A Coming of Age by Timothy Zahn

Author:Timothy Zahn [Zahn, Timothy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 0671655787
Published: 2011-04-01T02:19:29+00:00

Trudging through the knee-high bristleweeds, Tirrell rounded the last conetree to find that, as usual, Tonio had gotten back to the car first. “Well?” he asked the righthand, sliding gratefully into the driver’s seat as the other teeked the door open for him.

Tonio pointed northwest through the windshield. “There’s a patch about three kilometers away that’s thick enough to hide a cabin from the air—conetrees mixed with some kind of wide tops. No driveway I could see, but the main road’s only a half kilometer or so away, and it looks like you could get a car through.”

Tirrell had the map spread across the steering wheel. “Three kilometers northwest… yeah. About five by road, I’d guess. A little off the edge of the rock-mud region, actually, but I suppose we ought to check it out.” Refolding the map, he took a quick survey of their surroundings. “I was right back there, you know; we aren’t going to have room to turn around in here. You want me to get out before you do your stuff?”

The car rocked gently, rose a couple of centimeters, and settled back down. “Yeah, I think we’ll both have to get out,” Tonio admitted.

Sighing theatrically, Tirrell swung open the door and climbed back out onto the muddy grass. Without its passengers, fortunately, the car proved easy for Tonio to handle, and within a couple of minutes the detective was carefully driving along their earlier tire tracks toward the narrow backwoods road they’d been working off of for most of the afternoon.

“I gather you didn’t find anything of interest at the last spot?” Tonio asked.

“As a matter of fact, I did,” Tirrell told him. “Nice little cabin snuggled up under the edge of one of the conetrees.”

“What?” Tonio spun half around in his seat.

” ‘Course, half the roof had rotted out and there were scrub bushes growing in the living room,” Tirrell went on casually. “I figure it’s been deserted ten years or so.”

Tonio settled back down. “You rat,” he muttered.

Tirrell smiled a bit. “Come on, I deserve the chance to get a good zing in every once in a while—I’m the one who’s been walking his legs off in that soggy ground for two days, after all.”

“Trade you jobs,” the preteen offered. “There’s a lot more glare up there than you might think, and staring down at shiny conetree leaves gets awfully hard on the eyes after a while.”

“If you’ve got a headache, there’s aspirin in the first-aid kit,” Tirrell said. Reaching into the storage area behind the seats, he located one of the canteens. “There’s water left to take them with, too,” he added, sloshing the canteen experimentally before handing it over.

“Thanks.” Tonio was already rummaging through the first-aid kit. “I sure wish this was December—we’d have had Jarvis in nothing flat.”

Tirrell nodded. Conetrees exchanged their leaves for pinelike needles in wintertime, cutting down at least a little on the cover Jarvis’s cabin would have. More importantly, though, the steam and smoke from the generator and wood-burning stove Jarvis had bought would make a pointer visible for kilometers.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.