JJ’s anticipation of the new mission was mixed with uneasiness, and she swallowed hard as an idea occurred to her. We may be about to find out exactly what Commander Zota sent us here to see.
***
Nineteen
Even moving at top speed in the pressurized lunar rover, the journey over the rough terrain required a couple of days. JJ noticed quite distinctly that as they drove across the Moon, the horizon appeared much closer than it did on Earth. That was no surprise, since the Moon’s diameter was so much smaller than Earths.
Every kilometer was ground that no human had ever driven across, and they had to find the best route. If the moonbase had stocked extra radio relays, which they didn’t, it would have taken dozens—one placed on every high point along their path—to keep the rover in touch with Magellan. So, once the rover passed over the lunar horizon, they lost contact with Moonbase Magellan, and went forward on their own to observe as much as possible, then return with their report. When the rover traveled across the wide-open plains, they could see the uplifted rims of craters like barricades in their path. They encountered unexpected rock walls, maneuvered around craters, and bypassed deep fissures, all of which hindered their progress.
Still, they pressed onward without a break, taking shifts driving and sleeping. When it was JJ’s turn to drive, King sat beside her while Major Fox slept. Driving wasn’t fast like flying, but JJ loved the exhilaration of choosing their path across a landscape of rock and dirt with no roads on it. JJ was careful, as Major Fox had taught them. He was trusting them, and she took her duty as a member of the team seriously.
“Moon, sweet Moon,” JJ murmured.
King hummed “Home, Sweet Home.”
JJ sighed. “I miss it—home, I mean. Mom, school, our cat … even making my bed.” She hoped her mother wasn’t spending sleepless nights worrying about JJ and Dyl.
“Me too,” King admitted. “All of it. Taking care of my sisters after school, feeding Copernicus, taking out the trash. It used to seem like a lot of responsibility. I just figured my parents gave me all the chores they didn’t want to do, because that’s what parents do.”
“Bet those chores sound pretty easy now,” JJ said. “Mine sure do.”
He chuckled. “Uh-huh. Now that we’re on the moonbase crew, I get how the jobs are all connected. The base can’t make it unless everyone does their part to keep it working.”
“And if the base stops working, it can’t support life anymore,” JJ said. She pursed her lips, musing. “Actually, on a way smaller scale, it’s like our family. If Mom works two jobs to pay for our apartment and food, Dyl and I have to cook, do dishes and clean the place. That’s not the way Mom wanted it, but that’s how it works. We can’t just sit back and expect all the important stuff to get done. It takes all of us to keep things going.”
King hummed “We’re All in This Together,” then fell silent for a minute. “Sorry—it seemed appropriate. You’re right about families, though. They’re almost like ecosystems, everything depends on all the other parts. Kind of like Earth … ”
“Wow.” JJ wondered if that was one of the things Commander Zota wanted them to figure out. “Being here makes every little thing seem so important. At home, if we use up the last of the oatmeal and forget to put it on the grocery list, it’s a pain. But if the moonbase runs out of something, they can’t just go to the grocery store. Supplies only arrive once every six months.”
“And what if Earth runs out of something?” King asked.
JJ thought for a long time about that.
All three travelers were anxious to arrive at the mysterious base, so they could do some reconnaissance and put the mystery to rest. Despite her homesickness and the questions JJ still had, being on the Moon was the most incredible experience of her life so far. It didn’t matter if it meant hard work or a bit of danger. The adventure was worth it.
When Fox took his next shift driving, JJ and King discussed what the strange construction site might be, but the British major refused to speculate. Instead, he devoted his time to pointing out interesting features of the topography and explaining lunar geology.
“The surface of the Moon consists primarily of two types of terrain: the smooth dark lava flows called maria, which is Latin for sea, and the highlands, which are brighter and marked by more craters. The highlands are older terrain, of course, because lava flows in the maria wiped away the older craters.”
“Nature’s eraser, huh?” King said.
“That is one way to think of it. Lunar geologists can count the craters in an area to get a rough idea of how old the terrain is. A slate wiped clean by lava must be a newer landscape, while an area covered with craters must be older.”
At any other time, JJ would have found this information fascinating, but thoughts of what had damaged the Halley distracted her from Major Fox’s lecture.
After they crossed the terminator, passing from lunar daylight into night, the rover’s solar panels collected no further energy. Fortunately, the rugged vehicle was designed for long-range expeditions. The Moon’s surface had been a stark landscape of long shadows and sun-washed regolith as they drove across the day side, but now the ground was blanketed with deepening night. The headlights pierced the darkness, clearly showing the land ahead of them. Overhead, the universe had even more stars than JJ had ever imagined.
Fox sounded tense as he drove toward a steep rise ahead. “According to Bronsky and Cushing’s best guess, the anomaly should be located down in the crater beyond that ridge.”
Bright starlight outlined the lunar landscape, and JJ kept her eyes on the abrupt terraced crater rim ahead of them. Ordinarily, they would have driven around the obstacle, but they needed to get the best vantage. From the high point on the crater rim, they could assess the strange base—and hope they wouldn’t be seen.
“Hope we can sneak up on whoever made their hideout in that crater,” JJ said. “At least our engine doesn’t make any noise in the vacuum.”
“Uh-huh,” King said. “I’d rather nobody took a shot at us.”
“Let us not be alarmist, cadets,” Major Fox said. “But just to be safe, perhaps we should navigate without our front spotlights as we crest the ridge, to decrease our chances of being seen.”
The major guided the vehicle at an angle up the steep incline, then switched back and headed toward the crest. JJ could feel the rover’s engines straining on the slope, but they continued to make headway. At the crest, Fox stopped the vehicle, and they all looked down into the crater basin below.
There, they saw a sprawling site that might be military or industrial, but it was not composed of modules and solar arrays like Moonbase Magellan.
“It looks like a gigantic ant colony,” King whispered into the suit mic.
JJ agreed. Deep holes had been dug straight down into the regolith like mine shafts. Conveyor belts carried rocks and debris from beneath the lunar surface. Dust sprayed upward in a fog that slowly settled across the crater.
There were domes and trapezoidal structures, open latticework towers, twisted serpentine mounds connected by transparent tubes. Intense white lights highlighted the main structures, shining bright columns down onto work areas, but hoods shielded most of the area from above, so that orbiting spacecraft—like the Halley—would not necessarily notice.
Looking like segmented mechanical termites with jointed telescoping legs and clawed working arms, dozens of boxy robotic work vehicles engaged in furious activity. Inside navigation bubbles on the termite vehicles, JJ saw tiny moving figures—operators! From such a distance, though, she couldn’t make out any details—like whether the inhabitants of this strange base were human … or something else.
King said, “I’ll bet there’s a whole tunnel system beneath the surface.
JJ was excited and alarmed. “So was Dyl right? Is it an alien base? Maybe they built it here as a secret foothold, where they figured we wouldn’t notice.”
“I … ” Major Fox’s voice tra
iled off. “I need to see more.” Finally, he said, “They could be peaceful.”
JJ couldn’t let herself believe that. “Then who shot down the Halley?”
“And if they have nothing to hide,” King said, “why are they hiding?”
Fox came to a conclusion and nodded. “Our rover won’t make it down the steep terraces of that cliff face. Cadet Wren, Cadet King, we’re going down for a closer look.”
Back at Moonbase Magellan, Dr. Romero monitored the MCC, so that Dyl and Chief Ansari could go with the two newcomers to the damaged supply ship. Song-Ye had figured out a way to optimize the data-collection program for the ag bubble and stayed behind to work on her project. Dr. Wu remained in the observatory to study the images that seemed to show vessels arriving from farther out in the solar system.
Still slightly uneasy in his spacesuit even though he’d had some practice, Dyl rode in the Multi-Axis Rover with the other three suited crewmembers out to the Halley’s crash site.
What am I doing out here with all these professionals? Dyl wondered. How am I supposed to help?
“Our first order of business is securing our supplies. If we can’t get this ship off the ground again, we’ll have to conserve. Our survival depends on these containers,” Chief Ansari said.
Dyl, Bronsky and Cushing opened the landers cargo compartments, and Ansari operated the MAR’s mechanical grappling arms to offload the heavy packages of food and other necessities. “Dr. Romero and Cadet Park can inventory and stow everything after we get back to base.”
“Once the Halley is empty and lighter, the Multi-Axis Rover can move it to a more stable place, so we can effect repairs and refuel,” Bronsky said over the suit radio.
“We’re not going to tow the lander all the way to Magellan, are we?” Dyl asked.
“Not necessary. This isn’t an ideal launch site, but with the radio relay to the moonbase in place, we can calculate the take-off from this crater basin,” said Dr. Cushing.
“Provided, of course, we can repair poor Halley at all,” Bronsky added. “After what those—” he snarled a word in Russian that Dyl didn’t understand, but it didn’t sound like a compliment “—did to it.”
Over the next day, they completed two round-trips between Halley and Moonbase Magellan with the loaded MAR, delivering half a year’s provisions for the base. Then, back at the crash site, the four of them set to work again.
“If we can’t use this lander to take at least two of our crew back to earth, we’ll all have to tighten our belts and eat less,” Ansari said. “Dr. Romero will need to increase her plantings in the ag bubble drastically. We can get more air and water, and the new solar array increases our power reserves. Food will be the main problem. We have ten people, and a pantry stocked for four.”
Dr. Cushing said, “The space program used to operate on the principle of total redundancy so that if anything went wrong, we had a replacement part handy. Lately, though, redundancy has been considered too expensive and unnecessary. There is just no way a rescue operation can be mounted from Earth in less than three months.”
Dyl was appalled. “So you’re saying we have to fix the lander? This might be a problem.”
Ansari’s voice had a cool edge to it. “Or, Cadet Wren, you can ask your mysterious Commander Zota to use his classified transportation system and get us all back home in an instant.”
Dyl swallowed hard. “I wish I could do that, Chief—I wish I knew how.”
Ansari grumbled over the suit radio, but made no further comment.
“I wish I knew how to fix this? Bronsky said. The Russian captain sounded discouraged. “My poor Halley. Never a scratch until now.”
On a datapad, Ansari studied a diagram of an undamaged lander and showed it to Dyl.
“I dislike admitting it, but although I’m well versed in engineering, I’ve never had to repair damage of this sort,” Cushing said. “What a mess.”
Dyl looked at the burn marks from the strange weapon blasts, the breach in the hull plates and the intentionally widened gap that had allowed the extra pressure to vent out. Dyl felt out of his depth and strangely alone. He wished JJ and King were out here with him. He would even have settled for Song-Ye’s sarcasm. He wished he could be in the MCC, where he knew what he was doing. He wished he understood why Commander Zota had sent them here, of all places.
In dismay, Dr. Cushing wiggled the landing strut that had been bent by the hard landing among the boulders. “The job looks insurmountable.”
Dyl took a deep breath and plunged into the problem. “Insur-mountable is not an option. What we need is a list. Let’s make a note of every little thing that needs to be done. If we break the repairs down into individual tasks, it should be no problem—a piece of cake.”
“If you say so, kid.” Cushing didn’t sound convinced.
Dyl accepted the datapad Ansari offered him and took notes while the chief, Bronsky, and Cushing called out observations and made suggestions for repairs. Dyl used humor to keep their spirits up while they worked. He knew how much was riding on this task. Besides, being busy kept him from worrying about his sister, King, and Major Fox.
By now they should have found the answers they needed on the other side of the Moon.
***
Twenty
“Don’t get cocky in the low gravity, cadets,” Major Fox warned as he, JJ and King stood on the steep edge of the crater wall, trying to decide the best way to descend.
JJ looked down the rock face with its broad boulder-strewn terraces, narrow ledges, and the dizzying drop to the crater floor far below. “Okay, let’s get this done.” She saw a good rock shelf five meters down and jumped to it. “Cadet Wren!” Fox said. “You might think you can leap high off the ground, but a fall from this height would be as serious as a fall on Earth, maybe even fatal.”
“Yes, sir,” King said. “Gravity is still gravity. We promise not to be careless.”
Feeling chastised, JJ waited for them to join her on the rock shelf.
Major Fox tethered all of their suits together for safety in case one or the other of them should slip and fall, but he left enough play to give them freedom of movement in the descent. Fox picked his way along one ledge, then the next, dropping gracefully and landing with both boots on solid ground. King and JJ followed and soon made their way across the terrace to the next dropoff. While the low gravity was an advantage in climbing, their space suits greatly reduced their normal agility.
During the painstaking descent, some boulders broke loose and tumbled down in slow motion, ricocheting on other rocks and starting a small avalanche that gathered strength until it petered out upon reaching the crater floor.
Major Fox looked at the landslide; the tether kept them securely linked together. “Proceed with caution. And since we mistrust the intentions of the inhabitants below, I suggest we maintain radio silence for now, except in the event of an emergency.”
They continued down the crater wall, balancing on ledges before dropping down to the next line of rocks. Climbing back up was going to be even more of a challenge, but they had to take this one step at a time.
Whenever she wasn’t looking at her gloves and boots, securing her position, JJ kept an eye on the activities at the bustling secret base that filled much of the plain below. One flat glassy area of the crater floor held several triangular ships. Hard at work, the boxy termite machines scuttled along, building up mounds, excavating tunnels, moving processed metals and manufactured components from underground industrial areas.
JJ felt a strange queasiness in her stomach. Yes, they were more than a century in the future, and so her definition of normal had to change. But nothing about that strange outpost looked normal. It didn’t even seem to have been built by human hands.
When the trio finally reached stable ground at the bottom of the crater, they unclipped their tethers, and Major Fox pressed his helmet against King’s and JJ’s, speaking loudly enough that they could understand his words through the vibrat
ions in the faceplates. That way they didn’t use the radios, which might be detected.
“Those triangular ships are unlike any I’ve ever seen on Earth. I’m afraid there’s no simple way to identify them. You go around that direction, Cadet Wren. Cadet King, scout from the front, and I’ll go this way. Each of our helmets has a digital imager. Take as many pictures as possible. We’ll allot only fifteen minutes so that we can be sure of sufficient air for the climb back up. Given what we’re seeing, it behooves us to return to Moonbase Magellan as soon as we can.”
Because they were close to the frenzied activity in the strange outpost, they kept to the shadows at the crater’s edge, hoping they wouldn’t be noticed. As one of the termite robots scuttled closer, JJ verified that the dark rounded figure inside was not shaped like a human. It raised several whiplike appendages—tentacles!—and guided the boxy robot away again to dig a new hole in the ground. Her heart pounded harder.
Their adventure here on the Moon had been incredible, but this was the most astonishing thing JJ had seen yet. She counted at least fifteen of the insectile vehicles, and guessed there must be many more inhabitants in the tunnels below. This place was far larger than Moonbase Magellan.
With her breath echoing in her helmet, JJ continued to patrol around the edge of the crater until it was time to turn back. She had taken enough images to provide proof that even Collaborative Mission Control on Earth couldn’t deny. Their scouting team had found what they’d come for, but their amazing discoveries would be worthless unless they made it safely back to the moonbase.
After JJ, King, and Fox met up again, the British major indicated a sloping ramp of rock that looked like an easier route up to the first major terrace than the way they had come down. They began to climb, working their way past a sheer rock face. Fox and King pulled ahead and to the right.
Suddenly, the crater wall above them began to vibrate, shaking loose some crumbled rocks, then large boulders. King scrambled backward trying to keep his balance. JJ froze. What was going on? There were no earthquakes on the Moon, were there?
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