This is the second adventure featuring Stephanie Harrington and the treecat she calls Lionheart but who calls himself Climbs Quickly. This time a study team has come to the planet Sphinx to study the treecats to determine their intelligence. Along with the team comes the son of the team leader - Anders Whittaker. Stephanie develops her first crush on him which the team leader wants to encourage in the hopes that she will share more with the team than she has shared in the past.Stephanie is also concerned about getting her provisional air-car license and her role as a junior ranger in the Sphinx Forest Service. Her parents are concerned about her lack of friends her own age but Stephanie is slowly learning that all the kids her age are not "blackholes." She has always been friends with fellow junior SFS ranger Karl Zivonik but now she is getting to know some other kids - Toby, Jessica, Christine and Chet.When the expedition including Anders goes missing (because of the arrogance of his father Dr. Whittaker), Stephanie is very concerned about locating them. The concern gets even higher when lightning-strike fires occur. Stephanie and Karl and their friends have to rescue a clan of treecats that are in the way of the fires and stumble on and rescue the scientists at the same time.The story was entertainingly told both from Stephanie's and Climbs Quickly's points of view. We could see Climbs Quickly's frustration that the two-legs just didn't understand what the treecats were trying to tell them. He also had to try to understand the volatile emotions of Stephanie as she grows from child to woman. I recommend this book and the first book in the series - A Beautiful Friendship - to all young science fiction fans.
