Sassinak (1 of 4 free samples)

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COPYRIGHT
Sassinak by Elizabeth Moon and Anne McCaffrey. Copyright 1990 by Bill Fawcett & Associates.
All Rights Reserved. Sharing not permitted.

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SASSINAK

by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Moon


BOOK ONE

Chapter One

By the time anyone noticed that the carrier was overdue, no one cared. Celebrations had started two local days before, when the last crawler train came in from Zeebin. Sassinak, along with the rest of her middle school, had met that train, helped offload the canisters of personal-grade cargo, and then wandered through the crowded streets.

Last year she'd been too young--barely--for such freedom. Even now, she flinched a little from the noise and confusion. The City tripled in population for the week or so of celebration when the orecarriers came in. Every farmer, miner, crawler-train tech or engineer--everyone who possibly could, and some who shouldn't have--came to The City. It almost seemed to deserve the name, with crowds bustling between the rows of one-story prefab buildings that served the young colony as housing, storage, and manufacturing space. Sassinak could pretend she was on the outskirts of a real city, and the taller dome and blockhouse of the original settlement, could, with imagination, stand for the great soaring buildings she hoped one day to visit, on the worlds she'd heard about in school.

She caught sight of a school patch ahead of her, and recognized Caris's new (and slightly ridiculous) hairdo. Shoving between two meandering miners, who seemed disposed to slow down at every doorway, Sassinak grabbed her friend's elbow. Caris whirled.

"Don't you--! Oh, Sass, you idiot. I thought you were--"

"A drunken miner. Sure." Arm in arm with Caris, Sassinak felt safer--and slightly more adult. She gave Caris a sidelong look, and Caris smirked back. They broke into a hip-swaying parody of the lead holovid's "Carin Coldae--Adventurer Extraordinary" and sang a snatch of the theme song. Someone hooted, behind them, and they broke into a run. Across the street, a familiar voice yelled "There go the skeleton twins" and they ran faster.

"Sinder," Caris said a block or so later, when they'd slowed down, "is a planetary snarp."

"Planetary nothing. Stellar snarp." Sassinak glowered at her friend. They were both long and lanky, and they'd heard as much of Sinder's skeleton twin joke as anyone could rightly stand.

"Interstellar." Caris always had to have the last word, Sassinak thought. It might not be right, but it was last.

"We're not going to think about Sinder." Sassinak wormed her fingers through the tangle of things in her jacket pocket and pulled out her credit ring. "We've got money to spend . . ."

"And you're my friend!" Caris laughed and shoved her gently toward the nearest food booth.

* * *

By the next day, the streets were too rowdy for youngsters, Sassinak's parents insisted. She tried to argue that she was no longer a youngster, but got nowhere. She was sure it had something to do with her mother's need for a babysitter, and the adult-only party in the block recreation center. Caris came over, which made it slightly better. Caris got along better with six-year-old Lunzie than Sass did, and that meant Sass could read stories to "the baby": Januk, now just over three. If Januk hadn't managed to spill three-months' worth of sugar ration while they were trying to make cookies from scratch, it might have been a fairly good day after all. Caris scooped most of the sugar back into the canister, but Sass was afraid her mother would notice the brown specks in it.

"It's just spice," Caris said firmly.

"Yes, but--" Sassinak wrinkled her nose. "What's that? Oh . . . dear." The cookies were not quite burnt, but she was sure they wouldn't make up for the spilled sugar. No hope that Lunzie wouldn't mention it, either--she was at that age, Sass thought, when having finally figured out the difference between telling a story and telling the truth, she wanted to let everyone know. Lunzie prefaced most talebearing with a loud "I'm telling the truth, now: I really am" which Sass found unbearable. It didn't help to be told that she herself had once, at about age five, scolded the Block Coordinator for using a polite euphemism at the table. "The right word is 'castrated'," was what everyone said she'd said. Sass didn't believe it. She would never, in her entire life, no matter how early, have said something like that right out loud at the table. Now she cleaned up the cookcorner, saving what grains of sugar looked fairly clean, and wondered when she could insist that Lunzie and Januk go to bed.

"Eight days." The captain grinned at the pilot. "Eight days should be enough. For most of it anyway. Aren't we lucky that the carrier's late." They both laughed; it was an old joke for them, and a mystery for everyone else, how they could turn up handily when other ships were "late."

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