I do not own Danny Phantom
Stargazing
Danny took advantage of a rare night off to take Sam up to Thompson Hill for a little stargazing.
Danny set up the telescope, adjusted the tripod, set the azimuth, and fiddled with the focusing knobs.
"Take a look," he invited Sam, "I got Jupiter. You can even see one of its moons."
Sam watched until the planet moved out of the field of view. Then she joined Danny on the blanket where he was just laying back watching the night sky. She looked up and shivered.
"Are you cold, Sam?"
"No. I was just thinking…about the Disaster-oid. How it just came out of nowhere and almost ended all life."
Danny didn't say anything. He was thinking about how the Disaster-oid had been knocked into a new trajectory by Vlad's Saturn Station.
"Looking at the stars used to be so peaceful. Now I wonder if there are other death rocks out there."
"Probably. You know the Disaster-oid was actually two pieces, you know. The smaller one would have missed the Earth. That's the one my Dad blew up with Vlad's false coordinates. We should get a spectacular meteor shower next time we cross its orbit. It was the larger one that almost hit us."
"So what if another chunk comes our way?"
"Considering what we were able to put together in a week, we'll be better prepared next time."
"How much time?" asked Sam.
Danny shrugged. "It depends on how early it is detected. We try to keep track NEO's. We could have months, years, decades, or even longer."
"NEO's?"
"Near Earth Objects. Asteroids that cross Earth's orbit. Then there are comets. Short period comets like the Diaster-oid have aphelion between Saturn and Uranus and make an orbit in under 200 years."
There was something that was bothering Danny.
If the Disaster-oid came from Saturn, and it takes 200 years round trip, then half that distance would be in the ballpark of about 100 years. How did it get from Saturn to Earth in only two weeks?
The observatory astronomers had tracked the Disaster-oid and calculated its orbit back to Saturn. But it couldn't be the same one that Vlad had perturbed. Even with an explosive boost, there was no way it would have traveled all that way in only two weeks. Where there was one ecto-radium rock, there was probably more.
Maybe Vlad's chunk was still on its way.