Searched: Tia, a bright and spunky seven-year old contracted an unknown neural disorder which made her lose control of her body. So she became a shell person—controlling a spaceship as if it were her body and searching for the origin of the disease that laid her low, so that no other little girl will ever suffer the fate of The Ship Who Searched. PartnerShip: Nancia is a brand new member of the elite Courier Service of the Central Worlds. She's the ''brains'' of an advanced interstellar ship. The last thing she needed was a cynical ''brawn'' partner like Forister. But idealistic Nancia and worldly-wise Forister together just might save the galaxy. Neither of them would be satisfied to go through life in a glorified wheelchair; like Helva, The Ship Who Sang, they decided to strap on a spaceship!

The two novels continue the empowerment theme begun in The Ship Who Sang: through technological advances, children born with severe physical handicaps can be placed in mechanical shells, educated, and eventually implanted into the body of interstellar spaceships. Like Helva in the McCaffrey classic, these disabled humans can in essence become the ships. In The Ship Who Searched, young Hypatia Cade is a child prodigy. The seven-year-old daughter of exo-archaeologist parents, Tia is afflicted by a mysterious neurological disorder while helping her parents on a dig. In just a few weeks, Tia is almost entirely paralyzed. After neurological specialists examine her, the prognosis is not good. There is no cure. "A fairy trapped in a fist of metal," Tia gets a second chance at life -- and love -- when she becomes a brain ship. PartnerShip deals with Nancia, a naive brain ship who, after transporting five highly unethical businesspeople to a remote part of space, must figure out a way to honorably bring them to justice.