Scanned from FAR HORIZONS (edited by Robert Silverberg) [story 10]

THE SHIP WHO SANG
Anne McCaffrey
The Ship Who Sang (1970)
The Partnership (with Margaret Ball) (1992)
The Ship Who Searched (with Mercedes Lackey) (1992)
The City Who Fought (with S.M. Stirling) (1993)
The Ship Who Won (with Jody Lynn Nye) (1994)
"She was bom a thing and as such would have been condemned if she failed to pass the encephalograph test required of all newborn babies. There was always the possibility that though the limbs were twisted, the mind was not; that though the ears would hear only dimly, the eyes see vaguely, the mind behind them was receptive and alert.
"The electro-encephalogram was entirely favorable, unexpectedly so, and the news was brought to the waiting, grieving parents. There was the final, harsh decision: to give their child euthanasia or permit it to become an encapsulated 'brain,' a guiding mechanism in any one of a number of curious professions. As such, their offspring would suffer no pain, live a comfortable existence in a metal shell for several centuries, performing unusual services to Central Worlds.
"She lived and was given a name, Helva."
Those are the opening paragraphs of the first Helva novel, The Ship Who Sang, which tells the story of how Helva becomes the mind behind the operation of a stargoing spaceship, and how her first ship-partner, Jennan Sahir Silan, dies tragically when he and Helva have to rescue a religious group from a planet soon to be reduced to a cinder as its primary goes nova. The rest of the first novel tells of Helva's journey out of the intense grief she suffered on Jennan's death and her attempts to find another partner who would be as compatible. Niall Parollan, clever, sharp, outrageously nonconformist, and a womanizer, becomes her "brawn" and they go off together to seek adventures, which have been chronicled in a number of later novels done in collaboration with other writers.
-Anne McCaffrey