STARSTUFF
IRA HEINICHEN
Copyright © 2017 by Ira Heinichen
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Illustration © Tom Edwards
TomEdwardsDesign.com
ISBN: 9781549855405
For my wife
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Coming Soon!
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
1
—TEN SECONDS.
The man who would save the galaxy needed saving.
Watching the ticking of the chronometer, he stroked the sides of his shrieking ship; her metal bulkheads were hot to the touch. She was crying out in pain with every shudder and shake. A maelstrom of intractable gravity and mass burned outside her with an orange-yellow light, and it was tearing her apart; if that happened before the man could send off his distress call, all would be lost. But, if he could last till the coming break in the storm and send his desperate plea, there was a chance. There would be time.
—Nine seconds.
The thing about distress calls is that they’re supposed to be simple. In the ancient days when humanity sailed the wine-colored seas, a mayday signal was waving one's arms over their head, shooting off a red explosive, orange smoke (or smoke of any kind), or the transmission of three dots, three dashes, and three dots. Anyone within range would respond, rushing as quickly as they could.
—Eight seconds.
But this man sailed the dark skies of the cosmos, and his message couldn’t be dots or dashes; it couldn’t be simple; and it couldn’t cause just anyone to come rushing in to help. What this man had discovered inside the cosmic whirlwind railing against his ship was the kind of thing that would change everything, like fire, or the splitting of the atom. It would build entire civilizations, and it would wipe them to dust; it would obliterate lives, and it would elevate them. Such a discovery had to be born on the right shoulders, not just anyone’s.
—Seven seconds.
The man finished his check of his meticulously-crafted message one last time. It had to be perfect, a box that could only be opened with the right key, a ball of string that could only be unraveled by the right person. The carrier frequency would deliver the message to only one recipient, a boy on a lonely, backwater world; of that he was sure. The message inside would unravel as the right conditions such as space and time were met, and the right questions answered; of that, the man had only hope. Such layers and complexity were a risk in a distress call, but a risk he had to take.
—Six seconds.
The seconds seemed longer the closer to the end of the countdown they got. The man wasn’t sure if it was his own perception, or if the time dilation effect was that dramatic to visibly slow time over a mere two or three feet.
—Five seconds.
His ship screamed. “Just a little longer,” he cooed to her. She would save him if she held, just as surely as would the recipient of his distress call.
The man wondered if he was ready, the boy who would receive this desperate call. From inside the vortex, it was impossible to know exactly how much time had passed out there, but the man knew the dilation effect was there. He’d observed it on the way in. Out there in normal space, it had been years. Maybe decades. The man prayed he’d be old enough, wise enough, strong enough.
—Four seconds.
The man knew it would work. The boy would answer the call to adventure. He’d accept the challenge. He had to.
—Three seconds.
A bulkhead next to the man cracked open, bathing the cabin with angry amber light. It whipped the air into a frenzy.
—Two seconds.
On his monitors, the man saw a break in the storm’s swirling clouds of gas, rock, and energy. It cracked open like the bulkhead, like an eye in the middle of a hurricane. It was just big enough to slip a transmission through, and it was. Right. On. Time.
—One second.
It would be open for less than a second. It was already starting to close.
—Zero.
The man slapped his control panel, seemingly in slow motion. It felt like an eternity for the round button to respond with its tactile click, but the distress call was transmitted. Moving faster than light and devoid of mass or matter, it was held by no constraints of the vortex, and it charged through the crack in the half-second it appeared. The storm sealed again behind it. It was done. The message was away. The fate of the galaxy was all on the boy, now. There would be time.
The man closed his eyes and keyed a final instruction to his dying ship. It wailed with a new sound as its engines fired. The ship moved further inside the maelstrom.
He thought of the boy and pictured him standing on his small, dusty, and safely-insignificant world. He would be staring up at the stars, wondering where his place was in the universe.
“Come find me,” he whispered to him.
And then time stopped.
2
“IGNITER PLEASE, CLARKE. CAREFULLY.”
A pancake-shaped disc plopped down into Petrick’s outstretched hand. Gently, ever so gently, he pushed the disc into the bottom of the rocket fuselage. It clicked into place.
He frowned.
“That’s not an endcap, that’s a fuel cell,” he said, and he turned to his assistant, who had his tongue out and mouth open wide. “You think we need another fuel cell?”
Clarke pinned his two furry ears back against his tiny head and barked, which Petrick took as dog-speak for a yes.
“If you say so.” Petrick then grabbed another fuel cell and gave Clarke a sly wink. “Let’s go for it, eh, bud? Just don’t tell Dad.”
The two of them looked across the field at Fenton, the renowned scientist of the Fringe Worlds. He was wholly engrossed in whatever he was scribbling on the blackboard in front of him and he hadn’t yet noticed Petrick wasn’t doing his study work.
Petrick held the rocket up to the clear night sky and inspected it using
the light of Indacar’s summer moons. It was shortly after twilight, but the two moons were already shimmering and full. Their silver light glinted over Petrick’s worktable, which was piled high and full with all manner of scientific and mechanical clutter; wires, glass tubes, gears, circuit boards, and books all sprawled chaotically across its surface.
It must have been quite the odd sight: the boy, the man, the table, and the schoolhouse blackboard, all sitting smack-dab in the middle of an open meadow. They were the only sign of civilization or humanity in all directions as far as the eye could see. The field was flat, with knee-high wild grass, and surrounded on all sides by the old Indacaran forest. The only sounds beyond Fenton’s preoccupied mumblings were the gurgle of frogs and the occasional buzz of a glow bug.
“It looks good,” Petrick said after he’d turned the rocket all the way around a couple of times. “Hopefully it will be enough to go really super high.”
Clarke panted in approval.
Petrick set up the wire model rocket stand in the middle of the worktable and, with a few shoves, cleared the area around it. No sense in setting everything on fire, right? He reached for the control box with the ignition button on it and held it out to Clarke.
“Set us up out there a ways.” Petrick pointed off into the meadow beyond the table. “But do not press that button till I get out there.”
Clarke took the box in his small mouth and sped off into the grass. The box’s wire unraveled behind him as a silver trail. Petrick gingerly slid the small rocket, packed with incendiaries, down onto the stand. With equal care, he leaned in with the two contacts at the ends of the wires that connected to the control box.
Petrick looked at his father. The blackboard still preoccupied him completely; he was none the wiser.
Click.
First connector in.
Petrick looked over his shoulder at Clarke, who was half-hidden by the high grass. His head was up and alert, and the control box was still in his mouth. He was staring at Petrick, waiting dutifully. Petrick motioned for him to stay there and not move; once the second connector was in, the slightest press of the ignition button, or even the tiniest short in the system, and things would get . . . explosive—right in his face.
Petrick inhaled.
Click.
Second connector in.
The rocket hadn’t exploded.
Petrick let out a soft whistle of relief, backed away from the table, and ran quietly over to the waiting Clarke. He gave him a quick head scratch. He’d been a good boy.
This far away from the worktable, with only the lights of the moons for illumination, the rocket was a shadow. Petrick took the control box from Clarke and took a deep breath in through a giant grin. This was so much more fun than reading about thermodynamics. And all those extra fuel cells were going to make that thing explode.
“Here goes nothing,” Petrick whispered to Clarke, who lowered himself down into the grass in anticipation.
Petrick pressed the ignition button.
Nothing happened.
Petrick frowned and pressed it again. Still nothing. He held it up to his ear and jiggled—
Fwwwoooooooosssshhhhhhhhh!
The rocket blasted off from the worktable in a brilliant flash of orange fire and white smoke. Petrick whooped in surprise. Fenton spun around at the loud sound. The rocket shot straight and true up toward the night sky, a perfect launch.
Higher and higher and higher it climbed.
“Wait for it!” Petrick yelled out as he counted in his head for the grand finale.
Should be right about . . .
Now!
Boooooommm!
An eruption of pink, blue, and green lit up the meadow as the explosive stage caught fire, and the rocket shattered into a million colored pieces. It was beautiful.
It was awesome.
“Petrick!”
Fenton’s yell rang out over the sizzling sounds of the dying rocket. Petrick thought he was in trouble, but when he looked at his father, he saw him pointing at something. A fragment of the rocket hadn’t exploded. It was the bottom two fuel cells, the ones Clarke had insisted he include, that naughty dog . . . they were smoldering . . .
And they were falling right toward Fenton and the blackboard.
“Watch out, Dad!”
With another flash, the last two cells caught fire. Their trajectory couldn’t have been more perfect had Petrick planned it out himself—they bull’s-eyed Fenton and his blackboard in less time than Petrick had to shield his eyes. With a pop, the cells hit.
Everything was on fire.
The worktable, the blackboard, and Fenton disappeared into the fire. One might have quite reasonably been alarmed or panicked as the flames billowed out in every direction, but Petrick only groaned. His shoulders slumped and he trudged reluctantly toward the destruction with Clarke bounding gleefully ahead of him. The dog leapt into the flames and Petrick followed close behind . . .
And the flames all froze.
Fenton was standing in the center of them with his arms folded. Soot covered his face, but he was otherwise entirely unharmed.
“I thought you were reading.”
Petrick kicked at a box of wires and circuits engulfed in frozen fire. “I was . . .”
Fenton gave his son a look.
Petrick stared at the ground.
The laughter that came next surprised even Clarke, who barked in response. Petrick looked up to see his father doubled over, looking at the utter destruction around them.
“You have to admit,” the grown man gasped, “that your aim couldn’t . . . have been more . . . perfect.”
Petrick began to laugh too. It was true. He’d destroyed everything. “But wasn’t it great?” he said.
Once his laughter died down enough for him to stand upright again, Fenton waved a hand over the scene, and the fire disappeared. Exploded papers and bits of glass, wire, and other bobs moved in time-reverse back to where they’d been before the disaster.
“There we go,” Fenton said. He was smiling and holding Petrick’s rocket, as it had been before it exploded, in his hands. The soot was still on his face, and Petrick giggled. “What?” Fenton asked.
Petrick pointed it out, and Fenton let out a “Ha!” and ran his hand over himself. When he finished the gesture, he was clean again.
“You made this?” Fenton asked his son, his attention back on the rocket.
Petrick nodded.
“I thought you were working on the EM saucer for your Choosing Day project.”
“Oh, that’s done already. Plus, no way Suzy and Barry would ever go for a rocket on Choosing Day. This was just for fun tonight.”
Fenton stepped forward and handed it over to him. “It’s very impressive. Though, I think you made a mistake adding the extra engines on the back end there.”
“I wanted it to get all the way up to them.” Petrick pointed at the moons. “I mean, rockets are how real ships get up there, right?”
“More or less.” Fenton tousled his son’s hair, then wagged a finger at him. “Tell me next time. We can make one together.”
“I wanted to surprise you. And it was Clarke’s idea, anyway.”
Clarke was sitting and panting with a broad smile, pink tongue lolling, without a single trace of remorse.
“Mission accomplished, you scoundrels.” The man looked over at his chalk-filled blackboard. “I suppose I was a bit engrossed tonight, wasn’t I?”
“What are you working on?”
Fenton collapsed himself down on the ground and patted the grass next to him. “I’ll show you.”
Petrick sat. The grass was cool in contrast to the warm summer air.
Fenton reached up to the sky, and with a gesture pulled the stars and the moons down into his palm.
“Oooooooh,” said Petrick.
“I was plotting out the night sky,” Fenton said from behind the stars. “I figured we could start going through and identifying nearby systems and move out fro
m there.”
Petrick reached out and touched one of the tiny globes of light. “What’s this one?”
“Let’s see.” Fenton made a flipping gesture with his free hand, and the stars rotated around until the one Petrick had touched was in front of him. “That’s . . . FW005630.”
Petrick wrinkled his nose. “That’s its name?”
“It’s a planetless star system. And there are so many systems that usually only the ones that get settled get real names.”
“Like Indacar.”
“That’s right.”
Fenton lay down in the grass and with a toss, threw the night sky back up into place. “‘May my ship never drop anchor and forever sail the Dark Sky,’” Fenton said with a sigh. “‘Blessed be the ’stuff.’”
Starstuff (Starstuff Trilogy Book 1) Page 1
