Fire in the Night

Episode 37: Space:1999 The Classic Adventures

PROLOGUE

"Small ones, large ones,

Loud ones too;

And then there's the ones

Because of you."

--Sandra Osborne (from 'Explosions')

"Down in the hole

The belly, the bone-home

Down in the hole

The clutch of the bellman."

--J. Bottum (from Timor Mortis)

Baal only 'seemed' to grow larger, but according to the Law Of Philosophy, or every philosopher, there is an equal, but opposite, philosopher. It's calefacient face was a charged, rust color with black successions that came together to form closed vertexes near her south pole. The planet's upper mantle was red hot--killer, especially when taking into account the fact that it was still 300,000 nautical miles in the downrange. Stranger still was the fact that the avuncular host star was nowhere to be seen, yet there was heat, and atmosphere, and the imperialism of a new world--one that could quite easily fashion magical storms for the god-like ilk of a Jupiter.

*********

Blinding, per saltum solar flares cast out the darkness of the Plato Basin, and for the first time in months, the conical network of Moonbase Alpha was visible without the need for internal, or external lighting. The walls of Frigoris, normally a deep blue, turned white, and engulfed shadows from the launch pads, dormitories, and laboratory complexes threw black bars in all directions.

**********

Above the glare of the nickel, and polonium shielding of the command tower, the I-Band Omni Radio Booster searched the acme of space surrounding the planet.

Hitherto, it had been a pretty boring conversation, unless you have a hang for ether.

*********

Pierre Danielle, the on-duty CapComm was there when the roster printed out--slowly, but with laser jet certainty. He didn't need a reminder, but procedure was his lover. Removing the document from the tray, he applied the hole puncher, and placed the chart in a maroon, three ring binder.

Astrophysicist Lorna O'Brian stood behind deputy controller Zed Astrin. She reflected upon the big screen, and made notes. Then she made annotations on top of citations.

On the balcony stairs, WSC investigator Truman Starns compensated for his current lack of essential donations--seeing Dr. Dorothy Sullivan by the wide, panoramic vision port, he decided to strike up a conversation.

**********

The pilot had finished shaving, and was brutally slapping himself with a palm-full of neutral aftershave when the call came through. His bath towel was still around his neck, and he had yet to don his flares, but that didn't seem to trouble Big-P Danielle.

"Astronaut Francesco Basso, report to Launch Pad Three." The CapComm instructed inconsiderately.

"Ridiculous." The mission commander blurted back, grabbing his commlock from atop the wine commode cover.

"Frank?" His wife Vesta inquired, turning off the blow dryer, and entering the lavatory in her standard issue robe. "What is it?"

The pilot grimaced, and opened the link.

"I thought we were scrubbing the POR? Yes?" He reminded the CapComm, moderately irked.

"So did I." Danielle seceded. "But I just received the update, and it looks like you and Magnusson are go for a minimum, five orbit reconnaissance."

"Understood." Basso capitulated (Why fight it? He would look for someone he didn't know to take it out on.) and set his commlock on the beige porcelain so he could finish toweling off.

"I thought you were excited to get back to flying, dear," Vesta Basso smoothed the unscented body lotion along her lean, olive skinned arms. She was running late as she pulled on her rust colored tunic. Third shift technician Ed Malcom would bitch and moan about his aching corns and back pain as she would relieve him from his tour of duty. He would bray on and on as Vesta Basso would check through her tool cart and scan the list of jobs that Caroline Kennedy would hand to her on the way back to the Technical hub to compile the status reports for Angelina Carter. Ed's stomach would rumble and he would leave to the dining complex, limping and moaning down the corridor.

The routine hadn't changed in 3 years.

"You've been doing the ground patrol route for the past month, driving past rock after rock after rock. It would drive me nuts." She admitted. "I thought you welcomed the change."

"I want more stick time." The pilot accorded, pulling his flares up. His last mission before taking his snail-tour of the Moon had been a hardware transfer to the Contamination Control Program in the Locus Somniorum. The HAB module was an empty closet...no one on Alpha had acquired any type of disease, more royal than a gnawing case of the Shingles. His cargo was an awkward, unsophisticated microwave landing system. Supply-Three was the last ship he had helmed, which was unfortunate since he was a far better star sailor than he was a driver. "On the other hand...." He chuckled absurdly. "They've cancelled this probe three times. The first time it was because Severance was dreaming up problems with the interface load." He winked, and started pulling his tunic over his left arm. "The second time, Dr. Belgarian was the agent provocateur. Untrustworthy telemetry, he says. Since the planet doesn't revolve, there's no way of knowing what is on the other side. We need 'assists,' he says.

"And I wholeheartedly agreed. The 'assists' would have been a good survey mission but five seconds into the briefing, Tavadi burned the idea at the stake." He zipped his sleeve. For some inexplicable reason, he searched the medicine cabinet for the commlock that was right beneath his nose. "Then Professor Bergman resurrected the idea, embraced it, and then murdered it again after studying the long-range, spectroscopic data.

"We need consensus." Basso decided, fixing the tan belt to his waist. He was forty-eight years old, and still no sign of gray hair. Even after loathsome months of crossing the trackless, lunar terrain with William Gregory Harms, III. "Will this be a new beginning for us all, or are they conspiring to give Francesco Basso acid reflux disease?" He challenged, speaking in the third person. "Tune in next week, same time, same channel, same rude people."

"No one's exempt from the fickleness of management," she agreed, glimpsing into the mirror one last time and straightening her hair clip. "Take my department. Chris Potter can't decide if we work in pairs or work by ourselves maintaining electronics. First it was pairs. Then, I guess he saw we were having too much fun, then it was back to solitary work. There's talk now of assigning us in pairs again for certain jobs."

"I guess you just have to go with the flow," she decided with a sigh. "Have a good day and be careful out there. Don't forget, cards tonight at the Talics." She kissed him hurriedly then quickly walked out of their quarters.

**********

Angelina Carter was uncomfortably perched in the pretzel chair, next to a fibercasted Steve Gardner in Medical Center.

"I suck at mining," Angelina admitted, scribbling notes that were barely legible. "I don't know what I'm doing." Steve Gardner had stepped left instead of right on the scaffolding and fell 30 feet, resulting in multiple leg fractures.

"That's true," Gardner admitted. He 'heh'ed. "It's not 'just a bunch of rocks', is it, Ang? That's OK. Listen to the 'expert', yours truly, and you'll get along just fine. I look at this as an opportunity for you to appreciate my talent and remarkable abilities as a mining engineer."

"Don't be so pompous," she remarked with a smirk. "Did you hit your head or something? Since when did you acquire the technical superiority complex?"

Gardner sat back relaxed in a semi morphine haze, grinning and folding hands behind head.

"I suppose I see your point regarding speed of digging and such," she surveyed the map. "I'll pass that piece of info on to Alan and take more seismic measurements. Fortunately there has not been a lot of activity in the area and..."

She was interrupted by the opening of the double doors and her son Nicky, merrily running into the room. Alan Carter was behind him. The boy grabbed the remote from the stand and pointed it toward the television.

"HEY!" Gardner shouted. "Nickster! I know what time it is! Nyuk, Nyuk, Nyuk...."

The DVD player came to life and the comedic trio, The Three Stooges, appeared on the screen. The injured engineer and the child were engrossed with comedy from a bygone era. Her son barely noticed his mother kissing him on the cheek, bursting out in laughter as Moe walloped a 2x4 on Curly's cue ball head.

"I really don't think he should be watching something so violent, Bob," Ang remarked as she passed Mathias. "I'll pick him up later for lunch. Please don't let him sit there and watch that all morning."

"Not to worry." The physician waved unreliably. "You can count on me."

She glanced at Mathias, not believing him, then left with Carter. Mathias gave his opinion over a chess game the previous week that being stressed out over the boy watching too much Three Stooges was not a good reason to get stressed out. Nicky Carter had already seen more violence in his young life such that 70 year old slapstick comedy was trivial. Her desire, though, to provide a 'normal' upbringing in an abnormal world was irrational, she knew, but she wanted it anyway. They headed toward the elevator to the lower levels.

"Does it seem a little peppery to you, petunia?" The pilot asked convivially while tugging at his open neck uniform. "I could swear that planetoid is giving us a dose. According to Lorna O'Brian the temperature there is over a thousand degrees Centigrade.

"What an oven."

The idea was humongous.

**********

"No it's not." Victor Bergman disallowed, his eye huge in the magnifying glass before lowering the Endothermic scan plate. "It's accurate to say that these readings indicate a climate that is yellow hot, but the TM we acquired from the Explorer satellite was only partly correct. John, don't ask me how because I can't tell you, but somehow the night side is a completely different situation.

"And I do mean 'different.'"

"Tropical conditions?" The commander recounted. The report was an oxymoron. A complete mismate to the information they had gathered aforehand. "I haven't gotten used to the idea that half the planet could be in shadow. There's no host."

"No, there isn't." The professor jostled. "Still, our latest scans show less inimical temperatures, not to mention water, vegetation, a breathable atmosphere. There was quite a row about this in the Astrophysics Lab, I can tell you."

High atop the Ten Parabola, stellar cartographer Carroll Severance broke away from his dual action lens and retracted the lever that would adjust the hydraulics on the apotheosized telescope.

Koenig's reaction was a phenomenal shake of the head.

"A planet that has no sun, yet there's warming--extreme, calefactious heat, but on the far side, the temperatures are agreeable? Victor...."

"It's possible if there is sufficient volcanic activity, and a thinner crust." Bergman held up the long range photographs. "However, statistically, it is more likely to occur all over the planet. That's why this planet is fascinating, in that it is occurring mostly on one side. It is an anomaly, to be sure."

"It is certainly worth checking out with a reconnaissance flight, at least to gather data."

**********

"Excellent!" Angelina Carter, in radiation suit, rubbed her gloved hands together as four miners, also in radiation suits, brought out 4 lead lined canisters containing uranium on the forklift. They waved at her as they passed her en route to the processing center.

"That load will give us power for another three years," she remarked to the leader of the operation, Captain Alan Carter. She had been up nights, stressed out of her mind in recent weeks because the uranium supply had dipped to the dangerously low '6 month supply' level.

"Heck, if not here," she lowered her voice, "maybe we could use it as start up fuels for a reactor on Baal." She was putting the cart before the horse, WAY before the horse, as she usually did when there was even the slimmest hope of moving off the former earth moon when they came close to a planet. "Yeah," she continued. "Building a reactor from scratch is going to be quite a project but really, nuclear energy is the way to go. Who's to say there won't be plenty of fuel on Baal? Not all of us are cut out to be farmers. Maybe Melita has the green thumb with plants but I'm just not good with them. I just don't have a vibe with plants. We will need power though, so that is where Joe and Joan and Carter and I will come in."

She stopped, realizing that she was rambling, noting the amused look in Alan's face. She only rambled though, when she was nervous. She had no reason to be nervous but a nagging feeling of dread was crawling down the Chief of Technical's throat and settling in the pit of her stomach.

"ALRIGHT, GOOD ONE." Carter called to the surrounding team members--still delighted over Angs' mental impairment. "THAT WAS A DOODLE FOR SURE. LET'S SHUT DOWN THE PAYLOADERS, AND GET THEM ROLLING. GUAN, PULL THE PLUG ON THOSE ACCUMULATORS, AND WE'LL CLOSE OUT ARTEMIS.

"NEXT STOP...." He said coyly, looking directly at the technical chief. "THE KARST PROMONTORY. BEING AS HOW WE'RE ON A TIGHT SCHEDULE, IF YOU WANT TO YAK' IT UP, DO SO WHILE WALKING."

The native, fifty-five degree constant climate was making the pilot more congenial--right now it was far more comfortable than baking like a jacketed potato in the Moonbase network. The grit rolled from the back of his neck.

It felt a little off, but the whole jimhickey could collapse on his head, and Alan Carter wouldn't care.

Famous last words.

He romantically extended his forearm and elbow.

"Ready for another jig,' cutie?"

She smiled, blushing with sudden salaciousness behind the visor. "Sure, why not," she purred slightly, taking his arm. Everything would be alright, right? Maybe it was just the fact she really did not enjoy being in a dungeon like place as the lower levels. The air was cooler, which was nice, as she removed her helmet, but the feeling of being closed in disturbed her.

The distraction of her husband caused her to miss the jump in the seismometer digital reading but it quickly returned to normal just as she glanced down at the instrument again.

**********

Controller Zed Astrin put away his coffee cup, and uncrossed his legs so he could lean closer to the microphone. White beard stubble was showing on his chin, and neck--the culmination of a dreary cycle that could end only in death by numbers. And death by several other things too. Right now, he was discomfited...lethargic, and his face was its own chaperone.

"Phase One crew, lift off."

**********

The ascent engines were lit, and the oppressive, hot aerosol surrounding Moonbase Alpha was interrupted by Eagle One's slow, forty-five degree climb into orbit.

**********

"Alpha, this is Eagle One." Francesco Basso reported, pinned to his couch with a 5-G stomach but holding the yoke firmly. "NAVAID Control is good. We have green lights on the forward ops. Standing by for Mode One Charlie."

On the opposite side of the cabin, command module pilot Ron Magnusson held vigil over the manual thruster switches.

"Copy." Pierre Danielle answered routinely. "On my mark...Mode One Charlie."

Ignorance was bliss.

*************

"What?" Adisa Talic blurted from the data analyst station. Zed Astrin looked up and Pierre Danielle gave her a curious sidewise glance. "Emma, asked computer to confirm." She spoke to Assistance Computer Chief Black, who had been so engrossed in processing Carroll Severance's astronomical calculations that she jumped at the sudden urgency in Talic's voice.

Emma Black swiveled the computer workstation toward the big screen as she transferred the sensor data into the main server.

"What's going on?" Astrin was next to Adisa in a flash.

Emma's jaw dropped as she turned toward Adisa, while the notation displayed on Adisa's monitor.

"Double check that," Astrin blurted as he leapt up the stairs and stabbed the white button on Koenig's desk. "Commander Koenig. Please report to Main Mission. Urgent!"

************

"This is strange," Ang pulled Ahn Nguyen aside. "I'm getting an increase in seismic activity."

"Wait second," Ahn took the meter. Then, she whacked it gently against the I-beam support. "Now what it say?"

"Uh, the reading is normal." Angelina frowned.

"Yeah, this one does that all time. I think Ed Malcom 'fixed' it but it not working right since then. Don't worry." Ahn went on. "If there is significant activity, you feel it."

"Hey, Harmon," she shouted and trotted ahead. "Another jackhammer coming down in about 20 minutes."

Angelina studied the meter. The reading was steady, normal. She shrugged and clipped the meter to her belt, intent on taking it to Potter to be checked when she went up for lunch.

************

Commander Koenig and Professor Bergman charged into Main Mission under the right archway.

"We've checked the sensors," Astrin offered. "They are fully functioning without known faults. The data appears to be solid."

The commander grabbed the pile of green bar sheets with a dread that was glandular. He barely had a chance to review that, or the nictitating, flashing delta on Talic's geochemistry tab.

Bergman saw it though, just before the end.

"Oh no." He muttered briefly, insolubly. Futurelessly. Then came the presage from the master computer banks. It was death knell for the Baal planetoid.

"DANGER...NEAR LUNAR OBJECT IN SUPERMASSIVE STATE...." The female, AI voice of the logic circuit preempted the profound shrillness of the electronic alarm pulse. "THERMAL LIMIT EXCEEDED. RECIPROCAL, SPATIAL DETONATION IS IMMINENT...."

"INTERMIDIATE SPEED...."

"COMMANDER." Dr. Gurov, the geophysicist stationed in the MPSR room cried vehemently from the open hatch at the end of the mainframe module.

Having heard the deafening clapper, Helena Russell entered through Koenig's office and stumbled unbelievingly, dreamily, past Truman 'Abashed' Starns, who stood frozen on the balcony stairs next to Dot' Sullivan, MD.

The expression (2-x) Motion5 blinked involuntarily on the big screen but by now no one was watching.

"CONDITION RED." John Koenig blared, his voice cracking from the weight of abolition. "PLASMA BARRIER, NOW."

But Adisa Talic was glacial--immobilized by incipient, devious horror.

"DID YOU HEAR WHAT I SAID?"

Vesta Basso stood confused amid the chaos. One moment she was under the Technical station, changing out a monitor fuse, the next all hell had broken loose. She glanced at the big screen then looked helplessly at Pierre Danielle.

She wasn't sure what was happening to the planet but she knew it wasn't good. She also had another feeling. The moment the wife of an astronaut dreaded was upon her.

"Frank," she whispered inaudibly, expressionlessly, as Professor Bergman gently but firmly pushed aside a stunned Talic and initiated the sequence for the defense screens.

"Screens up!" Bergman reported as the shaking commenced. With one hand he steadied himself on the data analyst desk and with the other, he held on to Data Analyst Adisa Talic who got a grip on her mental shock.

"Full power!" She supplemented as the shaking leaped exponentially up the lunar Richter scale. Out of the corner of her eye, Controller Paul Morrow and Chief Data Analyst Sandra Benes stumbled under the left archway, weaving about to their places.

June Akaiwa-Quenton, with the added bulk of a full term pregnancy, lost her balance and stumbled backwards, landing against Helena Russell, who inserted herself as willing human cushion between June and the computer deck. Sparks ignited as Russell collided with the bank of computers next to the MSR doorway.

Truman Starns used his spine to impede the fracturing weight of the Level-A support beam, which nearly collapsed, cables and all, atop Dorothy Sullivan. He polished the linoleum with his teeth.

From the top of his head to the heels of his boots, a gray loess and mortar covered John Koenig chose his fall--his target, the reinforced area beneath the balustrade where Bergman and Russell had been blown. Scrabbling frantically for his commlock, he managed to clear his right leg before panel number two overloaded, and burst, sending out an ordinance of fire and metallic shards.

Vesta Basso, face streaked with blood, grime and a widow's tears clung to one of the metal stanchions beneath the technical desk.

************

Several stories under, it took all of 3 seconds for Angelina Carter to realize her seismic meter was indeed working properly as the ground began to shake, matching the spike and continued high readout on the digital LCD.Once in awhile, Ed Malcom actually fixed something correctly; this was ne of those times.

"LOOK OUT!!!" Phil Geist violently pulled Angelina out from under a roof section, as he happened to catch a glimpse of a stress crack stressing out. Granite boulders pummeled to the ground where the Chief of Technical Operations stood one half second beforehand.

Koenig's "GET OUT OF THERE, CARTER!!" on her husband's commlock, as he attempted to assess the near futile situation, was a useless irony to their situation as the rumbling and screaming escalated in the lower levels.

Specialist Harmon wailed as hardware and barrels of U238 munched him from the overturned bed of the armored rover.

**********

In the high dome of the Ten Parabola, stellar cartographer Carroll Severance wasn't there to see the main power grid negated. He was too busy being unconscious from the thud of the gunmetal gray circuit box, which fell from the telescope's barrel. Striking him upon the head, it sent the astronomer down the deep, dark rabbit hole.

He dropped to the floor like a concrete block, his chair, still swiveling in the glancing dust.

Somewhere in the bilious vapor cloud, Specialist Navas cried out, strangling on debris and tremendous gore from the exposed artery of her mangled shoulder.

*********

"EAGLE ONE." CapComm Pierre Danielle persevered from the epicenter of hurricane carnage. But his TTT link-up was broken and--ingenuously said--astronauts Basso and Magnusson were no longer there to listen.

**********

The fabricated, caissoned bulkheads of Moonbase Alpha--once sprawling in an ovate web across Plato's dry bed--disappeared in the violent onrush of the suprahot, cumulonimbus gases.

**********

The Mare Imbrium was in brief, outre' highlight before the satellite was plunged into the nova's umbra. In abyssal space, the lost legacy of the planet Earth became a submerged, overmastered silhouette. The encompassed Moon--an infinitesimally small, 2,000 kilometer sphere. A black dot on an effulgent, white wall of expanding, divisive atoms.

Chapter One

Blackness surrounded her, then abruptly the red glow of the emergency batteries illuminated the wallpanels. Doctor Helena Russell cautiously sat up, rubbing the back of her neck and slowly, slowly managed a standing position.

There was no sharp pain, mostly aching and pulling, which was a good sign. She tasted blood, though, and realized she had bitten her lip, almost completely through. A flesh wound, it would have to wait for attention.

"June," the doctor crouched down again next to the pregnant operative, who was groaning in semi-consciousness.

"I'm alright, doctor," she rolled over, amazed that she was still alive, "I....oh.." She stopped, alarmed by the drenching wetness of her flares.

"Your water broke," the physician nodded assuredly. "You'll be alright. Stay calm and don't get up."

Helena squinted, running through a preliminary assessment, as barely visible forms returned to shaky standing and sitting positions.

"John," Russell went to Koenig who was sitting up, shaking his head to stop the ringing, as Bergman propped him up with an assisting arm. Koenig had landed on his chin, the gaping cut a reopened childhood wound. It had bled profusely, as was typical of head injuries and his neck and tunic were covered in hemoglobin. "Are you alright?" she queried, as she triaged him for more serious head injury but decided his wounds were superficial, as he rose to his feet.

Without waiting for an answer, she made a beeline to Pierre Danielle, who was hemorrhaging profusely from the nose. The swelling and contorted shape told her the assistant chief of reconn needed her attention more than Bergman or Koenig.

"Paul...." The commander fixated again as he bollixed though the dark--past the huge, Rand McNally globe of the Earth which had, only a mere five minutes ago, resided in his office. His face was streaked with twin rules of blood that was blackened with gumbo sealant. "Sound the base."

The controller shook his head unconditionally. A pie shaped scrap of paper clung to the sweat and silt on his face like a muttonhead's Band-Aid.

"CAN'T DO IT." He replied, fuming. His totality of being was covered with cinders, in his eyebrows, his ears, under his fingernails. Baal had done a number. Somehow, in the shockwave shatter and delirium, his workstation was blown from it's moorings and lay at a right angle to the services desk, both keyboards on the floor, the stem of the swish lamp, separated from its cover by a huge crack. His optical mouse lay buried in the solid state disaster of red, and blue wires before the big screen. "ALL COMMUNICATIONS ARE OUT. WE HAVE NO LONG RANGE FACILITY, NO COMMLOCK FREQUENCIES, NO SATELLITES.

"NOTHING. WE MAY AS WELL TIE STRINGS TO TIN CANS, FOR ALL THE GOOD IT WILL DO."

"What amazes me is the fact that we're still breathing." Bergman observed, his back and right knee in shards of glass agony. "We were in low apogee. Being that close to Baal, it's a miracle we weren't vaporized in the explosion."

"The absorption fields didn't last ten seconds." A scummed-up, sharooshed Benjamin Ouma reported from the capsized, short-circuiting remains of his station. He was a putrefying sight. At least some things had not changed.

"HOW COULD THEY?" Sandra Benes argued tepidly. Behind her, the inestimable, gross, concussed Truman Starns sought to extinguish the flames of the fricasseed, master computer with a can of cool-dry. "NONE OF OUR UTILITIES WERE DESIGNED TO WITHSTAND BLOWOUTS OF THAT MAGNITUDE."

"WELL, WE'RE REAL SORRY ABOUT THAT, SANDRA." Koenig volleyed back. His vexation had a name, and it was two dead pilots, Eagle One, and God knew how many others. He had yet to see the score card...frankly, didn't want to. "THE NEXT TIME A GODDAMN PLANET COMES APART, WE'LL BE SURE TO RSVP YOU FIRST."

Zed Astrin winced in response to the torture of his new floating rib. His malaise, worsened by the sight of Emma Black, unconscious near the vision ports, with her rived tunic flipped back to expose her left breast. Helena Russell knelt beside her, respectfully pulling the material back into place while giving the commander and the professor an indeterminate look.

The commander would have, could have gone further in flaming the services manager, were it not for the sounds of gelid breath that emanated from the stairs just beside him. Helena Russell was already there. Her patient was there in body, if not spirit.

"Vesta?" The physician inquired, one survivor to another, of the catatonic woman who sat motionless with her algor palms dangling between her legs.

Koenig stooped to assist, but it was, perhaps, too late for this type of damage control.

"Physical shock," Russell mumbled as she assessed the stricken woman. "It is not trivial." She stood up and took a blanket from the first aid unit on the wall and draped it around Vesta Basso's shoulders. The cause of the condition was obvious.

"If I can't contact Medical, we need to at least start bringing people down there for treatment." She blinked, discouraged as all the monitors displayed ominous static and snow.

As if to underscore the urgency of the predicament of the more seriously wounded, Dr. Sullivan made eye contact with her, finishing her assessment of the prone Harness Bull Mohammad Zamari. The security man's fall from the balcony resulted in his final physical exam. No autopsy would be necessary, judging from the amount of gray matter on the tile floor which had only minutes before composed of the left side of his brain. Sullivan left the dead man, skirting around the large pool of coagulating blood, to attend Pamela Rose, who sat on the steps next to the right archway.

Her lower left arm was swollen like a balloon, but the bumps under her flame tunic along with the rust colored spots told her a compound fracture was likely. Rose promptly dry heaved partly in pain and partly from the gruesome sight of her own bones protruding from her arm as Sullivan tore away the sleeve.

"The bulkhead on Level D of the Command Tower is sealed," Lars Manroot gave them the gloomy news from under the left archway. Manroot had been on his way back to Main Mission from central computer when Baal transitioned from planet to chunks, opting to take the stairs instead of the elevator. It was a good thing since lunar debris from the explosion took out the command tower elevator. He had escaped with his life and he was relatively unscathed.

It was Lars Manroot's "lucky" day.

"We are completely cut off from the rest of the base." Manroot delivered the conclusion, and glanced in dismay at the chaos of wires, cables and upturned work stations in Main Mission.

"John...." Victor Bergman said affirmatively, while motioning the commander towards one of the lower vision ports that was not encrusted with entrails from the Baal planetoid.

Koenig left Manroot to his thoughts of hopelessness, and topped the stairs. Palms resting on the sill, he reconnoitered the area below the command tower. Launch Pad One was gone/submerged/interred; likewise, about one third of crescent shaped, Technical HAB; of the fabrication unit, there was no sign and Residence Building-C--the largest dormitory on the base, was seen from only the third story up. Some of the transparencies seemed too opaque; garish steam seemed to roil away--into the void; evidence of explosive decompression.

There was no need to worry about the huge, Vehicle Assembly Building. It was already underground. Again, Moonbase Alpha found itself remodeled by forces beyond its comprehension.

"We have to get the ground crews moving as soon as possible." Koenig conceived, eyes moving truculently from east to west. Through the mire, he could just make out a trio of LRV's--probably dispatched from security HQ to survey the random, chaotic, Hand Of God destruction. The lead car started to roll through the sand towards the command tower which evidenced some surviving structure, even if it was quixotic. "We need to find out the condition of the Alpine Valley refineries."

"The DEFCON Corridor?" Bergman divined.

"Maybe." Koenig said while walking back towards the riches-to-rags group. "EVERYONE, LISTEN. OUR SITUATION IS GRAVE, BUT HELP IS ON THE WAY. AS MANY OF YOU ALREADY KNOW, ALPHA WAS DESIGNED WITH CERTAIN FAILSAFES.

"In the event of nuclear war." He expostulated without pride. "THERE'S AN EMERGENCY EGRESS TO THIS UNIT. IT CONNECTS TO THE REST OF THE MOONBASE NETWORK. UNFORTUNATELY, THE CONNECTOR IS UNDERGROUND, SO IT MAY TAKE SOME TIME TO DIG OURSELVES OUT.

"Helena...do what you can here." The commander said with reserve. "Victor, you and Starns are with me. Paul, it's imperative that we get communications up and running again."

Morrow nodded in obeisance, but he was a magician without a top hat, or a rabbit to pull.

Sandra glanced at Morrow then at Koenig, wanting to shed her opinion on the Commander but decided her quickly evaporating energy reserve would be best spent untangling the mess of cables and wires that was the communication station. She disappeared under the desk mumbling something about futility as Ben Ouma reached for Vesta Basso's tool cart. Curiously, the widowed technician's cart was the only piece of furniture which had not been upturned when Baal was wrented asunder.

"Lars," Helena Russell finished splinting Pamela Rose's arm and glanced at the next stricken Alphan, "We need your help." She nodded to Koenig, Bergman and Starn.

"Be careful," she called as the trio departed through the Commander's office.

**********

"...oh please...." Ed Malcom beefed and bellyached. Bargaining, even though he was the only member of the expedition who was completely unharmed. Landing on his fat ass was his only date with destiny. "I'm dying."

"SHUT YOUR HOLE." Carter derogated him while examining the motionless, intractable treads of the armored truck. "YOU'RE NOT DYING." The pilot scolded--whacked and disgusted and leaning against the scrunched, evacuated fresh water tank. "YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT DEATH IS."

"Ed," Angelina Carter interrupted kindly and with surprising patience. "Go help Ahn find the maglights. We need some more lighting in here other than our commlocks."

He glanced at her miserably, like a fat mangy dog, then lumbered away to the Vietnamese technician, who gave the Chief of Technical a less than appreciative look. In the mind of the petite specialist, she was better off finding the flashlights herself. She was probably right. However, Ang had to get Malcom away from Carter. If he wasn't careful, the obese technician would eventually get on the Chief of Reconn's last nerve and end up on the receiving end of Carter's infamous left hook.

"Four people are dead, all mining engineers" Angelina reported to Alan. It was unfortunate to lose the expertise in their situation. "Blake Dekker, Tim Robbins, Brett Kelleher and Tina Popadopolus. Two people are seriously injured and will need to be carried on makeshift stretchers." She went on after suppressing a sigh, which did not escape his detection. "Everyone else appears to be ambulatory, suffering either possible broken arms or cuts and scrapes.....except for Ed."

"Are you alright?" She gently turned his left elbow to get a better look at the jagged cut which appeared to have mangled both his orange sleeve and his biceps.

She winced, not only because of the deep cut in his arm but also from the ache in her left side. On the other hand, she ached all over and pain meant she was alive.

"Besides feeling like a Berk, I'm midland." Carter replied, searching for an azimuth but finding only the blackness. "I GUESS I SHOULD HAVE DOUBLE CHECKED OUR ODDS IN THE LUNAR GEOLOGY BACK ROOM. MAYBE THOSE BOUNDERS WOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER."

Phil Geist, limping on a splintered, left ankle took the remark as an insult, which is precisely what it was intended to be.

"REALLY?" The mining chief reproved him. "ALAN, IT'S NICE TO KNOW THAT YOU'RE COMPLETED UNSPOILED BY FAILURE. AND FOR YOUR INFORMATION, THIS ISN'T A BLIND VALLEY. ARTEMIS IS A DEVELOPED SECTION AND HAS BEEN SINCE THE LATE EIGHTIES.

"NO SEIZMIC ACTIVITY."

"You could have fooled me." Carter ragged back. "Seems like a few minutes ago, the mountains were coming down on our heads. I wonder what made me think that, Phil."

"I would concur with that assessment." Specialist Harmon circumscribed. "Though I would not rule out the possibility that this had something to do with our close passage to the planetoid.

"Incidentally, communications are out." He told Ang' and showed her his commlock.

"On our end or theirs?" Communication Specialist, turned bulldozer operator Tim O'Connor joined the group. He typed in a code on his battered commlock.

Harmon's commlock chirped merrily in response.

"Our transmission is fine. It's Main Mission's receivers which are not functioning." O'Connor explained. "I just tried to ping the Main Mission communication server and got no response whatsoever."

"It wouldn't be a surprise if Alpha suffered some damage due to the quake, including the Command Tower." Harmon postulated.

"Actually," Geist debunked, "It would be a surprise if there was damage to the Command Tower. We just reinforced the footings to 50 feet down for stability against lunar quakes."

Ang picked up the dropped seismometer, which was still miraculously functioning. "Six point two on the Richter scale."

"Sure, that's a strong quake," Phil continued, "but the Command Tower would have been easily able to withstand a quake of that magnitude with minimal damage."

He leaned against the gray lunar dirt wall, favoring his injured ankle. "And by minimal, I mean a few dropped papers or overturned chairs, worst case."

Until now, it had not occurred to Angelina Carter there might be any more than minimum impact from the quake on the higher levels of the base. She assumed Nicky and everyone else was safe. What if they weren't? What if the base was destroyed and they were all dead? The thought was making her ill, contributing to the edge of nausea she already had in the pit of her stomach.

"Well, I'm sure they are aware of our situation down here," she pushed black thoughts out of her mind, "and they are working on rescuing us. I think we should stay put and let them find us since our last location was reported just 5 minutes before the quake. They know exactly where to find us."

**********

"I have absolutely no idea what's become of them." John Koenig said ignorantly, stopping at the end of the accessway with Bergman and Starns bringing up the rear. The commander's skin was an uncertain, roseate shade born of the dim glare from the emergency lights. They had negotiated the central stairwell--a disaster of litter only, with one splattered coffee cup, and sheets of data everywhere from an abandoned green flimsy. Starns studied the empty slip cover briefly before tossing it back over his shoulder. At ground level, they turned left, and then another left which brought them to a squat maintenance hatch which still opened on the manual override circuit. "If it still exists, the nuke' corridor is at the bottom of this ramp." He dilated, stooping beneath the door frame. "One more hatch, and there's no telling what's on the other side of it."

Gathering his brio, the commander slid open the transparent door to the nearby disaster locker. The bulbs were out, but beyond lay a red environment suit.

"Victor, help me out with this, will you?" He said as he liberated the helmut and gloves from their couplings.

"Do you smell that?" Starns nettled, sampling the belvedere with his broken, pugnacious nose. "A really aggressive odor." He described, feeling his lungs tighten. "Almost like bleach."

"That's not bleach, I'm afraid." Bergman shook his head and shot a look of immediate concern to Koenig. "Loxx fuel. We should be alright as we can close off areas and contain it." He unfastened Koenig's left glove and pulled. "However, if it gets into the ventilation system of the Artemis Cavern, the last known position of the excavation team, it will affect them."

That is of course, if they are still alive, Bergman thought but did not add to the statement.

"We have to assume they are alive until presented evidence otherwise," Koenig added, practically reading Bergman's mind as he unlatched his right glove. "We HAVE to."

**********

Acting on their own recognizance, Harness Bulls Judge and Theylan rolled across one of the lava tubes, and brought the rover to a halt beside the rent, contuse mountain of wreckage. A galaxy of hypersonic ice floated in the one eighth gravity. All that remained of the collapsed silo was a single, tumtum gantry that remained crippled from the clobbering given to it by the Baal aftershock.

"It's difficult to see anything through the vapor cloud." Theylan observed. The communications carrier in his suit worked just fine. "We've got a downed cistern. I'm not sure what it feeds into, but the wreckage is spread out all over the place."

"What about the MMC?" Pierce Quentin urged on the opposite end of the link, from inside the security cube.

Judge turned slowly in his suit, and aimed the rotating floodlight upwards in the direction of the high annular building with the decussated roof.

"It's there." He replied simply. "The tower is half buried in a drift of regolith." He studied, squinting. "I can see faces in the windows. Alive and kicking. Looks like they're trying to signal us."

**********

"Chum, that's about the billionth time you've tried that." Carter remarked, sitting on the running board of the disabled truck. "I'm starting to think you don't comprehend what it means to have a lift not go to the top floor."

He closed the lid to the First Aid Kit. Its contents were all but depleted and technically they had only been lost in Yonkers for a half hour now.

At his feet lay four, smashed helmut visors. Disaster dictated that he not bother to check the suits.

"Just a thought." Specialist Harmon replied defensively as he turned incurably away from the doors to the heavy equipment elevator.

Unexpectedly, Ed Malcom managed to get a small generator going to provided a minimal light as Angelina splinted Guan Rivera's left leg. She was helping the seriously injured engineer quench his thirst with a sip of the quickly disappearing water supply when Ang straightened, sniffing the air.

The odor was reminiscent of a swimming pool. Jessica Moran, geologist turned nurse and tending the other seriously injured Alphan, Andrea Mathew, noticed it too.

"Maybe the pool sprung a leak," she joked to Mathew, who was already becoming feverish and the smell was particularly amplified to her.

"Bummer," Mathew mumbled, momentarily calmed as she drifted into unconsciousness.

Angelina knew they were no where near the swimming pool. "I'll be right back, Guan."

She found Carter arguing with Jed Harmon who was clearly annoyed. Carter stood up when she approached while Harmon decided to give the lift motor another look.

"Do you smell that?" she whispered after taking him aside. If it what she thought it was, she did not want to start a panic.

"I've been smelling it for the past ten minutes, and it's getting stronger." He acknowledged, while heaving the strap of a pregnant field sack over his shoulder.

"Isn't Launch Pad One's Loxx silo right above us? If that thing sprung a major leak....." she glanced around, "we can't stay here."

"That it is, Pumpkin." The pilot regarded the useless truck, and clapped the battery of his digital GPS, but there was still no direction, north or south. His expression could aptly be described as one of disgust. "The aroma is one hundred percent, solid propellant. This isn't a high cavern so enough of it will turn our lungs to Tapioca." He glossed, aiming his maglite at a doorway, carved in the basalt atop the ledge. "If there's anything down here to oxidize it, then we'll have 'real' trouble; flame, all over our faces, and down our backs.

"You know about Napalm? Same principal."

"What?" Geist impelled him. "Alan, did you always want to be a doomsayer, but never got around to it? For your information, the lousy plumbing doesn't extend that far. We're five kilometers down--over five thousand, fucking meters. How do you figure that a payload spill could reach us here?"

The astronaut looked at Ang.' Just when he thought he had heard, and seen it all--now it was time hear more.

"Unfortunately, the electrical conduits extend down from the launch bay to the more developed areas like this one," Ang answered the question by opening a master electrical main box. Instantly the aroma became more pungent. "If they lose atmosphere, there is a failsafe hatch which seals shut over the main box in the hanger area. Unfortunately for us, that has not happened. However, we are definitely being exposed to whatever is leaking upstairs. Man, that must be quite a spill."

She paused for a minute. It was yet another design flaw on the base which they would have to rectify...if they survived.

"We really have no choice but to go or we will be asphyxiated. It would not be a pretty way to die, Phil, choking on our own vomit through chemically burned throat and nostrils."

"Nuts to that." The pilot depreciated. "Look. Geist. HOW FAR DOES THE LIFE ZONE EXTEND DOWN HERE?"

"There's two square kilometers of habitable volume." The geologist argued. "You want to explore? Well, those are the boundaries, but I hasten to add--that is the way out." He gestured, pointing towards the heavy equipment elevator. "We can dodge the gas but somehow, someway, we're going to have to return here."

"What's down that passage?" Carter nodded towards the rift in the cave wall.

"The Karst Promontory, of course." Geist answered. "And the lower AA Region."

"Then let's start hiking." The pilot decided and felt his throat burn.

Angelina nodded in full agreement, moving toward the seriously wounded and mentally constructing makeshift stretchers with pipes and blankets.

"WHERE WILL WE GO? WHAT ABOUT THE RESCUE TEAM?" The mining chief crossed swords with him. "THIS LITTLE STROLL COULD COST US, MATE."

"There's not going to be any bloody search and rescue. At least not from that direction. That exit is closed." Carter educated them all. "As to your other question, I don't care where we go, Phil, as long as it ain't here.

"We're on our own."

Chapter Two

Without love, life is hard.

Without a base, you're just plain screwed.

"That's encouraging." Truman Starns told Victor Bergman as they waited beside the closed hatch to the DEFCON Corridor. He was referring to the commlock at his hip. After a brief, static glow, a red, blue and green bar line appeared. It was still bunk useless, but the test pattern was a step in the right direction.

Rather than being lost in space, trapped within the confines of a settlement that was blown to oddments, they could now say that they were lost in space and trapped within the confines of an outpost that almost worked, but not quite.

"It is indeed," Bergman nodded in agreement as his commlock micromonitor displayed not only the test pattern but began playing a ping, ping, ping.

He pressed the red hot button in response and Sandra Bene's image appeared on the screen.

"Professor," the petite Data Analyst allowed herself to smile. "It is good to see you. We are obviously making progress."

"Yes, you are, Sandra," Bergman grinned back. "Excellent work."

It was a small victory but the battle of reconstruction was far from over. She nodded as she signed off.

**********

In Main Mission Control, Paul Morrow was at a loss for words. How to define the efficacy of damage to his workstation. Well, actually there was a way to define it. It sucked; was, in fact, busted to offal, spaceage plastic refuse. The entire complex was a silicone nightmare--all except for his paper shredder, which was good since he was giving serious thought to sticking his head in it.

Lars Manroot was attempting to splice a loop of coaxial cable when the voices came. It took a second to clarify that it was not the product of Schizophrenia. A darting glance from Helena Russell seemed to support his case for competence, and the fact that the dialogue was coming, not from limbo, but from the speaker beneath the big screen.

"...east-west damage control initiating a hold...."

"...report on C-Band, Unified S-Band...."

"...and Dyronforth...all effected areas evacuated...."

"Paul?" Helena Russell said fulgidly.

Morrow dropped his handful of jumbo, self regulating garbage and cut across the trench, moving the physician gently aside so he could increase the volume.

"Audio communication restored to 60% of the base," Sandra responded from under the communication station. All one could see was her tan flares sticking out one side of the station and Lars Manroot's flares protruding from the other side. "Some interbase commlock visual also restored but signal depends mainly on location."

"That is good news," a stressed but professional Russell responded. She turned abruptly as a wail from June Akaiwa -Quenton sent her dashing back through the Commander's office and into the auxiliary access corridor. The laboring woman had been removed from the computer deck for the sake of privacy but the big doors separating Koenig's Office and Main Mission or the side access were not operating; priority to repair them was low.

**********

John Koenig's commlock was not even granted the pittance of static. It remained powerless, and inutile. Exactly the way his command seemed so much of the time. After walking twenty five meters down the ramp in full pack, and pressure suit, he stopped, and opened the door to the nuke' highway via the manual override panel.

Seeing what was on the other side, he emitted a potent sigh of relief. After removing the intake hose, he unsealed his visor and pulled it back.

"How bad is it?" He asked of Pierce Quenton, and his team of harness bulls. Pete Garforth was there to represent Technical Section along with several EMT's, and variegated infirm patricians.

**********

Garforth took one look at the crud in his coffee cup and decided he no longer needed the caffeine jolt. The other attendants of the command conference preferred dry, unbearable stress.

"Had we all died, it would have been worse...." Michelle Cranston trailed from a position at the round table that was normally occupied by Angelina Carter. This did nothing to make the predicament seem more picayune. Like the commander's office, that line of reasoning was a malformed mess.

Sandra Benes gave Cranston a bizarre look which said 'DUH'. She did not open her mouth though because she knew she'd regret what would come out. The Chief of Services was exhausted. After being on her back under the Analyst Station for 6 hours, when access to the rest of the base was restored she went to status her area and people. Hydroponics was in relatively good shape but the dining complex and main kitchen had been destroyed. Gonzales had just closed the hatch when Baal came apart. Miraculously, no one was in the kitchen area, the appliances of which were now scattered on the lunar surface.

"Communication has been restored to 95% of the base and all internal commlock functions are operating within limited range," Benes reported the 'good news' to Koenig after educating him on the canteen situation. "We still though, have not been able to contact the excavation party because the signal amplifiers are being repaired."

"We do know that at least some of the party may be alive," Sandra continued, "as we did get one sensor functioning and we were able to pick up life signs. They were weak signals as the amplifier is iffy and needs further refinement but we were at least getting them. Commander, for some reason, though, they have moved from their last reported position. In fact, they are moving further away from the base rather than staying near the main cargo lift."

"Had they stayed, it wouldn't have mattered." Garforth included, setting aside his unscrumptious, smegma' coffee. There was a Y-shaped, silvery crack in the corner vision port where he stood. Were it not for the collision shielding, they would all be building castles in Plato's protohistoric soil instead of sitting in Koenig's office. The Gorski rubbertree plant fantastically survived the hail of demise that occurred an hour earlier. "The elevator isn't responding, and it's not an electrical problem. The call is being transmitted, but there's no movement. The bottom of the car is outfitted with boosters which allow it to move upwards at 300 meters per second. I theorize that those were damaged and that probably, their fuel requirements are all over the floor of the shaft.

"There's no way to be certain."

"Backup?" Koenig asked impatiently while grinding his DC hardcopy. Beside him, Victor Bergman shrank, compulsively tapping the lid of his ink pen against his front teeth.

"Yes." Garforth explained. "We could reel it in on cable--it would take forever, but it's been done before. The problem there is that something is obstructing the shaft." He shrugged his gloomy shoulders. "We're going to drop a camera down...see what's up with it...if it's something we can remove. The trouble is--the deeper you go, the harder it is to effect repairs. They're five kilometers down."

"Why not drop some C-4 into the shaft?" Truman Starns ascertained. "Or a PETN grenade? That might free it up."

"It could." Garforth suspected. "We might also end up doing irreparable damage to the cable trunking. The line might break, and the car would fall--and they would be smeared all over the cave floor--and they would die. There will always be a high risk factor for mining operations on those levels."

"There is a high risk factor for everyone out here no matter what they do," Sandra Benes amended sadly, folding her hands over her 5 high stack of flimsies, the top of which was a casualty report for her section.

"Are there other possible access points to the mines?" Koenig redirected the subject to the rescue of the excavation team.

"Commander, there is the remote possibility that we could retrieve them using the service hatch on the Lohrman Rille." Ben Dover, the assistant mining director offered. "It's forty meters, northwest of the octane reservoir."

He was a feverish man who could not keep his hands away from his face.

In the docile moonlight, his shadow resembled that of Bullwinkle, The Moose.

"I know that accessway." Challenged a sphinxlike Garforth. "The tunnel runs diagonal to the Karst Promontory, but it only extends for one kilometer."

"Right," Dover replied while turning on the projector which was activated to his laptop and pulling up an AutoCAD file. "You can see the access tunnel in green. Notice the 'blue line'." He deftly moved his laser pointer across the wall. "That blue line connects the Karst Promontory to the access tunnel. However, that is a ventilation shaft. It is about 1/2 meter square, though, and it is almost completely vertical."

Dover shook his head. "The toughest part will be for them to actually get to Karst Promontory. It is pretty rough even by mining standards. There are lots of hazards, fragile terrain, loose rocks, steep drops, to name a few. Its a challenge for those trained in the field."

**********

"Way to go, fossil." Carter trampled with sadism, and exacting dislike. "You're so slow, I betcha' on Earth you held a hair dryer at passing cars to see if they'd brake."

Phil Geist yawped at the lack of organization, and throwing his hands in the air, hobbled his way past Ang.'

Work on the grotto stairwell was not progressing. The former, aluminum postern lay in a crumpled heap--bulldozed beyond recognition by Baal.

"GET OFF MY BACK." Ed Malcom sniveled with great, pansy distress. He carried the huge samples of Pyroxene in both armpits, and dropped them--with a brutal crack of the lumbar each and every time--in the growing pile ten meters beneath the cave exit. "ASS HAT."

"Ass hat?" The pilot imitated the cellulite retaining technician. "Now, that hurt."

"WHY AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO GETS A WORKOUT?" Deadhead Ed wailed, perspiring oil--his breath laboring in tortured, cheynes-stokes. He bent to retrieve the next step--a huge, octagonal block of Olivine, and in the meanwhile the rest of the mining party was entertained by the sight of his hazardous, plumber's butt.

"Everyone else has sustained some kind of injury." Carter replied, diligently checking his GPS for signs of signal. "All except for you and me, berk, and between the two of us, I'm the one who is handsome and smart.

"So keep packing."

Angelina Carter was beyond sympathy for the self-centered technician as she ignored his pitiful, groveling look, pouting for her to run interference for him.

"He's in charge, Ed," she motioned to Carter. "Don't look to me for support or clemency. Do what he says."

She was cold and unwavering. Just 20 minutes before, they had lost the other seriously injured member of the excavation team. Her arms still ached from the fruitless administration of CPR.

"Andrea is still critical but we've gotten the blood loss to a stop," Angelina reported on the condition of the remaining near death team member. Her tattered sleeves along with tunic and flares encrusted with dirt, blood and sweat underscored the harsh reality of their situation. "She's tough but her real enemy now is infection."

She closed her eyes and sighed, running her hand through disheveled hair. "Alan, by the time Ed finishes the stairs, we're all going to be dead."

"Jed Harmon says there is another way down but it is steep. It would require ropes and harnesses."

She glanced at O'Connor, who was still programming and tweaking his commlock. "Still nothing from the base," she answered the question with a shrug. O'Connor's swollen and likely broken right wrist prohibited his participation in any heavy lifting. "But he is still working on it. He is actually attempting to send a Morse code signal using a lower frequency band."

Her left side still ached and the need to take breaks was becoming more necessary. Unbeknownst to her, her blood pressure had been slowly declining while her heart rate was increasing along with the nausea.

Carter conceded the flatness beneath him. It was delightful to torture Ed Malcom, who had served them all, over the years, with treachery, imbecility and unkind body odor. But now was not the time.

"HARMON." He called, dropping the GPS in the left pocket of his cargo pants.

"What?"

"Where's this other passage, and what kind of drop are we looking at?"

**********

Adisa Talic was standing in the ruins of the Trajectory Team desks. On her clipboard there was a stack of maintenance requests that would shame Leo Tolstoy. Standing far away from the hot-wires of the mainframe, Lars Manroot and technician Cliff Aldridge were attempting to right the three hundred pound mainbeam. In the event that worst came to worse, there was a circular saw laying in the inbox of the controller's workstation. The orange extension cord had to be run from the last operational socket on Level-B, which happened to be in the OK Corridor.

She smiled bitterly, compendiously at Umberto Garzon, who passed her in the night with a blackened, twisted, ricked-out hunk of heavy ventilation fan. And so what? What could not make them stronger could only kill them. They only needed it to breath. Who cares? Who....

She had no idea what caused her to look up. Minutes before, there had been nothing on the big screen but impervious nebulosity, and decaying particles. In hindsight, it was more because of the Master Alarm that was triggered at her station than it was the spherule that appeared in a rare divide of uncontaminated space. The data analyst moved with rapidity to her fucked-up, dumpsite station and increased power to the high gain antennae with a screw that no longer had a knob.

Benjamin Ouma and Kate Bullen watched blunderingly from atop the stairs.

"Commander Koenig, we have a contact." Adisa Talic grappled--her booted foot pressing the comm-pedal on the floor so hard as to crack the plaster smothered linoleum. "It's still in the downrange...over 350,000 kilometers outside the vapor cloud, but it's getting closer. It seems to be pitching over--into the rubble, not away from it.

"I believe it's a spacecraft."

Chapter Three

"Oh my god," Marilys Singh mumbled as she peered over the ledge leading nearly vertically down into the Krast Promotory. Her dark eyes were wide with terror and fear of heights.

"I'm not going down there," she shook her head.

"I'm afraid there is no choice," Angelina swallowed the lump in her throat. Her voice echoed as the small rocks fell from the ledge. Her initial opinion was neutral BEFORE Geist lowered a maglite to the floor. Now, they could see how far down it really was, as the light from below cast haunting shadows on the walls.

She wished they had not lowered the light source into the canyon.

Behind her, Jed Harmon and Ahn Nguyen were securing anchors and hooks into the rock, using sledge hammers and crude pliers.

"You go last, lardass," Harmon sneered, through grime, perspiration and matted hair at Malcom. "This is our longest length of rope and if you break it, at least the rest of us will already be down there."

**********

First one down--also in line for an obligatory broken neck, Carter's left boot broke the fragile silicates as he realized, too late, that the embedded ladder ended here.

"GEIST." He called upwards, clamoring to pull himself up. "WE'RE OUT OF WRUNGS. WHAT'S THE DEAL?"

"NO DEAL." The mining chief called, panting and descending. "THAT'S WHY I GAVE YOU THE PITONS. AFTER MINING OUT THE ANORTHITES, WE LOST INTEREST IN THIS SHAFT. YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO TAKE THE HAMMER AND BUILD US A SIDE MOUNT. IT'S THE ONLY WAY."

"BASTARD." Carter yelled angrily. "YOU MIGHT HAVE TOLD ME THAT BEFORE WE GOT STARTED."

"NO TIME FOR TALK...." Geist defended his position. "THOSE WERE YOUR EXACT WORDS, SO DON'T BLAME ME. YOU COULDN'T WAIT TO SQUEEZE YOUR ARSE DOWN THAT HOLE. INCIDENTALLY, YOU'VE GOT A ROUGH MOUTH, PAL--VERY UNBECOMING OF SOMEONE WHO IS SUPPOSED TO BE IN CHARGE OF THIS EXPEDITION. KEEP IT UP AND YOU'LL GET SOMETHING TUNED BESIDES YOUR COMPASS."

"PHIL!!" Geist's immediate supervisor, Angelina Carter, boomed from the side as Harmon and Nguyen quickly lowered the harness past him. "Knock it off. Save your energy for something more productive."

She was not going to reprimand him further. She could sympathize with Geist's irritation with her husband. When weary and completely fatigued, Alan Carter not only vented with extreme sarcasm but he seemed to enjoy it. That was the worst; not the stinging acerbity but the apparent pleasure he seemed to derive from tormenting others with gibe. Naturally, she knew he would later regret acrimony toward those who were boneheads due to circumstance. With assholes by nature, like Ed Malcom, there were no regrets.

"You could have told him the ladder ended in the middle of nowhere before he went down," she chided Geist evenly, handing him the second length of rope. She motioned up and was lowered next to Carter.

"At least we've got lights." The astronaut smiled reassuringly at Angelina. Thirty meters above, the 150 watt floods remained anchored reliably to their ceiling mounts. "How long will that last?"

She gazed at him blankly. She was about to slightly upbraid him for getting into it with Geist when he completely disarmed her with his charm. She had the urge to hug him but even if there was not an audience above, dangling from a rope 30 meters in the air was not the place to get affectionate.

"Tungsen lights run on emergency batteries," she answered looking up. "Pretty efficient and used in the mines on earth. They can last for a few days but it's better than a few hours."

She hoped they would be out of the caverns within hours, not days: long before the lights went out.

"How much further down do you suppose it is to the bottom?" she asked, refusing to look down to estimate it herself. If she did, she knew she would become dizzy, making her headache and nausea worse.

"HEY SWALLOW." He summoned Geist again. "HOW DEEP IS THIS HERE HOLE?"

"ME AGAIN?" The geologist mused. "THERE ARE THREE OTHER PEOPLE ON THIS TEAM WHO CAN SERVE AS FUCKING TOUR GUIDES. ALAN, LET ME KNOW WHAT I DID TO EARN YOUR RESPECT. I'LL CORRECT THAT PROBLEM AT ONCE."

Just below the rim of the orifice, Specialist Harmon expired nerdishly as he wended his way down the truckling tunnel.

"STOP BLOWING HOT AIR, AND ANSWER MY QUESTION." The astronaut clung to the last bar and craned his neck upwards. "HOW FAR DOWN DO WE HAVE TO GO?"

His knuckles were an achromatic, ivory agony that could not bear his own weight. A screaming fall seemed inescapable.

"I DON'T KNOW." Geist conveyed with laxity and insensitivity. "A HUNDRED METERS...MAYBE A HUNDRED AND FIFTY. IT'S BEEN A WHILE. HELL OF A FALL, THOUGH. DON'T LET GO."

"GODDAMNIT." Carter vituperated him. "IS IT A HUNDRED, OR A HUNDRED AND FIFTY. JUST ANSWER MY QUESTION, JAKE."

"A HUNDRED." The mining chief swore with professional oath.

Ang rolled her eyes during the exchange. Unless blood was drawn, there would be no point of intervening. She had discovered that Phil Geist was nearly as hard headed as Alan Carter and was a comparable match to his glib and sometimes caustic tongue.

Stricken with odium, and after entrusting his immortal soul to a clip-on, safety harness, the pilot handed Ang' one of the iron spikes. From someone above, he could smell the charged, rubbery tang of burning wires. There was only one place it could be coming from, and his desire was to be wrong for at least another hour.

"Tinkerbell, take that and maneuver it beneath my boots." He instructed the Technical manager who was dangling beside him in the gear sling. "NYGUEN, GIVE ME SOME SLACK. IF I HAVE TO PLAY GEORGE, THE MOUNTAIN CLIMBER I'LL NEED ROOM." He expounded, abandoning the ladder and allowing himself to descend. "GEIST, YOU GO LAST. RIG A CHECK LINE. THE ONES WHO CAN'T WALK, YOU LOWER THEM. BEFORE SAVING YOUR OWN BUTT, I WANT YOU TO MAKE SURE EVERYONE ELSE MAKES IT OUT OF THE CAVERN. THINK YOU CAN HANDLE THAT, OR IS IT TOO HARD? MAYBE I OUGHT TO LET MALCOM HANDLE THE OPERATION."

"THANKS FOR ASKING." The geologist construed the remark, unfazed.

"Right...." Carter approved as Ang' held the piton against the calcium-slimed walls. "Hold it steady...watch your hands."

He pounded the first one in.

**********

"It appears to be holding just within range of our detection suite." Specialist Modoc analyzed. "It made a plane change about five minutes ago." She exemplared, looking earnestly at Koenig and Bergman. "Two million nautical miles per second."

The MPSR room, normally a claustrophobic, closet of a compartment, was all but wrecked. No thanks to Baal. The surveillance desk was still operational, but the support panels, including BIOCHEMICAL, and ASTROPHYSICAL were a hodgepodge of baked circuits and shattered injection molding.

Koenig stared out the viewport with rectangular long range binoculars. It was a nearly pointless gesture but it lessened the blindness since there was no image on the big screen.

"Cartography estimates the ship is very large, over 3 times the size of Alpha." Koenig commented, comparing a recent star chart of the area to the image from the binocular and noting the addition of a bluish 'dot' in the field.

"It's very impressive." Bergman concurred, rubbing his left shoulder with the blunt end of a T-Square. "And there's more. Our 'guest' was just close enough for the lab to do a particulation study. John, whatever it is, it's utilizing interatomic spacing, and transposing repulsion. A highly advanced process. The only thing we could compare it to--and it was beyond us, even on Earth--is a Vortical Implosion Drive.

"Essentially, it fashions its own collapsars, and then slips through them to emerge safely at its destination on the opposite side."

"Incredible," Koenig acknowledge, slowly lowering the binoculars. "Moving through black holes for them is like plane ride for us on earth. It is the ultimate in travel, Victor. I wonder if..." He was about to speak the unthinkable when he stopped himself.

If this race could create and manipulate black holes for interstellar travel, perhaps they could create and manipulate an event horizon to send the moon back to earth.

The commander and the professor looked up to see the Main Mission Controller standing in the open hatchway.

"Still no reply to our communications." Morrow reported. "The blip is still hovering just outside the corona discharge. Forward momentum has ceased."

"It's not really reasonable to assume they would understand our language." Bergman said sagely. "We may want to use something more symbolic--visual transmissions...maybe even a morse light. Getting them to pay attention is easy." The professor postulated with woeful eyebrows raised. "The question is, do we really want their attention? Considering what just happened?"

"Considering what just happened?" Koenig repeated speculatively. He glanced at the blue pinpoint on the black velvet beyond the lunar landscape. "Are you implying we had something to do with Baal's demise?"

Anything was possible; the Commander had been in space long enough never to dismiss any supposition no matter how bizarre and unlikely it may be. Rather, he had not considered the possibility that their presence could have been a catastrophic trigger.

"Professor, Dr. Nayland asked me to give you this." The controller segued and handed Bergman a folded slip of paper. "Hot from the AP backroom." He joked blackly.

"Look...." The professor smoothed back his hair as the tension turned to lead. "It...would seem...." He reread the memo, authenticating it while Koenig waited. "John, our friends are emanating blackbody radiation." He decided fully, and without debate as he passed the bad word along to the commander. "Now, that could cause us to stand back and reconsider why Baal exploded, couldn't it?"

"Right," Koenig nodded, considering the new information. "Attempting to harness it may have been their undoing. On the other hand, it is a delicate balance and our very presence, our own kinetic energy, may have disrupted this space." He had the feeling of dread again.

"What do you mean, Commander?" Morrow, not a physicist, blinked then looked to Bergman. "Could you please explain the implication of this data in layman terms?"

"Alright." Bergman replied affably, setting aside the T-square, and leaning against one of the panic handles on specialist Modoc's board "I can try. Blackbody radiation--or cavity radiation, as it's sometimes called...." He assumed Morrow was a Rhodes scholar. "...is an absorption system. Like butterflies in a jar, only hotter, deadlier. Imagine how much power you would have if you could find a way to tap the neutronium core of a star." The controller seemed to understand, but Bergman found no fault with him if he was feigning competence.

"It's another reconciliation of the duality of the particle and wave nature of light, Paul" Koenig leaned against the sill, retrieving his quantum physics training from the back of his memory. "Discrete 'packets' or quanta, as we call them, of energy are emitted from the radiating body in the form of a sine wave or modes. In Classical physics, one would expect the radiated energy to increase exponentially to infinity with increasing frequency. Obviously, this is not the case."

"These 'modes' offer us a test for Quantum Theory." The professor elucidated. "After it's been bundled together, it reradiates it's own energy, but not with the characteristics of the radiation that was incident upon it, which probably explains why we were unable to detect any of this until Baal was obliterated.

"Also, figuratively speaking, we're morons. Yes. Out of our element. Even before the blast, I doubt that we would have comprehended it because it's a discovery that's a thousand years ahead of us."

"Your point is?" Morrow hustled with distrust and befuddled antagonism.

"Think of what you could accomplish if you could project that much heat into a standing wave." Bergman smiled, satisfied by the dawn of awareness on the controller's face. "All of those scientific wonders of the universe that we thought to be fantasy, and speculation--practical invisibility screens; unlimited thermal power; the ability to curve space just as that spacecraft appears to be doing. They would all be made feasible." The professor clasped his palms together in a posture of elegiac prayer. "I would also ask you to ponder what might happen if such an awesome force of nature started to run rampant."

Koenig understood where the trail was leading.

"Do you think they lost control of their process, Victor?" Koenig scratched his chin pensively.

Further discussion was temporarily delayed with the appearance of Helena Russell. "John, Victor, Paul," she nodded to the three men. "Communications has been able to pick up life signs from the Medical bracelets. Sandra has them set up on the monitor in your office, John."

Dr. Russell swiveled in the chair as she tapped a series of commands and brought up the image on Koenig's 21" monitor. The screen was split into quadrants, each bearing the name of a different person trapped in the caverns below, refreshing with a different set of 4 every 30 seconds.

"First," she began with the others, including Dr. Mathias, gathered around the Commander's desk, "We are not picking up any signal from 8 individuals. It's one of two possibilities. Either their monitors are malfunctioning or they are dead. Judging from life signs, one person, Andrea Matthew, is critical and likely being carried around. Though I can't rule out injuries, everyone else appear to not be in any immediate danger, with elevated heart rates and blood pressure certainly indicating an abnormal amount of stress level in everyone.

"The only individual apparently unaffected and as close to normal as possible is Ed Malcom."

**********

"WHAT'S THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN?" Carter yelled as a steel mill of orange sparks began to emanate from the casing above.

"I'D SAY IT MEANS THAT WE'RE ABOUT TO LOSE OUR LIGHT SOURCE." Phil Geist was happy to oblige him with an answer over the cacophony of short circuits. "AND PROBABLY OUR LIVES IF WE'RE NOT AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS SHAFT WHEN CURRENT GOES."

Ang glared angrily up at Geist, not that the chief geologist could see her 'if looks could kill' stare. Panic suddenly burst from the group, most of which were descending the rungs, clinging to the wall.

"I thought you said the light could last for days!" Singh cried out accusatorily at Ang.

"I said 'could' last for days," Ang retorted. "There are no guarantees."

"WE STILL HAVE FORTY METERS TO GO." Carter argued for an extension.

"OH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.'" Ed Malcom screamed in agony--nowhere near the kiss of death, except in the killing fields of his own mind--knowing that the end was near, that he was unable to turn a corner, that he was denied a last meal.

"CONGRADULATIONS ON FIGURING THAT OUT." Geist lauded him with mock sincerity. "YOU'RE A REAL SOCK SLAMMER, CARTER."

The geologist could smell the locks of his hair as they smoldered and burned.

Chapter Four

"Alert Two you are GO for the terminal count." CapComm Diane Chaplin spoke into the link. Beside her, Kate Bullen relaxed, holding a red flimsie at her belt. The base was fragmented, but they would always have bad news paperwork.

**********

On pad one, the A-2 Eagle lifted off from the platform, banishing the drifts of prehistoric beach and ascending upwards. Three kilometers downrange, her sistership A-1 was already coasting over the Alpine Valley and heading deep into the red, gasconade of radioactivity that engulfed the Moon. The target was not yet visible, but with a little luck, the coordinate line would carry them within ten million nautical miles of the alien spacer.

If they spun the Roulette wheel just right, they might even live to tell about it.

**********

"Alpha, Alert Two." Astronaut Fanta called over his plantronic headset. "Burnout completed...bandwidth is steady, and angle of rotation is thirty degrees, DW."

"Copy, 30-DW." Chaplin replied, turning to the next page in the flight plan while Benjamin Ouma studied the situation on the mainframe deck.

**********

"I hope you're right about this, professor." Controller Paul Morrow enunciated while leaning forward on his elbows at the command desk. "You realize that RDX is the most powerful non-atomic explosive we have."

"If it's placed just right, we'll have nothing to worry about." The mining AD, Ben Dover proclaimed cheerfully. "We will widen the two kilometer bypass."

Sitting in Koenig's chair, Bergman rubbed his forehead with nauseous digits.

"And if we fail?"

"Then they'll die quickly...mercifully."

"That's unacceptable." Morrow balked, crossing his arms and turning to face the vision ports.

"Let's be optimistic," Bergman replied, not that there was a reason to be but just 'because', "and assume that it works. It will still be a vertical trek but at least we can get down there a bit easier."

"The sooner, the better," Dr. Russell added from her place on the white sofa. She was nervously, unconsciously rubbing her index finger and thumb together. "The air is unbreathable at the upper levels but the life signs indicate they have moved to deeper levels. Since the hydrocarbons are heavier than air, though, the poisonous gases will follow them." She paused, then continued. "We have lost another life indicator. It could be a fault in the medical bracelet or..."

They all mentally completed her sentence.

**********

"Alert One, Alpha," Chaplin spoke evenly into the microphone. "Commander, Alert Two is closing 15 degrees on your starboard side, two nautical miles behind. Verify on your starboard keel camera?"

"Alpha, Alert One." Koenig replied, turning the dial on the A-V control panel. "Rendezvous confirmed, which is unbelievable. We're standing by now for AOS. We can't even see our hands in front of our faces, the aerosol is so dense. So far our DTS is unaffected. I'm impressed." He stated. The morbid humor was not lost on his CMP, Dave Sperla who proffered a stressed-out grin from the confines of his own couch.

"Ouma here, commander." The mainframe chief cut in on the forward monitors. "Your tracking is good...you appear to be on course, but there appears to be some type of heat transfer going on out there. It's not critical--at least not yet--but it is growing, particularly along the centerline of your current trajectory.

"Computer is working up a more reliable prediction. In the mean time, you can relax, knowing that you're in capable hands."

They could count on it.

**********

"Well...here's another point of view." Victor Bergman argued, moving quickly down the steps to the Trench stations, and relegating Ouma to the debouch. "John, that Blackbody solarization has started to expand. We thought the wave was spent, but apparently it's not. If the calcine build-up is just right, you may find yourselves in a very tight corner. I agree, the effects are negligible now, but be aware of your environment." He advised. "So far the alien spacecraft appears to be unfazed, but don't take any unnecessary chances."

Koenig gave a tentative glance to his co-pilot then returned to Bergman's image on the monitor.

"Is there a significant change in frequency and wavelength reading?" Koenig queried.

"Computer can't be certain," Ouma's impassive image invaded the left monitor. "There is too much electromagnetic interference from the remains of Baal to obtain accurate data."

So much for being in 'capable hands.'

**********

"He's dead," Angelina made the pronouncement over the body of Earl Jamison at the bottom of the Krast Promotory to Alan Carter.

It was quite obvious. Jamison's lifeless eyes were wide in terror as he fell to his death. A freak accident of the harness, a loose clip which became unlatched, as he twisted against the vertical cliff. Each circumstance alone would not have cause the lifeline to fail, but the one in a million combination permanently ended Earl Jamison's worries.

The last thing he saw was the extinguishing overhead light, 150 meters above. All they had left were the 6 maglights, actually, 5 now that one of them had been dropped from 20 meters.

It was officially out of service.

Traversing the last 5 meters were Ed Malcom, who was whimpering loudly, and Phil Geist, directly above him.

"Jesus, Alan," Angelina mumbled, morosely and out of earshot of the others. "We're not going to make it. I can smell the fumes already."

"Let me down! LET ME DOWN!!!" Ed Malcom cried out hysterically.

Geist cut the rope and Malcom fell the last two meters, landing with an audible thud on his amply cushioned rear end. The morbidly obese technician shrieked as if he was mortally wounded.

"For God's sake," Ang berated Geist, as he landed carefully, shifting the bulk of his weight to his good leg. "What did you do that for?" She couldn't decide whether Malcom may have actually been injured or if he was being his usual sniveling self. The volume of his whimpering was decreasing so she decided she would not have to check Ed's ass for injury and add more misery to her own ill health.

"He wanted down, so I let him down," Geist replied cheerfully, grinning wickedly.

"This is not a game and I am not amused," Ang snapped coldly at the Mining Chief. "Did you ever consider for a minute, Dr. Geist, that all we need now is for someone else to be injured?!?! Someone who is as large as TWO, perhaps THREE people?!?!" She glared in his face. "If he's hurt then YOU can carry him."

Ang turned without allowing Geist the opportunity to speak and stormed from him, toward a delirious Matthew, moaning for water.

"Geist." Carter broke his vow of absinthian silence with a vendetta, dealt out in spades. "If dumb was dirt, you'd be a whole acre."

The pilot was physically the closest to the Earl Jamison when the bandeau failed. He was there, to watch another human being die; there, to witness the big splat at the bottom in digitally remastered Technicolor; there, to experience the clarets of grue as they blitzed his hiking boots, his lips and his sideburns.

"WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?" The geologist said acerbically, shining his Maglite directly into Carter's eyes.

"OUT OF MY FACE YOU FREAKING' CATTLE TRUCK." The astronaut flared and smacked the flashlight from the mining chief's hand. It flew against an outcropping of bronze stalactites, and rolled away--it's light revealing no answers, only rocks.

"THAT'S ENOUGH OF THAT." Geist reddened--his palm still extended like a crossing guard. Putting his worst foot forward, he pushed Carter backwards with both hands. Using the symbolic language of venom, the pilot responded with a stifling punch to the other man's sternum. Eating the pain like Hershey's Kisses, the mining chief parlayed a greeting card of his own and the mailbox was the astronaut's jaw.

"!!!!!!STOP!!!!!!! STOP IT!!!! BOTH OF YOU!!!!!" Angelina practically shrieked herself hoarse, as she placed herself between the two men, each at opposite arm's length. She glared coldly at them, back and forth. "Phil, I've warned you to put a lid on it. If we are to..."

"WARNED ME?!?!?" He interrupted. "Why don't you tell hubby there to back off? He's being a fu..."

"If we are to get out alive," Ang returned the favor and interrupted Geist, speaking loudly and firmly above him, "it will require everyone to remain calm and keep our wits about us. You two fighting is NOT going to help."

Geist straightened. Biting his tongue as he rethought his case then spoke again. "I am doing the best that I can, Ang." His tone was even and low with obvious effort to keep it that way. "My team lowered everyone in the group who was not an expert rock climber, including the injured with less than adequate equipment. I'm sor..."

"YOU'RE THE BIGGEST BULL-ARTIST SINCE PICASSO." Carter boomed, his hair matted with dirt and with both fists clenched like fated hammers. "I TRUSTED YOU TO KEEP AN EYE ON EVERYONE. NOW JAMISON IS DEAD. WHERE THE FUCK WERE YOU?"

"!!ALAN!!" his wife objected to him dismantling her efforts at Détente.

"Holding the end of his line." The geologist testified stormlessly while wiping blood from the corner of his mouth. "There wasn't much for it." He reflected, inspecting the scarlet skin of his burned palm. "Especially not with Orson Wells blocking my view." He elucidated while offering up Ed Malcom as evidence. "By the way, he'll get us all killed if we live long enough. As long as he's around, we may want to ask ourselves exactly how much oxygen and space do we need."

"Gentlemen." Specialist Harmon said tactfully. "This will do nothing to help us prevail against the classic conflict of humanity versus nature."

"You're right, of course, Jed," Angelina nodded as she sat against a rock. The room was beginning to spin or perhaps it was her head. Resting on her backside made the merry-go-round stop.

"Jed," she went on, ignoring Carter and Geist who were exchanging mutual glares but otherwise silent. "What is the next step to get out of here?"

"We may be out of steps." Harmon conceded, looking to the roof of the cavern for that unknown vent, that uncharted lava tube that existed only in the subjunctive mood. "Where we are...." He trailed, consulting his charts. "Is in an air dome beneath the Karst Promontory."

"Get down to the brass tacs, Geist." Carter moved. "Where's the cab?"

"There isn't one." The mining chief insisted. "This area was shut down due to an inordinate Radon build-up. That's why Technical Section spent six months running conduits from the Electron Oxygen Generator."

"I offer as a footnote...." Harmon entertained. "The minute possibility of escape via the water evacuation ducts."

He hoped that Carter wouldn't brutalize him, knock the lantern from his hand and then abuse him with it.

"Eh?" The astronaut perked.

"It will never work." Geist declaimed. "Those were used for a hydro-erosion project before Breakaway. They're incomplete, and there's no way that fat and thin alike can make it through."

"Your cruelty is discomfiting." Specialist Harmon upheld Ed Malcom. "After all, this man is in shape. Round is a shape."

"He can fend for himself." Carter announced severely. "Not even Dracula would think his blood is worth bottling. Sink or swim you rotten birdcage bottom."

"!!!NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!" Ed Malcom wailed with abandonment.

Angelina ignored the technician, as she moved back to Matthew's side. Andrea Matthew was slipping away and there was nothing Angelina Carter could do about it. She was not a doctor but medicine had become somewhat of a hobby and her knowledge was fairly impressive. All she could do was lend comfort, and lie to Matthew, telling her that they would be rescued "soon", as the injured structural engineer drifted out of consciousness.

"Phil...<crackle>...Where <static> you? Answ...<crackle> me." Geist's commlock came to life, barely and he grabbed it from his belt.

"!!Melita!!! !!MELITA!!! I'm receiving you!!" Phil yelled into the commlock, ecstatic to hear his wife's voice; one sweet sound that he was beginning to think he would never hear again.

His answer? Snow, cracking and loud static.

**********

"I disagree." Paul Morrow told Koenig over the link. "If you turn away now, we'll know nothing."

Ben Ouma turned back to his software cart--unwilling to commit to either side, while Umberto Garzon regarded the controller with silent contempt.

**********

"What kind of bung is that?" Co-pilot Dave Sperla critiqued from the command module of Alert One. "The temperature has risen five hundred degrees in the last fifteen minutes, but he expects us to charge ahead?"

He thought the commander might have a clue.

"Koenig to Alert Two," the Commander studied the temperature sensor data. "I'm beginning to see the same effect. At this rate, our hulls will begin to melt in..."

His voice trailed off. "Alert Two, I'm picking up an exponential rise now in exterior temperature. Confirm?"

*********

The Alert Two CMP, astronaut Domalik should not have unsealed his suit, but he did, and using one of his beta-protected gloves, he attempted to beat out the circuit fire that was lapping at his couch.

Even more saddening, this, considering that the fire extinguisher bottle, secured to the bulkhead behind him, went unnoticed in the sudden, tumultuous panic.

"ALERT ONE, MAYDAY." Pilot Fanta hacked and coughed through his helmut into the broiling, spitting transmitter--all the while attempting to fan away the smothering, Acapulco Gold fumes that were emanating from his MCP. The orange, ancerine light panels above him began to flicker as the ship rocked wildly on the dead band. "WE'VE LOST OUR GYROS, AND OUR ENVIR CONTROL HAS BEEN COMPROMISED. WE'RE NOW ATTEMPTING TO IMPLEMENT EMERGENCY PROCEDURES.

"CABIN TEMPERATURE HAS INCREASED TO 250 DEGREES." He cried, as the re-entry, cryo-tanks beneath the floor of the aft equipment bay suddenly exploded, creating a bodacious bulge in the command module's inner hatch. "OUR ETC...." Fanta attempted to remain composed. "OUR ETC SHOULD BE...."

But they were all out of seconds.

**********

"Turn back Alert Two," Koenig frantically hit the communication stud again. Deep furrows ran across his brow. "Alpha, this is Alert One. We are turning back as well. Alert Two, do you read me?!?!?"

***********

"RESCUE EAGLE, THE ADDRESS IS UPLOADED." Paul Morrow bullied his fingers along the CONTROL keyboard. He moved frenetically, mythologically--with the psychotropic adept of a four armed Sanru. "LIFT OFF IMMEDIATELY."

The hasty and the tardy meet at the ferry, or so the saying goes.

**********

Dust, regolith, rocks and a few boulders rained violently after the thunderclap from the ceiling of the subcavern under the Karst Promontory. Miraculously, none of the large boulders landed on anyone, though everyone was covered with another layer of dirt and grime.

"This is just rich," Angelina Carter scowled, shaking the dust from her hair. "I can't believe its happened again."

"No," Ahn Nguyen, "it is not lunar quake." The crisscross grooves of her long braid were so caked with dirt that her braid resembled a smooth dark snake hanging from the base of her skull. "I think shaking come from above. Something hitting surface...yes?" She looked to Harmon and Geist for affirmation.

"Christ...." The mining chief demurred. "Do you think that may have been Basso and Magnusson? In Eagle One?"

Carter gave no response.

Chapter 5

"Captain Carter! Phil! Ang! I find the shaft!" Ahn Nguyen shouted while crouched on a iron ore ledge and staring up into a small hole above her. She sat back on her heels as Jed Harmon peered into the blackness of the opening, which was only about 1/2 meter in diameter.

"There it is," Geist pointed to his unfurled map with his maglight. "It leads straight up to EOG #1. There's a conduit which connects about 20 meters from the top and a hatch that is probably pressure sealed shut. But, when we get within 20 meters, we can use the commlocks to call someone to open the thing up."

Geist's sudden optimism was unnerving.

"Uh, I hate to burst your bubble, Phil," Angelina studied the too small aperture, "but how are we suppose to go up that. I mean, maybe Ahn can get through but what about the rest of us?"

Ang remembered her New Testament instructions, 'It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.' Evidently, the odds were more in favor of both the camel and the rich man than the trapped Alphans.

"That's some scheme you've cooked up." Carter blurbed while inspecting the man hole. It was an escape, suited only for an anorexic. "I can see making the first leg of the journey." He admitted, noting the easy, forty inch circumference. "No one except a cone head could make it out that hatch at the top. It ends in damn near a vertex. What was this thing for? An underground railroad for Bulimics?"

"Don't know." Geist marveled with him at the curious design. "This isn't my Moon, precisely. Back in the good old days--in our universe--Commander Aldornia limited the mining operations to conserve power. Koenig is better about trying to make the abnormal seem normal, or at least comfortable."

"Oh please." Carter groaned. "Spare us the yarn about Phil Geist, the perfect survivor, and how he used to eat shit for breakfast--and appreciated it. If Joe Blow Terran was so 'resourceful,' then why are you in the exact, same predicament as us mentally challenged folks from Earth?"

The mining chief smiled maliciously--his assault predicated teeth grinding out a promissory Visa/Master Card for the pilot's nose.

"I am none too familiar with this conduit." Specialist Harmon went to the fore. "But about fifty meters up, there appears to be a small, maintenance hatch."

"We don't want to go there." Geist advised, and perched contemplatively on a rock like Rodin's "The Thinker."

"Why?" Carter mouthed.

"It's not a good idea." The mining chief reiterated, pouring a capful from his canteen and then passing the water to Ang.'

"Why?" The astronaut prodded. He was tired--sick and tired. It was like the song "Penny Lane" by the Beatles, only this version was penned by a morbid co-author. The Moon was in his ears...and in his eyes...da-da-da-DA-DA-DA. If they didn't leave soon...they would die.

DA-DA-DA-DA-da-da-da.

"Well, maybe you should go ahead and give it a whirl." The geologist retorted, standing again. "I sure hope your legs are long enough to jump that bottomless pit on the other side.

"Numbskull."

"THAT'S ENOUGH," Angelina hissed at Geist then shot a look of anger at Carter. The fact that she was physically between the two men prevented the pilot from seriously deviating the geologist's septum. She was, though, weary of playing referee and wondered if they should just have it out with each other.

No, not until this was over: IF it was going to be 'over' in the form of getting out alive.

Geist turned away, momentarily vanquished, and unclipped his commlock from his belt. "Melita, it's Phil. Can you hear me?" He called almost desperately into the communication device. His answer was snow and static. "Sweetheart, if you can hear me, we are under the Karst Promotory. We're near the  auxiliary ventilation shaft to the EOG #1. Send the rescue team to that location."

More snow and static blared from his commlock as he released the 'transmit' button.

Geist tried over and over again, sounding like a broken record. Presently, Phil's voice grew distant to Angelina and she felt herself beginning to black out. She closed her eyes tightly and drew in a breath to clear her head.

Somehow she was not surprised by the house of horror sight when she opened her eyes. Men and women with shaven heads and bruised faces were buried up to their necks in the ground around her, pleading, begging for her to free them. She searched frantically for a shovel, a pick ax or anything she could use to dig.

"Hurry!! Hurry, for God sakes, HURRY!!" they screamed at her, some of them beginning to sob as a whirling sound in the darkness grew louder and louder. A fireman's hatchet, encased in Plexiglas with the etching, "For Emergency Use" appeared on the adjacent wall but the lock on the case was formidable.

Angelina tried to smash the case with a rock but it could not be broken. She grabbed for the key ring filled with a seemingly infinite number of keys and began trying each one in the lock.

She turned again as the first shrieks and a warm liquid splattered on the back of her tunic and flares. She cried out in horror as the hideous machine with the horizontal rotary blade easily decapitated the helpless victims, their heads with wide eyes and gaping mouths bouncing toward her and landing near her feet like misplaced rubber balls.

She fainted.

**********

The dispensary unit was done. Buried. No more shampoo/alcohol-based analgesics. Beyond it, there was only the gaseous, red mosaic left behind by Baal and ghosts from the highlands of Protagoras and the unprosaic, interminable, boring wonders of the sixtieth, lunar parallel. Vesta Basso turned from the cool, antiseptic bulkhead, and beheld her life. A dark, private room in Medical Center. There was a trio of MD's, and any number of emergency technicians but she knew who her doctor would be. The only one qualified to analyze the guts of her cerebrum, to dope her up with R&D pharmaceuticals.

Bob Mathias was to be her Dr. Kildaire. She didn't need a scholar to figure that one out.

Over the years, others had cracked, but Vesta Basso could sing.

The chief of staff was nowhere to be seen. Helena--gone to search for her ungrateful bastard, Demetrius. The more slavish her devotion, the more she was alienated. Vesta could relate to that. The Moonweaver had arrived about an hour ago--it's spirit coalescing from the open bottle of Seconal that was sitting on her meat factory nightstand.

Look what you're doing to your nervous system. The agent of depression reproved her. It was the ultimate Alphan, in many ways. Alone, without a gospel, desperate in a way that would make Henry David Thoreau seem like Norman Vincent Peale. Let me perform the aria for you.

I am your spaniel....

"I don't want to hear that." Vesta said angrily, but with pending with guilt. After all, a product of the shriven mind was still some company. The cool thing about schizophrenia was it meant that she would never be alone.

Would you like me to do my rendition of Puck? Of Oberon?

"I can't talk right now." Vesta replied, more politely and tried to mend their fences by smiling graciously at the Moonweaver.

They never did search for him.

"Why did you bring that up?" The widow spat. "Do you feel the need to blame someone? Is that how your 'friends' are?"

"HE HAS BOLTS, HE HAS NUTS--HE CRACKS THEM ALL IN HIS WELDING HUT.

"HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE'RES CEDRIX." The Moonweaver danced.

At that moment, Vesta stared around the open door into the brightly lit corridor and saw the VAB supervisor enter through the double doors to the main ward. He stopped at the desk, rubbing his forehead in a slow, aching figure eight pattern. He appeared to be asking for aspirin.

**********

"Paul! Answer me!" Commander Koenig paced in the travel tube, accelerating from Launch Pad 3 to the Command Tower. His copilot gave him a blank, curious look but otherwise said nothing.

As the car came to a stop, Koenig sprinted out into the corridor as soon as the doors parted. Rather than take the elevator, he dashed up the stairs. His co-pilot, though a younger man, was barely keeping up with him. The commander paused momentarily under the left archway in Main Mission.

Every person in the room was immobile with a look of terror paralyzing their bodies and their features. Victor Bergman was backed into a corner, moaning and trembling. Helena Russell, in a fetal position by the balcony steps, let out a guttural scream, her face stained with tears.

"HELENA!!" Koenig grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her almost violently. Her hands were clawlike, digging into his orange EVA suit, bloodying her nails. He spotted the laser hypo on the floor and noted its contents filled with several doses of an anti-hallucinogen.

Then he saw the brown-green tentacle materialize out of the second step leading to the command deck. It made hideous suction noises as it gripped the floor. There was another one..then another.

Koenig grabbed the laser hypo and injected himself. The dose was intense enough to make his head spin and stomach turn.

The nightmarish monster disappeared back into the floor again. He applied the hypo to Russell's delicate neck. She gasped and closed her eyes, shaking violently then groaned.

"John?" the doctor opened her eyes and struggled to a sitting position. "What in the hell was that all about?"

**********

Look at these women...

...who work spells to make you miserable....

Bob Mathias didn't care.

"She's gone." He said with noticeable ire. It was especially diaphanous if you were Hoch Ragusa, the on-duty RN. The assistant medical chief tossed the linen back onto the bed in the darkened room and headed for the commstation.

"Dr. Russell." He called, and punished Hoch Ragusa by forcing him to stand with him. "Vesta Basso has left the ward. I don't think she's anywhere in the medical complex."

*********

"That's quite a dream, Ang" The fifteen year old young man chuckled, slapping his knee. His bell bottom jeans and his plaid shirt spoke of a different era as did the bean bag chair. "A base on the Moon?" He laughed. "Well, maybe," he spoke out of consideration and contemplation. "But that is years away, Ang. Not in your lifetime and certainly not in mine."

Nicholas Verdeschi was correct, regarding the last part of his statement. Angelina Verdeschi's oldest brother was killed in a high speed automobile accident the day he turned 16 years old. His body had been hopelessly mangled and unrecognizable. His funeral was decidedly closed casket.

"And as far as the moon being blown out of earth's orbit?" He smiled kindly at his youngest sibling and only sister. "Well, that is an impossibility reserved for science fiction stories."

**********

"John, she needs to be found," Helena Russell cut the link after acknowledging Mathias. She administered the last dosage of the hypo into Harness Bull Pound's neck, returning him to a less horrific, though no less hopeless reality.

"She has delved into a highly depressive and schizophrenic state. She refused to believe Frank is dead." She bit her lip. "She could kill others...or herself."

"PAUL." The commander stormed the trench--bringing the blizzard with him while still holding his helmut.

**********

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.'

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis, te decethymnus, Deus in Sion, et tibi reddetur votum in Jerusalem; exaudi....

"Ah...." Bram Cedrix puffed with boom box, name-that-tune recognition. "Johannes Brahams."

His favorite it was not.

"Not precisely." Lauren Hahn corresponded gently at the Tower Team cubicle. Sitting atop the desk, Michelle Cranston set aside her metric wrench and gaped at the foreman. She wanted to compliment him for being more acculturated; she wanted to admit her underestimation of Cedrix's chic, hip-catness, but it adhered to her tongue like cheap peanut butter. Beside her, Pierre Danielle had no such deceptions. He knew at his core that Cedrix was an Austrian hayseed and he told him so.

"She told me it was Wolfgang Amadeus." The assistant reconnaissance chief gloated over the solenoid casing that he was unscrewing. "But then again, I'm no expert. I'm a Captain Beefhart man myself."

"I knew that." Cedrix argued defensively. He straightened his back...sucked in his gut.

"You lie," Michelle bantered to Cedrix neutrally. "You don't know shit about opera, Ced." She was absent minded, only half paying attention to the conversation. With Ang trapped with the excavation team below, most of the burden of Technical fell squarely on her shoulders. Working on the plan to rescue them as well as overseeing the repairs to the base was putting furrows in her brow and deepening the fine winkles around her eyes.

"What do you need, love." Hahn switched topics, adding one more to her pile of closed-out, red flimsies.

"Eagle 5-1." The foreman explained busily. "Tell Layne I need to check out that POP transducer, although something tells me this will be a low traffic day."

"Tell me about it." Hahn said easily. "Coop' has been a beast, and I expect more of same from the commander."

"I'll hook you up." Danielle volunteered, grabbing his commlock as he set aside his screwdriver.

What's a 'Johannes Brahams' Cedrix wanted to ask but didn't.

**********

The trail ended when the doors closed to Travel Tube-B.

And by now, thoroughly deranged Vesta Basso fingered the car's manual actuation controls before realizing that there was such a thing as a commlock hooked to her belt. On a lark, she turned away from the depot and danced on lily pads and infected, Typhoid-ridden toad stools all the way to the stairwell. There was no rush. The cup, so to speak, would be full and waiting when she got there. And perhaps, even Frank who continued to steal her oxygen and usurp her soul because he was in death, what he never was in life.

It was like magic.

**********

"You got fifteen inches on that." Yul Ostrog commented wearily, handing the altitude chamber specs' back to Specialist Pipe.

Bram Cedrix exited the buzz of the passenger module, re-entering the Pad Four white room precisely on queue.

"I'm done too." He proclaimed.

"How are you getting on?" Ostrog asked--too preoccupied with his own hopeless mortality to really care.

"She's ready." Cedrix announced. "Now we'll see who's nuts enough to try that little number again."

Actually there were only two people who fulfilled this qualification. Both of them stole around the corner as the mechanic and the foreman headed for the Ready Room.

Their names were Vesta Basso, and Vesta Basso.

**********

"COMMANDER." Dianne Chaplin started. "I'VE GOT AN UNAUTHORIZED IGNITION SEQUENCE. EAGLE 5-1 IS LIFTING OFF."

Chapter Six

John Koenig asked for a co-pilot to assist at intercepting Vesta Basso.

His wish was granted.

"Yes, he tried to flummox me, but I knew better. After all, everyone knows that a tire is composed of synthetic rubber; natural rubber; sulfur and/or sulfur compounds; silica; Phenolic resin; aromatic, naphthenic, paraffin oil. Polyester, that's a brain buster, I do admit; Nylon; petroleum waxes, etc. How would you feel--how would any of us feel--if some sheister tried to convince us that the pigments were anything less than zinc oxide and titanium dioxide. I hope you won't think I have a big head when I say that I did some pioneering research with black carbons; fatty acids; inert materials; steel wire.

"And oatmeal. Funny--I almost called you Newton. Why do I keep doing that? You're not Newton, you're the commander, but I digress again.

"Where was I? Oh yes. I've always had a certain penchant for the smell of fresh rubber. I won't bore you with the details, but suffice to say the most puissant products are between fifteen and sixteen percent antioxidant. The same is true for a truck tire. The approximate densities are:

"Ten mesh--about twenty nine pounds, give or take the cubed exponent. Great Scott, my neck is sore.

"Thereisnothingworsethangoingaroundalldaylikeyouhavearhinosteppingonyourhead.Icanfeelitrightinmycarotidartery.Occasionally,Ihavebeenknowntogetararetypeof exczema-onewhichwillcreateplatudinouswartsandzits.EachoneisaboutthesizeofaFabergeegg.IwishIhadbroughtablackheadextractortotheMoonwithmethistime.Had Iknown thatwewouldbefacinganuncertainadventureontheedgeoftheuniverseIwouldhaveplannedmytripmorecarefully.

"My speech is tangential, isn't it? My sincerest apologies, Newton. I suppose like all, great men, I suffer from the occasional bout of Attention Deficit Disorder. I say, like all great men, I suffer from Attention Deficit Disorder. Did you catch that? I was telling you about my Persian flaw--the infrequent lapse into Attention Deficit Disorder.

"Ican'ttellyouhowmuchpainI'velivedthrough.AnothertrialthatI'vebeenforcedtoendureisunsightlyskintagsonmyeyelids.Theymakemelooklikeadope, andtheybecomerawandirritatedwheneverIblinkmyeyes.Nottoworry--Ihavenointentionoflettingmytrialsinterferewiththesuccessfulcompletionofthismission. Letlessermenwhineandcryabouttheunfairnessoflife.Itismyintenttowrestthebullbyitshorns.

"Because there really should be more to life. Than bull. But back to tires--several, key points prevented me from being taken to the figurative cleaners by this guy. I can see that you're a busy man, so I'll cut to the chase. Let me begin by prefacing with the weight, in percentage, of a new, radial tire. I offer as a list, the following factors to be closely scrutinized:

"Tread.

"Base.

"Sidewall.

"Bead apex.

"Bead insulation.

"Fabric insulation.

"Insulation of steel cord.

"Innerliner.

"Undercushion.

"These are the building blocks that will open unto us the door to Steel Cord Analysis." William Gregory Harms, III said.

Commander John Koenig responded to Harms as he usually did; he ignored him. Admittedly, though, this time it was more difficult. An unfortunate side effect of the anti-hallucinogenic drugs on Koenig was a bass drum, unrelently, pounding headache.

Boom...Boom...Boom...Blah, Blah, Blah....Boom....Boom...Boom...Blah, Blah, Blah...On and On and On.

"Eagle One to Alpha," Koenig spoke through Harm's monologue. "Breaking orbit in 5 seconds. I show Eagle 5 on a collision course with the epicenter of the blackbody radiation core."

"It's worse than that, John." Victor Bergman said gravely in tight, video close-up. "Our instruments on Alpha are a bit more detailed, even at this extreme range. The model we worked up shows Eagle Five is on a latitude that will take it within range of the alien spacecraft."

"Petrov here, commander." The colonel telelinked as the monitor split in two to accommodate his dire. "You should know, Eagle Five's weapons are now armed--it's optical damage threshold is at full capacity."

"Right." Bergman agreed on the left hand side of the screen. "She also took the ship that we were planning to send to the EOG transfer depot to help rescue the mining team. It's carrying a thousand pound demolition bomb--the kind we use for uncovering ilmenite deposits."

"Not good...." The colonel decided. "Not good."

"No, it's not." The professor authenticated. "And considering what happened to Eagle One, it's not hard to guess what Vesta Basso is planning, is it?"

Koenig looked away momentarily then returned his gaze to the monitor. "No, its not. We will do whatever is necessary to stop her. Whatever is required."

"Harms...boosters in 10 seconds."

**********

"I'm OK, now really, Alan," Angelina Carter stood on shaky legs and steadied herself looking up into the shaft. She conservatively sipped the water, acutely aware that their supply was dwindling. "I haven't eaten in awhile and the fumes must have gotten to me." Her stomach was still turning and she was pale white, though the lack of lighting as well as the fine layer of grime everyone was wearing made it difficult to perceive her distressed complexion.

"I chip away at sides of shaft," Ahn Nguyen lowered herself out of the hole from above. "I think even Ed can go up it, at least maybe first 50 meters. Shaft opens to wide cavern with two ledges. It look like another opening from one. Not sure where it lead. Probably made in quake that trapped us."

She unclipped the rope from her belt. "Phil up there now fixing stakes and hooks."

"Well, I'm not pulling up lardass," Harness Bull McGiver snorted, motioning to Malcom. "I pulled a muscle and maybe more lowering bubble butt 150 meters. He's on his own."

Angelina ignored Malcom's pleas of clemency while performing a vital sign check on Matthew. It was amazing that the badly injured woman was still alive. Ang adjusted the harness of the stretcher while Malcom's whining and near sobs went in one ear and out the other. She dismissed his presence until she looked up and realized she was staring into the barrel of a laser.

"I'M GOING UP FIRST. YOU WILL NOT LEAVE ME," he sniveled. "YOU CAN COUNT ON IT."

"Ed," Angelina sat back in disgust. There was no fear but unmitigated fatigue and irritation. "Put that down. Of course we're not leaving you." She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. She could clearly see the power pack was not charged. Ahn Nguyen had spent the weapon to hone out the entrance of their escape. Unfortunately, Malcom was either too stupid or too distraught to realize his weapon was useless.

"Don't be ridiculous."

Before he could reconsider his position, McGyver tacked the supersized technician to the ground. The useless weapon tumbled off into the darkness. McGyver brutally pummeled Malcom's face, as blood and pieces of teeth, intermixed with Malcom's yelling, jettisoned in Ang's direction.

**********

"That's not the Men's room." Geist informed Carter as he continued to whittle his way to the surface with only faith and a rock hammer. "If that's what you're thinking."

"Why the hatch?" The astronaut inquired, clinging to the wrungs. "Was there some sort of explosive decompression?"

"Not at this level." The mining chief replied, and snarled like a nerd, eyeing him from beneath his black, bone rimmed glasses.

"Then why was it closed off?"

"Oh, that again." The geologist recalled minimalistically, while examining a multifaceted hunk of Pyrite. "Well as I recall, back in 1995, a couple of tech-heads took a tumble." He laughed. "You might say they had an early 'Fall' on the Moon that year. It must have been a real screamer. We sent a camera down to see if we could locate the bodies. The final depth for our cable was over nine kilometers, and there was still no trace of the cave floor below. We suspect it goes down even farther. Be a good chump--hop down there and help us update our maps since you're so curious."

His cackle was imperative.

"Geist, do you cherish anything?" Carter wondered, too exhausted to retort.

"Not much." The mining chief confessed. "I care about Melita--and the preservation of my own arse. Rational self-interest. A touch of the Ayn Rand. That's my philosophy."

"No." Carter refuted while reaching for his commlock with his free, left hand. "Pounding your pud.' THAT'S YOUR PHILOSOPHY."

He opened the hatch.

Precariously perched and wrapped in harness and rope, Ang directed her maglight through the opening.

"That's no bottomless pit," she spoke to Geist as Carter pulled himself through the opening and landed on solid ground. Ahead, a tunnel disappeared into the darkness. Ang gripped the top of the hatch and swung through the opening, landing next to Alan.

"Maybe on the Terran Moon this opening led to a great abyss but this isn't the Terran moon," she reminded him. She wondered now if Geist had been referring to Terran moon blueprints all along but she did not vocalize it. It was an understandable mistake, if he had downloaded the wrong maps from the server which housed the computer memory from the Terran Moonbase Alpha. However, she didn't want to mention it because she didn't want to listen to Carter and Geist resume the verbal fisticuffs.

"JED!!" Ang called to Harmon into the shaft. "Can you pass me a copy of the map?"

"I've got a printout of the PDF, ten kilometer copy." Harmon rubbed his chin mysteriously while holding the sheet under the maglite's beam. "There appears to be a discrepancy here. There are no outlets of that sort in this quadrangle--at least not according to the ILC Geological Survey that was performed in 1990."

He scaled the air well, one piton at a time, and handed the stereo copy to Ang.'

"What do you mean it doesn't appear on the map?" Geist questioned. "I've been on one Moon, or another for five years now and this opening is, at the very least, a common denominator."

He folded his arms, and shunned the improbable.

"I don't doubt your veracity." Harmon explained. "It is certainly possible that the surveyors overlooked this passage during their cartographical study."

"Those guys don't overlook things." Geist persisted unswervingly. "I know. I used to work for the Hevelius Foundation. They had the weight of global tax dollars resting on their shoulders. The end result is that you have crushed shoulders, but a reliable map."

"Well, it's not on this map," Ang retorted pointing to the lack of passage on the paper. Her voice was edged with irritation. In the shaft, echoes of an equally weary and irritated mining team attempting to help each other up the narrow shaft bounced off the narrow walls and into the mystery corridor.

"GEIST." Carter called from the darkened arroyo on the other side of the hatch. "I NEED YOU IN HERE, PRONTO."

"Wait here." The geologist cautioned Ang,' and Harmon with saintly sincerity.

Knowing their welfare was secure, he entered the course with both fists doubled and with murder in his heart.

**********

"WHO ELECTED ME TO BE YOUR GUY FRIDAY?" He crabbed, swinging his lantern back and forth over the indiscreet waterfall of igneous rocks that lined the trapezoidal, tunnel walls. "CARTER, THERE AIN'T NO 'I' IN THE WORD TEAM. WHY DON'T YOU GIVE IT A REST, AND-"

"SHUT UP." The astronaut punked the geologist again, shoving him backwards towards the opening.

Infuriated, Geist was about to reciprocate with more brute force diplomacy--until he realized that the pilot had just saved his life.

"It's not bottomless." Carter described, hunkered down and examining the open pit. "And there are your two bodies."

The mining chief was foiled.

"Goddammit! Why don't you guys just stop your...." Angelina's tirade came to an abrupt end as she and Harmon step around the corner and stared into the pit. It was only about 6 feet deep: ironically about the depth of your average grave. However, it was about 20 feet wide and beyond that appeared to be more tunnel. The bottom of the pit though was lined with razor sharp, jagged stalagmites.

Angelina shone the maglite on the bodies, scanning them up and down. Absence of bacteria and the extremely low humidity resulted in semi mummification of the remains. Both bodies were clad in the orange jumpsuit with the large "WSO" logo patch above the left chest, typical of the early 90's technical uniform.

"I can't say for sure since I'm not Bob Mathias," Angelina started, alternating the light between the bodies and the glinting stalagmites, "but it doesn't appear that they died from a fall. I mean, it is just not deep enough. It doesn't look like they were skewered with one of those dagger stalagmites either." She shook her head, noting the absence of any pointed rock formation protuding from the corpses."

"I wonder what killed them."

**********

"Alpha, this is Koenig." The commander alerted after braking. Between Alert One, Eagle Five and the extraterrestrial disc there was nothing but gas and comparisonless space. "Be advised, we're encountering some type of high energy fragments. The source appears to be perpendicular to the alien ship. This effect is accompanied by high, alternating degrees of temperature.

"Victor, what do you make of it?"

"It's hard to say," Bergman responded at the other end of the link, while looking down at his long, unfurled register data tape. "But it could be an energy dispersion from their power source; a secondary by product, much like heat is the secondary bi-product of burning a candle for a source of light. It could be harmless."

He reviewed the data again, frowning.

"On the other hand, it could be an energy build up for an eventual weapons discharge." His brow furrowed emphasizing years of concern. "Use caution, John."

"We're ranging now." The commander observed as Eagle Five grew steadily larger in the metric crosshairs of the arc, rendezvous window. On the opposite side of engagement, the interstellar hockey puck hung low in the inertial drift. Even at this range, it was something like magnificence--the Viking Drakkar Oseberg, the Olympia, floating in the fog-bound port of Piraeus. The grandeur was as obviate as Vesta Basso's attempt to massacre them. "If we can overtake her, I'll try to go in from the top and make a transverse, centerline connection."

**********

"He can't do it." Umberto Garzon told Bergman in Main Mission. "Her reactor is operating at 20,000 K's. We've never deployed a drop shaft at that velocity."

"No, we have not." Paul Morrow said angrily to all concerned. "And I shant' say this will be the exception to the rule."

"He has to at least try," Helena Russell interjected from the humanitarian perspective. She was under the big screen, eyes roving between the medical monitors and the image of Koenig on the colored monitor. "We give 110% to rescue those who are physically injured. Why shouldn't we do the same for someone who is mentally ill?"

At his turntable workstation, Benjamin Ouma eschewed the debate--even if he did think the commander was as crazy as a March hare--and commenced to typing probability formulae into his red, lateral keyboard.

**********

"One for one, we have to match course and speed." Koenig reasoned aloud.

"The crosscut will wreck Eagle Five's passenger module." He said jaggedly. "We'll only have one chance at this and then that hole we're going to punch will evacuate the ship's life support."

He didn't want Harms to answer him back.

**********

"CARTER, EXACTLY HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN PRONE TO THESE RANDOM ACTS OF STUPIDITY?" Geist abrogated him.

Inching along the five centimeter ledge, palms gripping any available hand hold, the pilot inched his way along in an attempt to reach the opposite side of the Pitchfork Grotto, as he had eponymously named it.

"STOP TALKING--YOU'LL TRIP ME UP." He grunted, hoping that a slow exhale would maintain his equilibrium "YOU'VE SEEN THAT SHAFT. WE'RE NOT GOING TO SPOON AWAY SIX MILES OF DIRT. I WANT TO SEE WHAT'S ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE TUNNEL."

But try as he might, he fell anyway.

Chapter Seven

"Alan, you always did give Mum the most stress," William Carter, III. stated casually from his crouched position in the corner. "Being the rowdy youngest, the daredevil who had no fear, I thought for sure you'd get yourself killed before your 30th birthday and I'd be the one to outlast you all to a ripe old age.

Pretty ironic, actually."

Actually, it was ironic. William Carter, III, one of the pilot's older brothers, died as a 29 year old during WWT. The TriContinent discovered his role as an undercover agent but before they could extract information through dubiously unethical interrogation tactics, William Carter dislodged the cyanide capsule sewn into the lining of his coat and dry swallow ingested it.

Memories--they tasted just like wine. And vinegar. And harsh grapes.

He started his peruse with thoughts of becoming a doctor of the veterinary arts. The first and only to specialize in Armadillo acupuncture. The old man put Carter down, and after his relentless speeches, the lad knew what he wanted to be when he grew up, an executioner. Prowess as Rugby intervened to salvage his self-respect. As far as the books go, he earned straight "C's" in everything except mathematics. His numeric excellence eventually led to a Bachelors Degree in engineering and avionics.

He contributed to the war effort his skills as a pilot. The patriarch of the Carter family would not have liked that either. He hated pilots...and stewardesses...and luggage carousels...and the two ounces of enticement that an airport gin bottle would provide. On the bright side, by then, the old man was no longer around to care. He was too busy taking a dirt nap. As it turned out, Carter's mastery of flying and sub-atomic massacre was so unparalleled that he was expatriated, beyond the equator to a NATO bomb group over China.

The rapacious way that the royal air force sucked him in was deadening. Then came the transfers and astronaut's training at Woomera and JFKSC.

He still could not quite shut the old man out, but firing fusion torpedoes at low orbital targets made him feel better.

"I GODDAMN HATE YOU TOO." Phil Geist reciprocated, tit-for-tat, as he inched along the narrow substratum. "STOP CALLING ME 'THE OLD MAN' AND HOLD STILL. I'M TRYING TO RESCUE YOU."

He anxiously signaled Harmon to begin lowering the winch.

Angelina remained silent, biting her lower lip, and wondering what was going on. Maybe he suffered a head injury in the fall. Maybe he finally went off the deep end, literally, into madness.

No. Not Alan Carter. Every one of them would succumb to their own private, delusional "reality" and plunge into madness but he would be the one left standing amidst the 'lunatics'. Or, so she always thought.

She knew Carter was not insulting Geist but made no effort to clarify this fact. The 'Old Man' was dear ole Dad, William Carter, II, a man who would swing from model, loving father to asshole Pop extraordinaire in one sentence. Brother 'Will' had long departed from this reality and Ang found it disturbing Alan seemed to be carrying on a conversation with a dead man.

"Your temper will be your undoing, Alan," dead sibling Will predicted, "just like the Old Man." He laughed. "He was quite a bastard, wasn't he? You thought you had it bad but I got the pointed end of the skewer from him...over and over again. I guess he loved us, in his own fucked up way, but believe it or not, I think you were a favorite.

"Lucky you." He concluded, completely unaware of his surroundings and the fact he was in the bowels of the runaway moon.

"Alan?!?!" Angelina called out, almost touching the ground as she was lowered into the pit, but frantically searching the area with the maglite. "Alan?!?! Answer me! Are you hurt?"

"He can't hear you." Geist fumed as his sling caught on an anorthite that was shaped like a furling claw. He bore his teeth at Harmon, who took that as a hint to give up more slack. "I'll bet the cracks in the cave walls were foam sealed next to some sort of hyperbaric gas mixture. That fog is probably what killed those technicians. Then, someone was nice enough to seal the hatch and deny all knowledge."

"Right." Harness Bull Thatcher replied skeptically. "There's a shorter, less voluble term for it. In security circles we call it premeditated murder."

"Did those UFO's forget to remove your anal probe before they left." Geist rattled Ed Malcom. To the mining chief, the technician's very existence was proof that mankind did have sex with buffalo. "MAKE YOURSELF USEFUL AND TOSS ME A COUPLE OF FILTERS."

His eyes were beginning to water.

"Then, come all my heartiest, we'll range the mountain side." Carter sang his bad rendition of "The Wild Colony Boy" while his resurrected brother did the hambone. "Together we will plunder, together we will ride...."

"IF HE FIGHTS ME, THERE WILL BE NO WAY TO PULL HIM UP." Geist said through the rasp of his respirator mask. He dangled like a jewel thief, ten meters above the demented, musical astronaut.

"Then I'll approach him first," Angelina shouted to be heard from behind the respirator. Tears were beginning to stream from her eyes. "God, it is getting bad down here." The portable O2 tank was dangling beside her, lowered on a separate rope simultaneously.

"Hey...you did good, Alan," the deceased Will pointed to the approaching 'angelic' form. He seemed distressed that Angelina completely ignored him, as she kneeled next to the pilot and fitted the mask over his nose and mouth. His face was pale and his lips were beginning to turn blue.

"Easy, babe," she spoke gently, as she turned the valve and started the flow of oxygen. "Deep breaths. You're going to be alright."

William Carter III disappeared as quickly as he appeared.

"Better head top-side." Geist advised Ang' with grave concern. All around them, the lancing, serrated cones tipped death at them. Their glance was lost as dust began to powder the floor of the pit from the stressed plate high above. "C'mon, blockhead." He pulled Carter to his rubber feet as debris sprinkled onto their cork muzzles. "Time to EVAC."

"Hey...." Carter hyperventilated behind his PPE.

Then the walls of the antre began to shake.

"DOCTOR GEIST." Harmon yodeled and it was right on schedule. "THE OHM METER."

"I KNOW, I FELT IT DOWN HERE." The mining chief called back. All things considered, he was dry and unmoved by it all--as if having 10,000,000 tons of lunar sheeting dumped on your head was a daily activity, like breakfast.

In the meantime, Carter and Ang' began to accede upwards. Their fate was in Nuygen's hands.

"THEIR BLASTING US OUT." Harmon was confident. "USING CHARGES TO MODIFY THE CHANNEL."

"No." Geist offered a new view as a huge piece of Talc fell from above and exploded beside his left boot. "WE'RE SO FAR DOWN, WE WOULDN'T HEAR OR FEEL THE REPORT."

"...bridge...." Carter mumbled stuporously--at the mercy of the elements as he dangled in his harness like a salvaged mutt. "GEIST...." He resonated with lethargic coherence. "THE BRIDGE...WE'VE GOT TO EXTEND THE BRIDGE."

"I DON'T SEE ANY OTHER WAY OUT," Ang yelled into her respirator while she steadied Carter with the other arm. "WE CAN'T GO OUT THE WAY WE CAME AND THAT HOLE IS JUST TOO NARROW TO CONTINUE."

"HOW ABOUT THAT." The geologist bubbled cheerfully as his sling began to uprise behind them. "FOR ONCE, WE'RE IN AGREEMENT. WHILE WE'RE HERE, WE MAY AS WELL CHISEL THAT IN STONE."