Killashandra

Deep in debt to the Heptite Guild and desperate to escape Ballybran before the season's deadly sonic storms, Killashandra Ree accepts an assignment from the Guildmaster: travel to the reclusive, music-obsessed planet Optheria and repair a damaged crystal-powered organ before its centennial Music Festival.

Officially she is there to fix an instrument; unofficially, the Guild wants to know why the citizens of this seemingly perfect world never want to leave. After she is kidnapped and marooned on an island, Killashandra discovers the organ was deliberately sabotaged, and that Optherian officials are using its subliminal frequencies to brainwash their own people.

Working with the rebel Lars Dahl, with whom she falls in love, she disables the illicit signal and exposes the conspiracy, though the mission separates the two lovers until a retrial, based on their island marriage, reunites them.