Anne McCaffrey - Petaybee 1 - Powers That Be

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The Petaybee Series

Volume 1

POWERS THAT BE

Anne McCaffrey

We dedicate this book to Neva Reece for holding down the Scarborough fort (and supplying the

cats with TLC) while we wrote at McCaffrey's house in Ireland. Thanks from us both, Neva.

Chapter 1

Stiding in the crowded processing center of Petaybee's spaceport, Yanaba Maddock eyed the side

door as a drowner would eye a drifting spar. Unobtrusively making her way to it, she hoped it

wasn't locked. It was, but the lock was not proof against the skills she had acquired in her years as a

company soldier, investigator, explorer, training officer, and, most recently, long-term resident of a

medical facility. Automatically checking to see if her activity was being noticed, Yana slid the door

open just wide enough to accommodate her thin body. She paused to pull on her gloves: she had

been warned in the briefing-and she always took briefings seriously-of the danger of bare skin

sticking to frozen surfaces.

For a moment she leaned back against the slide panel, to secure it in case she had been observed.

Then the cold air hit her. She knew from previous cold-weather training not to inhale the freezing

blast that whipped around the corner of the building and slammed into her face.

"The temp-er-actch-chur of Planet, Terraformation B, commonly called Petaybee, at certain

locations during certain points in lime during the winter can range as low as minus two hundred

degrees fare-in-height," the computer aboard the shuttle from ship to port had cautioned. "That's

cold, troops. Do not touch metal objects with your unprotected epy-dur-mus. Do not run, or the air

will freeze into small icicles in your lungs and lacerate them. Wear or carry your winter gear with

you at all times. Do not count on a nice warm vehicle for warmth. For one thing, there is a shortage

of nice warm vehicles on Petaybee, because machinery that doesn't freeze and crack in the extreme

cold is expensive. For another thing, even the expensive equipment breaks down, and you may find

yourself stranded. The tem-per-atch-chur at Kilcoole Space Base today is minus fifty degrees fare-

in-height. Some of the locals have been known to regard this as relatively tropical by comparison

with what they consider real winter. Bear in mind that summer to these same individuals consists of

two months of fairly constant daylight as warm as fifty-five to sixty degrees above zero, still twelve

to seventeen degrees colder than regulation shipboard settings of seventy-two degrees. So button up

your outer gear, 'cause the wind blows free, and take good care of yourselves, remembering at all

times that your ass belongs to the company. That is all."

Yana had smiled to hear the computer briefing given in the gruff voice and speech patterns of a

senior NCO, but she was no more inclined to ignore the warning than she would have been had it

been issued by a flesh-and-blood top sergeant. Minus two hundred, huh? Good thing she'd gotten

here during a "heat wave." Icicles lacerating her already trashed lungs would do nothing for her

convalescence.

Fumbling with outerwear that had been broiling her in the facility, she pulled her scarf across her

mouth, flipped the hood to her head, pulled it down over her forehead, which was fast becoming

wooden with cold, and tucked the scarf securely up to her eyes before she tied the hood under her

chin.

Cold though the air was, and despite a taint of overheated oil and space fuel from the snow-rimmed

plascrete landing pad, the freshness of it-warmed by her breath as she inhaled through the muffling

fabric-was clean! One of the small joys of her life were those first moments of breathing fresh,

unadulterated, unrecycled air. the real stuff.

She inhaled through her mask, tentatively at first, because her lungs were still not working as well

as they should-one of the reasons she was the perfect candidate for Petaybee in the eyes of her

employers. Gradually she began to take deeper breaths; she wanted to flush the dead air of a

spaceship out of her poor abused lungs. They would have even more of a chance to heal here in

Petaybee's unpolluted atmosphere than in the rarefied aisles of that medical complex back on

Andromeda Station.

She took in one deep breath too many and started to cough, gasp, and choke until her eyes teared

with the spasms. Panting with short chest inhalations, she managed to get control again. The tears

froze on her cheeks and she brushed them away. Grimly she thought that you could have too much

of a good thing-even air. And she had better get back inside: for all she was wearing garb

appropriate to the new climate, she could feel her fingers and toes numbing. She spared one look at

the horizon; the great bowl of a blue sky without so much as a defense shield over the spaceport,

and the ice-covered land and wondered if she really had made the right decision.

Slipping back inside, she pushed the hood off, pulled down the scarf, and scanned her nearest

neighbors. Only one of them seemed to notice that she had left and come back. He blinked and

frowned before turning his attention to the screen at the far end of the long hall where the names of

those to be processed were blinking. Y. MADDOCK was one of them.

She moved forward, squeezing past people until she came to the more eager layers of folk, packed

tightly as they waited for release.

"Maddock, Y," she said to the official, offering her plastics.

"ID," he said without looking up from his terminal.

She extended her left wrist, and with rough fingers, he turned it so he could see it, bending her hand

painfully.

"You're cold!" He looked up now, seeing her as a person, not a number.

She shrugged. "Leaning against that door."

"Humpf. Didn't you attend the briefing?" He frowned. "Don't touch metal ..."

"Even inside?" she asked with the innocent inquiring look she had used to flummox brighter men

than this one.

He frowned, and then the terminal required his attention, her plastic having jumped out of the

processing slot. It skidded halfway across the worktop before he caught it. Yana kept her face

straight: he looked the sort not likely to appreciate chasing anything, much less plastic.

A slip of film extruded from the slot by her hand.

"That has your work number, which you will memorize, work assignment, living quarters, ration

status, travel and clothing allowance, and the name of your official guide as well as his office

hours. Your travel pack has already been delivered to your quarters." Then he paused and startled

her by smiling. "You can take one of the waiting vehicles outside the terminal. Major Maddock.

Welcome to Petaybee."

Amazed by both the courtesy and the unexpected smile, Yana thanked him and moved smartly out

of the way to make room for the next person in line.

A translucent roof shield protected the area outside the passenger terminal. It was filled with the

sounds of confusion and impatience as the processed arrivees, most of them lugging their precious

23.5 kilo personal-allowance sacks, searched for each other or for transportation.

"Yellow slip, huh?" someone said in her ear, pulling her hand down to peer at it.

The someone was a young girl, so bundled in furs that only her face was visible, and that slightly

obscured by long wisps of fur and, possibly, her own hair. She appeared to be in her early to mid-

teens; her keen gray eyes were alive with intelligence and interest

"I'm cleared for yellow, too," the girl added, and her mittened hand shoved a plastic square under

Yana's eyes. The woman grabbed her hand for a longer look at the official-looking plastic. The girl

didn't resist, though her eyes widened slightly at the strength of Yana's grasp.

The plastic-covered printed documentation that licensed Buneka Rourke to convey passengers in an

authorized snocle within the environs of the port but no farther. There was a large A in the right-

hand corner and a renewal date sometime later on in Petaybee's year.

"How much?"

Buneka Rourke blinked and then grinned companionably. 'From here to your place, it's on the

PTBs."

"The PTBs?" Yana wasn't sure she had heard correctly.

Buneka's grin broadened, and her eyes twinkled with mischief. "Sure, PTB-the powers that be.

Petaybee," she added. "You didn't know that's where this planet got its name?"

"The briefing said it was Planet, Terraformation B," Yana said.

The girl waved her mitten dismissively. "They would manage to make it sound dull. But it's really

named after them-the Powers That Be that move us from A to B or Z or wherever they gotta plug

holes or clean up disasters or fight wars. C'mon. Let me get you out of this mess and give you a

proper welcome to Petaybee." The girl tugged at Yana's sleeve, pointing to a battered-looking but

clean orange/yellow snocle with fluorescent numerals, MTS-80-84, that matched those Yana had

seen on the plastic ID. But as Yana stepped off the curb, a big figure intervened.

"Yellow ticket? I take yellow tickets." The man glared menacingly at the girl. "You doan wanna

ride with this flitter-face. She turn you over into snow drift. No one find you. Yellow ticket

deserves big, warm snocle." He gestured toward a large, sleek affair.

"I've already-" she began.

"Terce, she's legally mine."

"You ain't cleared for yellows," the man said, hunching belligerently over the girl. He was a tall

enough man, but the furs made him even more bulky.

"Am, too." She waved her ID at him; snarling, he batted at her hand, dismissing her qualification. "I

got a passenger all legal, Terce," she went on. "You weren't even here."

Yana deftly inserted herself between them and made eye contact with the intruder. "I've already

accepted Rourke's assistance, but I thank you for your willingness to transport me."

"I gotta, dama . . ."

At first Yana thought he was swearing at her and then realized that he was bowing with great

subservience. There was an edge of anxiety in his voice and manner.

"You're safer with me," the girl said, glaring such a challenge first at Yana and then at Terce that

Yana sensed that more was at stake than just a fare.

"Look, girl, another yellow ticket." Terce gestured toward a man whose yellow ticket was plainly

visible in his hand, "you take 'im." Then he took a firm hold on Yana's upper arm and began to

swing her toward his vehicle.

Deftly, almost automatically, Yana disengaged her arm and then strode across to the battered little

MTS-registered snocle.

"Dama, dama," Terce cried, real concern in his voice.

Yana ignored him, lengthening her stride when she heard the triumphant exclamation from Buneka,

followed by the sound of boots slithering across the snow mush behind her. Yana hit the door

release on the passenger's side, then paused a moment to catch her breath before she slung her sacks

onto the rear storage shelf. Still chuckling over her success, the girl slid into the driver's scat.

"You'd better button up. This thing takes longer to warm up than Terce's fancy sleigh."

"And I'm safer with you?" Yana asked at her driest, as she rearranged her hood and scarf and belted

into the seat before slipping her hands back into the fur mittens.

The girl's eyes crinkled. "Well, Terce is known to do 'errands' for folk. My hunch is he was there on

purpose to collect you. If you'd wanted to go with him, you could have, of course, but you didn't.

So you didn't know he was there to meet you. So ... you're safer with me-especially the way he was

acting. He's not very bright." Her remark was couched in a kindly tone but held a hint of caution

nonetheless. She glanced over at Yana, her eyes bright, alert.

Well, Yana mused. An hour on the planet and intrigue starts already. Never a dull moment, no

matter what the spaceflot about Petaybee was. PTB! Powers that be. She chuckled at the thought

but let that also be an answer for her driver.

The chuckle turned into one of her coughing fits, and between spasms she fumbled in her sack for

her bottle of syrup. She was suddenly weak with the effort it took to draw enough breath between

explosions that threatened to blow her ribs apart. The fur mittens made her hands clumsy, and she

almost dropped the bottle before she could peel a mitten from her shaking hand and get the plastic

cap off. As soon as the syrup began to coat her pharynx, the spasm eased. She cradled the bottle in

her hands, against her chest. The preparation had a lot of alcohol in it, but she still wouldn't risk it

freezing.

The girl slowed the vehicle and looked back at her with wide eyes. Poor kid looked as if she were

wishing that she had let Terce take her fare.

"Are you-all right, Major?"

Yana gulped another swallow of the syrup, this time feeling the warmth spreading into the poisoned

cavities of her damaged lungs. Every time she coughed, ;-he images flashed through her brain of

the graphic films the doctors had shown her when they had explained why she was no longer fit for

active duty. As if the fact that she couldn't laugh or hoist a duffel bag without a paroxysm of

coughing wasn't evidence enough of her disability. Still, she was alive, which was more than the

others were. She recapped the bottle, tucked it into her parka pocket, and pulled the mitten back

over her hand. It was already going numb with cold. She noted with satisfaction, however, that

there was no blood on either mitten.

Catching the girl's anxious look, she said, "Don't worry, Rourke, it's not contagious. Took a little

gas at Bremport Station was all."

"From the sound of that cough, you must have had a nasty time of it," the girl remarked, speeding

up slightly again but proceeding more cautiously than before, as if afraid the jarring would set her

passenger off again.

"You might say that," Yana said, thinking of the others. The hell of it was, she had been through a

lot worse in her younger days and had come through without a scratch. Bremport was supposed to

have been a routine training mission-new recruits, a couple of them from Petaybee, she

remembered. She remembered just about everything from that mission, over and over again.

Using the technique she had learned a long time before from one of her old sergeants, she switched

her focus, letting her eyes rest on the panorama of blue and white nothingness, the featureless

landscape soothing her, helping her blank her mind, the cold in the air matching the cold inside her.

Ground-hugging vegetation pierced lumps of snow with frozen spines. Then she noticed that the

snocle track was on ground slightly lower than the rest of the terrain.

"You guys dig a new road here, huh?" she asked her driver.

Rourke snorted. "Not a bit of it. Do you think they'd be spendin' money on improvements for the

likes of us? This-is the river!"

"No kidding?" Yana looked out and down. Where the snow had blown away in one patch, she saw

the translucence of powder blue ice. "Anybody ever fall through the ice?"

"Not lately. Even this late in the winter it's still between minus seventy-five and minus thirty most

of the time."

"If everything is frozen, what do you do about drinking water?" Company leaders automatically

considered such details.

"Oh, that. I'll show you." The girl grinned and continued on.

After a few moments the ground had more rise and fall to it. Beside it, stunted trees, rooted and

branched in billows of snow, began appearing closer and closer together until they formed a sparse

forest on either side of the snocle. The girl veered the machine over toward the trees, and around

the next bend, Yana saw a little pavilion set up on the ice, smoke rising from a hole in the top.

Rourke had been decreasing the speed of her snocle and now drifted to a gentle stop.

The tent shook slightly from within and what looked at first like a bear emerged.

"Slainte, Bunny!" the bear said with a wave, dispelling the illusion. The fur-clad man lumbered

forward, lifting his great fur boots high above the snow. His face bristled with icicles from the ruff

around his mouth and nose, which was only lightly frosted, to his beard, eyebrows, and mustache,

which were thickly encrusted with ice.

"Slainte, Uncle Seamus!" The girl waved back and cut the motor. The man's eyes flicked up

through his personal icicles to glance at Yana, a searching look for all its brevity. "This is Major

Maddock, Uncle. She's going to be staying at Kilcoole."

"Is she now?" He included Yana in his wave, and she nodded at him.

"Do you have some thermos or two for me to take to Auntie, since I'm passing her way?" Bunny

asked.

"Now, that would be very good of you, Bunny. I've two now, and I'll have more later when Charlie

and the dogs come along. This dama doesn't mind stopping on her way, does she?"

"Nah! She won't mind. Will you, Major? You wanted to see how we got water. Come look in the

shed."

Moving a little more slowly than she would have liked, Yana climbed from the snocle. Out here, on

the river, the cold immediately clenched its fist around her face and thighs, the only parts of her that

weren't encased in synfur. She hoisted the muffler around her nose, but the sweet smell of wood

smoke still came through. She wondered if it would set her coughing again. But there was Bunny,

encouragingly holding up the flap of the tent and pointing to the fire burning in a circle around the

rim of a long black hole in the ice. An insulated container on a length of line stood beside the hole,

along with two other containers, which Seamus now gave Bunny.

Yana took a couple of steps toward the tent before the smoke from the fires wafted toward her. She

felt her throat seizing up and stepped back, silently cursing her weakness. How the frag was she

going to survive on a cold planet if she couldn't breathe in the presence of fire?

Bunny, her shoulders bowed as she hauled one of the thermoses with both hands so that the

container bumped against her shins, nodded to Yana to return to the snocle. Yana was relieved not

to put her lungs through any further ordeal. She turned with more enthusiasm than was prudent and

her feet promptly slid on the ice underlying the thin covering of drifted snow. She placed her feet

more cautiously then, and managed to make it back to the snocle without falling.

Seamus set the other water thermos in beside her and ran a mitten across his face, an accustomed

gesture that dislodged some of his facial icicles. "Welcome to Petaybee, such as it is, Major. You

need something, you just ask Bunny here."

Yana nodded. "Thanks." It was just possible that, if her official guide turned out to be anywhere

near as inept as she herself was in this environment, she would find Bunny's unofficial assistance

more useful.

They arrived at Yana's new quarters long after darkness had fallen, though by Yana's calculation it

was no more than late afternoon. She looked at the small single house standing alone on pilings

beside others of similar construction. It had one window and one door that she could see in the

gloom, and the window was small. Whatever. It was bound to be roomier than some of the berths

she'd had, and compared to her place on the ward at the space-station hospital; it looked palatial, as

well as incredibly private.

Bunny hefted her duffel out of the snocle for her and pushed open the door. The interior was spare,

white as the outdoors, and contained a cot, a small table on which rested her survival pack, a chair,

and a stove for heating and cooking.

"It's too late for you to inprocess today. Sorry it took so long," Bunny said. "Look, wait here and I'll

get some blankets. You'd better take this water, too. No one's given you your ration." She nodded

toward the thermos on a shelf beyond the stove. - "That's for your auntie, isn't it?" Yana asked.

"And I can scarcely take your blankets, too."

Bunny shook her head. 'They won't care about the water, and I can spare the blanket. You'll be

issued your own tomorrow."

She drove away in the snocle and, in a short time, returned on foot, carrying a bundle of puffy cloth

and a packet. "Smoked salmon strips," she said, indicating the packet.

"What?"

"Fish. It's good," Bunny said patiently. "You'll like it."

Yana's day had started back at the station hospital nearly thirty hours earlier, and she couldn't face

anything more taxing than rolling up in blankets and going to sleep as fast as possible. "Thanks,"

she said.

"Okay, then. Shall I pick you up in the morning to meet your guide? I could get the blanket then,

too."

Aha, Yana thought, a little blackmail here to ensure the continuing custom. Very enterprising.

"That'll be fine," she said with a weary lift of her eyes that would have to pass for a smile. Bunny

showed her how to light the stove before she left and promised to help her organize more fuel the

next day.

Without waiting for the room to warm up enough for her to remove her outerwear, Yana arranged

the chair at the head of the cot, sat down, and stretched her legs out on the bed. She had chewed

only a couple of bites of the oddly spiced salmon strip before she fell asleep, as she had for the last

few weeks, sitting up.

Bunny Rourke returned to her aunt's house after delivering the blankets to her client and returning

the snocle to its special shed.

"I'll need to check it out again in the morning," she'd told Adak O'Connor, the dispatcher and guard.

"No shuttles due from SpaceBase for another week," Adak said, removing his headphones and

turning away from the radio that connected him to SpaceBase and the few other places on Petaybee

that had such advanced equipment. He scowled at his record book, which contained the schedules

for the port and kept track of the whereabouts of the vehicles-both of them. Bunny was licensed to

drive one, Terce the other: they were the only authorized drivers to and from Kilcoole. The shuttles

belonged to InterGalactic Enterprises, known as Intergal, the omnipresent if not omnipotent

corporation responsible for the existence of Petaybee, and the boss of all Bunny's people. Bunny

had qualified for her license only because one of her uncles was an important man and owned his

own snocle as well as dogs. When Bunny's parents had disappeared, Uncle had taught her to drive

the snocle to help her make her own way in the village so she wouldn't be a burden. She was

Uncle's driver on the rare occasions when he preferred the snocle to his team. She also made the

trip out to his place to keep the machine running for him and repair it when it broke down- usually

from neglect. Her uncle was a brilliant man but not mechanically inclined. Bunny took after her

Yupik granddad: she could fix anything. And six months ago, on her fourteenth birthday, she had

obtained her license to ferry passengers from Space-Base to Kilcoole and back.

"I know there's no shuttles," she told Adak, "but my fare has to inprocess in the morning."

"Can't she walk or go by sled?"

"Nah. She's an important dama. An officer. But she's puny. Said something about being at

Bremport."

"The massacre where the Shanachie's boy was killed? Ah, the poor dama. And how is she puny?"

"She coughs. Bad. But she seems nice. Anyway, the snocle is authorized for official functions, so I

want to take her round to the outpost as quick as possible so she can settle in, like."

"Good child. You've taken to this dama, have you?"

"She's sleepin' this night under the quilt Auntie Moira made me."

'Then by all means lake the snocle in the morning, but mind you, no sight-seein'."

"Thanks, Adak," she said. "I'll bring you one of Auntie Moira's cakes in the morning when I come,

shall I?"

"That would be very welcome, Bunny. Good night now."

"Good night," she said, and headed back to the shed behind her aunt's house.

Ever since her older male cousins had turned a little too inquisitive about her development, Bunny

had preferred to sleep out here, in back of the kennel where Charlie kept his team of noisy and

protective dogs, who warned her of anyone approaching. She wasn't really scared, though. Most of

the people who came to see her brought her things-fish or moose chops, zucchini or tomatoes in the

summer-though some came just to visit. She was personally related to a large percentage of the

village, and she knew who would help her and who to avoid. There were a few people she didn't

want coming to her place-Terce, for one, but he was scared of Charlie's dogs. Mostly, everyone

looked out for her. That would have made her feel like a child except that she looked out for them,

too. That was how it was in Kilcoole. She was actually very adult for someone her age, trusted with

the responsibility of living on her own and holding down her own job.

Approaching her house, she was greeted by the hounds, who set up a good welcoming howl as she

walked quickly through them, unclipping the lines from Pearse and the lead dog, Maud.

She was pleasantly surprised to see smoke rolling up from her chimney to the sky. As she followed

its path she saw the lights were on display tonight: a simple pale green band whipping across the

black sky, dancing and twisting and sequined with stars. The smoke from the chimney smelled

grand-nutty and warm. Maud whined and stuck her long muzzle in Bunny's pocket. The dogs were

more used to Bunny, who had time for them and who usually fed and exercised them, than they

were to Charlie, who was their owner. Bunny petted Maud absently. Even with her stove getting a

head start on the chill, without her quilt she would need the dogs for warmth tonight. She would let

them in to get toasty by the fire while she ate her supper.

The big red dogs with their thick soft coats took up most of the floor space in the little shed. It

contained her berth, a scrounged unit cut out of one of the dead ships at SpaceBase, a shaky

tabletop pegged into the wall and placed so she could sit on her berth to eat, plus the stove and the

shelves she had built from old storage crates to hold her few belongings. She had the three books

left her by her parents, a set of tools-a gift from her uncle upon obtaining her license-and a

selection of shells, rocks, and mushroom-shaped tree tumors, as well as hand-me-downs from the

cousins and what little gear she had. On the table was a mare's-butter candle; it gave a fairly bright

light, though it didn't smell very good. Her shed was built of stone, of which Petaybee had plenty.

She had caulked it with mud two breakups earlier and reinforced it with some plasti her cousin

Simon had scrounged for her at the SpaceBase when he first joined the corps, before he shipped

out. The plasti had originally been used to repair the bubble around the SpaceBase garden, and it

did well in the cold, never cracking or contracting.

Something plopped down beside her onto the table and mewed up at her. She reached down to

stroke the rust-and-cream stripes of one of Aunt Clodagh's cats, though which she couldn't say

since so many of the Kilcoole felines were orange-marmalades. The cat pawed the door, and Bunny

smiled and followed, chattering to the cat.

"So Clodagh already knows about my passenger, does she, and left you here to tell me to report?

Glad to, cat, as long as there's a bite in it for me."

The dogs in the shed had ignored the cat; the ones in the yard did not bark as it led her through the

kennels. No one's dogs even barked at Clodagh's cats. They went where they pleased and knew

where everything was and what everyone was doing-as did Clodagh.

Chapter 2

The official guide-only a second lieutenant, Yana noted-stood up when she entered the

room. "Major Maddock," he said, saluting and flashing her quite an energetic smile. "Lieutenant

Charles Demintieff, first Petaybee military liaison officer, at your service, dama."

"Relax, Lieutenant," she said. "I'm reporting to you, not the other way round."

"Yes'm. It's just that I've read your file, and we don't get many heroes back here."

"Most heroes don't make it back anywhere," she said.

He laughed as if she had said something extremely witty. 'Then we're luckier still to have you,

Major. Colonel Giancarlo from SpaceBase snocled in this morning to welcome you personally.

When you've had your chat with him, we'll go over the routine stuff."

Walking into the adjoining room, Yana felt as wary as if she were entering the bridge of an enemy-

held ship. If the SpaceBase brass wanted to talk to her, why hadn't he done it at Inprocessing and

saved himself a long, cold ride?

The colonel, in contrast to the lieutenant, did not look happy lo see her. His insignia was one she

had seen only occasionally:

Psychological Operations, a euphemism for the Intelligence branch. She reported, and he waved her

into a chair while he continued typing something into a terminal.

"Well, Major," he said after she had been sitting there long enough to become impatient and

uncomfortable in her heavy gear. "What do you think of Petaybee so far?"

"Seems friendly," she said cautiously. He was testing her somehow, but she wasn't sure for what.

"The air is clean, pretty cold. Fairly primitive technologically. New recruits from here need

extensive training in the simplest equipment, and it's pretty obvious why, from what I've seen of my

quarters and the village. Am I missing something?"

"If you are, you're not alone," he said, his eyes shifting from the terminal to hers and boring into

them. "There shouldn't be anything here that we didn't put here. This planet was nothing but rock

and ice when Intergal claimed it. The company terraformed it, upgrading it from frozen

uninhabitable rock to a merely arctic climate. For the last two hundred years, it's been useful as a

replacement depot for troops, a relocation center for the peoples who were being displaced by our

other operations. Because the climate is rough on machinery, only SpaceBase contains much in the

way of modern comforts. The transportation needs of the inhabitants are mostly supplied by

experimental animals bred for the purpose."

"Experimental?" Yana asked. "Like lab animals?" She had been born on Earth but had spent her

childhood being shunted with her parents from one duty station to the next. Lab rats and monkeys

were somewhat familiar to her, along with a number of different alien species, but she was

unfamiliar-except from pictures-with the beasts she had seen on her way here today.

"Not exactly, although I suppose their ancestors did some time in a lab-originally. The company

hired Dr. Sean Shongili to alter certain existing species to adapt to this climate. That's how the

resident equines, felines, and canines, and many of the aquatic mammals come to be here."

"1 see," she said, but she didn't. The dogs obviously worked as sled animals, the cats to keep down

rodents. But she couldn't understand why Petaybee supported equines, too. Horses, from what little

she knew of them, seemed rather inappropriate for such a climate. And considering the need for

hacking and burning holes in ice to secure water, wasting such effort on domestic pets seemed

totally unproductive.

"Well, Intergal doesn't, entirely," the colonel said, as if he had read her thoughts. "The animals we

commissioned are here, but there have been sightings of other types that indicate perhaps Dr.

Shongili and his assistants were a trifle more creative than was covered by their authorization. The

current Dr. Shongili, also Sean, is certainly an odd bird, not what you'd call a team player. We've

monitored his records, however, and can't find any evidence that he's been exceeding his

instructions. We could, of course, move him, but this is not a research area favored by many in our

employ, and the Shongilis have done so well at producing viable species for arctic conditions that

we're reluctant to remove the current Shongili without more concrete evidence. Trouble is,

unauthorized species are not the only anomaly. Something else is going on here-our satellite

monitors have detected deposits of important minerals on this planet. When we dispatch teams,

they either can't find the location of the deposits, or else they simply don't return."

"That's why psyops is interested?" she asked, relaxing a little.

"You got it." Suddenly he grinned at her, an expression that did not make him any more attractive.

"That's where we can help each other, Major."

"Sir?"

"You're here this morning technically to be demobilized. You're a medical retiree due to spend the

rest of your days on this iceberg, which is unfortunate for you. However, your experience as an

intercommand investigator, and your earlier work with preliminary data gathering landing teams, is

of some interest to us, despite your disability, as is your record of combat experience. You don't

realize it yet, of course, but being a combat veteran carries considerable cachet in this place where

most families have at least one, and usually several, relatives in the corps. Furthermore your genetic

stock is similar to these people's." He eyed her, and Yanaba knew he was assessing the sprinkle of

white in the black hair that Bry used to claim had an auburn cast under bright light, the high

cheekbones, the rather bleached-out olive complexion, and the slightly tilted green-gold eyes. Her

body had once been lean and athletic, but weeks of illness had reduced her to brittle gauntness at a

weight she might have enjoyed had her strength not deserted her along with the extra kilos.

"How's that?" she asked, mystified.

"The people on this continent are a mixture of Irish and Eskimo-we've resettled cold-weather

natives all over the planet to assist the others in assimilation. In this area it's Eskimo: in other

settlements, ethnic Scandinavians and Indo-Asians."

"I don't exactly fit then," she said, smiling as tolerantly as possible.

"Well, of course, you were practically born into the company, but your father was Irish and your

first name, Yanaba-"

"Yanaba," she corrected. "That's Navajo-my mother's people. It's a war name, like a lot of

traditional Navajo names. Means 'she meets the enemy.' The Navajo, by the way, were desert

dwellers, not snow people."

"Close enough," he said. "Desert can get damned cold midwinter." He dismissed her objection with

a wave.

That told her she had made a tactical error by showing up his ignorance before she heard what he

wanted. But she had a fierce loyalty to her family. All she had of them now was the history

recorded in the computers for her by her parents before their deaths. It was about all she had had in

her life that hadn't been Internal-issued.

"We think you can fit, Maddock," he told her. "And we want you to do just that, because we need

to know what's going on. We want you to get to know the people, find out what or who exactly is

responsible for these problems: if Shongili is concealing experiments in producing new life-forms

on this planet, we need to know about it. If the geologic survey teams are being deliberately

ambushed and eliminated, we want to know that, and we want to know whom we have to deal with.

You don't have enough technical knowledge to locate the deposits yourself, but we want you to find

out who's preventing our teams from locating them. If there's some kind of sabotage or incipient

insurrection brewing, help us put a stop to it."

"Wouldn't it have been more effective to recruit a local informant?" she asked.

Giancarlo snorted. "There's something screwy about all of them. They all stick together all the time,

and every time I've had one of them in my office for any length of time, they start sweating and

turn red. Why would that happen if they're not scared, hiding something? Even Demintieff sweats

like crazy every time he comes in while I'm here. This office is always freezing when I arrive, and

even while I'm here, he keeps that outer office way too cold. These people also have gatherings that

nobody from SpaceBase is invited to, and if you ask one of the new recruits from here about it, they

just shrug."

"You haven't actively interrogated anyone yet, then?"

"No real excuse so far. What would I ask? Why do you people sweat so damned much, and how

come I don't get invited lo your parties?"

Yana nodded.

He leaned forward and stabbed at the desk with his finger, as if the gesture would somehow make

his words plainer. "We need someone loyal to the company to gain their confidence, find out what's

going on."

"What if they just sweat because they're used to the cold, and they have orgies or something at their

parties and don't want to mingle with outsiders out of embarrassment?"

"Major, perhaps I didn't make myself clear. You were injured at Bremport; you saw what happened

there. I shouldn't have to tell you what swamps of insurgency these colonial planets can be.

Unauthorized life forms have been spotted on this planet. Research-and-development teams have

disappeared into nowhere. You can't tell me these circumstances aren't related. What you have to

tell me instead is how they are connected with each other. Do you read me?"

She nodded, cautiously, and evidently mistaking her caution for hesitation he pressed on.

"You said something about your quarters. They're pretty standard for down here, but we certainly

have the wherewithal to make them more comfortable. Also, you're not full retirement age yet, nor

eligible for full pension."

"I have a medical discharge, sir."

"Not exactly. Not yet. Actually your disability status as of now is"- He tapped a key. -"only twenty-

five percent. That won't generate much of a pension. If you were on covert active duty, however,

you could do a lot better. We could even throw in hazardous-duty pay."

"Sir, with all due respect, while I wouldn't sniff at the money, the doctors back at the hospital . . ."

"You can't contact them from here, Maddock. And in the event you need further, fairly expensive

care, the transport from here back to there would be beyond your means, unless, of course, Intergal

foots the bill. I'll expect progress reports via Demintieff on a weekly basis unless, of course,

something comes up that I should know about instanter. Demintieff will take you around, introduce

you to people . . ."

Whatever this guy's specialty was, Yana reflected, it wasn't the gentle art of psychological

persuasion. He was about as subtle as a photon torpedo. But she owed Intergal her life and had

spent her life in its service. She wasn't going to turn them down just because this hammerhead

thought he was blackmailing her. Besides, she could use the pay.

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ThePetaybeeSeriesVolume1POWERSTHATBEAnneMcCaffreyWededicatethisbooktoNevaReeceforholdingdowntheScarboroughfort(andsupplyingthecatswithTLC)whilewewroteatMcCaffrey'shouseinIreland.Thanksfromusboth,Neva.Chapter1StidinginthecrowdedprocessingcenterofPetaybee'sspaceport,YanabaMaddockeyedthesidedoorasadrow...

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Anne McCaffrey - Petaybee 1 - Powers That Be

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