Crisis On Doona by Anne McCaffrey, Jody Lynn Nye Read Free Book Online Page B

eyes brimming with devilment. “I heard him every mealtime, in fact.”
    “And you didn’t warn him?” Todd shot her an aggrieved glance.
    “What? And ruin our fun?”
    “He was on the ssshuttle with you?” Hrriss asked.
    “Indeed, and at my table. That, dear hearts,” Kelly said, amused, sitting back in her saddle to watch their expressions, “is Jilamey Landreau, Spacedep’s nephew. He’s harmless.”
    “I’ll give you any odds, Kelly dear old thing, that he’s going to be trouble for whatever Team he’s on,” Todd said, summing up the stranger with a practiced eye, as Jilamey mounted the horse chosen for him with a modicum of expertise, though the quarterstaff proved an immediate encumbrance. “I don’t like the stable he comes from.”
    “It is not the stable he comes from that should concern us, Zodd,” Hrriss assured him, his eyes glinting mischievously, “and his trouble will be in conzrolling his hrrss. He will not be in our way.”
    “Ah, but he said he’s on Team One,” Kelly replied, delighted at the shock on Todd’s face.
    He fumbled for the Team list in his pocket. “I’ve got a J. Ladrulo ... Oh, no.”
    “I wondered at him being on Team One,” Kelly said, her face full of mischief. “I thought you knew what you were doing. However, don’t worry about him. I’ll make him my responsibility. I owe him a couple.” Now her eyes took on a gleam similar to Hrriss’s, her expression bland. “For aspersions cast like bread upon the surface of our table.”
    “You’re mixing metaphors again,” Todd said, ready for the banter they always enjoyed. “Didn’t they teach you anything useful at Alreldep?”
    “How to manage little men like Jilamey, sweetheart,” she said, giving him a coy and insincere smirk. But she sighed as Jilamey urged his animal over to Todd and Hrriss.
    He threw them a jaunty salute and banged the quarterstaff painfully against his knee. The horse snorted, flicking an ear at such an unusual appendage. “Lo, Kelly. Didn’t think I’d have the pleasure of your company so soon again, much less with Team One. Jilamey Landreau, at your service. Nearly missed my chance — shuttle was late. I’ve heard all about your local menace. Read up on the subject, too. I’m expecting great things of this day. I want to catch a really big snake. I’m assured that you’re the best. My friends” — he threw a sly glance over his shoulder at his ship companions — “could only get on Teams Three and Four.”
    And why he wasn’t with them, instead of complicating Team One, Kelly did not know. She’d have a small talk with the village elders later, she assured herself. Punctiliously, she introduced Todd, Hrriss, Hrrin, and Errala to Jilamey. At least he had enough manners not to gawk at the Hrrubans.
    “Landreau, you say?” Todd asked with cool courtesy. “Not any relation to Admiral Landreau, by any chance?”
    “The Admiral’s my uncle. That’s why I got on your team.” Jilamey grinned amiably.
    “Isss zat so?” Hrriss said, taking up Todd’s lead. “I find it amazing that he would perrmit one of his kin to take parrt in a Snake Hunt.”
    “Why not?” Jilamey appeared surprised. “Supposed to be the best hunting available.”
    “The Admiral told you that?”
    “He didn’t need to. Everyone knows that,” Jilamey ingenuously assured them.
    The three old friends exchanged glances. The boy couldn’t possibly be so naive. Or was it simply that no one had ever dared tell him how his uncle was linked with the Doonan snakes? Quite possibly. The settlers had escaped Landreau’s attempt to dispose of witnesses to his humiliation by driving a swarm of snakes down on the barn where he had imprisoned the colonists. He had never returned to Doona, nor would he have been welcome. It was amazing enough that his nephew had been allowed to come. However, now that Landreau was head of Spacedep, in charge of space exploration and defense, he was also not someone to