Starclimber Read Online Free PDF Page A

wealthy, and they’d never tolerate our romance. Romance: Only in my head did I dare use that word. Kate and I didn’t even dare utter it. We were both afraid, I think, that if we named it, others would try to stop it. We never talked of engagement or marriage.
    But in less than a year I’d be graduating from the Academy with my officer rating. My job would almost certainly take me away from Paris, and from Kate. And once she finished her own studies at the Sorbonne, she’d doubtless sail away from me. I worried very much what would happen then. I could no more be parted from Kate than from the sky.
    I hoped to one day wear a captain’s insignia on my collar, but if I didn’t have Kate, it would be small consolation. Secretly I’d decided that once I had my first position aboard a ship, I’d ask her to marry me—but part of me was terrified she’d say no. Or her parents would.
    I pressed my nose against the back of her neck and breathed in her scent.
    “We’ve got lots of Paris left,” I said. “And the summer’s hardly begun.”
    I heard her sigh. “I didn’t want to mention it tonight, but…my parents want me to go back home for the holidays.”
    “But what about our plan?” I said. “I took a job here so we could be together.”
    “I know. But my parents have been very insistent. You should’ve seen the letter. ‘Your father and I wish you to spend the summer among your family, and in the society that will be yours for life.’” Kate paused. “Sounds like a jail sentence, doesn’t it?”
    “Tell them you have to stay here!”
    “I did! Then I got a telegram from father that just said: ‘You sail June twenty-sixth.’”
    “That’s in less than a week!”
    Kate sighed. “They pay for everything, Matt. And they didn’t want me to come here in the first place. If I say no, they might call me home for good.”
    July and August, just hours ago, had seemed to stretch out with such promise. Now I felt all my happiness drift out through the open dome and evaporate in the night sky. Kate was going back to Lionsgate City. It sounded like her parents wanted her to start thinking about marrying. She’d attend society balls and galas and clink champagne glasses and dance with dashing men—and what if she met someone she liked better than me?
    I slumped back in my seat. “I hate this,” I said savagely.
    “Me too,” she said. “But what else could I do?”
    I shook my head, for there was no solution, which made it no easier to bear.
    Kate took my hand. “I love my star,” she said.
    “You can take it home with you,” I said feeling completely discouraged.
    “I’ll watch it every night.” She put her eye to the telescope. “Matt?” she said.
    “Yes?”
    “I think someone’s stealing my star.”
    “What?”
    She leaned back so I could get to the eyepiece. I quickly found the bright blue light near the end of the dragon’s tail—and blinked in amazement. Slowly but surely, the star was moving to the left.
    “Can’t be right,” I mumbled.
    “But you do see it moving,” Kate said.
    “I see it! Maybe an airship or something…”
    But it was too high to be an airship.
    Suddenly the light disappeared altogether.
    “It just went out!” I said.
    “What do you mean, went out?” Kate demanded. “You paid good money for that star!”
    “No, wait, there it is again!”
    The intense blue light was back, still moving slowly across the heavens, though on a slightly different trajectory.
    Kate’s cheek was against mine, her shoulder shoving me off so she could get to the eyepiece.
    “It’s stopped moving, but it’s flashing now!” she said. “And there’s another one!”
    “There’s two?”
    “It’s moving toward the first one!”
    I craned my neck, looking out through the open dome. I wondered if some kind of fireworks display was playing tricks on us. But no pyrotechnics flared in the Paris skies.
    “They’re both flashing now!” Kate exclaimed.
    “Let me