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

"And if it's been that long, we won't find mom and
dad at home. They'll have taken off somewhere to
avoid the political police."

That was obvious. I just hadn't looked at it yet. It
was also food for thought. Whether we found our
parents or not, the question was where we'd go. There
was probably an Imperial flotilla guarding the planet
to keep people from leaving. And the Empire would be
developing an informer network, of course; they'd
already had a spy network. So if we tried to lie low,
we'd probably be uncovered sooner or later.

Of course, the Imperials might have just arrived, and
our parents might still be safe at home. Dad knew the
ropes on this world better than just about anyone-
probably better than Piet. He'd operated as a
business consultant here on two continents, and had a
lot of underground contacts, too. He had resources I
didn't know existed.

The rain lasted just long enough for Tarel to get out
the burrow pig and pass it around for a few bites
each. Then, not even wet, I led off again. By
mid-afternoon, landmarks told me we weren't too far
from Piet's floater. Bubba assured us there was no
one near it-that was just one advantage of having an
espwolf-and in a quarter hour we were there.

Six of us, with our gear, didn't leave a lot of room
in the floater's boxy body. Piet raised her above the
trees and started for home. The first thing Deneen
did was turn the radio on. The programming was not
the usual. For a few minutes, all we got was
Federation, now Imperial, patriotic music, no matter
what station we tuned to. Then some guy speaking
Standard came on and gave a brief news rundown-mostly
stuff on changes in laws and regulations.

That told us how the Empire figured to run things-
they weren't even broadcasting in Evdashian. The
languages were enough alike that people on Evdash
could pretty much understand Standard, and I would
have bet that the Empire had declared a law against
speaking our own language.

When Deneen and Bubba and I, and our parents, had
gotten back from Fanglith more than two years
earlier, we'd resettled on the northern continent.
Federation spies had found our previous home. Dad