Scan Shongili smiled, and his eyes did, too: sparkly silver eyes that looked straight into hers, clever, "seeing" eyes that were bright with an unqualified welcome, a decided change from the superficial social manners that were usually all she was accorded and many degrees more kindly than Colonel Giancarlo. But Giancarlo had a mission for her, and he probably never regarded his mission personnel as remotely human.
Shongili wasn't much taller than she was; a subtle aura of great strength, intelligence, and charm emanated from him, though charm was a quality she had never trusted-until now. He was a lean man, which for starters she liked, with a narrow face, slightly broad at the eyes, which were wide-set and large; cheekbones that were more Magyar than Indian; a generous mouth with finely carved lips, white, even teeth just visible behind them; and a purposeful chin and jaw line. Not a man easily persuaded from his purpose.
"Well, now, so you're Major Maddock," Scan said, and she hurried to pull off her right glove as he extended what looked like an abnormally long-fingered hand. But it was warm and grasped hers just firmly enough for her to sense, again, the unexpected resources in him. In fact, the touch of his skin on hers was slightly electric, stimulating.
Then the silver eyes blinked and something in the altered look made her frown slightly, confused, for all that there didn't seem to be any diminution of his welcome or smile.
"Has everyone on this frozen ball of ice heard of me now?" she asked, slightly petulant. She forced a smile on her lips to make her words seem more of a joke than they had sounded in her own ears.
"Good news travels faster than bad on Petaybee," Scan said. He moved with lithe grace to the ever-present stove of a Petaybee home, pouring three cups from the equally ubiquitous steaming pot. "Actually, I have the only radio link with the town around. Adak at the snocle depot gets downright chatty if anything interesting happens-such as Kilcoole getting a new citizen, and a war hero at that. Here's something to warm your guts after such a long sled ride, Major."
"Thanks," Yana said, ignoring the war hero comment and hoping to restore herself to his good opinion after that flash of aggro. "You're very kind."
His silver eyes glinted as he handed her the cup. "Bunny would skin me alive if I never asked you where your mouth was," he said, and winked with pure mischief before he presented Bunny with her mug.
"Too right, Unk," Bunny said, "and Scan makes a good bev."
Yana clasped it in both hands, to warm numb fingers, taking her time about sipping a liquid she knew would be too hot to drink immediately. The rising steam carried a spicily inviting odor to her nostrils.
"Charlie's gone, I hear," Sean went on, hitching his hips up onto the nearest flat surface.
"Yah! With barely time to say good-byes, and no song," Bunny said, then cocked her head at him, smiling winsomely. "Which is why we wondered if we could have the recorder. The major here knows all about equipment like yours, and she volunteered to help us send him a letter. To make up for his sudden departure, like."
Sean flicked a gaze at Yana, and she quirked her lips in a smile.
"Charlie-boy's not the one to irritate folk," Sean said. "Wonder why they posted him off-planet." But he put his cup down and, with a single fluid movement, spun on one heel to an overburdened wall cabinet from which he unerringly extracted a recording device. Not, Yana realized as she saw the face of it, an obsolete affair but nearly state-of-the-art from the last time she had been issued one. The cabinet was crammed with technological gadgets of all kinds, half of which she couldn't put a name or use to. She watched as Sean negligently pushed back into place equipment that would have been worth a small fortune on any planet, much less a technologically starved one like Petaybee.
"Half of it doesn't work," he said, without seeming to have noticed her attention. "Petaybee's hard on any kind of instrumentation and machinery."
"How do you manage your work then?" she blurted out.
He gave an diffident shrug. "I improvise. We do a lot of that on Petaybee." He handed her the recorder. "Do you understand this type?"
She examined the display keys more closely and nodded, deciding to limit her comments. "Had one almost like this on my last assignment." She slid the thin rectangle into a thigh pocket. Then she nodded at the big cats. "I haven't seen anything like them here."
"Them?" Shongili looked half-surprised, half-amused. "My track-cats. When they're of a mind, they'll even pull a sled."
"They're big enough." Yana moved slightly on her buttocks. She was near enough to the stove to begin to feel the heat. She shrugged her jacket open a little more. "Do they always look at a person like that?"
Scan laughed. "They're always interested in new things."
"Did you design them like that?"
Scan's mobile eyebrows developed a quizzical quirk. "Design them? They designed themselves," he said with a shrug.
"Yes, but I thought you and your…"
"Not them. What he did; what I do is check on adaptability, not evolution or even mutation, but something in between as each species makes subtle improvements to survive in conditions their ancestors never had to cope with. Petaybee is a prime example of survival of the fittest."
"He's off," Bunny said with an air of resignation, and let herself fall backward into the chair she had been perched on. There she struggled out of her outer layers, preparing to endure. She shot Yana a grin to quell any apprehension.
"Like cats whose ears are no longer susceptible to frostbite?" Yana asked, remembering Clodagh's offhanded comment.
"Exactly." Scan grinned. But the humor in his silvery gaze held more than acceptance of her statement. He was probing, too, and a lot more deftly than Colonel Giancarlo could.
"Why haven't you done as much for the humans stuck here?" Yana asked, not quite certain she could tease this unusual man, but suspecting she could.
"Ah, them." Sean waved a hand. "We genetic manipulators aren't allowed to help humans. They have to do it the hard way."
"Have they?"
Sean cocked his head, his amusement not one whit diminished. "I'd say there have been… adjustments made. Learning what furs, for instance, are most suitable for the purpose of keeping human bodies warm."
"That's intellectual, not biological," Yana said.
"Mankind's intelligence distinguishes us from the animals, my dear major. And allows adjustments much faster than animals can alter their genetic codes."
"Do they? Here on Petaybee?"
"Over the last two hundred years, they'd have to, to survive. Wouldn't they?" He drained his cup. "Of course, the original Admin was sensible about some of the species they sent, which helped."
"Which ones?" Yana asked.
Bunny snorted, obviously knowing the answer.
Scan grinned, a grin of pure unadulterated mischief. "Why, the curly-coats." When Yana cocked her head at him inquiringly, he beckoned to her. "I'll show you."
"They're his pride and joy, Yana. You're in for it," Bunny said, propping her feet up on a footstool and obviously not intending to join Scan and Yana.
"I asked."
"The curly-coats are equines," Sean said, and as he cupped her elbow with his hand, she experienced the same electric shock of contact. "Originally from the Siberian area of the Eastern Hemisphere. They exist comfortably in extreme temperatures, having a spare flap in their nose that closes off frost. They survive on vegetation that wouldn't keep a goat alive. Small, sturdy, able to maneuver on tracks even a sled has trouble running."
He led her down a corridor from the main room, past closed doors, and into a link between the house and a spread of other buildings that she took for research and laboratory facilities. The link passed in front of other closed doors, some with security keypads. She was adept enough at sussing her immediate surroundings without appearing to do so, yet she had the sense that Sean was aware of her automatic scanning. They came to the end of the link, which opened onto a paddock with snow fences keeping the drifts from its surface. In the paddock were a dozen small horses, curly-coated to the point of being shaggy, with long fur icicled under their throats, and long feathers curling down from their sturdy barrels and down their short thick legs. At first she wasn't sure which end was which, since the manes were as long as the tails and just as thick. There were several brown animals, but most were a creamy color; they were all browsing on what looked much like the icicled spines she had seen on the riverside three days before.