Read Catching Stardust for Free Online Page A

but never to buy clothes. Her favorite places for clothes were the shops on Venus. The materials on Venus were out of this world and she’d gladly drop extra stardust to shop there given the opportunity. But since that opportunity didn’t exist at the moment, she would have to survive with regular old cottons, silks and polyesters.
    She browsed through racks of clothes in a few stores and managed to find a couple of summer dresses, some Capri pants, and a few shirts that would actually fit a woman who wasn’t built like a boy. Then she popped into a lingerie boutique and bought appropriate underwear to go with everything. If she could say one nice thing about the fashion on Earth, it was that the women here had some pretty nice options in the bra and panties department. She’d never been one for lacy thongs and push-up bras, but when in Rome, right?
    On her way back to the hotel, she couldn’t resist popping into a shoe store with a display of the most incredibly torturous-looking heels she’d seen in a long time. So Earth was tops for panties and shoes.
    As she slipped her feet into the supple leather, shimmering with silver sparkles and stood before the mirror, she knew there was no way she would return to Pleiades without these bad boys in her bag. Every girl needs a new pair of stilettos when they’re on vacation. And the toe was pointy enough to properly threaten Orion with when she returned.
    After a couple solid hours of power shopping, Maia finally made it back to her hotel room to deposit her bags and quickly change into one of her new outfits—a soft blue sundress that offset the green of her eyes and a pair of what a shoe store clerk had called gladiator-style sandals.
    She couldn’t help but giggle as she slipped her feet into the matching blue sandals and buckled the little straps around her ankles. These people had no idea what gladiators were really like. Being around for an eternity already, she’d seen everything—and never a gladiator in sandals this ridiculous.
    Although, they were surprisingly comfortable. And cute.
    Maia eyed herself in the mirror. She liked the way the thin material skimmed across her skin without revealing every curve and contour. Satisfied, she grabbed the new handbag she’d also purchased, since she couldn’t bring herself to carry around the pink zebra bag any longer than absolutely necessary, and threw her room key and wallet into it.
    It was already mid-afternoon and she was still no closer to finding a way home than she had been last night. Now it was time to get serious.
    Since she had no idea how to find her way home exactly, she hoped going to a place that reminded her of home would help. Maybe if she surrounded herself with familiar celestial things, some brilliant idea would come to her. If not, it would still be nice to be around something she knew, since the pit of loneliness in her stomach grew exponentially larger with every passing second.
    A short taxi ride later, Maia stepped onto the curb. In front of her, through the giant glass windows, she saw a huge silver ball. Of course it wasn’t really a ball, but it looked like one suspended in the middle of an enormous room by large metal rods jutting out of it at various places.
    The Hayden Planetarium—the best place she could think of to go to be completely submersed in the universe. Hopefully it’d be enough to give her some ideas on how to get home.
    She made her way into the museum, paying the entry fee with her credit card. If they only knew the places where that card had been, any scientist within a fifty-mile radius would want to put it in a little plastic baggy and study it. Who knew what kind of microscopic particles could be on it at the moment. It wasn’t very long ago when she’d gone to the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy for a bachelorette party. She couldn’t help but smile at the memories and the number of times she’d swiped this very card during that one weekend visit.
    What happens