Fire Season-eARC Read Online Free PDF Page A

urgent noises, then she was pointing, pointing…
    Climbs Quickly looked with his eyes—rather than following the guidance of Left Striped’s mind-glow—and saw a horror. The two treecats clung high in the branches of the tallest green-needle in this grove, their weight enough to bend the tip of the tree to one side. Flames licked up the trunk, consuming smaller limbs at once, spilling out along the larger limbs for a more leisurely meal.
    Wind was rising, both that which was driving the fire in this direction and that generated by the fire itself, for by feeding on the old green-needles that thickly carpeted this area, the fire was growing hotter by the moment. The flames took sustenance from the wind as well, dancing in delight.
    A new sound entered the complex of images as some part of the air car began laboring to cool the interior of the vehicle. An odor of smoke came where there had been none before. Aware from experience how neatly the air car usually sealed away any indication of the world without, Climbs Quickly felt panic rising.
    He had possessed such faith in these two-legs that he had brought them here without thought for their safety, but what if in bringing them here he had doomed them all?
    *   *   *
    “I see him,” Stephanie shouted. “No! Them. There are two of them. Two treecats up in that bent-over near-pine!”
    Spilling into the backseat, she grabbed her kit and slipped on the fire-suit that rested on top. This was an emergency model, made of fire-resistant fabric, basically a coverall with built-in boots and a hood.
    An adult might have found donning this difficult in the confines of the air car, but Stephanie was a flexible fourteen-, almost-fifteen-year-old girl. Lastly, she netted her curly brown hair under the matching hood, slinging the breathing mask to cover her face. An earplug included in the hood put her in immediate contact with the air car. Goggles with an optional heads-up display covered her eyes.
    Karl had been maneuvering the air car over toward the burning near-pine. He might not have managed, except that near-pine was among those breeds of trees that shed lower limbs as they grew, so the under-story was comparatively clear. Karl had a steady hand on the controls, but even with the guidance systems enabled, the updrafts of hot air were giving them a bumpy ride.
    “Steph,” Karl said, the measured tones of his voice showing just how tense he was. “What are you planning?”
    “Someone’s going to have to stuff the ’cats in the car,” she said tersely. “I’m sure Lionheart has been trying to tell them we’re here to rescue them, but I don’t think he’s getting through. How close can you get me?”
    “To that large limb about two meters below the ’cats,” Karl said. “I think.”
    “I have my counter-grav unit,” she said. “So whatever happens, I’m not going to fall.”
    She didn’t need to tell Karl that while the counter-grav unit would assist her in rising and falling, it wouldn’t let her “fly.” Moving through the burning tree—for rising sparks were now igniting the needles of the upper branches—would be up to her.
    When Karl had the air car into position, Stephanie opened the back side door. Smoke immediately gusted in, making both Karl and Lionheart cough and sneeze. Stephanie wished she’d thought to hand Karl at least the breathing mask from his kit, but she couldn’t delay now.
    Lionheart did not attempt to follow her out onto the burning near-pine. As Stephanie stepped onto the limb, she could feel it bobbing. Part of this would be from her movements, but she thought more was due to the conflicting air currents of wind and thermal updraft.
    Her goggles automatically adjusted for the available light, but even so, the conflicting brilliance of the flames warred with the darkening of the smoke. Even odder was the way her coveralls shielded her from the worst of the environmental changes. Stephanie knew she was walking through a rising