Jeremy's Space Rock
by
Ralph H. Proenza
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PUBLISHED BY:
Jeremy's Space Rock
Copyright © 2013 by R.H. Proenza
Revised 09/23/2016
ISBN: 9781301193134
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Cover Artwork by R.H. Proenza
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For my grandchildren Caleb, Joshua, Rebecca, Jenna and Noah who have a universe of things yet to discover.
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This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
Your support and respect for the property of this author are appreciated.
Many thanks to Melissa Mathews who encouraged me to publish and to others along the way who encouraged me by tolerating my stories.
I hope you enjoy the story and perhaps become one of its characters, if for only a short while.
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Jeremy's Space Rock
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The boy stared up at the ceiling from his bed. His thoughts bounced around like ping pong balls on a tile floor going from one thing to the next. His eyes now wandered to the window and upward into the darkness of space. This was one of his favorite places to look. Tonight the constellation Orion shone clearly in the blackness of the cloudless night sky. Just below Orion's belt was the fuzzy Cloud Nebula (he had seen it through a telescope). It was barely visible, even with his sharp eyes. Above that was the reddish star Betelgeuse that he loved to find at night. It was the eighth brightest star in the night sky according to astronomers. "Yes, there it is, Jupee! I wonder how long it would take to fly to Betelgeuse?" he mumbled to the large Styrofoam sphere hanging from his ceiling. Jupiter, known to him as "Jupee," hung along with the other planets of his Solar System model.
Jeremy Braddock had gotten a telescope just two months earlier on his eleventh birthday. He loved the heavens and studied his astronomy books all the time. After reading them he would almost get dizzy thinking about how HUGE the universe really was. He marveled how many stars and comets and asteroids and things were out there. He had already used his telescope to find the moons of Jupiter. He had been so excited to have found eight of them.
"Maybe one day I'll discover a supernova or something. They could name it after me. You know, like Halley's Comet or the Hale-Bopp comet," he said to the rest of his hanging solar system. He had no brothers or sisters so it was easy to talk to the things around him such as these models.
As he admired the twinkling stars through his window he noticed one particular star had gotten bigger and brighter. Jeremy shot up in bed. "Hey, wait a minute. That star is too bright to belong to Orion." He had perfectly memorized the shape of the constellation. But now the pinpoint of light appeared to be growing. "But… but that's impossible! How could it get bigger? Newton, do you see that?" He looked briefly over at his pet white mouse puttering around in his cage in the dim light then back to his window.
Within seconds the star had grown even more in size. Jeremy jumped out of bed and ran to the window. Gaping upward he noticed the star was actually moving! A small tail of fire was coming from the star, which had now become a tiny white ball, to his amazement. The bright ball enlarged. As he saw the tiny movement of flames coming from it, the realization hit him like a photon torpedo. "Holey moley, Newton--- that's a real... live ... shooting ... star! Well, beam me up, Scotty!"
He fumbled with the telescope uselessly but couldn't look away long enough to raise it toward the sky. The shooting star, for that's what it had to be, was getting still bigger. Yet it seemed to stand still -- as if it were…headed...right at...HIM! Jeremy stood frozen, his heart pounding in his chest. It was soaring closer in the sky with flames visibly streaming behind it. Its light became like a tiny sun as a whooshing sound reached him.
He ducked behind the window frame, for all the good that would have done. At the same time, he heard the loud noise of cracking trees in the wooded area behind his house. Jeremy caught his breath and leaned out the window. He thought he could pinpoint where the shooting star had fallen. No, it was now called a meteorite since it had fallen to the earth! He paced back and forth, anxious over what to do next. It was too late to go into the woods tonight. He needed daylight. He was wide awake now and he knew the rest of the night was going to last forever.
The following day the school clock seemed to move in slow motion like all the insides were filled with thick pancake syrup. Jeremy was about to explode with a secret he couldn't tell anyone about. Well, not just yet anyway. He couldn't even tell Beth in class. He would sometimes help with her science homework because Beth was so cute. It took all the self-control he could muster to keep it to himself and stay within the walls of the school building. But today was Friday and finally, the bell rang to finish off the school week. He was home in a flash. After changing clothes in minutes he was in the wooded area behind his house. He was ready to begin the hunt for the E.T. rock.
It was a good distance from his house but he knew where to start looking. After a tedious search of the woods, he found the evidence of burned and broken tree, limbs, and bushes. He then just followed the path it had made. The meteorite's fall had been slowed down by everything it had hit; first by the atmosphere, then by the trees. Now it rested in a shallow depression in the ground. The broken and charred trees marked the landing path of the meteorite. It lay on the ground surrounded by burnt and smoking underbrush and a ring of dirt made on impact. Several scorched broken pieces of meteorite lay nearby.
Jeremy gazed in disbelief, his eyes almost popping from his head. He remembered his science teacher saying that some two hundred million meteors enter the earth's atmosphere every year. Only a few ever landed because they would burn up in the atmosphere. Yet here was one! A meteorite of my OWN, well, sort of....wow! He stared at it like it was a whale size priceless gem.
As he looked the rock over it was like a boulder. A large dark gray-and-black pocked-marked boulder about 3 feet in diameter. It looked so much like any other rock boulder here on Earth, but that didn't lessen his excitement. He could barely stand it as he reached out his hand to touch it. Feeling slight warmth coming from it, he jolted to a stop with a gasp.
WAIT! What if it's infected with a new space germ like in the movie "Andromeda Strain" and it clots up all my blood? Or what if it's radioactive and my eyeballs get fried and my teeth all fall out? he thought to himself.
He sat on a nearby fallen tree to ponder his dilemma before a plan came to mind. He had to make sure he and the entire world were not in any danger, and he knew he had to work fast to beat nightfall again. He bolted home for a call to his science teacher who told Jeremy, his favorite student, he could call anytime.
"Hello, Mr. Philips, this is Jeremy, you know, from Second Period."
"Oh, yes, hello Braddock, one of my best students. What can I do for you, son?"
"I'm sorry to call you at home like this, but... Well, you see, I was, um, having this talk with my friend and, uh, we were just wondering how you can check something to see if that something is radioactive. You know, if you don't have a Geiger counter I mean?"
"Ah, a good question, Braddock. You always have good questions in class. Well, let's see. I suppose you... could... find a watch with an old radium dial on it. You know, a dial that glows in the dark. Then place it next to the object that you are concerned about. In about fifteen minutes check to see if the dial glows in the dark. But you would have to completely cover the face, like with dark tape first.
The tape would keep it from responding to the light around it. That would give you a false reading, you see."
"Hey, that's a good idea, Mr. Philips," the boy said excitedly.
"Well, I'm glad I could help. What -- did you find some weapons-grade plutonium or something?" Mr. Philips chuckled as if he had made a joke.
"Uh, NO... no plutonium, uh, we....were just wondering. But I'll tell you about it next week. Thank you and see you Monday, Mr. Philips."
Jeremy's plan called for some necessary supplies. Rummaging through his dad's junk box produced a bunch of cool things. One of them was an old watch with a dial that he used to be able to read in the dark when he was younger. It was amazing how junk sometimes became treasures! Now he was ready to approach the meteorite and put his scientific plan into motion.
He gently placed his pet white mouse in a small carrying cage. He carried it, along with a six-foot cane fishing pole, and set out again for the meteorite.
He creased his brow and peered at the mouse. "Sorry Newton, but, you know, this is in the Interest of Science." Jeremy made the words sound significant to the mouse. When at the site and almost next to the meteorite, he hooked the small cage to the end of the pole. Stretching his arms out he placed it up against and touching the fallen space rock. Next, he carried the duct tape-covered watch to the top of the meteorite again using the pole. Okay, now he could walk away and return later to check it all out.
It had turned dark when Jeremy snuck out of the house and returned to the woods clutching a flashlight. At the landing site, he grinned at Newton scampering around the little cage. He was still alive! HOORAY, no death-germs from space here, he reasoned.
"Newton, for your participation in this experiment, I will reward you with something. It will be a nice juicy piece of cheese when we get home!" Holding his breath he carefully picked up the watch using the cane pole he had left behind. Turning off the flashlight and removing the tape from the watch's face showed no glowing dial. Just to check it to see if was still working as it should, he lit it with his flashlight for a few seconds and the dial glowed brightly. OKAY, the watch is working fine and so there's no radiation here. My eyeballs and teeth AND the world were all safe!
Reaching out with a trembling hand he touched the rock's surface. The excitement was almost too much to take. It felt rough and no longer warm, like a regular rock boulder. That almost deflated his excitement a bit, but not by much. He rapped on it with his knuckles almost expecting something to knock back from inside. Good grief, Jeremy, you've been watching too many sci-fi movies! he thought to himself. The meteorite felt as solid as lead. After basking a little while longer in his excitement, Jeremy called it a night. Tomorrow I'll tell Mr. Philips. Maybe our University will want it, or maybe even NASA, so they can study it.
Before turning to leave he looked around on the ground for one of the fragments that had come off of the fallen star. He found a ragged chunk the size of a cantaloupe and held it like it was a giant diamond. "Wow, look Newton; I own a piece of outer space.... a space rock! And I owe you a big piece of cheese!" He clutched his treasure to his chest all the way home.
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Two weeks later Jeremy sat reading for the umpteenth time the newspaper story he had cut out. It read: "LOCAL BOY FINDS METEORITE." The newspaper showed a picture of him standing next to the large gray boulder and holding Newton's cage. The article explained how Jeremy had 'scientifically' tested it for dangers. He was surrounded by scientists from the University. They thought the meteorite had burned up in the atmosphere so didn't bother to look for it. They had named it the Braddock Meteorite.
Now he grinned at his prized space rock resting on his bookshelf. A sigh of accomplishment escaped from his lips. "Newton, I wonder if my space rock flew close to Jupiter, or Saturn, or maybe Mars before landing here?" The little mouse looked at him and went back to nibbling on his seeds.
He turned out the light. Sleepily, he looked up through his window at the constellation Orion in the black night sky. With starry eyes and a slight grin Jeremy wondered how long it would take to fly to Betelgeuse…
The End