“Very well,” Veebra shrugs. “I will have her incinerator pod loaded presently.” Veebra shrugs, then turns to Mom and Mr. Patel. “Come with me, please. We must leave these five to their business.”
They go quietly, stepping back into the float-tube and disappearing.
Tori takes my hand and squeezes it. With her free hand, she grabs the collar of my shirt and tugs it down slightly, pulling me into a kiss.
“What next?” Mixy asks Lydia, ignoring us.
“We’ll follow the Synthesizers’ escape vector. We’ll need to pick up Dex and Finale’s trail along the way, somehow. We’ll deal with it as it comes.”
She goes to stand directly in front of the submarine, looking it over.
“What are you going to name it?” I ask her.
“How does the Royal Albert sound?”
Tori leaves my side and stoops down beside Lydia, draping her arm over her shoulder. “It’s perfect,” she says. “Dorian would have loved it.”
* * * * *
I’m lying in a new bed, in a new room, in a new ship. The Royal Albert is quiet, tracing a course in Overdrive away from Earth. I haven’t been able to sleep. Between all the near-death experiences, the painful farewells, and the daunting task of hunting down my best friend and his Aniente captor, I’m a little amped up. Physically, I’m exhausted to the point I can’t see straight. But try as I might, I just… can’t… fall… asleep.
I call my Gibson up to my room and take it off its hook, climbing back into bed and resting with it in my hands.
What’s keeping me up?
I strum through a few chords, trying to figure out what it is.
There’s a puzzle. Something I’m missing.
What would Dex tell me?
Just stop and think.
I picture the star-map in my head again, remembering how the twin stars revolved around one another. I listen to my guitar strings, feeling the vibration carrying through my chest. What did Dorian say, that first night? The universe is in a constant state of motion. That, but something else. Something about the Prima Maestri. Tens of thousands of years ago…
I’m out of my bed, onto my feet, and running down the Royal Albert’s hall, my mind racing. I pound my fists on doors as I go. “Everybody up!” I scream, my heart pounding. “Everybody get up now! Down to the deck!”
By the time I hit the float-tube, Mixy, Lydia, Tori, and Baahir are bailing out of their rooms into the hallway, looking ready for a fight. I flash a smile and dive down the float-tube, hearing them clamoring after me.
“Call up Dex’s star-map!” I yell excitedly.
Lydia has to stand on a nearby chair to reach the main display, but she brings my map up after a moment of searching. “I was in my night-bath, Caleb,” she growls. “This had better be good.”
“I think I know why the map is wrong,” I huff, hardly able to catch my breath.
“Take a second,” Tori urges, putting her hand on my shoulder. She smiles at me.
“Dorian said everything is in motion,” I explain. “Everything. It’s all moving, right? The stars aren’t just sitting in space. They’re going somewhere.”
Mixy starts thumping his fists into the ground. “Of course, of course!” he exclaims. “Simple, simple, simple!”
“Mind cluing us in?” Lydia asks.
“The Prima Maestri disappeared a long time ago, right?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
“Well let’s assume they left behind accurate maps, and weren’t just playing a long-game prank on the rest of us. What would happen to constellations over a hundred years? A thousand years? Tens of thousands of years?”
“The constellations would all change,” Tori concludes. “Stars would continue moving.”
“How accurate are the Composers’ maps, Mixy?” I ask.
Mixy is already at his tactile display, fingers flashing over the keys. “Our navigation systems include planetary orbits and stellar vectors, of course. Coordinates change, as time passes.”
“So if you know the direction a given star is moving, you could just—”
“Reverse the process?” he interrupts. “Already calculating. There are several thousand twin-star pairings. To run a simulation aging each pairing and the surrounding stars backwards will consume significant processing power. The Royal Albert should be able to handle it.”
With one final click on his keyboard, the deck lights dim to black. The only source of light is the single display lit up with Dex’s star-map on one side, and a flurry of images flashing by on the other side. Different star-pairings with their neighboring star constellations flick by faster than I can keep up with. The Royal Albert thrums beneath our feet, dumping all of its power into the ship computer’s processor.
The seconds creep by.
Seconds turning into minutes.
Tori loops her arms around my back and pulls me close against her. It’s only then that I realize how badly I’m shaking, how dry my eyes are from not blinking, how tense my muscles are.
I close my eyes and wait, feeling Tori’s heartbeat against my side.
She draws a sharp breath.
I crack one eye open to find the rendering of Dex’s star-map set beside a second map, this one displaying two bright twin stars and the same constellation that’s been burned into my head since I said goodbye to Dex.
“We have a match,” Mixy sighs, almost in disbelief. “Predictive backdating puts this system at thirty-two thousand years ago. Song of all songs, Caleb, how did you think of this?”
“I tried to think like Dex,” I admit, smiling.
“So we know where we must go,” Baahir observes, walking closer to the display and studying the star-map. “But we still don’t know what we will find. We need to be ready for anything.”
“Don’t worry,” Tori assures him. “We are.”
Acknowledgement
I hope you enjoyed reading this book as much as I did writing it. Six Strings to Save the World was the subject of my frequent daydreaming. I thank my wife for the encouragement to see it from daydream to first draft. And I thank my daughter for reminding me that music and stories alike are a frequent and dependable source of joy.
Caleb, Tori, and Dex will return in:
Six Strings to Save the Galaxy
Interested in the sequel? Sign up for my newsletter for updates, sneak peaks, and special offers at:
www.MichaelMcSherry.com
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Six Strings to Save the World Page 29