Power Play - Anne McCaffrey [75]
“Look, Diego, you may have been brought up on a high-tech station,” Bunny said, ignoring Marmion’s attempt at pacification, “but you sure aren’t good at reading signs. I’ve had to, or I’d’ve been buried under avalanches and snow slides and all kinds of other hazards.”
“All planetary!”
“Well, a ship is like a small planet, isn’t it? And the vibrations have just altered! I was right about the air, wasn’t I? Why can’t I be right about the vibrations?”
“She may be, you know,” Namid interposed with a wry grin. “The Jenny’s got speed in her, and it’s been three days since the air source altered. That’d be about the necessary travel time from Gal Three to Petaybee, wouldn’t it, Marmion?”
“Yes, it would,” Marmion said, exhaling. This experience was unlike a boardroom brangle and as intense as any takeover or merge struggle, and she was finding her tolerance and understanding stretched to the limit. If it hadn’t been for Namid’s presence and diversionary tactics, she was sure there would have been fairly nasty squabbles, due simply to the pressures of so much proximity. Even with the most fiercely contested of her financial deals, she’d always been able to leave the premises and cool down. She was fond of Bunny and Diego; she genuinely liked Yana, who was bearing up nobly. She was more than a little fascinated by the complex personality of the astronomer, who had such divergent interests and informations: she’d never met anyone else so catholic in his tastes and so accomplished. Maybe she had dwelt too much in the rarefied atmosphere of her social sphere. One could become too specialized. Her time on Petaybee had opened that door, and this experience was showing her a vast panorama she hadn’t known existed—the panorama and pertinences of enforced idleness.
Dinah O’Neill had managed to gain them more privileges: better food, the daily tour of the corridors as exercise. Putting their heads together one night, Marmion and Namid had discussed the size of the ship. He had been on the Jenny somewhat longer than they had, but he admitted that generally he was far more interested in things light-years distant than he was in his immediate surroundings. Still, he agreed that they must have been on a larger ship than the Jenny when they’d been marched into Louchard’s presence that first time. Bunny, who could describe the different types of snow to be found in a three-mile area with distinction and accuracy, was able to describe the seemingly identical corridors with the same eye for minutiae. The Jenny’s captain’s quarters, for instance, were adjacent to the crew’s quarters, separated only by one passageway, and the ups and downs suggested auxiliary corridors connecting the Jenny to a larger craft.
“Deliberately confusing us as to the size and type of vessel,” Marmion had said.
“Two ships then,” Namid said, scratching his whiskers.
“Had to be,” Marmion agreed.
Diego and Bunny had told the others about the first shuttle, the one that had originally attracted them to Cargo Bay 30, an escapade that had ended in kidnapping. The two had apologized profusely and with much self-castigation—and with the inevitable “ifs”: if they hadn’t been curious, if they hadn’t scivved off on their own, if they hadn’t put Marmion and Yana to the trouble of coming after them . . .
That brought up the other question: What was Machiavelli Sendal-Archer-Klausewitch’s role in all this? Apart from being tagged as messenger boy for the piratical ransom demand.
“Ples Ferrari-Emool might know more about him,” Marmion had said, “but I didn’t. He was the newly appointed CEO of a Rothschild’s subsidiary