Power Play - Anne McCaffrey [47]
“You do my heart good, Una. You consider Kilcoole civilized?”
“Comparatively speaking,” she said with a slight grin, gratified that she had eased the haunted look on Sean’s face. She had come to admire him very much in the short time she’d been working with him, helping him with impossible burdens—not the least of which was this continuous influx of unnecessary people, especially the commercial types who seemed so eager to raid whatever wealth this planet held. “We were told that the SpaceBase had been destroyed so we would have to be landed at a distance from the nearest community . . .”
“Only the exact distance wasn’t specified.”
“That’s it. Had I known what I know now . . .”
“Tell me, Una, exactly what were you told and by whom?”
She paused, organizing her thoughts: Sean had discovered that organization was her strong suit.
“Well, first there was the bulletin about Petaybee being a sentient planet. So I tagged the word on my terminal for any further information, knowing, you see, that some of my family had been sent here. Petaybee”—she gave him a little smile—“was suddenly much in the bulletins, and then the advertisement appeared, offering safe and quick transport facilities to the surface of the planet.”
“Just like that?”
“Well, about three weeks after the first mention of Petaybee. I had enough frequent-flyer hours to my credit to get to the Intergal Station easily enough. And the cost of getting to Petaybee’s surface was not all that much, considering. In fact, rather cheap.”
“Cheap enough to attract passengers, huh?”
“I suppose so.”
“Go on.”
“When I got to the Intergal Station, the transit desk told me to book in at the Mallside hostelry, where all Petaybean passengers had to register. When I checked in, I had to deposit the fare and then I was given a departure time.”
“Just like that?”
“Yes.”
“By whom?”
“The clerk at Mallside. Oh, I got a stamped passage chit, or believe you me, I wouldn’t have handed over most of the last credits I had to my name.”
“You wouldn’t happen to remember the number of the account to which you credited the fare?”
“I do. BM-20-2334-57.” She repeated it so that Sean could jot it down. “The next morning I was given a time to assemble in the hotel lobby. I must say I was a little surprised at the . . . diversity of my fellow passengers. And relieved to find that there were other folks trying to find their Petaybean relatives.”
“What did your courier look like?”
“There wasn’t one. When I arrived . . . a little ahead of time, I admit, because I was so eager to be on time. Some small link transports don’t wait so it’s wiser to be on time,” she told Sean in her earnest manner. He nodded and she continued. “There was a printed notice that we were to proceed to the departure gate. Anyone not on time would forfeit their fare.” She paused. “The only thing that reassured me was that the transport was so obviously new—one of the other passengers said it was even state-of-the-art.”
“Would you have forfeited your fare if it had been a ramshackle vehicle?” Sean asked.
She gave a little laugh. “No, I’d sold up to get here. But to the business at hand, Sean, it’s Simon Furey who might stand watch for you at SpaceBase. He’s the one who noticed how new the transport was.”
“Where’s he right now?”
“We can ask Wild Star. She’s teaching in the latchkay shed.”
Wild Star was certain that her husband Simon would be quite willing to help Sean out. Simon seconded that when they found him. In the first place, he’d love to get his hands on the guy who had dumped them down in the middle of nowhere. If it hadn’t been for ’Cita, they could have frozen to death their first night on the planet. In the second place, he had two badly blistered hands from chopping wood, which was the chore he’d been assigned in Kilcoole.
“I don’t mind doing my share, like,” he said, displaying the bloody signs of his industry, “but I’d rather a chance to toughen up more gradually, like. Ya know what I mean?”
He said he’d stood enough watches on the mining vessels he’d worked over the past twenty years so that he felt