"John Dalmas - Fanglith" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dalmas John)

It was pretty risky, of course, what with the patrol ships around Morn Gebleu, and pursuit ships ready to
scramble and lock course with any fugitive. But my baby sister Deneen and I didn't know that. I was
busy with my box of toy space marines, while Deneen was into stuffed animals, as I recall.

file:///E|/mIRC/download/0671559885___1.htm (2 of 10)14-10-2007 13:09:25
 - Chapter 1


So almost all of my memories were of Evdash, almost three hundred parsecs outside the Federation
boundary.
Anyway, this was my name day, and I came out of the hayfield behind our house carrying a couple of
fish on a stringer—a long twig of brush with the side twigs trimmed off. I noticed that the family floater
wasn't parked on its pad by the back door, but that didn't mean anything to me. Dad might have gone to
see a client (he was a business consultant) or mom could have flown into town to shop.
Actually I was thinking about how we were going to wipe the field with Welser Academy in our banner
game the next day. I was the goalie, with the quickest moves in the district.
I went into the house through the utility room, hanging my daypack on its hook and dumping my fish in
the utility sink. I figured to clean them after I'd had a cold drink.
"Hi!" I called when I went into the kitchen. No one answered, so I assumed that mom and dad had left
together. I opened the fridge to take out the margel pitcher, and the pitcher wasn't there. It was in the
sink, empty. Now that got my attention. First of all I wanted some, and there wasn't any. Also, our
family has certain agreed-upon rules, and each of us takes responsibility for them. Whoever uses the
margel down to below the cup mark mixes a new batch, puts ice in it, and puts it back in the fridge.
Deneen and I rarely forget, and besides, we'd been away all day. And I could hardly imagine mom or
dad forgetting.
I mixed a new batch, had some on ice, then went into dad's office. He often leaves a message on his
computer screen when he goes out. And there was the second strange thing—the computer was off line!
It's usually left on continuously unless we leave for several days.
Somehow I felt strange about that—goose-pimply strange. I invoked it and asked if there was any
message. It didn't seem to understand, so I switched to keyboard memory—still nothing. It was
completely erased except for the basic, built-in functions! Then I yanked open the cabinet door, and all
the program and data cubes were gone!
Now that made my hair stand on end! It was totally crazy. And what popped into my head was
Federation agents. Dad and mom were both gone; they'd left deliberately and didn't expect to come back.
And dad had wiped the computer and taken or destroyed the cubes so agents couldn't learn anything.
And where did that leave me?
I started to look around for a written message, then realized that didn't make any sense. If they'd
expected agents to come along before I got home, they wouldn't leave a message that agents could read.
About that time I heard the front door and almost had heart failure. But then my sister's voice called out.
"Hi, everybody, I'm home!" I went into the living room just in time to see her start to tell someone's
number to the vid. I lunged at the manual off button. She stared at me like I was a lunatic.
"What," she challenged, "is that all about? I'm supposed to call Narni when I get home from school
today."
"Something's happened," I said, "something serious. We can't use the vid."
For a 14-year-old sister, she was pretty easy to get along with, compared to lots of guys' sisters. Dad and
mom didn't mind it when we argued about something real, up to a point. But since they wouldn't tolerate
either of us sniping at the other, we hadn't developed a big brother-sister hostility. So when I said that
something serious had happened, her expression went from irritation to skeptical interest. I told her what
I'd found and what I'd figured out as the reason.