Power Play - Anne McCaffrey [86]
Now he and Sinead descended the stairs carved out of stone and ice. Chumia held a lamp for them while the family cat scampered ahead, nearly tripping them. “It’ll be dark down there,” Chumia said.
But it wasn’t. One entire wall of the entrance chamber was glowing with a pattern of phosphorescence similar to the sort that Sean had seen in the underriver grotto.
“My goodness, will you look at that?” Chumia clucked while the cat rubbed against the wall, then stretched so that its paws touched the lower part of the design. “You’re going to think I’m a terrible housekeeper, guy, letting mold grow in the communion place. It’s never done that before. Didn’t think it could, permafrost being ice and all.”
“Never? These aren’t here from the last latchkay?”
“No, sir. What’s all these wiggles mean?”
“Looks like waves,” Sinead said, peering closely. “Here and here.”
“Waves . . .” the cave repeated.
The cat chirruped as if it, too, was trying to say “waves.”
“It is,” Sean said, pointing to the apex. “This must be where we are now—near these waves, and this circle represents the rest of the north—then more waves outside and the outer circles—”
“Waves, circlessssss . . .”
“What about the lines that end in circles here?” Ignoring the echo, Sinead pointed to the spiraled figure somewhat to the left of the midpoint between the lines. “And here? This one’s clear down beyond the waves. What do you suppose it means?”
“Trouble spots?” Sean guessed. “Like before?”
This time the echo didn’t repeat itself. “Means trouble spots like before,” it said distinctly.
The cat jumped as if someone had thrown water on it, and bolted back up the steps and into the house. They could hear the cat-door flap still flapping as they continued studying the diagram.
Dinah O’Neill was not happy about leaving her shuttle stranded on the ice like some sort of a monstrous sea animal.
“It’s watertight, isn’t it?” Bunny asked her, and shrugged when Dinah had to admit it was. “Then even if it falls into the water, they’re all right in there, aren’t they?”
“Sink?” Dinah cried aghast.
“Well, not really,” Bunny said. There might have been some who thought she was deliberately teasing Dinah O’Neill, but she was merely thinking out loud. “Besides, I think that hole’ll freeze over as soon as it turns dark and the shuttle’ll be okay. Frozen in, of course, but safe. Speaking of freezing, we’d better get going. Yana, I’ll scout ahead. You keep the others moving, okay?”
Yana flipped her a salute. “Aye-aye, ma’am. We’re right behind you.”
What Bunny didn’t say—nor did either Yana or Diego mention—was very obvious to them: the sun was westering and they hadn’t much daylight left to get where they wouldn’t freeze. Bunny struck out at a good pace toward the general direction of Tanana Bay. She would have preferred to go straight across the frozen inlet toward the main trail but that would waste time, which they didn’t have much of. So she headed toward the nearest high ground. Maybe there she could get a good look at the lay of the land and correct their path. She was also aware—though she didn’t mention it—that her little pouch of dirt was acting like a miniature hot bottle, its heat keeping her warm.
Humans were so dense and so slow. Punjab didn’t know how the planet put up with them sometimes. Even drawing them a big picture wasn’t enough.
Obviously that business across the water would have to be delegated—if humans were too thick to understand, perhaps birds or walruses would have to explain it to them—but it was not a job for cats. This simple task clearly was, however.
With