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By Michael Gabriel

Denver Jenkins is a fifteen-year-old computer-hacking Californian.
Big Louis, Turnip, and Dandelion are three accidental-prone aliens who have managed to end up at the wrong end of the galaxy. When Denver encounters the aliens, he discovers that an impending cosmic catastrophe threatens all life on Earth and that the future can only be saved with the help of the aliens superior science and the hidden mysterious powers of a bunch of young earthlings.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Jul 23, 2013
• ISBN: 9781481799164

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© 2013, 2014 by Michael Gabriel. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 02/25/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4817-9915-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-9916-4 (e)

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Contents

Buried in Canada

A Higher Civilization

A Lesser Civilization

Great Beast in the Desert

The Right Stuff

A Canopy in Heaven

No more Rainbows

The Children of the Firmament

Epilogue

For Teresa, naturally

Prologue

‘Good morning, children.’

‘Good morning, Miss Grafton,’ the class of fourth grade chanted in unison.

‘Next week, as we are all aware is an important day for our town, for our school and especially for our class, because we are privileged to have pride of place at the unveiling ceremony—yes, Joseph?’

‘Miss, who is gonna be there?’

‘Everybody important, including the President.’ The class went very quiet. ‘Now, Nancy, how is your speech progressing?’

Nancy Rodriguez stood up, pulled back the long dark hair that flowed around her face, slowly took a deep breath and launched into her memorised monologue. ‘Next week, we honor—’

‘No, Nancy, you must say Today we honor.’

‘Yes Miss. Next week—sorry Miss, I mean today we honor the memory of Denver Jenkins who, who on this date, two hundred years ago, to the day um… encountered alien voyagers, visitors from beyond the stars, our first contact.’ Nancy cleared her throat. ‘Since that date, the um, humanity now knows that we are not alone, we are but one world among many.’

‘Yes, that’s good, Nancy, coming alone fine. Remember loud and clear. A lot of people will be listening.’

‘Miss?’ Nancy said, ‘I’m not the best speaker in the class.’

‘Courage, Nancy. You are the youngest living relative of Denver Jenkins and it is quiet fitting that you were chosen to give the address. So have courage. Remember who you are and remember what Denver did for us all those years ago.’

‘Yes Miss. I will do my best.’ Courage. The girl drilled the word into her mind. Courage. That’s all it would take.

Buried in Canada

1.

Denver Jenkins was nine years old when the accident happened. He didn’t know about the accident until years later. On the date that it happened, he was standing on the front porch of his house, looking up at the night sky above northern California. The twinkling stars were poor competition for the plethora of fairy lights that decorated every house and tree up and down the avenue where he lived. But Denver wasn’t interested in stars. It was the 24th December 2043 and tomorrow Denver would be the proud owner of the latest state-of-the-art Supernova Tab 10 with personalized voice recognition. His school pals were going to be green with envy. Due to demand they wouldn’t be getting theirs till summer. How clever of Santa to have ordered one in time.

Out among the stars, and trillions of miles away from Denver and his dreams about Santa, something was going very wrong with another advanced state-of-the-art technological wonder—an intergalactic vessel, travelling with ease through unseen dimensions of Space, and home to hundreds of living organisms—a Mothership.

The accident that occurred on the mothership started a chain of events that eventually would lead Denver Jenkins into a life changing encounter with its alien crew. Chief among these aliens was Bhvg~Llxz, master and commander of the mothership, born and bred on an arboreal planet orbiting a binary star system deep within the heart of the Tucana galaxy. Bhvg~Llxz. The english tongue cannot readily pronounce this name, and when spoken, it is translated by the human ear into a name somewhat more down to earth. And so it was that in time to come, the master and commander of the mothership became known to Denver Jenkins as Big Louis.

The voyage had been so far uneventful; but ever sensitive to the status of his beloved mothership, the master and commander now became aware of a change in motion. He frowned as the monitor in front of him confirmed that the mothership had most certainly deviated markedly from the course set for her in paranormal Space. He turned in his seat and looked behind him. Dandelion was seated at her station busily cataloguing data streams and acting as if there was nothing unusual.

‘What’s happened?’ said Big Louis.

‘We have veered off course,’ Dandelion said, glancing casually at one of her many monitors linked to ship computer.

‘Yes I know that, but why?’

‘I do not know yet.’

‘Where’s Turnip?’ Big Louis said, looking around the bridge.

Dandelion shook her elegantly sculptured head and shrugged her slim and delicate, if somewhat skimpy, shoulders. Big Louis frowned again. Dandelion was his navigator, co-pilot, ship psychologist, crew welfare officer. She kept the ship journal, and recorded events that happened on voyage. She also dabbled in history, galactic biology and stellar science, among other things. She never got excited. If the spaceship were suddenly to plunge into a black hole, Dandelion would probably shake her head and shrug her skimpy shoulders.

Turnip! Where are you? Big Louis shouted at the top of his mind. Big Louis had a small mouth and never really used it for anything much, but he had a seriously big mind. He scanned the ship and latched onto the thought signature that belonged to their other companion. Turnip had heard him but wasn’t answering. Big Louis frowned doubly hard. Now there was definitely something wrong.

‘Gyroscopic controls have broken down,’ Dandelion said, just to be helpful. ‘We are 2.3 megaparsecs off course.’

‘Should we slow up and re-enter normal Space?’ asked Big Louis.

‘Too dangerous. We will run among very heavily crowded star bodies. Let’s keep going till we hit into clearer space and weaker gravitational fields.’

Big Louis’s role on the spaceship was more in the nature of an intergalactic truck driver. His job was to get his cargo from A to B quietly and efficiently, without fuss, without delay. Interruptions to the schedule irritated him.

‘Turnip!’ Big Louis said, firmly. ‘You may as well show yourself and enlighten us as to what has gone wrong.’

Turnip came up to the bridge from the engineering deck below. Turnip was the Chief Engineer on the ship. He was in fact the only engineer on the ship. He was bigger than Dandelion and smaller than Big Louis, but twice as ugly.

‘I was messing with the linear prophylacteries,’ he said sheepishly, facing towards Dandelion and trying to avoid looking at Big Louis.

‘Well?’ enquired Big Louis, unfriendly like.

‘I dropped a spanner.’

‘What?’

‘I dropped a lasonic spanner. It fell down a maintenance shaft and hit a nut attached to one of the plates holding the plasma boxes.’

‘So?’

‘The bolt must have sheared off and the plate buckled.’

‘And so?’ continued Big Louis, trying to hide his impatience.

‘The box fell down and disintegrated…’

‘Yes?’ Big Louis said, encouragingly.

‘The ensuing explosion broke a cable in the gyroscopic conduits…’ Turnip hesitated again.

‘Oh please,’ said Big Louis, slowly and menacingly, ‘please do go on. This is really fascinating.’

‘Well…’ said Turnip, ‘what happened was that, er… ’

‘The steering wheel fell off,’ interjected Dandelion, thereby hoping to cut a long story short. The steering wheel was a sophisticated piece of machinery without which the ship would be going nowhere in a hurry. Turnip gave her a dirty look. Being as ugly as he was, it was really tough for him to manage an especially dirty look.

‘Never mind her, Turnip,’ said Big Louis, coaxing. ‘Finish your story. Get it off your chest. You’ll feel better for it.’

‘The cable whiplashed up through the cubit compartments and hit the remdrive mechanisms… and… and…’ Turnip was almost close to tears.

‘Yes, what happened?’ Big Louis said, feeling more kindly disposed towards Turnip now.

‘The steering wheel fell off,’ Turnip blurted out. Big Louis gave a mental sigh of resignation.

‘Can you fix it?’ he said.

‘Nope.’

‘Any hope?’ said Big Louis.

‘Nope. No hope. I’m a real dope. No hope.’

‘Where are we?’ Big Louis enquired, looking at Dandelion still busy over her monitors.

‘Leaving galactic sector 133 and reducing velocity. 10.52 megaparsecs off our course. Returning to normal space… now. Computer advises shut down of drive engines. Without gyroscopic control the graviton field energies could tear the ship apart.’

‘What should we do?’ Big Louis said. ‘We are heading for the wrong end of the galaxy.’

‘We’ll… um… we’ll have to send for the Ulag,’ said Turnip, timidly. The Ulag was a type of intergalactic breakdown truck. Very efficient. Speedy response. Full discount for long-term paid up members.

‘Yes,’ said Dandelion. ‘I’ll send out a distress beacon. But we have a problem. There’s a solar system up ahead. We’ll run smack into it.’

‘Shut down engine drive,’ ordered Big Louis. ‘Check all buffers, and prepare for a crash landing in case we hit a rock or something.’

‘Velocity now sub-light,’ Dandelion informed them. ‘Decelerators at maximum. Graviton field strength zero. Velocity now minus one… minus two… minus three…’

The spaceship hurtled along the orbit of Neptune and bypassed Jupiter, but only just. It made a half circuit round the Sun and was heading back the way it came when the Earth loomed up in front of it.

‘Emergency buffers powered up! Defense screens at max!’ Big Louis shouted. ‘Turnip, the anti-radar shield, in case we encounter hostiles..!’

The ship sliced through Earth’s atmosphere, circled the planet twice before dropping to the surface and plowing through two hundred and fifty acres of forest, leaving a wake of destruction ten miles long. There it settled, buried in a heap of muck and timber debris and there it remained… quiet and still.

2.

Quiet and still. Peace. Tranquility. It’s very peaceful here, thought Big Louis, staring out the portside observation window. Too peaceful.

The ship was only partially covered by a pile of earth, so a hologrammic camouflage had been projected around the vessel to make it appear that nothing strange had happened in the forest.

‘How long have we been stuck here?’ Big Louis asked Dandelion.

‘I cannot say for certain. The ship’s clock is broken. But the planet has made two orbits of its sun since we got here.’

Two local years, thought Big Louis. He looked at Turnip. ‘Can you fix the clock?’

Turnip was slumped in his chair staring at flickering pictures on a monitor. Big Louis went over to him.

‘Sure thing, Big Louis. No problem,’ Turnip said without diverting his attention away from the screen. ‘It’s on the list. I’ll attend to it right away.’

Pinned up near the ceiling above Turnip’s seating position was a slogan written in the language of his home planet: Aquet ni pom pom ibgrue. Translated into english, it meant ‘no rest for the wicked.’

‘What are you watching?’ Big Louis asked.

‘Native life-form communication broadcasts. They call it television.’

On the screen was an old 20th Century sci-fi movie. Starship Troopers had broken into the alien invaders’ power plant and were just about to set the fission bomb…

‘What’s that on your lap?’ Big Louis said. ‘Are you trying to eat something?’

‘Yup,’ munched Turnip. ‘they call it tv dinner. Wanna try some?’

Big Louis came back over to where Dandelion was studiously studying her dials, scopes and monitors.

‘Why is Turnip thinking like that?’ Big Louis asked her. ‘And where did he acquire that drawl in his speech? It is tedious and alien.’

‘It’s ever since he started watching their television. Not good for his thought patterns, I’d say.’

‘Where are we, anyway?’ Big Louis said, tiring quickly of the subject of Turnip’s thought patterns.

‘Canada,’ said Dandelion.

‘This planet is called Canada?’

‘No. This forest is in Canada. The natives call this planet Earth.’

‘Never heard of it. What do we know about it?’

‘I don’t know what we know. Seems familiar to me but as yet I haven’t come across any description of it in the memory banks.’

Big Louis turned and looked out the window. It was early Spring. The sun was rising to a new day.

‘You’re worried about the mission?’ Dandelion asked him.

‘Yes,’ Big Louis said, sighing heavily. ‘I’m going to fail. I feel I will not be able to deliver on time, if the Ulag does not turn up soon.’

‘What does it matter if you are a little late?’

‘Professional ethics. I always guarantee a scheduled delivery.’ Big Louis walked to the elevator door. ‘I’m going down to the cargo decks to check on the luggage.’

‘Why don’t you use your chair, and save yourself time and energy?’ The chairs in the bridge room were customized for each crew member. Each could levitate and transport its occupant into any part of the ship where they might want to go.

‘I need the exercise,’ Big Louis said. ‘I’ve got plenty of time… ‘

The elevator door opened and Big Louis looked back. Dandelion had her head stuck in her star scopes. Turnip was flicking from one movie channel to another—first to Batman and the Boy Wonder climbing up the Gotham City Hall Building while the Penguin was at the top chopping the bat-rope with an axe—then