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

was just another big exotic canid with ordinary
abilities.

In a family like ours, you learn very young to keep
certain kinds of things a secret.
Bubba started crawling backward, and I did the same.
When we were out of sight of the house, he got up and
trotted off without saying anything. I knew where he
had to be going, and followed him. When we'd moved
here, dad had put a waterproof box in a huge old
hollow tree, where messages could be left in
emergencies like this.

It paid off: there was a package in the message box
and a medkit on top of it. I took them out, and Bubba
and I headed back to the others.

We opened the package at the floater. There wasn't a
lot in it-several data cubes and a message cube. One
by one we checked the cubes in the floater's
computer, the message cube first. It was dated seven
days earlier. An Imperial flotilla, standing off
Evdash, had demanded surrender, and a force of
fifth-column commandos, with the collusion of
traitors in the national police, had taken over
national police headquarters. With us not due back
for eight days, our parents had no choice but to
leave without us. "Well try to meet you later on
Lizard Island," mom had said, "and leave Evdash from
there." Try. Later. All in all not very reassuring.
And it didn't say where they were going or for how
long-probably for good reason.

The other cubes were a mixed lot: an astrogation
cube; a "miscellaneous" cube that included, among
other things, a learning program and a linguistic
analysis program-I'd had good use of both of them
before; a couple of library cubes; and a copy of the
family's planetary coordinates cube with everywhere
we'd ever flown on Evdash.

There was also one other: a copy of the old
contraband data cube we'd used to find Fanglith. When
I saw that one on the menu, I got goose bumps. I also
became aware that Deneen was looking at me. I
wondered if it affected her at all the same way.
She'd always been "Miss Objective Practicality."

An astrogation cube and the contraband data cube!
Huh! The knot returned to my gut. "Well," I said, "if