Ben Blazze and Heimdall's Orb

Prologue

THE THIRD ROCK

Our story begins with a series of what some people would call "coincidences." I mean people who don't understand the Universe, of course.

It started about 8,300 years ago. A starship from the Vega system (in the Lyra constellation) ended up by accident near a small yellow star in the uncoolest corner of the Milky Way.

The ship had its wormhole drive blown up. That disrupted the hyperspace tunnel it was crossing at the time of the crash.

"Commander, we have finished scanning this solar system," said the Immediate, as the confusion subsided a little. "I have good news and bad news."

The Commander, who was particularly cliché-averse, rolled his eyes and waited for the Immediate to continue his report.

"The good news is that the third planet has quite adequate natural conditions for us to survive," said the Immediate. "In our situation, this is like winning the Zargonian lottery."

If you are unfamiliar with the Zargonian lottery, let me explain. You're more likely to fall into an open manhole in your hometown and end up in Narnia than to win the Zargonian lottery. Even so, it is quite popular, as is any "magic" solution to problems at any time or place.

"The bad news," he continued, "is that the only intelligent race on this planet hasn't even figured out the math to regret it later."

"Are you saying that they don't have any technology that could help us?"

"They hit one stone on another to light a fire."

"We're screwed."

The Commander knew what that meant. Building another wormhole drive from scratch would take decades. Without it, they were stuck on that little planet. Moreover, they would not even be able to send distress signals. Why? Well, as you may know, the distances in space are garishly vast. Even light, which travels at 300,000 kilometers per second, takes thousands of years to go through some stretches. This is where wormholes come in: they are shortcuts drilled into folds of the space-time fabric. Through them, radio signals and starships can travel hundreds of light-years within minutes. That's almost as fast as schools' gossip! Well, the role of the wormhole drive is to open these portals, and that requires an insane amount of energy.

Finally, overcoming the initial frustration, the aliens headed for the little planet. Its name was Earth – a name that proves the "great creativity" of the natives.

The region where the spacecraft docked was later named Doggerland. It used to be a fertile strip of land that connected the present British Isles to Denmark. After the Atlantis' Exodus – an event you will soon understand – the North Sea flooded it, though.

The alien castaways began to settle in and make contact with the locals, the humans. Humans, or men, were the primates who were starting to rule Earth. Already in the first contacts, the foreigners had a little surprise. They found that the humans' genetic structure was pretty close to that of the Vaguir. The Vaguir were the people of the Vega system, most of the crew of the starship. That resemblance made them wonder if any of their ancient biological experiments had not hit Earth "by chance" a few millennia earlier. Speculating that was pointless, at least at that time, so let's just leave it for now.

The starship had thousands of crew members. Besides the Vaguir, there were also Arktos, Caelis, Siriar, and some other intelligent species onboard, as well as animals and plants. Humans had a shock when they saw so many different races more advanced than themselves. That's because one of their main traits, even today, is that they think they are the last Coke in the desert. After all, they thought, they were able to master bigger and stronger beasts than themselves. Also, some of them could reach the impressive age of 16 (!). This was a real feat, considering all that could go wrong in their daily lives: be trampled by mammoths, be attacked by hungry packs, have their skulls crushed by enemies, have their skulls crushed by friends...