Dimenon was rousing but, although he moaned in pain, Lunzie did not attend him. Margit, Aulia and Portegin kept their eyes front, trying not to focus on scenes they could neither stop nor change.
Tanegli came storming up the ramp to the shuttle, his face contorted with anger, a man controlled by his emotions, no longer the calm rational botanist, interested in growing things.
“There isn’t a power pack in any of the sleds,” he told Paskutti but he strode right up to Varian, grabbing her by both arms and shaking her. Kai willed her to feign unconsciousness. Such handling might impair any chance of that broken shoulder healing properly.
“Where did you hide them, you tight-assed bitch?” he cried.
“Watch your strength, Tanegli. Don’t break her neck yet?” said Paskutti, stepping forward in his urgency to arrest the angry man.
Tanegli visibly pulled back some force of the blow he had levelled at Varian. Nevertheless, her head rolled sharply backwards but as she righted herself, her eyes were still open. The marks of Tanegli’s fingers were vivid weals on her cheek.
“Where did you hide the power packs?”
“She’s broken her left shoulder. Use that as goad,” said Paskutti.
“Not too much … just enough. Can’t have her passing out with pain. These light weights can’t take much.”
“Where? Varian, where?” Tanegli accompanied each word with a twist to her left arm.
Varian cried out. To Kai’s ears, the echo was false since, in the throes of Discipline, Varian wouldn’t feel pain right now.
“I didn’t hide them. Bonnard did.”
Margit and Aulia gasped at this craven betrayal of the boy.
“Go get him, Tanegli. Find out where those power packs are or we’ll be backing the supplies out of here. Bakkun and Berru will have started the drive. Nothing can stop it once it starts.” Paskutti twitched with a sense of urgency now. “She’d know where he is. Tell me, where? Varian?”
Varian suddenly hung limp in Tanegli’s grip. He let her drop to the deck with a disgusted oath and strode to the open lock. Kai heard three more steps before the man stopped, shouting for Bonnard to come. Then Tanegli called for Divisti and Tardma to help him search for the boy.
Paskutti looked down at Varian’s crumpled figure. Kai hoped that the man didn’t suspect that she was only pretending. An expression close to the snarl of a fang-face crossed the heavy-worlder’s face, but he was expressionless again when he turned to Kai.
“March!” Paskutti gestured peremptorily to the lock. He motioned to Lunzie and the others to move; with flicks of his forefinger he indicated that each was to carry one of the unconscious ones. “Into the main dome, all of you!” he ordered.
As they crossed the compound, Dandy was lying dead in his pen, back broken. Kai was glad neither Cleiti nor Terilla would see their pet. The ground was littered with scattered tapes, charts, exposed records and splintered discs. Inadvertently he trod on one of Terilla’s careful drawings of a plant. Forcing deep breaths from his diaphragm, he controlled the fury he felt at such wanton destruction.
The main dome had been stripped of everything useful. The unconscious were laid on the floor the others motioned to stand by the farthest arc from the iris lock.
Outside, the search for Bonnard continued. Paskutti was now glancing first at his wrist chrono and then at the plains beyond the force-screen.
Kai’s heightened hearing caught the faint sound of his name. Carefully he turned his head and saw Lunzie staring at him, saw her imperceptibly indicate that he was to look outside. By shifting slightly he could see out, could see two dots in the sky, the black line beneath, a tossing black line, a moving black line and then he knew what the heavy-worlders had planned to do.
The force-screen was strong enough to keep out ordinary dangers but not the massed attack of stampeded creatures. The camp’s advantage of height above the plain and forest would be cancelled. The heavy-worlders were herding the animals right up where they wanted them to do their damage.
The Theks, receiving Kai’s message, might react to it … in a few days’ time. They might, if the thinking spirit moved them, send one of the younger Theks to investigate. But Kai doubted it. The Theks would rightly consider that any intervention of theirs would arrive too late to affect the outcome of the mutiny.