Starstuff (Starstuff Trilogy Book 1)

by Ira Heinichen

  “What was that?”

  “A saying. The opening line of the Star Farer’s Creed.”

  “Star Farer’s?”

  “Yes. Those same ones who way back when used rockets kind of like yours to lift off their planets and explore up there.” He pointed at a strip of the night sky that glowed a bit brighter than the rest. “See that there, where the stars are closer together?”

  Petrick nodded.

  “That’s the galactic cluster. That’s where the Star Farers came from, originally. Where we all did if you go back far enough.”

  “How far away is it?”

  “A few tens of thousands of light-years.”

  “Tens of thousands?”

  “Sure. But that’s why—”

  “That’s why they used starstuff.” Petrick knew where his father was going with the topic. “Is that why they say ‘blessed be the ’stuff? ‘’Stuff’ means starstuff?”

  “That’s exactly right. It’s incredibly important to them. Holy, almost. There would be no Star Farers without starstuff. Or Indacar, for that matter. There would be no strange worlds. No ‘Dark Sky’ to sail.”

  “Because starstuff makes it possible to go faster than light.”

  Fenton nodded. “With a starstuff drive, you can make the galactic cluster in a couple of weeks.”

  “That’s still a long time.”

  “Better than fifty thousand years, though, huh?”

  Petrick sighed. He lay down next to his father. “And that’s why you left. To find more of the starstuff.”

  Fenton nodded. “That’s right.”

  “Where does it come from?”

  “Well, starstuff is actually inside you right now.” Petrick looked at him to see if his father was putting him on. Fenton just smiled and nodded. “It’s true! Every atom in your body, Petrick, came from the same single source: a dying star.”

  “You mean like the elements in my body, from the core when a star goes nova or supernova.”

  “I do. Where all of the heavier elements are formed. And starstuff particles are in that mix, too, in very, very small amounts. They get ejected when the star collapses and spread out across space. That’s why they call it starstuff.”

  “So, then, why did you need to leave to find more?”

  Fenton closed his eyes.

  “Certain bits of matter have much higher concentrations of starstuff, and we know hardly anything about those special bits of matter or where they come from.”

  “And you’re up there trying to find that?” Petrick pointed at the stars.

  “That’s right. I’m looking for the Source.”

  Petrick closed his eyes and imagined himself stepping foot onto a new world nothing like Indacar. Maybe it had five moons, maybe it was all pink, and maybe the grass moved and wiggled when you lay down in it.

  “What’s it like up there, Dad?”

  “It’s everything you can dream. Stars a hundred times bigger than ours in colors like blue and red, purple nebulas, diamonds the size of Clarke, a wall of asteroids that stretches out and towers above you as far as you can see . . .”

  “And pirates?”

  “Sure. And ships the size of the dining hall at Childer’s. A hundred times the size of the dining hall, the Gathering Hall, and your dormitory combined! It’s the greatest adventure you’ll ever go on, and it lasts forever up there. It just keeps on going.”

  “I want to go.”

  “You will. Someday soon.”

  “When you come home?”

  “When I come home.”

  Petrick inhaled deeply and let it out slow, calming the rush of images filling his mind. He listened to his father’s breathing next to him, steady and comforting.

  “I miss you, Dad,” he said.

  “. . . I miss you too, son.”

  Petrick felt the sting of loneliness, of cold, but he let it be blown away by another whisper of the summer breeze. The two lay there, soaking in the quiet.

  An insistent bark from Clarke jerked Petrick upright.

  “Did you hear that?” he asked. Fenton didn’t rouse.

  Three more barks sounded in rapid succession, and Petrick looked around the meadow, searching for any movement that would give away the dog’s location.

  Bark! Bark!

  “Clarke’s barking, Dad. Wake up.”

  Fenton didn’t move.

  Bark! Bark bark bark!

  “Dad, wake up.”

  Clarke’s barking was now frantic, and Petrick got to his feet, whirling himself around to find him. Something wasn’t right. Fenton remained silent and still. The meadow was darkening unnaturally so that even the stars were beginning to fade.

  “Dad!” Petrick grabbed his arm and shook it.

  It dawned on Petrick that he felt as if he were floating to the bottom of some great sea.

  Bark bark bark bark bark!

  WAKE UP!

  3

  PETRICK’S EYES SNAPPED OPEN.

  Morning light overwhelmed all but the edges of his vision, and for a moment he couldn’t tell if he was still asleep and dreaming or if this was real. Clarke’s insistent barking continued, and that was very real, he decided. The dream was over.

  “Clarke,” Petrick grumbled at the wee dog, groggy and rather annoyed. “It’s too early.”

  Petrick looked around the room in which he found himself. It was chaos. Clothes littered the floor, mixed among piles of junk, half-finished projects, and crumpled papers. Several drawings and diagrams were pinned to the rafters of the steeply pitched ceiling, which rose to a peak in the center of the room. Petrick’s handmade wooden bed lay on one side. A wooden desk piled high with gadgets and papers sat next to it. Above the desk, letting in the morning sun, was a small round window like one might expect to see in an attic . . . which is indeed what the room was: an attic atop one of the half-dozen dormitories at Childer’s Home for the Parentless.

  It was Petrick’s attic room, and he loved it.

  Next to his bed, barking furiously and nearly doing cartwheels from excitement, was Petrick’s small, fluffy, brown and white alarm clock. Standing on his hind legs, he was just able to reach the bed. His eyes were large—almost comically large for his small face—and insistent. His ears were back, and his tiny black nose pointed to the ceiling.

  Upon seeing that his master wasn’t moving from the bed, he ratcheted up his barking another notch, which Petrick frowned at. Clarke must have been getting at something. Petrick looked at a metal spike he’d driven carefully into the attic floorboards. The sunlight cast a shadow onto a series of etched marks in a semicircle around the spike. Petrick counted the marks on either side of the shadow as quickly as he could.

  A digital clock like one his father had taught him to make once in a dream certainly would have been easier to read. It had glowed with orange numbers for time and letters for dates. . . but to have such a device was not the Indacaran way here in the waking world. It was ‘technology,’ evil and impure.

  Eight and nine, almost halfway in between, he counted.

  Eight twenty.

  Petrick’s frown deepened. Eight twenty . . . something is happening . . . ?

  “I’m late!”

  Petrick kicked off his twisted blankets and catapulted his lanky frame out of bed in one motion. Clarke finally wagged his tail in approval but continued barking.

  “Crunch! Oh, crunch, I’m late.”

  Petrick ran back and forth for a couple of seconds in a blind panic before reason kicked in and he finally spotted a shirt on top of a pile of clothes. He grabbed it and started to wrangle it over his head and shoulders before halting the motion. He sniffed and, upon reconsideration, took it off. No way that one was clean.

  He found a shirt with a passable odor. He grabbed some pants that were too short at the ankles—but all his pants were too short at the ankles these days—and was putting on his shoes when there was a pounding on his floor. On his attic stairs door, to be more precise, the kind that unfolds dow
n to the story below.

  “Petrick?” a muffled female voice called out from that direction. “You’d better be dead if you’re still up there.”

  “Um . . . ,” responded a distracted Petrick as he struggled with a second shoe. “I’m coming, Suzy!”

  Clarke finally stopped his barking and trotted over to the attic door, following Suzy’s voice. He made a small noise, pawed at the door, and looked back at Petrick.

  “So, you are alive,” shouted Suzy from below. “Good. That means I can be the one to kill you because you’re late.”

  “I know,” Petrick yelled back down. “Stop talking to me. I’m trying—to—get—dressed!”

  Petrick finished his wrestling match with the last shoe and sprang up. In a flash, he unlatched the attic door and it swung down, a ladder extending until it clanked down on the floor below. It nearly knocked into the impatient eleven-year-old Suzy, who stood at its base. Where Petrick was all long bones and bumbles, Suzy was compact and steady. Her diminutive frame and resting scowl dared anyone stupid enough to underestimate her.

  Petrick scrambled down the steps, trying to flatten his thick, bed-tossed hair, and prayed to Indacar that it would behave itself. Suzy crossed her arms as Petrick got to her, ignoring Clarke, who reached her and pawed at her furiously up on his hind legs for a hello head rub.

  “Forgetting something?” she asked.

  Petrick furrowed his brow, breathless. “What do you—? . . . Oh, crunch.”

  He spun around and ran quickly back up the stairs.

  Suzy and Clarke stood waiting as the footsteps on the ceiling above them tracked Petrick’s frantic movements, shuffling from place to place. There was a loud crash and a groan, followed by more footsteps. Clarke sat by Suzy’s feet and looked up at her, ears cocked slightly to one side quizzically.

  “I know,” Suzy said to him. “He’d go out naked if you didn’t remind him to wear clothes.”

  Clarke responded with a panting smile. He definitely agreed.

  “Not true!” Petrick called down. “The draft of air would tip me off.”

  Another crash and a small metallic ball emerged from the attic door and bounced down the descending stairs. Clarke, delighted, growled at the toy-sized sphere and gave it a paw or two.

  “Just a second!” Petrick said.

  Suzy shuffled her feet. “Come on!” she yelled.

  A moment later, Petrick descended, arms wrapped around a box that was bursting with some contraption. It was so full that it nearly entirely blocked his vision, and as he approached the bottom step, he almost missed it. He teetered for one perilous moment before Suzy raised a bracing hand, steadying her irresponsible compatriot.

  “Can you carry these?” Petrick asked from behind the pile. He held out a couple of the smaller parts of the mysterious whole, which was a myriad of springs, and wires, and nodules, and other various mechanical-looking bobs.

  Suzy’s eyes widened as she took in the whole of the contraption. “That’s a lot bigger than it was last night,” she said.

  “Yeah, I worked on it some more before I went to sleep.”

  “No kidding.” Suzy snatched the offering and set off down the hallway. “Let’s go.”

  “What about Barry?”

  “He’s waiting. Everyone’s already there!”

  4

  BARRY WAS A MESS.

  Sweat plastered his brown hair to his forehead, and he couldn’t stand still. He stopped his pacing when he saw Petrick and Suzy enter the backstage and rushed to grab some of the overflowing gadgetry threatening to crash onto the floor. Barry was round, and just barely taller than Suzy, but he could hustle when he needed to. His trusty canvas backpack, a fixture so consistent to him it could have been considered an appendage, bobbed up and down on his ample shoulders.

  “Of all the days to sleep in, you do it on Choosing Day,” he whispered, trying to keep quiet. The stage curtain was just ten feet away. Beyond it, in the Gathering Hall, was a crowd of adults. “We’re next!”

  Petrick set down his box with a clunk. That elicited a “Hush” from perfect Bethany Hills at the other end of the backstage area, who was practicing the dance routine she always did for this special day.

  Suzy rolled her eyes when Bethany went back to practicing. “Hasn’t worked for you yet, Bethany,” she said under her breath. “Not gonna start today.”

  “This thing is a lot bigger than last night,” Barry said, considering the contraption.

  “That’s what I said,” said Suzy.

  “You really think this is a good idea?”

  “Too late now.”

  “We’ll be fine, guys,” Petrick said. “As soon as they see that it works, we’re out of the woods. We just have to move fast with it.”

  “If you say so,” said Barry, beginning to grab items from the box and sort them with his stubby fingers.

  Petrick ran his eyes over the box of wires and gadgets. “Barry, I want you on the harness set up for Clarke,” he said. “In fact, Suzy, let’s—”

  “—get Clarke in his kennel.” She finished his sentence and showed him his dog, already safely in her clutches.

  Petrick nodded and peered back into the box and at the stuff Barry was unloading. “Wait.” He pointed to a cloth sack in Barry’s hand. “That comes with me.”

  “No,” said Barry, “this is the harness you just told me to grab.”

  Sure enough, it was. Petrick started looking through the rest of the box frantically. “Then . . . then where is my controller?” he said. “It was in a sack just like that.”

  “I’ve got it right here,” Barry said, slipping his pack off his shoulders. He opened the top rope drawstrings just enough to dart a hand inside the canvas pouch and pull out another cloth sack. Barry cinched his pack closed again and then, with practiced ease, threw it onto his back, sliding his arms through the two straps.

  Barry plopped the cloth sack into Petrick’s waiting hands. “Thought you might lose track of it since it’s so small,” Barry said. “So I grabbed it last night.”

  Bless you, Barry, Petrick thought.

  “We’re good?” Suzy asked.

  Petrick’s eyes swept over the sprawling mass. It was all there. He nodded.

  “Good,” she said. She then pointed over to the closed curtain that shrouded them from the Gathering Hall beyond it. “Who’s up?”

  Petrick tiptoed over to the side of the curtain where it met the wall, and he carefully pulled it back a slit to peer out to the stage.

  Three boys stood in front of a crowd of adult couples, who watched with varying degrees of interest as the children played them a lullaby on simple wooden flutes. It was a big crowd. Bigger, at least, than last season’s.

  One of the three boys hit a particularly sour note, and Petrick snorted involuntarily. The tallest of the trio stole a look over in his direction and locked eyes with Petrick. It was Litz. Petrick immediately shut the curtain. Of course, it was Litz. Petrick hoped he hadn’t been seen. You didn’t laugh at Litz, or his other two comrades, and get away with it.

  “Is Fris out there?” Suzy asked. Fris was Childer’s headmistress.

  Petrick had rejoined his friends and nodded.

  “Is she angry?” Barry asked.

  “I don’t think she knows we were late.” Petrick shrugged. He looked down at the contraption half assembled on the table and smiled. “They look asleep out there.”

  “Who wouldn’t, listening to Litz and his goons play their stupid flutes?” Suzy asked. “We’ll mop the floor with those grunts.”

  Petrick gestured to the machine. “Let’s wake them up.”

  The polite clapping from the audience was their cue.

  Barry and Suzy wheeled out the cart, now shrouded, and Petrick held a small box as they stepped out from behind the stage’s curtains.

  The hall was old, wooden, and plain, as were all the buildings in Childer’s. Hand-hewn hardwood beams curved to meet at the top of the ceiling, and three candle chandeliers
were spaced along the length of the center beam at the apex. Petrick traced the ropes that hung from down to where they tied to the side walls at hand height. The grandeur of it all was designed to be a monument to Indacar, and the land, sea, and sky that provided life’s necessities to its inhabitants.

  Chairs covered the floor, fifty or so of them, and that brought Petrick’s gaze back to the crowd of expectant adults. They were waiting for a child to so wow them that they would decide to bring him or her home. They were the Childless, and up on display for them were Petrick, Barry, and Suzy, the Parentless.

  Choosing Day was the most hallowed of days at Childer’s Home for the Parentless. It came with each changing of spring to summer, and Childless from every neighboring village and province would pour in to see if they could find a match. Many of them were homesteaders who lived out in the wilds, where life was more precarious. On Indacar, family was sacred no matter where you lived. Every Parentless child who was not chosen to go home with any of the Childless carried a mark of shame not only upon themselves, but on Childer’s, and the Indacaran people as a whole. Family was life, and family meant ‘parents’ with ‘children.’

  How many would be chosen today?

  Will I be chosen today? Petrick thought.

  Litz and company were finishing their bows ahead of the trio as they came out onto the stage. “So sweet!” Petrick heard someone say.

  Litz smiled and bowed again to the crowd, then turned around and shot Petrick a different kind of smile. As the two passed each other, Litz stuck an elbow into Petrick’s side that made him grunt and lose his grip on his small box for a split second. A small saucer-shaped device clattered onto the floor and Petrick’s heart leapt to his throat as he worried that the crowd could see.

  “Nature’s Fortune!” Litz cried out. “Let me assist you, brother.”

  The crowd murmured its approval of the gesture, and his use of the formal Indacaran language.

  Petrick gritted his teeth. If you fools only knew.

  Litz held out the small saucer, and Petrick snatched it away before the bully could do anything further or the crowd could catch sight of it. Litz let out a chuckle quiet enough for only Petrick to hear and then stalked offstage. Petrick turned the saucer over in his hands. He caught sight of Barry and Suzy a couple of paces away looking worried; Petrick reassured them with a slight shake of his head: the saucer wasn’t damaged. He set it on a small table in the center of the stage and looked up at the crowd.