Power Play - Anne McCaffrey [41]
“That, too, although with them carrying stuff, they aren’t likely to have free hands to pull the lasers on us.”
“Come on, Diego. If we stand here arguing about it, we’re goners for sure.”
“They’re too close!” he said. He saw them clearly now, the white-suited figures carrying two women—Yana and Marmie! One of the figures, a tall man, wore the helmet but no white suit. Diego was pretty sure he hadn’t been with them earlier.
“Let’s go,” Bunny said, and pushed him out the door. They were halfway down the corridor when a cloud of sweet-smelling pink gas overtook them.
Yana awoke coughing so hard she thought for a moment her life of the last few months had been a dream and she was still in the infirmary following the Bremport massacre. She had a sickly-sweet taste in her mouth and a constriction about her chest, which, she found when she stopped coughing, was caused by another body lying across her. She reached out and her hand was full of face—smooth, unlined face and a tangle of hair.
A chorus of coughing, not as violent as her own, erupted all around her, and then Bunny’s voice grumbled in a sleepy-headed childish tone, “Ouch, your finger’s in my eye.”
Bunny wriggled away, provoking an “ouch” in turn from someone else. “Sorry, Diego,” she said. “It’s a little crowded in here.”
“Yana . . .” Marmion’s voice was faintly slurred, and she, too, began coughing, but daintily. “Was that party of Ples’s much better than I thought it was?”
“I don’t think so, unless she uses pink perfumed gas on her guests afterward,” Yana said, coughing again.
“Merde alors! Is that what it was? Where are we?”
“I don’t know.” Cough. “It’s dark.”
Then suddenly it wasn’t, and a chirpy voice said, “Oh, good, our guests are awake. Tell me, none of you have any food allergies, do you? Anyone a vegetarian?”
Yana blinked fast and focused on the small port where a pert face dimpled in at them. Yana had seen hundreds of faces like that pushing everything from shampoo to specific spacecraft for flights to anywhere you cared to mention.
“What’s it to ya?” Bunny asked, surprisingly pugnacious on such short notice.
“Now, honey, that’s no way to be. Just because you have to be our guests for a while doesn’t mean the experience has to be unpleasant. Sorry to crowd you all in like that, but we thought you’d feel reassured to find each other nearby when you woke up. I’m afraid the boys were a little careless how you landed. So, let’s try again, shall we? Any food allergies?”
The tangle on the floor sorted themselves out. “I demand to know where we are and why we’ve been detained in this fashion,” Marmion said.
“I’ll be glad to explain, but really, the crew is going to be cross if they don’t get their dinners on time, so could you please answer my question first?” the person at the port said with a trace of irritation.
“I would dislike causing your crew any inconvenience,” Yana said in a trenchant tone. “None of us is a vegetarian but I—” She paused for a coughing fit. “—am sensitive to any sort of gas!”
“Fine, good. Wonderful. Back in a jiff,” the person said, and left.
“Marmion,” Yana said sotto voce, and when she had Marmion’s attention in the dimly lit room, she gestured to where she had hidden her alarm. It was gone now; she’d have been surprised if it had still been there; that would have been a gross oversight on their captors’ part.
Marmion gave the most imperceptible of nods and a sly smile. So, Yana thought, both of them had had a chance to send signals. Help ought to be on its way. Wherever they were.
“Macci’s not here,” Marmion said suddenly. “What have they done with him, do you suppose? There’s just us four.”
“Oh!”
Then Pert-face, as good as her word, was back. When she opened the hatch, she had two armed guards with her and the three of them stayed outside the room. The guards wore orange coveralls with no identifying patches. Pert-face wore a bodytight in green, with an aqua tunic of what appeared to be crocheted lace. Her hair was light brown,