Rather to Yana's surprise, a response came back immediately. "Flying Fish, this is Team Boom Boom. We see you. We have two severely injured people in our party. That's a big Mayday. Please transport to SpaceBase pronto. Over."

The pilot clicked the transmission button on his own microphone. "This is Flying Fish, Boom Boom. Gotcha. We're setting down one-zero-zero meters due east of you. Over."

But Torkel clicked on the copilot's mike again before the stranded team could respond. "Boom Boom, this is Captain Torkel Fiske on the Flying Fish. Is Dr. Whittaker Fiske or any member of his team with you? Over."

"Negative, Cap'n Fiske. Petaybee blew its top about the time the shuttlecraft was landing. The turbulence from the volcano blew the craft off course and we had to initiate evacuation procedures before we could search for survivors. Sorry, sir. Over."

"Boom Boom, Flying Fish here. I'm sorry, too, but you'll have to hang on while we radio SpaceBase for another craft to retrieve you. We need to look for the survivors soonest."

"I can't fly into that, sir," the pilot said, glancing anxiously at Torkel. "It'd clog the jets. Let me pick up the wounded and get ground support."

"Finding my father is number-one priority," Torkel told the pilot in a command tone. Yana couldn't see his face. She wondered briefly if Torkel wanted to save his father because of his importance to the mission, or simply because Dr. Fiske was his father.

"Flying Fish, you can't leave us here. Our wounded are in bad shape and the rest of us are having trouble breathing from the ash. It's smothering in there, sir. Please, at least pick up the wounded. Boom Boom over."

The pilot, heedless of Torkel's commands to fly into the face of the billowing ash clouds, began circling to land. Yana saw Torkel reach for his sidearm, but the pilot had anticipated a problem.

"Sorry, sir," the pilot said, pointing a pistol at Torkel, "but you and the others will have to get out while we load the wounded. I'll call for another aircraft and some ground support for you as soon as we're in the air."

Ornery started to draw his weapon, but his attention was on the pilot, not on Yana. With a well-placed chop to his wrist she numbed his hand and relieved him of his weapon before either he or Giancarlo could react. She stuck the muzzle of the gun under Giancarlo's ear with one hand and extracted his sidearm from his holster with the other in a series of rapid movements that would have made her hand-to-hand combat trainer beam with pride. Ornery leaned menacingly toward her, but his numbed hand wasn't following orders. She shook her head and jabbed Giancarlo meaningfully with the gun.

"This section of the aircraft is secured, pilot," Yana said into her mouthpiece.

The pilot gave her a thumbs-up and said to Torkel, "I'll take your sidearm, too, sir. And just in case you gentlemen want to claim this is mutiny or anything, I'm sure superior-officer types like yourselves are aware that, by chain of command, I am the pilot of this craft. I am therefore the temporary CO. Thanks to you, ma'am."

He set the copter down and the stranded people surged toward it. He lifted a foot and kicked Torkel's door open. "Out you go, Cap'n. You there, Corporal, open your own damn door and disembark. You too, Colonel. Under the circumstances, we'll belay the ladies first shit."

When the others had jumped out of the copter and the pilot turned to watch her go, Yana saw that he was a warrant officer, a green-eyed, lean-jawed man with curly black hair, broad prominent cheekbones, and the slight tilt to his eyes she had begun to identify with people from Petaybee. His nametag said O'SHAY.

Chapter 14

The track-cat lumbered down the riverbank and into the trees, surely and slowly-much too slowly to suit Diego. What if someone caught them and tried to take them back? What would happen to them then? Would they send Dad off-planet? Would they split them up? Would he be charged with the theft of the track-cat?

Hours seemed to pass as the vehicle rolled, slowly but staunchly, up small hillocks and forded freshets of water and melting snow running toward the river.

The track-cat was open to the air, too, so it was a good thing the day was exceptionally warm or they all might have frozen. Diego's dad lay inert against Steve, who clung tightly to his clothes to keep him from bouncing out of the vehicle.

The slushy, icy terrain was tough going even for the track-cat. Diego nursed it up a hill and down over the other side, only to lodge with one edge of the track in a ditch.

"Try rocking it," Steve hollered. "Forward, reverse, forward, reverse! Let it dig its own way out."

But the tracks could not bite or budge. Diego put it in neutral and climbed down to see exactly what the problem was. That was when he heard the noise from the other side of the trees and realized they weren't the only ones in trouble.

He pointed to show Steve where he was going and, leaving the vehicle running, trudged through the slush until he was clear of the trees.

The snowy road that the snocles had been so blithely using had become separated from the bank by a foot of open, steaming water. A soldier waved his parka to keep oncoming traffic from adding to the twenty or thirty vehicles already slewed crazily over what remained of the iced river. Beneath snocles and the feet of the drivers, huge steaming cracks yawned and pieces of ice broke off and floated in the blue-black water.

As Diego watched, the ice broke and a snocle shifted, unbalancing its ice raft so that it and one of the men both slid slowly into the river.

Groaning at this new emergency, Diego raced back to the track-cat just as Steve slid out from under Francisco and fastened the safety harness around the flaccid body.

"What the devil's going on over there?" Steve demanded as he sprinted toward Diego.

"The ice is breaking, and there's people stranded on it," Diego told him, panting and pointing urgently toward the river. "They need a lot of help and fast. We've got to let the village know right now."

But Steve had to see for himself and swept past Diego to crash through the brush and look at the river. Diego followed uncertainly, torn between the crisis on the river and his father's helpless body left alone in the snocle.

On the fracturing ice, maybe a half-dozen people now lay on their bellies, hands and feet linked, forming a human chain to fish for the man who had fallen into the river. He still had a perilous hold on the ice floe, which bobbed about, having tipped free of the snocle.

Steve stood poised on the bank for just a moment before he took a grip on Diego's shoulder. "Get your father to the village on the double, Diego, and send back help. I'll lend a hand here."

"But, the track-cat's stuck," Diego reminded him.

"Deal with it," Steve commanded in the same kind of gruff tone Diego had heard him use to talk to shipboard staff. Diego glared at him, resentfully. Steve, seeing his face, added, "That's our expedition team down there. See? The big fellow with the red bandanna? That's Sandoz Rowdybush. And I think the guy on the ice is Chas Collar. Your dad and I have worked with them for ten years. I'm not about to desert them."

"No, but you'll desert Dad."

Steve took a deep breath. "He's got you, too. Go back to the cat. If you can't get it moving, stick with your father till I can come for you. If you make it to the village, tell them this river is having a serious meltdown problem and we'll need all the help they can muster."

Not quite mollified but having no other option, Diego sloshed back to the track-cat. Sure the guys on the ice needed help, but what if help from SpaceBase came and found Diego's stuck track-cat? Then Dad would never get the help Diego was now convinced was his only hope. There were plenty of other guys out on the ice already-why did Steve think they needed him more than Dad did? Angrily, Diego kicked at the brush surrounding the track-cat-which gave him an idea on how to free the vehicle. He tore into the vehicle's locker, strewing a number of items on the floor until he found a hatchet, which he used to lob off enough branches to cushion the treads and give them some traction. Then he cleaned the mud out of the tracks as well as he could, all the while muttering to himself, as much to keep his own spirits up as to vent his frustration and anger.

Just about the time he had the cat ready to go, he had reached the conclusion that Steve had really had no other option but to go rescue his friends. On the other hand, there was no way Diego was going to wait tamely here. Not when he risked being found by the company corps, who might resent his appropriation of their vehicle. More importantly, they would take Dad back to the clinic, where nothing was being done for him, and Diego knew with a certainty he couldn't have explained even to himself that he had to get his dad to the village, and away from the company. The people in Kilcoole understood what had happened to his dad, and they could cure him. He knew they could. They had to.

He didn't realize how tense he had been until he broke the track-cat free of the mud. Hoping his spontaneous shout of relief had been inaudible among the shouts and cries coming from the river, he immediately changed directions, driving across the gully and back into the woods. Now he steered away from the riverbank, keeping to the trees, avoiding anyone who might be struggling ashore and also avoiding surveillance by airborne rescue parties.

Half an hour later, with the light beginning to wane, he was far enough from the river that, when the ice finally completely gave way, all he heard was a dull roar, like a far-off crowd cheering some sporting event. And he heard that only because the engine of the track-cat, which had been left running day and night since the vehicle had been commissioned, had run out of fuel.

He stopped and listened to the distant roar, tasted smoke and ash on the air mingling with the released ozone smell of open water, felt the ground trembling beneath the track-cat as if it, too, would break open at any time. Birds screeched through the trees as if crying warnings.

His father's inert body looked uncomfortable in the harness that was keeping it upright on the seat beside him. Diego tenderly rearranged the passive limbs into less grotesque positions. He didn't think his father could have been hurt by the rough journey, but he really hated to see his dad, once so athletic and fit, collapsed like a disconnected android.

With no more fuel, the vehicle was useless. Diego let out a deep sigh. Despite his detours, he couldn't be that far from the village at this point. He glanced around, sniffing and finally noticing the odd smells in the air: acrid, oily, definitely nonregulation. Usually by now the air started to chill off, but it was still as warm as it had been all day. Strapped as he was in the seat, Dad wouldn't be in any real danger from chilling for at least another half hour, Diego estimated. He reached for the coat he had removed during his exertions to get the track-cat moving again and tucked it around his father, patting it in place, remembering his father doing the same service for him when he was smaller. Maybe he shouldn't leave his father here. There were wild animals on Petaybee, wild animals strong enough to break into the track-cat, maybe. Would they be more afraid of the machine smell than they would be hungry? Suddenly Diego wasn't sure he could take the risk. Not with his father so helpless.

But he couldn't just sit here, halfway to nowhere. Fretting more than ever, he turned to rummage through the track-cat's locker, hoping there might be something useful in it. There was nothing: nothing to use to build a fire, no emergency rations, not even a canteen of water, but then the cat had been used around the SpaceBase, where such supplies had always been at hand. It wasn't as if the motor pool had anticipated the cat being stolen for a cross-country escape. Totally demoralized, Diego flopped down on the driver's seat, wondering how he was going to cope now. If Steve did keep his promise to come after him, he wouldn't be there anymore. Would Steve be able to come looking for them? What could he do? He'd only wanted to help his father!

As if to seal his depression, the first keening howl sounded through the evening.

Bunny didn't have to alert the village: the dogs' wailing did it for her. People poured out of their houses to see what was wrong. She didn't have to tell them the river had broken up. Anyone born on Petaybee and raised with Kilcoole's long winters could smell breakup in the air, could feel the change in the pressure, and if that wasn't enough, the ice melting from the roofs and the slush seeping through the soft soles of their boots made it all too evident.

Bunny ran up to Lavelle's door first. Liam opened it. "Liam, the river's breaking early and people in snocles are trapped."

"The planet take them, then." Liam shrugged angrily and started to shut the door in her face.

"Seamus is out there helping, and Dinah's got loose and ran off toward the river. Please, Liam, if you won't help, at least spread the word!" When he reached for his parka on the hook by the door, she caught his hand, grinning. "You don't need it. Come on."

She didn't wait to see if he followed but ran straight to her Aunt Moira's. Moira and her three oldest sons, Nanuk, Tutiak, and Tim, were already hitching up Charlie's dogs while Maureen and 'Naluk, the oldest girls, carried blankets and other provisions to the sleds. "Auntie Moira, the river's breaking up-"

"I know, Bunka. Don't just stand there! Help us! Seamus is out there on that river."

"He's okay for now, Auntie. The soldiers pulled him out. But they all need help."

Tutiak growled at her. "What do you think we're trying to do?"

"No need to be rude to your cousin, Tutiak," Moira said, slapping at him. "He's sorry, Bunka. We're taking Charlie's dogs to go help now. Okay with you?"

"Fine," Bunny said. "I have to go tell Clodagh."

"Hmph," Tim grunted. "As if anyone ever needed to tell Clodagh anything."

Bunny paused at Aisling and Sinead's, first noticing that the dogs were missing from the yard, then that the long daylight was finally waning. The door opened on her first rap to reveal Aisling wearing her waterproof breakup boots, with her arms full of blankets.

"Breakup's come early, Aisling, and-"

"I know."

"How?"

"Alice B heard from the other dogs. Sinead and the dogs are on the way."

"It's getting too slushy for dogs even. We're going to need the curlies."

"Have you asked Adak to call Scan?"

Bunny felt something inside her wrench suddenly. "No! I- Aisling, the soldiers kept Yana. I think Sean's in trouble."

"Warn Clodagh," Aisling said. "I'll tell anybody else who hasn't figured it out yet and meet you there."

With a wave, Bunny ran on through the dusk to Clodagh's house. Clodagh was holding a lamp when she opened the door. None of the cats were in sight; then one appeared, taking immediate advantage of the open door to brush past Bunny and jump up on the table, where it began mewing piteously.

"Marduk says Yana hasn't been home to feed him," Clodagh translated.

Breathless, Bunny collapsed in a sprawl on Clodagh's bed. "She was goin' to try to reason with Captain Fiske for us, but it mustn't have worked. Clodagh, the river's breaking-"

Clodagh nodded with some satisfaction. "Of course it is. The river ice has been Space Base's quickest connecting route to us. The planet's protecting us-and itself."

"Seamus almost drowned trying to help one of the soldiers," Bunny said, without asking how Clodagh knew what the planet knew, or was trying to do. She just did, that was all. She always did.

"That Seamus," Clodagh said, shaking her head. "Of course he would try to help. Is he okay?"

"He's out on the ice with the others. They're all still stranded. And not only that, Clodagh, but when 1 stopped by Lavelle's to untangle Dinah from her harness, Dinah-well, it was like she talked to me. She was all upset about some boy. And that has to be Diego, but he should be safe at the SpaceBase. What are we going to do, Clodagh? Everything's coming to pieces." This last came out of Bunny almost like the howl of one of the dogs. That made her realize that she was very tired and keyed up to the highest possible pitch. She would give anything to be able to sleep for a week-if only someplace felt safe enough to sleep in! Even Clodagh seemed different somehow, her eyes glittering and her customary expressions underlain with agitation and a hard anger that had nothing to do with Bunny. Clodagh, Bunny felt, was actually glad about the river and wouldn't have minded if everyone-well, not Seamus, but everyone else-had drowned. Bunny suddenly realized that she, too, wouldn't mind if they all drowned, if all of SpaceBase suddenly sank into the planet and disappeared and the company moon vanished from the sky. They were bound and determined to ruin Petaybee. Everything Bunny cared about and counted on was changing, coming apart the way the ice, usually as much to be depended upon as the ground this time of year, had broken away beneath her.

Even Clodagh's house no longer felt like the haven of comfort and reassurance it had been for Bunny ever since her parents had died and she realized she could no longer live among her cousins.

"Bunka," Clodagh said, touching her shoulder.

"Why couldn't they leave us alone, Clodagh? Why couldn't they leave Petaybee alone? Did they have to ruin everything?"

"They've ruined nothing yet, Bunka. Oh, they set a few charges about here and there, and sent soldiers out to the mountains. But until they stop and pay attention, they're not likely to learn anything about Petaybee worth the knowin'. And meantime, the planet has means to protect itself."

"Clodagh, have you ever been to SpaceBase?" Bunny asked. It hadn't occurred to her before that she had never seen Clodagh outside the village except for a time or two on journeys to Sean's house. Clodagh couldn't possibly understand the power the company had.

"Of course not, alanna, now why would I want to go there?"

"They have thousands of soldiers there right now. Yana says they mean to evacuate us. By force! Just without a by-your-leave make us all go into space someplace. Then they'll keep blowing up things on Petaybee until they get all the minerals and stuff they want. Clodagh, I've seen the shuttles and the ships. I know lots of the soldiers. They can do it if they want to. They own Petaybee."

"Nonsense, Bunka. Nobody owns Petaybee but Petaybee."

Bunny was about to argue the point when something landed with a heavy thud on the roof.

Marduk, the cat who had been living with Yana, stood on his hind feet and pedaled his front paws at the ceiling, chittering and mewing as if looking for a rafter to jump onto.

From outside the house came a sound like a well caving in, a roar with a deep echo to it. Bunny recognized it at once as the voice of one of Sean's big cats.

She, Clodagh, and Marduk were at the door all at once, but before they could go outside, a huge shape landed softly in front in the doorway. The black and white bewhiskered face of the big cat regarded them quizzically.

Marduk, far from being frightened by the larger feline, stepped forward to rub noses with it. Each brushed scent glands on the side of his face into the other cat's fur.

Clodagh stood away from the door, and the big cat padded inside, leapt to the bed, and circled about on her handmade quilt to make a nest for himself. Marduk hopped on top of the larger creature's back and chirruped autocratically. Clodagh produced a pair of thawed fish and a pan of water for the cats to lap. While they ate, Clodagh sat beside them on the edge of the bed and stroked their backs.

She crooned especially to the big cat, and it looked up from its meal with narrowed eyes and purred thunderously back at her. Marduk, annoyed at being left out, butted her hand with his head before he continued to eat.

"Do you suppose it knows where Sean and Yana are?" Bunny asked. "When I petted Dinah, I felt as if she was talking to me."

"Come here, Bunka," Clodagh said, and put Bunny's hand on the cat's head. "Have you an answer for Bunka, Nanook?"

Why else would I bother coming? the cat asked her in a velvety, rumbling voice.

The words weren't spoken; but Bunny heard them nevertheless, inside her head, the way she had heard Dinah's. Nanook's diction was much better than the dog's.

Clodagh regarded Bunny speculatively.

"It talked to me," Bunny told her, blinking rapidly.

"This cat is a he, not an it," Clodagh told her. "He talked to you because you can understand him. Marduk, also, is a he. In fact, on our whole planet, there are no its. Some things have no gender, but they are not without names. It's only polite to learn those names."

Bunny shrugged. "Well, I guess I knew that." She had played with the big cat since he had been a kitten, actually, every time she had gone to visit Sean. She petted him again. "Sorry, Nanook, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings."

Having cleaned his chops of fish residue, Nanook began to tidy up the white fur of his chest. The house suddenly shook, and-from under the counter came the sound of crashing glass. Marduk jumped down, and Nanook stretched beneath Bunny's hand.

Bean's gone swimming, he said. Yana came with soldiers, but their chop-chop bird squawked and the soldiers took her away again. They do not have good feelings for her. They have even less good feeling about Sean, They did not like those of us who live with Sean and tried to find us, to take us away with them. We were not found. Then the ground shakes and I smell smoke-that-is-not-cooking. And shedding time is early. What are people doing to our place?

The last thought was accompanied by a plaintive roar that sent a blast of fishy breath into Bunny's face.

Diego found a sturdy branch, though he knew it wouldn't be much good as protection against wild animals. Hefting it in his hand made him feel somewhat less vulnerable, however. He could hear the river roaring, along with a crunching and grinding of the ice that set his teeth on edge. He prayed Steve would be done with his rescuing of other people and remember he had a duty to rescue his own family. Darkness was closing in.

The distant howling picked up again and became separate sounds: keening, howling, and plain crying, like the ghost of an all-too-familiar memory. Diego glanced over at his father. For a moment he thought he had seen a flicker in his dad's eyes, but the older man sagged against the harness as limply as ever.

Another howl, much closer now, was answered by several others, still distant. Diego swung his stick like a baseball bat, placing himself between the track-cat and the hostile woods. As an afterthought, he reached inside and switched on the lights, grateful that the battery wasn't drained yet. Then the lights picked up a ring of shining eyes in the woods, closing in on him.

The howling took on a triumphant note, and suddenly something dashed from the woods and straight at him.

Cocking the stick to make his first blow count as much as it could, Diego released it at the top of his swing as the lights picked up the red fur of the dog. Dinah crushed him against the grill of the track-cat with the weight of her body. She licked his face and the hands he tried to protect his face with and whined her relief.

He couldn't have said how he knew the dog was Dinah instead of any other, except that Dinah had done this sort of thing I before. And behind her came answering whines and howls and a ? man's voice crying "Whoa! Down, dogs."

Diego freed himself from Dinah's embrace in time to see a sled pulled by four dogs break through the trees into the lights of the track-cat.

The man driving the sled wore no coat and frowned when he saw Diego, but Dinah ran frantically between the cat and the sled until the man relaxed.

"You're the boy who was with my mother, aren't you?" the man asked.

"Your mom was Lavelle?" The guess wasn't hard, with Dinah bouncing between them.

"That's right."

"Then please help us. I have to get my dad to Clodagh's. He's been dying at SpaceBase like Lavelle died when they took her off-planet."

The wind blew and the planet shook, whether in fear or anger or both Bunny couldn't tell, but inside Clodagh's house a phenomenon was taking place that Bunny would have only partially understood the day before.

A taciturn Liam Maloney, whined and howled into submission by Dinah and the other sled dogs, had delivered Diego Metaxos and his father to Clodagh's just after dark. Now Diego nursed a cup of tea, while his father sat tied into Clodagh's rocker.

Liam had returned home to feed the dogs, although Dinah had whined and made her peculiar "oooo ooo" sound when pulled away from Diego. Bunny wondered what she would hear the dog say if she stroked her. She wondered if Diego could hear Dinah yet, but thought he probably couldn't. After all, she had lived fourteen years on Petaybee, and she had always known communication existed between certain aspects of the planet and its people. Come to that, she had communicated with the planet like everyone else during the hot-springs interfaces at the end of every latchkay.

Everyone knew that some people, like Clodagh and Scan, could talk to most of the animals. Others, like Lavelle, could certainly understand their own lead dogs. Bunny had always talked to the animals, all of them, having been brought up to think it was only polite to do so. But today was the first time the animals had ever struck up what could be called a conversation with her. Maybe it was because she had bonded with her snocle instead of to dogs or cats or curlies, or maybe Dinah was just an unusually telepathic dog. Anyway, although Dinah was evidently tuned in to Diego, the dog had talked to Bunny first, and underlying all the worry and trouble, Bunny felt a marvelous elation about that.

The big cat, Nanook, had bounded past her as she held the door open for Liam and Diego to carry Francisco Metaxos into Clodagh's house. Bunny had caught a flutter of thought, Wonder what's happening out there now . . ., as the cat passed by.

Darkness blanked the windows and the wind blew fiercely, carrying the scent of ash and fresh water, thawing earth and smoke. It howled around the house like a team of hungry dogs and rattled the roof. Inside, the stove kept the house almost stiflingly warm as it kept Clodagh's caribou stew simmering in her biggest pot.

Diego was wolfing down his second bowlful and Bunny making short work of hers while Clodagh stirred fresh ingredients into the pot.

"Want to have enough for when people come in off the river," she said. "Some of them are bound to stop by."

The cozy domesticity of the scene was reinforced by Clodagh's cats, who had returned from whatever business they had been about when Bunny had first arrived.

Diego had one on his lap, while another, Bearcat, napped on Bunny's knees. And, of course, one of the more enterprising members of the pride twined around Clodagh's ankles as she cooked. Marduk and the remaining five seemed fascinated by Francisco Metaxos.

Marduk sat on the scientist's lap, kneading and purring and gazing raptly through narrowed eyes up into his face. Another cat sat on the scientist's shoulders, its rust-striped cheek and white whiskers snuggled against the man's right ear, front paws pedaling his shoulders while the ringed tail curled possessively around Metaxos's neck from the other side. Two more cats flanked Metaxos on either arm of the chair, licking his fingers and hands and grooming him, while another pair alternately wove about his feet and settled across them like house slippers.

You'd have thought the man was made of catnip the way the silly animals were carrying on, Bunny reflected. Whether it was coincidence or communication, at the moment the thought formed she drew an indignant dig from the cat in her lap.

"Can I have a bowl of stew for Dad, please, Clodagh?" Diego asked. "But maybe it'd be better-" He broke off and looked at Clodagh's back imploringly.

She turned and gave him an impassive half smile. "Yes?"

"If you'd feed him? Bunny says you're good at taking care of people and things and, to tell the truth, he never eats very well for me."

Bunny, who had watched Diego feed his father a couple of times, suspected that half the problem was that Diego found spoon-feeding his once-brilliant and vigorous father a disgusting process. She knew it made him sad and angry: that would be the way she would feel, she knew. Unnerving, too, to have to shove food into the mouth of a grown man as if he were an infant.

Clodagh regarded Diego with understanding and sympathy. She looked at the bowl she had filled and then handed it to him with a kind smile.

"No, it's better if you do it, son. Someplace inside your da he still knows you and loves you. If he'll eat for anybody, it'll be you."

"I guess so," Diego said dispiritedly, and pulled a chair opposite his father. Bunny noticed he was careful not to disturb any cats, though Marduk raised a paw as if to snag the spoon carrying food to Metaxos's mouth.

Grimacing, she looked away as the spoon neared the man's lips: that was the disgusting part, when stuff fell 'off the spoon and down the chin and had to be wiped off before it messed up the shirt. At least Diego didn't have to actually pry open his father's lips to get the food in. But, as she was turning her head, Diego suddenly said, "Hey, Dad. All right! That was great. Try another bite."

When Bunny looked back at them, Diego had a grin of satisfaction on his face: his father, eyes still dull, face otherwise slack, was chewing the soft diced bits in the stew. Encouraged, Diego replenished the spoon with more bits; the cat on his father's shoulders sniffed as the spoon passed his nose, but didn't try to snag it. Dr. Metaxos's eyes even looked a little more focused when he chewed, Bunny thought. Food was the best thing he could concentrate on right now; maybe he was even tasting it. She hoped so: it was a shame to waste a good Clodagh stew on someone who couldn't appreciate the fine taste of it.

Just then the door burst open and Aisling swirled in like a one-woman typhoon, followed closely by Steve Margolies. Through the door behind Steve, Bunny saw Sinead talking into the ear of one of the curly-coat horses that stood around about the house.

"Clodagh," Aisling called cheerfully, "Sinead and the cur lies did some right fine towing work at the river, getting snocles out of trouble. Everyone's out now and on their way back here. We left all the snocles at Adak's, but he's so busy, I thought I'd see if you had something cooked up for him to eat. He's going to be there all night. And it's not just the river breaking up early, either. You know all that smoke we've been after seein' and the ground shaking? Well, that's from a volcano eruption over by where Odark found Lavelle and Siggy with your lad here and his da." She grinned at the expressions of disbelief and amazement. "And the miners and engineers and company men that went out that way to start work, they got caught right under that volcano." She grinned so broadly at the effect of that news that she had to lick her lips.

Of them all, Clodagh didn't seem surprised.

"And, there's a shuttle down, almost right on top of the volcano, to hear Adak tell it, and the survivors yelling like stuck pigs for help. Well, that smooth redheaded captain who was sniffin' after Yana took her and Giancarlo and some other soldier to go see if anyone got out of the shuttle. They made it to the miners and then"-Aisling's expression changed to indignation- "that captain wanted to leave behind the injured miners and all, right where they were being bombarded with ash and hot mud, so's he could search for the shuttle. Can you believe the man's sand that he'd abandon wounded, his own people, mind you? And crazy enough to want to make a copter fly into all that heat and ash and smoke? But as luck would have it, and such good luck I can scarcely believe myself, the pilot was Rick, you remember Orla O'Shay's oldest boy that went into the service fifteen years ago? He and Yana Maddock made the captain and the colonel and the other bloke with them get out and load the wounded. He radioed back for a pickup for them and the other survivors, and Adak was just talking to him as we came in. Sinead says she has it from her sources that Scan's gone missin', too, and she's that worried about himself and Yana. The O'Shay boy says Yana disarmed the colonel and his lad neat as you please and not a moment too soon. Dr. Steve here wants to rustle up some transport. He feels he's got to get out there to eyeball that volcano while it's growing."

She paused to take a deep breath and then, with a grin, added, "Seems like Petaybee's not supposed to have volcanoes in that spot."

"Bunka, take a bowl of stew over to Adak and see if there's any more news, will you?" Clodagh said in a tone that was not a request.

"Sure, Clodagh," Bunny said.

"You're the one I'm to ask about transport?" Steve Margolies asked, looking perplexedly at the big woman.

"Eat first," Clodagh said hospitably, and handed him a bowl before filling a bigger one for Bunny to take to Adak. "You need good food after that stuff at the river, and for anything else you want to do."

Steve dragged a tired hand across his face as if he had only just remembered an essential like eating. He accepted the bowl and found a spot to sit, then took a good look around the room.

"Frag!" Steve Margolies exclaimed, his eyes wide with astonishment. "Look at Frank. He's petting that cat."

"Sure, it's fine exercise for his fingers," Clodagh was saying matter-of-factly. "Everyone knows animals are good for distressed folk."

Bunny was grinning, too, as she carried the stew bowl out the door on her way to Adak.

Despite the lid to keep the heat in, she had to walk carefully to keep from spilling the stew. It would keep hot long enough, however, for her to make a few short stops on her way to Adak's.

She slipped in at her own place, where she traded her soaked and stiffened hide boots for her breakup muckers and put on a kettle of food for her dogs. She looked in at Moira's window. The cousins and the dogs must have come and gone again, for Seamus was sitting large as life by the stove, shoveling Moira's soup and bread into his face. Moira was busy cooking. Now that Bunny knew that Seamus had made it back okay, she could continue with an easy heart.

Passing Maloney's again, she was greeted by Dinah's unhappy howl. She would pet and reassure the dog on the way back. Right now, not only was Adak's stew cooling but also a clever dog like Dinah might try to have first grabs at it. So she simply clucked reassuringly at the dog and kept going.

Six or seven snocles sat parked outside Adak's shed, but they had not been cleaned, serviced, or fueled, and were still covered with melting slush, water, and mud. Inside, Adak, headphones over his ears and microphone at his lips, was hunched over the radio. Bunny slid into a chair beside him and shoved the stew in his direction. He looked a little startled to see it appear in front of him, but accepted it without question. Lines were etched deeply into his face and his eyes looked hollow, but his whole body was taut with nervous energy. Early breakup and a new volcano a-borning might be considered catastrophes, but the end result was that today had produced the most excitement Kilcoole had seen since the first expeditionary team had been lost in a tsunami down on the southern edge of the ice pack.

"Well, I'm sorry about that, SpaceBase," Adak was saying with a certain amount of agitation, "but until the next hard freeze, the snocles aren't reliable as transportation for a trip clear out there. Over." He managed to spoon some stew into his mouth. "Oh, sure and they'll run on the snow, that's not the problem. The problem is the rivers, you see, and if you don't believe me, you can ask yer lads as got fished out of them today. Over.

"Is that so? Well, I'm sorry to hear that, too. It's a shame about Dr. Fiske's shuttle crashin' and to be sure we do understand the urgency and all. Over." He hurriedly ate some more.

"No, of course flyin' over it is impossible if the ash and smoke are as thick as you say. My suggestion would be to get yourself some of them crane-copters and have them hoist the snocles to the edge of the affected area and then see if the snocles'll drive at all in the ash. You're still going to be havin' the same problem with slushy going as we have here though. Over.

"The rivers of course, man! Petaybee has more rivers and lakes than you can shake a stick at, and who knows which ones are thawin' this early? Normally the high country would stay frozen longer, but a volcano, now, that's a chancy thing. I'm not a scientific man like yerself, but it seems to me such a thing would warm the country considerable. Over.

"Like I said, air-hoist a snocle to where O'Shay picked up the wounded. I'll wager Yana Maddock can drive it even if your two officer lads don't know how. Over.

"They what! When? How'd you find out? Uh-very well, over.

"Yes, then, I do see the urgency. Look here, I'll try to get some of the local folk on it in the meantime. The point is, machinery just doesn't do awfully well in some of the conditions we have hereabouts right now. That's why we use animals. I'll get back to you. Right. Over."

"What," Bunny asked impatiently, "was that about Yana?"

"Well, seems O'Shay radioed for help as soon as he was airborne and the other copter passed him at the halfway point. He was almost to SpaceBase when they radioed back that they were bringing in the rest of the survivors, but that Fiske, Giancarlo, and Corporal Levindoski overpowered Major Maddock and forced her to go with them into the flow area to look for Dr. Fiske. The higher-ups are that frantic to be after them, but the ash would clog any machines they got and it's not that good for the beasts either."

"I'll bet the curlies can do it, if anything can," Bunny said staunchly. "They were bred for sand and snow back on Earth, and they can close off their nostrils if they need to, and their eyes have a protective lid."

"Maybe so," Adak said, taking a slurp of stew. "Hard to figure why anybody'd want to risk a good curly to go after some company bigwig, though."

Chapter 15

Gun in hand, Yana held off Giancarlo, Torkel, and Ornery until the wounded were loaded. Torkel had relented enough to help, while Ornery and Giancarlo stood by, glaring malevolently at Yana. The last thing O'Shay did before he slammed the door shut was to fling out a red-and-white-striped rectangle. Picking it up, Yana identified it as an emergency rations pack and blessed the pilot's thoughtfulness. The four remaining survivors of the expedition were suffering from shock, and the high-energy rations would do much to revive them.

"If he thinks that's going to save him from a court-martial, he's got another thing coming." Giancarlo snorted as the copter lifted off. To Ornery-eyes he barked, "Don't just stand there, Levindoski. Commandeer that pack. We'll need those supplies on our search and rescue of Dr. Fiske and his party."

"Uh-uh," Yana said. "Not so fast, Colonel. You're not commandeering shit just yet. These folks need to chow down first." She pointed to the nearest survivor, a gaunt-faced man whose pocket nametag was half burned off. "Connelly?" she said, reading what was left. "Why don't you distribute? You'll want the yellow ones-they'll replace electrolytes and boost your energy levels."

Keeping one eye on her and the gun she held, Connelly retrieved the sack. With a pang of pity Yana saw that he was sufficiently fatigued so that it took him three yanks to break the labs, and half the bars and drink packets spewed over the ground. She stepped back and motioned for the others to help.

"Wait!" Torkel cried with a tinge of desperation. Yana turned to him. His eyes, watching the survivors scoop up the supplies, reflected a struggle with his emotions for the sort of control and charm that had always been a hallmark of his command personality. "Yana, please be reasonable. You know we're going to need those . . ."

"Torkel, if I was you I'd shut the frag up," Yana said, waving the gun at him. "You didn't exactly cover yourself with glory trying to take the copter away from the wounded and you're not improving things by trying to prevent the distribution of emergency rations to these survivors. As for me, I ate a while back."

Connelly, who had been handing the packets out to the others, contemptuously threw four at Torkel's feet. "Sorry, buddy. Didn't know you'd missed your bloody lunch."

"It's not that," Torkel said, wisely leaving the packets alone for the moment. "She's distorting this incident to make us look bad in your eyes, hoping you'll aid her."

"Which you are now doing by eating those rations," Giancarlo said sternly. "If you value your careers, you'll listen to Captain Fiske here and cooperate with our mission."

"Careers!" said another man, whose ashy parka bore the name "O'Neill." "Sure now, Colonel darlin'," he went on, his face angry, his words soft, and the Irish in his accent dangerously broad, the way the Petaybean accent became when mocking the stupidity of ; higher-ups. "We're that worried about our careers havin' just outrun yer volcano there. Seems to me that if it's our lives we're after valuin', the dama's the one to be listenin' to." He deliberately and defiantly chewed and swallowed a large hunk of his ration bar.

"Colonel Giancarlo, please," Torkel said. "I know you mean well but you're playing into her hands."

Watching his face, in which the desperation she had seen before was now suppressed, she saw him begin to calculate the effect of each word and attitude on the survivors. He was smart enough to know that he had alienated them initially, and smart enough to know that if he wanted to regain control of the situation he was going to have to have them on his side. "Folks, you'll have to forgive Colonel Giancarlo. He doesn't mean to sound callous but he's absolutely right. Our mission is one of the utmost priority and this woman has sided with the Petaybean insurgents creating this catastrophe!"

His arm swept across the devastation behind the survivors, the pulsing mud in the valley at their heels, the glow of the volcano visible even through the ashy miasma cloaking the area.

"Right," Connelly said, "one skinny little woman, with or without help, caused a volcano? I'm a mining engineer, Captain. Pull the other one."

The third man coughed both to clear his lungs and to get attention. "They might have set strategic charges that triggered the volcano."

"Th-that's right," the last survivor, a woman, stammered. Until she had eaten her ration bar, she had been trembling so violently that she had looked on the verge of convulsions; now her fearful glance centered on the presence of the authorities as represented by Torkel, Giancarlo, and Ornery. "Teams have disappeared here before. It can't all be natural."

"Damned right it's not," Torkel said, following up his advantage. "We were interrogating Maddock here, trying to get information from her to head off this disaster, when it blew up in our faces. Meanwhile, my own father, Dr. Whittaker Fiske, was coming to join a team in your vicinity to suss out the situation."

"In case you don't know who Dr. Fiske is," Giancarlo put in, "he's assistant chairman of the board, direct descendant of the man who developed the terraforming process that transformed the rock into a viable planet, and is the company's top expert on the environmental development and stability of all of Internal's terraformed holdings."

"He's the one man who can save this project and everybody involved with it, which is why you must help me find him," Torkel said, adding with a catch in his voice that could have even been genuine, "and he's my father. That's why we tried to supersede your need to move your wounded and effect your own rescue. Another copter would have been here for you immediately, of course, but this woman"-he jerked his thumb at Yana-"took advantage of the pilot's humanitarian instincts to turn the situation against us. But if one of you will guide me to where the shuttle came down, she won't be able to stop me from going in after my dad and saving this rock."

"Okay, who's it going to be?" Giancarlo demanded. "We need to move here and move fast. You heard Captain Fiske. We need volunteers to take us to the crash site."

"Say what?" O'Neill asked, not believing what he heard. "We come out of that"-he waved to the steaming valley.-"by the skin of our teeth and you're after us to risk our necks again? You're bloody nuts!"

The third man just shook his head tiredly. His shoulders were stooped under the weight of a variety of cameras and other instrument packages, as well as under the weight of the terror and pain he had just lived through. The straps kept Yana from seeing all of his name but "Sven" was part of it.

Torkel shook his head firmly, staring O'Neill down. "No. I'm not nuts. I'd never ask you to risk yourselves except that this it absolutely vital. It is imperative to the well-being of this planet and the personnel on it that we find my father with all possible dispatch."

"Find him? In that?" Sven demanded in a voice rasped harsh by smoke.

"There's no alternative, man!" Torkel was getting agitated, as he looked from Sven to Connelly and then to the other two, the stocky O'Neill and the stammering woman. "You did see the shuttle go down, right?"

Sven and Connelly both nodded.

"Well, where did it go down? Point me out the direction from here. I've coordinates, but they're only good in a copter."

Sven gave Connelly a long look and then, angling himself, he faced in a west-northwest position. "Near as I can remember it. We were scrambling ourselves by then."

"Why bother?" O'Neill asked, a trace of exasperation in his voice. "Captain, the shuttle was trying to land just as the volcano blew. The shock wave hit it like a ton of fraggin' bricks. I saw the craft knocked out of the sky with my own eyes. There's nobody could survive that." He obviously felt his own survival was miracle enough for one day.

"That's not true!" Torkel said, his voice suddenly wild with denial as he grabbed O'Neill's coat front and began shaking him. "My father has to have survived, you bloody idiot!" Then he realized what he was doing and loosed O'Neill with one more plea. "Don't discourage me, man. Help me, for pity's sake."

Yana had been watching this, also making certain that neither Giancarlo nor Ornery made any sudden moves toward her. She thought maybe Torkel's emotional display was genuine, but the man was devious-it could as well be a diversionary tactic. She couldn't take any chances. "Chill out, Torkel," she said. "These people are exhausted and in shock. They're not going to be fool enough to risk their lives going back in there."

But if Torkel was acting, he was doing it with enough conviction that he ignored her waving the gun. "You didn't actually see the volcanic blast destroy the shuttle, did you?" he demanded of O'Neill.

"No," O'Neill said tiredly. "It was intact when the force of the blast blew it off course."

"Ah, but it blew it away from the path of the debris, right?"

"Well, yes. It was debris, too, as far as the volcano was concerned," O'Neill told him.

"But there could have been survivors of the crash?"

Connelly, who Yana sensed was slowly being convinced by Torkel's insistence, told him in a weary but not unsympathetic voice, "That was three hours ago, Captain, and that volcano's been raining down and spitting mud out . . ."

Torkel heard the sympathy in the man's voice and pounced on it. "Will you guide me?"

But he had pushed too hard. Connelly withdrew and favored him with a disbelieving look, shaking his head. "The only one I'm guiding is me, out of here, when the copter gets back."

"Listen up, Connelly, and the rest of you, too," Giancarlo said. "Captain Fiske is not just any military captain. As son of Board member Fiske, he also holds the position of ranking executive on this planet at this time. Failure to cooperate with him and with this mission will have serious repercussions on your career."

"So," Connelly said, "will death. I'm not sticking around here waiting for that mountain to blow again for the chairman of the board. Besides, in these flying conditions"-he waved his hand off to the north-"no copter, any copter, would stay airborne for more than ten, maybe fifteen minutes." He snorted. "You'd do better using your feet."

When Giancarlo started toward him angrily, Yana spoke up again.

"I wouldn't, were I you, Colonel," she said. "They've done enough just making it here. And you both should know," she added, flicking a glance at Torkel, "how useless it would be to fly a copter in there!"

"Then, by all that's holy"- Abandoning his frantic make-'em-see-reason attitude, Torkel drew himself up into a noble-against-adversity stance. -"I'll make it on foot. Your packs there," he said, pointing to the pile slowly accumulating a cover of ash, "can be replaced at company expense when you get back to base. They won't be of much future use to you considering their present condition, but I would very much appreciate being able to scrounge what I need from them."

Connelly and Sven exchanged looks and shrugged. The woman, with an anxious look at Yana's gun hand, darted over and extracted a small sack from the pile, skittering back to the protection of her colleagues.

"Might as well. There's not that much there," Connelly said, "and if the company'll make good . . ."

"Of course, the company will make good," Giancarlo snapped. "Your equipment was company issue to begin with. Who else do you think would replace it?"

"I promise you it won't be debited from your pay," Torkel said quickly. "And any personal effects you've lost will be replaced, as well. The company takes care of its own."

O'Neill flicked him a resentful glance. "The way you were going to take care of the wounded?"

"Frag it all, O'Neill, I'm not some kind of a monster," Torkel said, even as he gestured for Giancarlo and Ornery to help him collect the packs. "I told O'Shay to radio for another bird for your wounded and for yourselves. A few minutes would have made no difference to them. You'll all get out safely. My father, and the crew of that shuttle, are still out there in that inferno."

Yana couldn't believe Torkel's gall, trying to guilt-trip the survivors. He sure was a company man: give with one hand, shuffle the shells, and take with the other! But she had no objections to him going after his father, as long as he didn't fore* anyone else to do it, too.

"Knowing how important it is, won't even one of you guide us?" he implored one more time as the air began throbbing with the sound of an approaching copter.

"Captain," Connelly said, "we really couldn't help you. All landmarks will have been destroyed by now, and none of us saw where your father's craft actually crashed. You've got the compass and the coordinates of where it was originally supposed to land." He scanned the sky anxiously with reddened eyes. "I hope you find him."

The unmistakable sound of the approaching copter grew louder: it was a Sparrowhawk, if Yana read the sound of it right. Those usually had room to seat the crew members and three more, but there was ample room for others to sit on the floor. Maybe, with a little luck, she could just manage to squeeze herself on board, too.

She relaxed her guard just enough to glance up at the sky, and that was when she was jumped. She had been so busy watching Torkel, Giancarlo, and Ornery that she hadn't paid any attention to the survivors, and Sven used the distraction of the chopper to grab her gun hand and twist. Before she knew it, she was on the other side of the weapon, nursing a numb wrist.

"Good man!" Torkel cried, leaping forward to relieve Sven of the gun, only to be waved to a standstill.

"He is that," O'Neill said. "Too good to let you get the drop on us again and try to get this helicopter away from us as well, for all the good it would do you."

Sven was evidently in agreement, for he backed over to the rest of his colleagues in a show of solidarity.

"I wouldn't have let them do that," Yana told Sven. "I made them surrender the other copter, didn't I?"

Sven grunted and shook his head, waving her back to the others.

"We're sorry, dama," O'Neill said. "You did help before and we're that grateful, but maybe you were only doin' it to get clear of them? Maybe you'd be after commandeerin' this bird for yourself to make your getaway. We can't chance it, and we don't need any more trouble today."

"At least take me with you," Yana urged.

But at that moment Giancarlo hooked her left arm and whipped it around and up under her shoulder blade, leaving her far more occupied with pain than argument.

"You're not going anywhere, Maddock," he murmured in her ear. "We haven't finished with you yet."

O'Neill and Connelly looked as if they were about to jump in and defend her, but Torkel spoke up again.

"You people go on. Take the copter, but leave her with us. She knows more than she's telling, and maybe when she sees what her rebel friends have unleashed, she'll have the good sense to help us save this planet."

"If she knows where other charges are planted, we'll get it out of her," Giancarlo said grimly.

"It is true that there wasn't supposed to be any natural seismic activity where we were setting up the mine," Connelly replied cautiously, with a glance first at Sven and then at the approaching copter.

"Right!" Torkel said, yelling over the copter's noise. "Everything that's happened is unnatural. You tell them at SpaceBase that there's a massive conspiracy afoot on Petaybee, and that Mad-dock's changed sides. She's in league now with the perpetrators. If you hadn't disarmed her, she would have gotten away, and who knows what trouble she would have caused."

The copter was slowly settling to the ground a discreet distance from the knot of humans. The survivors began backing toward it, Sven keeping the weapon trained on the company tableau of Torkel, Giancarlo holding Yana prisoner, and Ornery,

"They're nuts," Yana yelled, appealing to O'Neill. "You said yourself, nobody can jumpstart a volcano!"

O'Neill shot her a guilty glance, and he and Connelly exchanged looks, but the woman laid her hand fearfully on Sven's arm and he shook his head.

"No," he hollered. "We've risked our butts enough for one day. I'm not risking my job any further for someone in trouble with the management. You got into this mess, dama; you get yourself out without our help. You people sort it out among yourselves."

When the survivors were aboard the copter, Torkel leaned in the open door to yell at the pilot.

"You tell them at SpaceBase that I said this volcanic eruption is part of a plot to undermine our investigation and to kill a member of the board. And you get them to send out ground transport as soon as possible. Get it to the volcano site! We'll meet them there! Tell them that my father, Dr. Whittaker Fiske, is out there and it's vital we rescue him. Absolutely vital!" The pilot began lifting off and Torkel jumped down and backed off slightly, but repeated himself, yelling through cupped hands. "Tell them we've gone ahead to rescue my father. They're to follow us!"

The pilot gave him a thumbs-up signal and waved him away from the rising aircraft.

They all watched as the copter whisked away, disappearing into a maelstrom of wind, ash, and smoke. Giancarlo released Yana abruptly when it was out of sight, and she fell to her knees. As she rose, she gingerly worked her shoulder to be sure Giancarlo's enthusiasm hadn't wrenched muscles. As near as she could tell, she was still in good functioning order-at least for now.

Without so much as an eye blink, Torkel tossed her one of the packs he had been filling.

"Grab the rest of those ration bars, Maddock," he ordered.

She didn't mind. It gave her the chance to get something in her own belly. She couldn't fault the survivors, but she sure hoped they didn't believe the crap Fiske had been shoveling in their ears: that she was "in league with the perpetrators," "had caused all these unnatural phenomena." Trouble was, she thought with a snort, those poor devils were shocked enough to believe every word. Rather ungrateful of them, though, especially when O'Shay had made it plain that she was the only reason the copter had been able to land to pick up their wounded. Whatever! Torkel had turned them against her sufficiently to banjax her one chance of getting free. Free-and she had a private grin-to foment riot and rebellion back at the SpaceBase, or even with all those dangerous allies she had joined forces with.

She hoped they were all right at Kilcoole. Then Giancarlo brought her back to the present with a shove in the direction of the valley filled with blistering mud and smoking ash. Torkel was leading, then Ornery with Giancarlo behind her: not exactly where she preferred him, but she was in no position to make requests, was she?

Although there were still safe places to walk where the mud hadn't yet spread, Yana wondered how far in toward the volcanic site they could get, where the damage was fresh and the flow still boiling hot. If the planet decided to set off its new volcano again, they would be right under it. Actually, she thought, smiling to herself, the planet was doing such a complete job of dividing and routing the "enemy," that she wouldn't mind going under to such an admirable opponent.

"We'll be okay," Torkel said to no one in particular as he trudged forward. "But Dad won't if we don't reach him soon."

His voice was still taut with anxiety, though it projected less heart-wrenching filial devotion than it had when he had spoken to the survivors. Yana wondered why he was really risking their necks-but the answer was fairly obvious. Torkel was a pretty good company spy and a fair administrator, but he was not a creative scientist like his father, and without the elder Fiske, he was not apt to carry the same weight in the corporate structure. Of course he wanted to find old Whittaker. He was once again protecting his interests.

She was thinking about that as she kept a close eye on where she was putting her feet. She tried not to cough in the ash-laden, sulfury-smelling smoke. She hadn't had her lungs healed just to mess them up again inhaling this sort of crud. She tore off a piece of her shirttail and tied it across her mouth. The others did likewise, but cloth was a flimsy filter against the thickly laden wind, unlike the protective masks the company would have issued if such conditions had been anticipated.

Their progress was slow. They could not see the sun at all, and when Yana checked her watch, she had to rub the face clear of clinging ash to read it, but even then the face remained dark and empty; the ash no doubt had worked its way into the mechanism and clogged it. Fortunately, the compass was better shielded and more reliable. For hours, they picked their way forward through the maze of paths that terminated abruptly in mudflow, forcing them to double back and find a new path, then following that one forward until it, too, gave out. Occasionally the volcano would spew forth a gout of fiery red and orange matter, giving them a terrible beacon to their progress. The air was also getting closer, hotter, and that slowed them down, too. All were perspiring heavily, and the three men had torn shirttails into sweat bands around neck or forehead.

Just about the time Yana was beginning to wonder if the crash site was a myth to lure them into the certain death of the volcano field, Giancarlo yelled and pointed. There, ash-dusted and protruding from what looked like an ocean of the gray muddy guck, was unmistakably a delta wingtip that had to be part of the downed shuttle. They rushed forward, stopping just on the edge of the bubbling mud.

Yana looked up at Torkel and saw his eyes harden and his mouth twist in pain. That sort of anguish was not generated by a career anxiety alone, she realized. Whatever personally pragmatic motives he might have for this search, he truly did care for his father.

They had to spend a long time circling the crash site, looking for any sign that someone might have escaped. Torkel circled and paced like a crazy man, trying to find a way across the mudflow to that protruding wingtip, though what good that would do, Yana didn't know. They had no rope or cable to secure the tip to keep it from sliding farther into the mud, and the four of them certainly couldn't have pulled it, and the rest of the shuttle, free. Then Torkel obviously realized that this activity was futile and began methodically inspecting every inch of what solid ground there was for traces that survivors had exited the shuttle before the mud had drowned it.

The world was silent, except for the men's harsh breathing, and even that was muffled. Yana tried not to hold her breath, but she hated every ounce of contaminated air she had to drag into her lungs. When would Torkel give up this useless search? If there had been survivors, they ought to have had sense enough to get out of this vicinity with all possible speed. The likeliest explanation for the lack of traces leading away from the crash site was that there had been no one to make them. Surely Torkel had to admit that possibility. And it was equally unlikely that their tracks would be discernible with mud and ash constantly falling to cover such traces. Meanwhile, conditions were deteriorating from minute to minute as the mud and ash built up. If they weren't awfully careful, someone was going to take the wrong step and end up mud-baked.

She felt the ground flutter beneath her feet and took a step backward.

And quite unexpectedly she found herself touched by an amazing sensation. It was similar to what she had felt in the cave: staunch, reassuring, welcoming. She swiveled around, not knowing what she might find in such an unlikely place. There was only the giant boulder she had just stepped around. It was shaped like an enormous top, the point plunged deep into the ground. Its mass had separated the flow of the mud, leaving a wide, clear, somewhat sheltered space.

The mud around her gave a mighty heave and she shot an apprehensive glance at the boulder for fear it might topple over onto her. But it didn't move an inch. Was that what the planet had been reassuring her about? That the boulder was safe? Then Ornery shouted, and whipping around, she was just in time to see the wingtip slowly sinking out of sight into the mud. Torkel, standing a few paces beyond her, yelled in anguish and reached out as if to grab the wing. He was off balance when the surface heaved once more, and he was thrown sideways. Instinctively, she leapt forward, catching the fluttering edge of his torn shirt with one hand. With a second desperate lurch, she caught hold of his pack strap with the other and hauled him into the shelter of the top-shaped boulder.

The tremors were the prelude to another eruption of the volcano. Particles of ash rained down faster, ever faster, rapidly developing into a deluge of red-hot flying stones. Then, with a roar much louder than a ship blasting from a launchpad, scalding mud, scouring ash, and rock-strewn dust flew past them. Yana cried out, whipping her left arm under cover as the downpour ignited the fabric of her sleeve. She beat out the sparks and crouched down as tightly as she could against what protection the boulder gave. Beside her, Torkel let out a yowl as his vulnerable right side was also lashed by burning embers. The hot ash was pervasive, and there seemed to be no way to avoid it. In desperation, she unslung her pack and covered her head with it. Squeezing tight against the boulder, she felt the ground tremble again. Fleetingly she wondered about the advisability of clinging to a boulder, no matter what the planet suggested. At any moment the huge stone could roll over and crush them. But alternatives were not available. She let the pack slip farther down to protect her back from the hot and painful dusting.

Every muscle taut and every nerve stretched, she endured, as Torkel did beside her. She really should have made her escape at Scan's, she decided. That was her first mistake! She could have used one of the curlies or the comm unit or something to get her back to the village. Her second, she thought grimly, was not watching the miners and letting one of them take her weapon. Again, if she had played her cards better she could have been safely back at Kilcoole, where she knew she had friends and where she would have had a chance of finding Sean. If half of what people said about him was true, if what she felt about him was true, he would know what this was all about.

Then, miraculously, the roaring abated, a gust of side wind blew some of the smoke and ash away, and a light rain began to fall.

Maybe, Yana thought with small hope, it would rain harder, clear the air a bit, and cool the mud off enough so they could walk out of there.

When at last she dared to peel herself off the boulder, she did a damage report on herself. Burns stung, rock scrapes ached, she was covered with ash, blood speckled here and there. Then she looked at Torkel, who looked much the same way she felt. Only . . . her hand went to her head and she was relieved to find that she had more hair left than he did. Torkel had lost quite a swath, including his eyebrows, down his right side. And most of his shirt.

The back of his fatigue pants, made of a supposedly indestructible material, looked more like mesh drawers. His right arm was a mass of tiny blisters, and her left one was in no better shape. Both packs were smoking, riddled with burn holes. She was putting the remains of the pack out where the rain could douse the final sparks when she saw Giancarlo lying unconscious, half-buried in the runnel of mud. He must have been trying to make it to the shelter of the boulder, too. There was no sign of Ornery-eyes.

The copters and other aircraft were grounded by falling ash, the snocles could not run over rivers and muddy slush, the tracked vehicles were too slow, and the runners of the sleds would not slide over broken ground. Rivers had changed their courses so that travel by water was unreliable to the point of insanity.

Therefore, the little string of sturdy curly-coats, each bearing either passenger or pack, traveled alone across the vast emptiness of the uninhabited northwestern sector of Petaybee, toward the mountains stretching up from the plains on one side; on the other, down onto the ice pack to the north and on to the open sea.

The lead curly, Boru, carried Sinead, while the next, the largest and the sturdiest of the beasts, carried Clodagh, wrapped in a poncho that covered both her and her mount so that she looked like a mountain on hooves. Behind her traveled Bunny, then Diego Metaxos, who was still fretting about leaving his father in Aisling's care. He had been badly torn between the honor of being asked to join the rescue party and his responsibility to supervise his father's steady improvement. He had left his father absently stroking one of the several cats, who had continued to adhere to the man like leeches. Both Clodagh and Aisling had assured him that this was a very good sign and told him to let matters proceed at their own pace. Diego couldn't hurry the healing process but he had extracted a promise from Aisling that she would take his father down to the hot springs as soon as possible. Steve Margolies had insisted on coming along as the "technical" observer to the phenomenon. He carried the only concession to modem technology, a comm unit, for contacting Adak in Kilcoole and SpaceBase.

Bunny thought it was the most ill assorted rescue party imaginable, but, what with all the injured being tended at Kilcoole, these five had been the only ones available. Sinead would have gone by herself, if no one else had accompanied her to rescue Yana, hoping to find her brother, too. No sooner had Bunny told Clodagh what Adak had said about Yana being in trouble and the shuttle crashing than Sinead had barged into the cabin, muttering that Yana was in trouble and she had to go help.

"Sean send for you?" Clodagh had asked, her gaze unusually piercing.

"Not just Sean," Sinead had answered, biting her words off. She glanced about, measuring the occupants for suitability to her need. "This is it, Clodagh!"

Clodagh had nodded once and brought her meat cleaver down so hard that it quivered, stuck, in the board. "I go with you!"

"You?" Bunny couldn't believe her ears, but Clodagh was already taking off her apron, striding to the litter of parkas and boots by the door, and searching through them for her own gear.

Her statement had galvanized the others. Nothing would have kept Bunny from following Clodagh, though her insistence astounded Steve. But he repeated his assertion that he had to make observations of the phenomenon. When Diego vacillated, obviously distressed, wanting to go, yet unwilling to leave his father, Aisling had volunteered to look after Francisco.

As they went outside to select curly-coats from the herd Sinead had rounded up, another volunteer made it plain that he was coming along: Nanook. A quick smile lit Sinead's anxious face, and she laid her hand in a brief gesture of gratitude on the animal's black and white head.

Dinah joined them, too, using drastic measures to get her way. Seeing them ride out of the village, she had howled so piteously and continued to yelp at such an earsplitting volume that Herbie must have given in and ordered Liam to let her loose. She came charging up to Diego just as they dipped down in the valley northwest of the town, and she maintained a position beside his mount throughout the trek.

Nanook had taken it as his right to lead the expedition and ranged way beyond Sinead, now and then padding back to them as if hoping he could speed up their progress. But the slush and mud made the going slow, and even the clever curly-coats got trapped now and then in melting drifts.

On the first day, when the ground shook again, Clodagh lifted her hand to signal a halt. Laboriously she dismounted and slowly lay down, arranging herself flat on her belly, her right cheek pressed onto the snow-packed ground. After a long time, she rose, wiping her face clean before she pointed west. "That way."

Clodagh also had other means of communication and Bunny watched, fascinated, as she employed them. She sang. Using tone-like sonar, she sang to the birds and the rocks and the plants:

"Friends, have you seen our friend, Yanaba? ''

She met the enemy and was taken into battle with him.

See that she comes to no harm."

If the addressee was a raven, it promptly flew away; if it was an animal, it ran purposefully off; a stream, it kept about ill business, but Bunny swore that the ripples changed pitch; and if it was the ground beneath the hooves of the horses, it simply absorbed the songs, listening. Clodagh listened, too, and then she would alter their direction a compass point or two. They would continue for a while on the new course until she found something else to sing to.

In this way, despite Margolies's demanding explanations of this quixotic form of directions, they traveled for two days and two nights and half a day again. They got what sleep they could in their makeshift saddles, stopping only to feed the horses, and for ten minutes in every two hours to rest their mounts' backs. The horses kept moving tirelessly, mostly at a walk but occasionally, where the terrain had been swept free of snow, breaking into their smooth little canter.

Very early on the rescuers had to cover their mouths with pieces of cotton cloth that rapidly became clogged with dust and ash and had to be shaken often. Even the food they ate during their brief halts tasted like more of the same. Soon everyone's eyes went from stinging to being red and swollen. When they could dig down to clean snow during the rest halts, they bathed their faces, trying to relieve the irritation.

Everything was mud gray-the sky, the ground, the air- and the people and animals moved like big ashy lumps in front and behind. Bunny was so tired and so full of ash and smoke that only her sore tailbone let her know that she was not traveling in a dream. Then Nanook began racing forward and back to them until they quickened their progress in anticipation of what he might have found. He led them to a place where the snow and ash still bore faint indentations of human feet, the long flat marks of copter skids, and a pile of discarded effects, all but the metal reduced to scraps of melted or fused material. Fingers of cooling, hardening mud crept up the side of a canyon wall.

Nanook leapt the few feet from the edge of the canyon to the mud, and Bunny caught her breath, fearful that Nanook might be risking injury. But the cat was far from stupid, and he landed and solemnly stretched out on a surface that was apparently comfortably warm. He began licking his filthy paws as if he were back in Sean's laboratory.

"Trust him to find the perfect spot to relax," Clodagh said, amused.

Dinah also settled down to lick her paws clean. She had trotted dutifully by Diego's mount, her red coat barely visible under its ashen cover.

They slipped the saddle blankets and hackamores from the horses and fed them. They munched trail rations as they unstrapped the snowshoes that they hoped would give them better footing over the ash-covered mud and snow. While they made a final check of their packs, Steve Margolies called their position in to Adak. Bunny only hoped the transmission was better than the reception. All they could hear was a hiss and crackle a little louder than the wind, which was blowing steadily east.

"I hope they got all that," Steve told the others. "I didn't hear exactly what they said but, having done a personal on-the-spot review of conditions, I think they said this is a no-go area. There was also some gibberish about there being no one in command to give orders."

Clodagh gave a contemptuous sniff and, with a groan, once more began to spread herself flat on the ground. The others stood about for what seemed a very long time-at least the curly-coats had moved a good distance away in search of any grass the mud and ash hadn't buried-before she moved again.

She hauled herself up, mopped the ash from her face and neck, brushed it off the front of her clothes, and then pointed. 'That way."

"The volcano's that way," Steve protested, pointing elsewhere.

Clodagh moved her arm slightly toward the north. 'The volcano is that way." Then she dropped her snowshoes to the ground and stepped into them. Scooping up her pack and twitching her shoulders so that it settled on her back, she started off in the direction she had indicated.

Bunny looked at Diego and shrugged. Sinead jerked her head at the perplexed Steve, and very shortly, all were following her down into the valley, Dinah sticking right at Diego's heels. In several leaps, Nanook caught up and passed the humans. Clodagh took particular notice of where he put his paws. For all her bulk, she moved with unexpected agility as she followed the cat's tracks.

Chapter 16

Yana and Torkel dragged Giancarlo back to the uncertain safety of the boulder, the three of them hostage to the hot mud surrounding them. Yana bound up Giancarlo's pulped arm and leg, but the heat of the mud and flying rock had pretty well cauterized the wounds inflicted by the blast-or so she would have to hope, she thought ruefully. The colonel would be lucky to live long enough to get infections.

Torkel had taken a worse beating than she, for although her back was pretty well skinned, her hair hadn't been as badly singed and her scalp hadn't been peppered with ash because she'd had sense enough to protect her head. Torkel's face was scored and swollen where rock had hit it before she had pulled him down, and he was ravaged with grief besides.

She had had to prod him painfully to get him to move enough to help her with Giancarlo.

"Look, Torkel," she said in her best bracing tone. "If your dad survived the crash and the first blast, it's likely he survived I he second one, as well. At any rate, we can't do anything about it one way or the other unless we survive. Here, eat this so we do!" She thrust a battered ration pack at him, somewhat amazed that the wrapping was still intact. It seemed years ago that she had stuffed them in the front of her shirt.

She wasn't sure when she slept, but she knew that sometime within that interminable period, the searing heat from the mud dissipated and the sunless air grew cold again. She and Torkel Fiske put the unconscious Giancarlo between them and hunched over him, sharing their warmth with him. In her sleep she dreamed that she was holding Scan rather than Torkel, and he was bathing her wounds with water from the hot springs, telling her, "I'm here, Yana. Trust me. Nothing of this world means you harm. Listen to its voice. Remember now . . ."

The dream and others like it repeated as she slept or half dozed, shivering, clinging to the warmth and life in the two other bodies for more time than she could count or was conscious of.

Then, without knowing how or when it happened, she woke from the dream of Scan, feeling warm again. She smelled a freshening in the air and realized that her hand was touching something cool, hard, and smooth; and, rousing, she found that she was touching the once scalding mud.

Torkel was still sleeping, and Giancarlo moaned in a fever. Yana sat up and placed both palms against the mud. The sensation wasn't unpleasant. It still retained some warmth, but was otherwise hard and seemed stable. Standing, she tested other areas, pressing her fingers into the layer of ash overlying the previously steaming rivulet. It gave with a slight hiss and a hint of smokiness, but once the crust was broken, solid hard mud was only an inch or two down. She carefully hauled herself up on top of the flow and found that it held her weight.

The air was clearer. She could definitely smell and see the difference at this height. A strong wind whipped at her, blowing the ash back away from them and over to the north and east. Torkel sat up and blinked lashless eyes at the sudden change. Yana rubbed cautiously at her arms, avoiding the burn blisters but needing to increase blood circulation and reduce hypothermia. She was glad of the visibility, glad of the ability to travel again, if only they knew where they were going. Then she opened the remaining ration pack, twisted it into two more or less equal halves, and let him choose.

"We'll have to drag Giancarlo," she told Torkel when they had finished their scanty meal.

"He'll slow us down," Torkel said.

"You want to leave him?" she asked. She didn't like being directly responsible for anyone's death. On the other hand, if she was to be responsible for someone dying here, she wouldn't much mind if it was Giancarlo.

Torkel looked down at the colonel, then shrugged and bent to hoist him by the arms up the wall of mud, where Yana helped support the unconscious man.

"We'd better get him back to where a copter can land, I hen." Yana said.

But he shook his head stubbornly, unreasonably. "Dad may still be out here."

"You can come back afterward," she insisted.

But just then a fresh gust of wind from the west carried a raven toward them. The bird swooped, diving so low that its wing brushed Yana's hair.

Its cry was no doubt only the usual raucous caw, but to her, wounded, shocked, and probably a little delirious, it seemed to be saying " 'ana, 'ana," or maybe it was "Sean, Sean." Then it made an abrupt turn and flew back the way it came. Abruptly she recalled Sean's dream message.

"Okay, you win," she told Torkel. "But we spell each other dragging the son of a bitch and you get first shift."

She was pleased when the crow's west eventually turned out to be the right direction. Even so, both she and Torkel were at the end of their strength from dragging Giancarlo's heavy and unresponsive body when she caught the first gleam of open water. She hadn't realized how parched she was until that moment. Then her throat took over, reminding her that she was so dehydrated it didn't know if it would ever come unstuck. Up closer, Yana saw that the water was a little stream, running from one edge of the mud and on into the side of a hill. Yana fully expected the water to be milky with ash and mud and clogged with debris, but in fact it was so clear she could see the stones at the bottom. Somehow this stretch had escaped all of the ravages of the volcano. Where the stream emerged from the hill, she could make out a deep, cavelike opening, into which her crow guide disappeared as she watched.

Judging by the way the ash had drifted, Bunny thought that the wind had been westerly for some time, possibly the entire two and a half days it had taken them to make it this far. Nanook even began to touch down on the mud from time to time, and when the humans walked on it, they felt only a tolerable warmth through the soles of their boots. It certainly wasn't hot enough to damage the snowshoes, which were proving their worth through the heavier ash deposits.

They were moving steadily to one side of the smoldering cone. Smoke or steam was windborne away from them to the east, so that the air was not so clogged with ash and sulfur stench.

Seen from this safe distance, the volcano didn't, to Bunny's way of thinking, look all that dangerous. It was actually not very big.

"It doesn't have to be big to be dangerous," Steve said when she voiced her observation. "I'm no expert on vulcanism-Petaybee is not supposed to be labile," he added in a sourly amused tone, "but, on a world which does have considerable activity, a volcano can rise up one day and disappear the next. After raining ash, lava, rock, or whatever all across a landscape. We're just lucky this is only an ash-and-mud type. Some rise for the one blowoff and then remain dormant."

"Is this one dormant now?" Bunny asked, eyeing it nervously.

"We hope," Steve said with a grin.

"Clodagh?" Bunny persisted.

Clodagh shrugged and plowed on tirelessly. Nanook skirted a vast lake of hardening mud that steamed more than did most of the rivulets and puddles of the stuff.

The volcano was almost out of sight behind them, obscured by the foothills, when Nanook suddenly picked up the pace, from an amble to a working lope. Then, abruptly, he halted at a fast-running stream to lap up the clear water. The others were glad to follow his example.

Clodagh did more than drink: she immersed her face in the stream. She was so long about it that Bunny got worried, but when she finally lifted her dripping head, she wore a broad smile.

"That way," she said, pointing uphill in a more northerly direction as she wiped her face, leaving dark gray smudges on her forehead and down her cheeks.

Ash clung to all their clothing and rendered their complexions ghostly gray.

"Let me see if I can get a message through, Clodagh," Steve said, starting to unsling his radio equipment.

"Not now," she said, shaking her head, and began to follow the stream. Steve shrugged and resettled the radio equipment.

The stream disappeared into a narrow opening at the bottom of the first terrace of the cliff. When Clodagh indicated that they would have to climb, they discarded the snowshoes. Bunny marveled that Clodagh calmly prepared herself to climb, hitching her skirts high enough so that her sturdy legs, clad in woolen pants knitted in a variety of quite lively colors, were visible. She was slow, true enough, but she made certain progress upward. Nanook reached the top of the terrace in three graceful leaps, Dinah scrabbling close behind him. Fortunately they didn't have all that far to go. On the second terrace, Nanook turned to his right and led them around an escarpment, ducked into a hole in the stone, and disappeared from sight. Only then did Clodagh groan, for she would have to go down on hands and knees to follow the big cat. She did.

Once inside, they could all stand up again. Clodagh paused, leaning against the wall to catch her breath. Bunny thought the pace was telling on the large woman. It was certainly beginning to wear Bunny down a bit, and she was much more used to running about than Clodagh.

"Hey, this is like the other place," Diego said, looking about him. A curious luminescence gave enough light for them to see.

"Quite a few subterranean networks did appear on the last scan that was made of this planet," Steve was saying as he examined the rock walls, wiping off a light film, which he rubbed between his fingers. "They weren't on previous ones, but they do account for the subsidences. Or do they? Most unusual. I wish Frank had been well enough to travel with us. He's more familiar with such geological anomalies than I am." He walked on a few more strides before he stopped completely, forcing Diego, walking behind him, to hurriedly step aside. "Or perhaps there was a flaw in the original terraforming that has produced unforeseen long-range crustal defects. A shame that Dr. Fiske was killed on the shuttle crash."

"We don't know that for certain," Bunny said. "Only that Captain Fiske was going to try to find his father, so he could still be alive."

"Is Fiske's father the company big shot who's supposed to know more about Petaybee than anyone else?" Clodagh asked, pausing to lean against the stone.

"Yes," Steve said. "He's Dr. Whittaker Fiske, grandson of the Dr. Sven Whittaker-Fiske who developed the Whittaker Effect, the process that perfected the accelerated terraforming technique used to make Petaybee habitable." When Clodagh gave Steve a long and thoughtful look, he corrected himself. "Or at least he thought he had perfected it."

"Why didn't he name it the Fiske Effect then?" Bunny asked.

"He named it for his mother, Dr. Elsie Whittaker. I guess he thought it was appropriate, considering the generative nature of the project."

Clodagh gave a satisfied grunt and, pushing herself off the wall, was about to move forward again when she stopped, holding her hand up for silence. "Listen!"

The sounds were muted but obviously human. Bunny and Sinead dashed forward, Diego, with Dinah at his heels, just behind them. The voices had suddenly risen in excitement, and as Bunny turned the next bend, she stopped in surprise. Nanook had found Yana and was attempting to lick any part of her he could!

"Yana! You're alive!" Bunny cried, but she had taken no more than one step before she realized that Yana was not the only inhabitant of the large, low cave. And judging by the way the camp had been set up, Yana and her companions had been here a few days. "Who're all of you?" she demanded.

A sturdy man in a torn uniform and a bandage covering almost all his black hair stood up by the fire, where he had been stirring a pot. "Captain John Greene of the shuttle Sockeye," he said with a wry smile. "Who're you?"

"Buneka Rourke of Kilcoole," Bunny said in stunned courtesy.

"From Kilcoole? Of all the bloody luck," groaned a disgruntled voice, and a battered, blistered, half-naked, filthy man barely recognizable as the dapper Torkel Fiske rose painfully from his seat on the ground. He placed himself protectively between the rescue party and an older man, who had one arm bound across his chest.

Before either Bunny or Sinead could respond to Torkel's hostile reaction, Steve Margolies, and Diego, and an excitedly barking Dinah rushed into the cavern, followed more slowly by Clodagh.

To the man behind him, Torkel said, "Just keep calm, Dad. I'll handle this. These are the rebels I was telling you about. The ones who brainwashed Maddock into helping them."

"Nonsense, son," the older man said, stepping gently but firmly past his tottering son. "That's Steve Margolies there, and Frank Metaxos's boy, Diego. They're no more rebels than I am."

"Dr. Fiske," Steve exclaimed, rushing toward the older man and pumping his good hand excitedly. "I can't believe you survived."

"Neither can I," the older Fiske replied in a droll voice.

"Dr. Fiske, in the past few days, Diego and these people have showed me the most amazing developments. You simply won't believe what I have to tell you . . ."

"I'll be the judge of that," Dr. Fiske said. "Stop posturing for a moment, son, and sit down before you fall down." He gently pushed Torkel back to the floor. "And for the love of Mike let these people clean you up and dress your wounds. You're no damned good to me dead. You, young Diego, lend me a hand here to clean up my son's wounds before they fester. I've only got the one that's useful now, myself. I'll debrief Dr. Margolies."

"Yes, sir," Diego said, taking over the bowl of water and the cloth. Having learned a few things from caring for his father, Diego went about the duty both gently and conscientiously, cleansing the portions of Torkel's body that Torkel couldn't have reached. The captain wearily protested every dab, as if Diego were deliberately trying to inflict more pain than was absolutely necessary. Diego's private opinion was visible on his face: the captain was acting like a big baby.

Dr. Fiske settled down to one side of Torkel, and Steve hunkered down and began talking in a rapid-fire explanation full of words Bunny didn't understand even when she could make them out.

Yana caught Clodagh's eye and urgently beckoned the healer over, indicating Giancarlo's bundled figure on the ground by her feet.

Clodagh examined the colonel's terrible burn wounds briefly, pursing her lips at the irremedial damage.

"I can do something to make him comfortable, no more," she said, shaking her head. "Intergal may know something." She started to work, pulling various unguents and potions, bandages and splints from her knapsack.

Yana would never have expected to be sorry for a man like Giancarlo, but she was. Hurting as badly as he was, he had not uttered a sound.

For herself, Yana was so glad to see Clodagh and the others from Kilcoole that she could have cried. She and Torkel had made it to the cave several hours before, and she had been unutterably relieved to see the shuttle crash survivors. However, once Torkel had reassured himself that his father was safe, he began ranting about Yana's treachery and warning the shuttle crew to ignore anything she might say and to watch her. Considering the fact that Yana had obviously taken on most of the physical burden of dragging Giancarlo, as well as supporting Torkel, as they staggered into the cave, the shuttle crew didn't pay much attention to his ravings. Still, the atmosphere had been extremely tense. Even the cave itself seemed to be holding its breath, waiting for something. The calm before the storm? Yana wondered. A lull before the mountain blew again? It didn't feel exactly like that, and she was too tired to analyze the feeling, but it definitely added to the tension.

Once Clodagh finished ministering to the unconscious Giancarlo, she rounded on Yana, clucking over the scabby sores crusting Yana's left arm and over her appearance in general.

"When did you eat last, girl?" Clodagh demanded.

"I had a piece of ration bar just before we got here," Yana said.

"You look like you could eat a whole moose by yourself and sleep for a month. You were skinny as a skeleton when you got to Kilcoole, but we fattened you up good. Now you look like a lame doe after a hard winter again."

Yana jerked her arm away from Clodagh. "Don't fuss over me. I'm all right. There are others who could really use your help, Clodagh." She nodded beyond her to others wearing makeshift bandages. "The shuttle survivors have been here for three days, and they've had zip to look after themselves with. All they could do for Dr. Fiske was immobilize his arm and wash off his wounds."

"Is that him over there Steve's talkin' to?" Clodagh asked. When Yana nodded Clodagh said wryly, "He looks better off than Torkel to me."

Sinead joined the two women then, her face anxious. "Have you seen him?" she asked Yana. "I thought he'd be with you."

"No, if you mean Scan," Yana said with an odd smile. "But I'll tell you both something. We didn't find them"-and she gestured to the crash victims-"we were led to them."

Hope bounced back into Sinead's eyes. "Led to this place?"

Yana nodded. "What's more, they swear they were led here, too. I can only think of one person not here at the moment who might have engineered this rescue, and I've been wondering, Sinead, how the hell he did it." Her eyes were keen on the other woman's face. "Dr. Fiske told Torkel he believes that there's an underground network of rivers. That's why there were so many subsidences when the mining charges weakened subterranean supports. If there's a network, one river flowing into another, then someone who knew his way around could go from one end of the system to the other without ever being seen-couldn't he?"

Sinead gave Yana a long look. "If there was such a network, that's possible, I suppose. I don't go underground much. 1 like horizons." Then she reached to heave her pack off her back and began rummaging in it. "I've got spare clothes you can use. And some stuff Clodagh will want."

"No one looked beyond this cavern?" Clodagh asked with quiet urgency.

Yana shook her head. "We'd enough to do without going exploring!"

"That's as well," Clodagh said with a satisfied snort, and asked Yana who was the worst of the injured. She cleansed, stitched, anointed, and listened as gradually the two separate incidents were reported in detail.

The shuttle had been on the point of landing when the volcano blast had caught it, throwing the vehicle heavily to its side. Nine passengers had not survived the impact, but the others, hastily mobilized by the resourceful young pilot, Captain Greene, had got the living out of the shuttle before the air locks were submerged. They had managed to leave the area, the hot mud only centimeters from their heels as they plunged out of the western end of the valley. They had paused only to distribute supplies and attend to burns, scalds, and broken bones, before force-marching themselves as far from the erupting volcano as their strength would take them. The wind was easterly: they had picked the only safe direction to flee. And that had been only by chance, since the pilot had thought he was directing them toward the mining site that had been their destination, but a knock on the head, from the crash landing, had skewed his sense of direction.

"Remarkable that we were all led to this particular spot," Steve Margolies said. "This appears to be the opening of a vast system of caves. The two parties could have ended up in widely separated spots. Are there other entrances to this particular cavern?" he asked, glancing toward the back of the cavern.

Greene shrugged. "Could be. We didn't need to explore with that fresh stream right outside."

"We'll return later, properly equipped, and do a thorough investigation," Dr. Fiske said in a firm command tone. "Right now, we'd better report these coordinates and get our wounded back to SpaceBase. I believe this may be one of the places for which our teams have been searching all these years. Dr. Margolies, I trust you brought some means of communication with the base, didn't you?"

"Of course, of course," Steve said. He jumped to his feet. "We'll have to go outside and get some height for the best possible signal-" Then he stopped, as Torkel latched on to the comm set at his belt and hauled himself wearily to his feet, using Steve to balance himself.

"I initiate any communications," Torkel said curtly. Then he caught his father's frown and managed a ghost of his old diplomatic smile for Margolies. "That is, I'll report in while you and my father continue the debriefing."

Captain Greene nodded to the least injured of his crewmen, a short black man, who helped Steve and the rumbling Torkel untangle the comm set from Steve's belt.

"And while you're exercising your jaw, Dr. Fiske, I'll just see to your arm," Clodagh told the scientist. She crouched down in front of him and began untying the sling.

"Dama, I've waited this long," Fiske said with great dignity, resisting her ministrations. "I can certainly- Ouch! How did you do that?" He stared at his newly set arm and then at Clodagh, eyes wide with respect.

"It's a knack I've developed," she said. Then she dipped a length of bandage in a pot of her boneset potion and quickly and deftly wrapped the area about the break. By the time she had done that and rinsed her hands off, the bandage had hardened. "This will be more comfortable for you until you get back."

"But this hardened ... I don't believe this," Fiske said, tapping the shell experimentally.

Gently but firmly taking his arm again, she replaced it in the sling and tied it across his chest. Then she began to undo the blood-soaked bandage on his thigh.

"This wants stitching," she said, examining the gaping wound.

"It's been cleaned and dressed," Fiske said testily, inhaling quickly at the sight of his parted flesh.

"That was well done," Clodagh agreed, and let a handful of a moist salve slip onto the wound.

Fiske started to hiss and then stopped in surprise. "That didn't hurt."

"Medicine need not hurt, or taste bad, to be effective. Never did know who started that stupid old superstition," she said with all the scorn of an experienced practitioner. From another packet she took a needle already threaded and began to make neat sutures.

Despite an initial distaste, Fiske gradually became fascinated by her swift movements. "Where did you get your training?" he asked respectfully.

"Living on Petaybee teaches you many useful things," she said serenely, and tied off the last stitch. "Not perhaps what your medical folk might use, but it works. That's all we ask of any medicine, isn't it?" she added. "Anywhere else?"

He had a less serious laceration farther down the leg, and she put in two neat sutures to close that. Then she applied a wet aromatic compress to the swollen, bruised flesh of his ankle.

While Torkel and the crewman called for a copter and Clodagh fussed over Dr. Fiske, Yana helped Bunny warm up some of the provisions the rescue party had brought with them. By the time a rich meaty stew had been reconstituted with water and was simmering in a flight helmet stripped of its lining, Clodagh had finished administering to Whittaker Fiske. Yana offered the old man some of the stew, and he thanked her without a hint of his son's surliness.

Yana had tood for Clodagh, as well, and put it into the healer's hands with a firmness and a look in her eye that told Clodagh that she had better eat or else!

"Is it just that I am very hungry and tired of energy bars, or is this really as good as it tastes?" Whittaker Fiske asked amiably.

"Hunger is a good sauce," Clodagh said. "Here's a spot of seasoning that'll add an extra zap to it." From her capacious medicine bag, she took an herb bottle and sprinkled some powder into his bowl and hers, then offered it to Yana.

Settling down beside her, Yana grinned around her spoon. "Clodagh's far too modest, Dr. Fiske. Food generally tastes better on Petaybee because most of it's fresh! Even the frozen stuff."

"I thought the growing season was a little short for that," Whittaker Fiske said, chewing thoughtfully.

"Yes," Clodagh said. "But we get more daylight than usual during our growing season, so things get big fast. And the fishes and animals we eat grow all year round."

"And maybe you have a lot of access to hydroponic gardens on the space stations, Dr. Fiske," Yana said, "but to me anything that hasn't been freeze-dried and stored in a food locker for several ship-years tastes downright ambrosial."

They had just finished eating when Torkel and the crewman returned to the cavern, Torkel's step somewhat more confident than it had been.

"All right, everyone, gather what you want to take with you," he began.

"Not much of that," one of the crash survivors muttered.

"There's a jumbo copter on the way with medical staff," he continued, frowning as he tried to identify the wit. Then he saw that Yana was sitting next to his father. "Maddock, you're to consider yourself under arrest."

Yana looked up at him quizzically.

"Oh, come now, Torkel," his father said with some asperity. "Surely you can't hold any of these people, least of all Major Maddock, responsible for Petaybee's geological vagaries! I tell you quite frankly your allegations have no scientific foundation."

"Sir, you manage the planet and I'll manage the investigation. Maddock's turned against the company and is actively aiding the-"

"Who, you say, make their headquarters in Kilcoole?" Fiske asked in a mild tone, looking up at his son who towered over him. "The same town that organized this very efficient, if unorthodox"-and he smiled at Clodagh-"rescue party? I find that hard to believe."

Clodagh chuckled, and Torkel gave a deep, disgusted sigh and sank down beside his father.

"You wanted me to get to the bottom of the team disappearances . . . sir," Torkel said with exaggerated patience in a hoarse weary voice, "and the biological anomalies on this planet. You saw that big cat that came with these people, the one that's even now sunning itself on the ledge outside this cave? And keeping watch, I wouldn't doubt. That cat's one of those same anomalies. It's one of Shongili's little pets, and there'll be no mention of such a breed in your files. Major Yanaba Maddock's been thick with Shongili since shortly after she arrived here, and I believe she's fallen under his influence and become his accomplice. I don't have Shongili, but I do have Maddock, and with her in custody I'll get my hands on Shongili, too."

Fiske raised his hand to silence Torkel, but he looked directly into Yana's eyes.

"Are you guilty as charged, Yanaba Maddock?"

"Me, sir? No, sir," Yana replied with a wry smile. "Trouble is your son didn't like hearing what I had to report."

"Sir, this is neither the time nor the place to discuss the situation," Torkel continued in a low, strained tone, his eyes boring into Yana as if his stare could force her to silence. "It's not what it seems!"

"I'll go along with that," Yana said fervently.

"Sometimes when you create life, it does not fit the form you chose for it," Clodagh said with an enigmatic smile at Whittaker Fiske.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Dr. Fiske asked, frowning.

"You'll be given to understand that soon." She rose, putting an end to that subject. "Come, Yana, we must speak to Sinead. She, and perhaps Bunny, better drive those curly-coats back. They won't find much to eat around here now that volcano's finished."

"The volcano's finished erupting? How can you know that?" Fiske tried to get up, but he was stiff from sitting so long and couldn't stop her.

"She's bad as the rest of them, Dad," Torkel said, looking rather pleased that Clodagh had damned herself out of her own mouth.

"Bad?" Whittaker Fiske exclaimed. "Bad doesn't come into this, son! Margolies, a word with you!" He limped over to Steve, who, with Diego, was helping get some of the injured ready for transfer.

Yana remained near Clodagh. Captain Greene snagged Torkel to organize an orderly transfer of the survivors from their cave refuge to the nearest possible copter landing site, and that kept the captain occupied. There was a flurry of activity when the copters arrived, stretcher bearers whipping back and forth, people getting loaded. Yana noticed Clodagh in deep conversation with Sinead, Greene, and Bunny, but she thought nothing of it. She just made damned sure she stayed out of Torkel's way, a task made easier

when Greene strong-armed the exhausted man aboard the copter while insisting on giving him a preliminary report.

"I left my medicine bag in the cave," Clodagh said just as the last folk were waiting to load up.

"Sure thing," Yana said, turning back to the cavern entrance. But inside, she found Sinead, apparently gathering up the last of the debris. Sinead smiled at her, an odd sort of smile, and then Yana heard voices in the passageway.

"It is something that you must see right now, Dr. Fiske," Clodagh was saying as she entered the cavern, the scientist limping impatiently beside her, "to begin to understand what Petaybee is beneath the surface you folk gave it."

"Beneath the-what are you talking about, woman?" Fiske, anxious to return to SpaceBase, was getting grumpy. "Are we going to miss the copter?"

"It will wait," Clodagh said easily, and Yana realized that the big woman had come on a mission that had an urgent purpose extending beyond the initial search and rescue.

Chapter 17

Trailing behind Clodagh and Fiske, Yana heard the copter lift off. She paused, listening until the sound was barely audible, then turned back to follow Clodagh. As she started walking, she became aware that the atmosphere inside the cave had subtly altered and lightened: the whole cavern was flooding with a sense of release-the exhalation of the breath she had felt it holding since she had first arrived.

At the same time something splashed and she swiveled, but she could see nothing, and decided that the sound must have come from outside the cave. Backtracking, she peered out along the little stream that flowed into the cavern, through the low, dark opening. Something was rising from the stream out there. Sparkling droplets of water splashed around a long, silver-brown body energetically shaking itself dry as it rose from the water. Yana watched in fascination as the droplets flew, clearing a finely sculpted head with ears flat against the skull and bright eyes that seemed to search the entrance of the cave. Then the moisture was gone and the head seemed to, well, fluff out, she supposed, and the body lengthened into that of a man-a man who seemed to be wearing a fine silky pelt of hair. Or, perhaps, a gray wet suit. But as he walked closer to her, she saw with joyful surprise that the man was Scan, clad in nothing at all save volcanic ash, which he must have been trying to wash off in the spring before coming inside.

"You always travel that way?" she called out, not quite trusting what she thought she had seen and hoping that either he would explain sometime soon or she could somehow find a subtle way to ask.

He grinned down at her. "Not always, but it's very convenient if you know how." He looked down at himself. "Can get a little drafty once I'm out of my element, though."

The cave was littered with bits of uniform that had been discarded by survivors as not worth transporting. Scan rifled through them until he found a flight suit riddled with holes. He pulled it on, and it served as a social covering.

"Ashes as disguise and swimming as transport? Clever of you," she said, making a wild guess.

"More or less," he said, coming to stand very close to her and putting his hands on her shoulders.

She wasn't quite ready yet to be distracted by his touch, still bewildered and intrigued by the way he had appeared and by what she felt surely had to be her perfectly ridiculous perceptions of it. "You know - I was wondering about that raven that guided us here - I sort of had a sense of you then. You don't by any chance own a black wet suit and hang glider, do you?" she asked, lifting her brows in a query that practically demanded that he confide in her.

He remained amused and enigmatic. "And make myself small, as well? Gracious no, I couldn't do that. I don't go in for wings. I've a definite water affinity. But I do have friends in high places."

Yana decided to pursue that mystery later and concentrate on more urgent matters for the time being. She laid a hand on his arm and said, "Sean, I'd better brief you as to what's happening here. Torkel Fiske is ready to court-martial me for trying to defend

Petaybee and Clodagh's taken Torkel's father into the cavern-"

"I know, Yana, I know. And I'll explain as soon as there's time. Right now we'll do better to help Dr. Fiske and Clodagh."

His hand made a reassuring warm spot on the middle of her back as he guided her toward the passageway.

Yana became suddenly aware that the sound of the helicopter, which had grown faint by the time she had found Scan, was suddenly louder again. Instinctively she lengthened her stride. Sean heard it, too, and increased his pace to match hers until both were well within the passage.

The luminescence was brightening, and ahead of them she could hear Clodagh saying soothingly, ". . . someone who wants to meet you, Dr. Fiske."

The copter thud grew louder and louder, then suddenly began fading again, but from behind, Yana heard quick footsteps entering the cave.

"Come out with your hands up, Shongili, Maddock! I saw you rendezvous!" Torkel yelled. "And my father had better be unharmed or-"

"Are you with me?" Sean asked Yana quickly. She nodded, and they stood, one on either side of the passage, flush against the wall, while Torkel, forgetting all training in his agitation, barreled into their ambush. Yana disarmed him easily and caught him in a wristlock, while Sean, on the other side, did something that made Torkel sag against them. Other footsteps could be heard in the outer cave then, but Sean ignored them as he dragged Torkel onward. Yana stepped forward to help, and together they steered him through the passage and into the inner cave, where Clodagh, Bunny, Sinead, Nanook, and Dinah surrounded Dr. Fiske.

A warm mist was already rising from the rivulets running down the cavern walls and along the sides of the floor. It was scented with earth, ozone, plant life, both green and decaying, and the faintest hint of the perfume of exotic flowers. The mist trickled along the floor and twined up the knees of the people in the cavern, gently tugging them down.

The luminescence on the cavern walls danced with shadow play as if lit by firelight; the walls themselves seemed to pulse. The mist thickened and rolled up around them, veiling their faces: heavy, warm, scented mist; the distilled essence of the caves, the ground, the water, the air, moving in and out of their bodies with each breath they took.

Feet shuffled briefly behind Yana, and the disturbance in the air pressure told her that yet others had entered the room. They said nothing, and when she could bring herself to glance over her shoulder, she saw that the late arrivals were cloaked by the mist as well, their nostrils and mouths and lungs and hearts adding to the rhythm with which the cave pulsed.

Every sound was magnified, the trickle of the water rattling like rain on a roof or rustling leaves, a whispered accent to the measured throb in the cave.

Suddenly Torkel writhed in Yana's hands, and she felt him wake, heard his ragged breathing tear against the fabric of the thing that was happening here.

"No!" he cried. "No, stop! This is how they brainwash you. Dad, don't listen!"

Dr. Fiske's voice sounded muffled and distracted as he answered, " 'M fine. Don't be such a horse's ass."

And Clodagh murmured encouragingly, "You're both just fine, just fine."

From behind Yana, other hands joined hers on Torkel and other arms wrapped around him-in reassurance, not restraint.

"Don't fight, Captain," Diego's voice whispered. "Please don't fight. Listen. It doesn't mean to hurt you, it just wants you to listen."

"I'm here, Captain Fiske," Steve Margolies whispered in a less solicitous tone. "I'm a scientist, and so is your father. If this is all bull, we'll know. You're safe with us. Greene and the other pilot just joined us. You're safe."

"You're safe and well and here because Petaybee has much to tell the sons of those who first woke the planet to life," Clodagh said.

Torkel started to struggle again, and the whole cave suddenly vibrated with a thumping tremor that repeated over and over to the beat it had established from their breathing. The walls swirled with images, and Yana once more felt the jolt of contact running up her spine, exploding in her nervous system with blossoms of pure joy as she experienced a greater unity than she had ever known. A part of her heard Torkel gasp as he was infused with it, too, and then others became included. Contact was made with them now, each touching another; warm skin or warm cave, warm mist or warm breath, all were mingled in the heavy beat of the planet's great heart.

In the cold cave floor she felt the ice-and-rock shell that had once imprisoned that heart. Then a shock rocked through her, over and over again, the world's greatest orgasm, this world's great orgasm. She was so full of life and joy that her body could not contain it all and lovely things began growing from her skin, her hair, her eyes and mouth and ears and nose, her womb and anus and fingers and toes and hair, giving birth to thousands of new beauties every second, flowering things and furred things, winged things and hoofed things, soft dense creeping mosses and towering trees with undulating sweet-scented fronds. And through each thing, with no more than a whim of a try, she could speak and sing, act and dance, love and laugh and live. Even dying was a kind of life, and she felt that, too, with regret but no grief.

Lovely things sent shivers over her skin, caressed her surfaces, brought warm pleasure to her orifices, dove and swam through her blood, nourished her. And all was well and all was one and she was glad of life.

Then a little pain started-just a small one, near her heart. At first it only troubled her once in a while. It grew worse when some of the things that grew from her were removed, though she could bear even that at first. But it grew worse and worse as time passed and other, sharper, deeper pains shot through her, as if someone had suddenly plunged a knife into her. She seized up and screamed and tried to cry out through the things growing on her, and some heard and cried for her and some were scorched by the force of her cries. Panting, she waited for the pain to pass and it did, until the next time.

Then the first pain, the main pain, the central pain, a pain much like the start of the ecstatic release that had freed her from her ice and rock, intensified, deepened, drove through her until she could stand it no more. At last she lanced her own boil by applying more and more pressure, sending blood and the strength of her muscle and bone, igniting nerves until the area blew, and she lay bleeding, but relieved. The things that nourished her surface rushed over her and centered on the spot to console her, and she felt the consolation, the oneness, the comfort of releasing her pain through those who had first released her.

Gradually the images of a volcano erupting on her left breast dissolved into the image of the pain flowing through the pores of her skin and out. That image dissolved into one of herself accepting Petaybee's pain from within it and releasing it through herself, until she lay spent on the floor, Torkel Fiske sobbing on one side of her with Diego between them, Scan and Steve Margolies on the other side.

The mist had vanished now, and Dr. Fiske sat looking up at the luminous walls, tears coursing down his cheeks, his bad arm draped awkwardly across Clodagh's back and the other one around Bunny.

Slowly they rose and left the cavern. O'Shay and Greene, as last in, were first out to reboard the waiting helicopter. Yana hauled herself aboard and crowded in next to Giancarlo's stretcher, where Nanook lay stretched lengthwise next to the colonel, purring and doing the job usually reserved for his marmalade brethren. Then Sean squeezed in on her other side, and they made the journey in silence.

What was terraformed, Dr. Fiske, was a sentient entity which just happened to be a planet," Sean said when they were comfortably reassembled in Clodagh's house.

"Scientifically, I find that very hard to believe," Dr. Fiske said, sitting as erect as possible on Clodagh's bed.

Clodagh, meanwhile, was stirring up another batch of medicine for the abrasions and burns suffered by Torkel and Yana. Giancarlo had been delivered to the hospital at SpaceBase. O'Shay had taken off again, neglecting to mention to the receiving officer that he had several other passengers, passengers who were attempting to digest a great quantity of new information. He landed the copter at Kilcoole, and those who had been present for Petaybee's revelations disembarked.

Torkel was slowest to revive from the experience, remaining extremely quiet and contemplative when he did. But he also quietly and contemplatively used Steve Margolies's comm unit to order from the contingent of soldiers stationed in Kilcoole an armed guard around Clodagh's house.

He was confused, Yana thought, and she didn't much blame him. She was a little confused herself, and at the same time much more enlightened as to the nature of the bond between this planet and its people. She had, after all, directly experienced in microcosm everything the planet had experienced.

"Scientifically, there probably is no explanation," Sean said, calmly agreeing with Whittaker Fiske. "And I've spent most of my boyhood and all my adult years examining the pertinent sciences with little success and no ... scientifically acceptable . . . answers. I just know that Petaybee works for us, and for itself, in a unique symbiosis."

"Yes, it could be a form of symbiosis, at that," Whittaker Fiske said, nodding as he absently stroked a marmalade cat. "A most remarkable one. Definitely unique. However, I would still very much like to have more details: Was your grandfather aware of the planet's sentience and reactions? Did he establish whether or not its sentience occurred during, or after the terraforming process? How did you become aware of its sentience, and most of all, what protocol is now involved? I don't believe that Intergal has ever encountered such a phenomenon in any system it has explored to date. I do, at least I think I do, understand now why our totally unprepared and scientifically oriented teams could not psychologically cope with their-shall I call it ... psychic initiation to Petaybee's sentience? Poor Francisco Metaxos is a good scientist, but he has always been extremely didactic."

"He's better, by the way, Whit," Clodagh told the man. "Better all the time and now, I think, he's more accepting."

A curious, affectionate sympathy had grown up between Clodagh and Whittaker since the event in the cave. Dr. Fiske had held Clodagh's hand all the way back to the copter. The pair had sat together, staring out the copter window, now and then exchanging long searching looks. Yana would have liked to exchange similar searching looks with Scan-but not with a crowd of people around.

"Aisling will bring Frank over," Clodagh went on, "soon's they've finished feeding and grooming the curly-coats. Any chance of bringing Colonel Giancarlo to Kilcoole, too, when he's stable? Being contrary the way he is, he'd never have survived the cave in his weak condition, but strengthen him up a bit and introduce him to Petaybee gradual like, he might even come to understand a bit."

Whittaker nodded, though Yana thought Clodagh was being uncharacteristically and unrealistically charitable toward Giancarlo and far too hopeful about his adaptability. The man was as rigid as the company rulebook.

"I'll tell you what I can, Dr. Fiske," Scan said, leaning forward to plant his elbows on his knees. "And what I've learned about Petaybee. First, we've never tried to keep anyone deliberately in the dark about this, but as you can imagine, it's a little hard to explain and make anyone believe us. All we know is this: when your great-grandfather's terraforming process had been completed and the planet ready for occupation, a proper ecological mix was determined by the Intergal specialists."

Sean had washed off the last of the ash and was wearing pants and a gray cable-knit sweater borrowed from Sinead. With his silver eyes and silvery hair, he reminded Yana of the way she had seen him on the shores of the little stream when she had mistaken him for a seal. She ran her hand softly down his arm from elbow to wrist, and he captured the hand in his own and squeezed, as he continued speaking. "My grandfather, as the Intergal biogeneticist, was asked to make what biological changes were necessary to adapt animals who could function in this planet's harsh climate and be useful to inhabitants where machinery and technology would prove inadequate. He did so, supplying us with an ecological chain that includes plants, trees, grain, food beasts, and those that could be used in a variety of tasks, such as the sled dogs, curly-coats, moose, deer, the other small food and fur animals, birds, insects: all viable on this cold, snowbound planet. All of us here, the vegetation and we more movable creatures, were influenced by his work."

"But he went much further than he should have," Torkel said, less belligerently; more in dismay.

"Not deliberately. He was, like yourselves, a scientist, and he didn't reckon on the planet being a part of his equation. Once awakened, it had its own agenda and entered into the spirit of the changes-taking the ones Grandda made and improving on them now and then, when it felt these alterations were necessary. Those of us who have lived out our lives on Petaybee, like Lavelle, are more affected by those changes than the young people who volunteer for service off-planet. I have never left Petaybee. I know I never can." He smiled with great charm. "I don't wish to leave Petaybee. It has made me part of it, the way it is part of me."

Torkel shook his head, half denying, half agreeing. "That's not enough for me, Shongili. What happened to us in there? It wasn't brainwashing-not as I know it," he added, puzzled.

"The planet was telling you how it felt about what you've been doing to it," Scan said.

Torkel twitched, grimacing, seemingly unable yet to accept that explanation. "Well, I still don't understand how you got the planet to do what it's been doing over the past few days. Starting volcanoes, earthquakes, breaking up the rivers six weeks too soon ..."

Scan shrugged. "I didn't get it to do anything, Fiske. It planned its own defense. I've done nothing but see that its messages are delivered."

"Which only you can interpret?"

Scan shook his head. "You and I had the same experience there in the cavern, Fiske. You can interpret it as well as I can, if you just stop trying to deny what you felt. You can't deny what you personally experienced, can you? If you had rejected it as completely as you're trying to, you'd be in the same shape as Frank Metaxos. All I did-all any of us did-was to try to protect you from your own stubborn idiocy and put the right people in the right place at the right time for Petaybee to deliver its own message. It did that in the cave."

"And what, exactly, was the message that we both received, as you understand it?" Whittaker Fiske asked, his face full of lively curiosity rather than challenge.

"The message is that Petaybee is a living and sentient entity, Dr. Fiske," Scan answered imperturbably. "It does not wish to have its skin blown open, its flesh dug and taken away, its substance reduced, its children hunted, harried, or removed against their will. It is pleased to have been awakened, and it is more than willing to share itself: including, I might add, some valuable processes, which can benefit you and your superiors, that you're not even aware exist on this planet."

"Like Clodagh's medicines," Yana chimed in. "I'd think the company would have a lot of use for a cough medicine that can actually heal lungs as badly damaged as mine were."

Torkel regarded her with surprise, then turned thoughtful while his father nodded sagely.

"Not to mention that boneset stuff," Dr. Fiske added, running his fingers across the hardened cast. "Simple things that have multiple applications and no side effects. Go on, Shongili."

"Petaybee has been particularly distressed," Sean said, "by the increase of traffic at the SpaceBase. The planet was able to buffer the area under SpaceBase to allow a certain amount of necessary comings and goings, but that amount has now exceeded the safety margin and must cease. Petaybee does not wish to have to feed and supply the numbers now massing in the SpaceBase, as these numbers would be a burden on its resources, especially this time of year, before the growing season."

"It was glad to see that some of us who left here as kids have come home, at least to visit, though," John Greene said. He and O'Shay had been wolfing down a casserole Aisling brought over earlier. "I was given a real welcome in the cave. Didn't know it remembered me."

"You and O'Shay have a lot to answer for, Captain," Torkel said. "Like why you didn't place everyone under arrest when you saw that we were being detained in the cavern."

O'Shay shrugged. "Like the man says, Cap'n, we're native-born. We got more sense than to interfere when a latchkay's starting."

"You're natives?" Torkel stared at them. "No wonder I didn't get the support I required." He rounded on Sean then with a resurgence of his old belligerence. "Did you arrange that, too, Shongili?"

Sean shrugged. "You give me more credit than I deserve. The presence of Captains Greene and O'Shay is pure serendipity, Fiske. No harm's come to you, so I don't see that the personnel involved matters."

"I don't put anything past you, Shongili," Torkel said, and striding to the door, he opened it and beckoned a guard inside. "I want one of those portable comm links from headquarters. Bring it here on the double. We'll just check out a thing or two about the disposition of Petaybeans on this project."

The guard snapped a salute, and Yana thought she saw a little smile playing at the edges of his mouth. Yana wondered about that, and began to suspect what Torkel would find about the disposition and composition of Intergal troops currently on duty in Petaybee. She noticed that Steve Margolies was looking exceedingly thoughtful: he kept glancing from Torkel to Sean to Dr. Fiske, but whatever was worrying him he kept to himself.

"You keep speaking of these adaptations, son," Dr. Fiske said to Sean, with an air of getting back to important matters. "Just what do they consist of?"

"The most important," Sean said, his voice filled with the sort of excitement that the other two scientists, more than anyone else in the room, were best equipped to understand and share, "is how Petaybee-not I or my grandfather-improved, beyond their previous capabilities, the perceptions of some of the more intelligent species."

"Like the pussycats here with Frank?" Steve Margolies asked.

"Yes, and like this," Scan said, and lifted his hand and closed his eyes. In a moment there was a scratching at the window and a whining at the door. One of the guards opened the door to admit Dinah, who was leading a weakly smiling Francisco Metaxos, followed by Aisling. Clodagh opened the window to admit Nanook, who jumped down across the sill in one fluid motion, walked calmly over to Whittaker Fiske, put one saucer-sized paw on the man's uninjured arm, and said "Meh," quite clearly.

"My word!" Dr. Fiske leaned away, staring at the cat. "You asked it to come and do this?"

Scan nodded while Nanook gave a burst of purr, marched to Torkel, and repeated the performance.

Torkel started to shove Nanook away but stopped, giving Sean a puzzled look. "It's telling me that Giancarlo is resting well, thanks to it."

"Him," Sean said. "Nanook is male. And he likes his ears scratched. Most of the felines here have the ability to soothe troubled, or sick, minds. They'll carry messages, lead people across dangerous terrain, and hunt when that's necessary."

Dinah, tongue lolling from her open mouth, waited until Metaxos was safely deposited in a chair between Diego and Steve, then pranced up to Fiske. She gave a bit of a whine before she pushed her nose at his arm and held it there a moment.

"Talking cats and dogs?" Dr. Fiske asked, eyes round with amazement.

"Telepathic, actually," Sean said. "When they choose to be. Dinah, as a lead dog, had no trouble communicating about trail conditions and finding her way across frozen wastes. She had bonded most effectively with Lavelle, the woman who died when

Captain Fiske and Colonel Giancarlo had her removed from Petaybee. Nanook has a close bond with me, but is actually a pretty |j| social creature."

"And Clodagh's cats-" Yana began, but Clodagh shot her a look and she subsided. No need to tell the offworlders everything. Not more than they needed to convince them. Not just yet. So Yana made no mention about unicorned curly stallions, intelligent seals, and trained ravens. Scan's hand dropped to the back of her neck and kneaded it gently as he watched the reaction of the Fiskes and Margolies.

"Telepathic sled dogs and felines .. ." Dr. Fiske said, shaking his head.

'Tour granddad was one busy guy." Torkel snorted. Nanook dug his claws into Torkel's leg, ever so slightly. "Ouch!"

"Grandfather developed several types of large felines and canines suitable to this icy climate, but, as I said, Petaybee improved on his work many times over the years. Give Petaybee a chance, and it will improve on anything you ask it to. Isn't that much better than blasting the planet apart for mere minerals and ores which the company can surely find on lifeless asteroids and planets?"

Dr. Fiske sighed. "Ah, now I suppose we come to the crux of all this. If I understood it correctly, Petaybee is extremely grateful for its life, but not grateful enough to endure our resource development plans? That's why the teams have disappeared or been killed?"

Frank Metaxos cleared his throat and said in a rusty voice, "It wasn't intentional, Whit. I-freaked out, as Diego would say, what with the blizzard followed by that intense psychical input. I understand now that what I sensed in the cave was only this same explanation. And-incredible as it seems-something of an apology. Perhaps Petaybee could adjust its climate a bit for those of us who aren't used to such extreme conditions."

"Actually, Petaybee's extremely hospitable, if you're willing to take the hospitality on its own terms," Clodagh told him. To Dr. Fiske she added, "Petaybee offers you more than you could ever take from it by force. This doesn't have to be a fight."

"That's right," Yana said, leaning forward and talking with all the persuasion at her command. "The company's just been trying to develop the wrong things so far. This planet offers absolutely unique opportunities to study its inner life-providing you can find some extremely dedicated people able for the challenge. And that's the resource the company most needs to develop-the people."

"I suppose we could send scientists down to instruct them in the proper procedure," Dr. Fiske said slowly.

"You send them," Clodagh said, nodding. "We'll teach proper procedure. But you'll see, it will work."

"We'll send equipment-comm units, computer linkups."

"Some maybe," Clodagh said. "But not too many. Too noisy. Petaybee wouldn't like it. Just send a couple of teachers who don't mind the cold and can teach us reading and writing. That's quieter."

Just then the guard returned with the comm link Torkel had sent for. Torkel accepted the equipment and set it on his knees.

"Now then, we'll see what's going on here," he said. "Computer, I want files on O'Shay . . ."

"Richard Arnaluk, sir," O'Shay helpfully provided.

"And Greene . . ."

"John Kevin Intiak Greene the Third, sir," Greene told him. "My crew members were Corporal Winona Sorenson, deceased, Specialist Fourth Class Ingunuk J. Keelaghan, deceased, Lieutenant Michael Huyukchuk, wounded in action-"

"Wait a minute," Torkel said. "These names sound Petay-bean."

O'Shay shrugged. "They are-native-born or Petaybean stock. Same's true, I think, for most of the replacement troops shipped down with me. And the survivors we picked up near the volcano."

"Computer, access personnel list for troops transferred to planet Petaybee, code name Operation Mop-Up. Cross-reference by planet of origin or descent and provide statistical data of composition of total numbers."

After a moment of frantically scanning the screen, Torkel looked up suspiciously at Scan. "This can't be right. Unless your planet can manipulate troop movements by remote control." "Why? What does it say?"

"Eighty-eight percent of the troops deployed here for Mop-Up are of Petaybean origin."

Scan gave a low whistle. "Imagine that. I didn't know we'd sent so many people away. Did you, Clodagh?" "I sure didn't."

"Computer, audio, please. Explain how such a large percentage of personnel assigned to Operation Mop-Up are of local origin."

"This system cross-indexed physical and psychological requirements necessary for ground duty on an arctic-type planet. The personnel selected were the best qualified to function at appropriate levels on such a planet."

"Torkel," Yana said, leaning forward and slightly to the side to watch the screen. "While we're on the subject of the quantity of Petaybean troops involved, why don't you check statistical data concerning the service records of those with Petaybee as planet of origin as compared to those of the corps as a whole?"

"Computer?" Torkel asked, and gave it the data request.

"Petaybean personnel on the average receive seventy-five percent more commendations, sixty percent more bonuses, and eighty-nine percent more decorations than troops of other places of origin. However, they are promoted through the ranks ten point five times slower than other personnel, and only twenty-one point eight-nine-five percent of Petaybeans become senior officers.

Yana lifted her eyebrows at Torkel and permitted herself a small, smug smile. "See? These people are definitely worthwhile to the company, and definitely worth developing."

Torkel raised an eyebrow back at her. "As long as they're never removed from the planet to do what they're worth developing for?"

Sean broke in. "Many of our people are perfectly happy to serve the company and see the universe. You just have to recruit them early."

"And I think if the company worked with Petaybeans on the research, compensatory devices could be used to offset the incompatibility between Petaybean adaptive characteristics and space travel," Yana said. "That is what I was trying to tell you before."

Torkel shut down the comm link with a snap, and Sean grinned broadly.

"It's okay, son," Dr. Fiske told Torkel.

But Torkel shook his head uneasily. "It's not okay, Dad. We're in an intolerable situation, disadvantaged. There're not only more of them, they're the company's best troops but, being here, their loyalty is compromised. We're at their mercy."

"Fortunately for you, Captain," Clodagh said, handing him a cup of hot drink and a hunk of bread, "we're extremely merciful around here. Sprinkle a little of this on your bread. You'll see how tasty it is." She passed over an herb jar and, unusually compliant, Torkel shook it over his bread.

Dr. Fiske smiled at his son as one of the marmalade cats jumped into Torkel's lap and began purring. For a moment, Torkel stiffened, wavering briefly between rejection and acceptance. He took a sip of the drink and a bite of the bread. After several more sips and bites, he gave a deep resigned sigh and finally relaxed, leaning back in his chair, the cat firmly in charge.

"Look here," O'Shay began tentatively, appealing to Clodagh, "if there're that many Petaybeans come home to roost, d'you think we could have a latchkay to celebrate?"

"The very thing," Aisling agreed happily.

"Now that," Scan said, "is one of the best ideas I've heard in days. It would undoubtedly settle a lot of qualms and answer some of the questions you haven't thought of yet, Dr. Fiske, Steve."

"Well," Yana said, rising, "since confusion has died down to mere chaos, I'd really appreciate a decent bath and change of clothes." She looked askance at the riddled remainder of her shirt.

"I'm not exactly as clean as I'd like to be either," Scan said. Also rising, he took Yana by the arm and began leading her to the door. Then he stopped. "You wouldn't mind dismissing that guard now, would you, Captain Fiske?"

"I will," said Whittaker Fiske, rising and doing exactly that.

Yana could not believe the relief that washed over her as she and Sean stepped out into the fresh air. The whilom guard had dispersed like snowmelt on a hot day. She inhaled, half expecting the previous days' exertions to result in a paroxysm of coughing.

"You won't have that trouble ever again," Sean said as he guided her toward the path to the hot springs.

"Wait, I'll need clothes," she said, half towing him in the direction of her house.

"There's always something left about at the springs," he said, and pulled her back to his side, grinning with a boyishness that surprised her.

Laughing, she let herself be held. "Is it wrong of me to want to wash some of Petaybee off?" She asked, buoyant with relief and with his presence.

"You can never wash Petaybee off completely, Yanaba Mad-dock. Not now! You're stuck with us, love." And then he threw back his head and gave an odd call.

Two curly-coats broke out of a nearby copse and trotted up to them.

"Local transport," Scan said. When the curlies stopped beside them, he lifted Yana to the back of one before he vaulted astride the other.

"You just called and they came?" Yana asked, bubbling with laughter, as she laced her fingers tightly into the mane. She knew little about riding, but she felt no fear.

"Sure thing," Scan said, grinning like a fool. "Let's go!"

To her surprise and delight, Yana found the curly-coat's rocking gait to be extremely comfortable, its fur soft on bare skin. She tried not to see how fast the terrain sped by as they went hell-for-leather down the forest track to the hot springs.

They reached their destination in moments, sliding off the mounts, who then wandered away as amiably as they had come. Sean was discarding his clothing and stood before her, sleek, faintly silvery-tan, waiting for her to shuck off the tatters she wore. Then she held out her arms toward him.

Smiling with luminosity to his silver eyes that made her breathless, he enfolded her in his arms, pressing her head into his chest so that she could hear the beating of his heart.

"You've heard what Petaybee had to say. Now hear what I have to say to you, Yanaba Maddock." He tipped her head back to look at him. "You are courage, you are beauty, you are honor, you are strong and kind. You are also loved. By more than I." He bent to kiss first one eye and then the other, then her forehead. "Petaybee healed you because it had need of you. I have my own need of you, and of the child you carry for both of us." He touched her breast then, gently but as if in benediction.

"Child?" She tried to struggle free, appalled and aching with hurt and disappointment. If he wanted a mother for his children, he would have to find someone else and she couldn't bear that thought. "Sean, I'm past all that. It may have escaped your notice, but a person doesn't become a senior company officer until middle age. My body is just not-"

"Well, love, as long as we're talking about what bodies are and are not, I think you should be aware of a thing or two about mine. So much has happened, I didn't want to spring it on you all at once, but back in the cavern, when we were all joined with Petaybee, I knew . . ."

"Knew what? Sean? Scan!"

But he dove into the water, and as it sluiced over his skin, instead of the gray-brown ashy color subsiding, it deepened, blurring his skin so that she felt she was looking at him through mist. Sean rolled himself into a ball, dove under the water, and when he surfaced again, his silver-brown hair covered not just his scalp but his face-and his form had changed!

Before she could say anything, the seal who was Sean climbed back out, playfully flipped her with the water on his sleek hide, and unfolded once more into her lover.

She took one involuntary step backward, then stepped toward him. "What-exactly-happened there?"

"My grandfather did, as Torkel suggested, go a little far. Actually, a lot far. There are some special notes in his personal diaries, which I have hidden in a safe place. He was fascinated by old Native American and Celtic tales of men who could change their shapes to protect themselves and suit their environment-of course, these were magical tales, but he always maintained they were just an extreme form of adaptation. Of course, he wasn't supposed to experiment on people at all-he didn't realize at the time that the planet was already producing substantial adaptive alterations in us-but he did do a bit of manipulation on himself that has carried down in my chromosomes, so that I, at least, adapt-er, quite a lot more drastically-than others on the planet. I 'adapt' or actually, in most ways, transform, at times into the marine animal most suited for this climate. I'm what they call in the old Celtic folklore a selkie; a man on land, a seal in the sea, or in my case, in the water."

"And your sister?" Yana asked. "Does she transform, too? I wondered why she bit my head off when I mentioned seal hunting."

He shook his head. "Not that I know of, and I think she would have told me. She's the only one who's actually seen me change, except for you, though Clodagh knows. As you saw, the seal shape can be very useful when it's necessary to navigate the underground riverine network." He gave her a half-uncertain, half-rakish smile. "Clodagh and Sinead even seem to feel it makes me one of the more versatile individuals on the planet. But the woman whose opinion on the subject matters the most to me is you and-I wasn't sure how you'd feel about it, which is why I hesitated to make love to you the first time we came here, although I wanted to very badly. I meant to tell you all of this before we made love after the latchkay but ..."

She laid her hand on his cheek, and he caught it and held it as if she were throwing him a lifeline. He took another deep, ragged breath. Obviously confiding this secret to her scared him as none of the dangers they had braved together had done.

"I-hope-that after what you've seen, you can see that it's this dual nature of mine that gives me my particular special bond with Petaybee. And that because of it, when we were all joined with the planet, I sensed that within our common union there was an extra person present, the child you carry. Our child."

"But I can't have a child," she said, still trying to absorb his astonishing revelation. A little dizzy with all the changes taking place, she leaned against his water-slick body, her cheek damp against his shoulder. "I can't."

"You can and are having our child," Sean said in such a fiercely tender voice that she melted against him. "Petaybee healed that part of you, too, because our children will be even closer to it than most. The planet wants your children-and mine." He turned her in his arms, and again she saw the anxiety-no, fear- cloud his silver eyes. "Or do you not want mine?"

Yana gulped. "I think . . ." she began unsteadily; then she cleared her throat so what she could manage to say was audible. "I think that first 1 need a bath. After that, anything you want, I want, too!"

"Then you don't mind?"

"Being pregnant? No, I thought I'd never get the chance."

Relief mingled with the anxiety in his face now. "Then you do want the baby? You don't mind that I sometimes . . . change into a seal?"

She searched his face, so strong and full of integrity, intelligence, and humor. She thought of their lovemaking and his strength and kindness through everything they had endured together. She shook her head slowly, rather amazed to find that in the face of all of that-in the face of her love-she had damn few fears, and even fewer doubts. She put her arms on his shoulders, looked into his face with a quizzical little smile, and gave a small shrug of nonchalance.

"A seal? A man? Whatever," she said. "Nobody's perfect."

THE END

ABOUT THE COLLABORATION

The inspiration for the arctic background of Powers That Be came several years ago when Hugo and Nebula award-winning bestselling author Anne McCaffrey visited Fairbanks, Alaska, at that time the home of (future) Nebula-winner Elizabeth Ann Scarborough. When the two weren't working on a writers-in-the-school project for the Fairbanks Arts Association, Scarborough saw to it that McCaffrey tasted the adventures Fairbanks in the winter had to offer: a dogsled ride, the northern lights, a movie about dogsled racing, and (thanks to her friend Hilda's hospitality) moose spaghetti.

In the beginning of 1992, McCaffrey invited Scarborough to Ireland to conduct some folk music research. Inevitably, the two writers talked about writing, and folk music and the Irish, and the idea for Powers Thai Be "just growed" despite McCaffrey's busy schedule and Scarborough's exploration of Irish music. The manuscript bounced back and forth down the hall at McCaffrey's new home in County Wicklow, with story conferences occurring over the breakfast table before the milkman arrived. The two took turns writing and rewriting the manuscript to make the transitions smooth, each section being written in turn by whoever was most excited about that particular passage. The book was completed before the end of Scarborough's '92 visit, and McCaffrey's editor, Shelly Shapiro, who was visiting at the time, promptly put dibs on the joint project for Del Rey. The story will continue in two more volumes, which are to be written in the next two years on subsequent visits.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Anne McCaffrey shuttles between her home in Ireland and the United States, where she picks up awards and honors and greets her myriad fans. She is one of the field's most popular authors.

Elizabeth Ann Scarborough is the 1989 winner of the Nebula Award for her novel The Healer's War. She has also written twelve (and a half) other novels. Scarborough, whose other great passion is folk music, lives in a log cabin in the Puget Sound area of Washington State with her three cats.