Power Play - Anne McCaffrey [95]
The dogsleds were loaded and the teams hitched and ready to go when Liam Maloney mushed in, accompanied by Dinah, his late mother’s lead dog, and Nanook, the most companionable of Sean’s large track-cats. Dinah, good sled dog that she was, leaped up on Diego at once and began washing his face with a tongue that smelled like fish. Diego called her by name several times, looking over to see the effect on Dinah O’Neill, but she, the human, didn’t change expression.
“Kind of you to come, Liam,” Sinead said a touch sarcastically. “A bit late, but welcome nonetheless.”
“I was delayed,” he said, pushing back the parka hood and running his mittens over the ice that had formed in his hair and mustache. “Nanook had a hairy knicker attack on the way here and wouldn’t let us proceed for quite some time. I couldn’t get out of him what was wrong, but once he decided to move, he all but left us behind.”
Sean squatted down and held out his arms. “What’s the problem, Nanook?”
“Don’t tell me it talks, too?” Dinah O’Neill asked.
“Anything wrong with talking cats?” Diego demanded, rubbing Dinah-the-dog’s ears.
“Nothing at all. After what the darling little orange pussycat did for us, I have become a born-again cat lover, especially of Petaybean cats. I suppose export is out of the question?’
Sean looked up. “Here’s another first. Coaxtl is sending to Nanook that her cub—by that I take it she means ’Cita—is in trouble with bad humans. She went down to see Loncie when Johnny and O.O. took the last cube to Bogota.” He stroked Nanook worriedly. “While I’m gratified to see that the planet is expanding its communication network to cover the whole globe, I don’t have a notion what we can do to help ’Cita.”
Chumia said, “That was the other spot on the map in the communion place, then, wasn’t it? That’s what the waves were for and the circles—there’s more trouble down south. You’re right, Sean. I’ve never known the planet to tell us anything about what was happening down there before.”
Muktuk shook his head. “My dogs’d take me anywhere, but they ain’t real big on winter ocean swimming.”
“I’d swim it myself,” Sean said, “but the mental picture I’m getting is of someplace far inland, away from any waterways. I can’t imagine how the bears came so far from the ice pack.”
“Bears?” Bunny asked. “Polar bears? ’Cita’s down there with polar bears? Uncle Sean, we’ve got to save her!”
Sean gave her a small, wry smile. “Funny, that’s what she said when she heard you’d been kidnapped by pirates, and you’ve come out of it well enough.”
“I’d take Petaybean polar bears over pirates anytime, gatita,” Diego told Bunny, releasing one arm from the dog’s neck to hold her hand. “At least they have the planet to answer to. Whereas two-foot Dinah here only has Louchard.”
Dinah O’Neill lifted an eyebrow. “Perhaps. But I do happen to have command of a space shuttle that could be placed at your disposal to solve this little inconvenience. That is, if it could be freed.”
The rescue expedition was mounted forthwith and with great dispatch. Sean, Yana, and Bunny were everywhere at once organizing. The snow had not fallen so thickly that Bunny’s trail couldn’t be retraced in the darkness, and the dogsleds broadened the track. The nights were longer in northerly Tanana Bay than they were even in Kilcoole, but all the drivers and dogs were used to traveling in darkness. Fifteen sleds left the village, containing rope, chain, fishnets, winches, anything that might help free the shuttle. Dinah-Four-Feet and Nanook trotted alongside. Dinah-Two-Feet, as the pirate’s representative, accompanied the rescuers, but Megenda had been locked inside the communion cave for safekeeping and to fully recover from his narrow escape from frostbite and pneumonia.
“Let’s not get too close,” Bunny called to the sleds as they neared the hole in the ice containing the shuttle. “It broke with just me.”
“Make way, clear off