Episode #31: Reflections From The Deep

It has often been thought that the reknowned, 19th Century composer, Anton Bruckner lost his marbles after the second performance of his Third Symphony. His cognizance, pouring from his nose, and ears into an undone puddle on the floor--traduced to blubbering idiocy before a royal contingent of wastrel playboys in top hats, and their gold digging, immoral, high maintenance mistresses.

The reasons for his collapse have oft been speculated upon. Mostly, it came down to the fact that the symphony really wasn't very good, and had, in fact, garnered him a violent lambasting by Viennese critics in 1877, during it's premiere in 1877. Cabbages notwithstanding, on that previous occasion, Bruckner's confidence, born of stupid, foolish youth, helped him to survive the intellectual castration, and the visceral humiliations that befell him in the tenebrous, Bengal paws of the Upper Crust.

Possibly, the Third Symphony was too dreary. It is known that the maestro included numerous references to motifs that were spawned by his idol/hero/role model/Divine Inspiration with a capital "D," Richard Wagner. Wagner demurred this honor, asking that all homages to his work be stricken from Symphony No. 3; that Bruckner's notes be trashed; that they burn, and stir the ashes.

Wagner thought it was boring too.

As boring as it may have been--for empathetically we know (???Don't we???), the daily lux is so, and the mouthy dorks that rob plants of precious air, though the plants were smarter, are but mirror images of nous. He's boring; she's boring; you, and I are boring. Res ipsa lequitor--the thing speaks for itself. Existence can be as orgasmic, and engrossing as two microscopic grains of ice, almost colliding in the void of space. Their surfaces are rather vitreous, but in the end, they are only bland, H20, are they not? Highly compressed, glacial H20, but water is water, no matter how you pour it, and no one will ever compare it to a finely blended Rothschilds, or an eighty year old Bordeaux, fermented to sophistication in sequestered barrels.

For all of that, as mundane as one's individual perceptions of this slo-mo universe may be, it would not equal, many billions of times over, the mighty drudgery that is life on Moonbase Alpha. Despite the blaze of the mighty sequence star which cast its white glow over the roof tops of the facility, and which made it possible to detect magnesium in the black, hell pots of Frigoris, it was still just another day of twiddling thumbs, and slow anguish, which was nothing more than boredom's incestuous sister.

Alan Carter yawned openly, his elbow propped against the port's metallic sill. Behind him, Victor Bergman was moving about the conference table, and handing out green flimsies to the entrenched command staff. His words, inaudible in from without. On the obverse side of the fish tank, his voice could be heard, and it was chockablock with enthusiasm, and pride in the possibilities of discovery.

The pilot decided that his view of La Condamine hadn't changed one scintilla in the past five years. With that, he drug his unsurprised behind back to the table.

Angelina Carter craved some excitement. On her laptop screen, the spreadsheet of work orders for Technical Section only had two highlighted in red: instead of the usual 20 or so. Sorting through the list by technician, she was pleasantly surprised to find even Ed Malcom was on schedule with his jobs. Everyone in her section was now on a 5 days on and 2 days off schedule and into a routine.

The routine was welcomed at first then became dull and uninspiring.

Angelina tried to find inspiration in the latest buzz from Stellar Cartography. She eagerly flipped past the astronomical mumbo-jumbo to the conclusion.

"Three suns?!?!" Ang blurted in awe and disbelief.

"Amazing, isn't it." Bergman said excitedly, in the sheer light of the conference room monitor. His laser pointer wasn't moving fast enough. "What we have here," He explained indicating with his middle two fingers. "Is a phenomenon that we initially catalogued as one star.

"Going only by it's magnitude, of course.

"As we moved in closer, we realized what we really had. It's a ternary system. Three suns."

"Initially, this cluster was comprised of thirty suns." Ben Ouma added with emphasis. Rolls of register tape telemetry sat before him like gambling chips at the Lucky Dollar Casino. Paul Morrow nodded, sufficiently impressed, while Sandra Benes poured over astro shots of the stellar hegemony.

Alan Carter whistled his laud. He had no idea what the relevance was, as pertains to sucking air, that this situation afforded them, but he went along with Bergman's trip.

"Might be nice to have an Earth-type planet around at least one of those beauties." He offered subjunctively. He looked at Ang,' and nodded compliantly. Their luck usually didn't run that way. The way their luck usually ran, there would be a dozen planets, but none that were terrestrial; only a bagatelle of mud-trapped, primeval worlds orbiting some central hellfire.

"Ahhh, we can't have everything unfortunately." Bergman informed him. "As a matter of fact, there are no planets atoll. We have the supermassive star, Eta Carinae, here in the center." Continuing, the Good Doctor said, using his laser pointer to outline the largest of the photospheres, "It's a hundred times larger than the Earth's sun. To the left, we have Eta Carinae Positive. A smaller dwarf star, in opposition to the former.

"Oh, and the star in the foreground is Eta Carinae Negative. Together they form a celestial Triumvirate for this sector of space."

Paul Morrow raised an eyebrow. Despite five years, his astrophysics were still not on par with the others, but he could question Sandra about it later-after all, she was still working on a Bergman-sponsored Doctorate in that particular scientific branch.

"Heyyyyyyyyyy, Gringo." Chef Hector Gonazles inquired, restless, and disconsolate. "Why do I have to sit through this? Huh?"

They ignored him, though Paul shot him a 'Deputy Commander Warning Glance'.

Angelina looked over at Sandra who rolled her eyes with a look of slight disgust on her face. It was Doctor Russell's idea to include Alphans who were not part of Command staff at the regular Command Staff meetings. Helena had suggested it as a way for the Command staff to listen to the concerns and suggestions of the community by encouraging the attendance of "Joe Average" and to allow the section heads to be more "connected" with the people. It was all a bunch of nice, liberal, intellectual hogwash and another result of the routine and boredom. When one is struggling to survive, intellectualism is the last thing on one's mind. It was quite obvious survival was less of a struggle.

Last week Ed Malcom and Claude Murneau attended the meetings, showing the staff just how much Technical section had deteriorated.

It was all in Angelina's master plan, you see. Perhaps she might be able to convince Victor or Paul to allow some of the finer minds of Scientific or even Main Mission to transfer to her team. Now it was Sandra's turn to allow her finest to "shine".

"Professor, this is all quite cool and interesting, but how close are we going to pass by this triumvirate?" Angelina queried, skimming the report for the answer.

"It's on page three." Bergman said kindly. "And in response to your question: Not very close. We'll come within a hundred parsecs of Eta Carinae Positive. It's a concern, to be sure. But, as you already know, the further away we are from the magnetic radius, the less there is to worry about. The amount of force is inversely proportionate to the square of the distance from an object. Twice as far means only one fourth the amount of force, and twice the mass, means twice the force."

Bergman switched charts on the monitor.

"As you can see from this slide." He said, aiming his pointer at the pool of orbital references. "Right now, we're in a tightening ellipse. There's just enough pressure to tow the Moon into a figure eight revolution near the second star--though half-way through that, we'll achieve ten times more momentum than we need to reach escape velocity."

"That's a good thing," Paul murmured, more to himself than to anyone else-his mind already working through the preparations for such a 'close' pass of the triad of stellar primaries-reinforcing shielding, backing up all systems, checking the viewport shutter systems, reverifying all bulkhead seals.

"I've reviewed Victor's prognosticate myself." John Koenig said, dusting off his physicist's chapeau. "More than once." He addended. "Right now, I see no cause for alarm. This is a scientific meeting only."

"Why am I here?" Gonzales groaned, plaintively--his precious asparagus tips, boiling to a plastic in the hands of Hugo Willet.

Again, it fell on deaf ears, though Paul glared at him to sit down and shut up. Dammit, he thought to himself, this is the last damn time we bring non-contributors to these meetings-I don't care if it *IS* Dr. Russell's prized project these days.

Angelina scanned the data. "With all due respect Professor, the historic data on the movement of the suns and the subsequent calculation of the projected trajectories appear to be a rather small sample. I'm not one to go looking for trouble but the amount of data we have so far does not appear to be enough to make projections of our course with a high degree of confidence."

Too many times Angelina had made the mistake of drawing conclusions based on insufficient data....and those suppositions turned out to be incorrect.

She sat back and sighed, eyeing her laptop screen as an instant message window appeared from Chris Potter. Potter had been covering the electronics instrumentation group, since Livy DeHavilliand was still in a coma. "Besides, with our luck..." She stopped. No sense in conveying a pessimistic and alarmist attitude.

"Oh, forget it," she made a slight waving motion with her right hand as she typed the response 'Not now' in the instant message window to Potter and closed it.

Bergman smiled warmly.

"Right now, the mathematics is all we have, though." He explained gently--never forgetting such humiliations of Calculus as Nicol Tessla's well meaning, but adulterated plans to create robot submarines, and death rays, and sonic agitators that could level Nazi bridges, and munitions dumps. Science was a freeway sign, the professor knew, from his own, personal laughing-stock priori of angst, and shammuah. It was not the destination unto itself.

"Computer has verified the Moon's present trajectory." Benjamin Ouma concurred. Mechanically. Because he really had no idea. And because he could feel the zonk rays already beating down on them from Eta Carinae Positive, though Alpha's biospheric temperature remained a constant 58 degrees. "We'll be in perigee within the hour, but the interaction won't last long. Our pitch has been modified, slightly, but other than that, our forward motion hasn't changed significantly since we left Earth's orbit."

He knew though. His destiny was to interpret Computer. Computer was not his friend, however. Mostly, he felt like Microsoft's answer to a babysitter, and his charge was about as sophisticated, and precocious as a tic on a hog's tucchis. Of computer, it could be said biblically: she wasn't fast, but she sure was slow.

"We'll know soon." Bergman said paternally.

Then the lights dimmed--peradventure it was the gods blinking their dissent. Then the 4.5 table-shaker moonquake, which deposited Gonzales' coffee cup into his lap. Helena Russell would have been tossed, but fortunately Tony Allen flopped on top of her, circumventing her communion au fiber tile. Victor Bergman stared at Ouma--his complexion turned to cold, water-based paint. His laser pointer was on the other side of the room. Buried, beneath Gorski trinkets.

John Koenig's right eyebrow raised sternly as he reached for his commlock.

"Yeah," he kicked. "We sure will know soon."

"No reported damage, Commander," Paul commented, his eyes glued to the scrollwork across the tiny color screen on his commlock--he'd beaten the

Commander to the punch, as usual, but then again, that was his job--save the Commander work so that Koenig would have time for the important things in life, such as making the life-and-death decisions for the base. "Tech reports a bit of a shaking on the subsurface structures, but that's normal-the surface installations were initially constructed to absorb moonquakes." He examined the device in his hand. "We'll have a total report in an hour."

"Good." Koenig said, admirably composed again, as he returned to his seat, and prepared to rejoin the scientific kumbaya.' Problem solved. Then he noticed that Helena Russell's face had turned completely ashen; her lips were a tundra of blue shock. Then he was sliding backward in his space-age plastic chair--heading for the starboard commstation, and accelerating. His white leather command chair greeted him half way.

Hello, John. It seemed to say, and clouted him upside the head.

There was the savage, multitronic shriek of overloading bus panels, and the horrifying, accordant roar of metal collapsing all around them. Somewhere in the sterile corridors of Moonbase Alpha, screamers of dislodged shell plating, shattered perspex, and high voltage wires flooded through the two archways of Main Mission Control like the damned crying out from the A-1 Sauces of the Ninth Circle.

Alan Carter swallowed a heaping mouthful of plaster as he slid down the conference table like penguin on ice. He joined the pretzel on the other side of the room, Tony Allen, and Victor Bergman, grappled for stability on either side. Gonzales' final destination was the john (the other "John") where he kamikazied his bald head against the porcelain tank.

A more poetical fate could not have befallen him.

One moment Angelina Carter was perusing Bergman's report, the next moment she found herself flying out of her chair in projectile motion toward the steps leading to Koenig's desk. Her forehead clipped the edge of the table and instantly a stream of blood trickled into her right eye. Luckily for her, Paul Morrow was already on the floor and Deputy Commander broke the Chief of Technical's fall.

The zigzag, 8.0 exterminator quake uncreated everything in it's path. Atop Launch Pad Three, seismic waves that rivaled even those of the Good Friday

Quake in Alaska, hurled an orange moonbuggy into a neatly stacked row of storage octagons near the primary anti-gravity dish. Medical Center was buried alive beneath megatons of dust, and converging regolith. The Plato Crater received a face lift, and a nose job, and every monitor on the base turned scarlet.

Alan Carter considered himself a goner. His life paraded in front of him like an out-of-time, and underbudget Tournament Of Roses. He thought he could hear harp glissandi from Saint Peter's Angels.

It was only the RED ALERT Claxon.

"!!!Paul!!!" Koenig cried, while attempting to pull Sandra Benes from the floor. "!!!Track that!!!"

The big doors were half-way open when the diaphanous beast stopped tap dancing on the Moon.

Despite the cut on her head emanating a thin line of blood which spotted the shoulder of her tunic, Angelina hurried to the Technical station after Morrow pulled her up from the floor. She looked at her monitor then at the big screen, blinded by the image of the triple suns. She shook her head in horror as she looked at her monitor again then at the Commander.

"Sir," Angelina said blankly and, ironically, without the hint of surprise. "It appears we have changed course."

Sandra nodded numbly from the Data Analyst station and Bergman, standing behind Ang, glanced at Koenig forlornly.

"We are now on a collision course with the triumvirate."

That's not the way our luck usually runs, someone spake.

John Koenig stood leaning against port number two on the balcony. He thought, and pondered, and ratiocinated the nearest star until the x-rays, and sun spots from Eta Carinae Positive began to strobe his vision. A perdition of fused hydrogen, and helium, with incinerating, Calvinesque temperatures of up to 50 K at it's core. A crematorium in space, and it had their name on it. Emma Black moved past him with her clipboard. There was a woebegone rictus on her proprietary face. On the bottom landing, Helena Russell stood with her hand against the railing. Sloven, The Candy Striper passed her a cheerful check list for his volunteer rounds in Medical Center. That caused an upturning from the corners of her mouth, but nothing else.

Angelina tracked Sloven as he passed Tanya Alexander and gave her an apparently affectionate caress to the back of her neck then disappeared through the right archway... apparently. Her best reaction was neutrality, not a smile, not a returned loving glance. Ang had been studying Tanya's face again and, realizing she was the object of scrutiny, Tanya covered the possible slight discoloration under her right eye with her hand. Possible...the lighting was subdued and she seemed to have a preference of wearing an inordinate amount of foundation.

Angelina cornered Tanya on the balcony one month prior.

"Is Ivan beating you up?" she asked bluntly and unexpectedly over her cup of strong Moonbase Alpha coffee.

"No, of course not," Tanya laughed nervously. "I enjoy racketball but I'm clumsy, you know." That was a lie; Tanya Alexander was probably one of the most gracefully athletic women on the base. She quickly excused herself and returned to her station.

At that moment, Angelina Carter was convinced Ivan Sloven use Tanya Alexander as a punching bag. However, many others seemed to think he was just marvelous; he was helpful and friendly and kind and..etcetra. Yep, Sloven was one hell of a guy.

Victor Bergman stood by the tray, waiting for the circuits to stop opening, and closing near the mainframe. As soon as the register tape unfurled, he impatiently tore it off, and headed down the steps to Morrow's workstation.

"Well, sure enough, it's endgame for us." He said terminally to the controller's gooseneck lamp. He looked upwards at the balcony, and saw Koenig braced. "It's confirmed, we're being pulled into the chromosphere of the second star." He told him.

"I just don't get it." Carter said, irked, and standing at the Capcomm Desk with his hand on his hip. "Victor, I thought your people had this worked out."

"I thought we had." The professor explained, turning away from Koenig. "We monitored the gravitational pull of the Triumvirate, and we're still monitoring it.

"The thing is, whatever is pulling us in isn't gravity--at least not yet." He winced. "I'm not sure what it is."

"Right," Ang replied, now focused on their current situation. "From this distance, the gravitational forces of the triumvirate could not have possibly changed our course. It won't be until another 72 hours before we come under the gravitational influences of the Eta Carinae trio. However, once we are affected..."

She trailed off and sat back. They knew the situation. Once they were being dragged in toward the triple suns, they would be pulled in with such force and with such acceleration that there would be no escape.

"However, there is a slight chance we might beat this thing and perhaps effect a course change." Ang nodded toward Victor and Sandra, who did not have the blank looks of the rest of those in Main Mission and were already in the know from an earlier conversation between the professor, Sandra and Ang.

"???How long do we have before our life support systems are neutralized???" The Unhappy Camper (a.k.a. John Koenig) asked as he hustled back down the steps.

"It will take only two days for the intense heat to quash our air recycling systems." Sandra Benes reported while gazing at her monitor. "That's before we even enter trans-solar injection. Not long after that, our oxygen supply will evaporate--even in the cryo reserve tanks."

"That's cherries on a tree, alright." Carter flipped. "In other words, long before the Moon gets fried, we'll be lying here like an oven full of corpse pizzas."

"That gives us three days to effect a course change." Bergman summarized, situating a blockade between himself, Carter, and the commander. "Maybe five days to decide whether, or not we're going to have to abandon Alpha, although by then, it shan't be much of a choice."

"Revised data has just come in from our orbital satellites." Ouma announced, rotating the computer desk on its turntable to face them. "Whatever caused the two seismic displacements that we felt--it originated from coordinates that are obverse to the Triumvirate." He articulated. "And we weren't 'pulled.' We were 'pushed.' A tremendous pulse of energy that seems to have emanated from somewhere outside the galaxy.

"The data ends there." The chief said, and with pangs of ignorant guilt, returned to facing the big screen once more.

*****

Observing the distressed and non-working faces of the Main Mission operatives, Koenig directed the Command staff back into his office. After righting chairs and dusting plaster off the table, Koenig swiveled toward the group.

"What's the plan, Ang?" Koenig queried as the big doors rolled to a close behind him.

Ang glanced at Carter who was clearly pissed off; she pictured steam rising from his nostrils and was amused for a split second. She cleared her throat.

"Well, theoretically, it is basically creating a shockwave. When the gravitational forces of the three suns are about to influence us and pull us in, we set off a series of nuclear charges, a combination of nuclear mines and a few of the nukes, which would, theoretically, counter the force of the suns. This action introduce an angular momentum which would veer us away from the suns.....theoretically."

"Theoretically," Paul Morrow commented. "Theoretically we should still be in Earth orbit." He took a deep breath. "Have you run the simulations on this yet? How many of our remaining weapons do we need to dedicate to this project? What will be the effects on Alpha-can we expect another Magnitude Eight moonquake? Do we need to reprocess more plutonium to create more weapons-and mind you," he said, "based on past performance, we don't have the time to do that-the last time, it took us almost a week to refine enough weapons-grade plutonium for a single nuke, and another week to assemble it-though, granted," he acknowledged, "now that we have the process down, we could conceivably shave time from that deadline."

John Koenig moved away from his leaning position by the monitor, damping his bruised, and kabossed' cheek with a wet handkerchief. Candid, and immediately detectable black, and purple splotches on both sides made him look like Seymour, The Raccoon.

Then along came Sloven, through the maintenance hatch with an angelic look on his pug-face. He stole across the room to where Alan Carter was sitting, and passed him a green flimsied PM report on the post-shake, and bake status of the LSRO Hub. Carter nodded congenially. Then, Father Sloven turned his benevolence on Koenig, who frowned deeply, and judgmentally at him.

Angelina narrowed her eyes, regarding him coolly.

With that, the security guard turned his tail between his legs, and made good his fashionable retreat from the room, waving to Bergman as he went.

"We could conceivable cannibalize the P249 that we have earmarked for Alpha's reactors." Sandra Benes added. "But I don't recommend it. By the time it reaches that level, the isotope has already been refined for use in the power generation areas. Upgrading it for ballistic use has never been tried, and frankly, I think it would end in disaster, and at exactly the wrong time."

"No," The commander objected tersely. "Whatever happens--we don't go there. No robbing Peter to pay Paul. Those reactors are damn hard to re-up, and all of the scenarios we have for doing it involve a half-assed rigging that could get us all killed. Given the choice of being burned alive, or turned into freeze pops--neither option is acceptable. If we're going to save Alpha, we're going to have to do it with the resources we have.

"Victor, would you say that five day forecast is a reliable one."

"Reliable?" He said, ruffling through his notes. "It's as accurate as it can be, based on the information we have now. Remember though, we have yet to record any gravimetric readings from the Triumvirate itself. Once the Moon begins to fall towards that second star, the rules will change drastically.

"And," He segued, introducing the next topic in the agenda, as the problems began to breed like hot, and eager rabbits. "We also have to consider the time factor that's involved if we have to exodus the base. The launch window for our Eagles is crucial, if we're going to avoid having our fleet sucked in, and vaporized.

"By the way," The professor winked at Ouma. "That's something that I would prefer computer not calculate. No offense, of course."

The mainframe chief nodded in agreement.

Angelina silently counted to ten during the questions; Paul's rapid fire inquiries were annoying. He damn well knew there had only been preliminary discussions and they had not had the opportunity to work the details.

She answered, smiling patiently. "No, we have not run simulations because we just discussions less than 15 minutes ago. As you know, we have 8 Titans remaining and we will likely need to use 4 or 5. Petrov has begun prepping Evil Mushroom now. As far as a another magnitude 8 quake, perhaps, if we are subjected to another "push" by the external force that caused us to change our course. Otherwise, we definitely could expect more quakes once we come under the influence of the gravitational pull of the triumvirate in 3 days." She paused. "Of course, by then we will have much greater concerns. Concerning the question of reprocessing plutonium, we really don't have time to do it. We have 7 nuclear mines ready for use. It would have been nice to have more so we didn't have to use the Titans but so be it."

He turned to Ben Ouma. "I want the simulations-the top three simulations-in the next four hours. Before we commit to this, we need at least some assurance that we're not putting us into a hyperbolic course directly into Eta Prime."

He settled back, his fingers moving unconsciously along the frets of an invisible guitar as he forced himself to relax as much as he ever did. "Professor Bergman," he continued, "work with Captain Carter on an emergency evacuation plan-what would the possibilities be of placing enough supplies in our subsurface facilities to restore this base to minimal operating capabilities should we have to evacuate for the duration of the moon's close pass through the system?" Despite the forceful confidence of his voice, he knew there was no possibility-Eagles had a limited range and despite efforts, their meager resources were already stretched to-if not past-the breaking point.

"Agreed." Koenig said, moving behind Morrow, and Sandra, almost crushing a loose Gorski-thingamajig' underfoot. "But let's face it, evacuating the base is an absolute last resort. Before we waste any more of our time, I'd like Carter, and Professor Bergman to go up in Eagle One, and do a reconnaissance." He moved over to the pilot's side. "Ouma will have a procedure worked up for you. I want you to turn your I-Band Omni dish towards the coordinates that he gives you. I want to know if we're still being 'pushed,' and if we are, where exactly it's coming from.

"Right away, commander." The pilot said, nodding to Bergman.

"Ang,' I'd like you, and Paul to start work on Operation: Cool-Down. We'll devote as much time as we can to simulation study, but time is not on our side. Start assimilating the nuclear charges. Paul I want you to deploy them the minute they're ready.

"And remember." He added. "The clock is ticking--for all of us."

"Very good, Commander," Angelina typed in a series of pages to some of her technical staff.

"John," Helena Russell added, before allowing the meeting to break up, "the heat will begin to increase exponentially to the point where our HVAC systems will not be able to maintain a 68 degree constant environment very soon."

She unconsciously tapped her pen on the desk. "Things are going to start becoming very uncomfortable soon. I suggest not only enforcing mandatory water breaks to stave off dehydration but also allow all personnel to dress in light weight clothing rather than in the standard duty uniform; unless, of course, lack of covering would introduce a safety hazard on the job."

The doctor glanced at the faces around the room then back to Commander Koenig. "I don't need to remind you that with the increased heat, tempers will probably flare as well."

The commander nodded.

"Alright." He assented sans chagrin. "I'll ask Ang' to issue a Priority Three advisory on the chillers, and air-handling units. Paul, forward a hard copy of Dr. Russell's instructions to Alpha News Service." He said, while moving back towards his desk. "While you're at it, track down Pierce Quentin, and tell him I want to see him in my office.

"Now."

*****

Angelina Carter stepped out of Travel Tube C and took a quick right turn into the short corridor that led to the room which was at one time the bane of the Tri-Continent.

It was already stifling in the upper levels of Alpha, although it was still relatively cool in this lower level control room. The Chief of Technical Section was nevertheless dressed in shorts, tank top and sneakers, her commlock clipped precariously at her hip pocket. She approached the manager of Tactical and Defense, the former Colonel Yuri Petrov.

Tactical and Defense was sort of Security and sort of Technical. As of this moment, the section fell under the wing of Technical though Paul had recently voiced his preference to have the group under the Main Mission organization and hence, under him. Angelina didn't care either way; Tactical was probably one of the most self sufficient organizations, as Petrov ran a pretty tight ship. However, Commander Koenig did not see the urgency in moving the organization and today it was still her responsibility.

"We will definitely need 5 nukes, Colonel," Angelina approached him with a red flimsie. "How are the preparations coming along?"

"Paciihahhe," the tactician replied sedately in mother Russian, while handing Ang' the requisite radiation badge, though her gums appeared not to be bleeding, and though she appeared to not be glowing in the dark. "On schedule, with a few minor infelicities of staffing." He disclosed, and shook his head balefully at Dr. Roberta Specter. On the opposite side of the observation window, she appeared to be hectoring the PhD's as they tried to reach comity over the hot wires, exposed in an open gas hatch on the warhead's mid-stage. Dr. Teller wielded his clipboard, and appeared to be shouting mute, though no less personal, antonyms in her general direction. Dr. Jessup shook his head ruefully, and ignored her. "She's fair with logistics. There's leadership inside her that's dying to be expressed. But everyone considers her an airhead--myself included. Such is her quandary."

It choked him up just thinking about it. She never seemed to gain that priceless experiential knowledge, but went on, yakking,' and turning Deuterium initiators into fool's gold; her common sense, overwritten, as if by some higher agency.

Outside the gantry elevator, Harness Bull Pound was engaged in light conversation with Michelle Cranston, but the nearby LGM25C, code named Raven Nine was bigger than them all.

"STAGE TWO PRESSURIZATION NOMINAL, VORTEX INITIATED." Evil Mushroom broke in suddenly--it's sterile phonyms echoing from every speaker in the silo. "TURBOPUMP, AND R/V BACKUP SYSTEMS NOMINAL."

"The most sophisticated circuit on this base." The colonel said, not fondly, of the cybernetic dinosaur, designed, and built by SAC/NORAD. "Yet, if it had even one-quarter of Dr. Specter's ability to reason, it would be dangerous.

"I take it the launch coordinates have yet to be determined." He said evenly, examining the status of one of the concurrent launches, Raven 10, in the harsh yellow light of the gooseneck lamp.

"That would be correct," Angelina nodded then stifled a yawn as she leaned against the desk.

"The professor and Alan left 20 minutes ago on a reconnaissance mission. It is scientific, data gathering, really. Besides determining the coordinate to send the nukes and set the mines, the Professor is suppose to figure out what pushed us toward the trio suns."

She noticed a sheen of perspiration forming on Petrov's forehead. The tunics of the technicians working on Raven 9 had sweat stains on the back in the shape of a tree. "You guys should change out of the wool uniforms and make sure you drink plenty of water. I don't need the crew passing out from heat stroke and dehydration for the sake of a dress code."

"What about the nuke mines? What is the status on those?" Angelina eyed the giddy Dr. Specter and shook her head slightly.

"I'm afraid this area doesn't lend itself very well to summer fashions." Petrov explained, watching Dr. Jessup fix the helmet to his silver radiation suit before stepping inside the warhead's casing. From afar, he looked like Klaatu from "The Day The Earth Stood Still." Then Teller donned his fail safe gear, and took on the burden of the magnetically sealed crate that Michelle Cranston was carrying. The wall-mounted seal beams turned a cautionary blue color as she, and Pound ran like hell to opposing sides of the containment field. "We have three fission devices waiting to be armed. During my tour of duty in the Baltic, we referred to them as 'Island Busters.' Small--but exceptionally dirty.

"As to the remaining charges, I have no idea. Seems Mining Section is having difficulty excavating enough Plutonium locally for the thermonuclear transaction. The last I heard, they were so desperate that they were even willing to repel inside the bottomless pit at Wargentin."

Luckily, Petrov had never heard of any moonbase miners falling heels over shovel into the crater's screaming chassids. Then again, there was a first time for everything.

Angelina's commlock chirped and she removed it from the waistband of her Moonbase Alpha issued gym shorts. It was a text message from Chief Mining Engineer Steve Gardner. It read as follows:

"GOOD NEWS. WE FOUND MORE URANIUM. BAD NEWS. ONLY ENOUGH FOR 2 MINES. DELIVER @ PROCESS CENTER BY 1600. GARDNER"

"Right," Angelina murmured acknowledging receipt of the message. She looked up at Petrov. "Colonel, it looks like we will need another Tritan. You can have as many of the Electronics and Nuclear Techs as you need to get the job done."

Giving Petrov her best electronics people would of course, deprive her of techs to work on the HVAC system. However, priorities were priorities. She'd figure something out and had enough of a baseline knowledge to do some of the work herself; she was sure the Commander would give a hand too.

"Of course," Ang smirked, "I won't send you Malcom."

She expected Yuri Petrov to return her smirk, ever so slightly in his cool Russian demeanor. Only he did not. In fact, his expression was aptly described as frozen; so was his body. Petrov was in the middle of scratching his nose when he stopped completely. He did not blink.

Angelina Carter looked around and noticed Tellar, Cranston and Pound were also statuesque. The chatter of Evil Mushroom slowed to the murmur of a 45 record being played at 33 1/3 rpm. Fifteen feet from Petrov the empty space took on a ripple. Angelina slowly backed away, against the wall panel as she saw a definite form. She squinted then suddenly gasped as she felt a slow squeezing around her throat.

She could not move and she could not cry out. As she began to black out and her sight turned to tunnel vision, the ripple began to take on the form of a hideously, mutilated and decayed, though somewhat opaque face. It was nearly nose to nose with her, drawing closer and closer to her, when she closed her eyes.

In the next instant she found herself leaning against the wall, hand to her forehead. She looked around and saw Tellar, Cranston and Pound at work again and the background noise of the defense computer.

"You know," Petrov began, offering her a mug of water as Ang' crawled back up the rabbit hole to Moonbase Alpha. "I had a dual citizenship. I lived for ten years in Washington, Indiana.

"Don't ask. Anyway, they had an expression there that matches your expression to a tee;' 'messed up,' is the phrase. Would you like to hear the Russian cognate."

Michelle Cranston was exiting the connector ramp, and moving towards the elevator when she saw Ang,' and waved to her through the transparency. She seemed jovial at first, but then her mirth became an instant, add water grimace when she saw the swollen, left over horror on Angs' face. Harness Bull Pound didn't wave at all. He had his back turned to her while he spoke to someone on his commlock. His Brain Banger Prism dangled in its triangular holster like an unevolved tail.

Then the blue warning lights were replaced with soft, white, fluorescent again as Drs. Teller, and Jessup emerged from the belly of Raven Nine.

"Uh, sure, "Angelina stammered, as she took the water and quenched her sudden dessert thirst. He taught her the Russian translation and she heard it but she was not listening.

Michelle Cranston's brow was crinkled and Ang, waving the green flimsie like a fan, conveyed the non-verbal 'I'm just hot, that's all.' Cranston nodded slightly and followed Pound, deciding that she should probably get into some light weight clothing as well.

As Petrov talked, she reasoned to herself that she was tired, stressed and beginning to suffer from the heat; although she was not entirely convinced of the logic. She was sufficiently experienced now in weird phenomena to be suspicious; guilty until proven innocent.

"It sounds like you are on schedule and have things under control, Yuri," Angelina complimented. "Good job. Don't let Paul Morrow hassle you. Let me know if you run into any problems or need anything else."

"This is my Sanctum Sanctorum, down here." Petrov said copascetically. "I don't hear much from command staff."

He almost added: "Unless it is a directive to kill someone," or to make a crack attempt at same.

Angs' complexion gave him pause--maudlin, and only a few degrees above pale. It was possible that she doubted his veracity; thought he was full of it. He suddenly realized why he was stuck in the can with Evil Mushroom, and a garrison of Harness Bulls--each, and every one, an unstable, loony tune. He didn't much care for people. Too many surprises, and trying to anticipate them all gave him a acid reflux. He liked the human race better when he was barraging them with artillery, and raining nukes' upon their heads.

Pravda; not the wastrel Moon. Now there was a town to be in.

*****

The temperature on the base was now 95 degrees. Ed Malcom was on his way to the commissary. He was hot. He was galded. He was sheathed in raw sweat from the bank of his forehead, to the flab of his wide load. His bunion was killing him. His appetite was enigmatically, unaffected. He stepped miserably into Travel Tube-A, and waited for the car to accelerate.

Suddenly, sitting directly across from him on one of the Futura plastic couches, a brown squirrel of duplicity, and petty intent twitched its nose at him. Malcom was stunned--even enthralled by the atypical sight. He wanted to move closer for a better look, but suddenly, invisible bands of iron encircled him like a gigantic slinky. He couldn't stand, or reach for his commlock, or halt the degenerative progress of the travel tube car.

The squirrel-entity was now in control.

"It bothers you that I've joined you." The squirrel-entity said. He wasn't offended. "I can see that you're shocked. At my demeanor. My phenotype. Tell me, have you ever seen the Rogers & Hammerstein musical, "South Pacific?"

The technician's tongue tipped at his lips, a ubiquitous fist crunched at his vocal cords.

"You would probably like it, though the use of the glockenspiel, and the triangle was a bit extraneous." The squirrel-entity shrugged. "My guess is, you're a fan of percussion, though too dumb to appreciate the savvy of an artisan like Buddy Rich.

"Do you even recognize that name? You don't do you."

Ed Malcom gagged.

"Resistance is fruitless." The squirrel-entity advised. "There's no escape from us elementals. How can you possibly retreat from beings that exist between diatoms, and chlorophyll. You can run, but you can't hide. There is one way." The squirrel-entity admitted, but it was a long-shot, at best. "There's a mineral complex on the fifth planet in the constellation Pleiades. Its called Tryoxinmethylocarbaminechloronitrate. A drop in your coffee, and you would never again be susceptible to extrasensory harassment like this. Tryoxinmethylocarbaminechloronitrate has been known to block certain neural pathways that lead to the hypothalamus of the brain. An unfortunate platitude is that is causes the simultaneous firing of neurons in certain species of crustaceans, endemic to the system. For approximately fifteen seconds, they are at one with the Sublime. Then they rot like salmon in a fish market."

Ed Malcom wanted to vomit, but it would surely land on his fat gut, and roll down his stricken chest. He would be reek, as well as being hot, and galded. The future seemed dim.

"In your present situation, Trioxinmethylocarbaminechloronitrate is not an option." The squirrel-entity lamented. "It seems stupid that I should have to tell you that. It's a double redundancy, but I thought I would point it out anyway, just to be conversational." The squirrel-entity said, scamping to the edge of his plastic couch. "Now, as to my purpose--I have come to lift the complex layers of stupidity from your eyes, so the prophecy might come true; that the blind may once again see. For if you are made to glean, this entire asteroid, and everyone on it would axiomatically fall into the lower, death realms that are my theological domain. I have a master plan. However," the squirrel-entity cautioned "I should probably tell you that this will involve dispensing the shadows that you laughingly refer to as 'I.' Your life will become unbearable. I wouldn't wish it on my own worst enemy, really.

"What do you think about that?"

"!!!NO!!!" Ed Malcom choked.

"Yes." The squirrel-entity said, switching its tale.

The travel tube zoomed down a highway to hell.

*****

Still dark...but not much. Eta Carinae Positive was murdering the night.

Eagles One, and Seven maintained a holding pattern in close proximity. Eagle One's bow was aimed at all coordinates 43S.10SW. Eagle Seven was aimed in the opposite direction, astern of the solar alee. Major Donald Franzen had the helm. Eagle Flight One was under the direct command of Captain Alan Carter, WSCA. While Franzen corrected the degs on his ship, Professor Bergman seated himself at the workstation in Eagle One's laboratory module, and keyboarded the formula DM = m - M = 5lg (r/10pc) + A. The dish lowered from a hatch in the transport's keel, and modulated towards Ben Ouma's Widget Thing From Another Galaxy. Said Widget didn't want to be found, however. After only five minutes it became incenseingly, punch the fucking wall obviate. The professor groaned, and capped his ink pen.

"Bergman here." He said glumly to Carter through the link. "That scan came back two apples, and a banana. No telemetry. I think its time to spread out. I'll try boosting the signal gain through the MoonSat Network. Hopefully, I won't break anything."

"Alpha, did you get that?" Carter said into his headset microphone, as he opened the ship's drive.

"Affirmative Eagle One, we copy." Controller Winters replied, with all the elan of Robby, The Robot. "Eagle Seven, haul starboard. Eagle One, slow ahead to meridian."

Somewhere on the Main Mission observatory, Klaus Rotstein assisted himself to a nice, cushy chair next to an AC vent, where he did not have to produce, and spin. The lap of luxury, in the Royal Kuwaiti Palace of his worthless, do-nothing brain. The ice cubes in his moonbase cup melted almost instantly from the orange rays of the furnace outside.

"Roger that." Carter replied, tightening his safety harness. He opened the idiot switch, and fired a ten second burst of plasma from the aft thrusters. In space, Eagle One, and Eagle Seven parted ways--Carter moving forward into the scalding omnipresence of the Triumvirate; Franzen, to his destiny near the baked aurora of Tycho. "Eagle Seven, stand by for braking."

"Copy." Franzen said. With his Liverpoolian accent, he would have fit in perfectly alongside, George, and Ringo, and Paul, and John, who didn't mean to say that his group was better than Jesus Christ as a person, or anything.

Eagle Flight One was a hot mission--in more ways than one. Carter's hair was pasted to his head like a slimy, hirsute alien that intended to suck his brains.

"Nothing." Bergman said to the Boolean maps that lined the wall monitors. "As near as I can tell, the waveform originated over 300 AU's beyond the galactic system. Way, way out there, in the vicinity of Thetis.

"Apparently, it's stopped." He exhaled, turning away from the gooseneck lamp. "Which is good. I guess." He said, mocking the wholly useless auspiciousness of it all. It was like having some poltroon act all ennobled because he was able to offer you regular, or extra crispy for your Salem stake burning.

"Right." Carter sighed, wiping his brow with the right sleeve of his environment suit. He closed the port covers, and brought up the navigational display again. "Alpha/Eagle One. It's a no-go out here. Whatever it was, it's gone now. I'm reeling the dish in.

"Eagle Seven, you're on the Lubber's Line. We're returning to base."

Then out of nowhere, Arthur C. Clark's stargate opened, and closed, and before it was over, Carter was left to offer condolences to Moonbase Alpha's umpteenth widow. He would obsess over the proposition of blowing the goddamned computer to kingdom come.

"Franzen, did you get that? We're through. Time to pack up, and go home." He fumed while turning his forepeak away from Eta Carinae positive, and back towards the lunar poles.

No response. A million copulating bees on a white sheet of paper. In the lab, Victor Bergman acquired a taste for india ink.

"Eagle Seven, this is Carter." The pilot said angrily as his ship began to coast towards Plato. "Pull your head out of your ass, and answer up. I'm not in the mood."

"...the Moon...." Major Donald Franzen's voice piped weakly through the intership channel. "The...it's gone...can't triangulate...."

"???What the bloody hell are you talking about???" Carter bellowed, already working the Neptune Panel to fix the other pilot's position. The doors parted, and Victor Bergman entered the module, his frown lines much deepened.

"...too...many...." Franzen replied, even as he was being buried alive in subspace static. Bum rushed to his death in a place of black ash, and falling stars. A place of Roman Barges, and decaying pyramids, and lost milk carton children. The universe of Jimmy Hoffa, and Amelia Earhart, and TBF Avengers. The home of the UFO that sank Elvis, and the RMS Titanic, but not at the same time.

"Alpha, this is Eagle One." Carter said frantically. "Eagle Seven is in trouble. I need help locating his position."

They tried. They coordinated Franzen's last reported position. They attempted to project on Carter's last relative approach. They broadcast homing beacons, and rescue blyphs on the interstellar band. Helena Russell tried to somehow tie in the lost pilot's bioscan readings (which were flatline) with the tower's deep space tracking system, which Ouma rigged with a flathead screwdriver, and five yards of duct tape. Koenig ordered Klaus Rotstein out onto the surface for a frugal search. Moonbuggies were dispatched.

Carter did a spacewalk.

But Eagle Seven was gone. Graveyard gone.

*****

The roar of the compressors deadened Angelina Carter's hearing and eventually her mind.

After spending nearly 2 hours on her back half inside and half outside the enormous unit, as one of a team of engineers attempting to optimize the cooling system, Ang's eyelids became heavier and heavier. Even Ed Malcom's grumbling and the distant country music from Commander Koenig's CD player as he worked on the giant fan unit on the other side of the auditorium could not keep her from yawning.

The black soil sprinkled slowly from her hands as in an hour glass. From this soil, next year's harvest would be great. The twin moons had risen early in the reddish sky, as the red dwarf sun billions and billions of miles distant began to disappear below the horizon. The nocturnal creatures would soon emerge and the thunderheads in the distance forewarned of rain.

The air was sweetly pungent, from the aroma of the fruit, appetizing in appearance, on the nearby trees, which resembled gigantic vines, intertwining each other than trees. Angelina closed her eyes, feeling the cool breeze on her face, listening to the thunder in the distance.

The storms grew impossibly close to her as thunder clapped above her and lighting struck a nearby tree. It burst into flames. In record time, before she could stand, the fire had spread and she was suddenly surrounded. With nowhere to run, she watched frantically, as tears streamed down her cheeks, and the circle of inferno closed in on her.

Angelina gasped and jumped when she felt movement against her. Carter had maneuvered himself into the opposite equally narrow second service entrance and was right next to her. Perhaps he would be more useful. Ed Malcom, who had earlier gotten stuck in the opening as he tried to squeeze his bulk into it, had been sent to help Commander Koenig.

If they survived this latest crisis, Koenig would probably get back at her by assigning her to overnight Command coverage for at least a month. Such would be the way he would extract his "revenge" on her, she mused. Still, to Ang, it was probably worth it; she did not relish the thought of making full side body contact with Ed Malcom. His body odor was so bad, even from a distance Ang thought she would gag.

"Eagle 7 still missing?" She asked, resetting the voltmeter, though she already knew the answer. She was concerned but she was, as always whenever he went out in an Eagle, so very happy to see Alan return.

"Zero." Carter said. "The whole search was a Drover's dog. No sign of Franzen; no sign of Eagle Seven; not even a radioactive jetsam left behind by his Howitzers. I saw him in the autoforg facility this morning. Ten hours later, and it's like he never existed." He recanted miserably, removing another 43" X 48" screen from the open condenser dog house. "I just don't get it." He sighed, dropping the sheet, and placing his left fist against his forehead, as if to punch the answer through. "He wasn't even ten kilometers away. I had him on my scanners. How can a blasted 300 ton ship just disappear through the cracks with it's pilot. Like sliding behind a lousy, goddamned refrigerator."

It desolated him.

********

"A squirrel." John Koenig declared with ire, and voluminous choler. "Well, I think that's totally whacked." He informed Ed Malcom, reaching for the lever to close down Pump Number One. "I don't want to hear any such nonsense."

Five years in space. Sixty months, and what a craze-mill Deadhead Ed had already become. It was like Kool-Aid drying up in a jug. The commander saw it coming.

"Then I won't tell you about his kampf. His hideous plan, and how he would love nothing more than to cast every living thing into an unpurgatorial oblivion." The technician sulked, knowing that at this point, it would be more apropos to refer to 'he' with the more accurate, and insidious pronoun 'it.' "I wonder if we would enjoy greater success boosting the chillers if we realign the outside sensors."

"I already thought of that." Koenig said, aggravated, while reattaching the solid state circuit board to the control panel. Of course, the ground wire wouldn't reach. Another fun day-roasting in the inferno with Ed Malcom, and his cohort, the Squirrel, From Hell. "They were turned when the temperature reached 105 degrees Fahrenheit.

"It is now 108 degrees Fahrenheit." He announced, hoping to shock the technician back into reality. The result was a pittance. Nothing. A disaster cake.

"I'm concerned." His exogenous partner groaned.

"Then go see Bob Mathias, and have him plaster your skull with some industrial strength dope." Koenig halloo'ed. "But first--hand me that deep well socket out of the tool chest."

"Your remarks humble me." Ed Malcom complimented.

*****

Angelina gazed at Carter sympathetically for a moment. All the while she remembered her weird moment in the Evil Mushroom control room: The marching of time, no longer marching. The horribly bizarre face thing that nearly Eskimo kissed her. She wanted to tell him about it. However, the strain and despair in his eyes told her he really didn't need another tale of being transported to the land of Oz. Perhaps it was just a result of a weary mind.

"I'm sorry, Alan," she replied and gently kissed his cheek. "I'll be right back."

She pulled herself sliding on her back feet first out of the service entrance of the compressor unit.

Paul Morrow looked down at her. "I was wondering how long it would take you to wake back up and realize that I've been standing here for almost ten minutes." He crouched down beside her. "Your staff also owes me the simulation profiles for the course corrections blast-that was due three hours ago. Atop that, where is your husband-his flight operations people are behind the power curve on the Eagle refit operations, and their share of the tentative flight plan for Operation Noah's Ark." Noah's Ark, of course, was merely the motions of 'Plan B' to temporarily evacuate Alpha in case the nukes would fail to move the moon out of its present course.

As though 'Noah's Ark' would actually be viable. Eagles simply didn't have the range, oxygen reserve, or any sort of duration capability to actually pull such a maneuver off. Still, Paul had to arrange the contingency plans.

He waited a moment to allow Ang to gather her thoughts, then said, "Well?"

Ang stood up, brushing herself off. Morrow was drowning in his own perspiration, his hair wet and helmet like on his head.

"My staff is working on prepping the Ravens and mines. My resources are primarily dedicated to actually making the shockwave happen at this point, Paul. Jim Haines is working on the simulations, but frankly since we've never encountered a triumvirate before and the gravitation effects are unknown, the simulations profiles in this case are no better than best guesses." She wiped the back of her hands, teeming with sweat, on her shorts.

"The commander agrees," she added, turning toward the tool cart for the 1/6" driver bit. "As for a status from Alan, you should ask him yourself." She nodded to Carter who was straightening to a standing position behind Morrow.

He was neither ticked, nor termagant, nor inclined to massacre. Franzen was just the latest victim in the Moon's low RBI Score. Another sacrificial fucking goat, but he had little doubt, Morrow still had his tea promptly at 4:00 PM, regardless--ha-ha-ha, you insensate, limey cock sucker. Some must die, so others can live. That's probably what this John Fogerty with a moustache would say. His pores held the strain--sort of--but when it came time to make a basket, his eyeballs had an irritating habit of receding into his skull. Later, he'd rationalize it away with polemical statements that endorsed his office. Right. As far as Carter was concerned, the game had gone on for too long. Far too long. The hour was late; the clock was broken, and the batteries were cheap. He stepped casually beside Morrow, and turned his bottom teeth into a laconical, savage leer.

"Twenty-seven Eagles." Carter said with demeaning hyperbola. "Up to snuff, and with ancillaries for long range excursion--however long that might turn out to be. Ostrog pulled Eagle One into the outfitting quay an hour ago, and that was the last of them. She ought be ready right now.

"And," Paul said, with complete and total neutrality, "You never thought to make a verbal progress report? I thought better of you."

"You know." Carter brimmed. "I think you're becoming kind of a drip, Paul. Seems like I told you about this twice before I came in here."

"Three times, actually-but then I'll give you credit for having the cajones to at least have said it to my face." Paul glanced down at his palmpilot. "And five more times to others in passing conversation. Bad form, that."

"Maybe the heat has melted your ear drums, eh?"

She froze again in mid-reach for the recharged battery pack, gazing intently at Alan. Her non-verbal shouting "Don't Do It!!!" was either not received or ignored.

Paul looked up at Alan without moving his head-the effect was that of a exasperated teacher regarding an slow but otherwise poor student's lackluster performance in class. "I beg your pardon?" he said softly, his entire frame relaxing back into something other than a leisurely state. "If you're under the impression that you can stand here liberally squandering what precious little time Alpha has left, I can help find you additional labor." He glanced back down at his palmpilot and made a tickmark.

From across the pipes came the alto section. John Koenig found a nut--a 500 pound nut, but no squirrel--as Ray Price profoundly enunciated his ballad "The Green, Green Grass Of Home."

Paul glanced up again. "You certainly are a busy man," he admitted. "Imagine-all this time on your hands."

"Well, there are top people working on the map room calculations--adjunct, of course, to the planning committee. They check in with me, believe it, or not." Carter revealed. "Of course my very best star gazer disappeared several hours ago. He was assisting Professor Bergman, and myself. !!!Poof!!! Right out of space, he slipped by.

"No thanks to you, Mr. Main Mission Controller. "Heh," he gaped insanely. "Barb' Franzen is curious as to what you were up to when that happened also. I just told her you were in your cuppa'--now there's a priority, if ever there was one. You may want to talk to her--after you finish your fucking power trip, of course."

Angelina eyed both men as she finished snapping in the freshly charged battery into the bottom of the driver. She could see exactly where this was going; Ang decided she should attempt to play peacemaking diplomat. "Well," she spoke calmly and evenly. "I think we should take a deep breath and count to 10. Paul," she shot Carter a glance, "as you can see things are well under control and no one is slacking off."

In the background, Ed Malcom could be heard whining how his head hurt and how he was sick to his stomach.

Paul simply cocked an eyebrow and looked at Ang with unreadable eyes.

"Well, almost." Ang smirked. Although there was nothing funny about the situation, she was hot, exhausted and stressed; she couldn't explain it. Once again they were facing certain doom and after over 5 years, Ed Malcom still did not grasp the concept of teamwork. Funny, actually.

She continued to attempt diffusing efforts. "So now that you know everything is honky-dorey, would you like to give us a hand down here?" She smiled sweetly, offering the driver.

*****

"!!!Sonofabitch!!!" John Koenig cried angrily, dropping the circuit card like a 20/20, death-by-high voltage potato. He shook his benumbed, and static charged hand. The grease on his saturated white Haines tee formed a line directly to the perpetrator. Ed Malcom hung his head in shame. "!!!I thought I told you to shut this thing down!!!"

"You did." The technician said contritely. "And I failed to listen because I was otherwise invested in a miserable cosmogeny of my own making. I throw myself upon your mercy, sir. You can chastise me, or if you like, I can chastise myself."

He made as if to paddle himself with a monkey wrench to the arse.

(...bee-boop...)

Koenig shook his head pyrrhonically--unwilling to accept that cremation in pairs with Ed Malcom was the rara avis, final ending for his spiritual life. It just couldn't end this way. It was like having someone give you the Hope Diamond, only to jerk it away, and drop it in a septic tank. It was with an abject, incurable hand that he grabbed his commlock from the tool chest.

"???WHAT???"

"John." Victor Bergman said, uttermost, on the opposite end of the link. "Something very interesting. We need you in Main Mission right away. Tell Carter, and Morrow, we need them here too."

He broke the link.

Ed Malcom turned and lumbered miserably toward Carter, Morrow and his boss.

*****

Eta Carinae--destined to outshine the universe.

As the sprawling network of Moonbase Alpha began to shimmer, and steam in the detonated horizon; a crock pot of heat; a char four million times more intense than human beings had ever known. Eta Carinae had money to burn. She looked not too bad, considering the fact that the star had gone supernova in the southern skies of 1730. Normal obscurity returned eventually, but with a new wrinkle in the hem of space. The offspring of the explosion produced T-Tauri, the first cause of Paul Morrow's ass-case; the principal behind Claude Murneau's to-be-avoided, unmanageable moustache; the hot Olympus that squelched the air, and corrupted the mind; that compelled Sloven to a violent throtelen of Tanya Alexander, who was too tired to fend for her unbruised neck, and breasts.

What a guy.

T-Tauri, otherwise known as Eta Carinae Minor; otherwise known as Eta Carinae Positive. It took so long to bake the cake, and she might never find the recipe again. The source was brighter than Sirius, and the double-lobed gases devoured space, faster than Mikey could gourmand Life Cereal. Eta Carinae would just eat anything. As the digital clock beneath the big screen counted down to plasma degeneration, myth, and physical law merged at the oven doors. It took 140 light seconds for radio waves from the mother star to reach Moonbase Alpha's central array. At the end of long road, in the volcanic core, all questions were answered.

Could the Moon possibly survive impact with the star? No.

Could the Moon cope with the incinerating heat? Hell, no.

Could anyone on Moonbase Alpha hope to surmount this current botheration? Probably not.

Eta Cariane was the home of golf playing, coke-snorting, petty, uncaring, lazy lump gods. Her blistering pantheon included Odin, and Hecuba, and Osiris, and Bridg, and Zeus--that wonderful anthropomorph who got jollies screwing his mortal mistresses. Damnation, however, was a process, not an event. Time had to be allotted for every biped, triped, and protozoan to get their fair share.

There were three suns......but there were a million Moons.

*****

Hot town, summer in the city, back of my neck getting dirt, and gritty....

They took the stairs based on a hunch that it would be cooler. How about those hunches? It was just as sweltering, and draining, and electrolyzing as the lift ever was. By the time they reached the top step, the commander was breathless, stupefied, desert dog. Carter, and Morrow were stifled, propping themselves up on opposing, transparent quartz rails--rest in exchange for respiration. One nodded to the other as they prepared for the final eight meters, down the OK Corridor, and into the auditorium.

By the time they entered Main Mission, the internal temperature was 118 degrees.

"Alright, Victor, what do you have." Koenig inquired, handing his towel back to Emma Black. Carter relieved Gordon Cooper at the Capcomm Station, and Morrow landed on Deputy Winters with both feet. Ang' Carter exited the elevator at balcony level, and descended the steps to the technical workstation.

"Listen to this." Bergman said, unpausing the DAT copy that was loaded into the communications module beneath the big screen. Helena Russell stood by to assist. "We recorded it about a half hour ago." The professor said over the introductory static. "On it, you'll hear three of our Rescue Eagles. They were in the vacinity of Orbital Reference 2-4-8. Thirty-thousand miles perigee, and near the last reported position of Eagle Seven.

"We also discovered something else."

He nodded to Helena Russell as they waited for the static to clear.

"...over Compton...working our way towards Tycho...." The overlapping, deep space radio gargle commenced, almost audible.

"...Mission we are "GO" for altitude correction, and burn...." The voice of pilot Pierre Danielle.

"...2-9...we're looking at multiple caution, and warning lights, but...pitch...five...."

At this point, Carter crossed the open pit, and analyzed the litany that was emanating from the tape.

"...we don't see ANYTHING down there, but holes in the Moon...." Opine, courtesy of Thomas Graham, parallel flanking, and frustrated pustule.

"...crossed the Anderson Line, and heading north...empty space...."

"...to say; we must be...vein of Limonite...with my sensors...." Pilot Vicello Tiziano, fighting the good fight.

Bergman paused the system again, his upper lip, stiff.

During this time, Angelina had relieved a blood shot eyed, catatonic and dripping wet Andy Dempsey. She reminded herself again that she needed to talk to Paul about Andy. The technical station screen had reverted to energy saver mode, due to disuse.

She keyed up the Electronics Testing section status on a hunch and recent memory.

"Commander," Ang began "The main navigational unit for Eagle 2-9 is still in the burn-in chamber. It is not even close to being released to Reconnaissance for installation."

She looked to Carter. "Unless your guys swapped out another unit from another ship." That action, however, was not done without a very good reason and Technical would certainly know about it for traceability purposes.

"I didn't recognize three of those voices." Carter said, bewildered. "They may be piloting Eagles, but they're not in Reconnaissance Section."

John Koenig looked grim.

Helena Russell looked blankly from person, to person. The professor relaxed, folding his arms over his chest. The desired effect had been rendered.

In spades.

"Hangar bay." Gordon Cooper said--perturbed, and getting more perturbed from the Capcomm Station. "What's the situation with Eagle 2-9."

"Main Mission/Hangar Bay." A middle aged, former Trinidad answered from beneath the lunar surface. "Uzil here. Eagle 2-9 is still in the graving dock. The navigational assembly was pulled. Technical Section is remanufacturing the system. No word yet, but we're still waiting.

"Eagle One has been refitted; likewise Eagle 3-2. All systems are 'GO.'"

"Paul." Koenig said calmly. "Contact Eagle Flight Two. Tell them to scan the area. See if they can spot any other ships."

Bergman looked reticently at Ang,' and Carter. As if knowing what the outcome of that stratagem would be.

Helena Russell blinked.

Ben Ouma had taken the initiative. "Computer has analyzed and attempted to match the voices on the recording. It recognizes the voice patterns of Pilots Pierre Danielle, Tom Graham and Vicello Tiziano. Computer cannot make positive identification of three of the voices."

The storm door to the bizarre opened and closed. Angelina Carter was transfixed on the opaque, semi-shapeless figure descending the balcony steps. The figure passed in front of the Commander's desk and descended the two steps toward the Technical Station.

Ang was perspiring profusely from the heat when she felt her skin go cold and clammy as the thing touched her. A pins and needles sensation intensified on her entire left side momentarily then disappeared. She sat back in the chair rubbing her forehead, feeling herself blacking out. Then, suddenly, all was well and she felt instantly better.

She refocused on the screen in front of her and took a large swig of water. Sandra Benes noted the technical manager's flushed sallowness from her position in the adjoining workstation. She considered saying something, but her observations stopped short of her teeth.

"...maybe...." Koenig reeled, his soaked tee drying from the icy encroachment across his skin. "Sandra." He asked turning. "Is it possible we're receiving some kind of reflection, or a distortion. There's a ton of magnetite in that crater. Tycho is hard on ship-to-base communication. Could the local geography be interfering with Flight Two's transmitters."

"It is possible," Sandra acknowledged, "but not likely. An echo transmission would not have the signal strength of its originator. According to computer analysis the source signal strength of the unknown transmissions is nearly as strong as the known communications and, more importantly, the wave form is NOT the opposite, as would be expected in a reflection.

Sandra frowned, cupping her hand to her earpiece. "Commander, I'm receiving another transmission."

"Put it on speakers, Sandra." Koenig was instantly behind her.

"Eagle 2-9 to Alpha....!!!!what's happening!!!!...acknowledge...Eagle 2-9 to Eagle 3-6...OBrien....did you see....explosions...Main Mission tower...it's gone!!...Reactors....destroyed....return to base....rescue.......Eagle 3-6..!!! Evasive Action!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH"

The transmission was followed by a crackle then...silence.

*****

The sparsely furnished room in the deepest levels of Moonbase Alpha, in the catacombs, was now the most popular place on the base. The temperature in this room was only 80 degrees F. The occupants were the youngest members of the Moonbase Alpha population and the adults attending them; in this case, there was no shortage of adult volunteers to baby-sit the children.

Clare Profitt sat in a corner attempting to feed and comfort 6 week old James, one of her identical twin sons, who was crying fitfully with full blown colic. His brother, Jack, slept contently in the makeshift bouncy seat.

Eight month old Gretchen Erhlich watched as Nicky Carter built a tower of blocks. One swipe of her small hand sent the tower to the ground. Nicky responded with hearty laughter and both began throwing the blocks around the room until Joe Erhlich, gently but firmly reprimanded them.

Irina Volkovich, 6 months pregnant, reclined miserably on the couch.

Angelina Carter stepped into the room. Ivan Sloven had graciously volunteered to help watch the children. What a guy. He was on the floor, drawing with Jackie Crawford. Nicky had rambunctiously ambushed him, jumping on his back. Good ole Uncle "Ivan" responded with tickling and gentle roughhousing and Nicky was laughing so hard, his face was flaming red. What a saint.

Angelina did not think so; not at all. She couldn't prove it but thought Ivan Sloven was too good to be true. Men who beat up women are rotten to the core. She couldn't prove that either; but she was working on it. She eyed Sloven coolly as Nicky saw and ran to her. Sloven smiled graciously, innocently and returned his attention to coloring with Jackie.

Nicky hugged Angelina tightly and for good reason. Ang was no longer hot. She was no longer burning up and no longer sweating. In fact, her skin was cool and dry. Her son, on the other hand, felt like a furnace but he relished the coolness of her skin. She was, however, exhausted and she sat in a corner, holding her son. Her eyes became very heavy.

The rose quartz colored midday ski was marred only by the passage of lavender tinged clouds overhead. The waterfall shimmered and sparkled and the sound of splashing and laughter of children and adults alike could be heard on the other side of the waterfall.

Angelina realized she was pregnant, very pregnant, and carefully made her way over the rocks to the waterfall. The laughter grew louder and louder; she looked forward to joining in on the fun. She stepped behind the waterfall to be greeted with silence. Suddenly she felt pain and with one push, she gave birth to her child. This baby was a rare blessing and she cuddled him close to her. At the same time, she heard the voices again, but this time, they were screaming, begging for her to help. She gently laid the baby on the soft moss and covered him then stepped out of the waterfall.

The screaming stopped. She looked around, blinking, squinting at the reddish sun.

When she stepped behind the curtain of water again, Angelina screamed. The baby was gone. Blackness and the void overcame her and claimed her once again.

She awoke with a start, Nicky sound asleep against her. She didn't care about the voices. She would not lose the baby. She knew what she had to do.

*****

One hundred, and thirty degrees. The same temperature one would find in the arid, thirsty plains of Afghanistan. To the vulgar, unrefined, slack-off sentience of the Triumvirate, it was entirely too wintry, and gelid. While Professor Bergman stood at the empty conference table, using his muscle shirt to clear the mug, and ventilation backup from his calculator, John Koenig communed with Betty Crocker. He stood a-borning to the march of vision ports, careful not to gaze directly into the eyes of the gorgon. Pierre Danielle's ship was the last to return, the hydraulic pads touching down in the hot sands of Launch Pad Two. On a nearby commstation, Emma Black perspired on-screen, her tenacity, and sense of purpose, muted by the zero volume.

"Well," Bergman solicited, putting away his calculator. "This is a bit of strange situation we're in, isn't it. We need to think of something. Haul the nail. And do it before we acquire any more problems."

So ended his words of post-existential wisdom.

Koenig's white tee shirt was yellow under the arms from perspiration. He mopped his brow with the already damp bandana and shoved it into hip back pocket of his gym shorts.

"In 2 hours we will know whether things will turn around for us and we'll start to cool down or if we have to pack up and head out of here." Koenig looked up at the A/C vent. It had long ago stopped blowing cool air. He stepped to the side and continued gazing out the window. The elevator of Launch Pad 2 slowly lifted Eagle 10, with mine payload securely attached, to surface level.

"The mines are all set and attached to the Eagles. Lift off is scheduled in 30 minutes and computer has downloaded the coordinates."

Koenig turned to Victor who was now sitting in the low rider couch...sitting....sticking.

"Did Ang give you a status on the Titans?"

"Sure." The professor said, scratching his head. "From the looks of it, they're ready to go. It would be nice to have a goodly, round number waiting for us at the end of it, but we don't. I think Operation: Cool-Down is a little more theoretical than I would like it to be." He admitted, spinning his calculator on the damp surface of the table. "Then there's also the other problem; the difficulty we seem to be having keeping track of personnel, and equipment in this area of space."

It was like reading "Amazing Stories," or in MIA Franzen's case, "Weird Tales." There was nothing palpable; nothing to put on paper to speak of. It was all pap, and "creative" trigonometry.

"Yeah," Koenig sat on the steps as he took a gigantic gulp from his water bottle. "But the thing is, we haven't lost any personnel or equipment. All Eagles were accounted for, one in pieces. Everyone was on base except for pilots Danielle, Graham and Tiziano."

'And Franzen,' Koenig thought mournfully.

"If I didn't know any better, I'd say we were dealing with a premise from a bad Star Trek episode and we were on the verge of proving The Theory of Reality Displacement. What a bunch of crap." Koenig rubbed his forehead and chuckled. The Theory of Reality Displacement proposed that many alternate versions of reality existed on different planes of the time/space continuum. On earth, it had been dismissed as nonsense, the stuff of science fiction films.

Koenig slowly looked over the edge of his thumb and index finger resting under his eyes toward Bergman.

"Then again, Dr. Angelina Verdeschi proposed that nuclear waste accumulations would eventually result in a magnetic field that when discharged could create a megabomb. 'Nonsense' had been one of the milder words used to describe that theory in the academic community." Koenig sighed. "Now look where we are."

Bergman swayed, resting comfortably on the couch with his fingers kneaded behind his head. Somewhere in the office, a black, and white Emma Black was unknowingly sneezeworting a silver, fatidic Gorski plant stand. Elucidation from the converging flames outside had turned the interior wall panels to flush wine. He briefly recalled his painful immigration into the land of "know nothing." Knowing nothing, and living with the fact, day by day, was an truckling process, particularly at MIT--the Elysian Fields, where you not only were supposed to "know something;" rather, you were supposed to "know everything," or topple from balustrade of high repute. He remembered being disemboweled by Diophantine Equations--formulae in which he demonstrated only the sheerest stupidity. Particularly maddening were the expressions a(n), and y(n). They were generally unsolvable. The procedure was mostly regarded as useless, but there they were. The linear ones were solvable, but only after the quantities were stripped of their underwear, and made numerical.

Talk is cheap, Cullen Hightower once said. Except when Congress does it.

"The problem with science as we know it is that it only covers physical laws, and reality." Bergman remarked. "But there's a lot out there that we can't see, John. Our textbooks are archaic. They're about as relevant today as leaching, and lobotomies were before we left Earth. Thirty suns exploded in this sector of space.

"Imagine it. Thirty suns. Our knowledge of the inner working of even one star is limited, at best. There's no way of knowing how deeply it traumatized the framework of time, and space. We don't know how it weakened it...tore through it.... We could be walking on a bad floor, in a condemned house." Bergman analogized, while still the king of "know nothing." "Whenever two particles collide, an infinite number of outcomes follow."

Koenig took another swig of water as his commlock chirped on his elastic waistband.

"Commander, I need to talk to you. I'm here on the other side of the auxiliary door of your office," the woman on the micromonitor requested. "Please."

Commander Koenig pointed the bottom of his commlock toward the door, deactivating the lock. Angelina Carter stepped inside and the door whooshed shut behind her.

Koenig thought there was something odd about her. Then, he realized that she did not have the slightest sheen of perspiration on her. It could be heat stroke. However, her skin was not flushed either and she did not appear to be on the verge of collapse.

"What's up, Ang?" Koenig asked. Bergman drank his Vitaseed.

"We have to evacuate Alpha in the Eagles, sir. Operation Cool-Down is not our best option. You know that it is theoretical at best. We should stop wasting time and leave." She gazed out the bright orange viewport. "What we want...our home...will be out there."

Koenig, and Bergman shared a polite stun by hammer.

The commander absconded at first, inclining his head towards her--as if impaired by some bad plumbing in his eardrums.

"Leave?" He oppugned.

"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh," Bergman foundered. He prefaced, gathering his humours. "That sounds...promising. Where do you propose we go. Do you have any additional findings that we aren't aware of. If so, please tell us."

"Ang.'" Koenig said with dawning concert. "We did a multipoint sweep of this area. You, and Sandra both. Remember. There are no planets here--only the Triumvirate."

His attempted smile was broken ludicrousness. Compellers of argon rolled across the vision ports etherically. Before the temperature was 130; now it was 132. In the stage, the transparencies had begun to weep. Emma Black signed off, and her image was replaced with Clare Profitt's.

"We subjected this entire area to a 1,000 GHz radio sweep." Bergman gibed tenderly. "Along with CAMra, and holographic imaging. The results turned up nothing. There's no place to go; no where to evacuate to."

Angelina gazed at Koenig and Bergman, like they were a couple of simpletons.

"Of course we didn't find anything," Ang waved her hand dismissively. "The electromagnetic radiation from the sun trio is wreaking too much havoc with our long range sensors. The data is unreliable."

She was beginning to pace but not perspire.

"It is difficult to say how long the journey would be but certainly within the limit of our resources." She was not sure how she knew this statement. She just knew it to be true.

She stopped and turned toward them. "However, Commander, if we try to create a shockwave under these conditions, we certainly could end up with far more disastrous results. We could rip a hole in the very fabric of the time/space continuum itself."

She paused briefly. It was as if she heard herself speaking in a tunnel. She heard herself speak words that she had not formulated in her thoughts. They just...appeared.

"Don't you understand the implications of that?!?" For some reason, she was becoming exasperated.

"Now, you know better than that." Bergman reassured. "Of course we understand the implications, but how can we make a decision like that without further data. You're too good a researcher to be ignoring the exigencies of this. Believe me, if there's a planet out there, we're interested." He chortled. "Oh, are we ever interested." He affirmed, feeling the sweat trickle down his palpable forehead.

Koenig sipped his water neutrally, always thinking.

"Does Sandra concur with this." He probed, hoping. "How about Lars Manroot. What's the revised forecast from stellar cartography. Are you far enough along with this to provide latitude, longitude, flight coordinates."

Total, unbidden desperation.

A way out would be quite fine, thank you. Everyone on Moonbase Alpha keened. It would be better than being broiled alive like a Jew in Dachau. Christ, it was hot.

Angelina Carter, cool as a cucumber and in fact, beginning to feel a bit on the chilly side looked back and forth between Koenig and Bergman. Her instinct was strong but her logical mind could not prove it. She would never convince them..ever. She would have to take matters into her own hands when the time was right.

"The data from stellar cartography is inconclusive," Ang admitted, shaking her head. "But I don't see how working to create a theoretical shockwave is going to improve our chances either. It could result in damage to the base that would deprive us of the necessary resources for a long road trip in the Eagles."

"However, I will continue to support your decision." She lied. She knew what she had to do. There would be fall out during the long Eagle voyage ahead; she was convinced of it. However, she knew they would eventually understand that she was acting in the best interests of the community. "Excuse me, but I have more work to do before the blast."

Ang turned and left by the privacy door through Main Mission, shivering.

Koenig, and Bergman regarded each other with uncertainty.

*****

Know nothings were they all.

What does it take to achieve in life???

(???)

Let us consider the following expression:

If ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQURSTUVWXYZ could be rationalized to 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 910 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

Then of course:

A-S-S-K-I-S-S-I-N-G 1+19+19+11+9+19+19+9+14+7=118 %

"Marriage." The squirrel entity lectured nervously to his acolyte. "Procreation."

Ed Malcom shrieked.

*****

The activity level in Main Mission was beginning to reach a peak. The clock on the big screen showed a countdown of T-15 minutes until the blast that would create the shockwave and theoretically (hopefully?) would change the course of the moon.

Ben Ouma swiveled his computer desk between Sandra's Data Analyst station and Paul's Controller station. Paul was attending to the activity of securing the base. Sandra continued to gather sensor data and relay it to Emma Black on the computer deck. Main Mission Operatives were rushing about sweating in summer attire in the 145 degree heat.

Bergman continued calculations at the computer under the big screen.

* * * * *

Dr. Helena Russell stared out the viewport after ensuring medical was ready for whatever may result from the blast: either severe casualties, a quick evacuation...or both. A change in the background beep-and-ping of the life support monitors caused her to furrow her brow and look about in surprise-then a medical alarm went off from ICU.

On the heels of Bob Mathias, Helena plowed into ICU followed closely by Dorothy Sullivan-all three MDs came to a screeching halt, Bob at the EEG and yelling for a nurse to bring in something for the IV; Dot and Helena at the shoulders of Olivia deHavilland, who was sitting up.

Seven months of absolutely nothing-her mind barely registering activity on the brain-wave monitors; seven months of IV feeding and people changing her position every hour on the hour to avoid blood pooling, seven months of the tiny doll for the play purposes of the medical staff continuously losing weight from loss of body mass until she was no more than flaccid flesh covering bone.

And she, naked but for the continuously circulated, fluid-filled cooling blanket, was sitting up, eyes open and registering-something, her lips moving-from the long disuse of her vocal cords, soundlessly.

* * * * *

Commander Koenig, at his desk, and Paul Morrow shouted briefings and status to each other over the cacophony of Main Mission as Koenig intently typed at his keyboard.

Angelina Carter stood unnoticed on the computer deck under the balcony.

Captain Alan Carter, followed by Lt. Pierre Danielle, strode into Main Mission relieving Tom Graham at the Capcomm station. Ang nodded slightly to acknowledge him but that was the extent of the fanfare.

The last of the mines had been place. Now, all that remained was launching the nukes.

"CAPCOMM," Paul called, "Time readout to launch--Alan? Are all your birds grounded and undercover?" He knew the answer, of course, but wanted-for the third time in as many minutes-confirmation.

"Right." Carter affirmed--for the third time, and in as many minutes-confirmation. "Coop,' we're about to light the candle. Close the blast doors, and get your kiester out of there."

"Main Mission, we copy." Marilys Sing replied from her post in the Reconn Net.

The pilot turned to Morrow, and gave him a good natured slap on the rotary cup. They exchanged-despite the earlier friction-agreeable nods as Ben Ouma stepped across no-person's land to where John Koenig stood going over greenbar sheets with Dr. Specter. Her ears--trapped between them, there was only water.

Nobody seemed to notice that Angelina Carter was the only person in the room not drenched in perspiration. She turned toward the keypad on the computer and silently engaged the Evil Mushroom server.

Over yards of register tape, Ben Ouma noticed the words "ABORT SEQUENCE 1 COMPLETE" appear on his monitor. At the same time, Clare Profitt brushed past Angelina. She gasped. Ang's skin was ice cold.

"Are you alright?" Clare gently put a hand on her shoulder and immediately felt her entire arm grow cold. Angelina turned and glared at Clare. Clare let her go and stumbled back a step, eyes widening with fear.

Angelina Carter's eyes were no longer green. They were black. Her pupils had enlarged to oversized proportions that the colored iris was barely visible. She turned back to the computer and resumed typing.

* * * * *

"CRASH CART!" Yelled Bob Matthias as Olivia suddenly fell backwards onto the bed, the bioscanners screaming a flatline howl.

"10cc Atropine," called Helena, yanking the blanket away from the tiny form on the bed, "STAT!"

Already, Dot Sullivan was committed to chest compressions, one per second as a nurse slapped an oxygen mask over the mouth and nose of the lifeless mannequin on the bed--and suddenly, the biomonitors beeped with a near normal blood pressure and pulse.

"What happened?" questioned Helena, recovering the little engineer's form with the cooling blanket as everyone else began to put away the resucitation equipment. "She was in a coma and then..."

Dot stood back, staring at Livy. She'd seen the woman's lips move, and had been able to tell what she had said-and it chilled her soul.

*****

"Commander." The computer chief said in confidential tones. "Transmission from Tactical Section. Security Code Umbra is now in place. Transfer of protocols to the EM Mainframe in T-5 Minutes."

He looked unhappy, though. Bergman had the empathy to shake his hand, as Moonbase Alpha's master computer was now, officially useless. This isn't to say that it had ever been officially useful.

Koenig thanked him through a mouth that felt dryer than Death Valley. He looked from print outs to big screen with anxious beau ideal. The pop-gun, low orbital satellite transmissions didn't do it justice, though all monitors were gorged, and surfeit, and bursting at the seams. Spectroscopy, and photometric bombardment had neither the lexicon, nor the sack to truly define what they were seeing at this range. It was wondrous.

Eta Carinae Positive was fire.

The cameras returned too close images of molten, circumstellar dust. Eruptions of magma, approximate enough for the naked eye to glean. There was variability of light, which strobed through Main Mission like a crystal ball in Gehenna's disco tech. Then came the Halpha Emissions, and the UV Photons, and the x-rays--powerful enough, even outside of the gravitational pull, to begin persecuting, and beleaguering the lunar surface. It was lurid, and formidable, and terrifying.

It was light.

"Internal moonbase temperature now 155 degrees, and climbing." Sandra Benes reported, her eyes glued to the devil.

Ivan Sloven noticed the horrified look on Clare Profitt's face and began moving toward them from the right archway.

"ABORT SEQUENCE 2 COMPLETE" were the words that flashed on Ouma's display as he returned to his desk.

"Wha?!?!" Ben mumbled and began to type into his keyboard. "What the hell is going on?" He drummed his fingers on his desk as the hour glass tumbled on the monitor. Finally, he found the source of abort command data entries as "ABORT SEQUENCE 3 COMPLETE" appeared on his display.

He slowly turned his head toward Angelina Carter on the computer deck.

"Ang?!? What are you doing?!!?" Ouma called to her, as Sloven came next to her.

Evil Mushroom activated the claxon and boomed "FINAL ABORT SEQUENCE INITIATED....COMMAND CODES REQUIRED...FINAL ABORT SEQUENCE INITIATED.."

Paul looked up from his console-"What the hell?" he wondered aloud, then, "OVERRIDE ABORT SEQUENCE!"

Angelina Carter knew all the command codes.

"Stop her!!!" Ouma yelled.

Security Guard Ivan Sloven grabbed Ang by the typing wrist. Her skin was ice cold. Momentarily startled, he released her. Bad mistake. Ang grabbed Sloven by the wrist and in a swift turning motion aided by inhuman strength she snapped the bones of his wrist as if it was a dry twig. Sloven screamed in agony as she shoved him backwards and he staggered, falling down the steps.

Angelina Carter smiled and returned to typing the access codes. Ignoring Sloven's fate, Paul vaulted his own console and charged head-first across Main Mission at Ang.

*****

Whilst Sloven was having his bones fractured--being put to the ultimate test, and to the floor, Drs. Tellar, and Goldman met Petrov at the crow's nest atrium. The colonel calmly ascended four stories to the static-free, germ-free, radiation shielded accessway which led into the AI Brian Center of Evil Mushroom. He waited to for the elderly Doctor Goldman to show signs of respiration again, and then moved swiftly into the antechamber, pointing his commlock at the locks box that was magnetically sealed to the wall. The small, 4" X 8" panel popped open, exposing an ovate baffle, with three inset black switches. They were marked, easily enough, 1, 2, and 3.

Petrov pressed all of them, and waited for the retinal scan to finish blinding him.

The hatch opened, and the three entered the psychotronic, perspex mind of Evil Mushroom. The Red Room, as it was known, was bleary, and confounded. Goldman worked with arthritic slowness to overwrite Angelina Carter's abort sequence. How about that? Teller removed a screw driver from his tool belt, and tried installing a pneumonic erasure. How about that?

Petrov moved the mouse sprightly, navigating the terminal deep into the EM Mainframe's purely autonomic systems. He clicked on a rotating, CGI delta, and every covert, unpulchritudinous thing that the United Nations ever sequestered to this system was there. Bacilli Carrying Warheads; ICBMs; Cobalt Aspersion. Every kind of death. Every option for unleashing death. Death was large; it contained multitudes. He arrowed down the menu until he reached the appropriate file. A dialogue box opened which read:

EMERGENCY OVERRIDE

*****

Enough was enough and Ang had enough of Ronny Baer, the school bully, tormenting her every day. She had fantasized about this moment, when she would strike back and seriously wound her fellow third grade classmate. Most of the children in the class picked on ugly duckling Angelina Verdeschi.

"ANGELINA?!?! STOP IT!! IT'S OK!!" The teacher who strangely resembled Sandra Benes screamed in her face.

Suddenly, Ang was beset with another bully, Robbie Meserve, who tried to grab her from behind. With her new found strength she thrust her elbow backwards, resulting in an audible cracking of ribs. Her assailant also stumbled backwards, shrieking in pain and striking his head against the balcony railing.

* * * * *

Paul Morrow fell back and collapsed, an unconscious sack of sweating humanity, blood trickling from his torn scalp.

Sandra lost it. The heat, the violence, the tension. . .the nukes. Her hand clenched into the form of an unfamiliar fist and she swung, hard, striking Angelina dead center between the eyes on the bridge of the nose.

This action, had no effect, of course, but to give Ang a slight bloody nose. She grabbed Sandra by the throat and, lifting her up, slammed her against the wall of computers. Sparks few as she crumbled to the floor in a gagging, gasping heap.

Angelina shoved Ben Ouma back who went flying against Klaus Rotstein as she typed in the final command.

Red skies....purple hued trees growing in rich dark soil...strange fur covered birds flying above her...all things to be anticipated...all visions of hope swimming in her head....a future...a REAL future.

Evil Mushroom droned "FINAL ABORT SEQUENCE COMPLETE...T-10 seconds, 9...8..."

Then came Harness Bull Pound--man of action. He considered laying down a suppressing cloud of Sheep Dip Grenades, until he realized that he would cause every extrinsic in Main Mission to blow chunks. He settled for Safe Physical Maintenance, throwing his armored forearm around Ang's chin, and pulling her backward into half, of half of a Prone Bridge. He succeeded only in throwing his torso, and serendipitous shoulder muscles out of whack. Ang' grunted, bearing her teeth. She never left her feet, but soon he was airborne--heading for Proxima Centauri, and gaining speed. His blundering elbows flailed against the keyboard, and multifunction hatch on Morrow's console. His helmeted, head was clobbered against the gooseneck lamp, which was much harder than he speculated. Left to his bemoan, and his considerable pain, he wondered if his strategy had been a fallacious one; if maybe the rocket gun would have been the wiser choice.

He was probably onto something.

Carter discarded a damaged Sloven, and threw the overturned chair aside. He was reaching for the shoulder strap, but longer bones, with higher radiuses got to it first. John Koenig side stepped the fallen pilot, and pulled the rifle from the floor.

"!!!ANG'!!!"

He primed the core, and squeezed the rubber stock.

When the photons finally dissolved--to their extreme chagrin, and horror--Angelina Carter, though brained by the stun, was still standing. Her lips were pursed as if slightly amused by a slow person. She turned away from the keyboard to face the others. The static charge left her hair standing totally on end.

She looked like Elsa Lanchester from "The Bride Of Frankenstein."

Wetting her lips with her tongue as she prepared to address the topic of persiflage, and the lunar nation, she raised one articulating finger from the dais.

And ate moondust, falling flat on her face on top of Sandra Benes.

"EMERGENCY OVERRIDE....ENGAGED." The words flashed on the big screen as Evil Mushroom boomed through the auditorium. The claxon sounded.

"LAUNCH COUNTDOWN T-5:00 MINUTES."

4:59...4:58..4:57...4:56...The countdown displayed on the big screen in large white, arial font numbers.

All eyes, however, were not on the big screen. A shimmering outline, a vaguely humanoid and translucent figure slowly rose out of Angelina Carter. It stood 8 feet tall and its face was indescribably grotesque, striking terror in every heart.

It slowly walked from the prone forms of Angelina Carter and Sandra Benes, stepping through the unconscious Paul Morrow and stopped in front of Koenig's desk.

Koenig sensed remorse from the entity. It looked back at the Commander very briefly and nodded.

Then, it sank into the floor as if swallowed to places unknown.

"LAUNCH COUNTDOWN T-2:00 MINUTES. AUTOMATIC BULKHEADS SECURE."

The doors between Koenig's office and Main Mission rolled closed with a loud thud as Helena Russell barely made it through the opening.

"ABORT PROCEDURES....NEGATED. EMERGENCY POWER ENGAGED."

The point of no return. The lights panels grew red, striped by intermittent flashes of the gumball emergency light high above Main Mission.

"If this doesn't work, we're dead." Ben Ouma mentioned in passing. His white tee-shirt was drenched gray. His gym shorts were water logged. He may as well have gone swimming in his clothes.

It was 170 degrees on Moonbase Alpha, a factoid which put El Azizia to pittance, without recourse.

"Come on...." John Koenig urged, standing at Morrow's station with Bergman, and Russell on either side. It was something like a parting death wish.

"COME ON."

The floor beneath them began to tremor, and seism. Multicolored flimsies fell to the floor, as did Sloven before he even had a chance to stand. Dust, and unsecured kipple began to rain from the ceiling. Eta Carinae's gravity. She had arrived to welcome them into her Cocytus embrace.

"PYRO ARM IS GO." Evil Mushroom announced over the devilment of the foghorn claxon. "ALL WARHEADS ARE GO. SATURN V BOOSTERS TO IGNITION."

Over a kilometer away from the moonbase net, hypertrophied lids rolled upwards on their hinges to reveal a series of dark wells atop the perimeter stations. Large enough to swallow a small office building. Large enough to give the impression that there were many black eyes staring back at creepy space. The blanket beyond the mountain tops of Frigoris was an anguished, consumptive white. Compton's Crater looked more the garish daymare of Cydonia on Mars.

"LAUNCH IN T-5 SECONDS."

On the far side of the Moon, in what remained of the Montgolfier Basin, the canyon that was formerly Nuclear Disposal Area Two was opened in Flaminious relief.

"LAUNCH IN T-3 SECONDS. FIRING SEQUENCE INTIATED."

Carter was kneeling beside Ang' when Sandra Benes awoke to the deafening Oberons. Closing her hands over her ears, she whole-heartedly wished that she could have remained asleep.

Unwillingly, the star allowed the rocketing black, thermonuclear talismans into her breast. From afar, it looked like someone was throwing darts at a piece of white cohosh. One by one, the projectiles shimmered, and melted away from the tactile veil. Then she was alone again, with a lone asteroid at door to her broiling appliance.

In the end, the rapacious spell of Eta Carinae Positive was no match for the curse of humankind. The countdown clock expired, and the fission wheels were spun, unleashing the end time that Kazakhstan, and French Polynesia, and Yucca Flats never saw. Beyond the crest of the Alpine Valley, the vituperation was abruptly joined by the detonation of the nuclear mines.

The result was a 10,000,000 Gig blast that showered the cosmos with new stars. The lunar horizon was cast into a scalding, calefactive hell of radiation, and dividing atoms.

Then, the synergy sequent.

The even numbered charges were collaterally detonated, and space itself was rent in discompose as even the Triumvirate ceased parsing in the grand catechism of things. The Aertex of space died like an animal in the dream nova.

And then, the meson superglue was turned to rice paper.

And then, the singularity of dimensions was ripped apart with extreme prejudice, and contempt, like a badly written essay.

And then it got ugly.

*****

Her senses returned to her gradually and when they did re-establish themselves, all she felt was pain and aching misery. The aftereffects of a stun from a laser were not pleasant. The after effects of a stun from a laser rifle, which was maximum stun for the stun setting, were more horrendous many times over. First she heard voices as sound itself seemed to create waves of agony in her ears, not to mention the pounding headache.

"She's coming around."

Angelina Carter determined it was Bob Mathias though he sounded like he was miles away, talking through a tin can and string. Next she became aware of the pins and needles sensation and the frequent and random muscle spasms throughout her body resulting in more pain. She began gasping as she shook uncontrollably and began to cry. She still could not see and suddenly felt terrified. Perhaps she was blind.

"Easy...Easy...You're safe now. I'm right here." The second voice. Alan's voice.

She continued to shake, tortured by thousands of tiny daggers, when she felt the pinpoint pressure of a laser hypo against her neck. She sat up abruptly, still not seeing and felt Carter's arm around her. She instinctively grabbed him, though he had no intention of letting her go and falling.

Angelina had the migraine to beat all migraines. Still sitting upright, she rested her head against his shoulder, allowing her vision to focus. The light burned her eyes; more pain, more agony. Sight returned as the first thing she saw was Carter's orange zipper sleeved elbow. Her arms felt like they weighed at least 100 pounds each and her head felt like a gigantic cinder block. The unrelenting pounding in her skull was joined by her stomach performing somersaults. He offered her some water from a burnt orange moonbase cup and, with his help, she gulped it down. Add extreme thirst to her already long list of miseries.

She looked up at him, her eyes filled with pain, remorse and loss...yes, loss. When she spoke, her voice was hoarse and husky.

"I suppose I finally got myself committed to the loony bin. Either that, or when I can stand, it will be off to the slammer for me."

The corners of Carter's mouth twitched slightly.

"Well, av-a-go-yer-mug." He said sincerely. "No brig for you. Only the hard road. I guess you're going to have to hang with me for a while longer."

He smoothed her worried, lame locks away from her eyes.

"You'll live." Bob Mathias concurred, pulling the metabolic scanning aperture away from the bed. Jerry Parker was there to zip his bag for him. Heart rate, blood pressure, white blood count--all flowers. She would probably end up with a killer case of pneumonia before it was all over with, as would they all. Moonbase Alpha--your roving capital of the sinus belt. Nunez was already working his industrious, little flanges to the bone in the pharmacology lab; synthesizing economy-sized gallons of penicillin, and ampecillin. Helena Russell was maintaining their current, TR Program for heat shock, dehydration, and the almost stroke that Horst Goldman suffered.

The dentist was pretentiously busy, but in reality his beak was jammed, on-again, off-again, in a Max Brand western.

Ed Malcom took complete, intellectual credit for the success of Operation: Cool Down.

The temperature in the Plato Crater--otherwise known as Fantasy Island South--was now 143 degrees, and falling. The Moon was rebounding, and not into the jaws of the primary, or the dwarf kindred of Eta Carinae Positive. They appeared to be making a true, perpendicular, B-Line back into deep space.

"We were just a tad bit concerned about you, gorgeous." Carter bungled. "Any idea what that thing was."

"Thing!??" She nodded gratefully at Anne Delline as she refilled her orange mug. Her memory was coming back in bits and pieces.

She cleared her throat. He might not believe it but on this travelling circus and everything they had gone through, it was difficult to know.

"When I was checking on Petrov and crew in the cortex of Evil Mushroom, something weird happened to me. Time seemed to slow down and freeze. Something came face to face with me. Then it was gone. After that, when we were in Main Mission listening to the extra voices on the flight recorder, I saw it again. It approached me and..." She trailed off, astounded at the craziness of what she was saying.

"There's a planet out there...for us. But it's too late now. Don't ask me how I know. I just do...or did. We should have left in the Eagles. Now, we're stuck here."

She sighed, shaking her head. "I tried to convince the Commander and the Professor that we should go. They thought I was nuts, I'm sure."

"I don't remember precisely what happened after that." She furrowed her brow as a scrap of memory came back, sort of. "Is Sandra OK? What happened? What did I do? How did I end up here?"

Carter gathered it all up, twiddling his nomenclative thumbs.

"Sandra's fine." He said ponderously. "We're a-okay. The Moon is heading for a spot in the shade, and all you need to worry about is fixing the time pieces around here." He grinned, somewhat effortlessly. "For some reason, there isn't a single clock on this base that's keeping accurate time.

"Victor thinks it may have something to do with...magnetism...or some such thing."

Harness Bull Pound exited Dot Sullivan's office with his opinionated, middle finger in a metal splint. He gave Ang' the cold shoulder, and exited into the corridor, cool as Italian Ice.

("Sandra's fine." He heard himself say again as concentric pools of negative bosuns shuddered through the room like a flash flood. In the unified continuum, this transphysicality was experienced as a breathless pause. "We're a-okay. The Moon is heading for a spot in the shade." He reiterated, hating the sound of his own voice, and the warped, 45 rpm record of space, and time that was causing him to ellipse himself. At this point, he became worried. "And all you need to worry about is fixing the time pieces around here." Dumb, and dumber--he was trapped in the anachronism of a moment, and his tongue was not his own. "For some reason there isn't a single clock on this base that's keeping accurate time." He said, paling, and favoring Ang' with the petrified look of a man who was no longer in control. "Victor thinks it may have something to do with...magnetism...or some such thing?"

(Harness Bull Pound exited Dot Sullivan's office again, only this time with the look of someone who has two flat tires on their car instead of one. His opinionated middle finger was still in its metal splint. When he scowled at Ang' this time, it was more out of expectation, and rotation, than any viable grudge. He was nearly sliced in half by one of the expanding, Stonehenge arcs of energy before two stepping into the corridor.

(Again.)

Across the ward, Anne Delline dropped a duplicate laser hypo, the contents of which she was about to administer to a duplicate Horst Goldman who crabbed duplicit insults from his bed. Two pains in the ass for the price of one.

Bob Mathias staggered, holding his migraine assured forehead. Helena Russell staggered into the room with the look of one who was recently jack hammered into unconsciousness. She spun around, startled, and with no short term memory of anything salient.

The dentist forgot which paragraph he was reading. He knew it had something to do with a busty can-can dancer, and that he had read it twice. He had comprehended the meaning of the word 'boudoir' the first time.

"Did you feel that?" The pilot asked Ang,' reeling as he stood.

Angelina shivered violently and shook her head, eyes closed tightly in an attempt to shut out the double images. Double the pleasure. Double the trouble. Double the fun.

She opened her eyes. Single reality had returned as quickly as it left her.

"Y-yeah, "she stammered. "I thought that maybe it was just me."

Helena Russell and Bob Mathias exchanged anxious and disturbed glances, as Ang swung her legs over the edge of the bed, negotiating a sitting position and then a stand.

She stood up, weaved slightly and faced Carter as he helped her regain her balance.

"Why is it that the deeper we go into space the shit that happens gets weirder and weirder?" She whispered earnestly. "And how much more can we possibly take?!?!"

"It gets better...." Bob Mathias said, his courage, or lack thereof, extruding from his mouth. The analog was still locked up, but the digital clock was moving again. He watched a minute transfer the load to another minute on a nearby commstation. Sixty seconds that arrived at the party too early. Through some eminent, sneaky process of hyper chronology, the display now read 12:35 Lunar Time. Before it was 07:15 Lunar Time. Five hours had flown by them like a reckless, breakneck driver with a block of lead, instead of a foot.

Suddenly not one person in the room looked familiar to Angelina Carter. All strangers stared at her, dressed in Alpha duty uniforms that were similar but had obvious differences. They were ethereal in appearance, inundated by the soap bubble refraction of colors.

"Alllllllllllllllllaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnnnnn? Booooooooobbbbbbbbbbbbb? Hellllllllllllleennnnnnnnnnnnnaaaaaaaa?" Ang queried and listened to her voice echo through the room.

She blinked and all the people in the room looked familiar, though when she saw the analogue clock, the minute hand was spinning impossibly fast.

Horst Goldman would go no more aroving. He had fired his last nuke,' and all that was left now was Heavenly Pastures. As fetid, unfair luck would have it, he had died that morning, but it took the discombobulated Master Alarms too long to catch up. Nurse Delline was only two feet away from him when he passed. Carter caught a glint of--what was before--dispersing clouds beyond the line of Medical Center ports. The ribbon of gases was no longer wafting. It's mass had increased to a swirling, super cell of radiation, and random discharges of electricity that was unleashing a storm of meta particles like hail from the eye of a hurricane.

Angelina looked around calmly trying to make sense of the bizarre. Her gaze shifted to Horst Goldman and she gasped, the sound echoing loudly through the room.

He looked like he had been dead for days. Rigor mortis had long set in and the flesh had already begun to collapse from his now barely recognizable face and recede from his fingernails, which had grown to vamp lengths.

"Good Christ." Carter exclaimed, moving around the bed.

("Tsirhc Doog." He heard himself back mask, fully cognizant of what was apparently an automatic, four-speed canker in reality, and time. He looked back to Ang,' and Mathias who were momentarily speechless. His hand, poised on his dippy, confused commlock. The walls of Medical Center were black, and white ripples of water with silver ovulets, substantiating, and waning again, and again.)

From within the two mile expanse of Moonbase Alpha, came the shifting of tectonic plates; the low thunder that throbbed, and pulsed as forces out of calculus drummed against the roof tops. The aortic ebb, and flow grew to a wawling, ululating multisynchronous whang that drowned out hassled voices from the perimeter stations, as well as the Red Alert Claxon.

"???What is that???"

Out of the wall of placental mist, it began to crown.

......big screen...colossal...cap...rock...circular...there...not there...ionization...forty-eight kilometers...BIG...proximity...black...daymare...death...larger body...unified field...garbage...unreality...fear...fear offearitself...chaos...creation...demise...darknessfalling...electricity...water...fire...screaming...death...birth...devolution

..sorcery...prayers...useless physics...useless computer...death........htaed...retupmoc sselessu...scisyhp sselesu...sreyarp...yrecros...epar...noituloved...htrib...htaed...gnimaercs...erif...retaw...yticirtcele...gnillaf

ssenkrad...yticirtcele...retaw...erif...gnimaercs...HTAED...HTRIB...noituloved...epar...esimed...noitaerc...soahc...

flesti..raef fo raef...raef...ytilaernu...egabrag...dleif...deifinu...ydob regral...HTAED...eramyad...kcalb...ytimixorp...BIG...sretemolik...thgie-ytrof...noitazinoi...erehtton...ereht...

....there...not there...

....ereht ton...ereht...

....ralucric...kcor...pac...gib neercs....

11010100000000101 111000101000010101111 1110001010111101010

01010101010000011 111101010110101010000 0101100101000011110

11110000101000011 111111111110101000011 0101111111111000101

Passion purissima, Samuel Taylor Coleridge called it. That passiveness with pain. The essence of which is, perhaps, passivity?

*****

"!!!INCREASE MAGNIFICATION!!!" John Koenig cried out over the volcanic maelstrom, holding onto the funhouse, physical realm, as well as Ouma's workstation for dear life.

From under the right archway emerged Alan Carter, Angelina Carter and Helena Russell. There was no time for pleasantries as Victor Bergman, standing behind Paul Morrow's station, pensively stared at the big screen while rubbing his chin with his right hand.

Ang did a double take. OK.

Perhaps it was a false signal, an echo, a reflection of their moon. It was possible.

Sandra read her mind. "The object is real. Sensors show that it has physical mass." She nodded at Ang, wincing slightly despite the slight smile with the look of forgiveness. Ang winced as well (apologetically) when she noticed the black and blue telltale marks of bruising around her petite neck.

The object looked familiar to everyone in the room.

"It looks exactly like our moon," Angelina mused, in denial of what her instinct was screaming at her. "What are the chances of that?"

The asteroid was only 30% visible to the Satcom Network. Even though it was blighted by the barreling radium, and fermions of the surrounding storm, it told a compelling, unforgettable narrative. A bed time charmer that abode lifelessness, and sterility; barren lunar domes, and collapsed lava tubes in ancient rile. As it drifted out of the mist, ghost craters, and smooching Catena rolled by the big screen as the planetoid rotated haphazardly on an eccentric axis. As it became 48% visible, it became apparent that this new body sure wasn't very young, but it sure was very old, with titanium, and copper streaks bearing the only signs of post-dynamic imbue.

"What are the chances of us colliding with it?" Clare Profitt wondered, instead, standing atop the computer deck.

"Computer says 'no.'" Ben Ouma said briefly, and then resumed typing.

Victor Bergman nodded, pointing to the screen.

"We're close." He admitted. "But not close enough for that, thank God. Whatever the disturbance was that caused this, it appears to be collapsing in on itself now." He assured Koenig. "We'll be alright."

"Data confirms that the object has exceeded the Roche Limit." Sandra Benes corroborated. "The Triumvirate has it now."

The commander whewwwwwwwwww'ed. However, when all other contingencies failed, whatever did not shake the floor must be the truth. He exhaled deeply.

"Paul, order up an immediate spectroscopic analysis of that planetoid." He said, turning away from the screen. "Those charges we set off." He commented, leaning against his right shoulder, and addressing Bergman. "Could they have caused this."

The professor's bravura expertise, and ratiocination was lightning-like.

"You tell me." He said, scratching his head. "Then we'll both know."

Out of the corner of her eye, Angelina noticed Andy Dempsey. His eyes had their usual glazed look but his facial expression was abject horror. She slowly look in the direction Andy was gaping, the balcony.

Nothing.

She looked back at Andy again and his terror filled gaze was frozen. She looked back up at the balcony again.

Nothing.

"Are you OK, Andy?" Ang whispered, gently touched his shoulder.

"!!!!JESUS CHRIST!!!" Dempsey blurted, as he brusquely threw her arm aside, and jumped up facing her. The terror stricken look instantly changed to murderous rage.

Ang recoiled backwards, surprised. A tense microsecond seem to be momentarily drawn out to infinity.

"I...uh," Dempsey swallowed, looking down. "I'm sorry. I-I- I was startled."

He scanned the shocked faces around him, staring at him.

"I-I'm very sorry," he said again extremely contritely as he sat down and returned to the keyboard. "It's been a long day."

Ang glanced up at the balcony again. Nothing.

"It certainly has been." The professor said compassionately. "You've been hard at it. Go have yourself a rest. Kate can handle it."

Close by, John Koenig watched sternly as Dempsey exited through the left archway. His aggravated wary, and apprehensiveness was mimicked by Alan Carter at the Capcomm Station. Gordon Cooper shook his head.

"Spectroscopic analysis." The Data Analyst announced as file began to open on her monitor. "Sensors indicate that the planetoid is 3,500 kilometers in diameter."

Bergman grew tense as the body in space grew 89% visible.

"Arc of rotation is approximately 20.32 Earth days." Sandra continued inflectionlessly. "Thermal, and geographic show a core that's dead, inactive. Meteoroid debris, and regolith covers the surface to a depth of five, to ten meters in the maria. Constituent elements, plagiocase feldspar, iron, and volcanic breccia. Zero atmosphere.

"Lunar gravity." She paused. "There appear to be residual traces of radiation emanating from the far side, but the emissions are dated, and interspersed with atomic particles from the explosion."

Koenig looked circumspectly at Ang.' On the big screen, the asteroid was now 100% visible.

"Scan the poles for life readings." He said, knowing what they would find. At this point, deduction was easy.

"Life readings." Sandra confirmed uneasily.

"Look at that." Carter declared as the object showed them yet another, familiar facet. It had begun its deathfall into the fires of Eta Carinae Positive. "That dark spot in the northwest sector."

"It's called the Mare Imbrium." Koenig announced, without ignorance, or dim affidavit, as he turned to face Bergman, Morrow, and Russell. "What the hell have we done?"

"It's too strong of a coincidence," Helena Russell acknowledged. "Of course, we have been through this before." She stated plainly, alluding to the time they encounter the rapture corridor and the resulting alternate moon and earth.

"I don't know," Sandra piped up, perplexed. "I'm receiving a signal. Listen...."

The speakers were flooded with a rhythmic beeping and pinging.

"A navigation signal?" Sandra proposed. "But obviously not ours."

However, it was strangely familiar. Ang paused a minute and typed a few commands, modulating tone and frequency. She frowned, as she listened to her recomposition on her head phones, then nodded.

"Oh yeah?" Angelina offered. "How about this?"

The modified navigation signal played back on the speakers. It was the same as the signal from the other only in reverse sequence. It was THEIR navigation signal.

John Koenig turned towards the computer platform. A little bemused, a little disgusted.

"It's the area of space we're in." Victor Bergman said, throwing his red flimsies for Operation: Cool Down into Paul Morrow's recycling bin. "It's like ice. Very fragile. Either one, or the both of us, managed to punch a hole right through it, and this is the result."

In the meantime, Sloven descended the balcony steps, and waited half-way for his requisite ear full.

"We're receiving a distress signal." Kate Bullen--the solution to a freaked-out Andy Dempsey said, wary. "It's non-verbal. Semaphoric, and very low ebb. They're bounding light off of the emissions halo."

Koenig burned, unable to face the analyst's workstation.

"Are we going to check it out." Carter wondered aloud.

"I don't think 'we' have much choice." The commander replied, tersely.

The pronoun 'we,' as in relativistic fracturing; as in deepest crapola; as in two.

*****

Andy Dempsey stumbled out of Travel Tube C, already feeling the effects of his withdrawal. Everyone had stared at him in Main Mission. He tried so hard to hide his problem. Did they really buy his reason for nearly ripping the Chief of Technical Section's head off as "It's been a long day"?

A sprite young woman from Services eyed him curiously as he fumbled for his commlock with shaking hands to open the door to his quarters.

"Long day," he murmured to her, glancing with bloodshot eyes, then stepped into his quarters.

As the door slid and locked shut behind him, he staggered into the lavatory, leaning over the sink, and splashing water in his face. After casting aside the towel, he lowered the lights and reclined uneasily on his back in his bed, closing his eyes. His heart was racing. He felt ill. He felt weak. He had to call Anne. He had to summon the energy. He opened his eyes.

Hateful silence. Dudgeon, stark-raving reality.

Dempsey returned to the ergonomic bed, rolling his head from side, to side miserably. While splashing, and dog-paddling through his wretched self-pity, he remembered grade school, and chalk boards, and Nuns, who had none. Sister Edgar Horace, shooting flame from her undying mouth. It was one of those hypertensive moments where it is easy to recall everything, particularly the most Alexandrian horrors that visit one when the room is dark, and no human ken is about.

Suddenly, flashing through the DVD player of his mind was the Sioux legend of Henry Tall Horse. One fine autumn day, while ducking homicidal land barons, and requisite massacre at the hands of Custer's army, he came upon a pair of spirits. The gay ghouls danced amongst the cropped corpses of roses, and shapeshifted into devilish, bilious forms of conceited evil.

"It's an omen." Henry Tall Horse's sage father interpreted later. "And when she asks you to marry her, say 'NO.'"

In a fit of rage, Dempsey rose from the bed, and hurled an alabaster bust of Diogenes against his bedroom mirror.

Silver dust, falling forever in the light of Eta Carinae Positive.

The mirror shattered, which amused his night visitors to no end. They were entrenched about him, cleverly sealing the room against thoroughly considerate escape. One of the centurions blocked the exit to his quarters, its finger on the draw string of a pendulum, large enough, and incisive enough to razor someone's head off. His cohort was a female whose iceberg hands comprehended fire.

The other witch--whose eldritch sihlouette was viably close to the vision ports--had snow white hair, and held an oxidized, sand blasted compass, beveled with knives. Certain death awaited if he attempted to use the bathroom.

The being with the scythe was closest to his bed.

"Andy...so sorry to barge in on you...."

It spoke pidgeon English--wonky, and robotic, but easily apprehended. It's pronunciations, and enunciations crawled over black lips; through a mouth filled with graveyard dirt, ready for scripture. And he was not sorry.

Of course, they were familiar to him. He 'met' them 30 minutes ago. Andy Dempsey's skin began to crawl. Bugs..again with the bugs. He closed his eyes shaking his head violently, his body trembling.

"No!" He affirmed. It was just a hallucination. It was another consequence of his withdrawal and a testament of a need for a 'hit'. He willed them away. Upon opening his eyes, they were still there. He ignored them, instead, grabbing his comlock.

"Annie, please...you've got to help me. Annie, you've got to....." Static and snow was his response.

"No." He whispered, then, his face contorted in anger and disbelief.

"NNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!" He screamed. "GET OUT!!!!GET OUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

"...we have always...known...you...." The alien with the scythe-ever after, referred to as 'Mouth' said, looking around in admiration of the operative's quarters. "...you are fine this evening...and no, we can not leave...our time together will be...most short....

"Time is always short."

His words were holy truth.

One of the albino witches--the one with a flame thrower instead of a hand, nodded solemnly. Her snoze was long, and prominent--a fly-ridden peccadillo. Then Andy Dempsey saw things--through the hands covering his eyes. A three legged dog. A two headed calf. The screams of an infant, burning in the sheol of The Triumvirate.

"Tell us what you know." She said, illuminating the room with her ancient, torch gauntlet. Contrary to Mouth, Nose's voice modulation was almost too fast. She walked backwards in the direction of the commstation. She was as graceful as a ballerina doing "Swan Lake."

"...yes...what you know...." Mouth reiterated, massaging Dempsey's exposed neck with refrigerated talons. "Relax...you know...we love you...."

The alien guarding the door sobbed copiously as he readied his pendulum for another swing. There was a guillotine rack beneath it, and a leather abattoir--one would assume, this feature was for recovering the severed heads. This being, with the auto de fey, and the black, unblinking pupils would burn itself into Andy Dempsey's nightmares, inexorably. He came to know it as 'Eyes.'

Chilled electrical shocks raced down Andy's back to the base of his spine.

"I-I-" He gulped. His mind exploded in a nightmarish collage of all the things he ever did that shamed him greatly.

The time, as a 10 year old, he mutilated the 5 day old puppy, slicing off its tail; its yelps echoed through the room.

The time, as a 12 year old, when he was angry at his best friend and sabotaged his bike; the handlebars snapped sending him face first to the ground, breaking his jaw and several teeth.

The time, as a 14 year old, he forced himself on his 10 year old cousin; his deepest, darkest secret.

Somehow he suddenly found strength and courage. Defiance.

"I don't have any idea what you're talking about. Know? Know what?" He laughed impossibly. "I'm just a peon here. I don't know anything."

"Not anything...." Mouth remarked, exhaling permafrost, and with the bones in his browless forehead raising conspicuously. "THEN YOU ARE A LIAR, AS WELL AS A PEON."

Eyes let the pendulum swoop during a practice run. The blade, forged from the iron in mortal blood sliced, and diced the imagination. Dempsey grabbed his erupting forehead as the remainders of a terrifying, murderous collage fell into place. Rotting bodies, piled high to the ruined sky. Ruined organs, baking in the hot sun. Screaming mouths, wrapped with barbed wire. The behooving, piteous glare of puppy mutilators, and incestuous Main Mission Operatives.

"Perhaps he's not th