Other star systems flew past as they zoomed outward and outward. A web of red lines crisscrossed massive dust and gas clouds as the projection rushed ever further. The very arms of their galaxy had begun to become visible when finally, mercifully, the scaling slowed to a stop. A large section of stars became highlighted, and again their tiny dot blinked at the end of their own red line in the area from which they had zoomed so far out. Haber pointed to the dot.
“This, now, is us here on Indacar,” he said, and then he gestured to the large expanse being highlighted. “This is the Outer Rim.”
Barry dropped the juice box that he had been holding. And then, of course, he immediately retrieved it.
“That’s insanity,” said Suzy with her mouth agape.
“I . . .”—Petrick looked for words—“. . . had no idea it was so . . . big!”
“Space?” Haber chided. “The universe is infinite, my dear little masters. This is but our tiny corner of it. And . . . your father is somewhere out in that corner, slightly more than one hundred thousand light-years in total area.”
“So . . . ,” said Barry slowly, “you’re saying that we can’t walk there?”
Suzy socked him in the shoulder for asking such a stupid question, and Barry was so entranced by the galaxy lying before him that he didn’t even protest. Petrick, however, became very interested in a small section of the map, and he walked forward and pointed to it.
“Haber,” he asked, “what is this?”
It was a point on the map in the middle of what appeared to be a giant debris field that stretched in a thin line down virtually the entire height of the projected section they were looking at. It must have been thousands of light-years long. And, near its center, almost every single one of those red ribbons streaming from the stars converged into one single point, passed through the debris field, and then fanned out again in a multitude of directions on the other side, in the Outer Rim.
“That,” responded Haber, “is the Wall.”
“The Wall . . . ,” Petrick repeated. He didn’t think he’d heard of it before, in any of his dreams or otherwise.
“A massive belt of planetary debris millions of years old,” Haber continued. “The debris is in constant motion and quite dense the further inside you go, which makes its center unbreachable for even the most experienced pilot in the most maneuverable craft.”
“Unbreachable, you say?”
“Yes. Except for the Central Gateway.”
“That’s what this is?” said Petrick, pointing at the spot where all the red lines came together and crossed through to the other side. “These are shipping lanes, aren’t they? And they all come to one point here at the Wall, then go through to the Outer Rim on the other side.”
“That is correct.” Haber nodded, again looking impressed. “The red lines are designated Authority lanes.”
“Authority?” Barry had his hand up in the air, like it was class.
“You don’t need to raise your hand,” Haber said. “And yes, the Authority on Interstellar Space Travel designates corridors through space that are safe to travel, and protects them accordingly.”
“Protects them from who?” Suzy was now asking the question.
“From whom,” Haber corrected. “And they protect their corridors and those who use them from dangerous natural phenomena, mechanical malfunction, pirates—”
“Did you say pirates?” Barry’s eyes were wide.
Haber nodded. “The Authority protects the rights of its members to unrestricted, safe interstellar travel. The largest component of that, however, is their control over the supply of starstuff.”
Petrick turned to Haber. “Haber, how did my father leave Indacar?”
“In . . . his ship,” Haber said, not sure where the boy was going with his train of thought.
“Did he leave from here, the lab?”
“Well, no, he departed from Aaron’s Landing, of course, at the terminal there.”
“Then that’s where we need to go.”
Haber shook his head. “I don’t understand, young master. I’ve just shown you how impossibly vast an area Master Fenton traveled to. We have no idea where he went.”
“Yes we do,” said Petrick excitedly. “He went here first, didn’t he?” Petrick ran up to the projected map and stuck his finger right at the point where all the travel lanes funneled into one single red line. “The gate! He would have had to pass through the Central Gateway. We can try to pick his trail up from there.”
Haber cocked his head to the side and considered for a moment what the boy was telling him.
“Wait!” exclaimed Suzy. “Just wait, wait, wait!” Everyone turned to look at her. “What’s the big deal? Your father, the famous scientist, left you here, Petrick. And now you’re just going to leave and go help him?”
“Well, I was thinking all of us,” Petrick said. “Haber, too.”
“But you’re both acting like it’s the end of the universe! Why? Stop acting like we just understand this stuff when we don’t. I don’t!”
“I don’t either, actually,” Barry admitted, raising his hand as if they were in class.
Their question hung there in the air. Petrick didn’t quite know what to say. But Haber did. He pushed controls on his handheld, and the projected map shifted to show a single shining, glittering speck of light.
“Have you ever seen this before?” Haber asked the trio.
Suzy and Barry stood still, but Petrick nodded.
“That’s starstuff,” Petrick answered.
“Can you tell your friends what it is?” Haber asked him.
“Petrick’s told us about starstuff,” Suzy said. “It makes it so technologies, like ships and stuff, can travel faster than light can. And that’s a big deal in space.”
Haber nodded. “Yes, it is.” The projection switched back to the wide view of the Outer Rim. “It’s what has allowed humans to spread out into the galaxy.” He pointed to Indacar on the projected map. “Do you know how long it would take to get from here to the Wall at just slower than light speed?” The children shook their heads. “Two million seasons. Longer than there have been vreen on this planet. With a starstuff drive, we can get there in a matter of days.”
He changed the map so that the stars at the end of each red ribbon were lit up in a multitude of yellow dots. There were thousands of them.
“This was the reach of man’s vast empire for a thousand years,” Haber narrated. “Fueled by starstuff.
“There was a time,” Haber continued, “when the supply of starstuff was believed to be inexhaustible . . . but that was a long time ago.” The projection shifted again, and the stars began to dim, their bright red connections to other stars fading as well. “I’m acting like it’s the end of the universe, child, because it is. Discovery of new starstuff mines slowed and slowed, from every few months to every few years”—the lights and ribbons continued to fade out—“until what is believed to be the last was found seventeen years ago.”
Small explosions could be seen among some of the fading stars. Barry pointed to them, enraptured. “Are they fighting?” he asked.
Haber nodded. “There have been many reactions to the disappearance of starstuff,” he said. “War is one, the rise of the Authority to control what’s left is another . . .”
“My father left to find the Source,” Petrick said. “To discover where it comes from so there would be enough starstuff for everyone.”
“Without starstuff, it would take a thousand years to reach Indacar’s nearest neighbor. Space travel becomes impossible, and all of this ceases to function.” Haber waved at the holographic empire of man. “Civilization, as it’s been known for millennia, dies.” Haber shut off the projection and looked at Suzy. “That, young master, is why.”
“We have to help him,” said Petrick.
“I’m inclined to agree,” Haber said, nodding. “I shall begin preparations to journey to Aaron’s Landing immediately, and you children should prepare
for yours back to Childer’s.”
“No,” Petrick said, “I’m coming with you.”
Haber stopped in his tracks. “Impossible,” he said. “You’re . . . why, you’re just a child. Surely you can’t expect to just leave your home.”
“We found you, didn’t we?” Petrick said. He stepped forward and tilted up his chin; his eyes were steady. “I have the message. It was sent to me. Plus, you told me you weren’t sure you were ever going to be able to decode it. How can you save my father without the message?”
Haber cocked his head, considering. It was an excellent point.
From behind Petrick, Suzy grabbed his attention. “If he’s going, then we’re going.”
Barry’s head popped up. “We are?”
“Of course we are.” Suzy looked at Petrick next, as if to say, Right?
Petrick smiled at her and nodded, then addressed Haber again. “Yeah. Because we stick together. Always.”
“What about Childer’s?” Barry asked.
“What about them?” Suzy asked.
“They’ll be looking for us.”
“They won’t miss two more orphans,” Petrick said. He then got a gleam in his eye. “We have to save the galaxy.”
“Isn’t that something an adult should do?” Barry pressed.
“What has an adult ever been able to do that we haven’t?” Suzy asked.
Barry sighed. She was right.
He was in too.
“Well, how about it, Haber?” Petrick asked. “Will you come with us?” Haber paused seemingly forever, then nodded. “Then it’s settled. We go. Together.”
All three of the children looked at Haber.
“So, how do we get to Aaron’s Landing?” Suzy asked. “Do we walk there?”
“No,” said Haber thoughtfully. “I have something better in mind.”
17
THEY BURST through the forest edge in a giant cloud of black smoke, and their coughing, wheezing, fume-belching “buggy,” as Haber had called it, rumbled up a slight embankment and onto a very overgrown dirt path.
“You say this is a combustion engine?” Petrick asked, shouting over the din of the motor that sat a few feet behind them.
“Correct, young master!” Haber shouted back. “It’s an ancient design but extremely reliable. You can go as far as your fuel takes you!”
“Well, it sure smells bad!” Barry called up from one of the two seats that were directly behind Haber’s and Petrick’s, waving a hand in front of his wrinkled nose.
“Hold on!” Haber called.
Now that they were on the dirt road, cluttered and overgrown as it was, it was still as relatively straight and flat as Haber had hoped. This meant that he could pick up speed, and he did, releasing the throttle on the open-air buggy. Its four large round black tires spun out for a second as the motor’s RPMs spiked, but they quickly took hold of the ground beneath them, and the buggy surged forward.
“I like it!” yelled Suzy.
Petrick looked out the side at the forest whipping past them and was grateful to have the harness strapped across his chest and lap. The trees and shrubs lining the road blurred into stripes of green. He looked down at his feet to see Clarke looking up at him with a panting smile from inside a crate they’d fastened securely to the floor.
Haber was right; this thing was fast. And fun.
He looked back at his two friends and grinned. Suzy shook her head in that way she did to hide a smile she didn’t want him to see. Barry seemed the most unimpressed, and he merely raised his eyebrows and nodded his head as he sucked on another juice box. He must have pilfered it from the lab they were quickly leaving behind. Petrick wondered for a moment when Barry had even found time to raid the food stash for them and stow them away; they’d left in quite a hurry. But that was Barry.
Haber had said these pathways through the landscape had at one time, over a decade before, been used by vehicles of various kinds. Some were terrestrial; some flew; all were employed by those who wished to travel around the planet. Indacar, he said, had never been densely populated, being the Fringe World that it was. But it had once been a thriving planet of people who’d wished to get away from the hustle and bustle of the inner systems and centers of commerce. Indacar had a gentle sun pouring light upon it, with large swaths of temperate zones that eased between mild winters and warm summers. It made sense to Petrick that the Indacarans, or “Separatists,” would have chosen Indacar; you could afford to live simply and without nature-conquering technologies on such a mellow and inoffensive home.
World, he corrected himself. A mild and inoffensive world.
Petrick looked up at Haber and studied his long, pale blue face. His eyes were fixed intently on the road ahead of them, and he turned the wheel this way and that to avoid the holes and shrubbery that littered their path. There was so much that Petrick wanted to ask him. He’d known his father. Worked with him. What was he like? Was he the same as was in the dreams? What would he look like now, eleven years later? Would he have changed as much as Petrick had in that time?
The children woke with a start as they were all thrown against their harnesses, and there was a sudden crack that rang in their ears. Everything pitched forward. For a brief, very scary moment, it seemed as if they were going to tip over completely before the buggy came back down to the ground hard on its two rear wheels.
“Is everyone intact?!” Haber called from the driver’s seat, looking hastily over his young charges. They were shaken but seemed otherwise to be in one piece.
“What happened?” Petrick asked, looking around.
They were now stopped, the buggy’s engine was off, and they could see the afternoon was falling into dusk in the dense forest around them. The foursome had been traveling almost all day, and it seemed that all of the children had fallen asleep for several hours.
Haber responded to Petrick’s question by unbuckling himself from his harness and hopping out of the open-air vehicle. Petrick followed suit, as did Suzy and Barry.
They all shadowed Haber to the passenger side of the buggy, where they saw the cause of the loud cracking sound that had jolted them awake: the front passenger-side wheel was horribly askew. Petrick peered closer at what Haber was inspecting and saw that the shaft going into the large black wheel was cracked down the middle. Twenty feet or so back lay the reason for the violent jerk forward: a sizable hole right in the midst of the dirt roadway.
Haber shook his head. “This roadway into Aaron’s Landing has fallen further into disrepair than I’d anticipated,” he said ruefully. “In the diminished light, I did not see the hole.”
“It’s big,” Barry exclaimed, more out of observation than any sort of reprimand of Haber’s driving.
“What do we do now?” Suzy asked.
“If I’ve accounted correctly for our speed and time on the road, we’ve covered quite a distance,” Haber answered. He scanned the forest around them. Petrick could tell they had; the trees here were taller, thicker. The air was crisper. “With any luck,” Haber said, “the city should not be much further.”
“Well, then,” said Petrick, striding over to free Clarke from his crate, “we walk.”
“Walk?” Barry moaned. “I thought we weren’t going to do that this time.”
“We can’t ride in a broken buggy,” Suzy pointed out.
“Haber can fix it!” Barry retorted. “He can fix anything, right?”
“While I appreciate the sentiment,” Haber said, pulling his head out from under the buggy after one last look at the bent axle, “I’m afraid I have nothing to fix this with.”
Barry’s shoulders slumped and he pulled another juice box out of his pocket. If he was going to walk, he was darn well going to enjoy something about it.
In short order, they’d each loaded up with their individual travel packs. Haber had provided them with food, water, and shelter supplies from the lab, along with clothes that he’d been able to whip up from some fabric stores in the laboratory�
�and shoes. Blessed, actual shoes that could stand walking, as opposed to the slippers they’d worn from Childer’s.
It was impressive what the android had been able to produce from the shrouded machines, shelves, and equipment in the lab. Enough to get them started on their journey, anyway. Barry had seemed delighted to have a new pack. These new ones were sturdy and had latches and zippers—much fancier than the drawstring knapsacks at Childer’s.
As they set off, the sun was touching the tops of the mountain range to the west. Petrick wondered if this first little bump in the road—pun intended—would, in fact, become a rather major one. The forest around them was dense and dark. It was definitely not inviting and definitely not somewhere that he would prefer to spend the night.
There had been no other vehicles on the road while he was awake, and Haber confirmed when he asked that there had been none while the three of them were napping. That meant there likely wouldn’t be any at night either, and they’d be stuck wherever they set up camp until the morning came. In the mountains, Petrick knew vreen, and other larger creatures, stirred and hunted.
Petrick didn’t doubt Haber’s preparedness for a night in the woods, per se . . . then again, the android’s brisk pace indicated to Petrick that he was as anxious to get to Aaron’s Landing as he was.
Any fears about their distance from the city proved unfounded only a few minutes later as the foursome (plus Clarke) trudged up and over a hill crest and down below them, the sprawling landscape of Aaron’s Landing fell into view. The relief that they’d each been expecting to feel at the sight of the port city, however, didn’t come.
Starstuff (Starstuff Trilogy Book 1) Page 10
