Changelings by Anne McCaffrey

here’s what I can do, kids. I’ll see if Marmion can send us some high-tech lightweight snowsuits and waterproof packs and harnesses for you from offworld. One of her companies develops that kind of thing, I think. But meanwhile, you don’t go anywhere without hiding your suits and letting Coaxtl and Nanook know where you’re going. Meanwhile, I’ll talk to your father about finding you a swimming companion. It will pain him, you know. He’d like nothing better than to join you, and the three of you could be off sealing around while I fend off would-be settlers and contractors and answer the wretched com unit.”
    “Thanks, Mummy, you’re the best!” Ronan said, giving her an enthusiastic hug that almost knocked her off her stool.
    Murel planted a kiss on her cheek. “We’ll look for a swim friend too,” she said.
    “Someone your father and I approve of, mind you!” Yana said, but she was calling out after their heels as they flashed out the door and down the snowy track between the village’s shacks, log cabins, and the incongruous but inconspicuous white Nakatira cubes, which blended into the snow.
     
    S EAN PROMISED THE twins he’d go with them and they could swim as far as the ice floe, farther than they’d ever been before, and look for a friend with flippers or fins who could chaperone them.
    The twins were unusually excited when the next ship landed, as it bore the imprint of Marmion’s company. Surely she had sent the gear Mother asked for, along with all of these strangers disembarking.
    Murel and Ronan hung around until the pilot appeared in the hatchway. “Johnny!” they both cried, and ran to hug Captain Green, one of their family’s oldest friends. “Did you bring us anything?” Ronan asked, looking around the pilot for something besides his usual flight duffel.
    “I brought you all of those exciting new friends, did I not? What more could you possibly be wanting?” he teased, ruffling Ronan’s hair.
    “But Marmie promised to send us something,” Murel said, hanging on to his belt. “For our birthdays, you know. We’re eight today, aren’t we, Ronan?”
    “We are. And she did say so, Marmie did, said she was sending us this particular item.”
    “Funny, I don’t recall a thing about it,” Johnny said with a look of what he intended to resemble wide-eyed bewilderment.
    “Maybe you didn’t see it get loaded, Johnny. Could you look,
please?
”
    Don’t overdo it, sis,
Ronan told her.
I’m sure he can see through you as well as I can when you bat your eyes at him like that.
    That shows how much you know. If you have any brains, you’ll start batting too. He might have to go to a lot of trouble to find it. We’d best be scoring all of the points for adorable that we can.
    “Hmm,” Johnny said, scratching his chin, although both twins were quite sure it wasn’t itchy. “Let me think. You know, there was a lot going on at the time, what with all these folks getting ready to board, but I do seem to remember Marmion mentioning something about you.”
    “She promised Mum she’d send us something. And you know Marmie would never break a promise to Mum,” Ronan said in a sober, man-to-man tone.
    “No, no, of course not. But I can’t think of anything at all unless it would be those wee ration packets.”
    “Ration packets?” both twins asked at once.
    “Yes, now that I think of it, she handed me the little foil packets and said your mum needed them for you.”
    “They weren’t ration packets, Johnny,” Murel said. “You did bring them, didn’t you?”
    “Oh, aye. Though I hardly thought it worth the trouble. There’s plenty of ration packets still left over from when Intergal ran the Space Base. What did I do with them? Gave them to the cook, probably. You’d keep things like that in the galley, you know.”
    “No, no, they’re not ration packets and they were
ours,
” Ronan told him.
    “We’ll go search the galley, Johnny,” Murel said. “You needn’t