Power Play - Anne McCaffrey [76]
“Charas?” Namid asked.
“Never mind, Namid,” Marmion said, smiling and quickly changing the subject. “And why hasn’t Commander an Hon been able to track us? The security on Gal Three is supposed to be state-of-the-art!”
Marmion had fretted over this factor many times already. Namid sighed quietly. “We’ll know when this is all over, my dear.” And he patted her nervous hands.
His touch did soothe her, Marmion realized, even as she also accepted the fact that it was useless to review the events that had led to this impasse. It was better to think ahead, and practice meditation. Namid had offered a few new tips on quiet contemplation modes. They’d all learned them, both as a way of keeping sanity and a way to pass the heavy time of captivity and inaction.
Had the time of inaction passed, Marmion wondered, if the ship’s vibrations had changed?
“Well, the engines are still very definitely on,” Diego said, both his hands on the bulkhead. In fact, everyone had been attempting to assess the change.
“We could be in orbit,” Yana said, and her hand went to the little pouch of Petaybean dirt.
Bunny and Diego followed suit. Marmion had not been wearing the little pouch the day they were kidnapped, but she didn’t think the planet would care much what happened to her. She was responsible to and for herself.
Bunny watched Yana. Then she shrugged as the colonel did.
“No change, huh?” Bunny asked with a wry grin.
Yana shook her head. “It might not be Petaybee we’re orbiting.” There was an edge of depression and pessimism to her voice.
“Where else?” Diego demanded stridently. “It’s the planet she wants to plunder, isn’t it?”
“I had hoped she’d realized that there is no way to do that,” Yana said, again in that bitter tone.
She’d been away from Sean over four weeks now—a whole month in the development of their child. She could feel the lump in her belly now, slightly protruding from what had been a flat, well-muscled plane. Physically she was feeling better than she had at the outset of her imprisonment, but the mental strain of uncertainty was beginning to mount—and the tension of being restricted. Not that long voyages on troop carriers hadn’t been restrictive, but this was restraint of a different nature, and one she bitterly resented. She tried not to give in to the stress, fearing that it might mar the fetus in some bizarre fashion. Many of her nightmares had taken the form of harm to the child who was born, or unborn, as some sort of a monster. She shuddered.
Just then the panel opened and there was the second officer, not nearly as ferocious as Megenda, but almost as repellent in a slimy sort of way.
“Time for walkies,” he said, and gestured brusquely for them to fall in and take the exercise offered.
SpaceBase
Adak was on duty at the SpaceBase cube. Simon Furey had painted a sign, which had been nailed above the entry:
WELCOME TO PETAYBEE!
PETAYBEAN IMMIGRATION AND INFORMATION!
With the demise of PTS, the only spacecraft using the landing field—now flat, but somewhat pitted and broken—were from the Intergal Station. Mostly they were employed in lifting equipment off the planet. On the far side of the field the mounds of disembodied walls, floors, and roofs marked the graveyard of the old facilities, damaged when Petaybee had erected its ziggurat complaint against the Intergal despoliation. Adak and some of the other Kilcoole residents kept a sharp eye on this debris, most of which they could repair and put to good use once Intergal officials had cleared away and left them to the salvage.
Adak could keep track of comings and goings from the station by the discreet tap Simon Furey had been able to sneak into the Intergal Comnet, so he knew when ships—with possible “invaders”—might be landing. That left him with a lot of free time to mooch around the piles, which suited