{"product_id":"trouble-magnet-isbn-9780345485052","title":"Trouble Magnet","description":"\u003cb\u003eFrom science fiction icon Alan Dean Foster comes a blazing Pip \u0026amp; Flinx adventure  for fans of the green-eyed redhead with awesome mental powers and his miniature flying  dragon. In this dazzling novel, Flinx confirms his status as the galaxy’s greatest  magnet for big trouble.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Wandering out there in some remote region of the galaxy  is a gargantuan sentient Tar-Aiym weapons’ system. All Flinx has to do—while his  pals look after his injured love Clarity Held—is find the hefty object and persuade  it to knock out the monstrous evil that is hurtling through space to waste the entire  Commonwealth.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e A no-brainer, really, especially for Flinx, who is never without his  loyal entourage of official snoops, crazed zealots, assorted goons, and the occasional  assassin. Indeed, the boy wonder and his mini-drag, Pip, are eager to commence their  heroic task . . . just as soon as Flinx visits Visaria—a dangerously depraved planet—to  convince himself that humans are indeed worth saving.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The chances of stumbling across  high moral values and utopian ideals don’t look promising–what with Flinx playing  a lawless Pied Piper to a gang of lying, thieving juvenile delinquents. But prospects  really go south when Flinx runs afoul of the corrupt planet’s ruthless crime king.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/b\u003eStill, life is full of surprises, and Flinx is about to get smacked by a passel  of them—by turns devastating, heartening, and positively jaw-dropping. For although  Flinx came to Visaria to plumb the enigma of humankind, there’s another mystery waiting  here, a shocking clue about his own shadowy past.Alan Dean Foster has written in a variety of genres, including hard science fiction, fantasy, horror, detective, western, historical, and contemporary fiction. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Star Wars: The Approaching Storm and the popular Pip \u0026amp; Flinx novels, as well as novelizations of several films including Star Wars, the first three Alien films, and Alien Nation. His novel Cyber Way won the Southwest Book Award for Fiction in 1990, the first science fiction work ever to do so.\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003eFoster and his wife, JoAnn Oxley, live in Prescott, Arizona, in a house built of brick that was salvaged from an early-twentieth-century miners’ brothel. He is currently at work on several new novels and media projects.Chapter  1\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    A most peculiar thing happened to the battleship as it departed the   Repler system: initially daunting in size and form, it proceeded to   undergo a kind of reverse metamorphosis, as if a butterfly were turning   backward into an ungainly caterpillar. Intimidating weapons blisters   collapsed in upon themselves like so many glistening, harmless bubbles.   Lethal wave-form projectors shrank and slivered. Vast projecting   appurtenances shimmied and vanished like the ominous illusions they   were, until the menacing martial shape had imploded completely. In its   place gleamed the far smaller fast-moving footprint of an ordinary   cargo carrier approaching changeover. Clearly not a craft that was part   of the impressive fleet component still orbiting the planet that was   rapidly receding behind it, nor one that was likely to attract undue   notice.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Visually revamped, externally overhauled, and mechanically face-lifted   determinedly downscale, the Teacher slipped unchallenged into the   physically unreasonable but mathematically coherent state known   colloquially as space-plus, whereupon it swiftly left the Commonwealth   border system known as Repler not only far behind, but far beyond it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Changeover complete. Exterior appearance modified as per necessity.   Proceeding on general Almaggee vector. Awaiting instructions.” A pause,   then, “Resume search?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Resume search. Flinx stared out the command port at the splay of   distorted stars forward. Resume search for what? His ship was doubtless   referring to the search his friends and mentors Bran Tse-Mallory and   the Eint Truzenzuzex had sent him on. The one he had agreed to   undertake provided only that they see to and look after his injured   love Clarity Held back on New Riviera. A simple enough quest request.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    All he was being asked to do was search and scour the vast reaches of   the largely uninhabited section of the Sagittarius Arm of the galaxy   opposite the Commonwealth, locate and establish contact with an   unbelievably ancient planet-sized weapons platform of the   long-extinct—except for one recently demised individual—war-like   species called the Tar-Aiym, and persuade it to aid in defending all   civilization against an immense, undefined menace steadily accelerating   in this direction from a region of space near Boötes known as the Great   Emptiness. And do this while avoiding the attentions of the   increasingly persistent and curious Commonwealth authorities, the   crazed suicidal adherents of the Order of Null who badly wanted him   dead, certain elements of the AAnn Empire, and perhaps the isolated   Qwarm assassin. All in hopes of saving the galaxy and, with luck, of in   a few years making it to his thirtieth birthday. And maybe, just maybe,   finding out who his father was.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He took a deep breath. From her position sprawled across the center of   the command console, the minidrag Pip looked up at him, yawned, and   stretched her brilliant pink-and-blue wings without unfurling them. He   nodded, though not particularly at her.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Time for tea.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The Teacher brewed perfect tea. Many was the time, and more frequently   lately than not, he found himself considering perfection tedious. But   not when it came to the making of tea. Darjeeling tea from Terra, anar   tea from Rhyinpine, unique forest teas from Alaspin; the ship was   steeped in those and more. Various chemicals both natural and synthetic   for calming the mind and easing the body were available to the Teacher.   Except on rare occasions he disdained them all in favor of flavor in   the form of natural tea.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    When it was delivered to him in a pot and cup whose functions, if not   the material from which they had been made, would have been   recognizable to a tea drinker from a thousand years ago, he stirred in   additives, leaned back, and wondered at how many ancient ship captains   had similarly sat and sipped their own favored libation while studying   the stars. They had done so from a considerably different perspective,   of course. They had been sailing along beneath the stars, not among   them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The hot, sweetened, dark gold liquid calmed his body but did little to   settle his thoughts. Behind him lay the threat of the alien Vom,   extinguished. Ahead lay a search for something to help deal with an   infinitely greater threat. A search that might well take years. To what   end? Not for the first time he wondered why he ought to bother. What   about his own personal priorities? What about the future for himself   and Clarity he dared to dream of in quiet moments? If the evil he had   perceived within the Great Emptiness was not due to arrive for hundreds   or even thousands of years, why should he care about it? Why should he   have to be the one to sacrifice his life and happiness in a probably   futile attempt to forestall the inevitable?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Everything went in cycles. Perhaps the eventual arrival of the Great   Evil represented nothing more than the ending of one such cycle and the   beginning of another. Neither of which, as he lived out his normal life   span, he need be expected to deal with.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Still running away, he told himself as he sipped. The realization   burned him more than the hot liquid.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    After what he’d seen on Repler, the wild thought occurred to him that   maybe he should take drugs to make himself feel better. Perhaps try   something stronger than tea. Given his singular abilities, however,   there was no telling, no way of predicting, what the cost of such an   action might be. While he felt he could deal with any consequences that   the sampling of artificial stimulants might pose to himself, there was   no telling what kind of harm such an indulgence involving his   increasingly unmanageable abilities might visit on those around him. He   decided that such experimentation was, at least for now, not a viable   option.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    All right then, the voice inside himself demanded. If you’re going to   devote yourself to saving something, maybe what you need to stiffen   your resolve is to prove to yourself that that something is worth   saving. That it’s worth the sacrifice. What he had recently experienced   and observed while on Repler was not encouraging. Selfishness, greed,   violence. Conscious misuse of intelligence. Willful consumption of   sentience-altering drugs. Bloodhype. The noblest creature he had   encountered during his sojourn on Repler—the one with whom he had   personally empathized the most—had belonged not to one of the existing   races whose future he was being asked to help save but to a Tar-Aiym   named Peot: the last surviving representative of that long-dead,   war-like species.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    On the other hand, despite his recent, self-challenging, near-defiant,   and very brief dalliance with the United Church officer Kitten   Kai-sung, there was Clarity. Not to mention Bran Tse-Mallory,   Truzenzuzex, Mother Mastiff, and other exemplary examples of   contemporary cognizance and compassion. Even those who hungered first   and foremost for wealth, like the old prospector Knigta Yakus, were at   heart good folk whose heritable lines were deserving of preservation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Maybe that was it, he told himself as he sat up straighter in the   command chair. In the course of his short but very full life, so many   of those he had been in close contact with had been in one way or   another exceptional or atypical. Easy enough to rationalize risking all   to save such. But what about the great, restless, surging mass of   others? Did they deserve salvation? Was the future of those vast,   unknown, swarming genetic masses worth the sacrifice of his personal   happiness? That was really what was at stake. That was truly what he   needed to decide.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He had told the now deceased Peot that he needed to acquire wisdom.   Where to go and what to do to find it? In his short life he had seen   much. Love, hate, all manner of planetary environments. But not, his   recent encounter on Repler with the disreputable drugger and emoman   Dominic Rose notwithstanding, the full wickedness and inventive   iniquity of which humankind and others were capable. In order to pass   judgment on his fellow sentients, and to acquire the fullness of wisdom   that he sought, it was only reasonable to believe that he needed to   experience that as well. Needed to proceed counter to his natural   impulses and immerse himself in the worst that full-blown civilization   had to offer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He mentally and methodically worked his way through the most relevant   steller schematics. The source for the kind of learning he desired lay   a good way distant but not all that far off his present vector.   Determination overrode a hesitancy that as recently as several years   ago would have held him back from proceeding. Determination, and a   seriously advanced case of what-the-hell.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Sensing his change of mood, Pip spread her wings, rose, and glided over   to land on his right shoulder. As her tail end curled affectionately   around his neck, he reached up with his free hand to absently stroke   the smooth, scaly back of her head.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Course change,” he announced aloud, lowering his cup. “We will remain   within the borders of the Commonwealth, but off the Almaggee vector.   Set a course for Visaria.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The Teacher’s ship-mind was programmed to emulate an extensive and   varied assortment of human reactions, but pausing for emphasis was not   one of them. Therefore, its skepticism was immediate.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Permit me to point out that Visaria represents a considerable detour   from the most direct route into the Blight, the region you wish to   search for signs of the absented Tar-Aiym artifact.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He glanced toward one of the numerous visual pickups that were   scattered about the command chamber. “Yep.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Nonexistent applicable programming notwithstanding, the ship-mind   momentarily did seem to hesitate. “Visaria is an N Class One, highly   industrialized human-dominated colony world. It has no links that I can   discover to the alien weapons platform you are engaged in seeking out,   and its heavily concentrated and urbanized population is the kind you   prefer to avoid whenever possible.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Yep,” muttered Flinx a second time. He took a swallow of tea. Forward   of the curving port, stars and nebulae whirled about one another in an   eternal crazed tarantella—fused hydrogen partnering with torn particles   to produce all the colors of God.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “You are being deliberately unresponsive. Cold statistics and   classification aside, my records indicate that Visaria is considered   one of the most disreputable, debased, dangerous, and generally   unpleasant settled worlds in the entire Commonwealth. It has a   reputation for corrupting representatives of even such generally   well-thought-of species as the Quillp and the thranx themselves. It is   a place whose occupants are primarily preoccupied with building wealth   as opposed to character. Since you already have both, I am perplexed as   to why you should wish to go there. Particularly now.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Well,” Flinx replied evenly, “it’s not for a ‘vacation.’”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The ship-mind’s response was calculatedly cool. “The acerbic reference   to the recent awkward sojourn on Jast is duly noted. My query and   concern remain unaddressed.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “I indeed intend to spend an undetermined length of time there,” he   continued deliberately, “to further my education.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “At the risk of your life?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Ah yes,” the tall young man in the command chair murmured, “that would   be a first, wouldn’t it?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “If sarcasm were gravity and could be channeled, I would be the fastest   vessel in the Commonwealth.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “By which comment you indicate that you’re not averse to occasionally   employing it yourself,” he shot back.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The ship-mind collected itself. “My sole concern is for your   well-being. Visaria is a patently dangerous place. You are already   under threat from various sources. My logic processor fails to see why   you would willingly pile one danger upon another, when that other is   easily avoided.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “You don’t accept a desire to gain knowledge as a valid reason?” He   stared in the direction of the nearest visual pickup.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “One must consider the question of demonstrable risk versus theoretical   benefit,” the Teacher insisted.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “I’ve done all the analysis I need to,” Flinx replied irritably, “and   it is my intention to proceed.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Another suggestion of circuitous, or perhaps merely circuitry,   hesitation. “You are not feeling suicidal again, are you?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    A dull pounding started at the back of Flinx’s skull. He willed it   away. “If that was the reason for my wanting to visit Visaria, there   are quicker and easier means of fulfillment.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Granted.” The ship sounded relieved. “Visaria, then. Do you wish upon   arrival to enter into an announced orbit?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Rising from the chair, he placed his cup in the appropriate receptacle   and started back toward the ship’s lounge. “If the folks who run the   place are as cagey as you suggest, I don’t see how we could sneak in   unobserved. If it’s as crowded as you say, I don’t imagine we’ll need   to. And if it’s as shady even on the sunward side, I’m sure we can   convince the appropriate authorities to take a pass on any detailed   arrival and entry formalities.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    As its master left the command chamber, the Teacher set about   negotiating the necessary alterations to the appropriate dimensional   mathematics, with an appropriate kick in the right direction. It worked   flawlessly, efficiently, rapidly.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    But insofar as it was capable of contemplating the consequences of the   impulsive course change, it was not pleased.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Habitable worlds were like tolerable people, Flinx mused as the Teacher   decelerated through normal space toward Visaria. Viewed from a   distance, they all looked similar. Draw closer, and individual features   made themselves visible. The lines of a continent on a planet; the   lines of character in a person’s face. Canyons and crevices, rills and   revelations, some carved by wind and water, others by life and   experiences. He had encountered both weathered worlds and weathered   people. It was no different with sentient nonhumans. One simply had to   study the different physical features to learn what they signified.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Move in closer still and fine detail became apparent. With worlds,   individual streams. With people, streams of consciousness only he could   perceive. Mountains and forests, cities and roads and seaports. Shifty   or straightforward eyes, digits or tentacles reaching for handshakes or   weapons. To isolate such features, one just had to know how and where   to look. Surviving both worlds and individuals was a matter of   leavening alertness with knowledge. He had been born with plenty of the   former, and through circumstance had been force-fed an abundance of the   latter. In this he was not really all that different from his fellow   sentients. In one other highly significant way he was.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Worlds whispered to him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Inhabited worlds, mostly, though his Talent had grown sensitive and   sharp enough to allow him to perceive the emotions of less intelligent   orders of beings. It did not matter whether the worlds he visited were   dominated by his own kind, or by the insectoid thranx, or the   aggressive AAnn, or even more outré sentients such as the Vssey. If   they possessed an inner emotional life, their feelings encroached on   him. Through practice and time, he had gained the ability to shut out   some of the emotive shouting of others. But not all of it, and not   always. Just as he could not predictably control his ability to   perceive the feelings of others, so he could not always completely   banish them from his Meliorare-altered mind. That was why he often   chose to avoid worlds that were crowded with intelligent life. That was   why he was deliberately choosing to immerse himself in one now.New York Times bestselling author","brand":"Del Rey","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300711256293,"sku":"NP9780345485052","price":7.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780345485052.jpg?v=1767742981","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/trouble-magnet-isbn-9780345485052","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}