The Helium Bomb

The Helium Bomb

Daniel D. Mickle

Published by Daniel D. Mickle Dec. 2013 at Smashwords

Copyright © 2011

Cover artist: Daniel D. Mickle

Line Editor: Melissa Ringsted

The author asserts his moral rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including any photographic, electronic or mechanical methods without prior written permission of the author, except for brief quotations used in critical reviews and other non-commercial uses as permitted by copyright law.

This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and events are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all those who helped me with their thoughts and ideas for this and the other stories in this series, especially Ric and Ty Braden, who endured my going on and on about the stories and added their thoughts in certain areas. Furthermore, this book would contain many more errors, were it not for the excellent editing skills of Melissa Ringsted. Finally, I wish to thank you, the reader, for buying my book. I hope you enjoy it and anxiously await the other books in this series.

Prior books in this series:

Soul Keeper (Book #1)

Return to Abras (Book #2)

Future books in this series:

Trouble in the Orion Spur (Book #4)

Assassin - Knight Takes Queen (Book #5)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter One - NEO (Near Earth Object)

Chapter Two - Laosh Lost

Chapter Three - More Ice, Please

Chapter Four - Dangerous Drolla

Chapter Five - Strange Tower

Chapter Six - Diamond in the Rough

Chapter Seven - Tellas Moon

Chapter Eight - Pricey Stowaway

Chapter Nine - Crazy Guy

Chapter Ten - Paranoid Brain

Chapter Eleven - Driving Force

Chapter Twelve - Ice World Outpost

Chapter Thirteen - Dyrstan Proves Useful

Chapter Fourteen - Disfigured Statue

Chapter Fifteen - The Space Center

Chapter Sixteen - Abner Returns

Chapter Seventeen - Rebuilding

Chapter Eighteen - This Will Be a Blast

Chapter Nineteen - Impact

Chapter One - NEO (Near Earth Object)

This asteroid is fifty miles in diameter and on a collision course with Earth. In the darkened classroom, the British professor, Callus Grymm, pointed to the hologram behind him. The students saw a five-foot diameter image of a nearly round space rock.

What does that mean, Professor? asked one of the female students.

"It means nothing less than the end of all life on this planet. He paused. Even microbial … one moment. What have we here?" In the midst of describing the death of everyone in the room, the professor noticed one student had fallen asleep in his class.

Professor Grymm withdrew his wand from his robe pocket and aimed it toward the offending student, Oxford Peccant. How do I wake thee? Let me count the ways. He paused only a moment. I shall take thee to the depth and breadth and height thy chair can reach … As he said this, he raised both student and chair up to the high ceiling. I could drop him from there, but the school would regrettably frown upon my intentionally maiming or murdering a student while class is in session. Pity. The chair lowered back to a point only three feet off the floor instead. Does anyone know what work of poetry I was paraphrasing just now?

With no other hands in the air, he called on dark-haired Amy Levine, certain she would know the answer. She did. "Sonnet forty-three by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, written while she was—"

Correct, Miss Levine. Giving his wand a slight flip, the floating chair and the overweight ‘Ox’ Peccant, dropped suddenly to the floor. The chair broke under him, waking the sleeping Ox. "Mister Peccant, it appears you have broken yet another of the school’s chairs with your excessive mass. Please take another … Bring it right up here beside my desk and sit."

The professor walked around him, and continued speaking, Where was I? Ah yes, I remember now. His voice lowered more and more as he leaned closer to the student. In a quiet, pleasant tone, he said, While you were sleeping, I was just telling the class that an asteroid is going to hit the Earth, killing everyone. He leaned closer to Peccant’s ear and suddenly yelled, We are all going to die! Straightening back up, his voice returned to its normal pitch. You shall have ample time for sleeping once you are dead, which could come sooner than the asteroid, if you should sleep in my class again.

Gratified by the sudden look of terror on Ox’s face, the professor continued his class lecture, May I presume you have all heard of the Chicxulub impact crater, also known as the Caribbean? He glanced around. That is the remains of an asteroid impact, which many believe to be the event that brought the demise of the great dinosaurs, sixty-five million years ago.

Getting no response from most of his students, he sighed and continued, "Only three students? Why am I not surprised? The estimate of that asteroid’s diameter put it at only six miles, while the one coming is fifty. It hit the Earth with an impact equal to approximately two hundred quadrillion pounds of high explosive. It is hard to imagine such a force, is it not? He paused a moment. I shall attempt to enlighten you. The explosion was so great that not only did it melt hundreds of square miles of bedrock and turn thousands of cubic miles of ocean to superheated steam, but also an enormous quantity of the molten impact debris blasted into space, far beyond the atmosphere. This eventually rained back down, dispersed around the globe. The energy released both from the impact itself and from re-entry of the space debris had the effect of heating the air over the entire planet, touching every creature that did not hide underground in a cave or burrow. The heated atmosphere caused mass wildfires on a global scale, and was hot enough to cook the dinosaurs."

He placed a blueberry on his desk. If this were the asteroid that dug out the crater we call the Caribbean. Compare that to the one coming now. His hand appeared from behind him, swinging in an arc over his head. With a resounding bang, he squashed the blueberry on the desk using a standard softball. So much for the Caribbean, North, Central, and South America, Europe, and the Atlantic Ocean.

As he spoke, a new image appeared where the asteroid had been before. This time it portrayed a fiery holocaust, with dinosaurs attempting to flee. However, they were overtaken by a flash of fire, leaving a wake of death where once majestic creatures had roamed. That will be humanity’s fate.

The professor turned back to face the class. As he did so, the scene changed behind him. Dressed like cavemen, two small men—who might have been mistaken for dwarves—turned a gigantic spit, which held a meaty dinosaur many times their size. A flash of fire came and the dinosaur suddenly looked much more like a plump chicken roasted on a barbeque. They began tearing at a gigantic drumstick with exaggerated smacking of their lips and one gave a thumbs-up sign toward the students. Unexpectedly, one of the small men spoke, "That be’s good eating."

The other followed it with, Mm-mm, tastes just like chickens.

Professor Grymm took in the new scene and commented, Thank you, Noggle. I believe they get the idea. A little humor is fine, but let us not drift too far from reality. Your people did not reach Earth until tens of millions of years after the dinosaur era.

Doesn’t youse be too sure abouts that. We coulds have, the small man proposed.

Professor Grymm looked like he was tiring quickly of the exchange, but added, "Referring to your little reenactment there, kindly explain how your barbarian ancestors could have survived the heat blast which roasted that dinosaur to such … succulent perfection?"

Nisse magics, o’ course. The small man called Noggle was of a race called Nisse, a few of whom survived the destruction of their home world in a war seventy millennia earlier by coming to Earth. Noggle raised his right hand and snapped his fingers. He disappeared, but not before he could say, Class dismissed!

Most of the children jumped up to take advantage of this pronouncement, but Professor Grymm was faster. The classroom door loudly slammed closed in front of them. "Noggle meant his class. However, my class has not yet ended. You will all return to your seats."

Three seconds later he added, Now.

Is that what this one will do, Professor? Roast us all? asked Emily Hughes, one of three students who had remained seated the entire time.

The professor explained, The incoming asteroid is roughly fifty miles across, or nearly six hundred times the mass of the one that hit near Chicxulub. It is hard to conceive that any living creatures shall remain this time. Even those in the deepest parts of the ocean. On the bright side, we are forewarned of our impending doom, giving some of us the possibility of avoiding it.

A hand shot up. Professor Grymm, since we know of our Abrasax heritage and Abrasax ships can make the trip to Earth and back, why don’t we simply evacuate all the magical people, the descendants from Abras, before the asteroid gets here?

Evacuation may be possible, but could you live with yourselves if only the magical people escaped to Abras, leaving billions of other humans on Earth to die, without having at least tried to save them? Professor Grymm looked around the room.

Why not? spoke up Dyrstan Victious, after raising his hand. We are descended from the people of Abras. Those non-magicals out there are not even our race. They descended from monkeys or Neanderthals or … maybe frogs. His low opinion of non-magical people was obvious from his tone of disgust.

Do you think you don’t have some of their blood in your veins? accused Mindy Simpson. I’m sure we all do after being together for seventy thousand years.

Except you. You have the blood of a cartoon character in yours, Dyrstan muttered. Mindy folded her arms and gave him an icy stare.

All right, class … enough, the professor scolded, adding, One demerit for each of you. For your edification, the non-magicals descended from Homo Heidelbergensis, Heidelberg man, or so the latest theories conclude. Now, let us consider something. If we ignore all the other species and count only humans, there are still over six billion people on this planet. Most of the Abrasax ships carry less than ten people. Only two ships can carry over a thousand, but let us say we borrowed ships from other races and came up with six ships that would carry a thousand people per trip. If you divide that out, six thousand people into over six billion … You will realize that those ships would have to take one million trips each to evacuate everyone from this planet. How long would it take for any ship to make a million trips each way between here and Abras?

Mindy Simpson was careful to hold up her hand for recognition this time. As an astrogator, I can answer that precisely. Using quantum jumps, the absolute shortest time to travel between here and Abras is eighteen hours. That means traveling through Slaaashleeshh space, as well as cutting frightfully close to Charybdis, and having no other problems along the way. She paused a moment, scratching figures on a piece of parchment.

What’s Charybdis? one of the kids whispered.

Another answered, The black hole at the center of our galaxy. You can’t fly through it and you don’t even dare get too close. You have to go way around. Professor Grymm shot them a glance.

Mindy continued, At the other end, passengers must be let off and the crew given free time to eat, sleep, and get ready for another trip. If they were only making one trip, they might push themselves and complete the whole eighteen-hour trip without sleeping, but with a million two-way trips, the crews must rest each time. After resting, they will need another eighteen hours returning to Earth for the next load, and the crew will need more rest on the way and a sleep break at that end. If we assigned a double crew, so one crew flew for nine hours and the second crew for the other nine, some sleep time could occur in flight, with an additional six hours for loading, unloading, layover, and ship maintenance. Twenty-four hours each way is then possible. That makes it easy to figure. One million round trips will equal two million days. For those who have not worked that out, it comes to five thousand, four hundred, seventy five years.

Mindy had made her point. She sat down.

Thank you, Miss Simpson. Since the asteroid is on its way now, rather than five thousand years from now, we obviously do not have that much time. Transporting everyone off Earth is not possible. The professor continued, But let us assume for the moment that there were a way to transport everyone; there are still other problems. He paced a moment, pausing briefly. There remains the question of where to put six billion people. How can we dump them onto any planet without proper food and shelter? There are no planets out there ready and waiting to take six billion refugees, even if we could get them there.

Mindy mentioned Abras. Couldn’t they live there? asked fiery-haired Fiona Flynn. There were twelve billion people living there at one time. Earth has only a bit over half that many.

Yes, there is more available land on Abras than on Earth. However, the homes and buildings which were there at that time are mostly gone. They have fallen to rubble in the intervening seventy-plus millennia since the original Abrasax departed. Additionally, there are no vast storehouses of grain and other necessities to feed a sudden influx of billions of people. They will all have starved to death long before new farm land could be planted and sufficient crops harvested to feed so many.

A student named Kevin Wells said, So we must figure out how to stop the asteroid from hitting the Earth. Correct? Professor Grymm was normally quick to hand out demerits for those speaking out in class without having been called upon, except in this case. He seemed to have gained a lot of tolerance in the past couple of years where Kevin was concerned.

That is precisely how I see it, Mister Wells, Professor Grymm agreed. His idea of proper classroom decorum still did not include calling the young man by his first name.

Professor Grymm looked around the class. Consequently, I propose that all of you try to think of ways that we could divert an asteroid of such grand proportions from hitting the Earth. For your homework assignment this evening, I want each of you to write down ten ways to achieve the desired result of saving the Earth. If you still wish to consider moving Earth’s inhabitants elsewhere, please explain how you would do so, where they would go, and how you propose to feed and shelter them. We would not wish to overlook any possibility.

Ten ways? Billy MacDuff gasped. He smacked his forehead in dismay, but when he realized some of the girls might be watching, attempted to turn the motion into one of smoothing down his ever-messy haystack hair.

All right, class. That will be enough speaking out without first having raised your hand and been recognized. One demerit, Mister MacDuff. The professor added, Yes, ten ways. Even if they prove to be less than adequate—as I’m sure they will—you will each offer ten suggestions for avoiding disaster. Given all those suggestions, we might accidentally stumble over a viable solution. After a moment’s pause, the professor followed this with, Do try to be creative. I shall be holding my breath in eager anticipation of a number of excellent and inventive answers. He rolled his eyes.

Professor Grymm turned to the large student still sitting near his desk, and held up both hands with fingers spread apart. Ten is this many, Mister Peccant.

Ox, answered, I knew that.

With a roguish smile, Callus Grymm abruptly said, One demerit, speaking without permission.

A raised hand got the professor’s attention. Amy Levine, the star pupil in the class, asked, What if we all worked together? I mean, back when the Klai’trk’ha imprisoned us on Mak’kla, the four of us were able to lift a huge stone that must have weighed at least a ton, perhaps more. What if all the students in the school were brought together to concentrate on changing the asteroid’s direction?

While this point should be raised on your homework, I will comment on it briefly. Consider this. Counting all students, teachers, and others capable of magic currently within the school …

"Others meaning the Nisse folk," Billy whispered, as the professor continued.

The number is in the neighborhood of sixteen hundred. There were four of you, so we would have a power roughly four hundred times as great. Let us say, for the sake of argument, that you could move a stone weighing ten tons … no, twenty. Four hundred times that would be eight thousand tons of stone. Correct?

He was still looking at Amy, so she took that as permission to speak. Yes, sir, she said, but her thoughtful look showed that she had already figured out where he was going with it.

All right. This asteroid is fifty miles in diameter. Your Mathemagics teacher will confirm that we find volume for a sphere using four-thirds pi times the radius cubed. The radius being twenty-five miles, I believe you can work that out as being approximately, he paused about three seconds, looking at the ceiling, sixty five thousand four hundred fifty cubic miles of rock. He glanced again at Ox. Well, most of you, anyway.

Ox laughed. He realized that someone in the class had been insulted. However, he had not yet figured out who that person might be.

"Asteroids can vary in density. Some of the larger ones range from two point three to three point five grams per cubic centimeter with the lower numbers indicative of those with a larger amount of water ice. Through orbital observations, this one is estimated at three point naught. Converting everything to American measurements, I come up with a total mass of over nine hundred trillion tons of rock. That is vastly different from a mere eight thousand tons. It is two hundred twenty five billion times the size that everyone in the school working together could move. The professor’s glance took in all the students before he stated, Even magic has limits."

Ox had his hand in the air and the professor reluctantly called on him. We can get our parents to help. My dad is really strong.

Professor Grymm answered, Marvelous. That is such a marvelous suggestion, I am not sure I am ready to read ten such on your homework. Consequently, in your case only, Mister Peccant, I shall count your homework complete if you include two, he held up two fingers, that is this many, more suggestions.

Ox looked triumphantly around the room, proud that he had suggested something so good that he had gotten a lighter homework assignment as a reward. This helped underline the certainty amongst all the other students that Ox somehow remained in class by cheating. No one had proven it, but they were convinced someone must supply him the answers to the final exams, or take the tests for him.

* * *

Five houses divided the students at Greenbriar Academy. Each of these five houses had their own tower with separate dorm areas for boys and girls. Amy, Kevin, Patty, and Billy all stayed in Nashotah House, where the asteroid was the only topic on anyone’s mind that evening. Commander, Amy whispered, looking at Kevin, could we fly out to the asteroid in question? Maybe we will get some ideas after we look it over.

Two years earlier, Kevin had received his own interstellar ship from the queen of Abras, and because it was an Abrasax military Corsair, she had given him a rank in her royal guard so the ship’s intelligence would follow his orders. His rank was Wing Commander.

We could, but not now. It is past curfew, and while we might get around that, we would still need to know the exact location of that asteroid, Kevin kept his voice low, which we don’t.

Amy offered, Professor Grymm would have that information, but we wouldn’t dare disturb him at this time of evening, anyway. He is probably busy with Cassandra’s private tutoring about now. Blonde-haired Patty Varian looked Amy in the eye and they both began to giggle.

Right. Smooch, smooch, Patty laughed.

Billy ignored the last part as a girl just being silly and said, It was really strange. When Cassandra showed up, Professor Thexia threw such a fit about her being around. It was like she just instantly hated Cassandra.

Oh, duh! You are not that dense, are you? Patty goaded him.

I get this from a blonde? Billy wondered aloud.

She was jealous, William, Amy informed him. "She has had a secret crush on Professor Grymm for