Somehow "your sister" sounded like a nasty epithet. Sean ignored t he tone, knowing that Sinead could be a trifle difficult at times and these men, particularly, needed the kind of lesson only she could teach on Petaybee.

Sean put both hands to his mouth and uttered the ululating call they always used to cover long distances. One figure responded, straightening up, and looking around.

"Sinead!" he called then.

The sound of her name reverberated under her feet. Then a piercing distant whistle from the far side of the lake indicated that Sinead had not only heard, but seen them.

"Let's go."

"Isn't there anywhere we can go besides near her?" Minkus asked plaintively.

Sean chuckled to himself as he led the way down the slope. Somehow this encounter had restored him in a way not even the swimming could. Or maybe it was a case of both. The planet healing and then revealing what it was he had to do. Organize the influx and protect it as best he could.

He was reminded again of the influx as, halfway back to Kilcoole, they met Clodagh leading the white robes like a mother duck with her ducklings behind her. The white robes broke formation, however, and hurried forward to fuss.

"You poor men, we heard your cries!"

"You couldn't've," Mooney said. "We weren't that loud."

"It was awful," Clotworthy said to Sister Agate. "I can't stop shaking."

"It's the cold, poor dear."

The hunters confided to the other offworlders about the cat, the unicorn, and their injuries.

"Poor Mr. de Peugh," Brother Shale fretted. "Whatever is wrong with him?"

Clodagh shrugged. "Looks to me like he lost an argument with Petaybee."

"The Beneficence?" Brother Shale asked. "The Beneficence did this to these poor men?"

"Oh surely not," Brother Schist said nervously. "That wouldn't be very... benevolent... would it?"

"Sin," Sister Igneous Rock said firmly. "He sinned against the planet and it smote him."

"Now, you just cut that out!" Clodagh said. The hunters weren't the only frustrated people that day. "Petaybee hasn't invented sin yet."

They did whatf" Dr. Matthew Luzon said in a volume that blasted the eardrums of the party on the end of the comm link.

"The PTS transporter license has been revoked and the vehicle impounded."

"That can't be donel" Luzon angrily stamped the cane he still had to use into the thick carpet. There weren't half enough people down on the planet's surface yet, and he hadn't been able to infiltrate enough of his agents to effect the sort of damage he had planned on creating. Makem hadn't reported in since he landed, either, and so Luzon had no idea if the Asian Esoteric and Exotic Company had reached the surface. They had been so eager to slay the unicorns for their horns, long believed to have aphrodisiacal and healing powers, and to acquire the whiskers of the orange cats, which they had been told had similar powers as well as life-extending properties. He had also given them a list of therapeutic plants and lichens, which incidentally included all the vegetation so far catalogued on the planet's surface. The way those fellows worked, a forest could be hewn, chopped into splinters, and removed quicker than one of those disgusting felines could blink. And then the "renewable wealth" of Petaybee would be past history... but first he had to get enough people down there to do the job!

"The remote device was removed from the cockpit and there's one of those propulsion unit clamps that would blow the vessel into trash if someone tried a manual takeoff. That ship is grounded."

"But that's a totally prohibited perversion of basic Commercial Venture rights. All the proper forms have been accepted by-"

"They've just been disaccepted, Luzon. The credit account has had its assets frozen, and mail, messages, or credit transfers addressed to PTS are being returned to sender."

Matthew Luzon, fuming and sputtering and sorely tempted to throw the comm unit across the room into the mock-marble fireplace, was trying to figure out how the carefully constructed and protected PTS operation could have been discovered and blocked. Who? Unless that twit-brained Makem had been corrupted down on the planet's surface? The noise of his room buzzer penetrated his fury.

"Yes?" Even Luzon was astonished at the snarl in his voice and moderated his tone. "Yes?"

"Torkel Fiske to see you," said the sexy-voiced receptionist of this exclusive health resort.

"Ah, the very man." Matthew's ire settled almost as instantly as it had flared. "Enter. Enter. My dear Captain Fiske, how good of you to spare some time to visit the convalescent."

Fiske came in, suavely dressed and smiling, with a touch of smug satisfaction that was visible to the shrewd eye of his observer. Matthew began to feel that his unexpected visitor was going to cheer him no end, and so he prolonged that pleasure until he had seen Fiske suitably supplied with the drink of his choice and some of the enticing tidbits that the resort offered its distinguished clientele.

"I came, Dr. Luzon, because I felt that you might not have heard the news," Fiske said, still smiling unctuously. He took another sip, and accepted one of the little canapes.

"I fear the medics have required me to suspend my usual activities until my injuries are completely healed," Luzon said, "so I've not kept up with general news. If anything is bad enough, someone always manages to inform the galaxy." He smiled condescendingly over such a foible.

"Then I was right. You haven't heard about the kidnapping."

"Kidnapping?" Luzon leaned toward his guest, his heart pounding in suspense.

"Yes, kidnapping. And from Gal Three, where, as you may know, they have such a tight security system." Fiske smiled at Luzon, a smile deprecating the machinations of a security system that failed to secure.

"Really? How very alarming."

"Yes, and everyone is astounded. I mean, who would have thought that Marmion de Revers Algemeine had a single enemy in the galaxy."

"Not her!" Luzon could scarcely contain his joy, though he expressed a horror that caused Fiske to grin more broadly.

"And... you'll never guess who was kidnapped along with her?"

"No, indeed I cannot, so do tell me." Luzon was all but bouncing about on the seat of his electronic mobility device.

"Colonel Yanaba Maddock-Shongili..."

"Not the doughty colonel?"

"And-"

"Oh, not more victims! How appalling!"

"Buneka Rourke and young Diego Etheridge-Metaxos, too."

Luzon raised his eyes ceilingward. "There is justice in the universe. Truly, there is!" He bowed his head. Then he peered up at the grinning Fiske. "Who perpetrated this atrocity?"

"The infamous Captain Onidi Louchard!"

"Oh! Famous-I mean, infamous! I've heard the pirate was clever, but to breech Gal Three security... I'm truly speechless. And?"

"And what?"

"Have the bodies been returned?"

"You are bloodthirsty, Doctor," Fiske said, his glance tinged with censure. "The ransom has been set..."

"On Algemeine?" Luzon snorted with scorn. "It'll never be paid."

"What do you mean?" Fiske sat forward, concerned.

Luzon waved his hand at such folly. "My dear Fiske, Marmion Algemeine is one of the top financiers in the known galaxy. She would adhere to the Code out of principle, unlike the cravens on the Amber Unicorn."

"What Code do you mean?" Fiske repeated, now seriously agitated.

"Why, the Anti-Extortion Code, of course. Surely you're aware that the really rich have the most stringent laws against the payment of ransoms? To prevent wholesale kidnappings and the payment of vast sums of ransom monies? A wise move, and no one has tested the Code since the spectacular and highly publicized failure of the Amber Unicorn ploy over a hundred years ago."

"But-but-Louchard is smart and ruthless. He'll figure a way around it."

"Not if he was fool enough to choose Marmion de Algemeine, he won't," Luzon said, dismissing the matter with a snort. "Why, what's the matter?"

For his handsome guest had turned quite pale under his tan. "Then Maddock and those kids will die, too?"

"Of course. They've no assets-unless..." Matthew rubbed the carved jade head of his cane against his lips. The coolness of jade was so soothing and helped him think. "Unless Louchard can figure out a way to get concessions out of Petaybee." The moment the words were out of his mouth, Luzon canceled that possibility-until he glanced at Fiske again. "Don't tell me that was your master plan, Fiske?" he asked scornfully. "Tell me-what was Louchard like?"

"I never met Louchard," Fiske said, his expression set and his tone distracted, like a man, Luzon recognized, who was thinking very fast about something else entirely.

"But didn't you mention to me the fact that Louchard was involved in the smuggling of those miserable quantities of ore that were extracted from the planet?"

Actually both men knew that Fiske had mentioned no such thing: Louchard's involvement was speculation. Still, that would account for the pirate being willing to kidnap that wretched trio in the hopes of being able to obtain concessions no one else had had from Shongili. Luzon would never believe it was the planet; therefore, the mind behind all his misfortunes on Petaybee had to be the very human one of the man who stood to lose most: Sean Shongili.

"He might just do something to protect that unborn bastard of his, at that," Luzon mused. "Where are you going, Fiske? You bring me such interesting news." But Luzon's words did not pass the door that Tbrkel Fiske had slammed behind him.

It was a considerably more cheerful Luzon who began tapping out numbers on his comm link.

Aboard the pirate ship

15

I don't mean to pry or open a very sore subject, Namid," Mar-mion said when they had all rehashed and argued over the latest visit from their captors, "but have you any more relevant information about your ex-wife that we might use to advantage?"

Namid pointed to the corner of their room where he thought the listening device was planted. Then he continued speaking in such ringing, dramatic tones that they understood he wanted every word to be overheard by their unseen monitor. It occurred to Marmion that perhaps since the man had been unable to effectively communicate directly with Dinah, he was using the opportunity of talking about her more or less publicly to try to make an impression on her.

"They say," he said with a sigh, "that we never really know the people we love. When I first met Dinah, I thought I had never been so close to anyone. Not only was she attractive, intelligent, and interested in my work, but she had a great deal of drive, a lot of passion that I'm afraid I misconstrued at the time. Love blinds us, or something like that. We talked for hours. I told her about my work, and she was quite honest about her early years: the death of her parents when she was far too young to be alone; her first marriage at sixteen to a wealthy, ruthless man who left her an interest in certain enterprises-of which I suspect this is one. She was quite frank about her other marriages, most of them for convenience and empire building, until ours. I genuinely believe it was a love match on her side as well, at least at first.

"She so desperately wants connection, you know. Her family was among those scooped up by Intergal when they were buying up wars and other inconvenient impasses on Earth to populate their experimental colony planets. Your Petaybee was one of the early ones, of course. Since the 'colonists' were divided in the interest of breaking up political factions, many families were split and settled in different places. Dinah's great-great-grandfather came from a long line of seafaring people and had worked with the paramilitaries. She seems to believe he was some sort of great patriot, but he apparently adapted well enough to spacing and became one of Intergal's top cryptographers. At some point he married a fellow exile who had also chosen a company career over colony life.

"Dinah says that most of their progeny were prevented from advancing in the company because of Intergal's nepotism, but I think she might be a bit prejudiced. Surely none of them became wealthy, and when her parents died, Dinah had a rough time supporting herself. She told me candidly that she used her looks at first. Then, when she met the right people, her intelligence got her jobs as messenger, dispatcher, and freelance computer hacker, which was what she was doing when she met her first husband. She looks at her involvement as protecting her inheritance and investments, I believe. But I had absolutely no idea she was connected with piratical acts until she brought me aboard."

"Didn't you know anything about her business?" Marmion asked.

"Oh, yes, I knew she was involved in 'shipping' as a cargo master-"

Diego interrupted him with a snort.

"Or should I say 'purser,' " Namid added, with a show of humor that made Marmion give him one of her genuinely warm smiles. He went on. "That explained her absences and odd schedule. She was so interested in my work: variables, and what star systems were likely to spin out ore-laden planets, and, well, all the practical applications of astronomy. It all seemed so harmless, so natural." He hunched his shoulders in frustration. "And she is, you must admit," he added, addressing the remark to Diego, "a very attractive person."

"Ha!"

"And clever as she can stare," Bunny said with slightly sour admiration. "That nice guy/bad guy ploy she and Megenda were pulling is so old it's got whiskers longer than Uncle Seamus."

"Unfortunately, we end up falling for it because we don't know when farce and fact meet," Yana said.

"Oh, how I'd like to get that Megenda inside Petaybee for just five minutes..." Bunny said fiercely.

"Let's not be vindictive. We know he was only playing a part and may be a very nice fellow off duty, aside from an unfortunate tendency toward child abuse," Marmion said, glancing at the bruises on her young friends' faces.

' 'When a felon's not engaged in his employment, his employment...'" Namid sang in such a rich baritone that Marmion and the others regarded him with amazement. " 'Or maturing his felonious little plans.' Gilbert and Sullivan's little operettas are as cogent today as they ever were..."

"Go on," Marmion urged, her eyes wide with delight.

;' 'His capacity for innocent enjoyment, 'cent enjoyment, is just as great as any honest man's.' "

Marmion laughed and laughed and laughed and Yana found herself smiling at such contagious mirth. Even Diego grinned.

"I like the rune," Bunny said diplomatically, but her confusion was obvious.

"It's not exactly latchkay-type singing and music," Diego said, relaxed for the first time since their capture. "I've some discs, I think. You might just like G and S."

"G and S?"

"Later," Diego said.

Namid's mobile face fell into solemn lines. "Dinah liked G and S." Then he added more briskly, "But this isn't Penzance, and she wasn't indentured as a little lad, brave and daring. I do believe that there is a core of-"

"Wait a minute," Bunny said, sitting bolt upright and just missing banging her head on the underside of the upper bunk. She began sniffing and sniffing.

"What?" Diego asked, and Yana echoed the query.

Bunny sniffed deeply again. "We're no longer on Gal Three-type air."

"We're not?" Yana asked. Bunny's previous mention of her olfactory impression hadn't really registered. Now she thought about it. The air on the shuttle would have been imported from the station's ventilation system during the time the shuttle was in dock. But come to think of it, there was no reason she could think of why the air aboard the pirates' vessel should ever have had any connection with the station. Or was there? Bunny seemed very certain, and her senses, trained in the Petaybean outdoors, were extremely keen. Yana looked at Bunny, sorting through the implications of the girl's observation. Intriguing possibilities now presented themselves. Nor was she the only one to be thinking on the same line.

"Indeed," Marmion said softly, her eyes dark with thought, and she leaned into Namid, who put a reassuring arm about her shoulders. 'Indeed, indeed," Namid said. "And don't forget to breathe!"

Three days after returning to Kilcoole with the hunters, who booked the first Intergal shuttle back since PTS was no longer in service, Sean received a second communique from the kidnappers.

Dear Dr. Shongili,

I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but I was sent the following message by the criminals who abducted Colonel Maddock-Shongili, your niece, and young Etheridge-Metaxos, along with Madame Algemeine. I suppose they chose to send their demands to me, as CEO of my own company, since previously I had been unaccountably released to deliver the initial message. I had the great opportunity and rare pleasure of meeting your lovely wife and speaking with her briefly while she was still here on Gal Three: she was, is, a very special lady and a competent, caring officer. The children accompanying her were a delight to us all. I fervently hope that, between the efforts of the security team here on Gal Three and your good self, you will all be reunited soon.

On behalf of all of us here on Gal Three, Machiavelli Sendal-Archer-Klausewitch

Dear Dr. Shongili,

We were most concerned to learn from your wife that there might be some difficulty with her pregnancy if she isn 't back on Petaybee soon. She is very ill and could certainly use more of that Petaybean cough syrup that cured her the first time. Also, young Metaxos has sustained minor injuries due to his own youth and inexperience. Unfortunately, we are currently between medical officers, since our last one was discharged-regrettably, out the hatch and into space-for mutiny.

Surely you must realize that your family's lives depend upon your immediate response and compliance to our demands. We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Most sincerely,

Dinah O'Neill, representing Captain Onidi Louchard

aboard the Pirate Jenny

All Sean could do was sit there, stricken, when he finished reading. "What is it, Sean?" Una Monaghan asked.

'Cita, who was also there along with several other children and their parents and Wild Star Furey, put her arm around him and asked, "What is it, Uncle? Is it about my sister? What does it say?"

He held it up to her and she took it. But, of course, 'Cita couldn't read, so she turned to Wild Star, who took the note out of her hand and read it aloud. When she was done, the room was filled with a stunned silence.

"Oh dear, I ought to have read it first to myself," she said, "before I broadcast such news."

Sean shook his head. "It's everybody's business."

"Well, yes, but in front of the children-especially those who've just arrived from the other villages to go to school. Too much of the bad side of civilization all at once, I fear." She continued to look guilty and cast a nervous smile at her pupils and their parents.

Since she had taken up her post as Kilcoole teacher, Sean had learned a few facts about Wild Star Furey. She had had sufficient experience with the bad side of civilization. Her ancestors had been an Amerind tribe stubbornly clinging to a valuable piece of Terran real estate. Her husband's family were descended from Irish Traveling People who had finally been removed from the planet for refusing to settle on any given piece of real estate.

"It concerns Petaybee, Wild Star," Sean said. "And it's got nothing to do with civilization. Pirates aren't famous for being civilized."

"Pardon me, Doctor, sir," said a man who had arrived in Kilcoole a scant half hour before. Sean knew Muktuk Murphy slightly. He was from Tanana Bay. "Could the lady read that last bit again, please?"

"Which part was that, Muktuk?" Sean asked.

"That lady's name, sir, mentioned just before that awful pirate's name-"

"Dinah O'Neill?" Wild Star asked.

Muktuk cast a significant glance at the small, round-faced woman beside him, who had a wealth of curly black hair and typical Eskirish slanted blue eyes. Those eyes were dancing with excitement as she tugged her husband's sleeve.

"That would be it, Dama, thank you. Do you suppose me and the wife could send a message along with yours, sir, when you reply to the pirates?"

Sean shrugged. "What did you want to say?"

"Well, it's a bit hard to organize it right now, sir. It'll take me and the missus some thinking."

"Perhaps I should help you write it down then," Wild Star offered.

"Ah, now, that would be very kind of you, Dama," said Muktuk.

"Very kind indeed," Mrs. Muktuk said. "I'm sure all my people will appreciate it, and we'd all like to come to your school along with the children, please and thanks very much."

Aboard the pirate ship

When Dinah O'Neill returned to the captain's quarters, she found a message from Macci Klausewitch waiting on her comm unit.

"Dama O'Neill," Klausewitch's voice said, "this came in last night in response to your follow-up ransom message to the Petaybean administration. At first my stupid assistant didn't think it was important and almost discarded it. It's from Shongili's office, but it seems to be in some sort of code, hence the mistake. I do hope it will be good news-for both your captain's organization and my own."

There was no voice message involved, just print on the screen.

dear dama o'neill of the pirate ship,

WE LEARNED OF YOU WHEN YOUR BOSS'S NOTE CAME TO dr. SEAN SHONGILl'S OFFICE. YOUR NAME CAUGHT OUR EARS RIGHT AWAY AND WE WERE WONDERING IF MAYBE YOU MIGHT BE RELATED TO THE COUNTY GALWAY O'NEILLS TAKEN FROM IRELAND AT THE HEIGHT OF THE REUNIFICATION? we HAD A GRANDFATHER FROM THAT AREA AND TIME PERIOD WHO, DESPITE RAISING A LARGE FAMILY HERE ON PETAYBEE, NEVER FORGOT HIS BROTHER, RORY, WHO WAS KNOWN LOCALLY AS HANDY RED O'NEILL, HE THAT WAS INVOLVED IN THE BATTLE ABOARD THE ROSSLARE FERRY AND WAS THEN LOST FROM THE REST OF THE FAMILY WHEN THE COUNTRY WAS SO-CALLED EVACUATED BY THE POWERS THAT BE.

WE KNOW SOME GOOD SONGS ABOUT THE FAMILY YOU MIGHT LIKE TO HEAR AND WE WERE WONDERING IF YOU MIGHT HAVE SOME FROM YOUR FAMILY AS WELL, WHETHER OR

not you're of the same family as us.

we WERE GLAD TO LEARN ABOUT YOU BUT SORRY TO HEAR YOU ARE HAVING TO WORK FOR PIRATES. if it's FOOD OR A PLACE TO LIVE THAT YOU'RE NEEDING, WE.D BE HAPPY TO HAVE YOU COME TO LIVE WITH US HERE ON PETAYBEE IF YOU CAN QUIT YOUR JOB. we

would love to have you and your family, if you have one.

regards,

chumia and murphy of the tanana bay o'neills on petaybee

P.S. could you please put in a word with your boss and ask that sean's wife AND RELATIONS AND THE NICE COMPANY LADY ARE KINDLY TREATED AS WE'RE ALL VERY WORRIED ABOUT THEM?

Then the screen scrolled on to a second note.

THERE IS NOTHING A PERSON CAN DO IN REGARD TO RANSOM HERE. SS

Dinah O'Neill ran the message through several times. This was not going the way it should have. Not in any way, shape, or form. She hated to take Namid's accusation to heart: that she was losing her touch; she preferred the Yana-woman's suggestion that she had been badly informed.

She pondered the brief sentence from Shongili-for who else would be "SS"? "Nothing a person could do," huh? Well, that was certainly in line with Yana's allegation. Wouldn't the anxious husband of a newly wedded pair try to bargain? Not, Dinah came to the reluctant conclusion, if he had no control over this planet entity, this sentient world. Then she turned to the bulk of the message-so innocent and naive. If she could get out of her job as a pirate? What ingenuousness. Part of Shongili's ploy? No, the words had the ring of truth.

Further to that, which the Tanana Bay O'Neills couldn't have known at all, was that she was a descendant of that Rory O'Neill, Handy Red O'Neill, who had been so proud of righting that battle on the Rosslare Ferry. The last stand of the Virtuous, he'd called it. And he'd composed a roaring saga which was one of the few memories she had of her own redheaded father: bellowing out the chorus to the many stanzas of that saga. Oh, she'd have a family song to sing to these O'Neills of Tanana Bay, she would indeed.

Abruptly she clicked on the holoshield control set in one of her rings and depressed another button to summon Megenda.

Almost immediately, Megenda reported to his Aurelian captain. "Yes, Captain Louchard?"

"It's time to leave. We're going to Petaybee, Megenda."

The man's broken teeth showed in a grin. "Aye-aye, Cap'n."

Kilcoole

16

Sean?" Simon Furey came charging into the governor's mansion. "I got someone here from..." Furey frowned down at the plasfilm sheets trying to curl around his gloved hand from the static in the cold air he brought in with him. "Nakatira Structural Cubes?"

"Never heard of them."

"I have!" Furey said, impressed.

Sean reached for the film and they both had trouble unwinding it to the point where the consignment note and the invoice could be separated and read. "I don't know a thing about this," he added, shaking his head, especially over the fat letters of the no charge stamped on the invoice.

Furey jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the junked cabin room. "They'd be damned good things to have, y'know."

Sean looked about him, snorting at the confusion of tiers of boxes on every available space, boxes into which Una and her helpers filed the stuff that every shuttle brought down to dump in his already stuffed premises.

Adak came in just then, waving more plasfilm. "The most humongous slabs just arrived, Sean. They gotta be unloaded and put up, and I dunno." Adak's eyes were wide in his round face. "What are they?"

"Climatically resistant and atmospherically adjustable additional autonomous units, complete with all facilities, that can be erected instantly and with little or no site preparation," said the rangy redheaded individual who had followed Adak in. "But I gotta tell ya, man, we gotta fix and run or we miss the next delivery, and that's not company policy. We only got three days to site these things, and you're lucky to get delivery so quickly, considering how far in advance clients usually gotta book Nakatira Cubes. So where do we put 'em?"

"Them?"

The redhead flicked fingers at the film in Sean's suddenly limp fingers.

"Five of 'em." The redhead held up four gloved fingers. The gloves seemed to be his only concession to Petaybean weather, although the outfit he wore was probably one of those lightweight thermal beauties like the ones Clotworthy had brought with him from Herod's. Now the Nakatira emissary looked about him. "This the governor's mansion?" he asked incredulously, assessing the clutter in a single, not-quite-contemptuous glance.

"How big are these cubes?" Sean asked.

The redhead snorted. "Hell, man, you could put six of this bitty place in one and still get a rattle."

"Then I want one right beside this," Sean said, suddenly decisive. "Adak, get some axes and-"

The redhead held up a restraining hand. "No sweat, mate. Oscar O'Neill, the Great O.O., will take care of that detail. Like we claim, little or no site preparation is needed."

"What wouldja do with them trees then?" Adak demanded, his head protruding from his parka like a turtle's.

"You need the wood? We keep the wood," the Great O.O. said amiably. "That's one down, Governor Shongili..." And Oscar O'Neill paused to receive Sean's disposition of the others.

"Make a much better school than the latchkay does..." Simon Furey suggested appealingly.

"Done!"

"School's to be nearby?" O.O. asked.

"Just up the road," Simon replied eagerly, pointing in the right direction.

"Road?" O.O. asked condescendingly.

"Road," Sean said firmly, and wondered what to do with the others.

"Kin I make a suggestion, mate?" O.O. asked, and when Sean nodded, he said, "Well, I spent a good deal of good daylight e-rection time trying to find you. Wouldn't have found you at all if not for Cap'n Greene and his flyin' machine. He came along just as I was about to mark this lot 'return to sender.' Why not install one cube at that so-called SpaceBase of yours to direct incoming traffic and take"-he looked around him again-"some of the paperwork outta here."

Sean couldn't have agreed more; he was baffled by the whole situation. The no charge aspect of this largesse could not be explained by O.O. All he knew "was what was on the dockets, man," and "no charge" meant just that, and who were they to argue with Head Office? By the time the necessary decisions were made, Sean had a new office block adjacent to the marital cabin; awed Kilcoole had a new school; Petaybee Admin had its own-if empty-premises on the edge of the SpaceBase; there'd be a temporary "holding area" cube installed at SpaceBase as well, to take care of the unwanted visitors already cramping local dwellings; and Lon-ciana was going to find herself the recipient of the fourth Nakatira Structural Cube. If she was having half the trouble managing the Southern Continent that Sean was in the North, she'd need the space to do it in, too.

As abruptly as O.O. and his men had appeared, they left.

"He was as good as his word, wasn't he?" Una commented, standing in the new-fallen snow in front of the cube as the governor's "staff1 took stock of their new premises. "It's just forty-eight hours since they arrived."

"So it is," Sean said, totally bemused by the speed with which this had all been accomplished. O.O. and his men hadn't even paused when snow had whipped around so thickly that visibility was almost nil-despite the banks of heavy-duty lights that had been put up for work through the night.

The building had been sunk into the ground, neatly placed behind a screen of Kilcoole's conifers so that it didn't even seem to be an intruder. A unanimous decision had voted for an outer coating of a barklike paint so that it resembled-at least in color-the other cabins along the road. Of course, the upper level did tower above the neighboring buildings, but there were trees behind it that were taller still. It was empty, of course, for no one had had time to transfer anything.

"What a difference a day makes!" Sean said.

Cautiously approaching the new building, Marduk let out a little snarl. He was pacing along the front of it, sniffing here and there and usually sneezing at the chemical smells clinging to the newly erected building, pawing at the one or two mounds of disturbed dirt left over.

"Well, no good standing around out here, is there?" Sean said and took the three entrance steps in one.

Gal Three

1 tell you, Louchard's real ship only just left," Charas vehemently insisted to Commander Nal an Hon. She was once more dressed in the gear of a station brat, but there was nothing of the child in her manners as she leaned across the desk, hands gripping the edge, her white knuckles demonstrating the intensity of her belief in what she said. "That's why you never found the kidnapped victims in any of the ships that had disembarked."

"Your instrumentation could be faulty, Charas," the commander said patiently.

"Faulty my aunt's left toenail!" She swung away from the desk and began pacing. "My instruments registered the original Mayday from both Madame Algemeine and the colonel. I followed them to Cargo Bay 30-"

"And followed the shuttle..."

"So I did, but the shuttle seemed the obvious escape vehicle... and we were going so fast... My implant returns only life-sign readings past a certain distance." Charas shook her head: they all had been sure the shuttle had the victims. "But the signal from the implant suggests that Madame Algemeine is still on Gal Three. I got the strongest response in the cargo bay, only there's some sort of a scrambler system that diffuses so one can't accurately locate the source." She held up a hand when the commander started to interrupt her. "Until just this past half hour. Operations say that only five ships have requested clearance in the past hour- hours, that is," she corrected herself, her smile grim, "since it's taken me longer to reach you with this information. Freighters, all of them, incapable of moving at any great speed."

"Look, I want Madame Algemeine back as much as you do, but I've only so many forces to handle search and recover operations."

"Madame Algemeine will, of course, reimburse your costs. What are you waiting for, Commander?"

"Nothing," he said abruptly. Depressing the Alert pad, he issued instructions, detailing the descriptions and numeric IDs of the five ships to be stopped and boarded.

"Ingenious, you must admit," Charas said, relaxing now that she had gotten him to act, "remaining on Gal Three while the first of the search and boards were being initiated. But then we know that Louchard uses state-of-the-art technology. This abduction was very carefully planned."

She sighed, rubbing her face; she'd been working, with only catnaps to refresh her, ever since she'd received the first Mayday: prowling about the immense cargo bay, checking every single ship in the facility time and time again, trying to locate exactly which of the hundred or so ships hid the victims. But her locator, despite being state-of-the-art, displayed so many "echoes," even when placed against a hull, that she had been unable to pinpoint the target ship. Fortunately, her disguise had saved her from retaliation by sonie of the ships' personnel: aliens in particular were apt to take offense if you were seen hanging about their vessels for no apparent purpose.

At the outset of this incident, she'd seen the women in the company of Macci Sendal, so she hadn't been as close on Yana's heels as she normally would. For that she blamed herself. Getting slack in her middle years: she'd have to quit this kind of work if she was going to be less than top efficient all the time.

So the pair waited. Commander an Hon courteously supplied her with a meal and then a shower in his private facilities while fresh clothing was procured for her. She was adrenaline-poor at this point, having pushed herself so hard for days, and she almost nodded off when the first reports came in. The slowest of the five vessels had been apprehended: it was, as it was supposed to be, a drone grain carrier, and all its components checked out as they should. The second was carrying only two holds of cargo, to the captain's disgust, and he was in no fit mood to be stopped on such a spurious charge. The third was also innocent, and the fourth, but of the fifth, all they found were large fragments of the hull.

"Wasn't blown apart, wasn't hit by any space flot, wasn't burned or melted or anything, Commander. Just like the hull had been a weevy-fruit, split open down the axis."

An Hon and Charas exchanged despairing looks.

"Damn that Louchard!" Charas felt as near to tears as she had the day her mother died, when she'd been eight years old.

"Any residuals to track?" an Hon asked.

"We're searching, sir, but they could have just used the drift to take 'em the way they wanted to go and, begging your pardon, it could take weeks to do a search pattern and we'd still not be sure we got the right trail."

"Return to base, Captain, and thank you." Grimly Commander an Hon looked at Charas. "You still have a life signal from Madame Algemeine, don't you?"

Charas touched the point on her mastoid bone and inclined her head positively. Madame Algemeine was the only client for whom she would have permitted such an invasion of her personal privacy: she owed her, for her life and her sanity.

"We can check with Sally Point-Jefferson, too," she said.

The tall lean commander waved aside that suggestion with a twitch of his lips. "If she got the blast, so would you!" When a death occurred, those carrying the implant tuned to a person experienced an unforgettable blast.

"Now what? The kidnappers didn't leave a final warning of any kind, did they?"

"Nothing past the last one M'sser Klausewitch passed on to us."

"Klausewitch," Charas murmured, and locked eyes with the commander. "Odd man to be chosen as messenger. And Madame herself cancelled Millard and Sally as bodyguards?"

"Hmmm." An Hon shrugged at the whimsies of the rich. He would have had an operative with Yana in the head, in her tub, and under her bed, but who would have thought a kidnapping of someone of Madame Algemeine's status would occur in this day and age after the Amber Unicorn fiasco! True, there were occasional incidents involving lesser lights like merchants, captains, executives, and enough freaks eking out a marginal living on any big station like this to account for GBA and "accidents," as well as extortionist intimidating, but nothing on the scale of this felony. "Madame Algemeine had some critical meeting or other that they had to prepare for, and doubtless she felt that she was well enough known-with Klausewitch along-to inhibit any confrontation."

"And who let the two kids loose?"

"That has already been dealt with," the commander said in a hard voice. The "unseen eye" supposed to follow the young folk had missed their departure from the Algemeine apartments. His license had been revoked, and he was currently looking for any work he could get.

"That Klausewitch fellow," Charas said, returning to one aspect of this whole affair that nagged her like a damaged nerve. "What else have you discovered about him?"

"I got a repeat of the original clearance. He certainly wouldn't have been hired by Rothschild's if there was anything suspicious about him. But I've asked again for a comprehensive."

"He was sure green-e-o at Algemeine's first thing that morning. And I heard he doesn't usually rise until midday."

"That is true."

"Or is he just queer for pregnant women?" Charas asked with feminine cynicism.

"There was that case"-an Hon paused, rubbing his chin speculatively -"where a salesman with an impeccable record was convicted of grand larceny following an investigation of his accounts. He admitted falling under the spell of this Louchard personage. It is a possibility," an Hon admitted. "As the Great Sleuth remarked, when you discount the improbable and only the impossible remains, that will be the answer."

"You've got surveillance on him?"

"You may be sure of that, and on anyone else even remotely involved in this affair, up to and including our society hostess, Pleasaunce Ferrari-Emool."

"Yeah, her!"

"She's been known to associate with some unlikely characters."

"Hmmm."

"Get some sleep, Charas. You're not good to anyone in your present state, though you cleaned up better than I thought you would."

Charas managed a grin. "Any place here I can catch a few winks?" she asked, rising. "Don't want to be far away if you need me. And I'm not all that sure I could make it to my digs."

When Madame Algemeine had imported Charas as her Gal Three "unseen eye" she had naturally introduced the woman to Commander an Hon. Charas had assisted him from time to time when her principal client was absent from the station, so he had a high degree of respect for her capabilities, the present situation notwithstanding. He himself showed her to one of the cabins reserved for unexpected visitors. She lay on her side, positioned her legs comfortably, and immediately her breathing went into a deep-sleep pattern. He activated the comm link and left.

He should be getting some gen back on Klausewitch, and he couldn't imagine why it was taking so long. Because of the prestige of its special residents, Gal Three had priority clearance up to top-secret levels. Surely Klausewitch was not above that category.

On board the pirate ship

17

There!" Diego cried. "I can feel the vibrations now. Can't you?" His tone was slightly accusatory."Yes, actually, I can," Yana said, her fingers splayed on the bulkhead.

"And the air has definitely changed," Marmion said, sniffing. "I've never noticed before how different air can smell."

"You would if you lived where it's pure," Bunny said somewhat condescendingly, "and then had to breathe the muck. Oh, your launch had good air, but some places on Gal Three it was... well, it was downright stinky. Like the stuff that hovers over SpaceBase back home." The last few words came out in a tone that everyone recognized as homesick. But Bunny made an effort, inhaled the bad air, and turned resolute.

"We'll get back to Petaybee, gatita, I know we will," Diego said soothingly.

"Hell's bells," Yana said. "For all we know we may be heading there right now." She looked queryingly at Namid.

He shrugged his helplessness. "Louchard is known to be devious but rarely direct. He likes to hunt, stalk his prey, and then snatch."

"He makes a practice of kidnap?" Marmion asked, startled, and for the first time fear colored her expression.

"Not that I know of," Namid said as reassuringly as Diego had spoken to Bunny. "Now, don't you worry yourself, Madame..."

"I thought we'd reached the first-name basis, Namid," Marmion said, emphasizing his name.

"Thank you. Well, let me repeat: No, Louchard tends to deal in inanimate cargo, which is why I'm really surprised to see him turn to abduction."

"Cargoes being unable to testify in court, right?" Yana remarked cynically.

"Exactly, and once sold on can rarely be traced, since so often they are the raw materials which are turned into different goods entirely."

"Tell me," Yana said with a sudden surge of mirth, "does Louchard then steal those goods and sell them on?"

Namid's face and eyes lit with answering amusement. "I really haven't been with this happy band of free-souls long enough to have observed that." Then he sobered. "I can only extrapolate from what Dinah used to tell me. And, of course, I'd no idea that she was generally transporting stolen goods." He sighed unhappily, and now it was Marmion's turn to console him.

"But you do agree that we're breathing a different kind of air right now, don't you?" Bunny insisted.

"I do," Marmion said, and the others nodded. "Clever of you to have noticed, Bunny. Although why the pirate ship remained so long at Gal Three..."

"That's the easiest part to guess," Bunny said impatiently. "Who'd look on the station for us?"

"A good point," Marmion said magnanimously. "Your pirate captain is indeed a devious man."

"I wonder if he's an orphan," Namid mused, trying vainly to cheer himself up.

"An orphan?" Bunny exclaimed in surprise. She'd been one most of her life and had never found the condition easy. She nearly lost Namid's response, because thinking about being an orphan reminded her that, if the pirate should waste them all, 'Cita would be all alone again and lose what precious little self-confidence she'd gained since knowing she was Bunny's sister and a Rourke.

"Yes, an orphan," Namid went on briskly. "To further the analogy of the pirates I mentioned earlier."

Bunny forced her mind off sad thoughts and listened while, with such music and words as he remembered from the score of The Pirates of Penzance, he regaled them and thus passed the time until their next meal as pleasantly as their circumstances allowed.

They call this 'spring'?" asked Zing Chi, chief representative of the Asian Esoteric and Exotic Company Ltd., as he glanced around the desolate sweep of the broad valley, soggy with melt, yet burgeoning with insect life and the blooming of plants that the insects were helping to germinate. He was thoroughly disgusted and wanted to leave when they'd only just managed to get to Petaybee South. The transport service on which he had booked his team had been terminated and their monies returned, but the refund alone was barely sufficient to bribe their way to the planet's surface, to this particular, comparatively unsatisfactory setdown point. The southern pole of the planet did contain some of the botanicals listed, but it was the northern continent that was the documented source of what he had been assured were riches of herbal gold-and those elusive qualities in unicorn horns and cats' whiskers for which his company could charge their oldest customers vast fortunes.

Zing Chi was one of the best field operators, able to strip acres of plants by bloom, leaf, stem, and root in no time at all. Some of the vegetation in sight looked familiar and was supposed to be plants that had been brought to Petaybee during the initial terraforming so they could adapt to this new world. But the nearest were only ground cover, cultivated to keep topsoil from being blown away.

He had been given no warning that his entire team would have to do all of their collecting on foot. They had seen no villages so far, no cities, no place to purchase transport of any sort. Zing Chi began to fear that there was none to purchase.

Fortunately, his people were very good walkers and walk they did, gathering, stripping, and neatly cataloguing anything vaguely resembling the plant materials listed, even those available elsewhere.

After five days, they had laid bare a strip approximately fifteen miles long and a half a mile wide. It took all the animals they could find to feed them, for this time of year, there were no berries or nuts of any sort remaining. Zing Chi's team consisted of a hundred and fifty people, and they required much food.

One day the son of one of his senior men, Lu Han, brought what looked like a small spotted lion cub in his arms.

"Which whiskers do we need, boss?" he asked Zing Chi. "This little fellow will need some of them for his balance and space sense. He won't mind losing a couple though, I think. He's a good cub."

"Do as you're told and the animal will have no need for whiskers. We haven't enough to eat. Kill it, take the whiskers, and skin it. The rest is for the soup pot. Our clients have specified that they want the whiskers of orange cats only, but since they do not seem to know enough to assist us in reaching that which we need to harvest, I do not suppose they will know the whiskers of an orange cat from those of this cub. The bounty will be the same."

"But, boss..."

"Do as I say."

The boy nodded, and the cub, as if sensing that the decision had gone against him, began to wiggle in his arms.

18

Cita caught Johnny Greene as he boarded his copter for the trip south to help O.O. and his men install Loncie Ondelacy's cube. Coaxtl padded behind. The cat did not think highly of flying machines.

Birds are for eating, the cat protested. Riding in them makes one feel that one is a youngling being carried in the beak of a prey-bird for the feeding of her chicks. One does not like this feeling.

"Stop complaining," 'Cita said. "You'll like being in the South again. Hi, Captain Johnny!"

" 'Cita! How are you and your fine furry friend this morning?" the pilot asked, grinning down at her.

"I am far better than I have any right to expect, though I worry for the sake of my sister and Auntie Yana and Diego. But this one"-she pointed to Coaxtl-"longs to see her old caves again. A week ago she said she was fine but suddenly she growls in her sleep and talks only of going home. I heard you were taking one of these big houses to Loncie and Pablo, and I hoped that we might burden you with ourselves. I would like to show Carmelita and Isabella what I've learned in school. I have many new songs to sing, however poorly, for those who were so kind to a foolish stranger before I came here."

"What does your uncle say?"

"He doesn't mind. He says you are making regular trips now and could perhaps bring us back in a day or two? So we will not trouble Loncie for too long?"

"Sure, if it's okay with Sean. I know Loncie and Pablo and the kids will be glad to see you again. They're not going to believe how you've filled out in just a few months!"

All of these words had to be shouted over the roar of the copter's great engines, but at last 'Cita made herself comfortable in the back, and Coaxtl grumblingly curled up in a tight ball at her feet.

'Cita enjoyed the trip very much. She liked watching as O. O'Neill's special jet-crane hoisted the great boxes in the air and flew with them dangling, just so, so that the weight did not upset the aircraft. Johnny's aircraft carried lighter cargo, in addition to herself and Coaxtl-more administrative paperwork bundled by Una Monaghan to go to Loncie Ondelacy.

'Cita loved it when they reached the sea and she could see that the ice was already beginning to thicken off the northern coast. Whales and seals danced in the shadow of the aircraft, and dolphins leaped high, as if trying to touch the dangling cargo with their noses before diving again.

Gradually the color of the water began to change from gray-green to brighter, jade green to pale gray-blue and to the deep bright blue of the glacier crevice, then back again to blue-green, and almost lime. The air clouded with steam, and below the water boiled and hissed. Off to the right, a little island stuck up above the water, probably not even a mile wide yet, but it seemed to grow even as 'Cita watched, and already parts of it were seamed with green. Beyond stretched other such islands, and 'Cita wondered how long it would take them to touch and make one big one.

Coaxtl was sleeping and didn't seem to be wondering about anything, but she growled and sometimes snarled and her paws curled and uncurled. 'Cita wished she knew what the cat was dreaming about, but Coaxtl only spoke to her in her head on purpose-'Cita was still too stupid and insensitive to read the great cat's mind.

Then they were beyond the steam and the islands and back into the iceberg-clogged waters near the southern coast. Breakup was just beginning there, even as winter was beginning in the north, and great rushes of water spumed in the air as the icebergs broke free and calved from the ice pack. She saw a white bear jump from one piece of ice to the other, trying to reach shore. The bears were very hungry and ate people, but still she hoped he made it. He was trying so hard.

They didn't even stop and refuel at Portage but flew straight on to Sierra Padre, where Loncie and Pablo and their family lived.

But as they passed over the broad plain between rivers and mountain ranges, they saw a strange sight. The ground was as bare for miles around as if it had been closely grazed by some animal, and many people were bent over, harvesting what looked like weeds. 'Cita could see no reason for it.

Johnny flew low, buzzing the people playfully-but also curiously, 'Cita thought. These might be like the hunters and the funny people in white robes and the serious businesspeople she had seen before.

Whatever they were, Coaxtl didn't like them. Without so much as a warning, the cat sprang to her feet and threw herself against the door.

"Coaxtl, no! We're high up! You would be killed."

Coaxtl scratched long rents in the steel of the door, snarling. One will go out. Now.

'Cita ran to throw her arms around the cat and was dragged to the window; as the copter canted to the right, she suddenly found herself looking into the face of a boy a few years older than herself, with features that reminded her somewhat of Pablo's. He had been holding something, and his arms were still stretched toward it, where it cut a swath through the untouched undergrowth.

Coaxtl's scratching grew less furious as Johnny circled the area twice, thoroughly confusing the Nakatira Company crane copter, which hovered uncertainly before flying slowly forward, waiting until Johnny finished his survey. The people on the ground below looked up. They were not well dressed for winter.

When the people were at last far behind them, Coaxtl heaved a great sigh and jumped up on the seat 'Cita had occupied, parts of her hanging over the edges. 'Cita plopped down within the overhang of the cat's giant paws and scrunched the thick soft fur of her friend's belly with her fingers.

Coaxtl did not speak for the remainder of the flight, though she rumbled contentedly from time to time as 'Cita stroked her. 'Cita would have spoken, but the roar of the copter jets was too loud, and besides, she did not know what to say.

As soon as the copter landed and the door was open, Coaxtl streaked out and bounded away.

"Wait!" 'Cita cried.

The Home is in need, Coaxtl's voice told her. Bring help.

Johnny jumped down from the copter and helped 'Cita out. "Looks like your friend had an urgent appointment."

"She said the Home needed help," 'Cita told him.

"Yes," Johnny said. "I can see that. Don't worry, 'Cita. As soon as we've had a word with Loncie and Pablo and O.O. installs his cube, we're outta here, and I think we need to pay our respects to the planet's newest guests and ask them what the frag they're doing here. I have a hunch we'll find Coaxtl there."

"You are wise, Captain Johnny. Surely that is where Coaxtl will go, for she opposed their presence." 'Cita pointed to the long rents in the steel door.

Johnny groaned. "That's not going to be easy to explain to the company."

But there was no need to explain to Loncie and Pablo, beyond telling them of the barren swath the newcomers were cutting. Loncie told O.O. to put the cube behind the house, and ran out the door just ahead of her husband, who grabbed both of their coats and summoned several neighbors. All of them crowded into the helicopter, pushing 'Cita away to climb in before her.

She knew they were adults and much wiser and stronger than she. She knew she was being wicked and disobedient to crowd her way aboard. But Coaxtl was her friend and did not speak to others here.

She stuck out her chin and lowered her brows and tried to look defiant and invisible at the same time, but felt a pair of hands lift her over the heads of the adults seated on the floor, and found herself dragged into Loncie's lap.

"So you come with us, eh, Pobrecita?"

"Sr'Cita said. "I do."

"Bueno," Loncie said, patting her back.

The copter set down and the doors opened. People poured out. Not many, compared to the people on the ground. Only seven passengers, plus 'Cita and Johnny.

The newcomers stayed well back of the rotor blades until Johnny shut them down. Then they pushed forward, a handsome golden-skinned man with black hair and black, hooded eyes at the fore. All of the people were carrying things 'Cita couldn't see clearly.

"Sl&nte," Johnny said. "This lady is Lonciana Ondelacy, the regional administrator of the southern continent. This is her husband, Pablo Ghompas, and these here are what you might call the county council."

The man made a slight bow in the direction of Pablo and Loncie. "How kind of you to greet us."

Loncie inclined her head slightly, cautiously. "What brings you here, senor?"

"A mission of mercy, madame. My name is Zing Chi. I am of the Asian E and E Company Limited. We have been sent to collect certain substances to heal the sick and ease the ravages of age. Many of these things are obtainable only here. But we had no transportation until you arrived, and no way of finding what we seek. You can help us?"

'Cita did not like his smile and hung behind Loncie's broad back.

"We'll be pleased to, honored guest," Pablo said, before anyone else could say anything. "If only you will tell us what you seek."

Zing Chi reached into his pocket and pulled forth a written list. Pablo accepted it, handing it to Loncie, who could read, having once been in the employ of the company.

"What is this?" Loncie asked, anger rising in her voice as she read. "The whiskers of orange cats? Unicorn horns?"

"Oh, my goodness me," Pablo said, before she could tell them what she thought of their list. "What does it all mean? Gentlemen, whatever would you use such things for?"

"Unicorn horn is well known as an aphrodisiac and a preventer of poisonings, good sir," Zing Chi said with another bow. "Most valuable. The whiskers of the orange cats are said to prolong youth and good health."

Pablo shook his head. "Not here, I'm afraid. Someone has misled your informant."

"Is that true?"

"Oh, my goodness, yes. The unicorn horn you find on Petaybee is no good at all for aphrodisiacs."

"Is it not?" Zing Chi asked politely.

"You have been misled," Pablo said. "That is understandable, sir, since undoubtedly your information could not have come from anyone who actually had harvested the worthless horn of one of the Northern curly stags in the winter. The horns are good for cutting ice, which is what the curly-corn uses it for. No more than that."

"Are you absolutely certain?" Zing Chi asked with apparent courtesy.

Pablo sighed and hung his head. "You may ask my wife."

Loncie shook her head sadly. "It is true. We had Captain Greene fly us down the horn of a curly-coat killed in an avalanche so that Pablo could try the cure, but, alas-it was no good. Nothing did any good, in fact, until he ate the polar bear balls."

"Polar bear balls?" several of the men gasped inquiringly.

"Ah, si. When I finally recovered, I was muy macho in a way that only the polar bear balls of Petaybee can make a man who has lost his will to..." Pablo made what was often considered a rude or lewd gesture.

"I will add that to the list, then, sir," Zing Chi said.

"Of course, with all Petaybean remedies, there is a secret in the gathering as well as in the mixing, you understand," Pablo said.

"What secrets would those be, kind sir?" Zing Chi asked.

"If I told, they wouldn't be secrets, would they?"

"We are willing to pay special-informants-handsomely for research information," Zing Chi said.

"Oh, did you hear that, Pablo?" Johnny asked. "They'll pay us handsomely, I could get my copter door repaired, and you and Loncie could reinsulate your hacienda."

"I don't know, Captain Johnny," Pablo said, shaking his head. "Once the secret is sold, it is no longer a secret, and it is very dangerous."

Loncie grabbed her husband's arm. "We could build new bedrooms for our fourteen youngest offspring, corazdn," she said.

'Cita looked up at her curiously. Loncie and Pablo had only Carmelita and Isabella.

"That is true," Pablo said. "Very well. But we are Petaybeans, remember, and you gentlemen perhaps should not risk your lives professionally. It must be said that taking polar bear balls is done only when one has dire personal need, as I did. The secret, you see, is..." He beckoned the man forward and whispered fairly loudly in his ear. "The polar bear must be alive when you take his balls. You sneak up behind the bear and quickly tie a string around his balls. Then you must follow him around until they drop off."

"Why not just kill the bear and harvest the balls?" Zing Chi asked, not whispering.

Johnny pretended to be shocked. "You didn't tell him that part, did you, Pablo? Well, I guess as long as the bear's out of the bag, you ought to know. My great-granddad, when he first came to Petaybee, needed bear balls but he was in a big hurry and he killed the bear. He got what he wanted okay but only used it once before he dropped dead in bed. Did die happy, though."

"And have we the correct ingredient for youthfulness?"

Johnny looked at the list sideways and smirked. "Cat whiskers? Who was the joker who made this list out anyway? No, mate, cat whiskers are no good to anybody but the beastie that wears 'em most of the time. The way I figure it, your informant felt something sticky and figured it must be cat's whiskers without checkin' his source. What they use for prolonging youth and health up north is coo-berry thorns. And I'll tell you the secret to that for free. You got to get the protected ones, in the middle of the patch, to get the best results."

"Thank you," Zing Chi said with a bow, extending his hand and pointing the object in it at Johnny. "What you see in my hand, and in the hands of my workers, is a laser harvester, which is capable of flaying a man as easily as a tree. With the use of these implements, we will gladly take your suggestions under advisement and procure the items you suggest in addition to those we seek. First, however, we require transportation to the sources of these things. This you will provide us while the county council, as you call them, stay here as the guests of my company."

19

On the Pirate Jenny

We've stopped," Bunny said, suddenly sitting up straight on 'the edge of her bunk. She'd been leaning against the bulkhead and watching Diego write down the lyrics of the patter song. Some of the words Diego was transcribing, like "Major General," were new words to her, but it helped to watch him put them down. She could sound out the syllables, as he'd been teaching her to do, and then later, when they were allowed out to walk the corridors-Louchard's latest relaxation of the Rules of their Incarceration-he would teach her the proper pronunciation. Sometimes words didn't sound the way they looked, which only made the chore of reading them harder. She had complained bitterly that words should look like they sounded.

"Whaddya mean, we've stopped?" Diego demanded, laying his hand, palm flat, against the metal wall. "I still feel vibrations."

"Yeah, but they've changed," Bunny said.

"Yeah, and how much spaceflight have you done?"

"Enough!"

"Children," Marmion said, in her most reasonable, let-us-not-quibble-over-trivia tone.

She'd had to use a lot of that lately as the confinement became less and less bearable. Even learning The Pirates ofPenzance and the other Gilbert and Sullivan operettas that Namid knew was beginning to pall. At first it had been great fun, entertaining and engrossing. Marmion had a lovely light soprano voice and had been cast as Mabel, while contralto Yana had managed a creditable Ruth, Diego a decent Frederic, and Bunny, aided and abetted by Namid, became chorus and all the other parts. Bunny liked the piratical chorus best and was learning the part of the Pirate Captain-since he was an orphan, as she gleefully discovered at the end of the show. Between learning the lines and the lyrics, many an hour had been passed.

"Look, Diego, you may have been brought up on a high-tech station," Bunny said, ignoring Marmion's attempt at pacification, "but you sure aren't good at reading signs. I've had to, or I'd've been buried under avalanches and snow slides and all kinds of other hazards."

"All planetary!"

"Well, a ship is like a small planet, isn't it? And the vibrations have just altered! I was right about the air, wasn't I? Why can't I be right about the vibrations?"

"She may be, you know," Namid interposed with a wry grin. "The Jenny's got speed in her, and it's been three days since the air source altered. That'd be about the necessary travel time from Gal Three to Petaybee, wouldn't it, Marmion?"

"Yes, it would," Marmion said, exhaling. This experience was unlike a boardroom brangle and as intense as any takeover or merge struggle, and she was finding her tolerance and understanding stretched to the limit. If it hadn't been for Namid's presence and diversionary tactics, she was sure there would have been fairly nasty squabbles, due simply to the pressures of so much proximity. Even with the most fiercely contested of her financial deals, she'd always been able to leave the premises and cool down. She was fond of Bunny and Diego; she genuinely liked Yana, who was bearing up nobly. She was more than a little fascinated by the complex personality of the astronomer, who had such divergent interests and informations: she'd never met anyone else so catholic in his tastes and so accomplished. Maybe she had dwelt too much in the rarefied atmosphere of her social sphere. One could become too specialized. Her time on Petaybee had opened that door, and this experience was showing her a vast panorama she hadn't known existed-the panorama and pertinences of enforced idleness.

Dinah O'Neill had managed to gain them more privileges: better food, the daily tour of the corridors as exercise. Putting their heads together one night, Marmion and Namid had discussed the size of the ship. He had been on the Jenny somewhat longer than they had, but he admitted that generally he was far more interested in things light-years distant than he was in his immediate surroundings. Still, he agreed that they must have been on a larger ship than the Jenny when they'd been marched into Louchard's presence that first time. Bunny, who could describe the different types of snow to be found in a three-mile area with distinction and accuracy, was able to describe the seemingly identical corridors with the same eye for minutiae. The Jenny's captain's quarters, for instance, were adjacent to the crew's quarters, separated only by one passageway, and the ups and downs suggested auxiliary corridors connecting the Jenny to a larger craft.

"Deliberately confusing us as to the size and type of vessel," Marmion had said.

"Two ships then," Namid said, scratching his whiskers. "Had to be," Marmion agreed.

Diego and Bunny had told the others about the first shuttle, the one that had originally attracted them to Cargo Bay 30, an escapade that had ended in kidnapping. The two had apologized profusely and with much self-castigation-and with the inevitable "ifs": if they hadn't been curious, if they hadn't sciwed off on their own, if they hadn't put Marmion and Yana to the trouble of coming after them...

That brought up the other question: What was Machiavelli Sendal-Archer-Klausewitch's role in all this? Apart from being tagged as messenger boy for the piratical ransom demand.

"Pies Ferrari-Emool might know more about him," Marmion had said, "but I didn't. He was the newly appointed CEO of a Rothschild's subsidiary and would certainly have had an in-depth security check done on him to get to such a rank. I mean, how could he possibly have alerted the pirates that we were in Cargo Bay 30? What I'd very much like to know is where was Charas during all this?"

"Charas?" Namid asked.

"Nevermind, 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 Corn-net, 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 him fine. Though there was enough of a snowcover to run the dogs through the woods, the river had only a thin crust of ice on it, not strong enough yet for the snocles to use as a road. The really heavy weather was still to settle in, but he sure hoped Intergal would settle out soon so they could get to work. With all the people coming in and nowhere to put them, they'd be right glad of any sort of shelter that could be cobbled together.

A small vessel had just set down at the station, but Adak hadn't seen any passengers emerge, just the crews loading up the sort of stores that wouldn't be harmed by sitting out in the snow on the plascrete. Yet two people were now striding up to the door: a slim little woman with red hair, tufted with silver, rynxlike, above her ears and on her crown and lightly sprinkled with snowflakes, and a big guy who walked like a longtime spacer.

"Hello?" Dinah O'Neill smiled her most ingenuous smile at the fur-clad, round-faced little man who peered at them in round-mouthed surprise. "Is this the right place to find out how to get to Tanana Bay?"

"It's the only place, and why would you want to be going to Tanana Bay? It's snowing and we've had blizzard warnings," the little man said. "But much as it pains me to admit it, I'm after bein' the closest thing to a bureaucrat we got here 'cept for the governor. Adak O'Connor, immigrations officer, more or less, at your service, ma'am. And what could I do for you, exactly?"

"I believe I may have some relatives here in a place called Tanana Bay," Dinah O'Neill said, and altered her smile to a sad expression. "I wanted to come and see if we really are related and if perhaps I could make a home here near them, as all my other family have died out and I've nowhere else to go."

"You really must be hard up to come to Petaybee then."

"Blood is thicker than water. Even frozen water," she added, indicating the snowfall. Privately Dinah wondered how the hell the planet could afford state-of-the-art Nakatira Structural Cubes like this one if the planet's economy was so marginal. Still, the old man's response had been immediate and she didn't think him guileful. One wanted to attract folks to a planet, not send 'em running. Or maybe they did, to keep all the wealth to themselves. "Actually, I wouldn't have dreamed of coming here until just recently. I met a man who was telling me about how he'd been down with a committee investigating a so-called sentient planet settled by a lot of the people relocated by Intergal in the time of the Reunification War in Ireland, where my people come from. In the course of his work, the man I talked to had met some people he thought resembled me who shared a similar surname. So, I decided to check it out."

"And how about you, sir?" Adak O'Connor turned to Megenda, who had been standing at bored ease behind Dinah throughout the conversation. "I take it you and the lady here are together? Would you have relatives here, too, then? Maybe some of them Andean folk on the southern continent?"

Megenda cast a wild sideways look at Dinah, and she stepped in smoothly. "He's an old family retainer. I can't pay him any longer, but I couldn't convince him to leave me. He's very protective."

"That's real good of you, sir, to look after the lady so," Adak O'Connor said approvingly. Megenda nodded and glowered.

"Now then," Dinah said brightly. "Where can I get transport to Tanana Bay? Here?"

"Here?" Adak O'Connor crowed a laugh, then sobered. "Well, here's as good a place to hear the bad news as any. Right now, all the curlies are busy with them hunters that keep swarmin' in like summer bite-hards. The dog teams are booked up for the next two weeks."

"What about shuttles? Surely..." She waved vaguely at the spaceport.

"Dama, I don't know where you come from, but there's one copter available to this entire planet, and it's borrowed and late returning from where it went to, and no other air transport at all since Intergal reclaimed all they had."

"Really? I've heard this planet is full of opportunities."

O'Connor snorted, shuffling papers around as if he knew what he was doing with things that had to be read.

"Who was it exactly told you all this? Not that I mean to pry, Dama, but someone misled you proper."

Dinah waved vaguely. "I can't recall his name. I was so excited about what he was saying. He said he'd been here with a Captain Fiske."

"Huh!" O'Connor's eyebrows climbed in search of his receding hairline. "Captain Fiske ain't exactly had Petaybee's best interests at heart. You should be careful where you get your information, Dama. But just because Fiske's a curly's arse ain't no reason you're not welcome. You know anything about deep-sea fishin'?"

"Not much," Dinah admitted, "but I'm willing to learn."

Adak snorted again. "Little thing like you might have fast fingers and be good at gutting, but you're a mite light for fishin' work."

"Is that all that happens at Tanana Bay?"

"Sure, ain't much else up that way."

"Nevertheless, I'd like to go," Dinah said. "Unless, of course, my information was wrong. Where could I get in touch with the town leaders and inquire about my relations?"

"Short of Tanana Bay, nowhere."

"You've a comm unit..."

"Oh, that one! That only tells me when there's spacers comin' in. Ain't got no link to anywhere. Not even Kilcoole."

"Kilcoole?" Dinah paused. "That name sounds familiar."

"You could get to Kilcoole. Snocle'll be back on its regular run soon. Got some mail and stuff for the governor."

"The governor?" Dinah asked as innocently as if she hadn't been sending the man ransom demands for the past few days.

"Yeah, Sean Shongili." The little man seemed to swell his chest out with pride. "He's even got a cube like this one."

"Oh?"

"Had to," Adak rattled on with a broad grin. "Yana's cabin-she's colonel now-was so chock-full of paperwork you could barely find Sean in the middle of it all."

"Really?"

"Yup, and that O. O'Neill..." He peered at her a little too closely for comfort, but she couldn't see how one man would know about the correspondence of everyone on the planet, immigrations officer or no. "I don't suppose you're an O'Neill, too, are you? Never met one before and now they're comin' out of the woodwork."

Dinah contained her start of surprise. She quite deliberately hadn't given the little man her name.

"O. O'Neill?" She could also look exceedingly blank.

"Oscar O'Neill of the Nakatira Structural Cube Company?"

"Never heard of him. Why did you say he was here?" And, Dinah thought to herself, was that how Nakatira Cubes got to backwater-poor Petaybee?

"He brought in the four cubes that we got sent."

"You mean these cubes-they're very expensive articles, in case you didn't know-were just... bestowed on you?"

"Sure were, 'cause we couldn't afford 'em, being new at being an independent planet. Say, can you read and write?"

"Yes," Dinah said, adding mentally, Doesn't everyone, just as she realized that this man could do neither.

"Teacher?" Adak leaned forward eagerly. "We got one at Kilcoole- Wild Star Furey, and she's doing the job a treat. Why, two of our kids already read theirselves right through the primer they were given four weeks ago."

"Well, you're an up-and-coming independent planet then. Big tourist trade?"

"Tourist? Oh, you mean the hunters? Well, we don't know yet how they come to know about us." Clearly, Adak did not approve. "They don't know how to hunt proper on Petaybee. Worse, they keep getting lost and not knowing how to speak to Petaybee to find out where they are."

"Speak to Petaybee?"

"Wai, some of 'em's not done bad. But now the whole kit and kaboodle's here we can't get rid of 'em. Them and the druggists..."

"What would druggists..."

"Oh, you know the sort, Dama, big shots from drug companies. They think all they gotta do is dig plants or strip leaves and make pots of stuff to sell for bags of credits," Adak scoffed. "They've another think coming, and most of 'em is awful slow. They eat a lot, too."

"And that's bad?"

"Wai, lucky we had a good harvest this year, long spring, good summer. Got a bumper crop, or would have if all these folks hadn't dumped on us. Oppor-tooo-nists is what Sean calls 'em. They sure are lousing up our opportunities."

"Maybe we should go to Kilcoole?" Dinah suggested.

Adak eyed her shipsuit and her neat jacket critically. "Wai, you ain't dressed proper for anything but the snocle, Dama, and one of our drivers is unfortunately being held by pirates offa the planet. Sorry for the inconvenience. You can sit over there." He pointed to the rough benches lining the wall. "Won't be too long. A coupla hours till those guys bring us whatever pile o' junk's going to Sean this time."

Dinah and Megenda exchanged glances but obediently sat themselves down. The cube might appear windowless from outside, but there was a strip of one-way plasgas all around, affording them a good view of the activity around the spacer through the light snowfall.

"Captain Louchard's not going to like us waiting about," Megenda murmured to Dinah.

"I know, but it can't be helped," she replied, and crossed her slim legs. She had much to think over while she waited. At least the building was warmish. And the snow would hide the little shuttle craft she and Megenda had arrived in. She fingered the finder in her pocket, which would allow them to locate the craft no matter how much snow covered it.

Adak O'Connor had turned away from them to his comm unit. "... that Muktuk wrote," he was saying. "That's a rog, Una."

Dinah had been a pirate long enough that she didn't care for it when someone was communicating long-distance while she was in the room and without an escape route. She sauntered back up to O'Connor's desk as if bored and sat on the edge of the desk.

"So tell me, Adak. I'm awfully curious about this Tanana Bay. Where is it anyway? Actually, I was wondering if there was a map of this planet or something. I can't imagine the whole place being arctic."

"Well, it is, Dama. Dr. Fiske says that's 'cause we only got continents on the poles with nothin' in the middle-well, not so far. Governor says the planet's workin' on makin' middle bits, but it'll take a spell. Now then, as for a map..." He reached into the middle drawer of a desk and drew forth a much-creased sheet of paper with a monochrome photo on it. "There's not a lot, but Dr. Fiske gave us this serial map and showed us where Kilcoole is. I can show you where other places are, if you got a bit of time."

She smiled sweetly. "From what you say, I've quite a bit of that. So, then, where is it?"

"Right about-well, first you have to find Savoy and Harrison's Fjord, which are-"

"Why, when I want to go to Tanana Bay?"

" 'Snot that simple, Dama. You have to get your reference points like, and-"

The desk was suddenly thrown into shadow as Megenda loomed as only he could. "Stop stalling. Give us the coordinates."

Sean streaked from the Kilcoole cube in a stream of papers when Una gave him Adak's message.

"He said the lady Muktuk and Chumia wrote to was here looking for her relatives, Sean," Una told him. "Said she was an O'Neill if ever he saw one. He'll try to keep them there."

"Are Muktuk and Chumia still in town?"

"No, sir. They went home right after leaving the message."

"Send a team after them, and if you can't locate one, send Sinead on skis. She's the fastest in the village. Damn, without the company here, we're going to have to organize some kind of police force."

"How about Madame Algemeine's organization?"

"Good idea. Ask Whit to get a message to Gal Three. But no one is to move in until we can safeguard Yana and the others."

"Where are you going, sir?"

"For a swim," he said.

Una shook, her head as she watched him tear off his fur vest and shirt as he ran toward the river. Other people bundled up to go outdoors in this weather. Sean stripped down. She liked these people, she really did, but she doubted she'd ever understand them.

Even in seal form, swimming as fast as his flippers could take him, Sean arrived at SpaceBase too late. Adak was on the floor of the cube, a large bump purpling on his head. "Big sucker hit me," he said. "The lady was nice enough, though. They wanted a map to Tanana Bay."

"Did they now? At least we know where they're going."

"Yeah, but I don't think there's any way we can get there in time."

"I can," Sean said grimly.

Fortunately, the river ran close by the cube, and Sean dashed back out the door, still stark naked, dived in, and disappeared under the water. Adak touched his bump gingerly. "Musta got him outta bed or some-thin'," he said. "I coulda loaned him some pants anyway, if he'd stopped long enough..."

JVlegenda was already at the shuttle's controls and Dinah O'Neill was just about to climb in when a disturbance on the river caused her to pause. She was here to suss out this planet and its peculiarities, after all.

Her eye had been caught by the sight of the river ice bursting open, frothing with bubbles, then geysering three feet in the air as a large silvery seal jumped onto the bank. She was about to turn away when the seal turned into a well-built naked man, one of her favorite tourist attractions.

The man ran into the cube, and Dinah smiled.

"You comin'?" Megenda grunted.

"In a moment," she said, and her wait was rewarded. After a few minutes the door to the cube was flung open and the naked man ran out, jumped back into the water, and disappeared beneath the ice.

She saw Adak O'Connor standing in the doorway, scratching his head, looking slightly nonplussed, not much the worse for wear, and not terribly surprised at his visitor's appearance. Perhaps she was being unimaginative in her assessment of the possibilities of this place.

20

Southern continent

Oh, Lordee, thought Johnny, kidnapping's come back into vogue! This is ridiculous. "And so," he said aloud, "just how many d'you think you can cram in my copter?" Zing Chi smiled with pleasant malevolence. "You will call for others." At that point, Loncie snorted, Pablo guffawed, and Johnny just grinned.

"Man, you're looking at the sole and only copter available in this or any other Petaybean hemisphere. And I only got so much fuel left in the tanks. So stop waving that thing at me like it could argue the case for you."

'Cita noticed that the light had gradually faded while they stood talking; it was becoming hard to see the men.

Youngling, you are safe? Coaxtl's nimbly mental voice was like a warm blanket.

"Yes," she answered, automatically looking around to spot her friend.

At the edge of the ring of armed workers she could dimly make out the shadowy form of the boy she had seen earlier from the copter. Beside him, a pair of eyes shone. 'Cita knew it was Coaxtl. Then she saw the next pair of eyes, lower down, and the outline of a pair of smaller tufted ears. Another pair of eyes was beside Coaxtl's then, and, coming from the darkness, another and another and another.

She was about to tug at Captain Johnny's sleeve to point out what she saw when someone screamed and, all at once, several other people did, too.

"Quiet!" Zing Chi hollered. "Quiet, you morons! What is the matter with you?" He strode into the crowd and smacked the first screamer he met. But when he raised his hand to smack the next, a tall man, Zing Chi's head tilted back as his gaze traveled up and up and up, into the snarling face of a standing polar bear.

The crowd suddenly grew much more dense as the hundred or so workers shrank toward the copter and the ring of Petaybean snow lions and polar bears, wolverines and wolves, and other large animals stalked slowly forward.

Zing Chi retreated until he came up against Johnny. Johnny had taken the opportunity to draw his sidearm, and now he gave 'Cita an inquiring glance.

Just then CoaxtPs voice spoke in her head. None will hurt you, youngling. But these ones are a plague to the Home and we have come to see that they go no further.

'Cita pulled Johnny's shoulder down and whispered this information in his ear.

Johnny covered Zing Chi and said, "If those weedwhips of yours will burn, I suggest you build a fire. These critters don't like fire very much."

"I guess you don't want to tell them the bad news, eh, Captain Johnny?" Pablo asked.

"What bad news?" Zing Chi asked.

"We only told you what cures people make on this planet. Animals have their own remedies. A polar bear that hasn't mated for a while, for instance.

On board the pirate ship

Yana was lying on her bunk listening to Namid give Diego and Bunny an astronomy lesson. Bunny soaked up everything Namid had to say, while Diego made a pain of himself, playing teaching assistant. Marmie was asleep.

The door to their cramped quarters opened and Dinah O'Neill poked her head in. "Yana, could we talk?"

"What about?" Yana asked cautiously.

Dinah smiled sweetly. "Just a little girl-to-girl stuff. I thought you

might want to. I've been down to see your planet. I think I may have seen your husband."

Yana was on her feet and at the door so quickly she almost ran Dinah down.

"What did Sean say?" she asked, recklessly grabbing the smaller woman's arm. "How on earth could he meet your demands?" Surely Sean's loyalty to Petaybee was more urgent than even his love for her and their unborn child.

Dinah gave her a secretive feline smile. "I didn't exactly talk to him."

"But you did see him?"

"Nice-looking guy who turns into a seal?"

How had she learned Sean's secret? Well, since the wedding, a slightly more open secret. Yana nodded. "That would be Sean."

"Oh yes, I saw him-quite a lot of him actually. How does he do that?"

For a change Dinah was not accompanied by Megenda or any other heavies. Yana toyed with the idea of overpowering her, but curiosity about what Dinah had seen on Petaybee made her decide to wait. Besides, once she overpowered Dinah, then what? Take on the rest of the pirates? She could hold Dinah hostage, but pirates like Louchard weren't known for their unswerving devotion to their friends.

Dinah led her into a tiny room that boasted a desk and a double bed. Yana raised an eyebrow.

"I didn't realize Namid was so serious about the divorce when I brought him aboard. I thought I could get him to reconsider. What did you think? I take turns with the crew?"

Yana said nothing, but the eyebrow stayed aloft.

"You did, didn't you?" Dinah seemed amused, but there had been an edge to her query.

"What you do in bed is none of my business, and I don't think that's why you wanted to talk to me. What's on your mind?"

"Now, Yana-"

"I prefer Colonel Maddock-Shongili, if you don't mind."

"Heavens, there's no need to be so stuffy. You're coadministrator of a whole planet now. That makes you a politician. I'm a privateer. So you see, we have a lot in common."

"If you only brought me here to insult me, I'd like to return to my nice, convivial cell, please."

"You aren't making this easy," Dinah said.

"Gee, I'm sorry. I didn't know I was supposed to."

"I thought you wanted to return to your planet. I'm just trying to tell you that there might be a way, but it'll be tricky."

"Getting Louchard to agree?"

"Believe it or not, the captain will be easier to convince than the crew. If it was up to Megenda, you'd all be spaced. You have no idea the personnel problems one has trying to obtain crewmen who are rough enough to do the job but still controllable. It can be a real nightmare."

"I'm sure you didn't ask me here to tell me how hard it is to get good help these days, Dinah. Will you get to the fraggin' point?"

Dinah dropped her confidential air and became very businesslike. "The fraggin' point, Colonel Maddock-Shongili, is that under certain circumstances I can use my influence to return you to the planet. One of those circumstances is that you must personally guarantee my safety and that of my crew, when and if we release you."

"I certainly won't be able to arrange for your guarantee unless I am free to do so," Yana said acerbically. "What else?"

"I have business in a place called Tanana Bay. I've obtained an aerial map which leaves a lot to be desired..."

"How? Sean didn't just give it to you!"

"No, a cunning old devil named Adak pointed it out."

"Adak is Bunny's uncle. You didn't hurt him?"

Dinah shrugged. "Megenda had to give him a love tap. But he was standing in the door of a Nakatira Cube that seemed to be functioning as an immigrations office, alert, and watching your spouse's bare ass sink into the river when last I saw him. He's fine. But the map is too damned indistinct-no roads, no towns, no names. We'll need a guide to the settlement, and I also want to find one of those-whaddayacallems? Communion caves?"

"Wouldn't you prefer the one at McGee's Pass perhaps, or Savoy, to view the fruits of your previous efforts?"

"After what happened to Satok and company? No, thanks. Listen, I hope you're not holding that against me, too-"

"It's not me you have to worry about, mate," Yana said drolly.

"Well, then, I have to worry about whatever it is that allegedly makes Petaybee... unusual-at least unusual enough to allow a human being to do what your husband did. Change, I mean. I hope whatever that is won't hold Satok's operation against me. All I knew about that business was that the men delivered such and such an ore to such and such a site and that they had developed something involving Petraseal that let them succeed at mining where the company had been unable to."

Yana leaned forward and said with all the earnestness in her, "Dinah, if I have to personally cover every inch of ground near Tanana Bay to find the communion place for you, I will do so just to watch you tell that story to the planet and hear what response you get. But what are you going to tell Louchard if the planet refuses to consider your demands?"

"I'll think of something," Dinah said. "Now, however, it's time for us all to climb into the shuttle and take you home, don't you think?"

"And Bunny, Diego, Marmion, and Namid? Bunny's probably the best one to guide you."

"And not much good to me otherwise. Actually, Marmion has become a bit of a liability, delightful as her company has been. Had it not been for her offer of a transport fee, I'm afraid the boss might have done something drastic to, er, eliminate the danger. But a fee is a fee, and I'd much rather drop her off on your quaint little planet than, er, deliver her to her door on Gal Three, where I'm sure her friends and employees would all be there to greet me. And I suppose I'd best face it that it's all over between Namid and me. Petaybee's as good a place as any for the tasteless bastard." She gave a deep sigh. "Oh, very well. You can have it all your way for now. There! It's settled! Don't you feel better now that we've talked things over? I know I do!"

The moment the hatch opened, Bunny took a sniff and said, with a deep sigh of satisfaction, "Home."

Snow was falling against a pink and tangerine twilight, gilding the heavy snow cover with rose and gold, a glistening sheet stretching to mountains dwarfed by the distance.

"Very good, sweetie," Dinah O'Neill snapped, "but I knew this was your home already. Where exactly and specifically are we?"

Megenda was climbing out behind Dinah, but as soon as he stepped on the narrow gangplank, the port side of the shuttle sank approximately four feet into the ground, cracking the big pirate's chin on the ledge.

Bunny made a face. "Sinkholes. From the permafrost, you know."

Megenda's foot was trapped between the side of the hole and the shuttle. The other two pirates were left inside the shuttle, which continued to list further into the water.

"The fraggin' hole's filling up with water," Megenda bellowed. The words were just out of his mouth when the hatch closed abruptly.

"Oops," Yana said, watching the shuttle and the pirate sink further. "I don't think that's a sinkhole after all, Bunny. I think we may have landed on ice and it broke through under the shuttle's weight." She called down into the hole, "Hope you can swim, Megenda."

Dinah stepped to the edge of the hole to help the first mate, but the ice broke under her foot. Had Namid not grabbed her, she, too, would have fallen in the black and freezing water. As the hole broadened, Megenda lurched with his hands to find a hold on the exterior of the shuttle and managed to catch one of the security hooks, his heavy body precariously dangling from one hand.

"Help him!" Dinah said, reaching for her laser pistol. But it was gone, extracted from her belt by Namid, when he had rescued her from falling into the hole. "Damn!" she clenched her fists in frustration.

"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 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 loyal assistants who he had brought with him on the disastrous Petaybee investigation. Those who had survived the initial stages of security clearances were awaiting him in his office. He was going to start afresh on the many tasks awaiting him as he looked ahead, for bigger and better things.

A gaggle of people coming from the passenger lounge were advancing on him in a solid phalanx. Frowning, he gestured with his right hand for them to clear to the side to allow him to pass. But then he saw the reason for such a mass: an invalid vehicle, one of the newest types, was in the midst of the people, its occupant turning from left to right as he issued a stream of orders, which were being recorded. To Matthew's intense surprise, the man in the chair was none other than Farringer Ball, Secretary-General of Intergal: the one man he cared less about seeing than any other in the galaxy; the very one whose intransigence had resulted in the wretched planet being adjudged sentient and autonomous, ruining all Luzon's careful plans for its future.

"Why, Farringer," Luzon said in his heartiest voice, tingeing it with concern and sympathy, "whatever has happened to you?"

"Luzon?" Farringer's voice was a wispy croak, and Luzon was genuinely shocked at the man's condition. The chair obviously contained life-support devices; Luzon was now close enough to see the tubes running from the man's body to a machine under the seat of the chair. "Recovered from your injury?"

"Indeed, and I could wish you the same good fortune. Whatever has reduced you to this sorry state?" Not that Luzon wasn't delighted to see that justice was being served. "On your way to Petaybee, are you? For one of their miracle cures?" Luzon smiled graciously.

"Tb Petaybee?" Farringer Ball's wheeze went up an octave, and he stared at Luzon in surprise. "Why should I go there, of all places?"

"Why, hadn't you heard? Since the board so nobly decided that Inter-gal should withdraw and allow Terraform B its autonomy, every drug company in the galaxy is trying to sign up the exclusive rights to the therapeutic treatments only available there." Partially true, of course, since representatives were on the planet, although, according to Luzon's informants, none of them had reported back to their head offices, or anywhere, on the results of their missions.

"What therapeutic treatments?" Ball snapped, and half of the crowd around him looked expectantly at Luzon for the answer.

Luzon then realized that medics of various sorts made up most of the groupies around the secretary-general.

"Why, I thought you'd have heard. You always know what's going on in the medical field." Luzon could afford to be slightly condescending: poor health was Ball's true reward. "There is something about the pure air and organically grown food products on Petaybee, not to mention the ambience, that absolutely changes a man!"

"It does?" Ball wheezed. "How?" He peered suspiciously up at the obviously robustly healthy Luzon. "You only broke your legs..." His tone implied that a pair of broken legs didn't take much healing.

"True." Luzon leaned down conspiratorially. "But then I didn't need the special sort of healing that only Petaybee provides. We really shouldn't have let the planet out of our control, you know. You'd be glowing with health again if you'd taken the cure there."

"Taken the cure? What cure?"

"Now, that I don't know in any particulars, I'm afraid," Luzon replied, knowing that he had Ball just where he wanted him. "Of course, now that Intergal no longer has any rights on the planet, its administrators-if you can call such novices by that term," he added, permitting a belittling sneer to color his voice, "are of course setting up a monopoly on the surface. I really feel that one cannot put a price on such natural benefits, and one certainly shouldn't restrict those who are chosen to receive the cure to such a narrow category..."

"What category? What monopoly? What natural benefits?" Ball's agitation made his wheeze worse and he started coughing, a dry, hard, rasping sound despite the fact that he was also spraying spit around him.

Luzon moved a discreet step to one side. "Well, I'm no longer au courant to the latest developments, but they have been amazing. Truly amazing. I wonder that none of your medical advisers have suggested the Petaybean Cure to you. It'd make a new man of you, I'm sure." From the avid expression in Ball's eyes, Luzon knew that his little spiel had had the desired effect. "Do hope you're feeling better real soon, Farrie. Nice to have seen you. Must rush."

As soon as he had left the gaggle behind him, Luzon indulged in a smugly satisfied chuckle. The transport business he had backed to get as many people to Petaybee's surface as possible might have come to a crashing halt, but there were other ways of overloading the planet and proving that it could not take care of itself and/or its inhabitants, much less any visitors. CIS would have to step in and alter the current arrangement. Planets could not, should not, go about managing themselves, not in a well-organized intergalactic civilization. Citizens of the galaxy had the right to pursue commercial ventures whenever these were possible. Citizens were also guaranteed certain basic rights-rights that Petaybee jeopardized by its very existence.

And then there was the matter of Marmion de Revers Algemeine. Luzon had heard nothing on the news media about the kidnapping. "Nothing" on that situation was the best news he could possibly imagine. That took care of her-permanently. When was it he and Torkel Fiske were to meet? He tapped up his engagements on his wrist pad. Ah, this evening. Very good. They had a lot to talk about. Petaybee might not be a lost world after all.

21

Tanana Bay

Muktuk and Chumia had been home ten days when Sinead JMl arrived on skis. As she was delivering her message while • Tlwrapped in warm blankets and sipping from the hot tea Chumia brewed for her, one of the men on sea watch reported that a very funny-looking seal had just beached itself off the ice pack.

"Sean!" Sinead cried. She threw off her blankets, pulled on her still snow-wet coat, and headed out the door, the others behind her. "Sean?" Chumia asked, open-mouthed. "Your brother Sean?" "Bring clothes!" Sinead yelled back over her shoulder to Muktuk, but Chumia had already shoved Muktuk's latchkay snowpants and parka into his arms.

"By all the powers that be, if it ain't the guv himself!" Mutuk said when

he saw Sean striding briskJy toward them, sanguine, purposeful, and naked.

"Nobody mentioned this was a dress occasion," Sean said, grinning. "Sis, I'm glad to see you. Have you told them what's up?"

"She said somethin' about that pirate kinswoman of ours maybe comin' for a visit," Muktuk said.

"That's right," Sean said, pulling on the snowpants. "And we want to make sure she has a warm reception, don't we? We'll need to get as many folks as possible armed with whatever they have."

"We told her if she lost her job she should come," Muktuk said reluctantly. "Greeting her with an armed mob doesn't seem real hospitable."

"Not a mob, a posse," Sean said. "She and one of her henchmen hit Adak O'Connor over the head and stole that aerial map Whittaker Fiske gave us to get them here. I don't think she's coming here to settle, Muktuk. I'm hoping she's ready to do a deal for Yana, Bunny, and the others. I doubt she'll come without a suitable escort of her own, so we'll need a suitable one, too."

"Right you are, guv."

Sean was impatient to get the welcoming organized, but Chumia was firm that he needed to be fed and dried properly. While doing that, he could still tell them what he had in mind.

"We don't want to be rash and hurt the poor girl if she's only running scared," Chumia said. "Perhaps her boss made her hit Adak. Maybe that other man was her boss and she's still tryin' to get loose from him."

"You've seen no sign of a shuttle? Or any strangers walking in?"

Muktuk snorted at the latter and shook his head over the former.

"Well, either way," Sean said, "I need to visit the communion place."

"Sure thing, guv. Chumia, you get that end of the rug and I'll get this." Together the O'Neills pulled away the thick rug woven in shades of green and gold in a stair-step pattern. A trapdoor was revealed, opening onto well-worn steps that led to the permafrost cave Sean remembered from three former latchkays. The first time he'd come to Tanana Bay for a latchkay and had seen three villages' worth of people pouring into the O'Neills' tiny cabin, he'd been astounded, until he'd seen a line of folks disappearing into the floor.

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, guv, 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 satisfaction, Punjab felt the snow freezing to ice with each warm touch of his heavily furred paw, as Home cooperated with its chosen messenger, the feet of the planet, as Punjab's kind considered themselves. Confidently, he trotted on toward his quarry.

Bunny devoutly wished for her snowshoes as she blazed a trail through the two-foot-high drifts, her feet sinking through to the knees with each step. She deliberately squashed down as much snow as she could every time she made a track, but it was laborious going. After a short time, she returned to the others to encourage them and see if she could help.

Megenda was shivering so much that he staggered. She thought of giving him her jacket, since she could stand the cold better than he could. But her jacket wasn't big enough to do him a damn bit of good. Nor was anyone else's. And the pouch, which was doing such a fine job of making her feel warm, also wouldn't help the first mate.

When they reached the first copse, she considered starting a fire to dry him at, but that would take too much time out of the little daylight they had left.

Bunny gave Megenda full marks for keeping up, despite his shuddering chills. It was Dinah O'Neill who was having the worst time of it, being rather short of leg and having to take little running steps to keep up with the others. But she grimly plodded, skipped, and hopped on, and didn't fall more than a step behind.

Diego was beginning to puff, too. Those walks about the pirate ship had not been any substitute for proper exercise. He was grumbling and annoyed that Bunny didn't seem to be as affected as he was.