For Love of Mother-Not — Alan Dean Foster

THEY CALLED HIM FLINX...

He was just a freckle-faced, redheaded kid with green eyes and a strangely compelling stare when Mother Mastiff first saw him on the auctioneers block. One hundred credits and he was hers.

For years the old woman was his only family. She loved him, fed him, taught him everything she knew -- even let him keep the deadly flying snake he called Pip.

Then Mother Mastiff mysteriously disappeared and Flinx took Pip to trail her kidnappers. Across the forests and swamps of the winged world called Moth, their only weapons were Pip's venom...and Flinx's unusual Talents.