Starbounders by Adam Jay Epstein Read Free Book Online Page A

curled into a ball. His skin suddenly hardened into a rock-solid exoskeleton.
    â€œZachary, Kaylee, follow my lead,” Ryic called out.
    â€œDo I look like an armadillo?” Zachary asked.
    Zachary made a running dive over the cookout table and slid up beside the ice-cream freezer. Kaylee followed behind him, taking cover nearby. Zachary could hear the still-charging vreek coming closer and he could feel his own heart beating faster. He took a breath and reminded himself that he was a Night and he was going to be okay.
    Zachary pulled the cooling hose out from the back of the white tub and pointed its nozzle at the vreek. He sent a blast of freezing air at the monstrous slug, immobilizing it instantly.
    More vreeks remained on the loose, and seeing their mutant siblings incapacitated only made them angrier. One was about to take out its rage on a group of Lightwing boys huddled together, when a hand encased in a warp glove emerged from a black hole in space and grabbed the creature by its tail. With a tug, the slug was pulled into the void, and Zachary watched as the vreek appeared thirty feet away in Derek’s grasp. He attempted to wrestle the thrashing beast to the ground, but the vreek managed to get its mouth around Derek’s other hand and bite down hard. Derek let out a scream, and with good reason. Zachary could see that three of his fingers had been swallowed up in the slug’s maw. But before the vreek could eat more, an older female trainee armed with one of the extinguishers sent a blast of cold at the creature, freezing it in place.
    The last of the vreeks were surrounded by a circle of trainees and resident advisors. Zachary couldn’t see what was happening from where he stood beside the ice-cream freezer, but he let out a deep breath when the shrieking sounds echoing through the air finally stopped. The creatures had been subdued.
    â€œWe only have a few minutes before they thaw,” Instructor Avendale said. “Let’s hurry and get them down to the cargo dock. We’ll load them into the subzero freezer. Whoever’s responsible for this is going to be taking a one-way trip to an asteroid prison.”
    Zachary could see that she was glaring at Professor Olari.
    â€œYou should try some,” Kaylee said.
    Zachary turned to see that she was holding a bowl of ice cream topped with chocolate sauce and whipped cream.
    â€œReally?” he asked. “During all of that, you decided to make a hot fudge sundae?”
    â€œWell, I wasn’t going to let perfectly good ice cream go to waste.”

«FOUR»
    I nstructor Taylor, Indigo 8’s galactic-safari guide, was standing at the front of the Ulam’s briefing room. Her audience: thirty Lightwing boys and girls. They were being given one final lesson before departing on their first adventure into the outerverse. Zachary could hardly sleep the night before, and it wasn’t because of all the excitement at the bonfire. He, like every other kid in his SQ, had huge hopes and expectations about this trip.
    Instructor Taylor was showing them how to insert a lensicon, a contact lens with instant image recognition, allowing its user to identify whatever she or he was looking at.
    â€œGently rest the lens on your fingertip before placing it in your eye,” she said with a slight Southern drawl.
    Instructor Taylor was joined by two others who’d accompany the Starbounders-in-training into space: Professor Olari, who would be identifying all the wondrous creatures that passed by outside the ship’s viewing pods; and Dr. Carlos Rodrijo, a renowned celestial physicist who would be explaining the principles of spaceflight and galactic folds.
    Zachary pried his lower eyelid open and slid his lensicon over his right eye. Immediately his vision became blurry and he thought maybe he had inserted it incorrectly. He was about to remove it when suddenly his vision cleared and a tiny set of crosshairs appeared in