Power Play - Anne McCaffrey [48]
“Just don’t mess the guy up so much we can’t get civil answers out of him, will you?” Sean asked wryly.
The shuttle was due to make its weekly descent to Petaybee within the next thirty-two hours, and Simon was able to plot from its trajectory where it would touch down: in the forest nearer Shannonmouth than Kilcoole. There was no pilot to remonstrate with or wring information from. A highly sophisticated remote-control module guided it to and from Petaybee.
This Simon Furey discovered when he barged past the disembarking passengers and attempted to get into the pilot compartment. He’d come prepared with a device that would disable electronic locks, so he got into the forward cabin.
“If I’d had just a little more time, I could have bollixed up the remote so the shuttle couldn’t take off again. But it’ll come back, won’t it? I didn’t mess up the panel, like, disabling the lock.” He looked at Sean for reassurance.
“As long as whoever’s running this show doesn’t realize the lock was tampered with . . . What would you need to bollix the controls?”
Simon grinned. “It don’t take so much, really, if you know what to do. I’ll have another look through the refuse skips at the SpaceBase. They’re jettisoning an awful lot of useful stuff.”
“They are?” Seamus and Adak chorused together.
“Thanks, Simon,” Sean said, clapping the older man gratefully on the shoulder. “We’ll take any salvage you can hoist.”
“Figured.”
“Now,” Sean said, his expression altering from amusement to anxiety, “let’s see where we can stash this bunch of pilgrims!” For there were more robed figures huddling in the miserable knot of the disembarked passengers. Clodagh was still in the Kilcoole cave with the first bunches of Rock Lovers, or whatever the religious seekers called themselves.
Shannonmouth agreed to shelter the seven who were looking for their families. Nine of the religious had rock and stone names and demanded to be taken to Brothers Shale and Granite. So Sean took them back to Kilcoole to commune with their brothers and sisters. Three more hunters and another drug company representative made up this passenger complement. They, too, had to come back to Kilcoole, though Sean didn’t know where he’d be able to stash them. Now, if Simon should be successful in aborting the transport’s return to the Intergal Station, maybe this would be the last group he’d have to worry about. But with winter closing in, he’d have to sort the whole kaboodle real fast. At least the problem of trying to spread the burden of extra numbers on the already stretched economy kept his mind off Yana.
12
Gal Three
The “unseen eye,” aka Charas Parclete, who had been instructed to keep a close one on Yana, had followed the target subject and her escort through the maze and down to the cargo bay area. Since it was obvious the two women were in the company of a more-than-capable-appearing male—and someone the “eye” had better get some gen on if he was to be much in their company—the eye remained covert. In fact, the target subject and her companions were out of sight a good deal of the time, as Charas had to remain unseen. Suddenly there was a bit of confusion ahead, and when the covert watcher moved to a better viewing position, a whiff of the gas wafted across her face. Gagging and trying not to breathe while still attempting to clear her lungs gave the watcher a bit of trouble—especially as the Mayday reached the mastoid implant linked to Marmion’s alarm-pad just when the gas effected a very short period of unconsciousness. Struggling to regain full use of her senses, Charas staggered around the crates and cartons and saw only one body on the ground. Pressing the emergency signal for help, she dashed to the body.
“Fat lot of help you were as escort.” Charas resisted the temptation to kick the unconscious man for his dereliction of duty. There were other more pressing matters—like following the faint whiff of the gas through the maze of installations and cargo bays. This was a downtime in the cargo bay, when all but the most