Free Acorna’s Search by Anne McCaffrey Page B

wind. The sky was boiling, and jagged bolts of lightning flashed green nearby. There was no rain yet. It was hard for it to rain with the surface water so diminished, Acorna supposed while she waited for her lifemate’s answer.
    As they terraformed, possibly they would need to bring in water from the outside first, to “prime the pump” as humans said in some of the old books she had read, the ones about life in the desert.
    There was no answer from Aari or from Maati. Acorna told herself to be calm, that they might be preoccupied or conversing with someone else, not receiving. She stepped back into the flitter and said in a carefully level voice, “Miiri? I’ll have them hail you as soon as I can. I know it’s hard, but try not to let anyone go look for Kaarlye and the aagroni before Hafiz’s ship arrives with the personnel locators.”
    But the voice that answered was not Miiri’s and was, in fact, strange to her.
    “Khornya? Miiri said she had to join the search for Kaarlye and the aagroni, so I am now communications officer. This is Fiicki. Was there some message you wanted to give Miiri?”
    “Fiicki,” she said. “Try to call the search party back, please. Tell them to wait for personnel locators from the Moon of Opportunity. We must think of the safety of the searchers as well as of trying to find those who are lost. In fact, I may be missing two of my crew now.”
    “I’ll see if I can find them to tell them, Khornya,” Fiicki agreed, rather nervously. “No one seems to be around at the moment, though.”
    “Call them—with thought-speak,” Acorna suggested. “Before you leave the building.”
    “That’s odd,” Fiicki said after a moment in which Acorna followed her own suggestion, calling out for Aari, Maati, Maarni, and Yiitir. She could still see the tip of Thariinye’s toe and RK’s tail out the flitter window. “Silence.”
    “That’s what I’m getting too. Fiicki, there is something very peculiar going on here. Do not leave the com unit under any circumstances until those locators arrive, and call me at once when they do. Meanwhile, patch me through to Hafiz again, please, I am going to awaken the rest of my crew and do an air search for our missing people en route to base camp. No, no,” she said, feeling the panic in the erstwhile communications officer even through the vast distance between them. “Please don’t be overly concerned. Whatever is happening is certainly curious, and cause to investigate. But remember that we have heard no alarm or fear from any of those missing. Whatever is happening, it may not be at all harmful or dangerous. I think we should recall all personnel to base camp, dispense the locators when they arrive, then regroup and redeploy each team in continuous communication with MOO if possible. It’s either do that, or evacuate—and personally, I have no plans to leave this place without my family and friends. We will find them.”
    “I—”
    “If you feel differently, then of course you must do as you think best,” she added quickly.
    “It’s as if they’ve been swallowed whole,” Fiicki whispered hoarsely, sounding as though he was afraid the very building could hear him. “I have never felt such—silence, Khornya. Even in space there were the other crew members. Please don’t sign off.”
    “I won’t. Monitor the unit during my hail to Hafiz, but please keep trying to contact the others through thought-speech. And stay at your post—other crews might be trying to call for help, too.”
    “I-I will, Khornya. Please don’t break the connection.”
    She promised she would not. While the patch to MOO was relayed, she opened the flitter door, gave her sleeping shipmates a mental hail, and said to Thariinye, “Please come aboard now, and bring RK. We are going to base camp.”
    “It’s not my shift,” he said, yawning. “Can’t a man get any sleep around here? Why do we have to go now? And where are the others?”
    “I don’t know,”