Powers that Be

Chapter 12

Yana was still pleasantly disoriented from the experience in the cave and bemused by lovemaking as they walked back to the village. She was not exactly sure how far they had come from the hot springs when Scan pressed her hand in farewell and disappeared into the trees. Considering their conversation and his sudden insistence that they leave the cave, she was hardly surprised.

The sky resembled a healing bruise, staining the morning with yellow-brown haze and, even out here in the woods, smelling like a spaceport, which was unusual. Mostly the smells about Kilcoole were delicate and crisp, refined by the cold to mere essences, but now the stench of hot ship-shielding filled the air and cast a pall over the woods. How many troops had landed since she left SpaceBase?

As she walked out of the woods and into the long clearing preceding the village, one of Clodagh's cats-the one who lived in her own cabin? she could never be sure-trotted up to her, and a short time later Clodagh appeared.

Her beautiful smile livened her face as she embraced Yana and kissed her cheek. "Welcome, neighbor. I knew there would be no problem for you."

"Scan's gone, Clodagh."

"Very wise. You should find somewhere to go, too, Yana. The soldiers are all over the village now. They came the morning we returned from the chant."

"When was that, Clodagh?"

"Yesterday. Don't worry. It didn't take you long for an offworlder. Giancarlo has gone up to Sean's place with the others, but he was asking for you, too."

"I need to find Torkel Fiske before Giancarlo finds me. Is he here, too?"

"I don't think so. Bunny will know."

"Where is she?"

"Somewhere between here and SpaceBase. They been keepin' her and Terce and Adak all awfully busy. Adak will know where she is though."

As it turned out, they didn't need to go to the snocle shed. They met Bunny, accompanied by another of the cats, coming down the street toward them through a village that had changed during the time Yana had been in the cave. Snocles ferried uniformed and parka-clad figures up and down the streets, and similar figures wandered between the houses, trying to look as if they were patrolling something. Snocles were parked willy-nilly along the streets. Many of the vehicles were loaded with equipment, and Yana saw two trains of the machines heading away from the village. Several houses farther on, winter-uniformed corps members were slapping together another of the prefab buildings.

"As you can see, we've been invaded," Clodagh said. "Slainte, Bunny."

"Slainte, Clodagh. Yana! Oh, Yana, you did great. Isn't it wonderful?" Yana was momentarily confused all over again as Bunny gave her a welcoming hug, then realized that the girl's words referred strictly to the earlier portion of Yana's encounter with the cave, not to the more private events occurring afterward.

Still, the relief behind Bunny's joy reinforced Yana's recognition that not everyone found the communion wonderful, or even pleasant. The cave-no, the planet-could and did damage those it rejected, or those who rejected it; she wasn't sure quite what the criterion was. She was just immensely glad to have been found satisfactory.

She grinned back at the girl. "That it was. Even more wonderful than you can possibly imagine. But right now, Bunny, I need to find Torkel Fiske fast."

"That's dead easy," Bunny said. "He just left the station for SpaceBase. I'll take you out there. I'm trying to be there when Colonel Giancarlo is here, and here when he's there, so he doesn't remember his threat to take away my license."

The usually silent riverbed was now a high-speed thoroughfare, vehicles skiing back and forth, passing each other. The ride to SpaceBase was nerve-racking, because it was obvious, even before Bunny began to veer out of the way of poorly driven snocles, that not every driver was as capable as she was on such a treacherous surface.

Bunny dropped Yana at the headquarters building and drove off even more cautiously through a great deal of snocle traffic, toward the infirmary, where, she told Yana, she hoped to find Diego.

As opposed to the bustle outside, headquarters was quiet- stripped of personnel, Yana thought. The door to an inner office stood open, and through it she could see Torkel's bronze hair shining in the light from his console.

"Hello, Yana," he said when she strode in, closed the door behind her, and sat down. He barely looked up at her, which under most circumstances would have been a rather refreshing change from his pronounced attentiveness of the past few days. "I'm on comm line with my father. I'll be right with you."

She waited while he returned to his conversation.

"Great, Dad, see you soon. Over and out," he said aloud, tapping the final key. He was still smiling as he turned expectantly to Yana and asked, "What can I do for you?"

"You offered me Giancarlo's job. I want it."

He grinned. "Is it my turn to say, 'But this is so sudden'?" "Torkel, he's making a balls of the whole thing. Listen, we have got to talk seriously about what's going on here on Petaybee and the company's interface with the natives

"Yana, let me remind you of a point that others seem to be forgetting: the natives are transplants of barely two hundred and fifty years ago from Earth. Johnny-come-latelies as our projects go. And from my conversation with your buddy Shongili, it seems to me they're awfully damned possessive for sharecroppers on company property."

"That's because you only know part of what's been happening. Look, Torkel, Giancarlo told me to find out what's been going on with Petaybee and the unauthorized life-forms, and I think I have. Both the natives and my own experience confirm my conclusions. I think you'll agree, after we've talked, that the mining operations can't be started precipitously, and any mass transfer of I he inhabitants of this planet is out of the question."

"Excuse me, Yana. Dear. The company makes the decisions; not you, not me, and certainly not the illiterate dregs the company was kind enough to resettle here." He gave her his best company-negotiator's poker face. The set-to with Scan had either done some serious damage to his goodwill, or that goodwill had been an act.

"Torkel. Dear. At least hear me out, okay? You did ask."

He relaxed again. "Okay. Shoot."

"Before you slap my wrist, let me remind you that I was retained by the company to investigate, and I took that as my authorization to do so, not only in what's happening here onPetaybee, but also in company records pertaining thereto."

"You accessed Lavelle Maloney's autopsy file?" He asked with a one-wolf-to-another-wolf grin.

"That's a roger."

He shrugged. "I would have preferred you to go through channels, but I see your point. And if you can explain to her friends that birth defects caused her death, rather than our interrogations, so much the better."

"They weren't birth defects, Torkel."

"No?"

"No. According to Shongili and the others, they were anatomical adaptations engendered by contact with Petaybee."

"Really? Is there any proof of this?"

"Tests on any mature Petaybean will yield similar anomalies, Scan says."

"I see. We can run the tests on Sigdhu and the other woman then, I suppose."

"You can, but you need to bring them back to Petaybee ASAP and run the tests here. From what I understand, the adaptive mechanisms making the inhabitants suitable for a cold planet of this type would make them exceedingly uncomfortable in temperatures you find normal. And recycled air would contain viruses and bacteria which their immune systems couldn't handle. That's what actually killed Lavelle Maloney, and what may soon kill the other two if they aren't returned here." Before he could say anything, she continued. "Torkel, until the company can figure out a way of adjusting these peoples' highly sensitive immune systems to all of the free-spinning viruses and bacteria on satellites or other planets, the kind of move you say the company's proposing would amount to genocide."

"That's a fairly dramatic statement to extrapolate from the autopsy of one off-planet Petaybean, Yana. Besides, it's the Petaybeans themselves who are making this necessary, with their guerilla sabotage against our geographical and mining exploration expeditions."

Yana cocked a cynical eyebrow at him. "There're no guerillas on Petaybee, Torkel, no sabotage! If anything, it's the other way round."

"How so? The company owns the planet. The company terraformed the planet. It has the right to extract mineral deposits."

"The company might own the right to inhabit the surface of the planet, Torkel, and under normal circumstances, it might have the right to harvest certain resources the terraforming process sowed. But owning the planet itself?" She slowly shook her head. "This planet was here way before Intergal was formed or terraforming was invented. You don't own this planet."

Torkel gave a scornful snort. "If the company doesn't, who does? Not the inhabitants that the company put here."

She awarded him a pitying glance. "No, they just occupy it. The planet owns itself. It's sentient, Torkel. A living entity."

"Now you sound like Metaxos and his boy." Torkel threw up his hands in exasperation.

"That's because I've seen what they saw. Or, rather, 'seen' isn't exactly the right word. Felt it, experienced it, heard it, been touched by it. Whatever. The locals say it's a way of communicating with the planet, and you have to be willing to be touched by it or you can become disoriented enough to be in the same shape as Metaxos. Or, like some of the other missing teams, if you're too far from help, die as a result."

He regarded her a long moment. "And Metaxos aged in this process?"

"That's a possibility. The phenomenon can take a lot out of someone who resists it." Something occurred to her suddenly. "Do I… look any older to you than I did the last time you saw me, Torkel?"

"No. Younger if anything. There's a glow about you that, if you had ever given me any encouragement would make me jealous." He briefly dropped his lids over his eyes.

She smiled like one of Clodagh's cats after a snootful of fish. "Other than that?"

"No. So you contend that you've been through the same thing as Metaxos? And didn't fight it, so came out revived? So where did this happen? In one of these illusive mineral deposits?"

"I didn't find any deposits." Yana was unsettled by that shot. "I-found-myself in a quite ordinary cave formation, same kind I've seen other places occurring naturally under hills. According to the spatial map I received with my briefing, the cave isn't in one of the spots where your instruments have detected mineral wealth." She tried another tack. "Look, the locals accept me to a greater degree than you, Giancarlo, or anyone else. That makes me the best qualified to organize this operation in a way that won't be harmful to the natives or the planet."

Torkel gave her one of his suave smiles, which she had begun to find infuriatingly smug and condescending. "Yana, get real! We own the planet, and the natives are technically nothing more than employees. Also, it seems to me that you're treading-you should pardon the expression-on thin ice here. Are you really offering to do this job, or have you, in fact, gone over to the side of the people you were supposed to be investigating?"

"Why does it have to be sides?" she asked, leaning forward and willing him to keep making eye contact with her. "If this is a company planet and the inhabitants are company employees, isn't the company interested in the potential above and beyond the usual? This may be something entirely new here, Torkel. Something that would be useful without the expense of reterraforming a planet." She could see that "expense" was a key word, and he was definitely mulling over the "entirely new" notion. "At any rate, we'll need to delay any evacuation or even the transfer of a single Petaybean until we've developed some means to compensate for their dependency on the planet."

"Fresh air, freezing temperatures, and no microbes to attack their disabled immune systems." Torkel shrugged. "That should be easy enough."

"If that's all there is to it," she said darkly. 'That's what I know now, and I'm only scratching the surface. Please go carefully here."

"Oh, we're being careful okay. Since you're so concerned, you'll be glad to know that my father has been following all of the events here, too, and he's seen the Maloney woman's autopsy report, as well. Since he understands the brief evolution of this planet better than anyone, he's decided to personally conduct an investigation to rule out any malfunction in this planet's development resulting from the terraforming process as a cause for the aberrant occurrences you mention. That's Dad-nothing if not conscientious. And he likes nothing better than a new scientific mystery. Me, I'm a simple, practical kind of guy. I think the explanations for all of this are probably traceable to fairly uncomplicated sources."

There was a knock on the door. Torkel stood and walked over to it, stepped into the hall, had a few low words, then opened the door wider.

Giancarlo stood there, along with Terce, the snocle driver. Torkel shrugged.

"I'm sorry, Yana. And very disappointed to have to say this to you. However, Terce here corroborates Giancarlo's suspicions that you've entered into a secret pact with the guerillas and betrayed the company. I'm afraid we're going to have to hold you for questioning, pending complete physical and psychological examinations and testing, as well as the standard interrogation."

"Torkel-" she began. "Captain Fiske. That young man is one of the fai-"

"In light of our conversation," Torkel said, cutting her off midword, "I'll see to it that the investigation is conducted here on Petaybee for as long as possible, but it may be necessary to move you to more sophisticated facilities."

She stood and did an about-face, forbearing to tell him that being moved would probably not harm her in the same way it would the Petaybeans.

Giancarlo glared as she started past him. She kept her eyes straight ahead, focusing slightly over his left shoulder, as if he weren't there. With a hand jarring against her shoulder, he stopped her in her tracks, his expression guarded but hostile.

"We're also looking for Dr. Shongili, Major Maddock. You could save yourself an extra charge of obstructing investigations if you'll give us some idea where he might be found."

She said nothing.

Bunny Rourke's snocle was her dearest prerogative, if not possession, but she didn't bat an eyelash when she saw it was gone from the place where she had parked it.

She had been all set to take Diego and Steve Margolies back to the village, to let Steve meet Clodagh and the others and talk with them about what had happened to the Metaxoses. Steve had the same specialty as Dr. Metaxos and, if only he could be convinced to keep an open mind, that would give them one more ally to avert what Bunny knew in her gut was going to be a catastrophic change in Petaybean lives.

She had felt it in the cave during the night chant-just the least tremor, nothing someone unacquainted with the planet, like Yana, would notice, but the planet was worried, fearful. Sean had felt it, too, she knew, but she was also sure he had been clearing his mind of any negativity to help Yana. They were waiting for Steve to finish talking with Dr. Metaxos's doctor, so she and Diego had gone to start the snocle while they waited.

"I've got to go now," she said, turning to Diego. "They've taken my snocle, but I think you and Steve should get the first ride to Kilcoole you can."

"Maybe the major can get one for us from her buddy, that Fiske guy," Diego said, not understanding.

Bunny shook her head even as she pulled away from him. "No. If the major was okay, my snocle would still be here."

"I'll come with you." Diego still didn't get it.

"I have to go on foot. You'd freeze."

"Nah, it's warm today. I-"

"No. Meet me later. Bring Steve and we'll introduce him to Clodagh. I got to go before they catch me, Diego. Bye."

She didn't hear whether or not he returned her good-bye as she ducked between the buildings, behind piles of unassembled equipment, her white and gray rabbit-fur parka blending with the snow as she circled around to the river and headed back toward Kilcoole. There, she would pick up Charlie's dogs and go somewhere: Sinead's old trapper's cabin, maybe, the one Sinead had lived in before she had hooked up with Aisling. The PTBs wouldn't know the location of that one.

She hoped Diego would tell Yana what she had done, and then she realized that what she had told Diego was true: Yana wasn't okay. That redheaded captain, the nice one, either hadn't been able to help her or hadn't been as nice as he seemed. All the more reason she needed to get back to the village and try to get help. Behind her she heard more shuttles landing and smelled the fumes from the hot housings on the spacecraft as they touched down. There were so many of these company people with their machinery and equipment and all of Intergal's resources. The company men acted as if her people had to do anything they said, and for the first time, she was scared that they might be right.

She didn't run: running attracted attention. She tried to move with the rhythm of the wind and the snow, except that today the snow wasn't blowing, it was melting. Diego was right. It was a very hot day. She shed her parka as soon as she thought she was safely out of sight of SpaceBase and the river road.

She could hear the roar of the snocles on the river; an altered sound now, sort of muted, wet, splashy, accompanying the sound of the engines and the swish of snocle skis on ice. The day was really very warm. Warmer than it ever got even during the middle of the short Petaybean summer, when most of the snow was gone and it was no longer necessary to have a fire in the house. But how could that be? Actual breakup usually didn't come for weeks, and then usually gradually, a crack in the ice one day, a soft spot the next, and then the ice began to move. Never was it this hot so early in the season.

In the distance, the sound of an explosion was muffled but audible. She wasn't surprised. She had seen the explosives loaded in corps snocles setting out from Kilcoole in a northerly direction earlier in the day. They claimed to be "exploring," which meant they were blowing sores on the face of the planet.

Though the explosion sounded distant, the shock waves made the ground beneath her feet shudder.

Her boots were made of hide, suitable for dry snow. She had another, waterproof pair she wore for early and late winter, but she hadn't thought about changing into them yet. She could have used them now. The soft moosehide soles of her boots were soaking up icy wetness from the melting snow. If she didn't reach Kilcoole by nightfall, when, despite the unseasonable warmth of the day, the temperatures were likely to drop below freezing again, her feet would freeze. Maybe she should have stuck closer to the river. But she thought that it would be quicker, and safer, to cross-country to where Uncle Seamus was ice-fishing. She planned to ride the rest of the way home with him.

A breeze blew against her, but it was a warm breeze, soft and friendly. She took off her hat and mittens and stuffed them in her parka pocket, unbuttoning her outer sweater as she walked.

There was another distant explosion, and the ground bucked under her feet as if the whole planet had writhed in agony. Why did they have to do that? It occurred to Bunny that somehow the planet was generating the unusual heat, the early breakup, in response to the assault on it. Such a thing had never happened in Petaybee's inhabited history, but then, that history was relatively short.

The ground continued to tremble as she walked, more cautiously now, through the woods. Here she could keep close enough to the riverbanks to avoid getting lost. Where the snow hadn't drifted too deeply against the riverbanks, she even caught glimpses of the snocles through the trees.

How long had it been since she had taken Yana out to SpaceBase? Only a few hours, surely, and already the river had changed. The ice looked patchy now, long blue streaks showing where the runners had carved their tracks. And it didn't look like the rest of the ground anymore. It was shiny, with a glaze of melted snow over the top. She didn't remember the river ice ever melting so fast, but then, she didn't remember ever seeing as much traffic on the river, either. All that friction and weight surely added to the melting process. And this was the warmest day for this time of year she could recall in her whole life.

She was across the river from where Seamus usually set up his ice-fishing tent when she heard the sharp Crack! as if someone had fired a pistol right beside her head.

Some of the people in the speeding snocles were trying to brake on the ice, others slowing, veering in confusion. Yet others who had experience with such treacherous conditions were trying to pilot.

She ran closer to the bank, plunging into the snow up to her knees. Seamus was running from his tent, at first moving wildly about, then stopping, staring at the ice, and finally darting out in front of the snocles waving his arms, urging them toward the banks. Two yards beyond where he stood, between him and the oncoming snocles, the ice parted in a foot-wide gap, the side nearest town already buckling under the weight of the snocles that had just passed over it.

"Get off! Get off!" Seamus was yelling to the snocle drivers. "Drive onto the banks!"

A giant icy chunk broke off and plunged into the blue water bubbling up between the slabs. The ice, which had been substantial enough on the drive to SpaceBase with Yana, looked glass-thin! Along the edges of the river, it was creaking and she saw cracks forming there, too. The level of the river seemed to be rising.

One driver, either not understanding or not believing Seamus, zoomed straight for him, and plunged nose-first into the crack, the snocle runners and windshield submerged in the swirling water and wedging the crack even wider.

Seeing the tail sticking up out of the river alerted the next few drivers, but unfortunately not before three more, two coming from SpaceBase and one from Kilcoole, skidded out of control. The one from Kilcoole ran into a snow bank on the edge of the river. Bunny plowed through the snow to reach it, hopping over a two-inch-wide crack in the ice, feeling the surface, which only hours before had been solid, bouncing under the sopping soles of her boots.

The other two snocles had both torn into the back of the partially submerged vehicle, sending it deeper into the river. Fortunately, snocles had reinforced cabins and the drivers of the two that still had their runners on the ice scrambled unhurt from their seats. But Seamus was leaning across the crack, trying to pry open the sinking vehicle's door to extricate the driver.

Bunny pushed the snocle on her side of the crack back toward the center of the river. The vehicle slid easily on the ice, even laden as it was with equipment. Bunny knew the trick of it, having had to haul hers from deep snow or off black ice.

The driver clumsily wrenched open the door and spilled onto the ice, scrambling ineffectively to gain his feet.

"Get back in!" Bunny yelled to him. "Go get help from town!"

"No way am I gettin' back in that thing, babe!" the soldier yelled at her and ran for the bank.

More snocles were jamming to a stop just short of the crack, which was widening by the minute as pieces crumbled into the river. The drivers crowded toward the crack, trying to help Seamus save their comrade.

"Lie down! Form a chain!" one driver yelled-the first smart thing one of them had done, Bunny thought.

Torn between climbing in the snocle to drive to the village for help and going to the aid of her uncle and the driver, Bunny chose the latter. She dove into a belly flop, skidding across the ice faster than any of the other would-be rescuers could walk, and grabbed one of Seamus's ankles just as he managed to snag open the door of the imperiled snocle. The driver half jumped, half fell out of the vehicle and into the river just before the ice cracked wider. A piece of ice broke off, and the turbulent waters enveloped the rest of the snocle, the outstretched arms, head, and upper torso of the driver on the other side of the crack, and all of Seamus except the ankle to which Bunny was clinging.

His momentum dragged her forward but she held on, flailing in the water with her other hand, trying to grasp some other portion of him. She knew her actions might be holding his head underwater, but at least she could keep him from being pulled under the ice.

Something grabbed at her hand then and she caught her uncle's arm, letting go of the ankle to grab his forearm with both hands. It was then that she suddenly realized that the water was warm! Not ice cold, as it ought to be, but almost hot. She had no time to think about what had caused that, because Seamus's headbroke the surface just as Bunny felt the ice under her chest loosen.

"Here! Over here!" cried the soldier on the other side of the crack. By then they had already hauled the driver of the sunken snocle out, and some of the other soldiers were hurrying him up the bank. "Come over here, old man, that little gal can't handle you."

Seamus, nodding in agreement, lunged away from Bunny and over to the soldier, who was immediately joined by a second man. Together they pulled Seamus from the river.

Bunny slithered backward until she felt more solid ice under her. She slid until she came up against the abandoned, still-running snocle. Levering herself onto the driver's seat, she gunned the snocle down the softening ice so hard it flew across the gap at the side of the river and up onto the bank. She kept to the woods on the way back to Kilcoole to warn the village of the unseasonably early breakup, all the time wondering how that had happened.

After Bunny's precipitous departure, Diego Metaxos and Steve Margolies headed back to their quarters.

"So, what is it with you and this girl?" Steve asked in a kidding tone. "Are her intentions honorable?"

Diego felt himself flushing uncomfortably. He had thought once Steve got here everything would be okay, but even with Steve, he felt edgy and uncertain. The only time he had felt good was that day in the village, when he had chanted his poem and all of the people had understood it. After he had met Steve, and Steve had spent some time at Dad's bedside, Steve, Captain Fiske, and Colonel Giancarlo had spent hours closeted together, and that bothered Diego. The last couple of days, except for short visits with Frank at the hospital, Steve was occupied in organizing what he called his expedition.

Diego hadn't had a chance to talk to him about that and seized the moment.

"What are you planning to do when you go back out there?" he asked Steve when they were safely back in their quarters.

"The same thing your dad was trying to do, only with more support. Locate the deposits, mark the spot, take samples."

"Must make you feel good, taking over from Dad," Diego said. His voice contained a bitterness he hadn't known he felt-at least not toward Steve.

"Hey, son." Steve stopped stuffing articles in a bag and turned to face him. His brown eyes looked wounded. "It's not like that. I'd like nothing better than for Frank to be well and leading the expedition, but he'd want me to carry on his work, now, wouldn't he?"

Diego shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe not."

"What do you mean?"

"Did you ever think that maybe he's like he is because he didn't want to keep on?"

"What? You mean, he willed himself into the state he's in now"-Steve was clearly incredulous-"because he didn't do a good job the first time? Diego, my boy, that is not clear thinking."

Diego shrugged again, a disgusted lifting and dropping of his shoulders. It hurt to think about Dad. It hurt to think about Lavelle. He didn't even want to think about losing Steve the same way and he realized he was pulling a number on him, trying to guilt-trip or scare him into not going.

"I don't know, Steve. Maybe the mission isn't such a good idea, huh? What are they going to do if you find the stuff?"

"You've been too much in the company of Bunny and the villagers, Diego. Be sensible. The company has a lot of bucks invested in this planet."

"You haven't given it a chance," Diego shot back. "I thought you would take care of Dad when you got here but all you've been doing is taking over his job. You're just like all the other company geeks. You don't give a damn about us, this planet, or anything else except the fraggin' company!"

"Diego… son."

"I'm not your son," Diego said hotly, storming toward the door. "Good-bye. I'm going to see my dad. And hey, if you come back in the same shape he's in, I'll get you an adjoining bed!"

When green-coated men and women decide to give you a going over, you let them get on with it, cooperating when you have to. Especially when hovering over the proceedings is a block-shaped marine with piggy, close-set eyes: the kind you just know likes to twist arms and has some mighty painful nerve blocks he's dying to practice on a live and wriggling body. So Yana went along with the procedure, privately resenting every intrusion, draining, pricking, probe, and order. When she could, she sneaked glances at the scans, trying to remember from all-too-recent experience if she could detect any alterations, improvements, or changes in the results. She did better with X rays, and could even find the thickening around her innumerable repaired broken bones. Then one of the medics, the skinny woman with the jaw like a vise, altered the screens so she couldn't see the ones of her lungs-the ones she most wanted to check out.

"It's my body," she said in a growl of complaint. "I got the right to look!"

They ignored her, as they had done since she had been ordered into their presence. She did catch terms like "unusual remission," "minimal scarring," "regenerative," and "improvement": the last two words she liked hearing very much, but she would have liked to know where the improvement and regeneration had happened. Actually, she didn't need them to tell her that her lungs were sound again-lungs that she had been told would never completely heal from the gas she had inhaled on Bremport. Petaybee had done that for her. Would they believe it had been the planet? Probably not!

The medics were deep in consultation for a long while after the last of the examinations had been completed. One or another kept glancing at her as if she had grown tentacles or oozed slime or perhaps turned into a new sort of humanoid specimen they could dissect for the good of Mankind.

Ignoring the tension in her guts, Yana forced herself to relax-as much as anyone could on the hard examination table. She succeeded well enough so that she was jerked out of a doze by a rough hand.

The one she had come to think of as "Ornery-eyes" indicated, with a grunt and a jerk of his thick thumb, that she was to accompany him. The medics didn't pause in their discussion to observe her departure. Then she noticed that Ornery-eyes was sweating, great circles under his armpits and down his shirt back. Out in the corridor she could appreciate why: they must have turned the heat up as high as it would go. He jerked his thumb in the direction they were to take.

Automatically she memorized the turnings as he prodded her left or right, or straight ahead, and down the stairs. She wished she'd had a chance to see a layout of the SpaceBase complex. It was ingrained in her that she should never waste the opportunity to dekko a place, even if she might never need the info. Then she felt a series of concussive shocks through her paper-slippered feet, and she winced. That wasn't from any hard landings-unless someone was being awfully careless with shuttle vehicles.

Her escort grabbed her arm, pulling her back a pace and jamming her right up against a door. The thumb indicated she was to enter. She pondered briefly about knocking, but when the thumb jerked threateningly again, she shrugged and opened the door.

A man of medium age, medium build, and medium coloring, with the unmedium insignia of a bird colonel on his collar, sat at a small desk, studying the small screen. To her surprise, he looked up the moment she entered, waved the marine out of the room, and beckoned for her to be seated on the only other piece of furniture in the nondescript office. He also turned off the screen.

"Major Maddock, I'm Colonel Foyumi Khan, that's K-H-A-N," he said with a trace of a smile.

"Psych?"

He nodded. "Routine reassignment testing," he said in a manner designed to reassure-but somehow she wasn't. "You appear to be in excellent physical shape considering your condition just six weeks ago. This planet seems to suit you."

"It would be more accurate to state that I suit it." -

His eyes widened just slightly. "Oh?" he asked encouragingly. "How do you construe that?"

"My improved health, of course," Yana said, trying for innocence. This shrink was altogether too smooth. She was almost flattered that Intergal had assigned her an interrogator of his quality. "Great place for R and R."

Through her feet she felt another of those distinct tremors. Khan noticed it, too, and he frowned slightly, glancing down, then back up at her. She returned his regard quizzically, though she had already decided that the quakes were not being caused by someone crashing a shuttle onto the landing field. Somewhere blasting was going on, and Petaybee was wincing away from Intergal's latest assault on its mineral wealth. Damn Torkel! He hadn't heard a word she had said.

"And you feel that this… ah… planet is totally responsible for your improved physical condition?"

"Well, breathing fresh air that hasn't been recycled for who knows how long with what additives from however many stations it's been serviced in is a good start when you've burned lungs. Then there's regular hours, clean living, a natural diet free from technological additives, winter sports, and stress-free companionship. Those're surefire prescriptions for renewed vitality."

"I see. And this stress-free companionship? It means a lot to you?"

Yana shrugged. "I'm a company employee. I go where I'm told, do what I'm told, and when it's pleasant duty with nice folk, I'm grateful."

"Grateful enough to sell out the company to retain the nice folk?"

She chuckled then, noting the evenness of his return gaze, the blandness of his face. Behind those sat a very smart man.

"Why should I sell out a company which has provided me with what I need? Especially when I'm trying to convince the company that they're about to throw the baby out and recycle the dirty bathwater."

"The bathwater?"

"Colonel, I was sent out to see what I could learn. I learned something that Captain Fiske finds unacceptable. He's evidently quite ready to take the word of the man he originally intended I would replace and a short-witted snocle driver with a beef against me. All because he's run smack dab into something he can't understand."

"And you understand it?"

"No, not at all. But I do concede that it's happened, along with my"- She chuckled. -"inexplicable return to health."

"So you're grateful to the planet for this?"

She could see him grappling with that notion and nodded. "The planet is more than Fiske is willing to accept."

"But you do?"

"I do. And, if he'll only credit an old shipmate with the sense to tighten bolts when she sees 'em loose, he'd do himself, the company, and me a stupendous favor."

"Which is?"

"He-and Intergal-can gain a lot more from Petaybee than consumable minerals!"

"And what can they gain?"

"Working knowledge of a new sentient life-form."

"Which is?"

"This planet."

He brought his chin forward in a nod that ended abruptly. He looked at her and smiled: not a really reassuring smile, but the kind one might give someone who might not be playing with a full deck. Yana raised an eyebrow and deliberately laid one arm on the desk, hand relaxed on the surface, as she hooked the other arm along the back of the chair, assuming as indolent and relaxed a position as she could. She had given enough of the psych tests she knew were upcoming to know how to act: open, relaxed, easy, as if she hadn't a care in the world. She even hauled her right ankle up to her left knee, as if to leave herself completely open. This room was hot, also, and she didn't want to show any perspiration-even if the bird colonel was.

He shot the expected questions at her and she gave him back the answers, pausing briefly now and then to consider-as was wise of her to do-but not pausing long enough for him to consider it an evasion or hesitation. It was working, with him and with her, because the more complicated the shrink-questions, the more she relaxed, since she knew exactly the sorts of answers required. They hadn't really looked at her records, had they?

Suddenly, in the middle of posing a question designed to reveal any sexual aberrations she might have, he stopped and stared at her-as if seeing her for the first time.

"You know all the parameters of the answers, don't you?"

"Wondered when you'd figure that one out, Colonel."

He leaned back as far as the uncomfortable chair would let him, crossing his arms on his chest. "So what's behind all this? Give me a straight answer."

"I already did, Colonel. I've known Captain Fiske a long time. He asked me to do some nosing about for him since I was billeted in a Petaybean village. I did. I gave him my report. He doesn't care to believe it." She shrugged at such vagary. "It's not the first time commanders have refused to believe reconnaissance reports and taken more comfortable rear-echelon theories." She shrugged again, reaching up to scratch her head as if puzzled by such irrationality. She was sweating, and that wasn't the way to put across her point of view. Except that the colonel was sweating more profusely than she. "Hey, did they turn up the heat around here just so I wouldn't get a chill in my paper wrapping?"

Now the colonel was free to take out a cloth and mop his face and neck. "Heat's been rising steadily. I thought this was the cold season down here."

"The locals are already taking bets on the exact day and time the ice on the river will crack and be carried away downstream."

He gave her a side look, then grinned. "How'd you bet?"

"Me?" She chuckled. "I don't have enough money to waste on foolish bets, Colonel. But the earliest of those dates chalked up is weeks away." They felt another rumble underfoot, one considerably more authoritative than any of the others.

The colonel clutched at the edge of the desk as the monitor rattled on its stand. In the same second, Yana grabbed the side of the desk.

"Someone's planting too much semtex," the colonel said with a frown.

Yana grinned, having thought of another answer to the whammy they had just felt.

"Spill what you know, Major," the colonel advised, "while there's still a chance for you to get straightened out on this. Unless, of course, you think the planet's fighting back?"

"If, that is, I was a bettor, Colonel, I think my money'd be on the planet."

Just then the door burst open-resisting a little, for it was slightly off kilter from the last quake-and Fiske came in, his eyes narrowed in anger. Behind him were Giancarlo and Terce.

"All right, Yanaba, where is he? How's he doing this?"

Yana took great satisfaction in maintaining her calm while three sweaty, angry perturbed men threatened to overwhelm her. "I assume that the 'he' you refer to is Dr. Shongili?"

"You know it is." Fiske, jaw out, took the necessary step to loom over her in the chair.

"I don't know where Dr. Shongili is, Captain Fiske. How could I since I've been… involved… here for the past four or five hours."

"He's somewhere on this planet…"

"I hope so," Yana murmured.

"… And I'm going to find him and find out how he's doing this." Fiske flicked his fingers at the ground.

Yana did not have to pretend surprise. "You think he's blowing his planet up to thwart you?" She actually had trouble suppressing her laughter. "He's got no explosives. The company has 'em all. And why would he want to blow his planet up?"

"I don't know how he's doing it, but he's responsible."

"Using what?" Yana fired back at him. "Or, maybe," she said, turning devious, "he's told the planet to resist, to hamper, to impede your efforts to strip it of its natural resources."

Fiske jutted his jaw out again, clenching his teeth over whatever it was he wanted to blurt out in frustration. Instead, he transferred his feelings to the grip of his fingers on her arm as he roughly hauled her up from the chair.

"You're coming with me!" And he began to frog-march her out of the room.

"Like this?" she asked. Part of her paper skirt, soaked with her perspiration, had been left on the seat of the chair. She had also lost one of her paper shoes in his haste to get her moving.

"Captain!" the colonel barked in a tone that could not be ignored, even by Torkel Fiske. "You will permit the major to dress before she leaves this installation."