Power Play - Anne McCaffrey [63]
“Didn’t you know anything about her business?” Marmion asked.
“Oh, yes, I knew she was involved in ‘shipping’ as a cargo master—”
Diego interrupted him with a snort.
“Or should I say ‘purser,’ ” Namid added, with a show of humor that made Marmion give him one of her genuinely warm smiles. He went on. “That explained her absences and odd schedule. She was so interested in my work: variables, and what star systems were likely to spin out ore-laden planets, and, well, all the practical applications of astronomy. It all seemed so harmless, so natural.” He hunched his shoulders in frustration. “And she is, you must admit,” he added, addressing the remark to Diego, “a very attractive person.”
“Ha!”
“And clever as she can stare,” Bunny said with slightly sour admiration. “That nice guy/bad guy ploy she and Megenda were pulling is so old it’s got whiskers longer than Uncle Seamus.”
“Unfortunately, we end up falling for it because we don’t know when farce and fact meet,” Yana said.
“Oh, how I’d like to get that Megenda inside Petaybee for just five minutes . . .” Bunny said fiercely.
“Let’s not be vindictive. We know he was only playing a part and may be a very nice fellow off duty, aside from an unfortunate tendency toward child abuse,” Marmion said, glancing at the bruises on her young friends’ faces.
“ ‘When a felon’s not engaged in his employment, his employment . . .’ ” Namid sang in such a rich baritone that Marmion and the others regarded him with amazement. “ ‘Or maturing his felonious little plans.’ Gilbert and Sullivan’s little operettas are as cogent today as they ever were . . .”
“Go on,” Marmion urged, her eyes wide with delight.
“ ‘His capacity for innocent enjoyment, ‘cent enjoyment, is just as great as any honest man’s.’ ”
Marmion laughed and laughed and laughed and Yana found herself smiling at such contagious mirth. Even Diego grinned.
“I like the tune,” Bunny said diplomatically, but her confusion was obvious.
“It’s not exactly latchkay-type singing and music,” Diego said, relaxed for the first time since their capture. “I’ve some discs, I think. You might just like G and S.”
“G and S?”
“Later,” Diego said.
Namid’s mobile face fell into solemn lines. “Dinah liked G and S.” Then he added more briskly, “But this isn’t Penzance, and she wasn’t indentured as a little lad, brave and daring. I do believe that there is a core of—”
“Wait a minute,” Bunny said, sitting bolt upright and just missing banging her head on the underside of the upper bunk. She began sniffing and sniffing.
“What?” Diego asked, and Yana echoed the query.
Bunny sniffed deeply again. “We’re no longer on Gal Threetype air.”
“We’re not?” Yana asked. Bunny’s previous mention of her olfactory impression hadn’t really registered. Now she thought about it. The air on the shuttle would have been imported from the station’s ventilation system during the time the shuttle was in dock. But come to think of it, there was no reason she could think of why the air aboard the pirates’ vessel should ever have had any connection with the station. Or was there? Bunny seemed very certain, and her senses, trained in the Petaybean outdoors, were extremely keen. Yana looked at Bunny, sorting through the implications of the girl’s observation. Intriguing possibilities now presented themselves. Nor was she the only one to be thinking on the same line.
“Indeed,” Marmion said softly, her eyes dark with thought, and she leaned into Namid, who put a reassuring arm about her shoulders.
“Indeed, indeed,” Namid said. “And don’t forget to breathe!”
Three days after returning to Kilcoole with the hunters, who booked the first Intergal shuttle back since PTS was no longer in service, Sean received a second