Starstuff (Starstuff Trilogy Book 1)

by Ira Heinichen

  They lasted less than fifteen minutes.

  Someone at the Authority headquarters thousands of light-years away had marked Alpha-17 down as having been decommissioned on authorization from the vice purveyor with no loss of property or person worth recording.

  12

  THE VREEN BARED a mouthful of slobbery, arm-length teeth and lunged at Petrick, who was still the furthest forward. Petrick rolled onto his side. The beast reared up on its back legs in response and spread its winged forelegs out fully, partially blocking out the moons. It cast a nightmarish shadow across Suzy and Barry, whose faces had gone completely white. The vreen stretched its massive jaws wide and let out another bellowing screech into the night.

  Petrick looked desperately for a route of escape, a weapon—anything. He finally spotted something that he had to check twice to believe what it was. He glanced back at his friends just in time to see Suzy wave to get the fearsome creature’s attention. Her fists were balled to hide their trembling, and she was puffing out her chest as far as it would go.

  “Wait!” he called out.

  She froze instinctively.

  “Don’t move!” he called to her.

  The vreen stood there, wings out wide, and growled. It clicked its teeth together and drooled, unsure. Petrick pushed himself up off the ground and brought himself to a full standing position directly between his friends and the beast. He took a step forward.

  “What are you doing?!” Suzy whisper-screamed.

  The vreen bellowed again and set its feet into the dirt, looking ready to lunge.

  Petrick cringed, a reflex. “Just trust me,” he said.

  With that, the vreen lunged its enormous body forward directly at the three of them, and Barry screamed a loud, long scream. The kind of scream you would scream when the end was imminent and you wanted every living thing in a hundred-mile radius to know that your untimely death was happening at that very moment, and it was not okay.

  After an indeterminable period of time, Barry realized first that he’d instinctively shut his eyes in the face of his impending doom. He realized second that he was still yelling . . . which meant that he was very much alive. So he stopped and opened his eyes. Beside him, Suzy was pale and trembling from a response very similar to Barry’s in the face of death. Her palms hurt, she’d been squeezing her fists so hard.

  In front of them, Petrick was grinning. The vreen was gone.

  “Wha—?” bumbled Barry as he scrambled back up to his feet. “What happened?”

  “Where did it go?” Suzy asked, equally breathless. “Did you scare it off?”

  “No more than you did,” he said, still grinning. He walked forward a few paces and kicked at a lump down in the grass.

  Suddenly the vreen popped back into existence from thin air, snarling and massive. Barry and Suzy instinctively jumped back, but a microsecond later they noticed something was off. How could the beast have just suddenly appeared like that? That wasn’t possible. Petrick turned and walked back toward his frightened, curious friends . . . and passed right through the beast as if it weren’t even there. Barry made a noise of astonishment and Suzy’s mouth dropped open.

  “How—? Wha—?” Barry stammered.

  “It’s . . . not really here, is it?” asked Suzy, taking a tentative step forward.

  Petrick shook his head with that big grin on his face, and he passed his hand through the mirage, showing them the line of light that appeared on his hand as he did so. He then pointed back toward the mound in the grass that he’d kicked moments earlier.

  “It was luck, actually,” he confessed. “When I rolled, it gave me just the right angle to see that it was a light projection coming from back there. My dad has shown me things like this before, in my dreams. I never thought I’d see a real one, though.”

  “But, why is it out here?” Barry asked.

  “I think it’s like an alarm or security system,” Petrick offered with a look around. “To scare away any animals or people, maybe?”

  “Scare them away from what?” Suzy asked.

  “That,” Petrick answered, and the other two followed to where he was pointing.

  A few more paces beyond the hidden projector was a small set of stairs, grown over and concealed in the tall grass, that sank down into the ground. The three children shuffled curiously toward the inviting stairs, and they found a panting Clarke sitting patiently at the bottom of them. He barked happily in greeting to them as if calling them down. They obliged, and at the bottom of the staircase, they found a surprisingly large metal door set inside a wall of dirt. It was shut.

  Petrick bent down and scooped Clarke up into his arms.

  “Gotcha, you little devil,” he said, and Clarke licked his face, acting like his old self.

  “You think he was leading us here?” Barry asked in a whisper.

  “He must have been,” Suzy whispered. She was sizing up the ominous metal door.

  “Why are we whispering?” Petrick asked of the other two.

  Barry answered for both of them by offering a shrug. “You gonna open the . . . door? It is a door, right?” he asked.

  Petrick nodded. “It’s all metal. But yeah . . . it’s a door all right. And doors are meant for opening.”

  “Or for shutting, to keep nosy people out,” Barry muttered.

  Petrick stood squarely in front of it with Clarke in hand and pushed on its flat metal surface. It wouldn’t budge. He frowned and pushed harder. It still wouldn’t budge.

  “Maybe you need to knock,” offered Suzy.

  Petrick raised his free hand and then paused for a second.

  “You think it’s a good idea?” he asked. “I mean, what if—”

  “Just do it,” Suzy cut him off. “We were led all the way out here; someone must be expecting us.”

  “Whoever someone is,” Barry grumbled. “Could be a pack of hungry coyotes in there for all we know, and Clarke was feeling like a family reunion.”

  Petrick had other family reunions on his mind and felt suddenly that if he were to pause any longer, he might never muster up the courage to do it. So he just shut his eyes and stabbed his clenched fist forward to rap the door three times.

  It felt cold, damp, and unnatural. Completely unlike any other door on Indacar. This door was fabricated from materials refined so far beyond their natural state, they were entirely different to the touch. The sound of his small fist knocking upon this artificial surface was dull and hollow. It was impossible to tell anything about what might lie beyond the door.

  The three waited for a moment after the knocks, and nothing happened. Clarke began to get impatient in his master’s arms and started to wiggle. After a moment, it got to the point where it was too much for Petrick to handle, and he let the pup plop down onto his four furred feet.

  What happened next made Barry scream a little.

  Out from the bottom of the door flicked what looked like a lollipop with a gray cube on its end. The square end of the device glowed a dull orange after a moment, and Clarke trotted right up to it. Before Petrick could stop him, he touched his nose to the glowing end and froze completely statue-still.

  “Oh no!” cried Suzy, but Petrick stopped her from moving forward.

  “Wait,” he said, “I think he’s okay . . .” He couldn’t explain how but he knew his furry friend was fine.

  Sure enough, after the briefest of moments, Clarke relaxed, and the gray lollipop snapped back into the recesses of the door again. As soon as it did, there was a dull thunk! The metal door released inward ever so slightly. The trio looked at each other for the consensus that indeed, yes, they were in fact going through this mystery door. Each of the three children inhaled a deep breath.

  Petrick stuck out his hand and pushed on the door. It only opened another tiny crack. The door was heavy.

  “Help me, guys,” he said as he tried to push again.

  They dutifully joined in, the door groaned wider, and the three disappeared inside.

  1
3

  THE TRIO STARED down a dark hallway. It was unlit save for one source of light at the very end, where there appeared to be an entryway that led off to the right. The large metal door shut behind them with an ominous clang. Barry whimpered.

  “Come on,” whispered Petrick, and he started forward.

  The other two trotted after him. Barry grabbed for Suzy’s hand in the dark. She slapped him away at first, but after his second attempt, she grabbed him and squeezed reassuringly. Sometimes that’s what you do for a friend. Clarke, meanwhile, trotted merrily next to Petrick without a care in the world. He certainly seemed at home.

  As they approached the light at the end of the hallway, Petrick pointed excitedly. “Guys, look!” he said. “That’s an electrical light up there! It’s not a lantern!”

  Suzy and Barry looked, and indeed, Petrick was right. There was no open flame to behold in this light. It glowed without combustion, and Petrick pointed his finger along the wall near the light, where they could see wires fastened and leading away.

  “It’s like my torchless,” Barry said. He patted his pack, where he knew it was nestled safely.

  “What is this place?” Petrick wondered aloud.

  They reached the end of the hallway and turned right through the opening into a vast, dark room. Immediately visible in the center of the space there was a rather large open circular area, a dais, with a single pinpoint of bright moonlight shining down in the middle. As their eyes adjusted to the darkness, the children began to make out shrouded shapes all around the dais. They were too numerous to count.

  Drawn instinctively, they crept slowly toward the dais. Clarke continued to trot along happily, sniffing things here and there, perfectly comfortable in their new surroundings. Petrick’s heart was pounding, as were Barry’s and Suzy’s. There was, as yet, no hint of any electrical power on display in this large room.

  That is, until Petrick took his first step into the open center. There was a loud, deep rumble, and everyone froze in their tracks. A brilliant blue light flashed above them and blinded them. A tight horizontal line of light found the top of Petrick’s head and then slowly scanned down the length of his body.

  “Petrick?” said Suzy, worried, as the light traced down her body as well.

  “Just stay still,” he instructed. “I think . . . I think it’s trying to figure out who we are.”

  The blue beam of light reached the tips of Petrick’s slippers, and just as abruptly as it had turned on, it was suddenly gone.

  “Well . . .” Suzy was going to say the requisite “Now what?” but the entire room sprang into life before she could finish.

  Bright lights directly above them clicked on, again dazing the three of them. They could hear loud fans starting to blow, and warm air wafted down from the ceiling, stirring up thick layers of dust. More lights flickered on behind, to the left of, and to the right of the dais.

  As their vision normalized in the new light, they began to take in the enormity of the massive room. It went on for hundreds of feet in every direction except the one they’d entered from. Under the various odd-shaped shrouds around them, things started humming to life with beeps, lights, clicks, and chirps. Petrick could see workbenches with tools, shelves with unfamiliar gadgets and books, and paper sketches littering every horizontal surface in sight. It was all completely overwhelming, and all utterly magical.

  “Whaaaaaat . . . ?” asked Barry breathlessly.

  “It’s like the treasure shed . . . ,” Suzy said.

  “. . . but way bigger,” Barry finished. He blinked and Suzy rubbed her eyes, trying to comprehend this sudden flood of the unfamiliar and strange assaulting their senses.

  Petrick felt an incredible warmth welling inside his chest as he took it all in. “I think it’s a workshop,” he said. “I believe it’s my father’s workshop.” The other two stopped their own gaping to give Petrick a look that said, Are you crazy? “No, seriously,” he said, running over to one of the workbenches. “Look! This is the same kind of saucer that we built together from the junk shed for Choosing Day.”

  He held up an admittedly similar-looking saucer. Its resemblance was uncanny, in fact. “My dad taught me how to make this. And look! These are the automatic shears that we made two summers ago that almost cut off Mistress Fris’s fingers!”

  He grabbed a dangerous-looking pair of oversized scissors that began chomping on their own with the click of a button. In hindsight, that particular adventure had been destined to fail miserably from the get-go.

  “I don’t think we should be here,” said Barry. He was looking away from the center of the room, wide-eyed.

  “Barry might be right,” said Suzy. “We’re not supposed to be around all this . . . this—”

  “Technology?” Petrick said, wholly undeterred. “Come on, you said it yourself, it’s just like the treasure shed, except—” He flung off a dusty canvas covering with a flourish. His hands trembled at what was underneath. “Except this is real. Guys . . .” He turned back to face his uneasy friends. “This is my father’s workshop! This is his blackboard. The one I see every night when I dream of him!”

  Suzy stepped forward tentatively and scrutinized it. “It looks so . . . old,” she said.

  Petrick ran his finger along the chalk tray. “It’s real,” he said. His smile stretched from ear to ear. “I always knew it was.”

  That was when they heard a voice.

  “I don’t know who you think you are . . . ,” it shrilled. It was coming toward them from behind several of the shrouded piles. “But put everything down immediately! This is a private facility. I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

  Suzy tugged at Petrick, trying to indicate that they should run and hide, but he waved her off and craned his neck to try to see who was walking toward them. For the briefest of moments, when he’d first heard the voice calling to them, his heart had skipped a beat, thinking it might actually be his father. But no, this voice was different entirely. It had an odd lilt to it, it was higher pitched, and there was something that Petrick couldn’t quite put his finger on. Was it . . . fear?

  Through cracks of visibility between the covered shelves and mounds of unknown machinery, Petrick could see a shuffling figure in slivers and flashes.

  “You’ll find nothing here of value,” the voice called again. “Please leave immediately.”

  “We should go!” Barry rasped. “Before he sees us!” Petrick held fast.

  Clarke barked at that statement and began to wag his tail. He barked again as a figure emerged from one of the long rows, still in shadow.

  “Now, who is that?” the figure said. It stepped forward with a distinct shuffle.

  The darkness receded from the figure as he—and it was a he—stepped into the light of the central dais. Clarke let out another excited bark and ran at full speed toward him.

  He was tall, and he was wearing an odd set of tailored clothing in a style unlike anything the children had ever seen worn on Indacar. But it was his skin and his eyes that were by far the most striking. His skin was a lustrous, sparkling blue-white, and his eyes were a bright turquoise. They seemed to shine with a soft glow. Petrick didn’t understand how he hadn’t seen them piercing through the darkness.

  The odd man, if he was a man, stooped as Clarke rushed up to meet him and caressed his face as the small fluff ball licked his nose and cheeks furiously in happy greeting.

  “Clarke!” said the man. “What in the stars are you doing here?”

  “You know my dog?” said Petrick, getting the man’s attention.

  “Your dog?”

  The man rose and regarded Petrick with renewed scrutiny. Barry and Suzy warily closed ranks behind him. The man took a step toward them, and they instinctively each took the same step backward.

  “Your dog,” the man repeated. “And you haven’t stolen him?”

  “He’s had Clarke his whole life, mister,” Suzy said.

  “Then, you must be . . .” The man shook
his head as if he didn’t trust his own reasoning. “Petrick?”

  He knew his name. He knew Petrick’s name.

  “Who are you?!” Suzy demanded, filling the void for Petrick’s racing mind.

  “My name is Habersham Cornelius Franklin Windsor the Third,” he said in his strange, clipped accent as he puffed his chest out proudly. He then leveled his eyes back on Petrick. “But you may call me Haber, and I will call you ‘young master.’”

  “You know my father,” Petrick blurted out.

  “Of course I do,” Haber responded. “Your father made me.”

  “What is this place?” Suzy demanded.

  “I don’t answer to strangers, young lady,” Haber responded dourly.

  “Her name is Suzy, Mr. Habershawww . . . Corgnell . . . ,” said Petrick, struggling with the new man’s name.

  “Haber, young master, just call me Haber.”

  Petrick nodded. “She’s one of my best friends in the world,” he said.

  Haber walked toward the trio, and as he got closer, they realized how tall he actually was. Haber was taller than anyone they’d ever met on Indacar, perhaps seven and a half feet tall. Suzy tensed as he moved toward her, but he merely stuck his hand out in greeting.

  “A friend of the young master’s is a friend of mine,” he said, though his eyes were narrowed skeptically.

  Suzy shook his hand but then withdrew it in surprise.

  “Your hand is so cold,” she said.

  “It will warm as my circuits heat up,” he replied, nodding. “Recovery from hibernation is not instantaneous, after all.”

  Petrick stepped forward and took Haber’s large, shimmering hand in his own and looked at it with wide eyes. “You’re a robot,” he said.