Starstuff (Starstuff Trilogy Book 1)

by Ira Heinichen

  “I’m sorry I was so mad at you,” Suzy said to Petrick.

  “No, it’s okay,” he said back. “I wasn’t thinking.”

  “And I’m sorry they’re taking away the treasure shed,” said Barry.

  “Me too,” said Suzy.

  “We’ll have to figure something out,” Petrick said, eyes filling with the night sky. “We always do.”

  8

  “CAN you show me how to build my own stardrive?”

  It was early in the dream. Fenton was still setting up his lesson for the day. Petrick was standing by the table of materials running his hands over the wires and gadgets and boxes.

  “Your own stardrive?” Fenton repeated with his eyebrows raised.

  “I need to get off Indacar, Dad.”

  “Petrick, you can’t just run away from home.”

  “I wouldn’t run away. I’d fly.”

  Fenton pursed his lips. “A stardrive is incredibly complicated.”

  “I bet I can figure it out,” said Petrick.

  “I don’t mean that as an indictment of your ability, son. I mean that in terms of sheer practicality.”

  Petrick frowned his face into a question mark.

  “Well, first of all,” Fenton said, “you need starstuff.”

  “I can’t refine that here? I’d need just enough to get off Indacar.”

  “No, there’s not enough.”

  “But starstuff is in everything. You said so, straight from the dying suns into me.”

  “That’s true, but in tiny, tiny, minuscule amounts.” Fenton sat himself down on the ground cross-legged and invited Petrick to sit next to him. As the boy joined him, he cupped his hands closed, and when he opened them again, there was a gold point of light shimmering in the small space, floating. Petrick reached out to touch it, and his finger passed through it with an electrical tickle.

  “There is starstuff in every atom in your body,” Fenton said. “In every atom on Indacar, too. But it would take a thousand Indacars just to distill enough starstuff to hold in my hands.”

  Petrick nodded, remembering. “But it’s different on the Wandering Giants, those bits of mass you were talking about where there’s more of the particles.”

  Fenton nudged his son in the ribs. “So you do pay attention sometimes. That’s right. We discovered the first of the starless planets over millennia ago. They had starstuff particle concentrations a trillion times stronger than ordinary matter. A few tons of ore from the Wandering Giant could power a ship halfway to the Outer Rim. They changed everything.”

  “Until they ran out.”

  “Yes.” Fenton’s face sagged. “That’s right. Until we used them all up.”

  “And that’s why you left.” Fenton nodded. Petrick looked up at the night sky. “How are you going to find the Wandering Giants,” he said, “if they don’t orbit a star?”

  “I’m not looking for more of the Giants. I’m looking for where they come from. The Source.”

  “If I get off Indacar, I can help you look for the Source. I bet I’d be good at it.”

  “I bet you would, too.” Fenton smiled. “I know you would. But you have to stay home, for now.”

  “Mistress Fris says it’s dangerous out there.”

  “Mistress Fris has never left the walls of Childer’s,” Fenton scoffed.

  “Is it dangerous?”

  “You have to keep your eyes and ears open,” Fenton said seriously. He then grinned and leaned in mischievously. “But that’s where the adventure is! And, besides, you never go on an adventure alone.”

  Fenton pulled open the neck of his shirt and took out a small necklace with a medallion dangling from the end of it. The chain of the necklace was so thin, Petrick had never seen it before.

  “Have I ever told you about the Star Farers?” Fenton asked.

  “Yes!” Petrick lit up. “‘Let no man stand between me and the stars.’”

  “Good boy. Well, they also say this. And it’s so important to some of them, they wear it around their necks.”

  Fenton extended the small medallion out for Petrick to take into his hands. On one side was a symbol of a shining starstuff particle and a set of cupped hands, much like his father’s had been when he’d shown Petrick the particle. There was a large gash that scored the image at a diagonal. Petrick flipped it over to see the other side. There were two words stamped into the metal.

  “‘Never Alone,’” Petrick read. He looked up from the phrase at his dad’s face. “What does it mean?”

  “It means a lot of things. It can be an affirmation—as long as you have the Star Farers you’re never alone . . . or it can be a cautionary reminder—never do something alone that should be done together.”

  “What does it mean to you?”

  “As long as I have you, I’m never alone.”

  Petrick smiled and ran his fingers over the words, and the gash on the other side. “So, you’re a Star Farer?” he asked.

  “No,” Fenton said, and the medallion disappeared back inside his shirt. “I was given this as a gift by one.” The man’s eyes grew wistful, and Petrick prodded him to share whatever he was thinking about. Instead, he got a coy smile. “Maybe someday I’ll—”

  Fenton’s face froze midsentence.

  Everything, in fact, was quiet and still. Like the world had a power switch and it had been turned off.

  “Dad?” said Petrick, rising to his feet. There was no response.

  In the far distance, a low rushing sound crept into his awareness. Petrick strained to hear it and searched the empty meadow for the source. “Dad, you hear that?”

  Fenton did not respond. He could not hear him.

  The sound was growing louder, and it took shape as a droning whir. Or was it a buzz? Petrick walked a few paces from his frozen father as the buzzing grew louder. His vision telescoped, the periphery of the world contracted, and Petrick felt suddenly sick to his stomach. It was as if the air was crushing in upon him in invisible spikes, and suddenly it was hard for him to breathe.

  The buzz was now a roar.

  He realized he’d closed his eyes and stumbled to the ground. When he opened them and staggered back to his feet, he saw an enormous cloud of glow hornets that filled the distorted sky. Glow hornets were a summer fixture on Indacar, beautiful and mesmerizing from afar when their glowing abdomens were tracing lines of light in a night sky . . . but fearsome and dangerous when they swarmed. This was a larger swarm than the boy had ever seen.

  The angry cloud of them rushed down with a stabbing synchronicity toward the frozen Fenton.

  “Dad!” Petrick yelled.

  The glow hornets enveloped his head and upper torso. Their orange-glowing abdomens traced angry lines, a nest of light, they moved so quickly.

  The hornets awakened Fenton as if he were an automaton, and he stood, stiffly, unnaturally. The hornets rose with his head. Their roar was deafening. Fenton snapped his head to face his son, and Petrick saw that his eyes glowed the same orange as the hornets. Petrick stumbled again to the ground. The weight of the crushing world was heavy on his chest, and Petrick felt as though he might puke.

  The possessed Fenton’s mouth moved, but Petrick shook his head in desperation. “I can’t hear you!”

  Fenton repeated the motion, but the only thing Petrick could hear was the roar. He squeezed his eyes closed tight as a wave of nausea crested. He screamed aloud when he opened them again.

  His father’s face was suddenly inches from his. The hornets rushing between them were deafening. Petrick raised his arms reflexively to protect himself.

  “Help me!” Fenton pleaded.

  His eyes were smoldering suns.

  “HELP ME!”

  Petrick gasped awake for the second time in as many nights to Clarke’s furious barking at the foot of his bed. This time, however, it was still night, his head was swirling with a sharp headache, and Clarke was not himself.

  Petrick couldn’t be sure if it was leftover delirium, but
he could swear the small fur ball’s eyes shone for a second with the same orange fury as the glow hornets in the dream.

  He looked like he was ready to explode. The barking was incessant and insistent, with a different tenor than Petrick had ever heard. It assaulted his ears, which made the pounding in his head worsen, and he felt suddenly as if he might be sick.

  Petrick let the wave of nausea pass and dared to stand.

  Seeing that Petrick was now awake, Clarke jumped off the bed and ran over to the attic door leading down into Barry and Suzy’s room. There, he proceeded to punctuate each of his barks with several rapid-fire paw scratches at the attic door. Those turned into furious fast-as-possible digging.

  “Clarke!” said Petrick, the pain in his head making him feel woozy. “Stop it.”

  The dog did not hear him or chose to ignore the command. Downstairs, Petrick could make out the sounds of Suzy and Barry stirring.

  Petrick stumbled toward the possessed Clarke. “What is it?” he asked.

  Clarke looked directly at him, barked a single bark, and then started pawing again at the door. The message was crystal clear, although Petrick couldn’t fathom the reason for it. He lifted the latch to the attic door, and the stairs swung downward.

  Clarke, as Petrick instinctually knew he would, immediately bounded down the stairs and ran straight over to the closed door that led out of the bedroom to the hallway. There, he immediately started barking and pawing again. Petrick followed after him to find Suzy and Barry sitting up in their beds.

  “What’s going on?” asked Suzy, wide-eyed and awake.

  “I don’t know.” Petrick was midstride moving toward Clarke. “He just started barking like crazy all of a sudden.”

  Petrick paused once he reached the door leading to the hallway, considering for a second whether or not it was wise to actually let Clarke out, but the dog sensed his master’s hesitation and resumed his barking and pawing. It worked. Petrick opened the door rather than have his barking wake up the entire building. Clarke bolted down the hallway and then down the stairs in seconds.

  “Clarke!” Petrick called in vain, feeling very foolish. “Guys, we have to go after Clarke. He’s gone crazy or something.”

  “You go get him,” said Barry, flopping himself back down onto his pillow.

  Clarke began barking downstairs, and Petrick felt a stab of pain in his forehead, more intense than the others. An overwhelming thought filled his head.

  I must go after him!

  “Petrick?”

  He must have fallen, because he was suddenly looking up at Suzy and Barry’s worried faces.

  “Are you okay?” Suzy asked. “You kinda just . . . moaned and fell, and then you didn’t answer.”

  “We have to go after Clarke,” insisted Petrick, scrambling up to his feet and saying aloud the only thought he could hold on to. “He’ll get in big trouble if we don’t get him to stop.”

  Petrick jammed his feet into a pair of canvas slippers that he kept by the doorway and Barry and Suzy did the same without further protest. Petrick’s headache seemed to subside as soon as the trio were traipsing down the stairs toward Clarke’s racket.

  When they reached the ground-floor landing, they were surprised to see Clarke outside already. He had turned and was looking toward them through one of the open front windows, which had been cracked to let in the summer breeze and had provided the canine with his escape route. He’d stopped his barking as soon as he’d caught sight of his master.

  Clarke was several paces away from the dorm house, but he hadn’t run off as Petrick had expected. There he was, turned back toward them, waiting. Like he was waiting for them. Petrick was first to the front door, and he opened it to allow the three of them onto the outside porch.

  “Clarke,” Petrick hissed as loud as he dared. “Get back inside!”

  Clarke’s response was to turn tail and take off out of the commons like a shot from a cannon.

  “Uggghhhh,” Barry whisper-groaned. “We’re going to get in trouble.”

  Again, Petrick’s head felt like it was going to split open, and his mind screamed at him. I must go after him! He shook off an attempt from Suzy to steady him, leapt off the porch, and started off running in the direction in which Clarke had disappeared. The motion of his steps seems to relieve the pain, and his senses cleared somewhat.

  “Come on, guys.” He motioned back toward Barry and Suzy. Another nervous groan from Barry and the shuffling of feet told him that they were following.

  The trio left the confines of the commons, and the several paths that led to the various sections of the Childer’s compound stretched out in front of them. Clarke could have quickly disappeared down any of those paths, leaving his humans to scratch their heads and guess, but instead, they saw him just ahead in the moonlight, again with his head turned back, looking at them. He barked, just as he had before, and then took off up a path that our trio knew very well indeed.

  “He’s leading us out toward the treasure shed,” Petrick called back as he continued his jogging pace.

  “Why?” Barry asked breathlessly from behind. Petrick noticed his pack bouncing ridiculously up and down on his back. “Why would he do that?”

  Petrick didn’t have the opportunity to speculate. Some muffled noises behind the group made Petrick turn his head around to look back at where they’d just come from. Beyond Suzy’s speeding legs and Barry’s huffing and puffing, a lantern had lit up in one of the adult dorms. They’d indeed woken at least one of the adults up. A couple of them, if Petrick accurately saw the shadowed figures behind the backlit curtains.

  They were going to be in trouble for being out after curfew. There was no way around that now, so Petrick put it out of his mind. He wasn’t just going to let Clarke run off into the night alone.

  They reached their familiar corner of Childer’s, and all three stopped, breathing heavily. As they looked around, the colorless light of the moons made the hulking structures around them much more mysterious and menacing, like monsters frozen in the shadows.

  “It’s creepy out here in the dark,” confirmed Barry.

  “Where is Clarke?” Petrick asked, scanning around for the naughty dog. “I don’t see him.”

  “Me either,” said Barry, looking about. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” Petrick said. “I had a nightmare, I woke up, and Clarke was—”

  “Shhh!” said Suzy to the two boys, and cocked her ear to listen.

  A digging sound, over by the collapsed treasure shed, wafted above the noise of the crickets and the tree frogs.

  “I hear it,” Petrick said to Suzy. “The back room of the shed, by the wall.”

  The trio ran to the twisted pile that was all that was left of the treasure shed and slowed as they approached, keenly aware that they were in slippers, not shoes. There was sure to be glass, nails, and various other nasty pointy bits scattered about.

  “How are we going to get in?” said Barry.

  Petrick dropped down to his hands and knees and peered into the tangled mess as best he could in the pale light.

  “There was a space just big enough earlier to get through to the back,” he said. But as bright as the moons were, the shed was still a thicket of inky and impenetrable black shadows.

  “Clarke,” called Suzy as quietly as she could. “Come on out here.”

  Petrick slapped a hand down in the dust. “It’s too dark,” he said. “We’re never going to see anything.”

  A small beam of light clicked on behind him on cue. Petrick turned around to see Barry standing there, freshly repaired torchless in hand.

  Barry shrugged, unperturbed. “Never know when I might need it,” he said.

  Suzy threw her hands up. “Why didn’t you pull it out sooner? We could have stabbed our feet a hundred times out here already.”

  “Because the adults might see the light and find us,” Barry answered.

  Suzy lifted her chin and nodded. “Oh, yup, that makes
complete sense. Good call.”

  “I can see the crawl space,” Petrick cried out. It was much tighter than before, but it was still there.

  “Shhhh,” Suzy and Barry both hissed at him.

  He nodded and brought a finger up to his lips. “We’ll have to crawl on our bellies, but we can make it. Just watch for sharp stuff!”

  He pointed to an opening in the rubble and proceeded to shimmy himself inside. Suzy followed, and Barry brought up the rear, his small light illuminating the way ahead.

  Petrick grunted as he slid past a particularly low-fallen beam, then stopped as he felt a pull on the back of his nightshirt. It had caught on a shard of glass sticking out from a broken window frame. He freed himself with a yank and a rip.

  “Careful of that,” he called back, pointing at the shard. “Back shouldn’t be much further.”

  Sure enough, the light from Barry’s torchless caught a glint of metal shelving a moment later, and Petrick was able to rise from his hands and knees to a squatting position and move aside to let Suzy and Barry shimmy their way through.

  “This place is done for,” Suzy said with a tinge of sadness as Barry played his light over the last remains of the back of the shed.

  The roof had caved in, crushing most of the shelves. Their electrical and mechanical bounty was piled on the floor. There was nowhere left to stand.

  “Where is Clarke?” Petrick asked.

  The digging sound had stopped.

  Barry moved his light to the back stone wall the shed had been built against. “Would you look at that,” he cried.

  Clarke had been pawing furiously at what used to be the small opening in the exterior wall that surrounded all of Childer’s. The final collapse of the shed had knocked several more of the bricks out. It was now a gaping hole, perhaps large enough to slip through.

  As they spotted him, Clarke jerked his head up, and his muzzle and paws were covered in dirt, the hair on his head wildly askew. But again, it was his eyes that were most distinct . . . they seemed to glow for a moment in the darkness.

  Clarke barked at Petrick, and then he was off through the hole in the wall before any of the three of them could even lunge forward to try to catch him.