The Project Gutenberg EBook of Novice, by James H. Schmitz

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Title: Novice

Author: James H. Schmitz

Illustrator: Schoenherr

Release Date: November 12, 2009 [EBook #30458]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Transcriber's Note:

This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact & Fiction June 1962.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright
on this publication was renewed.

novice

by James H. Schmitz

A novice is one who is inexperienced--but that doesn't mean
incompetent. Nor does it mean stupid!

ILLUSTRATED BY SCHOENHERR

* * * * *

There was, Telzey Amberdon thought, someone besides TT and herself in
the garden. Not, of course, Aunt Halet, who was in the house waiting
for an early visitor to arrive, and not one of the servants. Someone
or something else must be concealed among the thickets of
magnificently flowering native Jontarou shrubs about Telzey.

She could think of no other way to account for Tick-Tock's spooked
behavior--nor, to be honest about it, for the manner her own nerves
were acting up without visible cause this morning.

Telzey plucked a blade of grass, slipped the end between her lips and
chewed it gently, her face puzzled and concerned. She wasn't
ordinarily afflicted with nervousness. Fifteen years old, genius
level, brown as a berry and not at all bad looking in her sunbriefs,
she was the youngest member of one of Orado's most prominent families
and a second-year law student at one of the most exclusive schools in
the Federation of the Hub. Her physical, mental, and emotional health,
she'd always been informed, was excellent. Aunt Halet's frequent
cracks about the inherent instability of the genius level could be
ignored; Halet's own stability seemed questionable at best.

But none of that made the present odd situation any less
disag