Midnight In The Shadows

AuthorHouse

Contents

Chapter 1 The Red Giant..........................................7Chapter 2 Just A Bum.............................................16Chapter 3 A Fly on the Wall......................................26Chapter 4 Raising the Devil......................................33Chapter 5 A Visit To Skytropolis.................................44Chapter 6 It's Only Money........................................55Chapter 7 Welcome to Oakville....................................61Chapter 8 Philanthropic Pesticides, Inc..........................67Chapter 9 Sensory Transformation.................................71Chapter 10 Who Killed Montague?..................................78Chapter 11 Matt Starr –Space Detective.....................86Chapter 12 Mr. Big...............................................93Chapter 13 The Starring Role.....................................101

Chapter One

Dr. Bernie Hogan's tiny satellite sped away from Earth's gravitational pull at 25,000 miles per hour, heading toward the Alpha Centauri star system. It was the last productive act from the planet Earth before it and Dr. Hogan both were engulfed in a giant red envelope. His satellite was named the Dove and was a personal project that punctuated years of amateur rocket research. He was determined to send a space probe into orbit around the Earth, but when it became obvious that the end of the human race was near, he frantically worked on a more powerful and improved version that would go far into deep space. The hope was that it would be discovered by aliens from another planet.

"It's kind of like keeping the memory of the planet alive," he would say to himself. Dr. Hogan was proud of his space probe and had painted its name on the side along with the words, 'To a home on God's celestial shore,' taken from the hymn I'll Fly Away.

The final phase of humanity's existence was dependent on the newly formed red giant, also known as the sun. It became the executioner for all that the Earth had been for its long and storied existence. Soon, the red menace would engulf all of the solar system and each of its planets would become a scorched, lifeless, cremated remnant of its former self. The Jovian planets, also known as Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, were made up primarily of gasses, and would be reduced to a small inner solid core, a fraction of their former size.

The sun had been the life blood of Earth for billions of years but due to its exhausted hydrogen supply, the star began losing its mass and thus the gravity that held it together. As it cooled, it took on a reddish appearance, expanded outward and with its still intense heat, began to cook the planets.

Mercury was, of course, the first to go as it became a glowing, molten sea of hot lava. Venus was next as its clouds were burned away, exposing its cratered, lifeless surface. It eventually exploded from the tremendous pressure that had built up inside its liquid core.

Earth's turn came as the life-giving atmosphere rich in oxygen was burned away. Plant and animal species methodically began to die out and what was lucky or unlucky to be left was destroyed by either the lack of oxygen or intense heat as even the oceans eventually began to boil. The red halo would creep outward, taking with it Mars, then Jupiter,

Saturn, Uranus Neptune, and finally tiny Pluto, which was innocently minding its business as the outer outpost of the solar system, having suffered the humiliation of being demoted to a minor planet. It would, however, have the last laugh as it would be the final planet to survive before its turn came for conflagration.

Dr. Hogan was one of the last humans to walk on the Earth and during his last days was able to get his rocket ship ready for its journey. Having to use his oxygen generators and living deep below the surface, he held out longer than most people and made rare trips to the top. He still kept records of the surface temperature, oxygen levels, humidity, and other readings that would be of no use to anyone on Earth.

Soon, however, even his insulated world began to fail and he knew the end was close. He struggled to the surface and in the intense heat, pushed the button that sent his rocket soaring into space. In only a few short hours, Dr. Hogan was gone, another victim of the evolutionary process of stars. The last words from his lips before he suffocated were, "I wonder if this is how the dinosaurs felt?"

Someone had written a short poem just hours before Dr. Hogan's death, that read:

    'The stars in the heavens shall come and go,
    Like all that's graced upon the eye,
    The eastern star that shines so bright,
    Shall be the same to dim in the west and die.'

The Dove's launch was perfect and it reached escape velocity of 25,000 miles per hour. It was heading out into space toward Alpha Centauri, the sun's nearest star neighbor, just as Dr. Hogan had planned.

As the Earth continued to cook from the increasing heat and gasses of the sun, the Dove passed the planet Mars in about six months and then pierced its way through the asteroid belt. In another year and a half it passed Jupiter's orbit. Four years into its trek it journeyed close to the beautiful planet of Saturn with its majestic rings.

In nine total years it was crossing Uranus' orbit and when it reached sweet sixteen it had come close to Neptune. The Dove then entered the Kuiper belt where 'short period' comets reside. Being made mainly of ice, they would also fall prey to the expanding red giant and would eventually melt, turning into gasses.

Finally, the Dove reached Pluto in twenty-five years and if it had eyes, it could have seen Pluto's barren, eerily lit surface that resembled the

Moon. But now even Pluto's had a reddish tint from the glow that was moving closer to the outskirts of the solar system.

As the Dove left the planetary neighborhood, it entered an area known as the Oort Cloud, a region with millions of orbiting rocks. Ordinarily some of them would have become long period comets, thrown out of orbit by the gravity of the giant planets such as Neptune and Uranus. This would have caused them to hurtle toward the sun in elliptical orbits, seen only once by Earthlings, then lost forever in the vastness of outer space. However, even they were not immune to the giant red fiery glow of the sun's changing structure, as most would be engulfed in heat or thrown far into space by the powerful solar wind to explore their own changing future.

As it left the Oort Cloud region, the Dove began its slow, quiet journey through deep space, spending thousands of quiet and peaceful years moving toward Alpha Centauri, the nearest star to the sun, 4.3 light years away. Carrying its nostalgic cargo along with its dead solar powered batteries, the Dove had long since become an inert, lifeless, silent, projectile, hurtling through space in a quiet world of serene emptiness. It was no longer sending out a beacon and would have to be discovered and retrieved by some advanced civilization in order for the legacy of planet

Earth to be remembered. The odds of this seemed remote but with new and advanced spaceships scattered throughout the galaxy, they could detect any object of comparable size, and since the Dove was metallic, the...