Powers That Be by Anne McCaffrey, Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

she had thought the outbound trip was fast and jarring, though she knew that Bunny had gone easily for her sake, the inbound journey was another matter. Sean ran beside Maud, the red leader dog, urging her to her best pace, chivying Bunny down steep inclines when she would have taken safer routes.
    Yana hung on, determined not to close her eyes when the sled tilted at alarming angles and the landscape seemed to fly past her. She was particularly aware of the increased speed when the sled thudded from one hummock to another, crashing her bones together. Or when the cat, who had somehow crawled back under the rugs, sunk its claws through her pants leg to keep from being thrown about. Stands of hardwoods that had seemed miles apart during the outward journey streaked past her with barely an interval between them.
    The abrupt arctic daylight had waned by the time they neared the settlement and saw its lit windows blinking welcomingly through the trees at them. The dogs slowed as they reached Clodagh’s, making their way through a welter of other teams parked there. Sean grabbed the pack with a flash of a grateful grin at Yana and charged up the steps, Bunny right behind him as soon as she had hauled on the brake.
    Grunting but telling herself that of course she understood their haste, Yana peeled back the furs and extricated herself from the sled. The cat jumped out and disappeared under the pilings. Oddly enough, as Yana straightened up she found that she wasn’t nearly as stiff this time. She felt for the bottle of Clodagh’s elixir and wondered what it contained. Then, hesitant about intruding, she climbed the steps to the porch. She could hear the subdued buzz of many voices even before she opened the door and slipped inside. The warmth was like a blanket surrounding her, but the press of people almost made her withdraw.
    Peering over and around the bodies packed inside the room, she could see no part of the injured survivors, though there was a long clear space in one corner of the room where they might be lying obscured by the crowd. Clodagh’s head and hips appeared from time to time, and once she saw what looked like the top of Sean Shongili’s head. Bunny was standing by the stove, where she was precariously dribbling coffee into two cups, trying to keep from spilling any as she was repeatedly jostled.
    Yana hoped one was for her, and it was: Bunny threaded her way through the throng and offered Yana a cup. She reached eagerly to accept it, for the warmth on her hands as well as her innards. She blew across the surface and at the first careful sip wondered if Sean used Clodagh’s recipe or if it was the other way around.
    “Could you see? Are they going to make it?” she asked, nodding toward the corner.
    Bunny nodded, her eyes dark with worry.
    “Ours’ll recover a lot faster’n theirs, so there’ll be more questions an’ tribunals and inquests and stuff.”
    Which Bunny felt were irrelevant, Yana decided. “Isn’t it just that your people are better acclimated?”
    Bunny looked disgusted. “Of course they are and we try to explain that to them, but
they
”—the pronoun was used in contempt—“never admit the fact. Their people should somehow be better able to cope when most of ’em’s never lived outside at all. And,” she added with perplexity in her voice, “that’s not the real problem anyway. The real problem is that they think they have to know everything about everything, and they don’t. Even we who live here don’t. But we know enough to pay attention to what the planet tells us, and they don’t seem to pay attention to nothin’.”
    Yana sipped, letting the warmth thaw the ice in her blood. Maybe she would do better if she ran like the others did. She had done nothing but sit, and she was whacked—whereas Bunny’s face was ruddy with stimulation, and Sean hadn’t even looked puffed when he had grabbed the pack off her lap. Everyone in the room had settled down to what might be a