Read A Beautiful Friendship-ARC for Free Online

answer her father’s question. To her way of thinking, there was a difference between “how hard” and “how effectively” (or “how intelligently ,” for that matter). That wasn’t exactly what he’d asked, though, and she shrugged.
    “I think at first most people figured it was kids,” she said, “and it’s not like the amount of celery that’s being taken is really hurting anyone that much. I mean, it’s only celery , and it’s not like there’s a big market for stolen celery, right? So the truth is, no one put a whole lot of effort into it at first. Like I said, they’ve had other things to worry about.
    “But it looks like whoever—or whatever—is behind it is starting to take more of it, and I think at least some people are worried the thieves might start branching out into stuff besides celery. Besides, like Mom says, an awful lot of it seems to be being taken out of the experimental greenhouses. In fact it looks like most of the reported incidents—the ones where people have actually noticed the celery disappearing—are coming out of the experimental plots. And if that keeps up or spreads to some of the other experimental farms’ plots, it could screw up some of the long-term research projects. So in the last few T-months, people have been getting more serious about figuring out what’s going on and stopping it. Besides, it’s a challenge!”
    “Getting more serious?” her dad repeated, and she shrugged.
    “Well, they started out simple. Given where the celery’s been disappearing from, most people figure whatever’s taking it can’t be too big, since it would have to squeeze into some pretty narrow places. A couple of people suggested setting traps, but the Forestry Service knocked that one on the head in a hurry because of the Elysian Rule.”
    Her expression sobered, and so did her father’s. The Elysian Rule had been adopted over a thousand years before, after a disastrous clutch of mistakes had devastated the ecology of the colony world of Elysian. It absolutely forbade the use of lethal measures against a complete unknown without evidence that whatever it was posed a clear physical danger to humans, and no administration on a planet in the early stages of settlement would even consider its violation without a reason far more compelling than the minuscule economic loss thefts of celery represented.
    “Since we don’t know what’s actually taking the celery, we can’t be sure how to set a non lethal trap for it,” Stephanie said. “That didn’t keep some people from wanting to go ahead with traps, anyway, but Chief Ranger Shelton wasn’t about to let them get away with that!”
    She grinned in obvious approval of the chief ranger’s stance, then continued.
    “So they tried alarms and sensors. Since everybody figures we’re dealing with some sort of local critter, they decided to try simple tripwires connected to lights and remote cameras first, but that didn’t work. Whatever is actually snatching the stuff, either it doesn’t spend a lot of time on the ground or else it’s really good at spotting tripwires.”
    She paused, brown eyes narrowed thoughtfully, then looked back at her father.
    “I think they’re right that it’s probably something local. Something small, I bet, and really, really sneaky . But what I can’t figure out, is why something from Sphinx would be eating celery of all things.”
    “I can think of several possible reasons,” her father replied. “Don’t forget, one of the things that made the Manticore System so attractive to colonists despite Sphinx’s gravity is how similar all three if its planetary biosystems are to the one humanity evolved in.” His eyes darkened. “That’s probably the only reason the Plague could evolve in it and hit us so hard.”
    He paused for a moment, then gave himself an almost apologetic shake and continued.
    “Both Manticore and Sphinx use the same sugars our biochemistry does, and the local amino acids