Anne McCaffrey - Twins of Petaybee 02 - Maelstrom

VIP免费

2024-12-07 0 0 647.84KB 252 页 5.9玖币

Maelstrom

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Anne%20McCaffrey%20&%20E...s%20of%20Petaybee%20Book%202]%20-%20Maelstrom.html (1 of 252)6-8-2007 22:36:39

Maelstrom

The Twins of Petaybee Book 2

Anne McCaffrey & Elizabeth Ann

Scarborough

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Anne%20McCaffrey%20&%20E...s%20of%20Petaybee%20Book%202]%20-%20Maelstrom.html (2 of 252)6-8-2007 22:36:39

Maelstrom
Contents
|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|10|11|12|13|14| 
|15|16|17|18|19|20|21|22|23|24|25|26|27|28
file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Anne%20McCaffrey%20&%20E...s%20of%20Petaybee%20Book%202]%20-%20Maelstrom.html (3 of 252)6-8-2007 22:36:39

Maelstrom

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Anne%20McCaffrey%20&%20E...s%20of%20Petaybee%20Book%202]%20-%20Maelstrom.html (4 of 252)6-8-2007 22:36:39

Maelstrom

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO

DR. TONY AND JEANNETTE ROGSTADT, PHYSICIAN, VET TECH, AND

RESCUER OF MANY CRITTERS DOMESTIC AND WILD.

The authors would like to acknowledge the advice and support of their editor,

Shelly Shapiro.

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Anne%20McCaffrey%20&%20E...s%20of%20Petaybee%20Book%202]%20-%20Maelstrom.html (5 of 252)6-8-2007 22:36:39

Maelstrom

CHAPTER 1

WAVING GOOD-BYE TO their parents and friends, their beloved river and

forests, to their home world, Petaybee, Murel and Ronan Shongili strapped

themselves in for another launch into space.

So soon! It seemed they’d only arrived home and now it was time to go again.

It’ll be great fun, sure it will, Ronan assured his twin sister in thought-talk. We’ll

see new places, meet new people, make new friends—

I’d have liked a bit more time with the old places and old friends nevertheless,

Murel complained. But here we are again. It feels as if we never left. She looked

around the lounge of the Piaf, a luxury liner much larger and more sophisticated

than Kilcoole, the tiny village that was home. The lounge alone was as long as

Kilcoole’s main street and could have held eight of the village’s largest building,

the latchkay lodge, inside.

Except for that, Ronan said, with a meaningful nod at the one big difference in the

lounge since their last trip.

Since they’d traveled from school back to Petaybee less than three short months

before, the small saltwater tank had been replaced by an enormous one that

dominated the lounge and dwarfed its occupants. Now the tank held a single Honu,

the sentient sea turtle that was the sacred totem animal of their friend Ke-ola. The

tank looked vast and empty despite the energetic game of tag between the Honu

and Sky, the twins’ river otter friend. On the return journey, if all went well, the

tank would hold many more—and even larger—Honus traveling with their people

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Anne%20McCaffrey%20&%20E...s%20of%20Petaybee%20Book%202]%20-%20Maelstrom.html (6 of 252)6-8-2007 22:36:39

Maelstrom

to what would become their new Petaybean home.

During takeoff, the ship’s owner, Marmion de Revers Algemeine, and Captain

Johnny Green, its commander, remained on the bridge. Marmion’s friendship had

helped their family, their village, and their planet countless times over the years.

The twins had known her all of their lives, and by now she knew their most

important secret, as well as their father’s. Many people on Kilcoole knew but very

few outsiders. Johnny was not an outsider, since he’d been born on Petaybee.

When the time had come for him to leave the Company Corps, he had chosen

service with Marmie over life on Petaybee, but he was Petaybean all the same.

Ronan, Murel, and Ke-ola watched the liftoff from the lounge’s viewport and the

bank of screens that flanked it. Ke-ola was the reason for their current journey—

and the reason Ronan and Murel were using thought-talk. They didn’t want him to

overhear their complaints and get the idea that they hadn’t wanted to come.

The actual sight of Petaybee receding to a cold white and gray ball seemed no more

real than its image on the screens. The cabin’s pressure and gravity were so well

maintained that the ship might have still been on the ground. They could not hear

or smell or taste the passage, or feel it in the wind that was not there. They felt no

sensation of lifting or moving.

The water in the tank didn’t so much as slosh, but the Honu and Sky swam to the

side to watch the departure. Then Sky tagged the Honu’s shell and they began their

game afresh.

The twins and Sky had become swimming friends before they were sent away to

Marmie’s space-station school. When they returned, Sky was waiting to help them

find their missing father, even though Da had been lost at sea where river otters

didn’t ordinarily go. For their sake, the otter had even allowed himself to be

transported in a helicopter, which was how he, as the first and only otter of any

kind to inhabit Petaybee’s skies, however briefly, had earned his name: Sky, the

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Anne%20McCaffrey%20&%20E...s%20of%20Petaybee%20Book%202]%20-%20Maelstrom.html (7 of 252)6-8-2007 22:36:39

Maelstrom

sky otter. Murel hoped that now that the little fellow was going into space he

wouldn’t want to change his name to Space. She’d just got used to calling him Sky.

As soon as the ship was free of Petaybee’s gravity, the twins and Ke-ola

unstrapped and raced to the tank to swim with the Honu and Sky. Ke-ola climbed

the ladder to the top of the tank. The ladder had a staging platform on the top and

was situated right beside the wide waterslide that ended in a shallow pool from

which the water was recirculated into the tank. Sky and otter-kind in general loved

to slide. Also, when it came time to remove the Honu from the pool, the slide

would allow the tortoise to descend to the smaller pool without injury.

Murel clambered up the ladder behind Ke-ola and pulled off her clothes so that she

wore only the harness holding the tiny bag containing her dry suit. A passing crew

member would have seen a brief flash of white skin and dark hair before she dived

into the water. Instantly she transformed into a silver-brown seal and streaked

through the water after Ke-ola, Sky, and the Honu. A moment later they were

joined by Ronan, also in seal form.

The water was saline to suit the Honu, but it didn’t smell or taste quite right to the

twins. No fish, for one thing. Still, it felt wonderful to be wet again. They dived,

surfaced, splashed, tackled, were tackled, escaped, and dived again until Sky

suddenly said, “River seals, look!”

He swam to the front of the tank where Marmie stood. She was saying something

as she looked up toward the top of the tank.

Ke-ola, who had to go up for air more frequently than the others, was on the

surface. He dived again, touched each of the twins, and pointed toward the top of

the tank. Then with a pump of his arms and a thrust from his muscular brown legs,

he shot upward.

Sky streaked past everyone and flung himself through the opening at the top of the

tank that formed the lip of the waterslide. Hah! he cried. Otters first!

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Anne%20McCaffrey%20&%20E...s%20of%20Petaybee%20Book%202]%20-%20Maelstrom.html (8 of 252)6-8-2007 22:36:39

Maelstrom

Ke-ola surfaced almost at once, followed by the twins. At the bottom of the slide

they jumped onto the wet deck and shook themselves dry until they resumed

human shape. A privacy screen installed beside the pool provided cover for them to

pull their dry suit packets from the harnesses on their backs and pop into the suits

before joining anyone else who happened to be in the lounge.

When they came out, Ke-ola and Marmie were sitting in bright cushioned chairs,

sipping from tall drinks on the table between them. Sky sat on another chair,

grooming his coat. A pot and four cups for tea sat on the table, along with a plate

of chocolate biscuits. When Murel picked one up, she found it was just-baked

warm.

Marmie smiled as they approached and took the other two chairs. “Ah, mes petits, I

am sorry to interrupt your play, but we need to talk.”

“Certainly, Marmie,” Ronan said, sitting erect and using his best manners. Marmie

had changed out of the white, fur-trimmed snowsuit she’d worn on Petaybee into a

long skirt made of many colored patches of smooth and textured fabric that looked

as soft as the coat of one of Clodagh’s cats. With it she wore a long-sleeved

turtleneck the color of the deepest part of the river on a sunny day. The fabric

shimmered from midnight blue to steel gray with flashes of silver and cobalt.

Around the high collar was a copper torc in the shape of a clamshell. Now and then

Sky looked up from his preening to peer at the neckpiece.

“What’s the matter?” Murel asked.

“Oh, nothing! But some of your fellow Petaybeans had questions about why you,

mere children, only recently returned from school, were chosen for this mission

instead of adults still able to travel. Do you two also have such questions? Or any

others?”

“It’s okay, Marmie,” Ronan said, with a quick glance at Ke-ola, who seemed more

interested in selecting a biscuit.

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Anne%20McCaffrey%20&%20E...s%20of%20Petaybee%20Book%202]%20-%20Maelstrom.html (9 of 252)6-8-2007 22:36:39

Maelstrom

“Well, actually…” Murel said, hesitating. She didn’t want to appear reluctant to

help, but after all, Marmie was giving them the opportunity to speak up. Who knew

when another chance would come? “I do wonder about one or two things.”

“Yes?” Marmie asked, cocking her head and leaning forward slightly, her light

exotic perfume flavoring the recycled air of the lounge as if a few flowers had

blossomed there.

“I don’t think I know why exactly you need us to come. Ke-ola can tell his people

about Petaybee and that it wants them to come and live there. They’ll believe him

before they’d believe us, surely.”

“Yes, chérie, but Ke-ola is not yet considered a Petaybean. It was very difficult to

convince the Federation that Petaybee is not only a sentient planet but that people

who live there for any length of time acquire a symbiotic relationship to the world.

People died—”

“Laverne!” Ronan said. “Liam’s mum. The Corps arrested her and she died when

they took her offplanet for questioning. Bunny and Diego have a really sad song

about it they sing at latchkays sometime.”

“Yes, and your mother and father fought very hard to convince the company that

removing your people from Petaybee and taking them elsewhere would be fatal to

them. Ultimately they and other scientists were able to provide enough scientific

evidence that the Federation recognized officially what you grew up knowing

about Petaybee. The board feels that only people native to the planet have a unique

interest in fulfilling Petaybee’s wishes.”

“And they—the Federation—think that if we are symbiotic with Petaybee, we

won’t want to do anything that goes against what Petaybee needs because it’s what

we need too, is that right?” Murel asked. “Because it isn’t really about wishes, you

know, Marmie. Clodagh says we don’t always understand why Petaybee requires

what it requires, but it doesn’t ask much of us, so when it does, we should pay

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Anne%20McCaffrey%20&%20...%20of%20Petaybee%20Book%202]%20-%20Maelstrom.html (10 of 252)6-8-2007 22:36:39

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

Maelstromfile:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Anne%20McCaffrey%20&%20E...s%20of%20Petaybee%2Book%202]%20-%20Maelstrom.html(1of252)6-8-200722:36:39MaelstromMaelstromTheTwinsofPetaybeeBook2ByAnneMcCaffrey&ElizabethAnnScarboroughfile:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Anne%20McCaffrey%20&%20E...s%20of%20Petaybee%2Book%202]...

展开>> 收起<<

Anne McCaffrey - Twins of Petaybee 02 - Maelstrom.pdf

共252页,预览10页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

Anne McCaffrey - Twins of Petaybee 02 - Maelstrom

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: