Flinx in Flux Read Online Free PDF Page A

doubt she would somehow manage to drive it away, even if forced to injure it in the process.
    Small as it was, it had probably been the last hatchling, so it was correspondingly reluctant to be weaned. But he had no intention of staying on Alaspin one day longer than absolutely necessary, certainly not to accommodate the feelings of a reluctant adolescent minidrag. There was nothing on this world he wanted to do, nothing he needed to see. All he wanted was to be on his way, wherever that was. He did not need an extra lifeform cluttering up his ship. He sighed aloud. He had been doing that a lot lately, he realized.
    “Isn’t much to you, is there?” A tiny, brilliantly colored triangular-shaped head peered out at him from beneath a concealing wing. “It doesn’t work this way. One minidrag, one human. You can’t have a three-way empathic relationship.” The minidrag did not answer.
    Perhaps he was not sufficiently mature. Certainly he was the runt of the litter. Flinx raised his left arm so they were eye to eye.
    “I suppose if you’re going to hang around, you’re going to have to have a name. What’s smaller than a Pip? A nubbin? No, you’re a throwaway, so I guess we’ll have to call you Scrap.”
    Not flattering, he supposed, but appropriate. The small loop of muscle tightened around his arm, though whether in reaction to being named or merely to secure its perch, Flinx had no way of knowing. He would not take up much space, Flinx told himself. Pip could keep her eye on him on board the
Teacher,
which was stuffed with scraps of another kind. It would feel quite at home.
    The big minidrag had relaxed against his neck now that her master’s animosity toward her offspring had vanished. She paid no attention to the yearling. Obviously she felt she had done her best to discharge her maternal duties. If her master no longer rejected the adolescent, she did not feel compelled to, either.
    He thought no more about his new companion as he retraced his steps. Alaspin was not a benign world. It was home to an impressive assortment of carnivores and poisonous lifeforms that did not discriminate in their eating habits between local and offworld prey. As Flinx had learned on his previous visit, this was no place to take chances, no country in which to relax and sightsee. So he did not think about either Pip or Scrap as he watched where he was putting his feet, trying to step in the muddy depressions he had made when cutting his trail to the lake. Leaves and vines teased his face, and he winced instinctively at each contact.
    Although there were jungles more hostile that those of Alaspin, this one was threatening enough for him. He had never had a desire to join the Scouts, those half-mad men and women and thranx who were first to set down on a new world. Not even Pip could protect him against parasites and tiny bloodsuckers. He held tight to his antique machete. At least, he thought, the ancients had had enough sense to make them of titanium. Anything else would be too heavy to wield efficiently.
    Another thirty meters brought him into the small clearing where his crawler waited. This was as far as he had been able to bash with it. The machine traveled smoothly over water and through most jungle, but dense thick trees defeated it. Thus he had been forced to leave it here and travel the rest of the way to the lake on foot.
    It looked like an oversize chrome canoe on wheels, roofed in plexalloy and articulated in the middle. The highly polished sides reflected much of the burning sunlight, not critical here beneath the trees but vitally important for cooling purposes when out on lake or river. Armored grillwork shielded the underside, protecting sensitive machinery. It was not much wider than the driver’s seat, which enabled it to pass between those trees it was incapable of knocking over. What it really was, was a giant, mobile heat exchanger, able to convey its passengers in relative comfort across Alaspin’s humid, hot