Powers that Be

Chapter 15

Gun in hand, Yana held off Giancarlo, Torkel, and Ornery until the wounded were loaded. Torkel had relented enough to help, while Ornery and Giancarlo stood by, glaring malevolently at Yana. The last thing O'Shay did before he slammed the door shut was to fling out a red-and-white-striped rectangle. Picking it up, Yana identified it as an emergency rations pack and blessed the pilot's thoughtfulness. The four remaining survivors of the expedition were suffering from shock, and the high-energy rations would do much to revive them.

"If he thinks that's going to save him from a court-martial, he's got another thing coming." Giancarlo snorted as the copter lifted off. To Ornery-eyes he barked, "Don't just stand there, Levindoski. Commandeer that pack. We'll need those supplies on our search and rescue of Dr. Fiske and his party."

"Uh-uh," Yana said. "Not so fast, Colonel. You're not commandeering shit just yet. These folks need to chow down first." She pointed to the nearest survivor, a gaunt-faced man whose pocket nametag was half burned off. "Connelly?" she said, reading what was left. "Why don't you distribute? You'll want the yellow ones-they'll replace electrolytes and boost your energy levels."

Keeping one eye on her and the gun she held, Connellyretrieved the sack. With a pang of pity Yana saw that he was sufficiently fatigued so that it took him three yanks to break the labs, and half the bars and drink packets spewed over the ground. She stepped back and motioned for the others to help.

"Wait!" Torkel cried with a tinge of desperation. Yana turned to him. His eyes, watching the survivors scoop up the supplies, reflected a struggle with his emotions for the sort of control and charm that had always been a hallmark of his command personality. "Yana, please be reasonable. You know we're going to need those…"

"Torkel, if I was you I'd shut the frag up," Yana said, waving the gun at him. "You didn't exactly cover yourself with glory trying to take the copter away from the wounded and you're not improving things by trying to prevent the distribution of emergency rations to these survivors. As for me, I ate a while back."

Connelly, who had been handing the packets out to the others, contemptuously threw four at Torkel's feet. "Sorry, buddy. Didn't know you'd missed your bloody lunch."

"It's not that," Torkel said, wisely leaving the packets alone for the moment. "She's distorting this incident to make us look bad in your eyes, hoping you'll aid her."

"Which you are now doing by eating those rations," Giancarlo said sternly. "If you value your careers, you'll listen to Captain Fiske here and cooperate with our mission."

"Careers!" said another man, whose ashy parka bore the name "O'Neill." "Sure now, Colonel darlin'," he went on, his face angry, his words soft, and the Irish in his accent dangerously broad, the way the Petaybean accent became when mocking the stupidity of; higher-ups. "We're that worried about our careers havin' just outrun yer volcano there. Seems to me that if it's our lives we're after valuin', the dama's the one to be listenin' to." He deliberately and defiantly chewed and swallowed a large hunk of his ration bar.

"Colonel Giancarlo, please," Torkel said. "I know you mean well but you're playing into her hands."

Watching his face, in which the desperation she had seen before was now suppressed, she saw him begin to calculate the effect of each word and attitude on the survivors. He was smart enough to know that he had alienated them initially, and smart enough to know that if he wanted to regain control of the situation he was going to have to have them on his side. "Folks, you'll have to forgive Colonel Giancarlo. He doesn't mean to sound callous but he's absolutely right. Our mission is one of the utmost priority and this woman has sided with the Petaybean insurgents creating this catastrophe!"

His arm swept across the devastation behind the survivors, the pulsing mud in the valley at their heels, the glow of the volcano visible even through the ashy miasma cloaking the area.

"Right," Connelly said, "one skinny little woman, with or without help, caused a volcano? I'm a mining engineer, Captain. Pull the other one."

The third man coughed both to clear his lungs and to get attention. "They might have set strategic charges that triggered the volcano."

"Th-that's right," the last survivor, a woman, stammered. Until she had eaten her ration bar, she had been trembling so violently that she had looked on the verge of convulsions; now her fearful glance centered on the presence of the authorities as represented by Torkel, Giancarlo, and Ornery. "Teams have disappeared here before. It can't all be natural."

"Damned right it's not," Torkel said, following up his advantage. "We were interrogating Maddock here, trying to get information from her to head off this disaster, when it blew up in our faces. Meanwhile, my own father, Dr. Whittaker Fiske, was coming to join a team in your vicinity to suss out the situation."

"In case you don't know who Dr. Fiske is," Giancarlo put in, "he's assistant chairman of the board, direct descendant of the man who developed the terraforming process that transformed the rock into a viable planet, and is the company's top expert on the environmental development and stability of all of Internal's terraformed holdings."

"He's the one man who can save this project and everybody involved with it, which is why you must help me find him," Torkel said, adding with a catch in his voice that could have even been genuine, "and he's my father. That's why we tried to supersede your need to move your wounded and effect your own rescue. Another copter would have been here for you immediately, of course, but this woman"-he jerked his thumb at Yana-"took advantage of the pilot's humanitarian instincts to turn the situation against us. But if one of you will guide me to where the shuttle came down, she won't be able to stop me from going in after my dad and saving this rock."

"Okay, who's it going to be?" Giancarlo demanded. "We need to move here and move fast. You heard Captain Fiske. We need volunteers to take us to the crash site."

"Say what?" O'Neill asked, not believing what he heard. "We come out of that"-he waved to the steaming valley.-"by the skin of our teeth and you're after us to risk our necks again? You're bloody nuts!"

The third man just shook his head tiredly. His shoulders were stooped under the weight of a variety of cameras and other instrument packages, as well as under the weight of the terror and pain he had just lived through. The straps kept Yana from seeing all of his name but "Sven" was part of it.

Torkel shook his head firmly, staring O'Neill down. "No. I'm not nuts. I'd never ask you to risk yourselves except that this it absolutely vital. It is imperative to the well-being of this planet and the personnel on it that we find my father with all possible dispatch."

"Find him? In that?" Sven demanded in a voice rasped harsh by smoke.

"There's no alternative, man!" Torkel was getting agitated, as he looked from Sven to Connelly and then to the other two, the stocky O'Neill and the stammering woman. "You did see the shuttle go down, right?"

Sven and Connelly both nodded.

"Well, where did it go down? Point me out the direction from here. I've coordinates, but they're only good in a copter."

Sven gave Connelly a long look and then, angling himself, he faced in a west-northwest position. "Near as I can remember it. We were scrambling ourselves by then."

"Why bother?" O'Neill asked, a trace of exasperation in his voice. "Captain, the shuttle was trying to land just as the volcano blew. The shock wave hit it like a ton of fraggin' bricks. I saw the craft knocked out of the sky with my own eyes. There's nobody could survive that." He obviously felt his own survival was miracle enough for one day.

"That's not true!" Torkel said, his voice suddenly wild with denial as he grabbed O'Neill's coat front and began shaking him. "My father has to have survived, you bloody idiot!" Then he realized what he was doing and loosed O'Neill with one more plea. "Don't discourage me, man. Help me, for pity's sake."

Yana had been watching this, also making certain that neither Giancarlo nor Ornery made any sudden moves toward her. She thought maybe Torkel's emotional display was genuine, but the man was devious-it could as well be a diversionary tactic. She couldn't take any chances. "Chill out, Torkel," she said. "These people are exhausted and in shock. They're not going to be fool enough to risk their lives going back in there."

But if Torkel was acting, he was doing it with enough conviction that he ignored her waving the gun. "You didn't actually see the volcanic blast destroy the shuttle, did you?" he demanded of O'Neill.

"No," O'Neill said tiredly. "It was intact when the force of the blast blew it off course."

"Ah, but it blew it away from the path of the debris, right?"

"Well, yes. It was debris, too, as far as the volcano was concerned," O'Neill told him.

"But there could have been survivors of the crash?"

Connelly, who Yana sensed was slowly being convinced by Torkel's insistence, told him in a weary but not unsympathetic voice, "That was three hours ago, Captain, and that volcano's been raining down and spitting mud out…"

Torkel heard the sympathy in the man's voice and pounced on it. "Will you guide me?"

But he had pushed too hard. Connelly withdrew and favored him with a disbelieving look, shaking his head. "The only one I'm guiding is me, out of here, when the copter gets back."

"Listen up, Connelly, and the rest of you, too," Giancarlo said. "Captain Fiske is not just any military captain. As son of Board member Fiske, he also holds the position of ranking executive on this planet at this time. Failure to cooperate with him and with this mission will have serious repercussions on your career."

"So," Connelly said, "will death. I'm not sticking around here waiting for that mountain to blow again for the chairman of the board. Besides, in these flying conditions"-he waved his hand off to the north-"no copter, any copter, would stay airborne for more than ten, maybe fifteen minutes." He snorted. "You'd do better using your feet."

When Giancarlo started toward him angrily, Yana spoke up again.

"I wouldn't, were I you, Colonel," she said. "They've done enough just making it here. And you both should know," she added, flicking a glance at Torkel, "how useless it would be to fly a copter in there!"

"Then, by all that's holy"- Abandoning his frantic make-'em-see-reason attitude, Torkel drew himself up into a noble-against-adversity stance. -"I'll make it on foot. Your packs there," he said, pointing to the pile slowly accumulating a cover of ash, "can be replaced at company expense when you get back to base. They won't be of much future use to you considering their present condition, but I would very much appreciate being able to scrounge what I need from them."

Connelly and Sven exchanged looks and shrugged. The woman, with an anxious look at Yana's gun hand, darted over and extracted a small sack from the pile, skittering back to the protection of her colleagues.

"Might as well. There's not that much there," Connelly said, "and if the company'll make good…"

"Of course, the company will make good," Giancarlo snapped. "Your equipment was company issue to begin with. Who else do you think would replace it?"

"I promise you it won't be debited from your pay," Torkel said quickly. "And any personal effects you've lost will be replaced, as well. The company takes care of its own."

O'Neill flicked him a resentful glance. "The way you were going to take care of the wounded?"

"Frag it all, O'Neill, I'm not some kind of a monster," Torkel said, even as he gestured for Giancarlo and Ornery to help him collect the packs. "I told O'Shay to radio for another bird for your wounded and for yourselves. A few minutes would have made no difference to them. You'll all get out safely. My father, and the crew of that shuttle, are still out there in that inferno."

Yana couldn't believe Torkel's gall, trying to guilt-trip the survivors. He sure was a company man: give with one hand, shuffle the shells, and take with the other! But she had no objections to him going after his father, as long as he didn't fore* anyone else to do it, too.

"Knowing how important it is, won't even one of you guide us?" he implored one more time as the air began throbbing with the sound of an approaching copter.

"Captain," Connelly said, "we really couldn't help you. All landmarks will have been destroyed by now, and none of us saw where your father's craft actually crashed. You've got the compass and the coordinates of where it was originally supposed to land." He scanned the sky anxiously with reddened eyes. "I hope you find him."

The unmistakable sound of the approaching copter grew louder: it was a Sparrowhawk, if Yana read the sound of it right. Those usually had room to seat the crew members and three more, but there was ample room for others to sit on the floor. Maybe, with a little luck, she could just manage to squeeze herself on board, too.

She relaxed her guard just enough to glance up at the sky, and that was when she was jumped. She had been so busy watching Torkel, Giancarlo, and Ornery that she hadn't paid any attention to the survivors, and Sven used the distraction of the chopper to grab her gun hand and twist. Before she knew it, she was on the other side of the weapon, nursing a numb wrist.

"Good man!" Torkel cried, leaping forward to relieve Sven of the gun, only to be waved to a standstill.

"He is that," O'Neill said. "Too good to let you get the drop on us again and try to get this helicopter away from us as well, for all the good it would do you."

Sven was evidently in agreement, for he backed over to the rest of his colleagues in a show of solidarity.

"I wouldn't have let them do that," Yana told Sven. "I made them surrender the other copter, didn't I?"

Sven grunted and shook his head, waving her back to the others.

"We're sorry, dama," O'Neill said. "You did help before and we're that grateful, but maybe you were only doin' it to get clear of them? Maybe you'd be after commandeerin' this bird for yourself to make your getaway. We can't chance it, and we don't need any more trouble today."

"At least take me with you," Yana urged.

But at that moment Giancarlo hooked her left arm and whipped it around and up under her shoulder blade, leaving her far more occupied with pain than argument.

"You're not going anywhere, Maddock," he murmured in her ear. "We haven't finished with you yet."

O'Neill and Connelly looked as if they were about to jump in and defend her, but Torkel spoke up again.

"You people go on. Take the copter, but leave her with us. She knows more than she's telling, and maybe when she sees what her rebel friends have unleashed, she'll have the good sense to help us save this planet."

"If she knows where other charges are planted, we'll get it out of her," Giancarlo said grimly.

"It is true that there wasn't supposed to be any natural seismic activity where we were setting up the mine," Connelly replied cautiously, with a glance first at Sven and then at the approaching copter.

"Right!" Torkel said, yelling over the copter's noise. "Everything that's happened is unnatural. You tell them at SpaceBase that there's a massive conspiracy afoot on Petaybee, and that Mad-dock's changed sides. She's in league now with the perpetrators. If you hadn't disarmed her, she would have gotten away, and who knows what trouble she would have caused."

The copter was slowly settling to the ground a discreet distance from the knot of humans. The survivors began backing toward it, Sven keeping the weapon trained on the company tableau of Torkel, Giancarlo holding Yana prisoner, and Ornery,

"They're nuts," Yana yelled, appealing to O'Neill. "You said yourself, nobody can jumpstart a volcano!"

O'Neill shot her a guilty glance, and he and Connelly exchanged looks, but the woman laid her hand fearfully on Sven's arm and he shook his head.

"No," he hollered. "We've risked our butts enough for one day. I'm not risking my job any further for someone in trouble with the management. You got into this mess, dama; you get yourself out without our help. You people sort it out among yourselves."

When the survivors were aboard the copter, Torkel leaned in the open door to yell at the pilot.

"You tell them at SpaceBase that I said this volcanic eruption is part of a plot to undermine our investigation and to kill a member of the board. And you get them to send out ground transport as soon as possible. Get it to the volcano site! We'll meet them there! Tell them that my father, Dr. Whittaker Fiske, is out there and it's vital we rescue him. Absolutely vital!" The pilot began lifting off and Torkel jumped down and backed off slightly, but repeated himself, yelling through cupped hands. "Tell them we've gone ahead to rescue my father. They're to follow us!"

The pilot gave him a thumbs-up signal and waved him away from the rising aircraft.

They all watched as the copter whisked away, disappearing into a maelstrom of wind, ash, and smoke. Giancarlo released Yana abruptly when it was out of sight, and she fell to her knees. As she rose, she gingerly worked her shoulder to be sure Giancarlo's enthusiasm hadn't wrenched muscles. As near as she could tell, she was still in good functioning order-at least for now.

Without so much as an eye blink, Torkel tossed her one of the packs he had been filling.

"Grab the rest of those ration bars, Maddock," he ordered.

She didn't mind. It gave her the chance to get something in her own belly. She couldn't fault the survivors, but she sure hoped they didn't believe the crap Fiske had been shoveling in their ears: that she was "in league with the perpetrators," "had caused all these unnatural phenomena." Trouble was, she thought with a snort, those poor devils were shocked enough to believe every word. Rather ungrateful of them, though, especially when O'Shay had made it plain that she was the only reason the copter had been able to land to pick up their wounded. Whatever! Torkel had turned them against her sufficiently to banjax her one chance of getting free. Free-and she had a private grin-to foment riot and rebellion back at the SpaceBase, or even with all those dangerous allies she had joined forces with.

She hoped they were all right at Kilcoole. Then Giancarlo brought her back to the present with a shove in the direction of the valley filled with blistering mud and smoking ash. Torkel was leading, then Ornery with Giancarlo behind her: not exactly where she preferred him, but she was in no position to make requests, was she?

Although there were still safe places to walk where the mud hadn't yet spread, Yana wondered how far in toward the volcanic site they could get, where the damage was fresh and the flow still boiling hot. If the planet decided to set off its new volcano again, they would be right under it. Actually, she thought, smiling to herself, the planet was doing such a complete job of dividing and routing the "enemy," that she wouldn't mind going under to such an admirable opponent.

"We'll be okay," Torkel said to no one in particular as he trudged forward. "But Dad won't if we don't reach him soon."

His voice was still taut with anxiety, though it projected less heart-wrenching filial devotion than it had when he had spoken to the survivors. Yana wondered why he was really risking their necks-but the answer was fairly obvious. Torkel was a pretty good company spy and a fair administrator, but he was not a creative scientist like his father, and without the elder Fiske, he was not apt to carry the same weight in the corporate structure. Of course he wanted to find old Whittaker. He was once again protecting his interests.

She was thinking about that as she kept a close eye on where she was putting her feet. She tried not to cough in the ash-laden, sulfury-smelling smoke. She hadn't had her lungs healed just to mess them up again inhaling this sort of crud. She tore off a piece of her shirttail and tied it across her mouth. The others did likewise, but cloth was a flimsy filter against the thickly laden wind, unlike the protective masks the company would have issued if such conditions had been anticipated.

Their progress was slow. They could not see the sun at all, and when Yana checked her watch, she had to rub the face clear of clinging ash to read it, but even then the face remained dark and empty; the ash no doubt had worked its way into the mechanism and clogged it. Fortunately, the compass was better shielded and more reliable. For hours, they picked their way forward through the maze of paths that terminated abruptly in mudflow, forcing them to double back and find a new path, then following that one forward until it, too, gave out. Occasionally the volcano would spew forth a gout of fiery red and orange matter, giving them a terrible beacon to their progress. The air was also getting closer, hotter, and that slowed them down, too. All were perspiring heavily, and the three men had torn shirttails into sweat bands around neck or forehead.

Just about the time Yana was beginning to wonder if the crash site was a myth to lure them into the certain death of the volcano field, Giancarlo yelled and pointed. There, ash-dusted and protruding from what looked like an ocean of the gray muddy guck, was unmistakably a delta wingtip that had to be part of the downed shuttle. They rushed forward, stopping just on the edge of the bubbling mud.

Yana looked up at Torkel and saw his eyes harden and his mouth twist in pain. That sort of anguish was not generated by a career anxiety alone, she realized. Whatever personally pragmatic motives he might have for this search, he truly did care for his father.

They had to spend a long time circling the crash site, looking for any sign that someone might have escaped. Torkel circled and paced like a crazy man, trying to find a way across the mudflow to that protruding wingtip, though what good that would do, Yana didn't know. They had no rope or cable to secure the tip to keep it from sliding farther into the mud, and the four of them certainly couldn't have pulled it, and the rest of the shuttle, free. Then Torkel obviously realized that this activity was futile and began methodically inspecting every inch of what solid ground there was for traces that survivors had exited the shuttle before the mud had drowned it.

The world was silent, except for the men's harsh breathing, and even that was muffled. Yana tried not to hold her breath, but she hated every ounce of contaminated air she had to drag into her lungs. When would Torkel give up this useless search? If there had been survivors, they ought to have had sense enough to get out of this vicinity with all possible speed. The likeliest explanation for the lack of traces leading away from the crash site was that there had been no one to make them. Surely Torkel had to admit that possibility. And it was equally unlikely that their tracks would be discernible with mud and ash constantly falling to cover such traces. Meanwhile, conditions were deteriorating from minute to minute as the mud and ash built up. If they weren't awfully careful, someone was going to take the wrong step and end up mud-baked.

She felt the ground flutter beneath her feet and took a step backward.

And quite unexpectedly she found herself touched by an amazing sensation. It was similar to what she had felt in the cave: staunch, reassuring, welcoming. She swiveled around, not knowing what she might find in such an unlikely place. There was only the giant boulder she had just stepped around. It was shaped like an enormous top, the point plunged deep into the ground. Its mass had separated the flow of the mud, leaving a wide, clear, somewhat sheltered space.

The mud around her gave a mighty heave and she shot an apprehensive glance at the boulder for fear it might topple over onto her. But it didn't move an inch. Was that what the planet had been reassuring her about? That the boulder was safe? Then Ornery shouted, and whipping around, she was just in time to see the wingtip slowly sinking out of sight into the mud. Torkel, standing a few paces beyond her, yelled in anguish and reached out as if to grab the wing. He was off balance when the surface heaved once more, and he was thrown sideways. Instinctively, she leapt forward, catching the fluttering edge of his torn shirt with one hand. With a second desperate lurch, she caught hold of his pack strap with the other and hauled him into the shelter of the top-shaped boulder.

The tremors were the prelude to another eruption of the volcano. Particles of ash rained down faster, ever faster, rapidly developing into a deluge of red-hot flying stones. Then, with a roar much louder than a ship blasting from a launchpad, scalding mud, scouring ash, and rock-strewn dust flew past them. Yana cried out, whipping her left arm under cover as the downpour ignited the fabric of her sleeve. She beat out the sparks and crouched down as tightly as she could against what protection the boulder gave. Beside her, Torkel let out a yowl as his vulnerable right side was also lashed by burning embers. The hot ash was pervasive, and there seemed to be no way to avoid it. In desperation, she unslung her pack and covered her head with it. Squeezing tight against the boulder, she felt the ground tremble again. Fleetingly she wondered about the advisability of clinging to a boulder, no matter what the planet suggested. At any moment the huge stone could roll over and crush them. But alternatives were not available. She let the pack slip farther down to protect her back from the hot and painful dusting.

Every muscle taut and every nerve stretched, she endured, as Torkel did beside her. She really should have made her escape at Scan's, she decided. That was her first mistake! She could have used one of the curlies or the comm unit or something to get her back to the village. Her second, she thought grimly, was not watching the miners and letting one of them take her weapon. Again, if she had played her cards better she could have been safely back at Kilcoole, where she knew she had friends and where she would have had a chance of finding Sean. If half of what people said about him was true, if what she felt about him was true, he would know what this was all about.

Then, miraculously, the roaring abated, a gust of side wind blew some of the smoke and ash away, and a light rain began to fall.

Maybe, Yana thought with small hope, it would rain harder, clear the air a bit, and cool the mud off enough so they could walk out of there.

When at last she dared to peel herself off the boulder, she did a damage report on herself. Burns stung, rock scrapes ached, she was covered with ash, blood speckled here and there. Then she looked at Torkel, who looked much the same way she felt. Only… her hand went to her head and she was relieved to find that she had more hair left than he did. Torkel had lost quite a swath, including his eyebrows, down his right side. And most of his shirt.

The back of his fatigue pants, made of a supposedly indestructible material, looked more like mesh drawers. His right arm was a mass of tiny blisters, and her left one was in no better shape. Both packs were smoking, riddled with burn holes. She was putting the remains of the pack out where the rain could douse the final sparks when she saw Giancarlo lying unconscious, half-buried in the runnel of mud. He must have been trying to make it to the shelter of the boulder, too. There was no sign of Ornery-eyes.

The copters and other aircraft were grounded by falling ash, the snocles could not run over rivers and muddy slush, the tracked vehicles were too slow, and the runners of the sleds would not slide over broken ground. Rivers had changed their courses so that travel by water was unreliable to the point of insanity.

Therefore, the little string of sturdy curly-coats, each bearing either passenger or pack, traveled alone across the vast emptiness of the uninhabited northwestern sector of Petaybee, toward the mountains stretching up from the plains on one side; on the other, down onto the ice pack to the north and on to the open sea.

The lead curly, Boru, carried Sinead, while the next, the largest and the sturdiest of the beasts, carried Clodagh, wrapped in a poncho that covered both her and her mount so that she looked like a mountain on hooves. Behind her traveled Bunny, then Diego Metaxos, who was still fretting about leaving his father in Aisling's care. He had been badly torn between the honor of being asked to join the rescue party and his responsibility to supervise his father's steady improvement. He had left his father absently stroking one of the several cats, who had continued to adhere to the man like leeches. Both Clodagh and Aisling had assured him that this was a very good sign and told him to let matters proceed at their own pace. Diego couldn't hurry the healing process but he had extracted a promise from Aisling that she would take his father down to the hot springs as soon as possible. Steve Margolies had insisted on coming along as the "technical" observer to the phenomenon. He carried the only concession to modem technology, a comm unit, for contacting Adak in Kilcoole and SpaceBase.

Bunny thought it was the most ill assorted rescue party imaginable, but, what with all the injured being tended at Kilcoole, these five had been the only ones available. Sinead would have gone by herself, if no one else had accompanied her to rescue Yana, hoping to find her brother, too. No sooner had Bunny told Clodagh what Adak had said about Yana being in trouble and the shuttle crashing than Sinead had barged into the cabin, muttering that Yana was in trouble and she had to go help.

"Sean send for you?" Clodagh had asked, her gaze unusually piercing.

"Not just Sean," Sinead had answered, biting her words off. She glanced about, measuring the occupants for suitability to her need. "This is it, Clodagh!"

Clodagh had nodded once and brought her meat cleaver down so hard that it quivered, stuck, in the board. "I go with you!"

"You?" Bunny couldn't believe her ears, but Clodagh was already taking off her apron, striding to the litter of parkas and boots by the door, and searching through them for her own gear.

Her statement had galvanized the others. Nothing would have kept Bunny from following Clodagh, though her insistence astounded Steve. But he repeated his assertion that he had to make observations of the phenomenon. When Diego vacillated, obviously distressed, wanting to go, yet unwilling to leave his father, Aisling had volunteered to look after Francisco.

As they went outside to select curly-coats from the herd Sinead had rounded up, another volunteer made it plain that he was coming along: Nanook. A quick smile lit Sinead's anxious face, and she laid her hand in a brief gesture of gratitude on the animal's black and white head.

Dinah joined them, too, using drastic measures to get her way. Seeing them ride out of the village, she had howled so piteously and continued to yelp at such an earsplitting volume that Herbie must have given in and ordered Liam to let her loose. She came charging up to Diego just as they dipped down in the valley northwest of the town, and she maintained a position beside his mount throughout the trek.

Nanook had taken it as his right to lead the expedition and ranged way beyond Sinead, now and then padding back to them as if hoping he could speed up their progress. But the slush and mud made the going slow, and even the clever curly-coats got trapped now and then in melting drifts.

On the first day, when the ground shook again, Clodagh lifted her hand to signal a halt. Laboriously she dismounted and slowly lay down, arranging herself flat on her belly, her right cheek pressed onto the snow-packed ground. After a long time, she rose, wiping her face clean before she pointed west. "That way."

Clodagh also had other means of communication and Bunny watched, fascinated, as she employed them. She sang. Using tone-like sonar, she sang to the birds and the rocks and the plants:

"Friends, have you seen our friend, Yanaba? ''

She met the enemy and was taken into battle with him.

See that she comes to no harm."

If the addressee was a raven, it promptly flew away; if it was an animal, it ran purposefully off; a stream, it kept about ill business, but Bunny swore that the ripples changed pitch; and if it was the ground beneath the hooves of the horses, it simply absorbed the songs, listening. Clodagh listened, too, and then she would alter their direction a compass point or two. They would continue for a while on the new course until she found something else to sing to.

In this way, despite Margolies's demanding explanations of this quixotic form of directions, they traveled for two days and two nights and half a day again. They got what sleep they could in their makeshift saddles, stopping only to feed the horses, and for ten minutes in every two hours to rest their mounts' backs. The horses kept moving tirelessly, mostly at a walk but occasionally, where the terrain had been swept free of snow, breaking into their smooth little canter.

Very early on the rescuers had to cover their mouths with pieces of cotton cloth that rapidly became clogged with dust and ash and had to be shaken often. Even the food they ate during their brief halts tasted like more of the same. Soon everyone's eyes went from stinging to being red and swollen. When they could dig down to clean snow during the rest halts, they bathed their faces, trying to relieve the irritation.

Everything was mud gray-the sky, the ground, the air- and the people and animals moved like big ashy lumps in front and behind. Bunny was so tired and so full of ash and smoke that only her sore tailbone let her know that she was not traveling in a dream. Then Nanook began racing forward and back to them until they quickened their progress in anticipation of what he might have found. He led them to a place where the snow and ash still bore faint indentations of human feet, the long flat marks of copter skids, and a pile of discarded effects, all but the metal reduced to scraps of melted or fused material. Fingers of cooling, hardening mud crept up the side of a canyon wall.

Nanook leapt the few feet from the edge of the canyon to the mud, and Bunny caught her breath, fearful that Nanook might be risking injury. But the cat was far from stupid, and he landed and solemnly stretched out on a surface that was apparently comfortably warm. He began licking his filthy paws as if he were back in Sean's laboratory.

"Trust him to find the perfect spot to relax," Clodagh said, amused.

Dinah also settled down to lick her paws clean. She had trotted dutifully by Diego's mount, her red coat barely visible under its ashen cover.

They slipped the saddle blankets and hackamores from the horses and fed them. They munched trail rations as they unstrapped the snowshoes that they hoped would give them better footing over the ash-covered mud and snow. While they made a final check of their packs, Steve Margolies called their position in to Adak. Bunny only hoped the transmission was better than the reception. All they could hear was a hiss and crackle a little louder than the wind, which was blowing steadily east.

"I hope they got all that," Steve told the others. "I didn't hear exactly what they said but, having done a personal on-the-spot review of conditions, I think they said this is a no-go area. There was also some gibberish about there being no one in command to give orders."

Clodagh gave a contemptuous sniff and, with a groan, once more began to spread herself flat on the ground. The others stood about for what seemed a very long time-at least the curly-coats had moved a good distance away in search of any grass the mud and ash hadn't buried-before she moved again.

She hauled herself up, mopped the ash from her face and neck, brushed it off the front of her clothes, and then pointed. 'That way."

"The volcano's that way," Steve protested, pointing elsewhere.

Clodagh moved her arm slightly toward the north. 'The volcano is that way." Then she dropped her snowshoes to the ground and stepped into them. Scooping up her pack and twitching her shoulders so that it settled on her back, she started off in the direction she had indicated.

Bunny looked at Diego and shrugged. Sinead jerked her head at the perplexed Steve, and very shortly, all were following her down into the valley, Dinah sticking right at Diego's heels. In several leaps, Nanook caught up and passed the humans. Clodagh took particular notice of where he put his paws. For all her bulk, she moved with unexpected agility as she followed the cat's tracks.