Enigma

by Terrance Mulloy

  Seated behind him was his co-pilot, Amelia. She was fighting the insane G-forces, flipping switches and twisting dials on her console to no avail. The readouts across her helmet visor were blinking red. Everything associated with the craft’s guidance systems was failing. “Flaps deployed! No thrusters! Drifting east… shit, my RCS is dead - can’t map trajectory or roll!” Over the bleating of sensor alarms, another, louder and more prominent alarm began to drone. “Matt, we need to bail!” she screamed.

  Both pilots could only watch helplessly as the rocky terrain rushed to meet them at blinding speed.

  “Bailing!” Matt pulled the ejection handle to his right side and the seat exploded out of the cockpit, tossing him hundreds of feet into the air.

  There was a loud pop as his parachute unfurled, stabilizing him just in time to see the XF-500 crash below, bursting into flames.

  Matt swiveled his head around, scanning the clear blue sky for his co-pilot.

  It was empty.

  “Amelia?” he said, his head titled up to the sun. “Are you clear?”

  Static rippled across his comms.

  “Amelia, do you copy? Answer me!”

  But there was no response. She never made it out.

  Chapter Ten

  S lumped against a console, Lucas jolted awake from the harsh blare of an alarm sounding throughout the facility.

  Zoe was seated nearby, tapping away furiously at a computer with Lucas’ other team members looking on nervously. “It’s the air filter units outside. Every time there’s a moonquake, at least one of them ruptures.”

  “Moonquake?” Lucas replied.

  “They’re a damn nuisance. I have to keep rerouting the ducting system so this module can keep getting airflow. All this dust clogs up the filters. It’s hazardous too - no different than breathing in asbestos. Just as well you showed up. I’m down to my last O2 tank.” Zoe paused and looked up, sensing something. “Feel it?”

  Everyone looked up at the ceiling. The vibration of pipes and conduits could be heard faintly rattling throughout the room.

  Chakma watched as a stylus began to roll towards the edge of Zoe’s desk. “There’s been no real volcanic activity on the Moon for billions of years. What could be causing this?”

  “No idea. They first started just before we were attacked. Until then, no one on the base, at least to my knowledge, had reported any seismic activity.”

  “How often do they occur?” Chakma asked.

  “Some days there’s none. Other days, there can be several.”

  Lucas turned to his team. “Kwong, I want you to stay here. Chakma, Mitchell - you two take a rover out to that array.”

  Chakma gave a nod and began gathering his gear. “Aye, aye, Captain.”

  Mitchell gave no indication he understood the order and continued fidgeting with his helmet.

  Lucas then turned to Perez and Adams. “We’ll investigate the dig site.”

  Zoe stood from her console, meeting Lucas’ gaze. “You have no idea what you’re walking your team into. We shouldn’t even be here. We should be on our way home.”

  “As I said, we will be - as soon as we can determine what happened here.”

  “I already told you what happened here.”

  “I’m under orders, Zoe.”

  “So was I. So was my entire crew.”

  Lucas ignored the remark and headed over to the others, grabbing his gear off a table. “I want everyone to re-sync their internal comms to my channel.” He threw a glance at Zoe and continued to talk low at Kwong. “Keep an eye on her.”

  Kwong gave an earnest nod. “We’re not going anywhere, Captain.”

  Lucas shot Zoe another look before heading out. He did not trust her.

  Chapter Eleven

  C hakma held on as Mitchell rollicked across the rough and uneven surface of the Moon, veering around rocks the size of cars, and aprons of ejecta that surrounded the never-ending myriad of impact craters. He was following the tread marks from previous rovers, headed out to the antenna arrays.

  Chakma took in the vast lunar basin before them. It was permanent night on this side of the Moon. Nothing except an endless grey landscape, starkly contrasted against the enveloping jet-blackness of space.

  Lucas, Perez, and Adams moved cautiously towards the abandoned construction site. Their halogen flashlights panned over giant dozers and low-G excavator vehicles that sat empty. Some still had their internal console lights on. It looked as if time had stopped in this one area.

  “There’s no solar here, so how could these vehicles still have power?” Lucas asked, running his gloved hand over the dust-caked tread of some mammoth piece of boring machinery.

  “Their power units piggyback off the bases own supply grid, “said Perez. “So, if the base always has power, the vehicles and equipment will too. It’s not very green, but it is efficient.”

  Adams panned his light over a massive bucket-wheel excavator, which seemed to have been abandoned mid-haul. There must have been tons of lunar rock and regolith still captured inside its conveyor feed. “It’s like they were all working and just blinked out of existence.”

  Lucas spotted a jagged trail of footprints in the soil.

  Adams and Perez also noticed it and joined him. They stood there, examining the footprint trail with their flashlights.

  Then, Adams spotted something else just ahead, narrowing his eyes. “What is that?”

  There was another pair of footprints intermingled with the others. These were three-pronged imprints, with a strange sole and grip design. They did not look to be human.

  Perez gulped. “It’s another pair of prints.”

  “I can see that, but… with three toes? Oookay.”

  Lucas followed both pairs of footprints. They soon gave way to an uneven drag trail. “Looks like there was a struggle.”

  The trail led straight to a massive tunnel. The huge drilling machine sat before it - the cutting shield was caked with crushed lunar rock. Besides the drill, there was an array of spotlight rigs casting insidious shadows over the deep hole that had been bored into the side of the tunnel.

  Perez stared up at the looming darkness. “Tell me we’re not going in there.”

  Lucas swallowed his dry throat. “We’re going in there.”

  Adams shared a concerned look with Perez. “After you, Captain.”

  Perez nodded ah, huh . “Yeah. After you, Captain.”

  Lucas swallowed again - a conscious effort to push the rising fear back down his throat. It did not work.

  Back in Igloo Six, Kwong sat at a table in the mess hall, running a systems check on a tablet device.

  Zoe sat across from her, watching her work, nursing a mug of fresh coffee.

  “Is this going to be like a thing with you?” Kwong said without looking up from her screen.

  “What thing?” replied Zoe.

  Kwong looked at her blankly. “Staring at me like that.”

  “I’m sorry… it’s just been a while since I’ve been this close to another person.”

  Kwong swiped her screen then shoved her tablet into a small duffel-sack. She then took a sip of her coffee, her eyes now fixed on Zoe. “Is what you said really true?”

  “No, I made it up so I could be marooned here all by myself.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Are you?” If you were, we’d be halfway back to Earth by now. I’m telling you, we are not welcome here. We’re trespassing.”

  “What happened to you?” When she was met with silence, Kwong blew out a frustrated sigh. “Zoe, I’m not your enemy. We came here to help you. So please - walk me through it.”

  Zoe’s eyes dropped to her lap as she gritted her jaw. She was galvanizing herself to respond. “It started when our orbital SAT picked up a huge mascon. Before we started drilling into it, our Mineral Analysts were noticing anomalies within the surrounding rocks. There was an abundance of refractory compounds which shouldn’t exist here. They were also confused at how
magnetized they were - considering there’s not meant to be a magnetic field on the Moon.”

  “Maybe your equipment was giving you false readings.”

  “It’s possible, but… no. It was accurate.”

  “Moonquakes? Magnetized minerals? None of this makes any sense, Zoe.”

  “In 1969, before the Apollo 12 crew returned home, they sent their Lunar Module ascent stage crashing back to the Moon’s surface.”

  “I remember learning about that.”

  “They were attempting to create an artificial quake. The Module struck the surface about forty miles away from their landing site, where seismic equipment had already been set up to record the impact. What they found was not only unexpected but astounding. The Moon reverberated like a bell for over an hour.”

  Kwong still wasn’t sure where she was going with all of this. “And?”

  “Everything about this place — everything we’ve been told by science — it’s not what we thought. It was never what we thought.”

  Chapter Twelve

  T he rover’s wheels spewed a fountain of dust as Chakma and Mitchell pulled up near the edge of a huge crater. He had to make certain he hit the brakes hard. With no air resistance, the rover could have easily spun off into oblivion.

  Puzzled, Chakma glanced at his readouts. “My coordinates say the array should be located right here.”

  Mitchell disembarked from the rover, eyes narrowing as he peered out over the gaping sea of grey. “This is not a crater.”

  Chakma joined Mitchell on the uneven crater rim, taking in the vastness of the circular chasm. It was several miles across, and at least a mile deep. Wherever the antenna array was, it was long gone - buried underneath tons of regolith. “It’s some type of mass sinkhole.”

  Chakma noticed something below and pointed to it. “What is that?”

  Mitchell saw where he was pointing and frowned with confusion. “The hell?”

  Way down in the crater bed, something large protruded from the soil. From their vantage point, it appeared to be a line of domed metallic structures, like a cluster of iron golf balls resting atop a gear pit.

  Chakma struggled to find any words, his mirrored helmet visor hiding his sweat-beaded face. “It looks… metallic. Artificial.”

  Mitchell stepped back from the edge of the crater, swiping the comms console on his wrist. “Captain, this is Mitchell and Chakma. Do you copy?”

  There was a beat of static, followed by a burst of unintelligible garble.

  “Say again, over.”

  Nothing.

  “The antenna arrays are gone. I repeat: the antenna arrays are gone. We also have a visual on a structure of some kind, over.”

  Still nothing.

  “Fuck!” Mitchell growled.

  Chakma tapped away on his tablet. “Looks like our long-range comms are fried. There’s a heavy electromagnetic interference in this region. I’d be willing to wager that thing down there is somehow causing it.”

  Lucas continued to lead Adams and Perez towards the tunnel, passing the primary drill’s giant tractor wheels.

  Their flashlights cut through the inky darkness, revealing a massive tunnel bored out of the lunar rock. It was roughly the height of a two-story house, and about as deep as a football field in length. They all entered. Lucas steadily panned his light over the tunnel walls. The drill’s diamond-shaped design was etched into both sides of the tunnel wall, giving the bizarre appearance of some ancient stone-carved hallway.

  Lucas was the first to reach a huge fracture at the end of the tunnel. “What is that?”

  Their flashlights sporadically illuminated what seemed to be some kind of metallic hatch. There was evidence of some minor damage to the surface where the drill had struck it before retreating.

  “A doorway or entrance?” Perez studied it with measured fascination, noting a set of panels on the left side. “Is that a control panel too?”

  Lucas stared up at the object with absolute wonder. “Someone built this.”

  Adams stood there, mouth agape, his flashlight dancing over the structure. “Definitely not natural.”

  Lucas brought up his comms. “Chakma, Mitchell, you copy? Kwong?” He was greeted with a burst of garbled static. “Shit.”

  Kwong took a sip of her coffee and grimaced. “Oh, that’s horrible. Tastes like soapy water.”

  “You get used to it after a while… I do miss my vanilla Latte’s back home, though.”

  Kwong set her mug on the table and shared a tiny smile with Zoe. “Coffee snob, huh?”

  “Maybe a little.”

  “So, you guys never ran into any problems when your first arrived here?”

  Zoe idly shook her head. “There was always some mechanical and logistical hiccup. But for the most part, the crews kept everything running like clockwork. We thought we might finish ahead of schedule. We were able to get so much done in this low gravity.”

  Kwong took that in, then rose from her table and headed over to the small kitchenette, where some freeze-dried coffee and liquid packs were shelved.

  Zoe watched her walk off, her expression darkening.

  Kwong took the thermal jug of coffee and gave her mug with a refill. “Well, I hate to say it, but we may be stuck here with this terrible coffee for a few more hours. You want a refi—”

  Thwack!

  Kwong was suddenly belted hard over the back of the head with a metal food tray. She buckled over from the impact as Zoe lunged at her with another blow. This time, Kwong managed to deflect it with her forearm. The tray bounced off her arm and clattered to the floor as Zoe then turned and bolted past her. “Zoe! Stop!”

  Zoe frantically tore out the mess room and down a series of connected hallways. Kwong was now hot on her tail. When Zoe reached a narrow porthole that led into a larger supply bay, she slammed a button and ran through the doorway before it closed. The second it slid shut, she tapped a security override code into the control panel, sealing it shut.

  Kwong reached the door and tried overriding the console on her side, but it was already locked down. Without the code, there was no way she’d be able to get it open. Through the viewport, she met eyes with Zoe. “Zoe, open the door. Please! We’re not here to hurt you,” she said pleadingly. “You need to calm down and open the door!”

  “I can’t do that.” Zoe turned and opened a large dumbwaiter-type device which housed various lunar spacesuits. She wheeled one off a rack and began to suit up.

  Kwong started banging on the viewport. “Zoe! We can talk this through! Don’t go out there!”

  Zoe clipped her helmet on and waited for it to pressurize, meeting Kwong’s gaze one last time. “I’m sorry I hit you— but I can’t stay here any longer.” And with that, she turned and entered an airlock hatch, sealing it shut behind her. She peered out the viewport, taking in the surface.

  In the distance, the XF-500 sat docked, ready and waiting. Its black skin gleamed invitingly under the base’s, stark perimeter lights.

  The was a blast of expelled air as Zoe exited the Igloo and started hopping towards the waiting ship.

  Lucas and Adams were standing before the strange hatch, their flashlights examining the surface.

  Perez walked over to the object that looked to be some type of control panel. It was a beveled slate of stone-like material, which also had weird, circular etchings on it. She gently ran her fingers over it, trying to get a feel for the texture underneath her gloved fingers.

  “What are you doing?” asked Adams. He was no longer loving any of this adventure.

  “It’s a door, right? So let’s try and open it”

  Adams groaned with disapproval. “Please don’t.”

  Lucas stared up at the metallic behemoth towering before them. “Yeah, I’m with Adams on this one. That’s probably not a good idea, Perez.”

  Too late.

  Perez’ fingers caused a honey-combed light to shimmer across the panel. She instinctively snapped her hand back and looked at the
others. “Sorry.”

  “Not cool,” Adams huffed. “Not cool.”

  There was a deep rumbling from within the tunnel walls. They began to back away from the door as the sound of heavy internal locks could be heard. The hatch then suddenly irised open.

  The three of them stood there with a mix of terror and awe.

  What lied before them was a vast corridor of artificial design - built entirely of rust-colored iron material and roofed with metallic beams. Intricate conduits of wiring also ran along each side of the corridor. It appeared to be some type of mechanical maintenance shaft.

  Lucas was the first to break from his stupor and step forward.

  “You’re not going in there, right? Asked Adams.

  Lucas could not peel his eyes off what was ahead of him. “I don’t think we have a choice.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “Stay here if you want, Adams,” said Lucas. “I’m going in. Perez, you with me?”

  Perez gulped and followed Lucas through the entrance, leaving Adams alone.

  He looked back towards the tunnel entrance, weighing his options, then turned and continued to follow them through. “Man, they ain’t payin’ me enough for this shit.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Z oe was now panting feverishly, burning through her O2 supply as she took huge bounding leaps towards the XF-500.

  When he finally reached it, she dipped under the ship’s belly. When she saw there was no hatch, she headed around to the rear side and saw a small hatch overhead. She reached for the emergency entrance flap on one of the landing pads, lifted it, and yanked the handle down hard. There was a puff of gas as a narrow ladder unspooled next to her. She waddled up it and disappeared inside.

  In the small airlock bay, Zoe did not even bother to take off her suit. No time. She closed the hatch after her, then waited for the adjoining airlock to grant her entry once it was re-pressurized. When a light beeped green overhead, she clumsily pushed her way through the hold into the cockpit.