Description: "We," Captain Astra announces, "have just encountered something interesting." I know my captain. When she says interesting , it doesn''t mean what you think it does. We''re in the mess-room of the spaceship Hindsight . The mess-room is the bright, colorful place where the crew gets together to eat, and also to socialize, and for important meet- ings, which is what this is. At the head of the long table is the captain, who''s leaning back in her chair with both hands behind her head. She has light brown skin, curly white-gray hair, and brown eyes with wrinkles at the corners. Right now her wrinkles are crinkled because she''s smiling widely at the rest of us. " Very interest- ing," she repeats. Next to her is Electra Zox, my best friend. As usual, she is tense, her hands clenched, her green skin a little pale, and her tintacles are dark gray. Tintacles are kind of like hair, but more tentacly, and they change color depending on how she''s feeling. Dark gray means that she''s suspicious. Then comes Telly, our vegetarian cargo master, who is grinning around his tusks. "What''re you planning?" he asks Captain Astra. "Oh, you''re going to love it," she answers. Then she nods at one of the Shkkka, who is standing in the doorway. The Shkkka are three insectoids who are one person, and they are our ship''s engineer. "Is the ship ready to go?" the captain asks her. "Because we need to move ." The Shkkka twitches her antennae, which means yes . There''s one person missing from the crew, and that''s Amby, the tall blue humanoid who was our navigator. They returned to their home planet to be with their other family. Instead of Amby, we have a new navigator. He''s a human- oid. He says that his name is impossible for us to pronounce; we call him Fred. Then comes me. One of two shapeshifters in the entire galaxy. I''m curled in Amby''s old nest chair in my human boy shape: pale skin, brown hair, brown eyes. Protein bar wrap- pers are scattered around me. I am listening to the captain while keeping an eye on the thing sitting on a plate in the middle of the table. It looks like a delicious donut sprinkled with powdered sugar. The donut isn''t doing anything. It''s just sitting there. At the head of the table, the captain gives a nod toward Reetha, the big green-scaled lizardian who is in charge of our communications and security. "You want to tell them about the interesting thing?" the captain asks. "Or should I?" Reetha, who doesn''t talk much, and also doesn''t blink-- lizardians don''t have eyelids to blink with--just stares back at the captain with her golden, slit-pupilled eyes. The captain leans forward. "I''ll tell them." She rubs her hands together and makes a low laughing sound that is almost a cackle. Heh-heh-heh . "Reetha picked up a signal from the edge of the galaxy." "Deep. Dark," Reetha corrects. Captain Astra shrugs. "The edge of the Deep Dark, but not actually outside our galaxy." She looks around at all of us. "Reetha detected a strange blip on the sensors. We think it might be a certain lost ship . . ." Everybody looks blankly back at her. "A ship packed with supplies," she hints. "Lost, drifting around the galaxy, big news about twelve years ago . . ." "No." Telly''s eyes widen. "Not the Skeleton ?" "Hah!" the captain says, and bangs the table with her hand. "Yes. The Skeleton ." I must look blanker than everybody else, because the cap- tain grins at me. "Never heard of the Skeleton , Trouble?" "Nope," I tell her, and take a bite of protein bar. "Twelve years ago," she explains, "the Skeleton was a cargo ship stuffed with valuable supplies on its way from a station near the galactic center to a newly settled planet on the Outer Rim. And then--" She makes a wavy motion with her hands; I think it''s supposed to be spooky. "And then , it disappeared, like a ghost, never to be heard from again." "Until now," I say.

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