Power Play - Anne McCaffrey [89]
“A moment’s hush, please,” Sean said in a loud authoritative voice. He was instantly obeyed as he bowed his head to consider what to do next. Everyone tried not to fidget.
“So”—now Sean was ready to recap—“you’ve all been released and everyone is safe?”
“Thanks to the cat upstairs,” Bunny said. “I don’t know how it managed to find us—out hunting and heard me call, I suppose.”
Sean and the others exchanged sheepish glances. “We all had a map,” he admitted with a thumb jerked back to the still-glowing wall of the cave. “But the cat acted on it while the rest of us were gathering a force to protect ourselves from the pirates.”
“The only two that are here are warming themselves nearby. There’s a couple of others on ice, you might say, about where the map says.” She indicated the slowly fading spiral and line, dribbling away as the microscopic animals forming the phosphorescence deserted the map to go on to more important matters. Chumia busily sketched the whole map on the back of her hand. The portion of the map that crossed waves remained as bright and deliberate as it had been when Bunny first arrived.
“Yana talked Dinah into getting Louchard to release Marmie and Namid, too, since they’re afraid to return Marmie to Gal Three and can’t get any ransom for her.”
“Wait, wait! Who’s this Namid?” Sinead asked.
“An astronomer Louchard’s also got imprisoned.” Bunny didn’t explain about Namid being divorced from Dinah, because it wasn’t really an important detail. “We came in the Jenny’s shuttle, only the damned fool landed right on the edge of the ice, so they’re about to take a dive off the ice in the inlet.” At Sean’s gasp of horror, she added quickly, “Oh, Yana, Diego, and me, as well as Dinah O’Neill and the first mate, got ashore okay, but there are crewmen still inside and they can’t go nowhere right now.”
“And they’d have nowhere to go here either, so crowded we are,” Sinead said sourly.
So everyone started talking at once again until Sean, in midflight up the stairs on his way to Yana, stopped and held up his hands.
“Okay now, folks, let’s just calm down. If the ship’s disabled, we can relax. There’s just two people to be considered, and I think we can handle this, Muktuk, Chumia, Sinead, and me. Go on back to your homes and your dinners. And thank you very much for being so ready to stand on the line. Sure do appreciate your support.”
Then, followed by Bunny, Sinead, and the two Murphys, Sean swarmed up the steps two at a time.
“Where did you say you stashed them, Bunny?” Sean asked when they got outside.
“First cabin I came to.” Bunny pointed. “Megenda was shaking so bad he needed to get warm!”
“Oh, that’d be the Sirgituks,” Chumia said, smiling. “They won’t mind. They’re still down below. Shall I ask them to stay here, in our place, until we’ve got things all settled?”
“Would you please, Chumia?” Sean asked with an appreciative smile, but he kept right on striding toward the place where Yana was.
He was at least ten strides in front of Bunny and Muktuk when he reached the door and went in. Bunny trotted to catch up and heard a very surprised Yana call out Sean’s name. When Bunny entered the Sirgituks’ cabin, Sean and Yana were locked in each other’s arms, cheek to cheek, eyes closed, rocking back and forth and not saying a word. Yana’s face was wet with tears.
Dinah O’Neill was looking Sean up and down as if she was hunting for something she wasn’t seeing, and there was a bit of a smirk to her grin. Megenda was still shivering, though not quite as violently now he had the warmth of the soup in him. Yana and Diego had removed both the pirates’ clothing and their own in Bunny’s absence, and were wrapped in the Sirgituks’ extra clothing and blankets. A kettle boiled on the stove.
“Dinah O’Neill, this is Muktuk Murphy O’Neill and Chumia O’Neill O’Neill, your kinfolk. And the man by the fire is First Mate Megenda of the Jenny,” Bunny said.
“Greetings, kinswoman,” Muktuk said, “though I think we gotta do some straight talking before anyone’s going to want to welcome