Starlighter Read Free Page A

percussive note. It was a welcome sound, an annual passage of sorts. Harvest labors would soon end, and a season of shorter days, book reading, and more intense battle training would begin.
    As Jason watched, his father carried a double armload of wood toward the shed, limping heavily, as always. Why hadn’t he asked for help? With his eyes fixed straight ahead and his brow low, he seemed worried about something. Maybe he wanted to be alone.
    Extending his arms, Jason pulled the shutters to a partially closed position, leaving enough of a gap to provide light for the room. The wall to his right caught his attention, as it often did. Adrian’s mural of the planetary system decorated the once-white plaster. He had drawn the configuration from data gathered at the governor’s observatory, where a triad of sky scopes watched the dark heavens each night. Because of Adrian’s fascination with the legends surrounding the location of the mythical dragon world, knowing how the planets took their steps in the cosmic dance had become part of his obsession.
    In the center, Solarus hovered with orange flares streaming from its more reddish surface. Eighteen planets, some large and some small, orbited the central point, each one scattered from one side of the wall to the other and frozen in place at various distances from the red star.
    Jason touched the fourth large planet from Solarus, Major Four…home. Adrian had added stunning detail, including a relief map of Mesolantrum on the face that showed the Elbon River and the oceans that bordered their country on three sides.
    Moving his finger across the wall and past Solarus, Jason mumbled each planet’s name out loud until hereached a dark sphere directly opposite Major Four. He stopped and planted his finger on its center.
    “Dracon,” he said out loud as he leaned closer. Adrian had drawn no details on its surface, only a vague sketch of a dragon. It figured. No sky scope had ever located Dracon, so a sketch of a mythical beast seemed appropriate.
    As he shuffled back to the hole in the floor, he spotted a hair floating in the still-swirling air. He grabbed it and let it dangle in front of his eyes. Long and light brown, this was obviously Adrian’s. Perfect.
    He reached down and picked up the tube. About a foot long and as thick as his wrist, it was shorter and thinner than the old model, but the screen on the side was the same size as always, a square the length of his thumb.
    He slid open the small metal door next to the screen, the hatch for the genetic material. The moment he dropped the hair in, the screen would display acceptance, allowing him to look through the end of the tube to view the video message.
    As he suspended the hair over the hatch, he looked at a drawing propped on the desk, a portrait of himself and Adrian crossing swords. Guilt weighed down his heart. Strange or not, Adrian had done so much for him—teaching him everything about being a man, from battle training to treating a woman with honor and respect. When Father had tried to teach the same lessons, they had bounced off Jason’s mind, but Adrian’s words seemed so much easier to grasp.
    He looked down at the spot where the tube had lain. A scrap of parchment lay there, a piece of the Code. With the last known copies of the great book burned byPrescott’s men, only a few remnants survived, and this quarter of a page would stay hidden until a better man took the governor’s place.
    Although too small to read from this distance, the words on that ancient parchment reached into his mind and spoke with Adrian’s voice. If you wish others to treat you and your belongings with respect , then let respect for them flow in your thoughts , your speech , and your deeds.
    Jason dropped the hair on the floor and set the tube back in the hole. He couldn’t do it. No matter how bizarre Adrian’s recent behavior had become, there was no excuse to pry into his business.
    Rapid footsteps approached. Snatching in