Power Play - Anne McCaffrey [83]
“Why should I help him?” Diego asked.
“You guaranteed safe conduct,” Dinah reminded Yana.
“I didn’t mean against natural disasters,” Yana said. “He’d be no great loss to me.”
“He’s still a human in trouble on my planet,” Bunny said, down on her stomach and ready to give assistance. “Diego, Namid, hold on to my ankles!”
Marmion hesitated only a moment before extending the link by grabbing Diego’s ankles.
“Oh, very well,” Yana said, and started to flop down on the ground, but Namid shoved her away and took her place, holding Marmion’s ankles.
“You must think of your child, Colonel,” he told her.
“Here, Megenda! Take my hands,” Bunny told the pirate. “We can pull you out, but you’re going to have to turn loose of the shuttle first. Swing your body this way.”
Megenda let go of the shuttle and grabbed Bunny’s arms so quickly that she screamed in pain. Next he got a hold of her long hair, pulling himself half out of the freezing water.
The ice cracked ominously under the load it now bore and the edge disintegrated abruptly so that Bunny hung facedown into the opening, looking into black water while the pirate hoisted himself over her legs to Diego, whose grip on Bunny’s ankles slipped as she tilted downward.
When Megenda hauled himself onto the secure bank, Yana walloped him on the jaw with Dinah’s laser pistol.
“Get off those kids, you ass!” she commanded. He slumped sideways, relinquishing his hold on Diego’s arms. Dinah and Yana scrambled forward on their knees to haul the girl out of the hole.
Yana collapsed in the snow, coughing and panting, while Diego and Bunny nursed various bruises and strains the big pirate had inflicted.
Dinah crept forward and peered over the edge of the hole, then considered the precarious cant to the shuttle.
“I don’t suppose they can just fly out of there, can they?” Yana asked.
Dinah shook her head. “One skid is caught under the edge of the ice. They’re off balance.”
“On the bright side, at least the shuttle seems to be able to float.”
Bunny said, “Yana, we gotta get out of here. I can feel the temperature dropping, and this gear of theirs isn’t good for more than minus seventy-five.”
“It gets colder than that this early?” Dinah asked, appalled.
Bunny nodded. “I’d be all right, I expect, but the rest of you are in trouble unless we get to shelter pretty quick.”
“Have you got a clue where the town is, Bunny?” Yana asked.
“If we’re right on—almost in—the bay, it’s got to be over that way,” Bunny said, pointing to what looked to Yana like an identical piece of the snow-covered terrain all around them. “Sorry. I usually come by dogsled along the trail and don’t need to pass this way. I’ve no landmarks here, except the mountains, so we’ll have to head that way until I can get my bearings. And we do have to move or you’re all going to freeze.”
“Right,” Yana said. “How about the communion place? Do you know where that is from here?”
Bunny shook her head. “It’s within the town someplace is all I know. When it was their turn to give the latchkay, I was sick and couldn’t go.”
“Okay, then,” Yana said, “let’s move out. On your feet, you,” she commanded, using her toe to nudge Megenda, who groaned but remained limp.
“You shouldn’t have hit him so hard,” Dinah said.
“I should have let him drown,” Yana told her. “And he’ll be the first to freeze, wet as he is. So come on, Namid, Diego, you’re strong! Let’s get him up and head on out of here.”
Gal Three
Dr. Matthew Luzon, striding along the corridor from the shuttle that had brought him back to his head offices on Gal Three, was feeling very good. Assiduous application of the physiotherapy exercises, careful diet, and self-discipline had completely restored him to the level of physical fitness that he deemed necessary for a man with his responsibilities.
He had been reviewing applicants for the positions left open by the defection of the highly paid and supposedly