Crescent

by Homer Hickam

  “The dome’s sealed. The new maintenance shed is abuilding. Those crowhoppers really did a number on it.”

  Maria smirked. “Oh, yes, they certainly did.”

  “Crater, Maria, what’s going on?” Jake asked. The other Apps, the ex-Legionnaires, Crescent, and Ike were standing in the street, their rifles lowered, the cannon abandoned.

  Petro peered at them. “Guess I should be introduced,” he said.

  Crater named them, then said, “This is my brother, Petro.”

  “Nice to meet you, folks,” Petro said. “Sorry to take Crater and Maria away, but there’s a lot of people in the outside world who’ve been worried sick about them.”

  Maria was already halfway up the ramp. “Come on, Crater!”

  Crater climbed up on the ramp, looked Petro in the eye, then hugged him. “Thanks for coming after us.”

  “Hey, what’s a brother for? Anyway, Mom would have killed me if I hadn’t. But, honestly, Crater, we’ve got to go. I’m a commander, not an admiral. I’m already overdue.”

  Crater walked off the ramp, back into the dust, then turned around. “I’m not going.”

  Crescent took a step forward. “No, Crater. Maria’s right. You must go.”

  Crater kept his eyes on Maria, who had turned around at the hatch. “I’m staying,” he said.

  “Your choice, buddy.” Petro chuckled. “You were always a chump.”

  Petro stopped momentarily beside Maria, then climbed through the hatch and went inside.

  Maria walked halfway down the ramp. Tears were streaming down her face. “Please, Crater. Please.”

  “You go on,” Crater said. “They need you out there.”

  The ramp began to slowly rise. Maria looked over her shoulder, back toward the ship, then, holding the handrails, walked to the ramp’s end. All she had to do was take a single step and she would be back on the dust. Crater closed his eyes and willed himself to keep them closed. In a short while, he felt the brush of dust blowing past him as the silver taxi jetted skyward. He waited a little longer, then opened his eyes, there to see his future.

  ::: Reading Group Guide

  1. The characters are three years older now than they were in the first book, Crater. How have they changed?

  2. The Colonel says during the battle in chapter one, “Kill them all. Remember they’re only crowhoppers. It isn’t as if they are real humans.” So why did Crater disobey the Colonel and take one as a prisoner? What trouble does it immediately bring him?

  3. Crater often does what others want him to do, even when he doesn’t like it. Does this make him weak? Do you like him better when he goes against authority?

  4. Maria has grown to be a tough businesswomen who is used to getting her way. Do you like her this way? How does she change during the story, and is it in a good or bad way? What lessons does she learn? Why do you think she has feelings for Crater?

  5. Crescent was genetically engineered to be a warrior who kills on command. Yet she is still human. Once she starts living in a different culture, how does she change?

  6. Absalom, Dion, Lucien, and Carillon are crowhopper warriors who seem a little different than the others. What is this difference? Did you like or sympathize with them? What do you think will happen to the three young crowhoppers who stay in Endless Dust?

  7. What do you think about the odd phenomena of lights and movement that has been observed on the moon for centuries? Do you think we should find out what is actually happening there? What do you think about what Crater and Crescent found in Alphonsus crater?

  8. Would you like a gillie of your own? Why do you think the two gillies hate each other?

  9. The Apps in Endless Dust are about to be joined by their family and friends. When others find out about the rich minerals they have found there, do you think they will be able to keep their simple life, or will outsiders come in and change everything?

  10. What do you think would happen if a huge deposit of gold was found on the moon?

  11. Crescent is a crowhopper of the Phoenix Century. Discuss what this means to her.

  12. At the end of the novel, Maria is given the choice to stay in Endless Dust with Crater or leave. Which do you think she did?

  ::: Author’s Note

  My fascination with the moon began in Coalwood, West Virginia, when five other teenaged boys and I famously built rockets. To see what we were aiming at, we constructed an observatory atop the coal company clubhouse, which was actually a hotel for bachelor miners not unlike the Dust Palace I describe in Crater and Crescent. On top of this three-story building, we had a small telescope, given to us by one of the company junior engineers, and there we studied the heavens. I was naturally very interested in looking at the planets and stars, but I had a problem. When I took off my glasses and pressed my eye against the telescope eyepiece, I mostly saw blurs, no matter how much I fiddled with the focus knob. Happily, when I moved the telescope to look at the big, bright moon, I could see everything! After the other boys wore themselves out marveling at the rings of Saturn and the bands of Jupiter, none of which I could make out very well, I usually just looked at the moon and, before long, I could even imagine myself traveling through its mountain passes and into its craters and across its great basins. The near side of the moon became as familiar to me as my little town.

  As recounted in my memoir Rocket Boys, my fascination with the moon led me to suggest to the future President John F. Kennedy when he visited the coalfields that maybe the United States ought to go to the moon. He apparently agreed with me, since that’s what we did. I also told him I thought we should go up there and just mine the blame thing because, as a West Virginia boy, I didn’t see much value in living anywhere that couldn’t be mined. Whether he agreed with me on that, we will never know. I am fairly certain other presidents didn’t. For that matter, it’s clear they didn’t like us going to the moon at all, because as soon as we got good at flying up there, the plug was pulled on the entire enterprise. I try not to take this personally, although it’s difficult. The present president (circa 2013) won’t even consider it. In fact, he said in a speech at Cape Canaveral that since we’d been there already, it didn’t make any sense to go back. He even laughed when he said it, as if it were all a big joke. As you can imagine, that made me smile like an Umlap.

  Despite the ignorance and small-mindedness of some politicians, most people who pay attention know the moon is loaded with treasure just waiting to be mined. Besides the Helium-3 this series is named after, there’s thorium (which my settlers in this novel are after), plus aluminum, calcium, nickel, magnesium, silicon, titanium, and a whole lot more. We also know that the moon is vastly wetter than we thought when we went there the first time. Crater’s invention, or something like it, may one day be able to extract enough water to support a new civilization of hardy pioneers and miners. As for the gold found in the sample taken by Crater from the nickel “lake,” this is a real possibility. In fact, scientists believe that all the gold embedded in Earth’s crust was delivered here by asteroids. If that is so, certainly the moon, battered as it was and is by asteroids, should hold a fair lot of gold. The only way to find out if I’m right, of course, is to go look.

  Another mystery explored in this novel has to do with the baffling lights and movement seen on the moon for centuries called lunar transient phenomena, or LTP. There are many reports of monks staring at the medieval moon and thinking maybe they saw evidence of angels up there. On the other side of the world, ancient Chinese astronomers wondered if there were dragons spitting fire on the moon. Such sightings have continued. Just as the gillie apprises Crater, the Russian astronomer Nikolai A. Kozyrev in 1958 spent an hour watching what he concluded were eruptions inside Alphonsus Crater that produced white and pink flares. In 1963, astronomers at Lowell Observatory recorded red, pink, and orange lights at Aristarchus Crater. When German astronomers spotted a bright glow at Aristarchus while the first men were walking on the moon, Neil Armstrong was asked to look o
ver that way. He did and reported “an area that is considerably more illuminated than the surrounding area [with] a slight amount of fluorescence.” Reports of LTP continue to come in from professional and amateur astronomers across the world. All this means something odd is happening on the moon. What it might be, only guesses can be made. Whatever it is, it’s cool and prodigious. It’s my recommendation, of course, that we take a closer look by going there.

  This novel also explores other phenomena, which has little to do with the moon and more with the human condition. This includes such tendencies as bullying and discrimination. Crescent, the crowhopper girl, is clearly different from the humans in Moontown, not only because of her outward appearance but because of her culture. Crater, for reasons he doesn’t entirely comprehend but probably due to his fundamentally good character, first refuses to kill Crescent and then defends her from Moontown bullies. He also tries to understand why she is the way she is. Crater’s actions, of course, are good and admirable. No one should be hurt or disliked just because of how they look and where they come from. This is not to say, I hasten to add, that the crowhopper culture, as I have presented it, is one to be admired, nor do I believe it is necessary to admire any and all cultures. My point is everyone is an individual who usually has nothing to say about their physiology or the culture into which they were born. Therefore they should be respected as individuals and, if need be, defended from bullies. There is probably nothing more exalted in the eyes of our Maker than to defend the weak and fight for people (and animals) who lack the ability to fight for themselves.

  A troubling scenario in this novel has to with Ike the Helper. We have reached a stage in our scientific knowledge where it will soon be possible to design people with certain desirable physical and mental characteristics. In a way we’ve always had this ability, although it took a lot longer and was vastly more hit or miss. What I’m referring to is the tendency of people to pick mates based on perceived positive qualities. The offspring of such choices may or may not be born with those characteristics but, if kept up over generations, the evidence shows they can be enhanced. Some royal families took this to the extreme and inadvertently reinforced such negative traits as hemophilia and mental disorders. The situation brought forth in this novel is what happens when what is usually thought to be a negative characteristic is deliberately sought.

  Ike the Helper is an example of a person designed in a laboratory to be functional and teachable but with less than “normal” intelligence. There is only one reason for Ike to exist and that is so he can be a slave or, euphemistically, a “Helper.” In Crescent, the demonstrators outside the Helper store in Armstrong City aren’t fooled by this twist of a word, but others eagerly adopt it, rationalizing that if the intelligence of anyone is low enough, and if they are sold as a product, they don’t qualify as fully human. Crater also isn’t fooled, but he struggles with the morality of the situation. After all, Ike wants to help! He’s been taught to be helpful since he was a child, and if he isn’t allowed to help, he is unhappy. If we ever allow real “helpers” to be created, we will find ourselves in a moral quagmire, and I’m not certain how we’ll get out of it. It is up to writers, however, to worry about such things through our stories. If my readers think about the implications of Ike the Helper and Crescent the Legionnaire, then I’ve done a portion of my job.

  All I know for sure is the future is out there and it will be either very good, or about the same, or awful, depending on what is done with the present. Since I tend to be an optimist, I think there’s a greater chance that it will be very good, but I suppose it might not be. Actually, however it works out is really kind of up to you.

  — Homer Hickam

  ::: About the Author

  Homer Hickam is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Rocket Boys, which was made into the acclaimed movie October Sky. He is also the author of Torpedo Junction, The Keeper’s Son, The Ambassador’s Son, Sky of Stone, Back to the Moon, Red Helmet, Crater, and many other books. He is married to Linda Terry Hickam. Homer loves his cats, hunts dinosaurs when he can, and shares his time between homes in the U.S. Virgin Islands and Huntsville, Alabama. Visit homerhickam.com for more information.