“Is that the map?” Crass asked, holding to one of the seats for support. It was a stabilization technique he slowly realized he was growing accustomed to while traveling out in the widening black yonder of uninhibited Space.
“It sure is,” the Captain replied. “Want to see where we’re landing the module at?”
He looked at Crass, then unbuckled his seatbelt, and clasped the map to the forward wall with tiny metal clips. Then he pointed to a darker spot towards the middle. Crass thought it resembled, strangely enough, a Mr. Pacman of some dark blue origin, if he was to judge it honestly. Or was he high still?
“Mare Tranquillitatis. Better known to us as the Sea of Tranquility, though the name can be confusing. This seemed the most appropriate area to build the LunaDome. From the gift shop area, one can see the footprints of Armstrong and Aldrin, the heroes of the early Apollo 11 missions. The flag is still there and standing like a little Statue of Liberty.”
Crass counted the years mentally and had about sixty-three, give or take. The lunar surface wasn’t prone to atmospheric effects such as wind or air (maybe solar wind) moving across it to shape it endlessly unto the end of Time.
Things were a bit different and he was coming to understand the importance of viewing the safety video before the entry into space, and furthermore, onto a planet not so very far away after all. The computer clocked our speed at 31,690 miles per hour. We had another thirty-thousand miles to go, and soon we’d be approaching the Tranquility base and touching down.
“And the bright lights in the other areas? What are they for?” Crass asked.
From behind him came loud and rambunctious commotion from a group of grab-assing teenagers. Crass turned around and saw they were cutting flips in mid-air, laughing, giggling, and breaking his fucking chain of thought.
The Captain glanced back quickly, and then continued talking.
“Construction sites, laboratories, shelter sites for the scientists and explorers on the surface. You can stay in a rover for about two weeks before you run out of oxygen, but you can’t stand around on the surface unprotected for that amount of time without being pelted by micrometeorites.” Captain Don smiled and watched the teenagers be idiots, momentarily. He must have found their tomfoolery amusing.
“If we were to stay long periods of time, which we wanted to, then we needed habitable living quarters with oxygen, water, and protection from the elements present on a planet without an atmosphere.”
“Tornadoes and hurricanes weren’t anything to worry about anymore, but we needed protection from radiation and brief meteorite showers,” the Captain said, looking at the computer screens. “So we came back here starting in 2020 with manned missions. We put the best and the brightest to work on building something that would last forever up here. What they came up with is unique, and I think you will all enjoy it very thoroughly.”
Mickey turned and looked at Crass. He was standing by the round window, and beyond it hung limitless space, a starry blanket of epic proportions. His gold teeth sparkled in the glow of the overhead lights.
“Hey, Captain Don? Do we get to drive around the surface in the rovers?” Mickey asked. He was floating there in his white space suit.
The Captain looked up. “I believe they do offer rides to the resort’s tenants at the help desk or inside the gift shop. You’ll have to check with LeAnn when we touchdown at the base. She’s the director of operations at Tranquility.”
He moved back to the bank of switches. Most of them were flowing, pulsating with an inconspicuous life.
“This is the most exciting trip I’ve taken in a while,” Mickey said.
Crass agreed with him one hundred percent, and was equally excited to make it there safely and soon. Light reflected off the surface of Luna and bounced into the glass of the cabin, coming into view larger this time.
The rocket ship cut through space, constantly being pulled closer to the Moon by an unseen force. Crass was hoping they we almost there by now. He knew they were close, but there was no way he was going to open his mouth and ask that pesky question that kids always enjoyed asking on any road trip, short or long.
Are we there yet?
The Captain looked up from the dashboard, and said: “Ten minutes crew. Sometime in the next five of those, we all need to be buckling in our seats again.”
The teenagers cut flips as Crass turned to look at Eva. She had gotten together with Skye and they were helping each other apply their makeup. After Crass stared long enough, she looked up from the compact mirror and blew him a kiss, smooching her wet lips at him. They had a high gloss shine like lacquer on fine woodwork.
She wasn’t cute. She was fine, as in a fine specimen. A fine product of somebody’s awesome night some twenty-odd years ago. Beautiful people developed out of beautiful moments. He had heard or read that somewhere, but couldn’t remember exactly where.
The Moon’s gravity pulled the ship closer, the laws of which were better to work with, than against. Crass drifted over to his seat, pulled himself in, and buckled down with the shoulder harness. He pulled on the straps, tightening his body to the rigid aluminum frame.
Mickey floated by after a few minutes, knocking one of the teenagers out of the way to avoid a mid-air collision. The long haired freckled kid tumbled into his friends and they bounced off the interior walls molded with padded safety bumpers.
What followed was a spiteful endeavor to try and shut Mickey down with creative curse-word inventions. It didn’t affect him in the slightest. He buckled in to his seat and flipped them the bird as they settled down the long haired kid, and began buckling in for the landing.
“The lunar module is about to detach,” the Captain said. “We’ll be touching down in five minutes.” He buckled in and pushed a button on the brightly lit console.
“Get ready.”
IX: LunaDome
Smaller rockets located on the back of the vessel ignited, slowing our quick ascent towards the pale grey surface below. We came down softly on the launch pad located at the rear of a large building as the rocket’s engine died down.
Crass glanced out the windows of the space ship and saw strange mechanical machines like robotic push-mowers far out over the horizon, which wasn’t that far at all, two miles at best. The landscape quickly toppled over the crest and out of view. We were now on a planet about one-quarter of the size of our home planet—Earth.
Captain Don said: “It’s ok to unbuckle now.”
We didn’t float around as easily as we’d done in Space. The Moon had an altogether different effect, giving you one-sixth of the mass you encountered on terra firma.
Movements seemed agile, like a ninja’s, but just not as quickly executed. Crass figured he might weigh twenty to twenty-five pounds. He felt like he could jump slap over the Hoover Dam if he pleased. If he was on Earth, but he’d left there and found something new. There were rugged and sloping craters here, rolling hills, and piles upon piles of fine silica, or what many Moon adventurers would call regolith.
The crew donned their pressurized helmets, and stepped out onto the white tarmac with the LunaDome emblem stenciled through the middle with bright lettering. Crass asked the Captain about the machines with the tracks like bulldozers.
“Solar harvesters,” he answered back. “They’ve been turning the top layer of regolith into solar panels for power. We have fields designated for energy sources.”
“You can’t live without power up here and the lunar day lasts for two weeks at a time, so we’re able to catch a lot of that potential and use it for power here at the LunaDome.”
All of this conversation came through the built-in interior headset in his helmet. Even though he was right beside Crass, it sounded like he was talking to him from miles way.
He led the crew across the tarmac and to a metal door with a giant metal wheel placed dead center. The bright silver stenciling read Arriving and below it: Airlock for Decontamination. Captain Don pushed a blue button on the side of the
white building and the door wheeled itself open with a thud, revealing a narrow corridor with bright lights and metal grating on the floor.
The door in the distance was made of solid glass and had a screen embedded beside the airlock. It read LOCKED in white letters amidst a digital sea of red. The crew followed behind the Captain like chicks behind Mother Duck. He knew exactly where to go and what buttons to push in this strange atmosphere.
The teenagers were the last to step into the narrow chamber of white and red light. Behind them, the hatch closed and sealed itself shut.
Crass was gazing at the glass door when the screen blinked blue three times and then turned green like a streetlight. Invisible jets on the glass walls sprayed out a high pressure mist like steam blowing out of a rolling locomotive. He couldn’t see anything but vapor clouding around the bubble of his helmet. His personal dome.
Crass Duvall was out in Space. Well, being on the Moon was more like it. He’d crossed Space to get here. Could he fit that exact meaning into one hundred and forty characters? He’d almost certainly try when he got a moment to sit down and let the pen do a little talking with the unblemished page.
Ten seconds of decontamination and the screen read: Welcome to the LunaDome. Please Enjoy Your Stay! The glass door slid into a pocket in the thick wall and we walked into a clean and white facility that made the confines of Space look dismal and the surface of the Moon boring.
Crass was thinking he might try to sweet talk his way into securing a position up here somehow. Anyone seen the Human Resources Department around here?
They walked over large white tiles the color of pearls and gazed out of wide glass panels someone later told him was as thick as the glass used in the Presidential limousine. He hardly cared and dismissed the thought, turning his attention to the building and the cratered landscape in the distance.
The walls ran in circles close to the main entrance, creating a large dome with high ceilings and memorable photographs from the various different Space missions. There were framed posters of the astronauts bouncing around the surface, collecting rocks, and driving a rover that looked like the stripped carcass of a Chevy pickup, except it had a satellite dish attached to the back.
A woman dressed in a reflective white suit welcomed us.
“Welcome to the LunaDome excursion number fifty-seven,” she said with a graceful smile. Her eyes narrowed in, looking us over silently. She then turned her attention to our leader. “Captain Eastbrook—how was your journey?”
There was a twinkle of light dancing in her eyes. Crass sensed a past flame and was absolutely tickled by this revelation.
“Delightful as usual my dear,” the Captain said with a quick smile. “The crew here came silently, most of them anyways,” he sighed, and glanced over his shoulder at Crass.
Why was the sonofabitch picking on him? You think you’d leave the Earth and all its little idiosyncratic problems, but reality smacked you in the fucking face, even here, on the Moon, thousands of miles away.
“Happy day!” LeAnn said excitedly, clasping her hands together and smiling brightly at us. Her eyes looked like the snow crystals in a decorative Christmas globe.
“My name is LeAnn Rivers, and I’m the managing director of Tranquility Base operations here at the LunaDome. I imagine all of you are very tired from your travels. We have your rooms set up for the weekend retreat, and with that being said, let’s get all of you over to the Regress Room for outfit change and you can begin enjoying your stay at the LunaDome facility.”
She moved on her feet quickly, bouncing along the smooth floors with ease, like her feet knew the exact rhythm and bounce of the motion up here. Some of us bounced off the walls, but still made a steady progress in the right direction. The Captain disappeared behind a white door that slid into a pocket in the wall.
Mrs. LeAnn, our newest guide on this strange planet, was showing the crew the Regress Room and talking with the bag-carriers as they dropped off our luggage.
“If anyone gets lost, follow the dotted black lines on the floor to the nearest directory. You can see the entire layout from there. It may help out, in case anyone gets hungry or wants to try their luck at flying in the gymnasium.”
Mickey was standing there and looked back across the brightly lit corridor at the lady. She was pacing slowly across the tile, as if on an escalator. Crass thought this was their first real taste of the moonwalk.
“Flying?” Mickey said dubiously, not quite understanding. Crass was equally interested to hear this explanation.
“Yes,” LeAnn said. “With the Moon’s gravity, you weigh about as much as a big fish. If you got on a pogo stick, you’d likely bounce off the glass ceiling. I’m not sure you would survive the landing. A three hundred foot fall is still lethal up here, but strap wings to your arms, dive off the gym’s platform like a Peregrine falcon, flap your arms swiftly, and you can fly in a controlled environment.”
She smiled and turned to leave, rounding the corner quickly. She was gone out of sight in a jiffy. Mickey had already changed into regular clothes and walked to his room. The teenagers had disappeared shortly after coming out of the room.
Eva came out and looked good, like real good. Stars floated in the spheres of her eyes, looking to parade right off into Crass’s safe, little world.
“Me and Skye are going to find the cafeteria and grab a bite to eat. You want us to wait on you?”
She’d found the space shoes and walked quite normally, as if on Earth. Crass thought if one was daring enough, they’d toss the shoes and try to manually adjust to the breezy gravity of the Moon.
“Go ahead,” he said, making short strides into the Regress Room. “I’ll catch up with you in a little while.”
“Ok, don’t take too long,” she whispered. “There’s a lot to see up here.” She smiled as the door of the room slid back into place.
Crass walked in and found two assistants waiting to help him get out of the bulky spacesuit. They’d already brought up his bags from the rocket.
“Crass Duvall?” a man with glasses and thick black hair said.
“Yes sir, that’s me.” Crass took a seat on a wide chair and bounced right back on his feet.
“It takes a little while to get used to it,” the man said, and pointed to a small podium with stairs. “Stand over here and we’ll get you out of that thing.”
Crass walked over and the dark haired man hooked the suit to anchors and started unlatching the helmet. Within ten minutes, he was fully dressed in civilian clothes and found the space shoes very convenient for walking on the Moon. Maybe Sting, of The Police fame, had found it easy, but this was no cinch when you really found yourself walking on the lunar surface.
He thought a nap would be divine about now. After the crew of employees had left the Regress Room, he was alone and thought it over more seriously. In the room was a window, a regular house-size window he would guess, and it looked out over the silver hills and low sweeping craters that made up the place beyond the glass.
The Sun beat down on the grey blanket of glass, reflecting some of the light back at him, and making it not so easy to look at without a pair of sunglasses on. The panorama was obliquely beautiful. A jagged line of abstract truth skittered across the shifting soil.
Space was really changing. Look here, Crass thought, I’m up on the Moon. That was big news, wasn’t it?
It was. It most certainly was.
Crass eased out of the Regress Room and saw Mickey standing there, waiting on him in his regular everyday clothes.
“Are you ready to go eat?” he asked, yawning and then brushing it off.
“Hell yeah,” Crass exclaimed. “I’m famished.”
They spent the next ten minutes looking for the cafeteria. They’d spotted a few of the restaurant advertisements hung in the corridors between the photographs of the rockets and the astronauts. Hunger stepped up a notch as they hurried off, following the scent in their noses.
The food was waiting.
Mickey and Crass followed the outer line on the floor of the LunaDome, which took them over to the large white directory on the wall by the main lobby and checkin desk.
Employees bustled around the building and Crass saw a large rover starting its trek over the powdery floor of the Moon. Layers of grey soil pushed up and around the tire tracks in billowed plumes. It looked identical to the one they had ridden from Innsmouth to the launch pad of the rocket.
“The café is past the hotel part of the building,” Mickey said, turning back around and walking off.
The white board was a mixture of collecting black lines, some running horizontal, others vertical, and some circular around the domed parts of the structure’s blueprints.
“Damn. Alright then…where’s the gift shop?” Crass looked at the board dubiously. All of the text appeared to be in microscopic font and coded with tiny little black numbers. He needed clarity. Mickey walked back over and stared at the board with him.
“Close to the observation deck. Hell, right by it, in fact.” Mickey said, tapping the clear plastic of the sign.
Crass wondered how in the hell he was able to read the numbers so well. But then again he knew Mickey had flown more than enough flights under the influence. This was possibly a day in the park for him.
“I’m glad you can see that, Mick. I see the figure, just not all the details.”
“Hawk eyes,” Mickey said, lifting both his eyebrows high and walking off again. “Are you coming to eat?”
Crass gave him an easy look. “Of course, kemosabe. Let’s go,” and he tread down the wide corridor behind Mickey.
They found the modernly styled café right where the directory said it would be—past the hotel rooms, at the back of the building, next door to the gymnasium and the movie theater. Large glass windows made up the outside perimeter walls that peered out over the growing lunar day.
LunaDome: A Novel Page 8