Read Online The Last Starfighter by Alan Dean Foster - Free Book Online Page A

looks solid but isn’t, quite. The metal mesh activated and deactivated the disguise. Or maybe it was solid, a preset fleshy buildup that could be added to or removed from the alien face simply by applying the rag. Or maybe he was insane, and indulging his fantasies in the coldly logical fashion of the completely crackers. They say the real crazies are the most methodical in their thought processes. He’d read that somewhere.
    But he could hear his heart pounding in his chest, feel the pressure from the car’s periodic jumps (he could hardly call it a car anymore) as it shot through the void, taste the dry fear in his mouth. He bit down on his lower lip until it bled, found he could taste that too. The action frightened him. Hurting himself would prove nothing.
    Something bright and massive loomed up off to the right. He recognized it immediately. The rings were brighter than he’d imagined them, and far more lovely. Breathtakingly beautiful. As he stared, Saturn receded rapidly behind them.
    “Now,” Centauri announced amiably, “it’s time to take some speed.”
    “I’m not into drugs,” Alex replied softly.
    “Oh, sorry.” Centauri hesitated, thinking, then grinned at his own error. “Wrong reference. I mean, it’s time to make some speed. Better?”
    “Yeah, better,” Alex told him.
    Centauri shook his head, looking very human. “You people concoct the strangest expressions.” He touched controls. Alex leaned forward. His curiosity was all that remained between sanity and total terror.
    “What now?”
    “Now we go to supralight drive.”
    “Faster than light? That’s impossible.” He regretted his words the instant they left his mouth. In light of his present situation the comment sounded more than silly.
    There was no derision in Centauri’s reply. “ ’Taint. Why, if it were, nobody’d ever get anywhere , would they?”
    Alex felt the universe change around him. Stars danced in his eyes and he couldn’t be certain if they were in front of or behind his corneas. Maybe both. But the colors were pretty. Space travel as psychedelia. Or psychotic.
    “What . . . what happens now?”
    “Now?” Centauri was scrunching down in his seat. “Nothing to do now until we outgabe, son.” He closed his eyes. Alex wondered how that affected the eyes behind the disguise. Perhaps when he stopped staring Centauri would take them out and put them in his pocket for safekeeping. At this point it would have seemed only normal.
    But Centauri simply crossed his arms over his chest and let out a relieved sigh. “Enough work for one night. Time for a snooze. Why don’t you relax and try and catch some sleep, son? From here on in-out the ride’s pretty boring.”
    “Sure.” Alex tried to sound composed and in control. Might as well, since there wasn’t anything he could do about his situation. Getting out and walking, for example, seemed out of the question. “Sure, why not?”
    But for some reason, he couldn’t go to sleep.
    He might have dozed off in spite of himself. He couldn’t be certain. Consciousness came and went, ebbed and flowed as the lights of a distorted universe flicked past. Stream of cosmosness. His mind was lulled further by the steady tick-tick of the softly lit control panel while the perfect environmental controls of the ship relaxed his body. It was like riding across country with someone else doing all the night driving, the lights of motels and fast-food joints and street signs all melting into a warm yellow visual blur.
    The ticking was interrupted by a sharp beep. Outside, the stars resumed their normal appearance. To the right a pale green moon rich with copper ores was sliding past. A sun lay ahead. It was a little whiter than the one that baked the desert around the Starlight Starbright trailer park.
    Centauri awoke, sniffed twice, blew his nose on a handkerchief and settled in to prepare for landing as they dove straight for a cloud-shrouded planet. It was rich with ochre hues