"No." Scan looked at the young pair, his mobile face thoughtful. "No, I don't think we will. Bunny's handling him like a trooper."

"Handling him?" Yana bristled.

Scan shrugged, his expression bland. "Keeping him company, if you like. You know more people here than he does."

Just then Sinead and Aisling danced up to them, Sinead leading, as always. Both wore superb leather shirts, Aisling white, Sinead buff, with elaborate decorations which were so tasteful that jewels could not have been better displayed.

"Enjoying yourselves?" Sinead asked, her expression bland, but the slightly arch tone of her voice seemed to convey some hidden message evidently intended for Sean.

"Now that you mention it, I am," Sean said, equally archly, locking gazes with Sinead. "How about you, Yana?"

"Oh, I am, indeed I am," she replied. Sinead nodded and kept walking.

"What's up with your sister?" Yana asked Scan, as he whirled her in a pirouette to the other side of the room.

"Don't let her worry you for a single minute," he said.

She caught an odd twitch to his mouth, a twitch of minor irritation, she thought. Well, sisters had been irritants to brothers since the worlds began.

About the time she was beginning to wonder if the music makers had been trading off with others who looked identical to keep up such an amazing barrage of dance tunes and tempos, the current ones put down their instruments and left the little stage.

Somehow Scan had timed it so that he and Yana were at the seemingly bottomless punch bowl as the last note died away. He pressed yet another cup into her hand.

"I'll be too blurred to sing," she said, trying to put it down.

"Drink it. You're on."

With what seemed to her like unceremonious haste, he then guided her across the floor to the platform.

"No, no, Sean," she protested, noticing herself to be the center of attention. In the sudden way these people had, everyone was settling into a quiet mode all around the room as Sean led her inexorably to the stage. Even the children were quiet, the babies remarkably all asleep.

"Yes, yes, Yana."

"Why me?" she protested, but her feet seemed willing to follow Sean.

"You're the hero."

She tried to wrench her arm free of his grasp, but his fingers merely tightened, and then she was stumbling onto the box that was the step up to the platform. She stood there, miserably aware of being the focus of so many eyes, so much unwarranted attention, of her coming ordeal. How could anything she said, or sang, help ease their losses?

Scan held up both arms and what little noise there was died completely.

"This is Major Yanaba Maddock," he announced, turning slowly to take in everyone patiently waiting. "You all know her. She will sing." Then, with an oddly formal bow, he gestured for Yana to sit on the single chair that was now centered on the stage.

She sank limply to the chair, feeling the hard seat grind into her tailbone. Sing? She was supposed to sing now?

A soft beat registered, and she saw Scan, the bodhran in one hand, gently fingering sound from the skin. She blinked and suddenly began the chant that had come to her. She hadn't rehearsed it since that day, weeks before, when Scan had coaxed the words from her. But they were there, on her tongue, and in the proper order, in the precise rhythm of the drumbeat, and her voice was saying them. She was unaware of anything else because her mind was back there, in Bremport for those few surrealistically macabre and devastatingly helpless and horrible minutes, and she wondered that she could enunciate any words for the pain in her chest, the constriction in her throat, and the unwept tears that pressed against her eyelids. She wished she were even more blurred than she knew she had to be, to let go like this. To perform, as if by rote, any duties that had not been drill-inspired over centuries of practice.

She heard, from a distance, her own voice, and she had never realized she could sound like that: a husky rich contralto that dipped and rose. She wasn't really aware of what she was singing until she got to the final lines.

"I was sent here to die, too, here where the snows live The waters live, the animals and the trees live, And you."

As the last of that vowel drifted into nothingness, she bowed her head, tears streaming down her cheeks and falling into her hands. She couldn't move and didn't know what she was supposed to do next. Maybe Scan would liberate her.

Then a pair of work-roughened hands slid across hers, pressed gently, and withdrew only to be replaced by another set of hands. By the third pair she looked up, for their touch was like a benison, healing her grief, staunching her tears. She could even smile as yet another set of parents laid hands on hers to mutely offer their appreciation. Seeing the tears in their eyes-tears of an odd sort of sublimated sorrowing-hers began to ease, along with the constriction in her chest, the tight bands about her heart.

The little ceremony completed, Scan collected her and brought her wordlessly to Clodagh's bowl, where the woman herself ladled a cup for her and solemnly inclined her head in a regal bow of approval as the cup was handed from Clodagh to Sean and then to Yana.

Then Sean put his arm about her shoulders and drew her to sit in a space that magically appeared on a bench against the wall. His shoulder touched hers, his hip and thigh brushed hers. She felt drained but exultant, no longer sad but infinitely relieved. She sipped the punch, keeping her head down, unwilling to make eye contact with anyone as she savored what was, as Sean had said, a healing.

The little susurrus of soft voices, expectant, made her look up to see Bunny leading Diego to the stage.

"This is Diego Metaxos," Bunny said, arms above her head and turning around slowly to the audience just as Sean had done. "He must sing."

Yana hoped that she had shown as much composure as Diego did. He sat down with more grace than she had, his hands splay-fingered on his knees.

"I am new come, in storm, here. , A storm of heart and mind and soul. I sought and found storm with Lavelle She saved me when the sled crashed down. With the heat of her body she saved me. With the wit of her mind she saved my father, too. Saved me to see the cavern that all say I didn't see."

His tone was rich in irony and his tenor young and surprisingly vibrant though Yana suspected he had never sung before audience either.

"But I saw the caverns and the water and the carving of wind and water.

I saw the gleaming snow, like jeweled cloth.

I saw the branches waving, the water talking,

The ice answering, the snow laughing.

I saw The animals of water and earth and they were talking, too.

They were kind to me and answered all my questions

But I do not know what questions I asked.

I do not know what answers I heard.

I know the cavern, the branches, the talking water,

The speaking ice and the laughing snow. I know

That you know it, too. So hear my song

And believe me. For I have seen what you have seen.

And I am changed. Hear my song. Believe me."

He threw his head back as his last passionate note died away, and threw out his arms, entreating their response.

It began as a very low murmur of approval, growing as more folk entered the answering chorus, as more people began to drum their feet on the floor, as a crescendo of sound beat on Yana's ears until she almost put her hands over them. But if she had, she would not have heard the answer.

"We believe! We believe! We believe!"

She had jumped up and was shouting along with everyone else. Because she could not doubt the boy. Everyone, at the same instant, swarmed across the floor toward him. Bunny was on the platform, hugging him, and suddenly he was crying, with the same sense of relief that Yana knew she had just felt.

Singing the Inuit way had much to recommend it.

Yana was still caught up in the emotion surrounding Diego's song when a voice spoke in her ear. "Now that was very moving."

The voice belonged to Torkel Fiske, who prevented her from turning with a light touch on her shoulders. Sean was no longer beside her. "Very touching. I'm so glad I convinced Giancarlo to let the boy come here today. Obviously he needed to vent his emotions and I do find it curious that when he insists here, in his poetic mode, that the nonsense his father has been babbling was real, the villagers agree with him."

"Maybe," Yana replied in a sardonic tone, "that's because the villagers are more observant than the company."

"Oh, but the villagers are the company, too. Perhaps a branch that's had insufficient attention in the past."

"Ooh, that sounds ominous," she said as lightly as she could.

"Maybe a little prophetic," he admitted, breathing into her hair. "I hope nobody will mind that I came. I just had to see for myself about this party you and Diego were so excited about. Could I talk you into a dance, or are you able?"

"I seem to be managing," she said, looking around for Sean. "And there's no dance music playing," she pointed out, feeling ridiculous, standing there in her homemade blouse, uniform pants and stocking feet like something out of a gothic novel. "Look, Torkel," she said, shaking off his hands to turn in his arms. "You've been a godsend and I'm very glad to see you, and I'm flattered by your interest. Under ordinary circumstances I'd be very tempted, but, well . . ."

"Oho!" he said, his eyes smiling down at her while his mouth twisted with mock disappointment. "I'm not the only one to appreciate you, huh? I was hoping the locals would be too backward to notice. My estimation of this place increases by the minute."

Thank God his ego was strong enough that she didn't have to worry about losing his friendship-and his assistance-by declining to play. She kissed his cheek. "Asshole."

He prolonged the contact with a hug that ended with sagged shoulders. "Oh well, so much for the reasons I was looking forward to coming."

About that time Aisling approached them and held out her arms for a hug, too, giving Yana a graceful way to extricate herself from Torkel. "Yana, I just had to tell you how beautiful your song was, how much it meant to me and everybody else."

"Thanks, Aisling. And thanks again for making this gorgeous blouse."

Aisling flushed with pleasure. "That's okay. It looks beautiful." She glanced at Torkel inquisitively and with just a tad of something Yana took to be-well, not hostility, but suspicion.

"This is an old shipmate of mine, Aisling, Captain Torkel Fiske. He arranged for me to get the material and for Diego to be here today."

"Oh, that was real nice of you, Captain," Aisling said, sticking out a long-fingered hand for him to shake. Torkel, typically, raised it to his lips instead.

"Hey, Yana." Sinead appeared behind her partner and stuck her hand out to Torkel, too. "Tell this guy for me that Aisling and I share everything," she said.

Again, the tone was friendly but the undercurrents were guarded and, in this case, more markedly hostile-but not because Torkel was kissing Aisling's hand. Yana thought perhaps Sinead might be being possessive of her on Scan's behalf.

"Torkel, Sinead Shongili."

The two regarded each other like fencers assessing each other's strengths; then he kissed Sinead's hand, after which she surprised him by kissing his, then licking her lips.

"Um, hairy knuckles. My dad had hairy knuckles."

"I like her," Torkel said, turning to Yana and pointing to Sinead.

"Me, too," Aisling said, putting her arm around Sinead's shoulders.

"Listen," Torkel said confidingly, taking in not only Yana but Aisling and Sinead, "maybe you women can help me with something I've got to do which is going to be real hard. Maybe you'd even know if I ought to do it now or wait until this party is over."

"Sure, Torkel," Aisling said.

"What's the matter, man?" Sinead asked.

"I need to find out who is next of kin to a woman named Lavelle Maloney."

"Lavelle!" Sinead said. "Has something happened to her? Where is she?"

Torkel gritted his teeth and patted the open air with his hand in a calming gesture. "I really think I should tell the next of kin before I tell anybody else, don't you? But, well, I think they'll need your support when I've finished talking to them."

"Oh, no . . ." Aisling said.

Sinead touched her partner's forearm gently. "Why don't you go tell Clodagh and Scan they're needed and I'll take Torkel and Yana to get Liam." To Torkel she said, "Lavelle's husband has been sick a long time. He didn't come today. We'll get her boy Liam to come with us back to her house to tell his da. Her daughter lives at Tanana Bay, and her other son is in the Space Corps, stationed on Mukerjee Three."

Yana saw Scan then, one arm around Bunny and the other around Diego, hording the kids toward her, speaking earnestly to Diego. Close behind him came Clodagh, and Sinead stopped as she met them.

Clodagh held up her hand and twiddled her fingers impatiently, as if staving off Sinead's news. Then she, too, headed toward Yana and Torkel.

She knows, Yana thought as Clodagh sailed toward them like a liner through an asteroid belt. She already knows. But how?

Torkel was intercepting Sean and the kids. "Diego, son, you have great talent," he said.

Torkel looked so handsome and fatherly congratulating Diego, Yana thought. He had wisely chosen not to wear a uniform, despite the apparently official nature of his visit. He wore instead a heavy sweater patterned with moss green, rust, and cream that set off his hair and eyes to good advantage, and a pair of rust-colored woolen trousers. He was bigger than Sean, she saw, and more stockily built, and of course their coloring was very different; one russet, the other silver, like fire and ice. Except, she remembered with an inward blush, there had been nothing icy about Sean Shongili thus far in their acquaintance.

"Sean," Sinead was saying, "this man is here because something has happened to Lavelle."

Sean squeezed his eyes shut and his lips thinned with pain, but that was nothing compared to Diego's reaction.

"What? What's happened to her?" the boy demanded of Torkel, his eyes blazing and his fists clenched. "What did you dorks do to her?"

Torkel looked genuinely pained. "Nothing, son. We're not sure what happened, and won't know until we get the autopsy report."

Sean's head snapped up. "Autopsy?"

"I take it she is dead then?" Sinead drawled with a contemptuous roll of her eyes.

Torkel blew a deep and frustrated sigh. "Please. Let's tell the relatives first."

"Sinead," Clodagh said softly, and the woman plunged into the crowd.

Diego, who at first had seemed moderately pleased to see Torkel, suddenly blew a gasket. "Goddamn you guys, you killed her!" he cried. Sean had hold of him, which was a good thing, because Diego was lunging for the captain and spitting with anger. "You guys just kept after her and kept after her and wouldn't believe her or us or anybody. So you fraggin' tortured her to death or something! Damn you. Why couldn't you let her alone? Why can't you let us all alone? You don't know the truth when you hear it. She told you what happened. Dad and I told you what happened, and you beat her up because you didn't believe her and she died."

"No, son, I-"

"If you didn't have my dad there, I'd never go back to that place. Never! Let us go. You're too dumb to-"

Clodagh was interrupting him with soothing noises, but she didn't really know the boy.

Neither did Yana, but she knew the reaction. The boy had simply had one too many profound traumas in a short space of time. His singing had been a highly emotional probing for him, opening a deep wound for healing. Before the healing could take place, Torkel's revelation had assaulted him with a new pain on top of the other.

"Metaxos, listen to me," she said in a calm but very firm voice. "We can find out the truth. There'll be a report. They'll return her body. I'll go back with you to SpaceBase personally and find out what happened if I have to go retrieve Lavelle myself."

Diego jerked his head to turn his scaring glare on her. "You're one of them. How can 1 trust you?"

"Oh, Diego, come on," Bunny said.

Just then Sinead arrived with a stony-faced young man in low. "Captain Fiske, this is Liam Maloney, Lavelle's son."

"My mum's dead, isn't she?" Liam asked Torkel. In contrast to Diego, Liam seemed outwardly very calm. Almost as if he'd been expecting this, Yana thought.

"Well, yes. I wanted to tell you and your father together."

"No offense, Captain, but I don't think Dad wants to see any of you people right now. I'll tell him." He turned to Clodagh, who put her arm around him as if he were still a baby, and as they moved away, he buried his head against her massive breast.

"Okay, Captain, now that you've done your duty, I think the rest of us need to know what's going on," Scan said.

"Come on back to my place," Yana said quickly, including Scan, Bunny, Diego, Sinead, and Aisling in her invitation and finally, with a sympathetic glance at Torkel, adding, "I'll make us some real coffee."

Chapter 10

How did she die?" Scan asked.

"We can't be sure yet. The autopsy report 'wasn't in when I left SpaceBase," Torkel said. "Probably delayed effects of exposure. Acted like respiratory failure, apparently. The medic suspected she may have frostbitten her lungs while she was out there and nobody realized it until she had already been transferred via shuttle to headquarters. The old man isn't doing so hot either, although the girl, Brit, doesn't seem to be suffering any ill effects. They're to be transferred to Andromeda medical facility for further observation."

"Don't," Scan said. "Send them back here. Keep them at SpaceBase if you have to, but they will soon sicken and die if you send them offplanet. They're adapted to this planet and these conditions. They'll die elsewhere. Bring them back."

"I'm not sure I can do that," Torkel said, just a hint of belligerence creeping into his voice. He didn't say it, but Yana could feel the resentment building in him: here he was trying to be such a great guy and let the locals in on what was happening, and they tried to tell him how to do his job.

"Why not?" Diego demanded angrily. "Are you having too much fun questioning them?"

Torkel heaved an exasperated sigh. "Son, I'm trying to be patient with you because I understand how upset you must be about your father. Your dad's partner is on the way down to look after you and should be arriving on one of the first troop shuttles. But I've had about enough crap out of you. You've been raised by Intergal. Surely you know that we don't use rough stuff on our own people . . ."

He appealed to Yana, but she said nothing. The terrorists from Bremer had been interrogated. They had, at one time, been Intergal's own people.

Sinead said diplomatically, "It's just that we're a very close-knit community here, Captain Fiske. People will worry about Sigdhu and Brit even more now with what's happened to Lavelle. I'm not saying it was the company's fault, but you know, we're used to a different kind of atmosphere here than what you have on the stations and ships. Our air is fresh, even if it's cold, not endlessly reprocessed."

"Glad you enjoy it," Torkel said with an ironic lift of his eyebrow. "The company provided all of the amenities of this planet."

"We need our own back here on the surface, man," Scan said, and Yana realized that he was at a disadvantage not knowing who Torkel was. "My family has been accommodating the species of this planet to its peculiarities for four generations now and between you and me, the company hasn't provided a lot of what's here. There are major adaptation problems for our people . . ."

"And you are, sir?" Torkel asked politely, but with an edge in his voice to match the one in Sean's. They stood across the room from each other, each with his feet spread and his arms poised, like a pair of gunfighters squaring off.

The cat, which had been lounging on the middle of the table washing its underside, suddenly leapt up, sprang to the door, and meowed urgently to go out. Yana crossed between the men to open the door, and when she turned back, they had relaxed so that they were merely glaring at each other, but no longer posturing. She stepped quickly between them, gesturing to each to come closer.

"Captain Torkel Fiske, descendant of the terraforming Fiskes, this is Sean Shongili, descendant of the genetic-engineering Shongilis," she said quickly, as if officiating at a hailing party for newly recruited officers. "You guys want to go to opposite corners and come out flashing credentials?"

They didn't seem to hear her for a moment; then Torkel suddenly grinned fondly at her and reached out to squeeze her shoulder.

"Trust you to try to defuse a situation, Yana. God, I've missed you. Shongili, I am actually extremely pleased to meet you. Excuse me if I came on a little strong, but we were all shocked by that poor woman's death when she had been so instrumental in saving young Diego here and his father."

"I think I can help, Torkel," Yana intervened again. "Let me see that autopsy report when it comes in. And please, I think there's been enough evidence gathered so far to show that Petaybee is not exactly what the company ordered, and Sean may be right about the adaptive failures."

Torkel shook his head. "That doesn't make much sense, Yana, when half the existing Intergal force was recruited from Petaybeans originally."

Yana shrugged and held out a cup of coffee, wishing she had acquired more cups from the BX. He took the cup in one hand, and then took her hand in his other.

"The recruits are young, Captain," Sean said. "Their growing isn't over, nor full maturation reached when they leave Petaybee to join Intergal."

"That's as may be, Shongili. Yana, we'll talk about this later. I can see now that everybody's too upset to listen to reason."

"I can take you and Diego back, sir," Bunny volunteered. Yana noticed that her young friend had very wisely kept her mouth shut throughout the conversation, retaining an enviably neutral-at least as far as Torkel was concerned-stance.

"Thanks, young lady, but 1 brought my own," Torkel said. He turned to Diego as if to say something, but Diego's black scowl made him think better of it.

They were pulling on winter gear when there was a knock at the door. Yana opened it, and there was the cat, sitting squarely in the middle of the doorstep, and Clodagh, in only a light jacket, stocking cap, and knitted scarf, right behind.

"I'm glad I caught you, Captain, Diego," she said, with a slightly softer look at the boy. "Adak just got a message in and brought it to the latchkay looking for you. Dr. Margolies is at SpaceBase now."

Torkel nodded his thanks and started to turn to Diego, but Clodagh stopped him.

"Captain, I was thinking maybe, you know, if your doctors think Dr. Metaxos won't get any better, maybe he and Diego could come here to live with us? Dr. Margolies, too, if the company wanted to station him here. Maybe he could do the work you need better if he lived with us?"

Yana wondered what Clodagh was thinking of. She knew the villagers had responded well to Diego at the latchkay, but in many close-knit communities, Dr. Metaxos would have been held indirectly responsible for Lavelle's death. Maybe these people were just unusually generous, but she couldn't imagine they would welcome a known company agent on the premises. On the other hand, theoretically Scan was a company man, too.

Torkel looked as flummoxed as she was by Clodagh's offer and said with his customary charm, "That's very kind of you people, and I'll certainly suggest it to Dr. Margolies and to Colonel Giancarlo. It might indeed be convenient to have Dr. Margolies based here in Kilcoole, at least for the time being, and good for young Diego to be around people his own age again. At least until the company comes up with some permanent solution for his problem."

Clodagh shrugged. "It's no problem to us, Captain. You might not realize it, but what happened to Dr. Metaxos has happened to quite a lot of people on Petaybee. This planet can be kinda hard on certain folks."

"Thank you for your concern, ma'am."

Yana had her coat on before he stepped a foot out the door. Hooking her arm in his, she said, "Tell you what, Torkel. How 'bout if Bunny takes Diego back to base and I keep you company on the way out and ride back with her?"

"I'd like nothing better," he said.

With somewhat forced heartiness Scan said, "Well, back to the latchkay for the rest of us. Bunka, make sure you girls are back in time for the night chants. Major Maddock will want to hear those."

For someone who had appeared so ardent earlier, Torkel Fiske was strangely silent during much of their two-hour snocle ride to SpaceBase. The river trail was wide and flat, streaks of clear ice showing black where the snow had drifted away, the moons gleaming white, mirroring the planet's surface. As the snocle cleared the trees and approached SpaceBase, white, blue, and red lights in the sky shot skyward or fell like multicolored snowflakes toward the landing pads.

"Looks like Kilcoole's not the only place there's a party going on," Yana said jokingly to Torkel.

"Hmm," he said, and in the closeness of the warmed air in the snocle, she could smell the musky cologne he wore. The man who has everything, she thought as she admired his classically handsome profile. She ought to be more moved, she told herself. She really ought.

"Yana? I thought you were medically retired here. Yet there doesn't really seem to be anything wrong with you that 1 can detect. Has it occurred to you that you needn't cut your career so short? I could arrange for light duty for a while, until you get back in the swing of things."

"What kind of light duty did you have in mind, Torkel? To tell you the truth, it's not bad here."

He snorted. "You could have fooled me. But actually, I thought maybe as long as you were here and you have the rank and the 'in' with the people, you could relieve Giancarlo. He's really blown it by letting that woman die while she was offplanet. It's that kind of stupidity that triggered the Bremport massacre."

"You've been reading my mail on that one," she said. "That guy has zero finesse."

"Exactly. Now, I don't have to tell you that at times you need a pretty heavy whip hand if you're going to accomplish a mission that people may not understand the rationale behind, or that may cause some temporary inconvenience. People hate change. But I think someone who already gets along with them ..."

"I see," she said. And she did. Someone who already got along with them was in a better position to betray their trust and kindness. Still, she might be able to help ease any transitions, which would not be a concern of Giancarlo's.

"And we could work together again. I need a strong superior officer to keep me on the right track, you know," he said, reaching over and squeezing her knee.

"Hoo boy, you were serious about that whip-hand business, weren't you?"

He was negotiator enough to know when to drop the subject and give her time to think about it, which she did as they slid into SpaceBase, the lights from the landing and departing shuttles spreading multicolored pools across the snow for the miles surrounding the base.

While a holiday air had prevailed at Kilcoole, it was definitely business even-more-than-usual at SpaceBase, where parka-clad soldiers scurried from the landing pads to a row of prefab warehouses that had not been there on Yana's previous visit. In fact, other troops were still assembling three more of the structures, while heavy machinery moved crates into the existing buildings.

"What's all this?" Yana asked. "Looks like an invasion."

"Watch your mouth," Torkel said, "if you want to be a positive influence for change. This is the expeditionary force I told you about. We're using SpaceBase as a supply depot for this continent. My father will be coming down later to supervise the more technical aspects of the operation but basically, from here, we'll launch probes and set up base camps close to the points we've identified from space as having the greatest potential for the resources we're seeking."

"Is this going on planetwide?"

"Not at the moment. Look, love, I can't say any more unless you choose to renew your active-duty status and your security clearance, okay? So think about it. And, by the way, come in for a physical so I can shove your status-change papers through in a hurry. You look pretty good for someone with banjaxed lungs and a medical discharge."

"It's all this clean air and country living," she said breezily.

"Great," he said, with a touch of grimness. "But don't be surprised if there are more traffic jams than usual around quaint and charming Kilcoole in the near future."

He plowed into an infirmary parking place willy-nilly and was out of the snocle and around to open the door for her before she could undo her seat belt. Bunny's snocle was already there, and she and Diego looked to be engrossed in urgent dialogue inside the vehicle.

"Can I meet Margolies without a security clearance?" Yana asked sweetly. "Just so 1 can reassure the populace as to Diego's family situation?"

"Of course," Torkel said. "I imagine he'll be in visiting Metaxos."

Bunny and Diego emerged, looking expectantly in their direction.

"We might as well form a welcoming committee," Torkel said with an overly hearty grin at the kids. "Come on."

Diego spotted Steve Margolies the moment they walked into the infirmary. He sprinted the length of the hall to embrace the older man, heedless of the presence of the medics, Torkel, Bunny, Yana, and even that of his father, lying on a hospital bed open-eyed and propped into an upright position with pillows. The room had only three other patients, and the ward on the opposite end of the corridor showed an unbroken line of empty beds.

Margolies, balding, bearded, and not quite portly, looked as glad to see Diego as the boy did him. "I came as quickly as I could, Diego," he said.

"I knew you would, Steve. I knew it."

Torkel stuck out his hand. "Torkel Fiske, Dr. Margolies. I had you sent for as soon as I learned of you from young Diego and this lady. This is Major Yanaba Maddock, currently retired and, uh-"

"Hi, I'm Bunny," Bunny said, also soliciting a handshake. "I hope you and Diego and his dad can come and live with us in the village."

"That's very kind of you," Margolies said, startled but amiable. "But right now I think Francisco needs the care he can get here."

"Have you found quarters yet?" Torkel asked.

"No. I came straight here after inprocessing."

"Well, then, look, Colonel Giancarlo and I are going to have to have a more extensive conversation with you later but I think right now the thing for me to do is to go make sure you are lodged at least in the same building with Diego. Yana, Bunny, I think we should leave this family alone, don't you?"

The infirmary corridors were teeming with new personnel and new equipment, and the building itself had been enlarged with newly attached modules at either end. Technicians were feeding data to computers, and medical personnel were stocking shelves and unpacking boxes. Yana wondered briefly why, with a half-empty infirmary, they were adding to it. She didn't like the look of that, actually. They must be expecting a great many more troops-and casualties.

They said their farewells, Torkel taking leave with just a hint of a lingering look in his eye for her as he strode off to do whatever it was he was going to do. Which Yana had a pretty good idea was not confined to simply seeing that the Margolies-Metaxos boys were comfy.

She and Bunny climbed in the snocle just as he turned around and waved, and Yana waved back until he was out of sight.

Then, as Bunny started the engine, Yana said, "Develop a mechanical problem, Bunny. I'm going to go back in there for a bit. If anyone challenges you, or stops to help you, drive off and come right back on base after a few minutes. I shouldn't be long."

Bunny gave her a hard, measuring look, then shrugged. "Okay, but whatever you're up to, be careful."

Yana flipped her an abbreviated salute and headed into the clinic.

For the first time since her release, Yana felt fortunate to have spent so long in a large medical facility. She walked back in as if she knew exactly where she was going. Purposefully, she pushed back thoughts of what would happen if she was discovered and her presence in the facility officially queried: Torkel might not even be able, much less wish to, bail her out, and she could easily lose her pension with Integral and face time in a detention center. But right now was the best time for her to obtain a copy of Lavelle's autopsy-before anyone thought to doctor it up for official reasons.

She entered the Staff Only lounge, which was as empty as it was bound to be with so much activity going on outside, pulled off her new blouse, and hung it on a hook beneath a patient gown. Pulling on a scrub top and a paper cap, and paper shoes in place of her cold-weather boots, she hung a surgical mask around her chin and, taking a deep breath-without a hint of a cough, she noted distantly-to ease the tension in her guts, padded briskly back down the hall.

At Andromeda, as at most company infirmaries, convalescing patients did routine, nondemanding chores to save the professional staff work. Even officers did it, and were glad of it, for it helped stave off the boredom of being separated from their own work and their own lives. During her own convalescence, Yana had spent considerable time helping in medical records, requesting and transmitting data from central files. She could at least see if the autopsy had been performed on Lavelle yet-and if it had become a classified file or not.

She walked straight into the vacant ward opposite the one containing Diego's father, careful to keep her back to the boy and his guardian, and sat out of sight, around the corner, at the nursing-station computer. She typed in the access code she remembered from her days in the hospital-no longer than six weeks ago, which seemed incredible, considering how well she felt and how far she had come. She breathed a sigh of relief as the code worked. In a closed system, where for the most part only company troops and employees had access to the facility, the need for security was not as tight as it would have been on a world containing a variety of corporate or military entities. On shipboard, space station, or wholly owned planetary subsidiary, Inter-gal was the only game in town.

Then the machine purred along for a moment and she punched in AUTOPSY REPORT, and suddenly the screen filled with data. She hit PRINT, scanning while the document printed.

The lungs had been congested, so Lavelle had indeed had pneumonia, but that was not listed as cause of death. Her immune system had suddenly and fatally collapsed, unable to cope with half a dozen systemic viral infections. The autopsy noted that this alone was surprising, since tissue samples-muscle, blood, skin, and bone marrow-all indicated that she had been in the physical shape of a woman half her chronological age. Also, a small inexplicable node had attached to the medulla oblongata. That was strange enough, but the autopsy report also cited the presence of an unusually large and highly developed lump of "brown fat" weighing an astonishing 502 grams: its blood vessels had ruptured. A footnote by the examining physician explained that while two hundred grams of brown fat were normally present in human babies at birth-to ensure NSHP, nonshivering heat production- the substance atrophied when babies grew big enough to adjust their own temperatures to cold. It was odd enough to find the brown fat active, and far odder to find it so enlarged. There was also a thin subcutaneous layer of a dense fatty tissue. A minor mutation to protect inhabitants against the cold? Then she remembered seeing a similar fatty layer, thin but present, in the animals she had skinned after the trapping expedition.

Reading on, she was vastly relieved to see that there was no sign of any external injuries or evidence of drugs in the system that might have indicated that Lavelle had been tortured or abused in any way during interrogation. Stuffing the printout in her pants pocket, she shut off the computer, rose, wiped her eyes like any machine-weary tech, and made herself shuffle back down the corridor to the lounge to change again into her latchkay blouse before rejoining Bunny in the snocle.

Chapter 11

How do we know that this is for real?" Bunny asked when Yana showed the autopsy report to Sean, 'Sinead, and Clodagh.

"It is," Sean said unequivocally.

"Then you know about this brown fat stuff, the node, and the anomalous fatty layer?" Yana asked.

Sean nodded and Clodagh's eyes glistened.

"It's why only the young can go off Petaybee," Clodagh said.

"Their brown fat hasn't developed the same mass that adults' have?" Yana asked.

There was a long pause while Sean, Clodagh, and Sinead exchanged secretive, and almost embarrassed, glances. Bunny just looked from one to the other, perplexed and hoping to find an answer in their faces.

Finally, Sean nodded. "Something like that, Yana. It's pretty complicated, and frankly nobody, including me, understands all of the functions of the adaptations. You may have noticed my research facilities for anything much beyond simple animal husbandry are a bit limited. A lot of it the planet simply seems to do on its own. I haven't found anything about deliberately introducing such changes as the brown fat and the node in any of the notes my predecessors left behind, but I do know they exist from examining the corpses of other Petaybeans."

"I can understand how you might not know how the changes got here or what they consist of if you're not responsible for them, but there are still a few things I think you can explain," Yana told him.

Had she not grown up on space stations and ships, where humans were the dominant life-form but by no means the only life or even the only sentient life, she might have been a little more shocked by what they were implying, that humans were being altered by a planet to suit itself. As it was, she was vaguely annoyed with herself that she was reminded of old vids of aliens who took over the bodies of innocent earthlings.

She took a deep breath and began confronting the issues that disturbed her concerning Lavelle's physiology. "Let me get this straight. You folks here on Petaybee are all Earth stock, right?"

"That's right," Clodagh said. "My ancestors were sent here from County Clare, County Limerick, County Wicklow, and Point Barrow, Alaska. Scan's and Sinead's are from Kerry and Dublin and northern Canada."

"You know all that?"

"If you'll remember right, Yana, I told you most of us can't read or write. It's part of my job here to remember these things." Clodagh grinned. "An old Irish profession."

"Well, tell me this: if you're Earth stock, like me and like most of the company corps, how come only you people can't be moved from where you were sent? I mean, even if the young can go and the older ones can't, it hasn't always been that way, has it? Why is that brown fat stuff affecting you now and it didn't to begin with? Surely at first the company occasionally recruited people who were a little more . . . mature."

It was Scan's turn to look perplexed-and somewhat worried. "Yes, they did. But mostly they've preferred to recruit the youngsters, and it's never seemed to do them more harm than military service does anyone, that we know of. And you have to understand, Yana, that our people have been adjusting to the planet and the planet to us for a couple of hundred years now. The physical changes found in Lavelle's body were adaptive changes to this world. Some people adapt more readily and more completely than others-and the more exposure they have, the longer the period they have to become accustomed to something, the greater the chance of a profound adaptation. Lavelle was very much a woman of this planet. She lived most of her life outdoors, she ate only what she caught or grew, like many of us, and she was well into her fifties. Here, she was very tough. But her body was used to cold weather, Petaybean midwinter cold, far colder even than you've experienced so far, to clean air and pure water and real food. I'm afraid she had lost whatever resistance she had to other conditions in the process of becoming suited to the extremes of Petaybee. Our peculiar weather conditions would never have killed her, but in exchange for that protection, her body relinquished certain other immunities. Besides which, she had a very strong emotional attachment to her home place."

"I hardly think emotional attachment alone could have caused her death," Yana said.

"It's possible, Yana," Clodagh said. "It's possible. It's hard to explain to you when you've been here such a short time but maybe when you witness the night chants, you'll understand a little better. With Lavelle being the kind of woman she was, I knew, Sean knew, really all of us knew, that she was as unlikely to survive away from Petaybee as that colonel would out in the mountains without a parka. If we'd known that they'd planned to take her offplanet, we'd have protested, tried to stop them somehow."

"Lavelle would have protested," Sinead said in a bitter voice, her small rough hands knotted at her sides. "She must have told them. She didn't need to know what her insides looked like lo know she would die offplanet."

Yana gave a gusty sigh. "And much as 1 hate to say so, she could've told them till the sun turned cold and they wouldn't have believed her."

"Now they do?" Clodagh asked, her face impassive.

Yana shook her head, in anger, frustration, and a whole lot of other conflicting and negative emotions. She was tired. She was confused and disappointed and even somewhat disillusioned, something she had never thought would be possible again. This had seemed to be such a simple, happy place, and now it had a secret. All she wanted was to get some rest.

"It's time to go now," Sean reminded the others as he tucked his hand under Yana's elbow. "You haven't missed the chanting, Yana. It will revive you."

Feeling the familiar surge of attraction for him mingle with all of the doubts, fears, and unanswered questions rolling through her mind, she wondered if he could be lying, if in spite of his protestations he was somehow tampering with these people's genes so that they would never be able to leave. She had the oddest feeling that he was definitely hiding something, and that worried her more than any of the other secrets Petaybee held. Was Sean responsible for the problems Giancarlo had mentioned when she had first arrived? And if these people knew they were being changed, as some of them seemed to believe, why did they put up with it?

Yana regarded Sean for a long moment as his silver eyes appealed to her. Gazing up at him, she tried to see him as some sort of psychopath mad-scientist monster, and all she could think of was how wonderful it had been to dance with him tonight, and before that, their encounter at the hot springs. His expression grew less sad and serious as he watched her face, and she knew he could see her resolve to stay detached melting.

Then, with her voice wavering with unaccustomed indecision as much as weariness, she said, "Oh, frag, Scan. I'm really bushed. Nothing short of eight hours' sack time is going to revive me."

A sly smile kindled in his eyes and curved his lips. "Wanna bet?"

Clodagh unexpectedly touched her shoulder, her eyes gentle with sympathy. "You come, Yana. You'll see."

The cat came out with an authoritative "meh!," provoking Yana to an exasperated laugh. She rubbed her forehead with an impatient gesture.

"You guys are bent on brainwashing me into a proper Petaybean, too, aren't you?"

"Something like that," Scan said in very good humor. He knew he had won. If he hadn't exactly convinced her, she would at least let her wishful thinking override her better judgment for the time being. With a deft movement he closed the opening of her jacket, flipped her parka hood onto her head, and started pushing her hands into her gloves.

"Lemme do that," she said, feeling a surge of almost childish rebellion. She didn't want to feel completely manipulated just because she was willing to be reasonable. But she didn't resist as he guided her along, following Bunny, Clodagh, Sinead, and Aisling back to the hall, which was still resounding with the sounds of merriment within.

Outside the door, a girl stood chatting with a man who was stirring the contents of a huge metal drum, set up over a small, fierce fire. As they passed, the man nodded, smiled, and smacked his lips appreciatively at the odors wafting up from the delicious-smelling concoction, soup or stew, in the big barrel. Clodagh took an exaggeratedly deep sniff, fanning the aroma toward her with both mittens.

When they entered the meetinghouse, Yana had to pause to adjust to the temperature-and the odor-of the hall, which had been packed solid with energetic folk for the past eight or nine hours.

If these dancing, singing, talking, gesticulating, laughing, crying people were really the cruel victims of a malign curse that doomed them forever to bondage to a hostile planet, they were either blissfully unaware of it or they plainly didn't give a rat's ass.

And suddenly, neither did she. She liked this lot better than the whole Intergal company corps and the board of directors put together, and if there was something wrong with them, well, she had been told to investigate and that was what she was doing. Sort of.

The room was hot, but she didn't mind; it was redolent with food, sweat, and other odors, but there was also a sensation that defied a name, although she thought it had something to do with the great good humor, the fun, the joy these people were projecting. How they had kept it up the whole time she had been gone, she didn't know. But patently they had! She grinned up at Scan and saw that he was sweating; she felt the first moisture beading her brow, too.

As if their entrance were a signal, the music ground to a wheezing stop and the dancing couples stood looking toward them expectantly. Clodagh, Scan, and the others stripped off their parkas, and Yana removed hers. In a corner of the room a bodhran rumbled like marching thunder and a banjo began playing in a minor key. Someone began singing in a husky tenor, as if his throat had endured too many cold winds and the smoke from too many fires. He sang a lonely, homesick sort of song about the green fields of planet Earth, then followed with a rollicking, humorous parody contrasting Earthbound living to life on Petaybee. The next song was a similarly silly one about the last man on the planet who could read, which Yana knew was an exaggeration since at least the company-sponsored people read memos and orders and such.

That song changed the mood of the evening, and every instrument but the drum stilled. The drum slowed from the bouncing beat of bodhran to the steady muted thump of a heartbeat.

Without exchanging another word with anyone, Clodagh began singing the song she had sung for Yana over dinner the first night.

Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.

The drum pounded in even, measured time as Clodagh was joined by everyone else as soon as she had sung the first line.

Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. The air swirled with smoke from the fire, on it riding the evaporated breath and sweat of the two or three hundred people cramming the hall. Yana felt them so strongly around her that it was as if they all wore the same skin; the drum was the beat of their collective heart.

As the last droning word of Clodagh's song died away, someone else took up a new song, one that Yana had not heard before.

"Lost the song, lost the words, lost the tongue

Lost the skill to read our own tracks.

Lost the skill to mark our trail.

Lost the symbols to read the spoor of others.

Lost the pictures that once replaced them.

Lost the voices that told us we did not need them.

Lost the earth for want of the songs. Ajija."

The voices swelled around Yana as several more drums took up the beat, so that the walls of the lodge itself seemed to pulse with the tempo. Sean's voice sang in her right ear, Bunny's in her left, Clodagh's in front of her, and Aisling's behind her. She found it difficult to think of the report, difficult to think of anything, in fact, except exactly what was happening all around her, inside her. She breathed in the air that the others had breathed before her, she swayed to the beat of the drum, and although she didn't know these songs, she realized that her own mouth was opening with all those other mouths. This was a sort of spiritual communion, with those around her, that had nothing whatever to do with a religion, or a ritual of any sort. Happening, that's what it was. A Happening. It was happening just as much to everyone else in the hall as it was to her. Words were irrelevant: feeling was important. She just had to be singing something as the song continued, a new voice leading it.

"The new song stained the soles of our shoes

The new song bathed us.

We drank the new song.

We breathed it, taking it into ourselves for life

And for life to the song giving forth breath."

And another voice, older, cracked, sang:

"The new song spoke to us in the new tongues.

The howl of a dog, the curly-coat's whinny,

The fox's bark.

The new song walked on the feet of the cat.

It spoke of its secrets in the death-squeal of the rabbit.

It sings its secrets from its own mouth

To the ears of those who can listen.

Let's not leave it to sing alone any longer

But go to the center and add our voices

To keep it company for a while

And learn from it new harmonies. Aja ji."

Yana had no idea how long or how often the song had been repeated, but suddenly everyone was putting their parkas on and, to the continued beat of the drum, filing through the door, out into the night. A brilliant band of light snaked overhead, punctuated occasionally by small dots of colored lights descending. More traffic at SpaceBase, she realized. It seemed incongruous and unreal after the chanting to think about ships landing.

Scan was nudging her forward, sandwiched between himself and Clodagh. "Is it over now?" she asked.

"Not yet."

"Where are we going?"

"To the hot springs. We chant as we walk. You'll see. It's very beautiful."

He squeezed her shoulders encouragingly, and she was not at all surprised, for some reason, to find that she was no longer tired.

With the beat sustaining her, and everyone else, they marched on; totally unlike any Christian soldiers, she thought irreverently. She was surprised when they reached the hot springs in what seemed like a very short time. She had thought the springs were much farther away from Kilcoole. The rising steam occluded any details that daylight might have illuminated. The procession- no, procession was not the right word any more than "ritual" or "religion." Okay, she thought, this informal early-morning-after-the-night-before gathering made its way around the spring and seemed to disappear. Startled, she blinked, felt Scan's fingers tighten in reassurance, and then realized that the line led under the waterfall. She hadn't suspected before that there was any access there. But then with the steam and the sheeting of down-spilling water, she hadn't looked.

There was just sufficient space for a body, knowing where to go, to sidle past the actual cascade of water without getting more than a dusting of spray. Then she had to adjust her vision to a curious lambent light that was both soft and clear. She could see the walls of a passage curving gradually downward, and the bobbing of heads as people descended. The air was remarkably fresh and invigorating.

The downward movement continued, with people silently merry. Yana tried to figure out why those words seemed so appropriate: "silently merry." But they all were glad to be here, together, and moving toward whatever destination lay down there. She became aware that Scan was giving her occasional quick glances, as if reassuring himself that she was accepting this "happening." She didn't know what else she could have done but go along with everyone else, if only to discover what she could of the hidden places of Petaybee, and its secretive inhabitants. Yet . . . the palpable merriness of everyone around her denied the prospect of threat or harm. And she felt so good about coming!

How long the downward slope wound its way, she couldn't tell, for the soft rhythmic beat of the bodhrans urged them onward, yet the drum sound did not echo, but was oddly absorbed by the walls. Then, suddenly, they were there! In a vast luminous cavern, all blues, greens, soft pastel variations of those hues in serrated layers, streamers, bands, patterns. She wished she could ask Diego if all of this looked familiar to him. She was certain she was in the cavern he had described-if not the same one, then a similar one. For there was the water he had mentioned, the odd formations that did look like natural vegetation in their apple green, and ice-sculptured animals in weird and bizarre shapes. People were seating themselves in random groups, murmuring pleasantly, merrily, to each other, with an air of expectation about them.

Clodagh moved to the right of those in front of her and Scan guided Yana in that direction. Sinead, Aisling, and Bunny veered, too. Clodagh went beyond any other group, to a sort of promontory of pale sea green ice, and plumped herself down, cross-legged, a position that Yana found both remarkable and enviable in a woman of such proportions. Clodagh settled herself solidly and smiled as Scan, propelling Yana in front of him, moved beyond and above her. He motioned for Yana to be seated. She was somewhat surprised to find that the surface wasn't the least bit cold. Scan folded himself down beside her, close enough so that their shoulders were touching. She wondered about his constant tactile contact with her: she had never noticed him being touchy-touchy with anyone else. She didn't know if she was offended- no, she wasn't. Not at all. When he wasn't being just plain reassuring, even possessive, she found she liked Scan touching her for any reason. She had always maintained a physical aloofness with most people, male or female, saving touch for caress, rather than for identity or possession. When Bry turned touchy-touchy, she knew what would soon follow. She folded her arms about her legs and hooked her knees up to her chin. Sean assumed a similar posture, as close to her as possible. He grinned and gave her a totally impious wink.

The surface under her buttocks seemed to get warmer. She wiggled, realized the heat was all over, and undid her parka, only then noticing that everyone else had already done the same. A steam or mist seemed to be rising all around them, hiding the people on the other end of this crescent. She didn't think the body heat of even so many people could have such an effect on this huge cavern.

Sean was watching her, a half smile curving his lips as if he expected, and was pleased by, her actions.

"So? What now?" she asked, leaning into his strong shoulder so that only he heard her.

"Relax, Yanaba. Just take it easy, and take it all in. We're including Petaybee in the latchkay and introducing you. In a moment the planet will respond-just accept it, okay?" His lips barely moved, but she heard each word distinctly. His fingers flicked out in a subtle gesture.

That was when she became aware of the change in the lighting. Whether it was a trick of the mist or not, the lambency had taken a deeper, golden hue, and through her tailbone she felt a vibration. Conversations died off, and a respectful silence spread. Clodagh seemed to elongate from coccyx to poll. Bunny, too, straightened her spine. Much as she wanted to, Yana could not turn her head to see if Scan was responding, for she herself was caught up in whatever it was. And what was it? she asked herself, as she felt each vertebra in her back stiffening. Vibration and warmth pulsed up her spine to her brain stem. Then she was taking deep breaths, inhaling from the gut, filling her lungs-lungs that could now expand to full capacity with neither pain nor wheeze.

She had the weirdest sensation that her brain was expanding, too, the scalp lifting from her head bones-not at all an uncomfortable feeling; more as if she was lightening up all over. Of their own accord her eyes closed-so that she could concentrate on these internal expansions. She was aware, too, of her blood flowing in her veins, juices moving throughout her organs, as if some agency was cleansing her inside out-the way one inflated a mattress, a survival bubble tent, or the tire of a ground-effects machine. There was no pain or discomfort involved-only this sense of being filled in every physical crevice and bodily cavity, this lightening.

She was then inexplicably aware of a different sensation: one of completeness, one of belonging, one of perception and acceptance beyond her physical self. She fought that briefly, lost, and was rewarded with a euphoria she had never experienced even in her closest moments with Bry. It was like, yet unlike, orgasm; inexpressibly satisfying and rewarding. She exhaled slowly-for the lightening feeling had apparently occurred during the course of her one deep inhalation. Immediately she pulled air into her lungs again, wishing to achieve that almost vertiginous state of full extension, that delicious lightening, that . . . quasi-mystic belongingness.

Something very gentle, like a feather flicking dust from a delicate surface, flowed across her mind, chiding her for being greedy. All she really needed would be given.

Yana blinked her eyes open, for the thought was alien to her: it had been implanted in her mind. She blinked again. The mist had dissipated. And so had the people who had accompanied her to the cavern. Clodagh was gone, Bunny and Diego, Sinead and Aisling! Before she could panic, there was pressure against her right shoulder.

"I'm here," Sean said, a ripple of laughter in his low voice. When she turned her head, his silver eyes caught hers and then he nodded. Exhaling a totally worldly sigh, she let herself sag, no longer upheld by whatever had had her in its thrall. She felt a shaft of regret for what was no longer in touch with her.

"How long?" she asked Sean, gesturing about her.

"How long did it feel?" he asked, taking her hand in his warm one.

"Like one deep breath."

He nodded again, his eyes slightly hooded, but his smile was full of satisfaction. Then he held her hand up, examining it closely before he turned it palm up and kissed it. She could not control the shudder that crackled up her spine. He laid her palm against his warm cheek and made eye contact.

"It was more than one breath, wasn't it?" she asked.

He nodded, and she could tell from his caution that the time that had passed had been much longer than he felt it safe to admit, before gauging her reaction.

Slowly, carefully, sorting through her memory of the experience and her reactions, reaching the logical conclusion of something that defied logic, she asked, "You people weren't just being poetic when you said Petaybee is alive, were you? It is, isn't it? And it-it hypnotizes you or puts you in a trance or something. Like Diego?"

Sean nodded. "Most of the time it's like it was for you and for Diego, but for those too rigid to accept the possibilities, it can be extremely traumatic-induce shock, madness, even death. Not just with outworlders. You may have noticed young Terce, the other snocle chauffeur?"

Yana nodded. She hadn't seen much of Terce since she had arrived, but she remembered Bunny saying the boy wasn't too bright.

"He didn't react well to this experience. Most children easily accept it, but Terce ... Maybe he just had too linear a turn of mind or something, but it terrified him and he's never tried again. He sometimes lurks on the edge of the latchkays but he won't join in. But there was no malice involved-just a ... lack of communication." He shrugged. "There's much more to this planet than instrumentation can detect, Yanaba. You've experienced a central part of it tonight."

"A rite of passage?" She wanted to sound skeptical or cynical or even facetious, but that wasn't the way her words sounded even in her own ears. She dropped her voice to a whisper. "I passed?"

Scan laughed with such real mirth that she had to grin. Then he pulled her against him, arms tightly cradling her body to his chest, rocking both of them back and forth.

"What do you think?" he asked teasingly.

"I don't know what to think. I'm not exactly the religious type . . ."

"Religion has nothing to do with it, Yana. We weren't worshiping. The planet is alive. It's only courteous to communicate. There's-a relationship involved," he said, quite lightly and happily. She realized that he was more relieved than he cared to admit that she had come through her-introduction-without trouble. He continued his rather nonchalant explanation while draped around her, nibbling her ear. "The company wants us to think that everything on the planet came from them, but that's not the case.

This planet has a mind, and has developed resources, of its own. Living here, most of us know that and accept the gifts, the protection, and in return, we offer it companionship and-I don't know, expression, I suppose."

"But why? Why does it not only accept you but give you so much? If it really is a living, thinking being, it could as well resent you for occupying its surface. What does the planet get out of you-us-being here?"

He smiled lazily again and ran his finger the length of her spine. "Scientifically speaking? I haven't a clue. But I do have a theory: I think that the reason probably is-maybe-that Petay-bee likes us."

"That's it? It provides for you, lets you live here and allows you this . . ." She searched for a word. "This blissful form of communication just because it likes you?"

"That's about the size of it." He nodded. "And it protects us from its own extremities as well, don't forget, with the adaptations." He gave her a delicate nibble on the back of her neck to punctuate his remark.

"That didn't ultimately provide enough protection for La-velle," she reminded him, trying to sound rational when all she wanted to concentrate on was how to twist in order to nibble him back.

"It can only protect its people here, Yana. Miracles are seldom things."

"Will I grow the adaptations? The-what was that ugly term?-brown fat and the protective layer under the skin?"

"If you need them."

She pressed a thumb roughly across his bare forearm and gave him a quizzical look.

"Oh, yes I have it," Scan said comfortably. "And a few other accommodations you'll just have to find out for yourself. Some of us are more fully adapted than others. I, for instance, am even more a creature of Petaybee than Lavelle."

"I don't believe it! You don't look different. And you don't carry an extra ounce of flesh anywhere," she said, almost accusingly. She was remembering his body all too vividly.

"Are you sure?" he said in a teasing voice, and his hands began to wander across the skin of her back and arms.

That was the first moment she realized that she was as naked as he was. When had that happened? Yet their nudity did not surprise her, seeming as natural as if they had just shared a sauna- and she had wanted to see his finely muscled body again. Did this damned planet grant three wishes? Had she taken hers without knowing what she really wanted?

Of their own accord, her hands began to caress his warm silky flesh, the muscles excitingly firm beneath her fingers. Then Sean added the persuasions of his lips to those of his hands, and Yana responded with an ardor she thought she had lost too long ago to ever regain it. He was so silky, so strong, so agile, suddenly so demanding, and she found she had a few demands of her own. His chuckle seemed to beat against her diaphragm and against her breasts, forcing an echo from her as he rolled himself into her with a speed and skill she had to admire. He filled her as she had never been filled before, and the ascent into ecstasy was almost more than she could bear ... than they could bear, for Sean, in mind and body, was subtly, and impossibly, linked to her in a way that she had never experienced before. She was herself, matching the urgency of his rhythm; she was him, sheathing and unsheathing with a power that he, too, had never encountered in a long life of couplings.

They both called out at the same time, in the same voice of joy that was colored with an agony of regret for so ephemeral a moment. As they clung to each other, breathless, unbelieving, that moment seemed uncannily elongated-and all too brief.

"Yana!" Sean murmured in her ear, his tone reverent.

"Oh, Sean!" With strengthless arms, she pressed him against her, burying her face in his neck. The million things she wanted to tell him remained unsaid, for words would shatter the sense of bonding and she felt she had to preserve it, extend it.

For the first time in her adult life, sleep overcame her after sex. Sometime later, Sean shook her gently by the shoulder, kissing the corner of her mouth.

"Hmmmm." She didn't wish to move. She wanted more of him and put her hand out to pull him back to her. But he was dressed. That effectively brought her fully awake.

"We must leave now, Yanaba," he said, his eyes tender and his hand gentle as he began to dress her.

That, too, was a novel experience, being dressed by a lover. She helped him even though she didn't want to.

When she was jamming her boots on, he took her hand, pressing it against his leg, and with his free hand, tilted her chin up so she met his eyes. She had to catch her breath against the lovingness in their silvery depths. He stroked her cheek with a touch that reminded her of another one.

"Sean, if you were taken off-planet-if they hauled you in for questioning like Lavelle? Would you die, too? Torkel was-"

He put a finger to his lips. "I know. And I can't stay here-" And she knew he meant Kilcoole, not just this cavern. "But I will return to you"-and the slight emphasis made her heart bump- "whenever I can, Yanaba Maddock." He dropped his hand to her breast, over her heart, and pressed in hard. "Am I in yours as you are in mine?"

"Yes." Why she could admit it so easily she didn't know. Except that it was true. And it didn't matter if he never did return to her. She would love Sean Shongili for the rest of her life.

His lips brushed hers as gently as he had stroked her cheek.

"Come, we have to hurry." He turned abruptly and led the way out.

As they moved up the slope, it seemed to her that the light behind them gradually dimmed. It was dawn when they ducked out from under the cascade. Dawn of which day, Yana wondered.

Chapter 12

Yana was still pleasantly disoriented from the experience in the cave and bemused by lovemaking as they walked back to the village. She was not exactly sure how far they had come from the hot springs when Scan pressed her hand in farewell and disappeared into the trees. Considering their conversation and his sudden insistence that they leave the cave, she was hardly surprised.

The sky resembled a healing bruise, staining the morning with yellow-brown haze and, even out here in the woods, smelling like a spaceport, which was unusual. Mostly the smells about Kilcoole were delicate and crisp, refined by the cold to mere essences, but now the stench of hot ship-shielding filled the air and cast a pall over the woods. How many troops had landed since she left SpaceBase?

As she walked out of the woods and into the long clearing preceding the village, one of Clodagh's cats-the one who lived in her own cabin? she could never be sure-trotted up to her, and a short time later Clodagh appeared.

Her beautiful smile livened her face as she embraced Yana and kissed her cheek. "Welcome, neighbor. I knew there would be no problem for you."

"Scan's gone, Clodagh."

"Very wise. You should find somewhere to go, too, Yana. The soldiers are all over the village now. They came the morning we returned from the chant."

"When was that, Clodagh?"

"Yesterday. Don't worry. It didn't take you long for an offworlder. Giancarlo has gone up to Sean's place with the others, but he was asking for you, too."

"I need to find Torkel Fiske before Giancarlo finds me. Is he here, too?"

"I don't think so. Bunny will know."

"Where is she?"

"Somewhere between here and SpaceBase. They been keepin' her and Terce and Adak all awfully busy. Adak will know where she is though."

As it turned out, they didn't need to go to the snocle shed. They met Bunny, accompanied by another of the cats, coming down the street toward them through a village that had changed during the time Yana had been in the cave. Snocles ferried uniformed and parka-clad figures up and down the streets, and similar figures wandered between the houses, trying to look as if they were patrolling something. Snocles were parked willy-nilly along the streets. Many of the vehicles were loaded with equipment, and Yana saw two trains of the machines heading away from the village. Several houses farther on, winter-uniformed corps members were slapping together another of the prefab buildings.

"As you can see, we've been invaded," Clodagh said. "Slainte, Bunny."

"Slainte, Clodagh. Yana! Oh, Yana, you did great. Isn't it wonderful?" Yana was momentarily confused all over again as Bunny gave her a welcoming hug, then realized that the girl's words referred strictly to the earlier portion of Yana's encounter with the cave, not to the more private events occurring afterward.

Still, the relief behind Bunny's joy reinforced Yana's recognition that not everyone found the communion wonderful, or even pleasant. The cave-no, the planet-could and did damage those it rejected, or those who rejected it; she wasn't sure quite what the criterion was. She was just immensely glad to have been found satisfactory.

She grinned back at the girl. "That it was. Even more wonderful than you can possibly imagine. But right now, Bunny, I need to find Torkel Fiske fast."

"That's dead easy," Bunny said. "He just left the station for SpaceBase. I'll take you out there. I'm trying to be there when Colonel Giancarlo is here, and here when he's there, so he doesn't remember his threat to take away my license."

The usually silent riverbed was now a high-speed thoroughfare, vehicles skiing back and forth, passing each other. The ride to SpaceBase was nerve-racking, because it was obvious, even before Bunny began to veer out of the way of poorly driven snocles, that not every driver was as capable as she was on such a treacherous surface.

Bunny dropped Yana at the headquarters building and drove off even more cautiously through a great deal of snocle traffic, toward the infirmary, where, she told Yana, she hoped to find Diego.

As opposed to the bustle outside, headquarters was quiet- stripped of personnel, Yana thought. The door to an inner office stood open, and through it she could see Torkel's bronze hair shining in the light from his console.

"Hello, Yana," he said when she strode in, closed the door behind her, and sat down. He barely looked up at her, which under most circumstances would have been a rather refreshing change from his pronounced attentiveness of the past few days. "I'm on comm line with my father. I'll be right with you."

She waited while he returned to his conversation.

"Great, Dad, see you soon. Over and out," he said aloud, tapping the final key. He was still smiling as he turned expectantly to Yana and asked, "What can I do for you?"

"You offered me Giancarlo's job. I want it."

He grinned. "Is it my turn to say, 'But this is so sudden'?" "Torkel, he's making a balls of the whole thing. Listen, we have got to talk seriously about what's going on here on Petaybee and the company's interface with the natives

"Yana, let me remind you of a point that others seem to be forgetting: the natives are transplants of barely two hundred and fifty years ago from Earth. Johnny-come-latelies as our projects go. And from my conversation with your buddy Shongili, it seems to me they're awfully damned possessive for sharecroppers on company property."

"That's because you only know part of what's been happening. Look, Torkel, Giancarlo told me to find out what's been going on with Petaybee and the unauthorized life-forms, and I think I have. Both the natives and my own experience confirm my conclusions. I think you'll agree, after we've talked, that the mining operations can't be started precipitously, and any mass transfer of I he inhabitants of this planet is out of the question."

"Excuse me, Yana. Dear. The company makes the decisions; not you, not me, and certainly not the illiterate dregs the company was kind enough to resettle here." He gave her his best company-negotiator's poker face. The set-to with Scan had either done some serious damage to his goodwill, or that goodwill had been an act.

"Torkel. Dear. At least hear me out, okay? You did ask."

He relaxed again. "Okay. Shoot."

"Before you slap my wrist, let me remind you that I was retained by the company to investigate, and I took that as my authorization to do so, not only in what's happening here on Petaybee, but also in company records pertaining thereto."

"You accessed Lavelle Maloney's autopsy file?" He asked with a one-wolf-to-another-wolf grin.

"That's a roger."

He shrugged. "I would have preferred you to go through channels, but I see your point. And if you can explain to her friends that birth defects caused her death, rather than our interrogations, so much the better."

"They weren't birth defects, Torkel."

"No?"

"No. According to Shongili and the others, they were anatomical adaptations engendered by contact with Petaybee."

"Really? Is there any proof of this?"

"Tests on any mature Petaybean will yield similar anomalies, Scan says."

"I see. We can run the tests on Sigdhu and the other woman then, I suppose."

"You can, but you need to bring them back to Petaybee ASAP and run the tests here. From what I understand, the adaptive mechanisms making the inhabitants suitable for a cold planet of this type would make them exceedingly uncomfortable in temperatures you find normal. And recycled air would contain viruses and bacteria which their immune systems couldn't handle. That's what actually killed Lavelle Maloney, and what may soon kill the other two if they aren't returned here." Before he could say anything, she continued. "Torkel, until the company can figure out a way of adjusting these peoples' highly sensitive immune systems to all of the free-spinning viruses and bacteria on satellites or other planets, the kind of move you say the company's proposing would amount to genocide."

"That's a fairly dramatic statement to extrapolate from the autopsy of one off-planet Petaybean, Yana. Besides, it's the Petaybeans themselves who are making this necessary, with their guerilla sabotage against our geographical and mining exploration expeditions."

Yana cocked a cynical eyebrow at him. "There're no guerillas on Petaybee, Torkel, no sabotage! If anything, it's the other way round."

"How so? The company owns the planet. The company terraformed the planet. It has the right to extract mineral deposits."

"The company might own the right to inhabit the surface of the planet, Torkel, and under normal circumstances, it might have the right to harvest certain resources the terraforming process sowed. But owning the planet itself?" She slowly shook her head. "This planet was here way before Intergal was formed or terraforming was invented. You don't own this planet."

Torkel gave a scornful snort. "If the company doesn't, who does? Not the inhabitants that the company put here."

She awarded him a pitying glance. "No, they just occupy it. The planet owns itself. It's sentient, Torkel. A living entity."

"Now you sound like Metaxos and his boy." Torkel threw up his hands in exasperation.

"That's because I've seen what they saw. Or, rather, 'seen' isn't exactly the right word. Felt it, experienced it, heard it, been touched by it. Whatever. The locals say it's a way of communicating with the planet, and you have to be willing to be touched by it or you can become disoriented enough to be in the same shape as Metaxos. Or, like some of the other missing teams, if you're too far from help, die as a result."

He regarded her a long moment. "And Metaxos aged in this process?"

"That's a possibility. The phenomenon can take a lot out of someone who resists it." Something occurred to her suddenly. "Do I ... look any older to you than I did the last time you saw me, Torkel?"

"No. Younger if anything. There's a glow about you that, if you had ever given me any encouragement would make me jealous." He briefly dropped his lids over his eyes.

She smiled like one of Clodagh's cats after a snootful of fish. "Other than that?"

"No. So you contend that you've been through the same thing as Metaxos? And didn't fight it, so came out revived? So where did this happen? In one of these illusive mineral deposits?"

"I didn't find any deposits." Yana was unsettled by that shot. "I-found-myself in a quite ordinary cave formation, same kind I've seen other places occurring naturally under hills. According to the spatial map I received with my briefing, the cave isn't in one of the spots where your instruments have detected mineral wealth." She tried another tack. "Look, the locals accept me to a greater degree than you, Giancarlo, or anyone else. That makes me the best qualified to organize this operation in a way that won't be harmful to the natives or the planet."

Torkel gave her one of his suave smiles, which she had begun to find infuriatingly smug and condescending. "Yana, get real! We own the planet, and the natives are technically nothing more than employees. Also, it seems to me that you're treading-you should pardon the expression-on thin ice here. Are you really offering to do this job, or have you, in fact, gone over to the side of the people you were supposed to be investigating?"

"Why does it have to be sides?" she asked, leaning forward and willing him to keep making eye contact with her. "If this is a company planet and the inhabitants are company employees, isn't the company interested in the potential above and beyond the usual? This may be something entirely new here, Torkel. Something that would be useful without the expense of reterraforming a planet." She could see that "expense" was a key word, and he was definitely mulling over the "entirely new" notion. "At any rate, we'll need to delay any evacuation or even the transfer of a single Petaybean until we've developed some means to compensate for their dependency on the planet."

"Fresh air, freezing temperatures, and no microbes to attack their disabled immune systems." Torkel shrugged. "That should be easy enough."

"If that's all there is to it," she said darkly. 'That's what I know now, and I'm only scratching the surface. Please go carefully here."

"Oh, we're being careful okay. Since you're so concerned, you'll be glad to know that my father has been following all of the events here, too, and he's seen the Maloney woman's autopsy report, as well. Since he understands the brief evolution of this planet better than anyone, he's decided to personally conduct an investigation to rule out any malfunction in this planet's development resulting from the terraforming process as a cause for the aberrant occurrences you mention. That's Dad-nothing if not conscientious. And he likes nothing better than a new scientific mystery. Me, I'm a simple, practical kind of guy. I think the explanations for all of this are probably traceable to fairly uncomplicated sources."

There was a knock on the door. Torkel stood and walked over to it, stepped into the hall, had a few low words, then opened the door wider.

Giancarlo stood there, along with Terce, the snocle driver. Torkel shrugged.

"I'm sorry, Yana. And very disappointed to have to say this to you. However, Terce here corroborates Giancarlo's suspicions that you've entered into a secret pact with the guerillas and betrayed the company. I'm afraid we're going to have to hold you for questioning, pending complete physical and psychological examinations and testing, as well as the standard interrogation."

"Torkel-" she began. "Captain Fiske. That young man is one of the fai-"

"In light of our conversation," Torkel said, cutting her off midword, "I'll see to it that the investigation is conducted here on Petaybee for as long as possible, but it may be necessary to move you to more sophisticated facilities."

She stood and did an about-face, forbearing to tell him that being moved would probably not harm her in the same way it would the Petaybeans.

Giancarlo glared as she started past him. She kept her eyes straight ahead, focusing slightly over his left shoulder, as if he weren't there. With a hand jarring against her shoulder, he stopped her in her tracks, his expression guarded but hostile.

"We're also looking for Dr. Shongili, Major Maddock. You could save yourself an extra charge of obstructing investigations if you'll give us some idea where he might be found."

She said nothing.

Bunny Rourke's snocle was her dearest prerogative, if not possession, but she didn't bat an eyelash when she saw it was gone from the place where she had parked it.

She had been all set to take Diego and Steve Margolies back to the village, to let Steve meet Clodagh and the others and talk with them about what had happened to the Metaxoses. Steve had the same specialty as Dr. Metaxos and, if only he could be convinced to keep an open mind, that would give them one more ally to avert what Bunny knew in her gut was going to be a catastrophic change in Petaybean lives.

She had felt it in the cave during the night chant-just the least tremor, nothing someone unacquainted with the planet, like Yana, would notice, but the planet was worried, fearful. Sean had felt it, too, she knew, but she was also sure he had been clearing his mind of any negativity to help Yana. They were waiting for Steve to finish talking with Dr. Metaxos's doctor, so she and Diego had gone to start the snocle while they waited.

"I've got to go now," she said, turning to Diego. "They've taken my snocle, but I think you and Steve should get the first ride to Kilcoole you can."

"Maybe the major can get one for us from her buddy, that Fiske guy," Diego said, not understanding.

Bunny shook her head even as she pulled away from him. "No. If the major was okay, my snocle would still be here."

"I'll come with you." Diego still didn't get it.

"I have to go on foot. You'd freeze."

"Nah, it's warm today. I-"

"No. Meet me later. Bring Steve and we'll introduce him to Clodagh. I got to go before they catch me, Diego. Bye."

She didn't hear whether or not he returned her good-bye as she ducked between the buildings, behind piles of unassembled equipment, her white and gray rabbit-fur parka blending with the snow as she circled around to the river and headed back toward Kilcoole. There, she would pick up Charlie's dogs and go somewhere: Sinead's old trapper's cabin, maybe, the one Sinead had lived in before she had hooked up with Aisling. The PTBs wouldn't know the location of that one.

She hoped Diego would tell Yana what she had done, and then she realized that what she had told Diego was true: Yana wasn't okay. That redheaded captain, the nice one, either hadn't been able to help her or hadn't been as nice as he seemed. All the more reason she needed to get back to the village and try to get help. Behind her she heard more shuttles landing and smelled the fumes from the hot housings on the spacecraft as they touched down. There were so many of these company people with their machinery and equipment and all of Intergal's resources. The company men acted as if her people had to do anything they said, and for the first time, she was scared that they might be right.

She didn't run: running attracted attention. She tried to move with the rhythm of the wind and the snow, except that today the snow wasn't blowing, it was melting. Diego was right. It was a very hot day. She shed her parka as soon as she thought she was safely out of sight of SpaceBase and the river road.

She could hear the roar of the snocles on the river; an altered sound now, sort of muted, wet, splashy, accompanying the sound of the engines and the swish of snocle skis on ice. The day was really very warm. Warmer than it ever got even during the middle of the short Petaybean summer, when most of the snow was gone and it was no longer necessary to have a fire in the house. But how could that be? Actual breakup usually didn't come for weeks, and then usually gradually, a crack in the ice one day, a soft spot the next, and then the ice began to move. Never was it this hot so early in the season.

In the distance, the sound of an explosion was muffled but audible. She wasn't surprised. She had seen the explosives loaded in corps snocles setting out from Kilcoole in a northerly direction earlier in the day. They claimed to be "exploring," which meant they were blowing sores on the face of the planet.

Though the explosion sounded distant, the shock waves made the ground beneath her feet shudder.

Her boots were made of hide, suitable for dry snow. She had another, waterproof pair she wore for early and late winter, but she hadn't thought about changing into them yet. She could have used them now. The soft moosehide soles of her boots were soaking up icy wetness from the melting snow. If she didn't reach Kilcoole by nightfall, when, despite the unseasonable warmth of the day, the temperatures were likely to drop below freezing again, her feet would freeze. Maybe she should have stuck closer to the river. But she thought that it would be quicker, and safer, to cross-country to where Uncle Seamus was ice-fishing. She planned to ride the rest of the way home with him.

A breeze blew against her, but it was a warm breeze, soft and friendly. She took off her hat and mittens and stuffed them in her parka pocket, unbuttoning her outer sweater as she walked.

There was another distant explosion, and the ground bucked under her feet as if the whole planet had writhed in agony. Why did they have to do that? It occurred to Bunny that somehow the planet was generating the unusual heat, the early breakup, in response to the assault on it. Such a thing had never happened in Petaybee's inhabited history, but then, that history was relatively short.

The ground continued to tremble as she walked, more cautiously now, through the woods. Here she could keep close enough to the riverbanks to avoid getting lost. Where the snow hadn't drifted too deeply against the riverbanks, she even caught glimpses of the snocles through the trees.

How long had it been since she had taken Yana out to SpaceBase? Only a few hours, surely, and already the river had changed. The ice looked patchy now, long blue streaks showing where the runners had carved their tracks. And it didn't look like the rest of the ground anymore. It was shiny, with a glaze of melted snow over the top. She didn't remember the river ice ever melting so fast, but then, she didn't remember ever seeing as much traffic on the river, either. All that friction and weight surely added to the melting process. And this was the warmest day for this time of year she could recall in her whole life.

She was across the river from where Seamus usually set up his ice-fishing tent when she heard the sharp Crack! as if someone had fired a pistol right beside her head.

Some of the people in the speeding snocles were trying to brake on the ice, others slowing, veering in confusion. Yet others who had experience with such treacherous conditions were trying to pilot.

She ran closer to the bank, plunging into the snow up to her knees. Seamus was running from his tent, at first moving wildly about, then stopping, staring at the ice, and finally darting out in front of the snocles waving his arms, urging them toward the banks. Two yards beyond where he stood, between him and the oncoming snocles, the ice parted in a foot-wide gap, the side nearest town already buckling under the weight of the snocles that had just passed over it.

"Get off! Get off!" Seamus was yelling to the snocle drivers. "Drive onto the banks!"

A giant icy chunk broke off and plunged into the blue water bubbling up between the slabs. The ice, which had been substantial enough on the drive to SpaceBase with Yana, looked glass-thin! Along the edges of the river, it was creaking and she saw cracks forming there, too. The level of the river seemed to be rising.

One driver, either not understanding or not believing Seamus, zoomed straight for him, and plunged nose-first into the crack, the snocle runners and windshield submerged in the swirling water and wedging the crack even wider.

Seeing the tail sticking up out of the river alerted the next few drivers, but unfortunately not before three more, two coming from SpaceBase and one from Kilcoole, skidded out of control. The one from Kilcoole ran into a snow bank on the edge of the river. Bunny plowed through the snow to reach it, hopping over a two-inch-wide crack in the ice, feeling the surface, which only hours before had been solid, bouncing under the sopping soles of her boots.

The other two snocles had both torn into the back of the partially submerged vehicle, sending it deeper into the river. Fortunately, snocles had reinforced cabins and the drivers of the two that still had their runners on the ice scrambled unhurt from their seats. But Seamus was leaning across the crack, trying to pry open the sinking vehicle's door to extricate the driver.

Bunny pushed the snocle on her side of the crack back toward the center of the river. The vehicle slid easily on the ice, even laden as it was with equipment. Bunny knew the trick of it, having had to haul hers from deep snow or off black ice.

The driver clumsily wrenched open the door and spilled onto the ice, scrambling ineffectively to gain his feet.

"Get back in!" Bunny yelled to him. "Go get help from town!"

"No way am I gettin' back in that thing, babe!" the soldier yelled at her and ran for the bank.

More snocles were jamming to a stop just short of the crack, which was widening by the minute as pieces crumbled into the river. The drivers crowded toward the crack, trying to help Seamus save their comrade.

"Lie down! Form a chain!" one driver yelled-the first smart thing one of them had done, Bunny thought.

Torn between climbing in the snocle to drive to the village for help and going to the aid of her uncle and the driver, Bunny chose the latter. She dove into a belly flop, skidding across the ice faster than any of the other would-be rescuers could walk, and grabbed one of Seamus's ankles just as he managed to snag open the door of the imperiled snocle. The driver half jumped, half fell out of the vehicle and into the river just before the ice cracked wider. A piece of ice broke off, and the turbulent waters enveloped the rest of the snocle, the outstretched arms, head, and upper torso of the driver on the other side of the crack, and all of Seamus except the ankle to which Bunny was clinging.

His momentum dragged her forward but she held on, flailing in the water with her other hand, trying to grasp some other portion of him. She knew her actions might be holding his head underwater, but at least she could keep him from being pulled under the ice.

Something grabbed at her hand then and she caught her uncle's arm, letting go of the ankle to grab his forearm with both hands. It was then that she suddenly realized that the water was warm! Not ice cold, as it ought to be, but almost hot. She had no time to think about what had caused that, because Seamus's head broke the surface just as Bunny felt the ice under her chest loosen.

"Here! Over here!" cried the soldier on the other side of the crack. By then they had already hauled the driver of the sunken snocle out, and some of the other soldiers were hurrying him up the bank. "Come over here, old man, that little gal can't handle you."

Seamus, nodding in agreement, lunged away from Bunny and over to the soldier, who was immediately joined by a second man. Together they pulled Seamus from the river.

Bunny slithered backward until she felt more solid ice under her. She slid until she came up against the abandoned, still-running snocle. Levering herself onto the driver's seat, she gunned the snocle down the softening ice so hard it flew across the gap at the side of the river and up onto the bank. She kept to the woods on the way back to Kilcoole to warn the village of the unseasonably early breakup, all the time wondering how that had happened.

After Bunny's precipitous departure, Diego Metaxos and Steve Margolies headed back to their quarters.

"So, what is it with you and this girl?" Steve asked in a kidding tone. "Are her intentions honorable?"

Diego felt himself flushing uncomfortably. He had thought once Steve got here everything would be okay, but even with Steve, he felt edgy and uncertain. The only time he had felt good was that day in the village, when he had chanted his poem and all of the people had understood it. After he had met Steve, and Steve had spent some time at Dad's bedside, Steve, Captain Fiske, and Colonel Giancarlo had spent hours closeted together, and that bothered Diego. The last couple of days, except for short visits with Frank at the hospital, Steve was occupied in organizing what he called his expedition.

Diego hadn't had a chance to talk to him about that and seized the moment.

"What are you planning to do when you go back out there?" he asked Steve when they were safely back in their quarters.

"The same thing your dad was trying to do, only with more support. Locate the deposits, mark the spot, take samples."

"Must make you feel good, taking over from Dad," Diego said. His voice contained a bitterness he hadn't known he felt-at least not toward Steve.

"Hey, son." Steve stopped stuffing articles in a bag and turned to face him. His brown eyes looked wounded. "It's not like that. I'd like nothing better than for Frank to be well and leading the expedition, but he'd want me to carry on his work, now, wouldn't he?"

Diego shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe not."

"What do you mean?"

"Did you ever think that maybe he's like he is because he didn't want to keep on?"

"What? You mean, he willed himself into the state he's in now"-Steve was clearly incredulous-"because he didn't do a good job the first time? Diego, my boy, that is not clear thinking."

Diego shrugged again, a disgusted lifting and dropping of his shoulders. It hurt to think about Dad. It hurt to think about Lavelle. He didn't even want to think about losing Steve the same way and he realized he was pulling a number on him, trying to guilt-trip or scare him into not going.

"I don't know, Steve. Maybe the mission isn't such a good idea, huh? What are they going to do if you find the stuff?"

"You've been too much in the company of Bunny and the villagers, Diego. Be sensible. The company has a lot of bucks invested in this planet."

"You haven't given it a chance," Diego shot back. "I thought you would take care of Dad when you got here but all you've been doing is taking over his job. You're just like all the other company geeks. You don't give a damn about us, this planet, or anything else except the fraggin' company!"

"Diego . . . son."

"I'm not your son," Diego said hotly, storming toward the door. "Good-bye. I'm going to see my dad. And hey, if you come back in the same shape he's in, I'll get you an adjoining bed!"

When green-coated men and women decide to give you a going over, you let them get on with it, cooperating when you have to. Especially when hovering over the proceedings is a block-shaped marine with piggy, close-set eyes: the kind you just know likes to twist arms and has some mighty painful nerve blocks he's dying to practice on a live and wriggling body. So Yana went along with the procedure, privately resenting every intrusion, draining, pricking, probe, and order. When she could, she sneaked glances at the scans, trying to remember from all-too-recent experience if she could detect any alterations, improvements, or changes in the results. She did better with X rays, and could even find the thickening around her innumerable repaired broken bones. Then one of the medics, the skinny woman with the jaw like a vise, altered the screens so she couldn't see the ones of her lungs-the ones she most wanted to check out.

"It's my body," she said in a growl of complaint. "I got the right to look!"

They ignored her, as they had done since she had been ordered into their presence. She did catch terms like "unusual remission," "minimal scarring," "regenerative," and "improvement": the last two words she liked hearing very much, but she would have liked to know where the improvement and regeneration had happened. Actually, she didn't need them to tell her that her lungs were sound again-lungs that she had been told would never completely heal from the gas she had inhaled on Bremport. Petaybee had done that for her. Would they believe it had been the planet? Probably not!

The medics were deep in consultation for a long while after the last of the examinations had been completed. One or another kept glancing at her as if she had grown tentacles or oozed slime or perhaps turned into a new sort of humanoid specimen they could dissect for the good of Mankind.

Ignoring the tension in her guts, Yana forced herself to relax-as much as anyone could on the hard examination table. She succeeded well enough so that she was jerked out of a doze by a rough hand.

The one she had come to think of as "Ornery-eyes" indicated, with a grunt and a jerk of his thick thumb, that she was to accompany him. The medics didn't pause in their discussion to observe her departure. Then she noticed that Ornery-eyes was sweating, great circles under his armpits and down his shirt back. Out in the corridor she could appreciate why: they must have turned the heat up as high as it would go. He jerked his thumb in the direction they were to take.

Automatically she memorized the turnings as he prodded her left or right, or straight ahead, and down the stairs. She wished she'd had a chance to see a layout of the SpaceBase complex. It was ingrained in her that she should never waste the opportunity to dekko a place, even if she might never need the info. Then she felt a series of concussive shocks through her paper-slippered feet, and she winced. That wasn't from any hard landings-unless someone was being awfully careless with shuttle vehicles.

Her escort grabbed her arm, pulling her back a pace and jamming her right up against a door. The thumb indicated she was to enter. She pondered briefly about knocking, but when the thumb jerked threateningly again, she shrugged and opened the door.

A man of medium age, medium build, and medium coloring, with the unmedium insignia of a bird colonel on his collar, sat at a small desk, studying the small screen. To her surprise, he looked up the moment she entered, waved the marine out of the room, and beckoned for her to be seated on the only other piece of furniture in the nondescript office. He also turned off the screen.

"Major Maddock, I'm Colonel Foyumi Khan, that's K-H-A-N," he said with a trace of a smile.

"Psych?"

He nodded. "Routine reassignment testing," he said in a manner designed to reassure-but somehow she wasn't. "You appear to be in excellent physical shape considering your condition just six weeks ago. This planet seems to suit you."

"It would be more accurate to state that I suit it." -

His eyes widened just slightly. "Oh?" he asked encouragingly. "How do you construe that?"

"My improved health, of course," Yana said, trying for innocence. This shrink was altogether too smooth. She was almost flattered that Intergal had assigned her an interrogator of his quality. "Great place for R and R."

Through her feet she felt another of those distinct tremors. Khan noticed it, too, and he frowned slightly, glancing down, then back up at her. She returned his regard quizzically, though she had already decided that the quakes were not being caused by someone crashing a shuttle onto the landing field. Somewhere blasting was going on, and Petaybee was wincing away from Intergal's latest assault on its mineral wealth. Damn Torkel! He hadn't heard a word she had said.

"And you feel that this ... ah ... planet is totally responsible for your improved physical condition?"

"Well, breathing fresh air that hasn't been recycled for who knows how long with what additives from however many stations it's been serviced in is a good start when you've burned lungs. Then there's regular hours, clean living, a natural diet free from technological additives, winter sports, and stress-free companionship. Those're surefire prescriptions for renewed vitality."

"I see. And this stress-free companionship? It means a lot to you?"

Yana shrugged. "I'm a company employee. I go where I'm told, do what I'm told, and when it's pleasant duty with nice folk, I'm grateful."

"Grateful enough to sell out the company to retain the nice folk?"

She chuckled then, noting the evenness of his return gaze, the blandness of his face. Behind those sat a very smart man.

"Why should I sell out a company which has provided me with what I need? Especially when I'm trying to convince the company that they're about to throw the baby out and recycle the dirty bathwater."

"The bathwater?"

"Colonel, I was sent out to see what I could learn. I learned something that Captain Fiske finds unacceptable. He's evidently quite ready to take the word of the man he originally intended I would replace and a short-witted snocle driver with a beef against me. All because he's run smack dab into something he can't understand."

"And you understand it?"

"No, not at all. But I do concede that it's happened, along with my"- She chuckled. -"inexplicable return to health."

"So you're grateful to the planet for this?"

She could see him grappling with that notion and nodded. "The planet is more than Fiske is willing to accept."

"But you do?"

"I do. And, if he'll only credit an old shipmate with the sense to tighten bolts when she sees 'em loose, he'd do himself, the company, and me a stupendous favor."

"Which is?"

"He-and Intergal-can gain a lot more from Petaybee than consumable minerals!"

"And what can they gain?"

"Working knowledge of a new sentient life-form."

"Which is?"

"This planet."

He brought his chin forward in a nod that ended abruptly. He looked at her and smiled: not a really reassuring smile, but the kind one might give someone who might not be playing with a full deck. Yana raised an eyebrow and deliberately laid one arm on the desk, hand relaxed on the surface, as she hooked the other arm along the back of the chair, assuming as indolent and relaxed a position as she could. She had given enough of the psych tests she knew were upcoming to know how to act: open, relaxed, easy, as if she hadn't a care in the world. She even hauled her right ankle up to her left knee, as if to leave herself completely open. This room was hot, also, and she didn't want to show any perspiration-even if the bird colonel was.

He shot the expected questions at her and she gave him back the answers, pausing briefly now and then to consider-as was wise of her to do-but not pausing long enough for him to consider it an evasion or hesitation. It was working, with him and with her, because the more complicated the shrink-questions, the more she relaxed, since she knew exactly the sorts of answers required. They hadn't really looked at her records, had they?

Suddenly, in the middle of posing a question designed to reveal any sexual aberrations she might have, he stopped and stared at her-as if seeing her for the first time.

"You know all the parameters of the answers, don't you?"

"Wondered when you'd figure that one out, Colonel."

He leaned back as far as the uncomfortable chair would let him, crossing his arms on his chest. "So what's behind all this? Give me a straight answer."

"I already did, Colonel. I've known Captain Fiske a long time. He asked me to do some nosing about for him since I was billeted in a Petaybean village. I did. I gave him my report. He doesn't care to believe it." She shrugged at such vagary. "It's not the first time commanders have refused to believe reconnaissance reports and taken more comfortable rear-echelon theories." She shrugged again, reaching up to scratch her head as if puzzled by such irrationality. She was sweating, and that wasn't the way to put across her point of view. Except that the colonel was sweating more profusely than she. "Hey, did they turn up the heat around here just so I wouldn't get a chill in my paper wrapping?"

Now the colonel was free to take out a cloth and mop his face and neck. "Heat's been rising steadily. I thought this was the cold season down here."

"The locals are already taking bets on the exact day and time the ice on the river will crack and be carried away downstream."

He gave her a side look, then grinned. "How'd you bet?"

"Me?" She chuckled. "I don't have enough money to waste on foolish bets, Colonel. But the earliest of those dates chalked up is weeks away." They felt another rumble underfoot, one considerably more authoritative than any of the others.

The colonel clutched at the edge of the desk as the monitor rattled on its stand. In the same second, Yana grabbed the side of the desk.

"Someone's planting too much semtex," the colonel said with a frown.

Yana grinned, having thought of another answer to the whammy they had just felt.

"Spill what you know, Major," the colonel advised, "while there's still a chance for you to get straightened out on this. Unless, of course, you think the planet's fighting back?"

"If, that is, I was a bettor, Colonel, I think my money'd be on the planet."

Just then the door burst open-resisting a little, for it was slightly off kilter from the last quake-and Fiske came in, his eyes narrowed in anger. Behind him were Giancarlo and Terce.

"All right, Yanaba, where is he? How's he doing this?"

Yana took great satisfaction in maintaining her calm while three sweaty, angry perturbed men threatened to overwhelm her. "I assume that the 'he' you refer to is Dr. Shongili?"

"You know it is." Fiske, jaw out, took the necessary step to loom over her in the chair.

"I don't know where Dr. Shongili is, Captain Fiske. How could I since I've been . . . involved . . . here for the past four or five hours."

"He's somewhere on this planet ..."

"I hope so," Yana murmured.

". . . And I'm going to find him and find out how he's doing this." Fiske flicked his fingers at the ground.

Yana did not have to pretend surprise. "You think he's blowing his planet up to thwart you?" She actually had trouble suppressing her laughter. "He's got no explosives. The company has 'em all. And why would he want to blow his planet up?"

"I don't know how he's doing it, but he's responsible."

"Using what?" Yana fired back at him. "Or, maybe," she said, turning devious, "he's told the planet to resist, to hamper, to impede your efforts to strip it of its natural resources."

Fiske jutted his jaw out again, clenching his teeth over whatever it was he wanted to blurt out in frustration. Instead, he transferred his feelings to the grip of his fingers on her arm as he roughly hauled her up from the chair.

"You're coming with me!" And he began to frog-march her out of the room.

"Like this?" she asked. Part of her paper skirt, soaked with her perspiration, had been left on the seat of the chair. She had also lost one of her paper shoes in his haste to get her moving.

"Captain!" the colonel barked in a tone that could not be ignored, even by Torkel Fiske. "You will permit the major to dress before she leaves this installation."

Chapter 13

No doubt in an effort to humiliate, harass, or annoy her, Giancarlo signaled Ornery-eyes to stay in the room where Yana was to dress herself. It would take a lot more than Ornery-eyes to perturb Yana. She was slightly flattered that Giancarlo thought it would! Ignoring her audience, she took advantage of the dressing-room shower to enjoy a quick wash before she dressed. She smiled as she noticed that she had been given ordinary-issue clothes, not winter gear. Torture could take many subtle forms: freezing wasn't a common one.

When Ornery bustled her down the corridor to the assembly point, Yana was reasonably sure she'd had the best of that deal. For when they got outside, it was nearly as warm as the facility had been-and she was far more comfortable, in the lighter garments, than any of the others were.

She was shoved, just ducking her head in time to keep from cracking it on the doorframe, into a ground vehicle, which was already inhabited by several squads, sweating in their winter gear. They were conveyed out to the field where a troop copter waited. She caught a glimpse of other air-assault vehicles and some big land cruisers. She also saw two dark circles, one of considerable size, where the field, plascrete and all, had subsided. She wondered if the planet knew what to target or if it just pulled the plug where the terrain made it easiest.

They had barely gotten settled when the bulky vehicle tilted to one side.

"Lift! Lift! Lift!" Torkel yelled as the pilot made as if to investigate the damage.

Yana privately enjoyed the planet's antics very much, though she was crammed in the backseat between Giancarlo and Ornery-eyes's massive torso. The latter had folded his arms over his chest and was staring straight ahead, ignoring the almost- 180-degree view afforded by the bubble-shaped Plexiglas windshield. Yana, however, took the scene in eagerly.

Craters pocked the surface of the great field. As the vehicle came around and headed north-northeast toward Kilcoole, she saw the village below; then, as the copter angled off toward the mountains, she gasped as she caught glimpses of the river, seamed with dark, steaming cracks. Its surface was littered with snocles, either capsized into the cracks or stranded on larger blocks of ice. A few, back toward SpaceBase, were being off-loaded by men stripped down to their shirts, while farther ahead men and women scrambled to save each other from drowning and pulled each other ashore. A couple of snocles were attempting to find snow firm enough for the runners to ski on while one soldier broke trail, planting markers to show where the snow had not yet turned to slush.

Yana hoped that Bunny's snocle wasn't out there among the stranded, or that the girl hadn't been arrested when Yana was. She also wondered just where Scan was, but one thing was sure: he wouldn't be where this copter was taking them.

It landed in the pasture that had once held the curly-coats. She thought she caught sight of one of the dark ones, hiding in the copse, but it could have just been a big brown-branched bush the height of a curly-coat. The house, when the troopers entered it, weapons drawn, had the feeling of a deserted place. At least that was what Yana sensed from the still, cool air inside. Not so much as a whisker of one of Sean's unusual big cats, either. Torkel led the way down the link to the laboratories, Giancarlo with him, Ornery hauling her along in their wake.

"I want every disk, file, paperwork, notebook, everything," Torkel called over his shoulder to the lieutenant in charge of the squads. "Everything taken back to the base. I want this place under strict surveillance and rigged to catch anyone who steps inside."

"The animals are all gone," Giancarlo said savagely. "He obviously got back here to let them all loose. We could have learned something from them."

Yana could see from the condition of the pens that they hadn't been occupied for a while. That must have been the first thing Scan had done when he had separated from her.

"You certainly didn't expect to find them here, did you, Colonel, tamely waiting for us?" Torkel asked, resuming his pose of amused condescension.

"Dammit, Fiske, I told you we should have moved in on him earlier, right after that all-night binge the natives had."

"But I thought that was too good a chance for my undercover operative to miss," Torkel said, leaning against the wall. Just where Scan had leaned, Yana thought, the first day they had met. "Is that where everyone got their orders, Yana? Is that where you switched sides?"

"I haven't switched sides, Captain Fiske. I'm still a company woman, trying to help the company all I can."

Giancarlo raised both fists, and she stared back, daring him to carry through his threat.

"You both wanted me to see what I could find out. I did just that," Yana went on. "Not my fault I can't tell you what you want to hear. No one's told me what that is."

"Terce said you'd sold out," Giancarlo shouted. "He saw you go with the others, to plot treason."

"Where'd he see us go?" she asked, hoping her hunch was correct. "We were in the hall until daybreak and then most of ui went to the hot spring to clean up."

"That fat woman, the one with all the cats, is the ringleader."

"Clodagh?" Yana allowed her incredulity and astonishment full rein and laughed. "If that's what Terce told you, Colonel, you must be the only one on Petaybee who doesn't know that he isn't playing with a full deck."

Just then the comm unit bleeped, and Torkel toggled it on. He listened, and in the next moment, disbelief, consternation, and finally horror swept across his face.

"Back! Back to the copter!" His arm swept them before him with great urgency. "Shuttle's crashed!"

Yana wondered from Torkel's reaction if his father, old Whit-taker Fiske, had been due to arrive in that particular shuttle. Briefly she considered departing in the confusion. Ornery was up ahead of her in the corridor: she could slip away very easily right now. But she was certain she had weakened Giancarlo's accusation. She could do more if she hung about. Maybe, with a little luck, she might get Torkel to listen to what she was saying. And, if his father wasn't dead, maybe she could beat some sense in that old man's head. She would certainly prejudice the case she had been making by doing a flit right now. Petaybee ought to have one advocate in the company's court. Sauntering, she caught up with Ornery just as he realized she wasn't nearby.

"Miss me, big boy?" she asked, and walked past him, out to the waiting copter, where she slid in next to Giancarlo, leaving Ornery to compress his mass into the space between her and the copter's bulkhead. Ignoring the commotion and Torkel's demand for more information on the accident from the copter pilot, she was perhaps the only one looking out past Ornery toward the river, newly freed from ice thrall. She sat up straight, unable to believe her eyes, as a dark object that she first thought was a boulder turned into a seal and suddenly moved with astonishing speed and grace to slip into the water.

Now, how long had that been there? Had it actually been watching the house? Or was her imagination working overtime?

The regeneration is all the more remarkable as it's so totally improbable," the medic was saying to his companion as they preceded Diego down the hospital corridor. "Never saw anything like this. And in such a short time. Woman was hacking her lungs out and not likely to live the year out."

The man beside him asked a question that Diego could not hear, but he figured they had to be talking about Yana.

"No, no, can't be a transplant. I'd believe that more than a natural remission but there're no scars: not even a 'scope hole."

They turned to the right at the next corridor and he went on, thinking hard. Bunny had mentioned that Yana's health had improved since her arrival on Petaybee. He snorted. His father's sure hadn't. What if ... And he halted in his tracks for a long moment. Then he was jolted out of his reverie by tremors underfoot- which reminded Diego of other half-understood remarks by Bunny. Why wasn't she around when she was needed? Why had she skitted out of the base as if something was after her?

More than anything now, he wanted to get Dad to Kilcoole and Clodagh. Petaybee had messed his dad up and now Petaybee could damn well cure him, like it had Yana!

It was, as Diego had hoped, slack time in the ward. Dad was sitting up in his chair, and dressed, which might have been a battle. Diego had stuffed another parka under his own, a real drag with the heat so high. Even his dad was sweating a bit. Diego got (he wheelchair and, for the benefit of the other men in the ward, started his chatter.

"Dad, you wouldn't believe the weather out today, so I'm goin' to take you for a little stroll. See if we can't chase the cobwebs out of your head. Here now, easy, you just sit tight, huh?"

His father, as usual, didn't acknowledge his words with so much as a lifting of the eyes.

Diego wheeled him out of the ward, down the hall, and onto the ramp outside the infirmary.

For the first time he became acutely aware of how noisy it was at SpaceBase, of the change in the temperature and the air. Snocles that had once zipped down the snowy paths between buildings were racing their engines to escape being mired in slushy, melting snow. New vehicles, forklifts and track-cats, toiled to move the tons of equipment freshly delivered to the loading docks. One of the smaller track-cats was trying to shift a snocle entrenched in a snow bank.

Suddenly the ground bucked, the boardwalk collapsed at one end, and the wheelchair jerked from Diego's grasp and rolled down onto the ground.

Diego jumped down and caught it before it turned over and dumped his dad in the slush. People ran past him, ducking for cover, as another jarring crash from somewhere nearby shook the ground. When he looked up, he saw that both the track-cat and the mired snocle, engines still running, had been abandoned by their drivers. The track-cat was just a few yards away, but the wheel-chair was stuck in the slush.

"Come on, Dad, you're going to have to help me," Diego said, his fingers fumbling to unstrap the wheelchair's safety belt. He placed his father's arm around his own shoulders and tried to haul him to his feet, but Francisco was dead weight. Diego looked from the aged, uncomprehending face to the alluring track-cat.

He changed tactics. He slid his father back into the chair and darted for the track-cat. It couldn't be much different from driving anything else, and he already knew how to drive hovercrafts and had watched Bunny drive her snocle. He released the tow chain and flung himself into the driver's seat, fumbling for the throttle.

After a little experimentation, he managed to get it into reverse and backed it over to where his father sagged in the chair. Leaving the snocle idling, he hopped down beside his dad, pulling the limp and unresponding arm back across his shoulders and attempting to hoist the older man up once more. This was hopeless! Dad just hung limply and could do nothing. In another minute the driver would return, or someone would pass by and see them, and then this perfect chance would be lost.

"What the hell are you trying to do?" someone said suddenly behind him.

Diego nearly jumped out of his skin, then recognized Steve's voice just as his father's partner stepped in front of him.

"I've been searching all over for you. I heard the explosions . . ."

"We're fine," Diego said hotly. "And we'd have been even finer if you hadn't caught us. I've got to get Dad out of here and I will somehow." He raised his chin defiantly and stared Steve straight in the eye.

Steve stared back, looking at Diego as if he were crazy; then all of a sudden he shrugged. "Okay, Diego, it's your call. But I go, too." And he picked Diego's dad up in his arms as if the stricken man were a baby and climbed up on the companion seat in the track-cat.

Diego scrambled into the driver's seat and, after a try or two, shifted the cat into forward gear and headed toward the village.

Bunny roared into the snocle shed. Adak was red in the face

and waving his hands, arguing with a uniformed soldier, but she had no time to be polite about interrupting them.

"Adak, quick, we've got to rouse the village! The river's breaking up way early, and a lot of snocles are trapped on the river. Seamus fell into a crack bigger than a tree saving one of the drivers, and the others pulled him out."

"You run and tell Clodagh, Bunka. She'll let the village know, and I'll get on the radio for help."

"I told you, sir, I'm relieving you of duty," the soldier said.

"Good. Then you get on the radio," Adak said. "And I'll use this vehicle to try to rescue the stranded drivers."

"You can't do that, sir. That's a company-issue snocle, and not a private vehicle," the soldier said. "Besides, I don't know how to work this thing," he added, staring at the microphone.

"Fine, then I will, and you go help the drivers, but keep your snocle off the river and for pity's sake stop standing about arguing, man," Adak snapped.

Bunny grinned as, without further argument, the soldier climbed into the snocle and gunned it back down the tracks it had just made. Bunny sprinted out of the shed as Adak was pulling on his headphones and picking up his microphone.

Whatever he was saying over the radio was lost, however, because all over town the sled dogs had begun to howl with the plaintive screams of tortured souls. As Bunny passed by Lavelle's place on her way to Clodagh's, she was even more surprised at the antics of Lavelle's dogs. Still tethered to their kennels, some were standing on the roofs and howling; others were lying on the ground, whining and baying in turn. Dinah, the lead dog, had become a frantic canine acrobat. She raced to the end of her chain, then back and forth and in frenzied circles until her lead was tangled in her legs and around her collar, and her neck would soon be rubbed raw from the friction. Bunny stopped to untangle her.

Poor Dinah. She really missed Lavelle, Bunny thought, but then, when she stopped to touch her, she got an urgent flash of hot, panting thought: The boy, the boy, gotta go, gotta go, gotta get the boy, oh let me get him, gotta go, needs me, friend, friend, needs me, needs me needs me, gotta go, go go nowoooo . . .

"Shh, Dinah, shhh," Bunny said. It didn't feel strange to be talking to a dog: she did it all the time. But it did seem odd that the dog seemed to be talking, too. "Diego's okay, Dinah. I just left him. Look, tell you what, you come with me and we'll find Clodagh, okay? Don't run off now when I unsnap you. Maloneys have had enough pain without losing you, too."

The more of Dinah she untangled, the more the dog calmed, tail wagging cooperatively; but when the dog was at last free, she snatched herself out of Bunny's grasp and bounded off toward the river.

Holy cow, sir, where did that volcano come from?" the pilot asked Torkel as the copter sped toward the westerly crash-site coordinates provided by SpaceBase. They were still a good distance away when he pointed to the port side.

Since his comments had crackled through the headsets everyone was wearing, Yana looked, too. The fiery glow, the pall of the ash hanging in the air, was plainly visible. The air was still full of turbulence from the initial eruptions, and the lightweight copter shook and tossed about like a Ping-Pong ball.

Beneath them the ground rolled and fissured while ash and smoke pumped from the newly blown cone, born on one of the low mountains to the west. Visibility was poor with airborne smuts that were beginning to build up on the ground. Yana realized that some of the quaking she had felt back at the clinic must have come from this eruption.

Sandwiched as she was between Giancarlo and Ornery, Yana had a clear view between the pilot and Torkel, riding in copilot position. She wasn't at all reassured by the panorama. It looked like someone's terraforming gone wrong, and she thought they would be smarter to make tracks from rather than to.

As the copter drew nearer to the new volcano, a thin line of people emerged from the grayness beneath them and started waving frantically.

Torkel picked up the copilot's microphone. "This is Flying Fish. We have you in sight. Please identify yourselves. Is Dr. Whittaker Fiske with you? Over."