Acorna’s Search by Anne McCaffrey

Acorna said. “Why don’t you call them?” She watched his face as he did. His confusion when his queries went unanswered was all too evident.
    “Khornya, I don’t understand. I hear nothing. No answer, no other thoughts, nothing.”
    “Exactly,” she said. “It happened while you were sleeping and while I was speaking to Captain Becker and Hafiz. Just like that. I remember watching them walk away from the flitter toward the bog and then I became involved in the conversation. Then, just a few moments later, when I tried to call, nothing. They’ve vanished. It is apparently happening all over. So get in. We will do a quick fly-over where they are supposed to be, and see if we can pick up any clues. I do not expect to find easy solutions. The aagroni —and from the sound of it, nearly everyone else at base camp—is gone. And we’ll be no help to the people back at MOO or our friends if we find out where the missing persons are only by joining them.”

 
     
Five
     
     
    T he fly-over of the territory they had been covering on foot for the last few weeks showed no signs of any Linyaari, or of other animal life of any kind.
    Acorna flew low and in a zigzag pattern three times, covering the entire area of their study and somewhat beyond those boundaries before she would give up. Yiitir, Maarni, Aari, and Maati were all gone, if she could believe the evidence of her own eyes and the instruments of her flitter. She double-checked to make sure they had not returned to their camp or Yiitir’s and Maarni’s flitter, but both were sitting as silent and empty as they had been all during her conversations on the com unit.
    The weather was not good for flying. Although the flitters, once airborne, had shields to protect them from lightning, the small craft was buffeted by the wind and twice lightning crashed against the shield. The flare of energy was so bright that Acorna was nearly blinded. RK huddled on the deck behind her, and she was sure his fur must be standing at attention all over his body. Thariinye said nothing, but his eyes rolled to the sides a bit, his nostrils flared, and the white of his star-clad skin blanched even further around the knuckles as he held onto the control panel while the flitter dipped and bobbed and took heart-stopping plummets in the storm.
    At last they landed at the base camp, leaving the worst of the storm crashing and booming behind them. The large laboratory bubble looked as quiet as the former graveyard upon which it was set.
    Night gathered even more rapidly than usual, the storm clouds bunching with other more innocuous ones, bullying the planet’s pallid sun into seclusion. Acorna feared that they would find the base camp entirely deserted, but at the sound of the flitter, Fiicki emerged from the lab bubble and pulled the flitter door open before the engines had shut down.
    “Khornya! Thariinye, I am so glad to see you! Oooooh, and poor little Riidkii,” Fiicki said, impeding Acorna’s exit to reach behind her and scoop up the bristling, growling RK.
    “At least he’s not missing yet,” Thariinye said with a trace of annoyance.
    “True, true,” Fiicki said. “But everyone else is. Please don’t leave me alone here again. The silence is enough to distress and depress me—and worse, there are the noises.”
    “Noises?” Acorna asked. “What sort of noises?”
    “Underground growlings I hear through my sleeping mat, like the beginning of an earthquake, or a volcano about to erupt or—as if the ground was digesting something. Or someone.”
    Acorna laid her horn against the side of Fiicki’s head, but since his fear had a reason and was not pathological, it could hardly be cured as if it were a mental illness. He did grow calmer, either because of the effects of her soothing thoughts or because they gave him the reassurance that he was not completely alone.
    “Underground noises? Now that’s something to consider,” Acorna said thoughtfully. “I wonder—could