Power Play - Anne McCaffrey [102]
Bunny grinned. It had all been so obvious, but the idea was so new to her she hadn’t considered the really salient factors.
“Furthermore, it will be my pleasure to present you with a suitable study unit and all the hard-copy books you wish. Among my inheritances are the contents of several libraries. And when you’re ready to go off-planet, you can be the pilot student for the Petaybean Offworld Civilian Scholarship program.”
“I didn’t know there was one!”
“That’s because I just decided to sponsor it.”
Bunny reached across the table and gave her a hug. “You’re aces, Marmie!”
“Likewise. Tell me, you haven’t seen Namid, have you?”
“Nope. Nor Diego. But I came straight here after I got dressed.”
“Then I think I’ll get dressed as well and we’ll go find them, shall we?”
If Dinah O’Neill, aka the fearsome Captain Onidi Louchard, had known what was in store for her, she would have fought her incarceration with every one of the many combat skills she had learned since she’d been a defenseless preteen. She did hear Megenda mumbling incoherencies as she was propelled down the ladder. She did notice the odd indirect lighting, but she blithely ventured farther into the cavern, toward the warmth she felt on her face. She thought that at least this prison was comfortably warmer than the cabin she’d just left.
That was when she noticed that the holo transponder was missing. Not that she had to worry about the Petaybeans inadvertently turning it on. But Namid would know what it was. She ought to have checked, and she berated herself for such an oversight. Captain Louchard, she grinned to herself, would have plenty to say about that when next she assumed that mantle.
She and the two crewmen, Dott and Framer, came across Megenda then, all curled up in a fetal position on the floor of the cave, just where it opened up into a fair-sized chamber—a chamber that was oddly beautiful in its pastel shades and mottled walls. The beauty was of a strange, disorienting nature, however: the mottles rippled and the shades altered in an unnerving fashion. Walls were supposed to be stationary, and their coloration was generally stable, too.
“What’s the matter with him, Dinah?” Dott asked, planting a toe on Megenda and trying to turn him onto his back so the first mate’s face would be visible. He was a rather unimaginative sort, good for routine or monotonous duties, strong and unquestioning, happy to be given orders he could follow, which he followed to the letter. “Thought you said he was just cold.”
“I don’t like the look of him,” Framer said, taking a step back from Megenda’s rigid body as if afraid of contagion.
“He’s warm enough now,” Dott said, grabbing one of Megenda’s hands and trying to pull it away from his face.
“Hey, how can you have fog in a cave?” Framer asked, and pointed to the mist beginning to rise from the floor.
“These caves are supposed to be special places,” Dinah said as evenly as she could, but the rising vapor carried an aroma to it that was unlike anything she had ever encountered. Her skin began to crawl under the warm parka she’d been given. “I’d like to know what’s going on here,” she said, turning around on her heel, addressing whatever was generating all these unusual effects. She could have sworn that there’d been no mist, no odor, and no vacillating wall colors and designs when she’d first reached the cave floor. She looked behind her and saw that the mist was closing in, obscuring her view of the walls.
“Going on here?” The phrase was interrogatory, not rhetorical, and the voice that said the words was not an echo of hers.
“Dinah?” The unimaginative Dott’s voice quavered. “How do we get out of here?”
“No way out of here.”
“Keee-rist, who’s talking?” Framer looked wildly around him. “Who’s talking?”
Dinah wanted to reassure him that it was the Petaybeans perpetrating some sort of a hoax to frighten them, but she absolutely knew, though she didn’t know how, that the voice was nothing caused by any human phenomena. It penetrated her body through to the marrow of her bones.
“Listen,