style rather like a cockatoo’s crest. Her eyes proved to be ice-blue. The light hair and eyes made a marvelous contrast to the sandalwood hues of her complexion. Anders spent an enjoyable moment contemplating this delightful proof that female beauty could come in such contrasting packages.
“I’m starved, too,” Christine agreed. “I’m sure Stephanie’s folks will have laid out plenty of food, but we should wait for Stephanie, don’t you think? I mean, this is her party.”
“Absolutely,” Jessica agreed. “Only she and Trudy are still up. I think they’re having another go at the bulls- eye target.”
Trudy must be the owner of the pale pink polka-dotted glider. It had seemed to Anders’ untutored eye that she and Stephanie were competing for who would stay up longest. Then he realized the situation was more subtle. Both were aiming to land within a large target laid out in an open field. While Stephanie was apparently merely trying to hit center, Trudy was actually impeding Stephanie’s descent. Her moves were subtle, but Anders figured if he could tell, so could the rest of the club members.
“There they go again,” Toby said, his tone one of long-suffering. “I wonder why Trudy is even here. I mean, Stephanie can’t stand her.”
“The social mystery of the century,” Chet agreed in the tones of a veteran newsie. “It’s like the Monarchists inviting the Levelers to tea.”
At that moment, the pattern of dodge and feint above changed. Stephanie broke hard right. When Trudy moved to block her, Stephanie swirled higher, cut over Trudy to the left, then dove. If Chet’s dive had resembled that of a hunting hawk, Stephanie’s looked like an orange-and-black brick hurtling toward the ground.
A scream sounded from nearer to the house. Glancing back, Anders saw a man with flaming red hair beginning to run forward. Dr. Marjorie stood stock still next to a heavyset woman with brown hair who, from her open mouth, was probably the source of the scream. Despite the adult panicking, there was no doubt in Anders’ mind that Stephanie was in complete control of the situation.
Well above the ground, Stephanie pulled out of her plummeting dive, caught a slowing air current, and came swirling in for a landing, her feet landing lightly in the very center of the black target placed on the meadow grass. Immediately, with what Anders guessed was proper etiquette in such games, she moved out of the way of the other flyer, and strode toward the gathered party, still wearing her glider harness.
Strapped in behind her, Lionheart was chittering away. Anders had listened to enough hours of recorded treecat sounds to guess that the ’cat was scolding his human.
Above, moving more like a butterfly than a hawk, Trudy came in for an elegant landing of her own, also touching down on the bulls’-eye’s center, but after Stephanie’s daredevil maneuver or Christine and Jessica’s ballet, her demo failed to be at all impressive. Most of the club members had run over to tease Stephanie about how she’d nearly not made it to fifteen and a day…
Only Dr. Richard, standing to the side, his strong features just a bit too fixed, seemed less than enthusiastic about Stephanie’s performance.
No. Make that two who looked less than happy. Karl Zivonik, his glider slung so he could carry it over one powerful shoulder, shared Stephanie’s father’s lack of enthusiasm for Stephanie’s risky acrobatics. Equally obviously, neither of them was going to call Stephanie on the incident-today.
For her part, after unstrapping Lionheart, Stephanie stowed the Flying Tiger, accepting compliments with just the right balance of pleasure and enthusiasm. If she and Trudy had indeed been involved in some sort of private joust, no one would have known it from her.
Trudy, on the other hand, looked more than a little miffed. Like Jessica, she had worn her hair under a cap. Now she pulled the cap off, combing out thick, dark tresses whose sausage curl certainly owed as much to art as to nature. Pretending to be completely absorbed in her primping, Trudy’s brilliant violet-blue eyes scanned the group.
When she noticed Anders, he could have sworn those eyes flashed. Anders was aware he was attractive. His mother had made certain he had no illusions on that point, saying that ignorance would just leave him vulnerable. He’d even had his share of what she insisted on calling “puppy loves”-girls who called him up and left messages on his uni-link. But the look Trudy gave him as she sauntered over toward him was almost hungry.
“Hel-lo!” Trudy said, pulling the word out into several syllables. “And who might you be, and where have you been all my life?”
She’d thrown her shoulders back, raising her right hand to toy with the closure on her flight-suit, ostensibly because she was warm-out on the field, Anders could see that Toby and Chet had already divested themselves of their suits-but in actuality to draw attention to what she clearly thought of as irresistible assets.
Those bouncing breasts were quite remarkable, especially on someone who was probably not much more than sixteen, but Anders thought the approach rather simplistic-and even sort of sad. What a pity she had to offer herself as if she was some sort of appetizer. Anders realized, though, that he must have been more distracted than he wanted to admit because the question still hung in the air between them.
“I’m Anders Whittaker,” he said. “I’m new to Sphinx. My father’s in charge of a team of xenoanthropologists here from Urako to study the treecats.”
Trudy clearly had to think about what that might mean to her. After consideration, she apparently decided that just because Dr. Whittaker was here to study the treecats, that didn’t mean Anders was interested in them.
“How deadly for you,” she purred, coming up next to him and somehow slipping an arm through his. “Your father really must talk to my father and brothers on the subject. After all, a balanced view is important, isn’t it?”
“Indeed it is,” came the voice of Dr. Richard from behind them. “However, Anders has been very politely waiting for the rest of you before getting something to eat. Here’s the plan. Grab a snack from the buffet, then go in and change. Oh! Save some room for dinner. We’ve made some very special dishes.”
The mention of food caused a general rush, in the course of which Anders managed to get free from Trudy. He made his way over to Stephanie just as they all reached the buffet.
“Happy Birthday!” he said. “That was quite a landing.”
“I think Dad’s going to have my ears,” Stephanie said, forcing a laugh. “Lionheart has already chewed me out. I’m not supposed to do things like that.”
Anders shrugged. “Hey…It looked terrifying, but I never thought you were in trouble. Can you tell me what’s what on the buffet? I haven’t been on Sphinx long enough to know the local delicacies.”
Stephanie giggled. Not a contrived girlish giggle, just a laugh that invited him to share a joke. “You won’t find a lot of this stuff anywhere else. Some is Meyerdahl-influenced. Some are my mom and dad’s creations. They both love to cook.”
Christine, who had been spreading something orange and pink on a cracker, halted in mid-motion. “Creations in her kitchen or her lab?”
Marjorie Harrington laughed. “Kitchen and lab-but all the stuff from the lab has been cleared for human consumption. You probably have most of it in your cooler at home.”
Christine bit into the cracker and looked blissed-out. “Not this. Definitely not this. Can I have the recipe?”
Chatter became general after that. Anders had more than Stephanie helping him select treats to try. All the hang-glider club members vied to get him to try river-roe and ice-potato paste, toasted near-pine nuts, and other oddities.
Adults were arriving now. Anders was delighted to meet Scott MacDallan and Fisher, “his” treecat. MacDallan proved to be the red-haired man he’d seen rushing toward what had seemed like Stephanie’s inevitable crash-not a big surprise, since he was a medical doctor. The stocky woman with brown hair proved to be both Scott’s wife and Karl’s aunt, Irina Kisaevna, a very nice woman. Ranger Lethbridge came, making apologies for his partner, Ranger Jedrusinski, and saying that he couldn’t stay for dinner.
“We drew straws for fire watch,” he said, “and she lost. I’ve promised to bring her a dry crust or two for consolation.”
“We can do better than that,” Stephanie promised, and immediately started piling a plate with finger foods to set aside. “Mom won’t want me to cut the cake yet, but I’ll bring you both some tomorrow.”
One by one, the members of the hang-gliding club emerged, each dressed in some interesting variation on formal wear. Karl, it turned out, actually owned a tuxedo, and looked very dashing in it. Toby’s outfit consisted of
