“Little star? Starling? Are you there?”
Alma was in the woods behind her house. She’d been so tired from the night before that she’d drifted off to sleep while waiting for time to pass. When she’d jerked awake to a room lit by moonbeams, her clock had read 12:03.
Now she was running through the brush, the quintescope case banging against her leg, and calling as loud as she dared, but there was no bell sound. There was no red-gold light.
There was no Starling.
Disappointed, Alma went to the very edge of the yard, behind the bushes and leafless trees, to wait for Hugo. The crater was there, and she climbed to the bottom and sat cross-legged, clutching the quintescope case in both hands. She waited for what felt like a long time. She waited until she was sure that Hugo was not going to come, sure that he thought she was stupid or crazy or both.
Then she heard a whisper.
“Alma?”
Alma jumped up and scrambled out of the crater. She pushed through the bushes—and there was Hugo, robot-glasses flashing in the just-less-than-full moonlight, wispy hair tips blowing wildly in the wind, yellow gloves on his hands.
“You came,” Alma said. “I didn’t think you’d come.”
“I wasn’t sure if I would be able to,” Hugo replied. “But my mother had an unexpected night shift and my stepfather always retires very early, as do my younger siblings. Also, your house is in very close proximity to my own. I’m on the south edge of Second Point.” He pushed his visor-glasses up on his nose. “And there are … additional factors as well.”
“I have something to show you,” Alma said. “Something you’re not going to believe.”
Sitting there in the crater, Alma had been thinking about the best way to tell Hugo about the Starling, since she couldn’t show her to him. She couldn’t just say it; Hugo would probably back away slowly, gloved hands held up.
The crater, she had decided, would impress him.
She was right. When Hugo saw the smooth, red-earthed pit, his squinty eyes popped open behind his visor-glasses and he murmured, “Zonks. I can certainly see why you would assume that this is a meteorite-impact crater.”
“Isn’t it?” Alma asked. “I mean, don’t you think it is? That’s what it looks like to me.”
Hugo crouched down. He craned his neck until he was almost upside down, first one way, then the other way. “I can’t be certain,” he said after a few minutes. “It’s extremely small. The smallest crater I’m aware of was approximately three hundred feet across. This is not even thirty feet across.” He scooped up some of the dirt from the edge of the pit, held it up to his visored eyes, then let it fall back to the ground. “Although there does appear to have been a fire here. Perhaps if there was—was there anything else? A larger piece of rock, perhaps?”
“There was the Starling,” Alma blurted, forgetting her plan.
She glanced quickly at Hugo, and she could tell by the way he wasn’t looking at her that she should have stuck to the crater.
But now that she’d started talking, Alma didn’t think she could stop. All day she’d worried about the Starling. All day she’d tried to figure out what she should do. Then she hadn’t been able to go to the Fifth Point, and the Starling wasn’t here.
She needed help. She needed Hugo’s help.
She had to tell him the truth.
“I told you a star fell from the sky and into my backyard,” she said. “But the star wasn’t just a star—not just a ball of gas—it was a person. A girl, I think. A—a Starling maybe. And this was where she landed two night ago, and then last night—last night I saw her and she started to run. I chased her through the woods, but then she disappeared. I was hoping she’d be here again tonight. I think—I think she needs me. And I thought if anyone would know what to do, it would be you because you know all about stars and nuclear stuff and elements. And I know you probably think I’m crazy, but it really happened, and I really, really, really need to figure out what to do next.”
Alma said these words very fast. She only breathed twice. And when she was done, Hugo was still studying the crater—and not her—very intently.
Alma waited, but he didn’t say anything.
“Hugo?” she finally said.
“You’ve provided me with a lot of information,” Hugo said, “and I think it would be wise for us to sit down somewhere out of the wind for a few moments. It feels as if a storm is approaching.”
“You’re not going to leave?” Alma asked, relieved.
“Not yet,” Hugo said.
“You don’t think I’m crazy?”
“No,” he said. “Not crazy.” He reached into the pocket of his coat. “I have this.”
He took out a book, and he opened it to a page near the middle, a page taken up by an illustration.
An illustration of the Starling.