The Sidereal Hour

Episode #32

"The lunatic is on the grass....

"The lunatic is on the grass....

"Remembering games, and daisy chains, and laughs.

"Got to keep the loonies on the path...."

The cloud formation seemed to be getting larger to 50 year old Alan Carter--only recently retrieved from his status as castaway on an exiled moon. He drove a moonbuggy across a steep banks of Ur, capital farm village of planet number TR347 in the galaxy Triangulum. An incredible amount of moisture--the product of two of the most life threatening, Valley Forge-type winters he had ever known--oxidized the front end of the vehicle, giving it a carcinomic, besmudged look. He dropped his speed into rabbit mode to avoid capsizing. As he crossed the parted briars into his own homestead--the asshole, high grass informing him that neighbor Dempsey had once again decided to let things go on his side of the property line.

"The lunatics are in the hall....

"The lunatics are in my hall." Roger Waters, and David Gilmore insisted as he pulled up to the shed.

"!!!Hey, Dempsey!!!" The pilot flustered, removing a rake, and a shovel from the rear of the cart. "!!!Turn your bloody stereo down!!!"

He didn't care for Pink Floyd, but sometimes he could relate to brain damage.

"The paper holds thier folded faces to the floor,

"And every day the paperboy brings more...."

"!!!You loud, loutish bastard!!!" He yelled over the home improvement fence. "!!!Turn it down!!!"

Turning, he was startled to see that Ang' was floating through the window...settling down beside him. Her snow white fall of hair gravitated upwards in a sinister beehive, reaching for the throbbing, ebbing mass high above them in the sky. The swirling vapors of hydrogen which, perhaps, presided over ancient Rome; which, perhaps, cast a dreadful pall over Saxon England, and the drowning of Roanoake in the mythological pool.

"I need a decision from you." His wife said, easing into the eaves. "You see...I'm pregnant again."

Bile gurgled down the tubes in her throat as she giggled like a Catholic school girl in trouble.

Carter gasped in horror, like a character in a Bill Gaines comic book.

"And if the dam breaks open many years too soon.

"And if there is no room upon the hill."

The middle-aged pilot forgot all about Andy Dempsey's sub wolfer. Suddenly, he was surrounded by vile cherubs--a hundred of them at the very least. They were winged, with pot bellies, and sweet, odious faces. Their lips were poised on the corner of blasphemy. The last man on their adopted planet was a young man. His bleached hair was neatly combed, and parted. His gate was almost insectoid as he flattened the leaves, and twigs beneath him.

Carter felt his spine turn to Log Cabin Syrup. The young man was an eater of souls.

"And if your head explodes with dark forebodings too....

"I'll see you on the darkside of the Moon."

The young man had no face....

*****

"Captain Alan Carter." The pleasant female voice called at the other end of the commlink. "This is your 4:30 AM wakeup call."

The pilot strangled to consume recycled air again. The sheets of the ergonomic bed were soaked with chill sweat. He thrashed momentarily. Gradually, his consciousness interfaced once more with the residence building. A single light burned from the energy cells in the lavatory as Moonbase Alpha came back into focus.

"Captain Alan Carter." Marilys Singh said again, eager to move onto the next name on the list. "Duty period will begin in thirty minutes."

He looked up from the fading horror to see that Ang' was standing in the doorway, drying her hair, and staring at him.

Nightmares were part of the reality of living on the former Earth moon to destinations unknown. Dropping the towel and turning up the dimmer switch Ang elina hurried to the bedside. Her mission was twofold. First and foremost to calm and to comfort and second to reduce the noise level to discourage an early awakening of 20 month Nicholas Carter in the next room.

"Heyyyyyyyyy," she gently grasped his shoulders as she sat on the edge of the bed. "It's OK. You're OK. It was only a nightmare," she soothed, pulling him toward her. She thought his heart would pound its way out of his chest and he was still hyperventilating. It had been quite awhile since he had a troubled sleep such as last night. In fact, his tossing and turning kept waking her during the night. She, however, said nothing.

"It must have been a good one," she whispered, barely audible as she heard Nicky stirring in his bed and hopefully settling back down for a few more hours.

"Yeah." The pilot exhaled. Then came the invidious visitation from a man who was dead, and in his grave these two years.

"You've gone down hill. What would Mamma Vee, and Guido think?" Antonio Dean Verdeschi, who failed to keep his head around a monster--one who sought to promulgate through force, and crack insults, said with epic disappoint. "What's your deal?"

Carter jumped from the bed, his mind reeling. There was no one there, of course; only the double entendre terror, and a coolness from the nearby vent. The pilot wiped sleepy seeds from his eyes, and examined a room where he, and his wife were the only living beings.

He chuckled spasmodically in an effort to breath easily.

"These things...they're hard to shake sometimes, right?" He stumbled towards the open door, and turned the bathroom faucet on.

"Sure," Ang nodded, eyeing him with concern. She slowly crept into Nicky's room and arranged the blankets, tucking the child securely in bed and kissed him lightly on his forehead. When she turned to leave, she noticed the crucifix above his bed had fallen to the floor; probably, she surmised, an accident from an encounter with an airborne toy. She placed it back on the wall and left the room.

The running water of the facet was replaced by the shower as Angelina, after getting dressed and quietly entered the living area, tapped the "Enter" key and the laptop whirled to life from sleep mode. A quick scan of the work order spread sheet once again showed that Ed Malcom had completed under 50% of his tasks this week.

"Sonafabitch," she mumbled slamming her fist down on the desk, disgusted and sleep deprived.

She was about to get up and fix Alan a cup of freshly brewed coffee when the screen went blank. The blood red words appeared to slowly burn themself on the screen. Confiteor Deo omnipotenti quia peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo et opere: mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

Entranced, she spoke words she had not uttered in years.

Carter heard her, zipping the sleeve of his tunic. He found that a quick look in the mirror could tell him wether, or not the Old Brewmeister's spirit was still in the room with them. It wasn't.

The logical deduction then, was that it was hypnogogia; just the epilogue for one of one of the worst nightmares he had ever had.

"Dominum, deum nostrum. Amen." He added, reaching for his commlock. "Cupcake, it looks like we speak the same language."

*****

Beyond the apetala bluffs, and the sprawling, cyber-vault of Moonbase Alpha, the Cirrus Cloud expanded it's nocturnal horns, like a Brahma Bull that was huffing, and stepping, and ready to strike. There were intermittent flares within the evolving span, like a flashlight in the mist. It's shadow grew to dominate the solitary roof-tops of the network buildings, creating a stark change in hue that was something like Andy Worhol. It was scintillant, and omnivorous. A mythical city of Ananova, perched within the coastal ruins of a Mamallapurum.

Or, just maybe, a bunch of gas, and light, glopped together by the complexities of gravity, and inertia.

Commander John Koenig grabbed his cup, and opened the big doors. The office flooded with light, and radio-jargon, and the bustling of a dozen bodies, manning the various workstations.

"Commander." The capcomm greeted, handing Kate Bullen the revised ETOD. The support screens in front of the mainframe desk, declined steadily from 00:59, lunar time.

"Coop.' We missed you last night." Koenig said with a toothy sneer. "I thought you were a big fan of 'Citizen Kane.'"

"Yeah." The pilot replied with an uninvigorated swirl of the pen. "Big, big fan."

He relieved Alan Carter with a shake of the hand after the other pilot emerged from the records room.

"Paul." Koenig said, stirring his coffee, and perousing the apocrypha of greenbar sheets that lay all over his desk. "Astrophysics is wanting a conventional spike on that cloud. Now, does that mean Eagle One is 'go' for an EVA, or has the lab changed thier minds on the rock hunting scenario."

Angelina Carter gazed out the viewport on the operations level of Main Mission, watching the immense cloud and occasionally sipping her tepid coffee.

Multihued blue thunderhead shapes swelled from the center and reached toward the baby blue tendrils on the edge. She fancied shapes with the clouds, like cumulous clouds floating in the sky on a warm summer day.

A rabbit..

A fox, chasing the rabbit.

The face of a small boy, wearing a baseball cap, with the rim to the side.

A devil and his pitchfork.

She shook her head, breaking the trance and deciding to think positively when conjuring cloud caricatures.

Victor Bergman waved a friendly 'hello' in passing, but he wasn't sure that the technical chief received the greeting. His head was still turned when he narrowly avoided a head-on collision with Data Analyst Adisa Talic.

"Sorry." She said, executing a fast cha-cha side step.

"I'm not worried about it." Bergman said, rubbing his temple absently, and not quite knowing what to do with the blue flimsie he held in his hand. "John." He said, stepping up to the office level, and taking a deep breath. "I've got an update on our friend, the cloud." He elucidated, attempting to sound optimistic. "It looks like there's an alternative source of heat inside there. Meteosat confirms it to be anywhere between 50, and 100 CRI.

"Not bad, really."

The commander turned fallow, accepting the report with a Stercolin brow.

"I was told that light couldn't penetrate that cloud at all." He said, concerned. "That's why we're sending a manned probe in. What's generating the heat inside there?"

With only fifty-three minutes to go before launch, John Koenig came to dislike the Cirrus Cloud.

*****

The Roman Empire.

They had their share of wars, now....

It all began in Ready Room-D of the reconnaisance hub.

Carter relaxed on the unrelaxing couch while flight technician Engwald added nitrogen to his environment tank. He drummed his fingers, and watched, for it was a meticulous, central operation, you see. Ask Engwald. He would tell you. If perchance, there was too much of the old N7 in an astronaut's lunchbox, the result would be a non-toxic asphyxia. The quandary of the unseen, invisible horse, trampling you down while you yet gag on your own tongue. Such is life in deep space.

"See, we're not all up in a gaff." The technician blustered, blowing on the pilot's helmut visor, and polishing it's surface. This was not inducive to hygiene, or a successful excursion into the unknown, but Engwald cherished the procedure, as though the helmut was, in reality, an auxilliary bladder.

Carter blinked, and stared at his funny, orange astronaut galoshes while another technician (whose last name was Cruise...no, not Tom) fastened the couplings.

In fact, back in the barbarous day--that time long ago, before pizza, and calzones--when Rome wasn't enjoying the entertainments wrought by feeding Christians to the lions, she was awash in any number of gorey bloodbaths. Let us observe the civil wars between 68-69 AD. When the nation was not at war, the doors to the temple of Janus were kept open. When the nation was not at war, the doors were kept closed. Humankind has seldom seen such powers of insight, and deduction as evinced by the Romans.

"I'm going to plug you now." Cruise said, aiming the air hose into the opening in Carter's tank.

"Oh," The pilot said graciously. "Please do."

"See that." Engwald explained, pointing suspiciously at the digital commstation clock. "Now is the hour. As soon as we put paid to you, I'm going to take a flippin' tea." He waited for Carter's response. "We're not in a ruck right now, and I'm tired of being rat-arsed overworked."

"You up for it, Captain." Cruise asked meekly, as he attached the pilot's commlock, with a thrust hard enough to rupture his appendix.

"Nope." The pilot said.

The resulting Janus coins were more of a political masseuse than anything else. The visit to Rome by the Armenian King Tiradates seemed ho-hum on the surface. Then again, when one considers the fact that a revolt was fomenting in Judea; one that would last long after the death of Nero, and far into the reign of Vespasian, it probably was time to kiss-up, and supplicate.

"Good luck." Engwald said, helping the pilot to his feet after the ceremony was concluded. "I hope it's a real snog out there."

Carter was sure it would be, and in more ways than one. That's why he didn't want to go, but forced himself to anyway.

*****

The Chief of Technical Operations stared blankly at her 21" monitor with several 'windows' programs open. The monitor went into screen save mode and Angelina blinked then jumped as she heard the familiar wailing of her son.

Nicholas Carter squirmed out of his nurse's arms the moment they crossed into her office and he ran toward her.

"Momma, Momma, Momma!!!" the frantic child screamed repeatedly as he clambered into her lap.

"What's the matter??!?" Angelina called to the nurse over Nicky's sobs as she attempted to calm and comfort him.

"He woke up from his nap screaming," the dishevelled nurse replied wearily. "I couldn't get him to stop!"

"Take 5, Donna," she nodded and the grateful nurse made a beeline to the breakroom beverage dispenser.

"It's alright, baby, it was just a bad dream," Angelina soothed as she rocked the child. "Just a bad dream."

Nicky gazed at her, sniffing, through swollen blood shot eyes and tear stained angelic face.

"Bug," he whispered.

Angelina blinked. "Bugs look scary." Angelina affirmed as she stroked his hair. "But there are no bugs on Alpha. You are safe."

"Bug," the child reiterated, his expression terror-stricken.

She drew him closer to her and kissed her forehead, inhaling the baby lotion scent.

The slat door of the window slapped open with a 'crack' and Angelina was inside the dark confessional. Her eyes adjusted to the near darkness, except for the light of the candle on the other side of the box.

"SPEAK," ordered the figure on the other side, dressed as a priest. The white from the roman collar emitted a ghostly glow. "Begin with you Act of Contrition."

Angelina spoke from ingrained reflex "Deus meus, ex toto corde paenitet me omnium meorum peccatorum, eaque detestor, quia peccando, non solume poemas a Te..."

"If you detest sin, why do you nuture evil?!?!" The figure on the other side interrupted. "Reject sin. Repent."

She thought she saw the light reflect from the gleaming tips of his evenly sized teeth. Eyes of red corneas stared at the child against her bosom.

"No..He is my son," she retorted in horror. She held him tighter and tighter.

"He is your sin," it laughed maniacally.

"No!!!!" Angelina screamed and opened her eyes. Caroline Kennedy, with an armful of red and green flimsies, stood with mouth agape at the door.

Nicky Carter jolted awake and stared, dazed, into his mother's eyes momentarily before bursting into a torrent of tears.

*****

Angelina Carter intercepted Captain Carter on his way out of the ready room. Call it woman's intuition. Call it Angelina Verdeschi Carter intuition. She had a bad feeling, a really bad feeling about this mission, although it was as mundane as cooking pasta on the stovetop.

"Be careful out there, hot shot." She greeted with veiled optimism, giving him a hug, and after seeing no one else in the corridor, a kiss for luck.

"You bet." The pilot replied warmly. "You'll be proud of me." He called, nodding, and waving as Coop' fired up the tractor driver, and Eagle One began to coast towards the crane. "I'll catalogue those occult gases so well--I'll be Dr. O'Brian's go-to bloke for sucking air." He shook his head, unimpressed. The ship passed beneath the depot lights, her metallic blue hull darkening under the huge electromagnet which transferred her to the launch pad.

"CLEAR THE HANGAR." Coops' voice boomed across the speakers. "MARK V EAGLE, ROLLING."

Ang' backed away from the orbiting domes of red light. Bram Cedrix honked as he raced by in a maintenance quad. The technical chief nodded--accidentally bumping into Yul Ostrog, and Umberto Garzon who was Eagle mechanic to some...the ghost of Sloven to others.

She tried to stall. Anything to delay him from going on that ship. "I feel badly for him," she indicated to Garzon. "He really seems like a friendly guy; unfortunately people haven't taken too well to him because of...you know...."

"I'm not acres about him either." Carter confessed proudly. "Of course, it's like water off a duck's back trying to explain that to Coop' during a section meeting. He's yard manager, so he picks who he wants to service the fleet. My guess is--that asshole there must have impressed him in some extrinsic way." He theorized, while smiling, and waving at Garzon from the other side of the hangar.

The mechanic turned from his conversation with pad leader Tom Morningstar, and waved back, half-hearted, and divested by complete, terminal insecurity.

"Then again," Carter amended. "Coop' didn't have that much experience with the real thing, much less that DAT copy we see standing before us."

His distrust was visceral.

She understood his detached neutrality and always had to keep the prejudgement gavel in check. She wasn't about to continue discussing the Sloven lookalike, not now.

"Um," she looked up at him. "Are you sure you have to go out there? Where you really next on the mission roster or where you just getting antsy and wanted to go flying?"

She never, ever asked him not to go on a mission. Afterall, it was his job. Love the man and accept his job; it was part of him. She recited this mantra over and over again, day in and day out. Besides, a chance breakdown in the structural integrity of the technical section outer wall and she would be out on the lunar surface without benefit of an EVA suit. Still, all rationalizations aside, she was frightened for his safety. She did not want him to go out there but she couldn't come out and say it...exactly.

"No, it's me, and Pearly." He said winningly. "We were up for a run. Well...I was up for a run. He hasn't logged any time here recently, so we thought we'd better lock the door to the simulator.

"You know--separate the men from the boys. That kind of thing."

He winked.

He also neglected to mention that Big-P Danielle, and Gareth Hunt were the backup crew for this mission, and could just as easily have gone in their stead. Spiking a cloud didn't require the adept of a neurological surgeon, or a jack, CSM pilot. All that had to happen was a multifunction switch had to be thrown that was marked LOAD. After that, it was a matter of good record keeping; exhausting a roll of color to photograph the comparatively intriguing facets; monitoring the thermal output, and the radioactive malage at the epicenter. The entire mission plan was only a paragraph long. Would that they could afford to send out a Reesus monkey, that would have sufficed for this less than Sputnik probe.

Just outside the hangar, he could see Paul Morrow waiting on the gangway, his helmut held confidently against his hip as the remaining members of the pad crew reeled the fuel pump back in, and awaited transition procedure.

"TECHNICAL SUPPORT TO STANDBY." Coop' directed from five stories above. "FLIGHT ONE CREW, INGRESS."

"That's me." He said, brandishing his own helmut.

She stopped him by grabbing his left elbow. "The baby had a nightmare and an 'all hell breaks loose' screaming fit when he woke up. The nurse brought him to me, screaming. It took me awhile to get him calmed down."

She looked up as Coop impatiently motioned to her to beat it. "He said something about a 'bug.' Alan, he's never SEEN a bug. Don't you think that's weird?"

"Maybe." He said, squinting, and pinching out invisible quantities. "Just a little. Not nearly as weird as old Coop' is going to get if we don't get this bird launched."

Her hand slid down his arm. "I love you. Everything will be ok,"she squeezed his gloved hand and released him, stepping back into the elevator.

"Might be a good idea to wait up for me." Carter suggested lasciviously as the metal closed over his face.

'Silly... Ludicrous,' she berated herself. 'What the hell. All that accomplished was probably to upset him.' Through the murky pool of tears she glanced into the plexiglass to inspect her distraught features.

The blurry image of a long dead reconnaissance pilot stared at her. Angelina gasped and recoiled. She peered into the glass again, with tears shed and clearer vision. Her distressed mirror image stared back at her.

*****

The Cirrus Cloud rafted its way over Carnot.

Emerging from the underground high bay, Eagle One rose to launch position. The outlining beacon lights flashed proudly at her noble endeavour. This enterprise required that her passenger module be removed. Mounted to the girders in its place was the five megaton spiking torpedo. The separatist factions inside its warhead casing awaited the union of that would allow, maybe, a theory to be born.

"Ohhhhh, the wool on this ram's belly, it grew to the ground." Carter sang as he brought up his navigational display. "Cut off, and sent to the Sydney sales, it fetched a thousand pound. The wool on this ram's back, boys, it grew so very high--the eagles came, and built thier nest, and made the young 'uns cry."

It was a gloomy tune. He cursed himself for being dumb enough to sing it.

Paul Morrow nodded at Alan from the co-pilot's seat. "Systems go," he reported, though the Chief Pilot was under the DCO's authority, this was Alan Carter's realm. With a slight smile manifesting beneath his mustache, Paul continued, "Thanks for letting me come along-I could really use the flight hours."

"Hey, don't mention it." Carter p'shawed, pulling the safety harness over his right shoulder. The Physics Lab's proposal to spike the cloud--even more mundane, more uninteresting now, than when it was first mentioned. "Somehow, I don't think we'll be sharpening our abilities any. Except maybe our ability to doze off.

"Harms is going on the next little voyage of discovery." His mind was made up. "Then they'll have the hot air from his big mouth to go with their nebular gas samples."

"Dozing off?" Paul questioned, a slight tone of amusement in his voice and little twinkle in his eye. "Just so long as we get a smooth and even flight out and back. He turned back to his console and examined the laminated checklist velcro'd to the leg of his suit. "LPS receivers green on Primary and Secondary," he announced, his voice once again business. There would be time enough to bullshit later.

They lifted off.

*****

When she strode into Main Mission, Angelina went up to the computer deck where Professor Victor Bergman stood, perusing the incoming data from Eagle One's onboard sensors. Doctor Helena Russell kept on eye on the life functions, jotting notations on a clipboard periodically glancing at the monitors labelled CARTER and MORROW. Commander John Koenig stood next to her quietly talking with her. Main Mission operatives scurried between desks as the chatter of normal flight operations occured between Carter and Pierre Danielle, who was manning the Capcomm.

Ang glanced at the cloud on the big screen with Eagle One, miniature model size in comparison, approacing its southwest corner.

"So how's it look with the cloud, Professor? Anything exciting?" Ang asked, bored and tense at the same time.

"Interesting so far." Bergman replied, his inquiry moving from his makeshift chart table, and back to the big screen again."

"Eagle One/Alpha." Deputy Controller Winters said slow, but even, but altogether psychopathically. "We read you as 'go' for SRAM Camera on. Right. Null your rates...and stand by...injection phase in two minutes."

For reasons unknown--though it seemed to someone to be a good idea--the ship had coasted towards the gaseous enigma in a cautious, verticle, belly-up position. Victor Bergman was not involved in this particular planning stage, so he had no idea what its significance was. Possibly it was to facilitate an easier jettison of the instrument pack. In any event, the crew had to fly the ship while laying on their backs.

Behind Angelina Carter, John Koenig stood with his arms folded, and looking severe. The only person at the party who didn't like the band, who didn't like the cheese ball, or the taste of the dip.

"Check." Carter replied from the 5.0 auditorium, tin cans. "Cameras on. High gain, and laser on. Scimitar VHF on."

Then the bowells of the Cirrus Cloud became visible through the auspices of modern technology, and it was magic. The pilot could be heard whistling commendably as the big screen filled with an energized storm of red, and orange, and green, and violet--somehow translated through sub-molecular pigmentation into a pleasant sky blue.

"Nice." The pilot commented over the link. "And to think we're only scanning the outer layer. It's tempting to turn this baby right side up...do some exploring."

"Negative." Koenig warned. "That's not a mission parameter. Just spike the thing, and get back here."

Lorna O'Brian smiled like a politician in a supermarket. Elated by the data on the screen--but wound up as tight as wire mesh by the commander's fume, and dominion. Pierre Danielle beamed, but not too proudly, so as to avoid death by black sleeve.

Then, suddenly--inexplicably.

"MAGNETISM?" John Koenig asked sternly.

Victor Bergman turned his head quizically as he finished the annotation to his charts. It was like a joke. A bad joke. What do a blonde, and a turtle have in common? I don't know, what do they have in common? The turtle doesn't have Leukemia. Ha-ha-ha. Such was the macabre, and seeming inappropriateness of the commander's concern.

"No." Winters said calmly. "Is there supposed to be?"

O'Brian shook her head, but otherwise said nothing.

Sandra Benes kept her eyes glued to the incoming data.

"Possible energy source readings," she announced to Angelina as she fed it to the Main Computer.

Angelina Carter studied the output on the monitor. "That's not energy; at least, that's not any kind of energy we are familiar with." She shook her head sternly.

"Electron movement confirmed, though," Sandra reiterated, pushing buttons and clicking her mouse. "I do not understand." Sandra's face was a mask of confusion.

Her instinct wanted to say 'Commander, get them out of there!' However, Ang had no reason to make that recommendation. "Electron movement confirmed, but so what? It doesn't appear to be random though." She went on, thinking out loud. "This is too weird."

She plotted the graph of the electron movement and extrapolated from the image on the monitor. "Magnetic field." She stated blankly. She did a quick recheck of the data. "Eagle One's onboard computer data only presents cosmic noise."

Commander Koenig heard her and bounded down the steps to Winter's station. He punched the white stud on the Controller's panel.

"Alpha to Eagle. Carter, recalibrate your magnetometer."

"Alpha/Eagle One." The pilot said curiously. "Please advise. Magnetometer?

"What's the situation with this cloud?"

"That's an affirmative." Pierre Danielle broke in over the CapCom link. "No situation, but it doesn't hurt to be cautious." He guessed. "Go ahead, and set your broadband to Omni. Stand by to initiate FGM sweep."

"Right." The pilot replied, condescending, and irritated. "The system is recalibrated, and I show us broadcasting at 10,000,000 kHz. Our panels are good."

It was the last they heard from him.

*****

Commander John Koenig leaned forward on his elbows at the conference table. Helena Russell along with Bob Mathias sat on his right. Next to Mathias was cool and detached controller Winters. Pierre Danielle, Assistant Chief of Reconnaissance, thumbed through a mountain of flight data next to Mark Winters, impinging on the space of Sandra Benes. The Chief of Service Section looked distraught though she was determined to keep herself busy and keep her mind off of...Angelina Carter sat next to Sandra with laptop open and wearing a completely annoyed expression as Ben Ouma on her opposite side had a pile of register tape computer read outs which rivalled Pierre Danielle's stack of papers. Completing the circle and sitting on Koenig's immediate left was Professor Victor Bergman, relaxed in a semi reclining position, legs extended and hands clasped behind his head.

"What do you mean by 'life signs are indeterminate'? " Angelina interrupted Dr. Russell's computer generated medical report on the conditions of Captain Alan Carter and Controller Paul Morrow. "What the hell does THAT mean? Either they're alive or they...." She hesitated and swallowed, her hardened gaze switching methodically between Mathias and Russell, "aren't."

Mathias cleared his throat.

"We're getting heart defribrillations...but with no brain activity." He said, nudging Helena Russell out. It was just as well. At this point, she elected to be nudged out. "Remember though--we're dealing with equipment. At this point we're in no position to be rendering any kind of diagnosis. It could very well be a hardware problem. For all we know, their bioscanmonitors may not be making flush contact."

"Flush contact?" Ben Ouma mused with skeptical jocund. "Maybe that's the reason why they're not responding to our communications. And maybe it's also the reason why Carter hasn't fired the SPS on his service module to reach escape velocity. It's FLUSH CONTACT. "FLUSH CONTACT...obstructing our normally-"

Sandra and Angelina both glared at Benjamin Ouma coldly. Both of them thinking the same line of thought: 'Ben, shut the fuck up!' They glanced at each other and remained silent.

"It's because Eagle One is in the cloud now." Victor Bergman interrupted, dropping his pen, and defusing the argument before it could go off. Stopping the flush before it could become post-porcelain. "As I said before, the chamber is light insensitive."

"Yeah." Koenig pontificated. "So we thought. Victor, I'm sorry, but that little revelation about a heat source inside the Cirrus Cloud has left me-" He shrugged his shoulders. "Doubtful? The disappearance of Carter, and Morrow's ship does nothing to buttress our store of knowledge. "From here on out, it may be best for all concerned to admit that we know ziltch about that cloud. It works for me.

"Now, as to what we do know." He said, changing gears. "Ouma, are you sure--absolutely sure there's no magnetic field out there, particulated, or otherwise."

"None." The computer chief said emphatically. "We scanned it again using the Flux Array here on Alpha. There's nothing out there, but free floating H."

"Their on-board systems were functioning perfectly--up until the moment when Eagle One was absorbed." Pierre Danielle reported, wondering if his choice of words was accurate. "Whatever happened, it had nothing to do with their instrumentation."

"Absorbed?!?" Ang, standing and beginning to pace, turned her crossbow of fury and despair on 'Big P' Danielle, with a raised eyebrow. "Ok, whatever. Look, how come that robot Eagle is not ready yet? You have all the technicians you need for the retrofit. I've given you every available hardware guy and Ben has given you every available software guy. Why isn'tthat goddamn ship already up there?!?" Her voice had grown raspy as her eyes bored into Danielle's back.

Sandra concurred, tapping her pen impatiently. "What IS the delay, Pierre?"

At the viewport, Ang turned and took a deep breath, staring at the Cirrus cloud that appeared to be looming toward Moonbase Alpha.

Big-P looked as though he were about to bust. His eyes dialated. Presently, he began to perspire, and dread.

"Look," He said, jockeying for air. "Cedrix, Ostrog, Garzon--every mechanic in the bay working on it. As soon as we agree on something--anything--I'll also be working on it." He showed them his commlock. "Reverse engineering isn't as easy as breaking the lugs, and replacing a tire." He gave Bob Mathias an inestimable look. "These are complex systems. We have to pull the drive, and replace it with a hypergolic assembly. "Something that will burn without us having to worry about power interruptions, or automatic shut-downs due to a magnetic field that, theoretically, doesn't exist."

He sneered at Ben Ouma.

"Well, if those work crews don't pick up the pace, in three days we'll be 'theoretically' out of range, Pierre." Koenig said grudgingly. "People, you can make excuses to high Heaven. I don't care. Know this--I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO INTENTION OF JUST LEAVING CARTER, AND MORROW BEHIND. AU CONTRAIRE. MAKE THE NECESSARY ARRANGEMENTS; GET WHOEVER YOU NEED UP--OFF OF THEIR DEAD ASSES--AND INTO THE OUTFITTING QUAY."

"John...." Bergman appealed uselessly.

"NO. WE'VE BEEN SITTING HERE FOR FORTY-FIVE MINUTES, AND ALL I HAVE HEARD IS BULL!!!"

Big-P Danielle was mutilated.

"Well," The professor said elliptically. "Here's some more. So far, we have yet to brook the topic of that warhead that was attached to Eagle One. The one used to spike the Cirrus Cloud. It could very well be that Carter never had a chance to deploy the thing. We have to assume it's still anchored to the ship, and if we go in there, applying force, we could accidentally detonate it.

"We probably wouldn't detonate it, but still, the possibility remains."

Another wonderful piece of news, something more for Ang to ponder as she stood, motionless, and staring out the viewport. She did not turn back to the group yet. She did not blink. Blinking would spill the tears so she stood, gazing at the cloud, and clearing her mind as the arid room faciliated the drying of her eyes.

Mark Winters nodded. "Ship to base computer transmissions indicate that the executable file for the deployment was being initiated. However, we can't confirm whether the command was completed and the warhead was detached."

....detached...detached...detached.... Mark Winter's voice echoed inside Ang's head. She blinked. The cloud began to take on the shape of a face.

"Have you crossreferenced the signal from the mechanical release to the server?" Sandra jumped in, shuffling the report papers.

....server...server...server....Sandra sounded as though she was shouting across the Grand Canyon. The cloud transformed into a winged horror, a 5 billion year old vision of lewdness, ugliness, torment and terror. Angelina squinted, hyperventilating, as it mocked her with red corneas and a row of too many canines.

"No way. Not again," she murmered, the room was spinning. Then, she collapsed.

But it was behind the cabinet...underneath the stove of reality, where dust bunnies form shapes out of the crest of nothingness. Angelina slid past a 1,000 possible solutions to the vertex. She merged with Goldbach's Conjecture, and the Reimann Hypothesis. She was a creature of eternal physics, transpositioned, and viscerally united with the Hardamard Matrix.

She was a two headed hydra--one physicality, with any number of possible permutations, and abominations. Every number that is greater than two is the sum of three, but she was standing on a scratch of coral, sandwiched between two, warring Typhons. In seconds, she became Homo Inifinitus--sexually generalized human in a world of pure consciousness.

She was invigorated, whether she liked it, or not. She no longer had a stomach, ergo there was no release for her screams, and vomit. The sounds of the children chanting poured from the cold, amorality of the Annex.

The melody pricked her ears, as the insect's shadow grew closer, and more defined.

Goosie, goosie gander....

Where shall I wander....

Upstairs, downstairs, and in my lady's chamber.

There I met an old man, who wouldn't say his prayers.

I took him by the left leg, and threw him down the stairs....

The creature's exoskeleton was long, and splendiferous. It's mass displacement was easily five tons, with unmoulted green skin, a ribbed thorax, and graceful pods that trundled along with no care for space, or appetite. It turned it's triangular head, and considered Angelina Carter with acutality, and unimpeachable debate. The technical manager felt her mind outgrow her cranium. The real danger loomed of her going stark, raving, fucking bonkers, but the image of the spitfire was carried mercifully away by on the Holy clouds.

In it's place stood Professor Victor Bergman.

"Ang.'" He said benignly. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

He extended his hand as he approached. The aura of selflessness about him could have torched any number of Old Testament prophets in a heartbeat.

"You're confused, I know." He conceded, folding his arms over the chest of his tunic. "We've had a difficult time keeping the Annex secure, otherwise this never would have happened. Because of your own choices, you're partly responsible.

"Do you accept that?" He didn't wait for an answer.

Over the edge of the chasm, out of the torrential rains, a new star rose into the metaphysical sky, became ghostly, and then vanished completely.

"You've slipped sideways, Ang.'" Bergman explained, nodding for her when her expression obviously drew blank. "That's alright though." He said consolingly. "Remember always--there's only one face in the mirror."

With that, all tint, and hue drained from his hands, and cheeks. His outline dried to a statue of hard semen, and burst in the etheric satori, without resonation. The rolling gales were wreathed. The curve had a name, but it wasn't Mariah. It was...

"...ANG.'" Commander John Koenig said louder from his position directly beside her. "We're going to need a detailed schematic of that torpedo, from either you, or Petrov. Can you handle it? Do you need any help?"

Sandra Benes was stirring her coffee miserably while Ben Ouma quadruple checked his register tape, partly hoping for different answers, partly to hide his head. Victor Bergman was filing his right index finger with the cap of his ink pen. Dexterous flanges that would behold no answers any time soon.

Angelina Carter blinked at her own reflection in the viewport.

"Yes...uh, no sir. I mean, yes, I can handle it and no, I don't need help," she glanced upward at Koenig then away as she returned to her seat between Sandra and Ben.

"Winters," Koenig eyed Angelina then turned his ire on the overnight controller. "What is the problem with the sensors on the orbital satellites? 'Unknown At This Time'?!?"

He slapped the red flimsie report to the table. "And what the hell does 'ASAP' mean by estimated time for repair?!?!?"

"The problem is in the transponder on Meteosat One." Winters said demurely--too unemotional to care about having his ass skewered. "We were planning to deorbit them next month, and install upgrades."

"NEXT MONTH?" Koenig seared. "I DON'T THINK SO. YOU'VE GOT ONE HOUR TO UPGRADE THE NETWORK. ROTSTEIN IS GOING TO DO A SPACEWALK, AND INSTALL THE NEW OPERATING SYSTEMS, BY HAND, ON EACH, AND EVERY UNIT, AND HE'S NOT COMING BACK IN UNTIL HE DOES.

"SCREW UP ONCE, AND YOU'RE BOTH RELIEVED OF YOUR POSTS."

Victor Bergman winced.

"You can't do that." Winters jeered defiantly, looking to Big-P Danielle, who wasn't about to profer his support.

"WATCH ME." Koenig pledged, with venom.

"Are you OK?" Ben Ouma whispered to Angelina as Mark Winters tried to disappear into the moduform chair, without success. Ang looked at Ben as if he stepped off of Planet Idiot.

Angelina Carter's movement to the printer to retrieve hard copies of the torpedo schematic was enough of a distraction to grant Controller Winters a temporary reprieve. She distributed the copies. "I've also sent it via email," she added, sitting down. Her coffee was beyond tepid. She drank it anyway.

*****

He was helicoidal....

Radiated....

Cochlear....

Circumvoluted, and amassing the blue rivers of light within the command module. Morrow was gone. Dead, by virtue of non-consideration, and Alan Carter scudded down... ...down...

...down...

...down...

...down...

Farther into the ring of fire where his hypothalmus was stimulated to smell terror, and to drink horror, and gallivant with evil trolls that barred thier bridges well. He attempted to stand, his Zero-G harness falling backward like rejected pythons. The ship was listing ten degrees to stern. Inside Eagle One, it was cold, and dead. Outside, it was necromantic, and transcendental. His obstructed vision fixated on the co-pilot's chair. Just above the arm, a pair of valves marked FLOW CONTD were in the downward position. Two ferine, sickly yellow eyes glowed above the safety switches, ebbing in, and out of mind. It was about mirrors. And the good shepherd taketh care of his sheep.

That was how he came to be deposited somewhere in the tableau of the third, manned exploration of the Moon.

"???HEYYY???" Carter thought, as opposed to actually saying because his mouth, and throat were inexplicably full of cement. Someone dropped his head. No neck; no ears; no eyes, or mouth; just his unconnected ovaloid. He fell through the vaccum onto the barren, dog bone fringe of the Mare Insularum. Just before him were the tall crater walls of Fra Mauro.

"I have in my hand a golf ball." That goddamn Al Shephard declared to his audience on the cape--after the fact of dropping Carter on his head. "I have here a specially made golf club." He touched the club head to the pilot's earless skull plate. Standing near the Antares descent stage, Ed Mitchell chuckled supernally. He took a moment to hobble across the landing site in his bulky, outmoded, white agency suit.

As if watching a person be bludgeoned to death required festival seating. Carter had only met Shephard once, but apparently his best impression had been not too good. Good old, Mr. "Light-This-Candle" whacked him for miles, and miles. The force of the blow sent the pilot into incurvate space, leaving the Moon behind--an insignificant speck of dust on the lampshade of the universe.

His final thought, anvil banging, as the universe deformed behind him: You suck, Al Shepard.

*****

"Launch in T minus 30 seconds," Pierre Danielle announced from the capcomm station. The digital clock on the left monitor below the big screen unemotionally displayed the countdown. "Eagle 1-3 liftoff," Danielle announced as he punched the red stud on the console and all eyes averted the the image of the robot Eagle slowly rising from Launch pad 3. Pilot Danielle's attention was diverted to the joystick control.

Angelina Carter turned silently toward the viewport watching Eagle 1-3 ascending the void toward the Cirrus cloud. She heard the chatter from Main Mission but nothing in particular held her attention.

"I'm picking up brain wave patterns!" Helena Russell announced, as Ang whirled around and Koenig strode toward her. "I..." Dr. Russell stopped."Dammit. They're gone again." She shook her head as the life functions monitors for Carter and Morrow once again displayed a flatline for the EEG reading. "It was perhaps 10 seconds worth of activity," Helena spoke to Koenig while nodding to Sandra, who had stood up suddenly at the data analyst station. "But it was there."

Ang turned toward the viewport again. She was obsessed with watching the cloud, gazing at it. There was something about that cloud....

*****

Whooaahhhoohhh, OahhhhhoOOOHHH

It's been a long, long-

A long time coming.

A change gonna' come....

...brothers you knew for years is now mad pussy, and scared.

Back in the days, UFO's couldn't walk up in here.

It's time to motor, travel like a foul odor.

Clear my head- -stay sober.

The soul controller.

WhoaaaOOHHHHHH.

He was beginning to wonder if this was perchance, one of those situations that would require a STANDARD ALIEN PROCEDURE--also known as SAP.

The green room was shaped like a triangle, with a round window that had undergone a seriously inept cement job. Alan Carter was no longer Al Shephard's golf ball, so the promenade across the floor was even, save for the myriad, broken boards, and exposed pipes. His orange boots splashed through the slog of a broken water main as he trekked like a stoned man towards the open closet door. There was a white appendage protruding just behind hinges, rusted by a decade of condemned plumbing, and exposure to whatever lay outside.

Sitting at a small, round table that was lit by a banker's lamp, a 200 pound orangutun of the Galapagos Isles sat smoking a cigar, while studying the pilot with his beady, untrustworthy simian eyes. The scorn of every creationist, and Romantic Poet, except for Walter Savage Landor, who wrote corny ballads like "The Hay Of Love." Carter waved at the ape, and kept moving. The cigar was an ultra-cheap Havanna thing that he wouldn't stick in his mouth were he paid to do so.

His gloved hand reached for the crystal knob, and pulled open the closet door. Cobwebs separated, and a Norway Rat as big as a house scurried. His gigantic rat's ass made a B-Line for the local hole, and Carter saw no more of him.

*****

Professor Victor Bergman stood pensively on the top of the stairs in front of the commander's desk, staring intently at the big screen. Right hand cupping his chin, he occasionally glance at John Koenig, pacing in front of him and interrupting his view of the screen.

"Eagle 1-3 contacting cloud periphery in 10 seconds," Pierre Danielle announced as the room hushed. "9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1...contact"

"Magnetic field increase," Ben Ouma swivelled the computer deck.

"On it!" Daneilled responded triumphantly, as the model size Eagle shook slightly, listing to the right then stabilized."Aft thrusters responding and equalizing."

Lorna O'Brien immediately studied the sensor data, analyzed by the main frame. "Nothing unusual about the cloud so far," she shook her head, perplexed."Hydrogen, Nitrogen, trace amounts of inerts. Magnetic field is insignificant. There is still no energy source reading." She turned toward Bergman and Koenig. "There is nothing out there that should be immobilizing that Eagle or jeopardizing the crew!" Angelina stared out the viewport, at the green triangular shaped room with the poorly constructed round window. She blinked and the roof of the maintenance hut and the walls of Plato crater returned into view. "Alan. Where are you?" She whispered, inaudibly.

*****

I'm going too deep....

The world is spinnin' round.

Why don't you take me down?

The world is spinnin' round.

The Al Jolson patina victrola music seemed to emanate from his pores as he looked upon the ghastliness before him. The baby crib was tilted askew--the white flaps, and ruffles, disshelved, and pointing towards a dried pool of coagulating blood on the floor. What lay inside would be unmentionable--as nightmarish as the sinew that streaked the parasol in an expressionistic zig-zag.

"Is it as bad as I said it would be?" The giant mantis creature inquired with venality.

"Yeah." The pilot replied, capsized, and sickened.

"???Where???" The pilot exploded.

The change in tenor was half expected.

"In time." His companion replied cooly. Carter pushed his way past the trees, stabbing upward at the third quarter moon. The timothy grass was high, and wet. The leaves that were clinging to his environment suit were bitten with the frost of late Fall. The pastoral effect was replete with wolves, baying at the lunar halo. He pushed his way into the dark forrest cabin, closing the wooden door behind him. A figure was seated by the fire, watching the embers burn. A garish orange light illuminated the sihlouette of a large, bearded man--apparently deaf to the footfalls approaching behind him. The pilot blinked, cautiously side stepping a rotted board to obtain a better look.

"Big-P?" He said with terrifying clarity. Pierre Danielle--assistant chief of Reconnaisance, and eighty years old if he was a day. A curtain was pulled back on the canopied bed only meters away from him. A white, Arabian Stallion--it's scrofulous eyes sick, and demonic, looked on the ravishment of a woman's breasts by something so evil as to be beyond definition. It was debased, and heinous. A living, breathing, psychodramatic enacting of Henry Fuseli's best nightmare. The groping of it's talons was sporadic, almost pixeled--as if the universe had trouble tuning into this particular atrocity.

"Maybe...in time." The other voice said, and Carter whirled at the door.

*****

"Contact with Eagle One in 30 seconds," Pierre Danielle announced from the capcom. Eagle 1-3's bow cameras plainly revealed that the torpedo had been released and was not longer attached to the spine of Eagle One. Big sigh of relief. Huge. Angelina Carter, pulling herself away from the viewport, had relieved Andy Dempsey at the Technical station, glancing anxiously at Pierre Danielle. Beads of sweat formed on the pilot's brow and upper lip as the silence enveloped Main Mission and all eyes and attention spans were diverted to the unassuming Assistance Chief of Reconnaissance. Danielle was completely engrossed in the docking manuever, moving the joystick in barely perceptible and incremental movements.

*****

Wake up snowman, now--your dreaming....

The foundation of the fractal was thousands of kilometers long. It would have made Aleister Crowley proud, back there when he was writing _The Book Of Thoth_. Carter was squashed by the Brobdingnagian of the game board he was standing on. Non-Euclidian geometric shapes discharged from the floor outward, in a fussilade of bizarre angles, and bulging ballocks that warped his mind, and fogged his mathematical reason.

"We're not even half-way there." His companion abraded him, with a delicate twitch of its pods. The extraterrestrial sky was a strawberry field of soft strato-clouds, lined with flakeing crystals that floated gently in the one-fourth gravity. In the right hand, golden ratio, hung the Moon in third quarter.

"What did it mean?" Carter demanded, heaving, and pulling at the central frieze. He wheezed like a man on Plutonian drugs, or an astronaut who had breathed his last.

"The rules call for sixty-four squares-" His cohort recounted. The abyss was awe-inspiring.

"There's no black square in the lower left." Carter argued, feeling the amethyst give way, along with the rotary cup in his shoulder. "The rows are numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5-" "-6, 7, 8." Carter acknowledged with a desultory pant, and shaking his head. The unlocking mechanism turned beneath him. Gears the size of Chicago, Illinois began to grind, and bifurcated dimensions rolled away like waves on the Pacific. Eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one--off. The pilot staggered from queasy vertigo. "I think you're a lying sucker."

The door quartered open beneath him. His tumble into darkness proved that the Mantis was a bullshitter, to rival the likes of William Gregory Harms, III.

"Look who's talking, mate." The bug replied offended as Alan Carter died, and rose again.

*****

"5-4-3," Pierre Danielle counted the seconds down, hand poised on the board tube lever,"2-1..HUH?!?"

Bergman raised an eyebrow, as Koenig had made his way to the capcomm, standing behind Danielle.

"The robotic onboard computers reports no concrete object for contact," Ouma swivelled his computer desk around.

"What do you mean 'no concrete object for contact'?!?!?" Angelina blurted, rising from the technical station and gesturing at the big screen. "It's right there!!"

"No physical matter for Eagle 1-3 to clamp the boarding tube on Eagle One," Pierre Danielle murmured. "That is weird." Angelina looked helplessly and imploringly toward Koenig and Bergman. "Now what can we do?" The proximity alarm went off on the Data Analyst station and Sandra Benes moved small, slender fingers across the keyboard as she silenced it. She glance at Ben Ouma who merely nodded.

"Sir," Sandra began, the Commander, Bergman and everyone in Main Mission all ears,"the cloud has changed direction of drift." She glanced at all the faces. "We are heading straight towards it."

*****

"I thought you were the only person in the universe who loved Vitaseed; that is, until we ran across Phil Geist." Angelina Carter chuckled slightly as Professor Bergman, sitting on the edge of the low rider couch in the Commander's office, stirred the dreadful beverage with gusto. Technically, Bergman was the only person in THIS universe who loved Vitaseed. Geist was from another universe...technically; not that it really mattered now anyway. "He calls it 'mother's milk'," Angelina Carter sat on the couch, clutching her flimsies and wrinkling her nose. The Commander would be arriving any minute. "With all due respect, professor, how can you drink that crap? Even my dog turned his nose up at it once." She laughed at the distant memory.

"Good man," Bergman smiled fondly. "No, I encourage you to give the drink another try some time." He commended, tapping his spoon smartly against the rim of the cup. "I confess, when I first tasted it, I thought I was going to regurgitate--but Ang' it's packed with all sorts of vitamins, and minerals, and nutrients. It's much healthier than coffee, or Glucose-A." He nodded with surety. "That's heart failure in a cup, is what that is." He sipped, looking for a way to break the contemptuous silence. "Oh," he exclaimed, setting his cup down. "How about this. I understand the Physics Lab has come up with a scenario for liberating Eagle One using gravitational fields, and high frequency transmitter dishes. Commander Koenig, and Dr. O'Brian are looking over the specs now. "Of course we haven't much development time." He conceded, biting his thumbnail. "On the other hand, our finest minds are working on it. You may not realize this, but before leaving Earth, we learned a great deal about opticution, and tweezers."

He neglected to mention that the process worked only on low, numerical objectives. The only subject that had ever been pushed successfully with a pressor beam was yeast on a petrie dish.

Angelina sat back and sighed.

"Professor, I know you are trying to be encouraging but I do know better. Afterall," she smirked, "it was you who taught me everything I know.

"The energy requirements alone to dissipate that cloud are way, way beyond our capabilities; unless we want to risk throwing the reactors in overload....and the cold fusion process is still in pilot stage but believe me, I wish it was set up so I could throw the switch and ..." she trailed off. "Well, its not ready and we are months away from being ready," she finalized then took a sip of her unhealthy coffee.

The privacy door to the office open and Commander Koenig, closing the door and clipping the comlock back on his belt, stepped down into the pit. He sat in the modulform chair across from the couch, leaning forward on elbows.

"Victor.." he began then glanced toward Angelina, who readied her report,"Don't worry, Ang. We'll bring him back."

She looked up then nodded. "Of course, sir." She cleared her throat and opened the flimsie to the middle of the report.

"Victor," Koenig returned his attention to Bergman," it looks like the energy requirements for the use of high frequency generation and gravitation fields to dissipate the cloud are beyond what we are currently capable of generating. Any other alternatives?"

"Alternatives." Bergman cerebrated, pacing the dark room in a short circle. "Perhaps, there is one." He decided, summoning the theory with dramatic perpend. "We can't physically push Carter's ship out of the Cirrus Cloud. We tried that, and failed. We also know that we can't push the woolpack apart with tow beams." He smacked his lips together succinctly. "What we may be able to do--and mind you, this is a long shot--is devise a more conservative way of accomplishing the same thing. "We can't move the cloud, but we may be able to move Eagle One. We focus the discharge on Carter's last reported position, and see if we can give him enough of a nudge to separate him from the damping field that's inside there." Ironic it would be if they managed to emancipate Eagle One, even as the Moon plunged into the apocalyptic core of the Cirrus Cloud. If they succeeded, Carter, and Morrow could well end up being the favored alphans; soul survivors from the rank, and file of the damned. "Now, we know from our attempt with the hypergolic Eagle that some sort of molecular transformation is going on in there." The professor postscripted. It was an attempt to forget his former, genocidal line of thought. "That may not matter, though, when it comes to opposing energies.

"It could work." He conjectured, and returned to his nutritious, but otherwise nauseating, and surfeit Vitaseed.

Angelina was not surprised in the least when she looked up and suddenly became transfixed on the side door to Koenig's office. It was open. Peering inside, cocking its head curiously, the mantis stared at her. If it had physical form, all it could do would be to poke its green head in the door. Obviously, it was not a solid thing since half of it was in the room and the other half was outside. It must be gaseous, she thought. She also assumed, that only she could see it.

"VENI, Sancte Spiritus, reple tuorum corda fidelium, et tui amoris in eis ignem accende." It spoke to her, monotone. In English "Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of Thy faithful and kindle in them the fire of Thy love." Was this the Holy Spirit? She'd never imagine the Holy Spirit being a giant bug. Then again, God could take on any form He wished, she supposed...if this was "God".

"Help us," Angelina spoke in a low tone, somehow feeling that this presence, soothing, comforting, could help them.

"Specifically, what help are you asking for?" Koenig interjected into the scene and in an instant the surreal appearance of the office disappeared. The hum of the HVAC unit above buzzed in her ears before returning to the level of background noise. Koenig and Bergman were both staring at her inquisitively.

"Ang, are you alright?" Bergman rested a paternal hand on her shoulder.

"Yeah, I'm fine," she nodded, brushing away the mental cobwebs.

"I spoke to Dr. Chandra today." Bergman said with sympathetic futility. Koenig froze in half turn. "He's been on the loop since this whole thing started." He acknowledged Ang,' but his regard did not extend to lies, more lies, and obfuscation of the truth. "Everyone at the Hague, the ILC, the JSC; they're all wanting to know what's going to be done about this threat. I have friends in the back room of mission control. So far they've kept their theories to themselves, but I fear the political ramifications are going to outweigh the human element.

"Again." He said repugnantly. "They're just breathing down our necks, John. We can't keep putting off DC Breck, and once he knows, Simmonds won't be far behind. You know they're going to instruct us to use any means necessary to neutralize the Cirrus Cloud before it reaches Earth. "Up to, and including the use of Cobalt Mixers, and Meson Rippers."

Bad news for Carter, and Morrow. And darnit all, he was fresh out of Vitaseed.

Angelina sat through the conversation utterly confused. Hague? the ILC? the JSC? Neutralize the Cirrus Cloud before it reaches Earth?

"Dr. Chandra??" Angelina queried. "He's probably not even alive." She looked puzzled. Bergman and Koenig glanced at each other, in bewilderment. Why won't they. Dr. Chandra was the Chief Scientist of the ILC, stationed in Boston...Massachusetts...United States...Planet Earth.

Bergman regarded her kindly. He remembered the long nights when she was under his tutelage as a graduate student. The glazed look of fatigue and the slow mental connections of a mind over exhausted.

"Yeah," Koenig smirked, trying to make sense of her nonsensical response,"and that guy would have been of little use now anyway.

"Look, Ang," the Commander stood up." Go get some rest. Go see Helena or your chess buddy Bob for something to relax you."

"But, I'm not..."

"That's an order," he interupted and climbed the steps to his desk.

"Do as he says," Bergman patted her gently, "and we'll tackle this one later."

Koenig gandered cooly as she exited through the privacy door. Beyond the expanse of vision ports, there was a summiting view of a breathtaking Earth. The shadows deepened below the platonic rise. There was always one more door. One might say, after closing one door you immediately open another.

"She'll be alright." Bergman presumed, hardly looking up from his inappropriate, red flimsie.

*****

"The Historical Tragedy Of Alan Carter, Astronaut, And Not Hamlet"

not written by William Shakespeare

These Our Actors:

Captain Alan Carter, Dazed, And Confused

Tubbs, A Drunkard

Jack Crawford, Jr. (a foe)

Nicholas, The Conqueror (a foe)

Angelina Carter

Ghost of Angelina Carter

Ed Malcom

(Chorus, various minstrels, TAC Squads, Main Mission Personnel, Forces of Darkness & c.)

Act One, Scene One:

Chorus:

Spiralling through the plumbing Of the Universe, this--STARCROSSED ASTRONAUT; Landing he knew not where, nor did he care, his Backside a torrent on the lunar topography. No hostlery.

(Entrance: Captain Alan Carter, regaining his senses as an odious, besotted Tubbs offers him suspicious liquids. The cavern they are in is covered with aluminum, and lye.)

Carter: That stuff stinks. Where am I, and who the hell are you?

Tubbs: Take your cockney load, your governorship. !!!TOOL!!! Have you er'swig. I done the deed what to build up the alcohol content.

Carter as Tool: Who is Tool? Answer my question, you barmy bastard? Where am I?

Tubbs: The Moon, I reckon. Always the Moon. !!!O' wretched excess!!!

*****

"Perhaps it would be a good idea to find ways to neutralize its affects," Kurt Rotstein suggested from the balcony in Main Mission,"rather than neutralize the cloud itself."

"Neutralize its affects?!?!" Sandra Benes blurted in disbelief. "How can we neutralize its affects if we do not know what its affects are?!?!" She was disgusted and incredulous. How dense could that guy be?!? Angelina Carter wearily shook her head as she left Main Mission through the left archway. On her right, through the viewport, she glance at the Earth rising above the horizon. Finger like cirrus clouds caressed the coast of Connecticut from the encroaching storm. It was going to be one hell of a Nor'easter.

*****

Act One, Scene Two

(as the plot doeth thicken)

(Entrance: Of a TAC (see 'death' squad) patrol, roving the catacombs, while illuminating the almost total darkness with Roman Candle bursts from their NHB Guns.)

Tubbs: !!!HO'!!! Harry's men!!! We are disclosed!!!

Carter as Tool: What are you talking about?

Tubbs: You forget old knight, the circumstances that conspired us to this life of iron, and woe. O' poor, Commander Harrison; his stripe defiled by that albino Millibyte, and his false profit. Pity this scorched satellite--security, reduced to Harness Bulls roaming the caverns, reducing the population for survival, and sport. They homer down innocents like ourselves whose only misfortune was to be borned dumb.

Carter as Tool: I have no idea what you're talking about. Speak fucking English.

(Our traveller turns as a bright flashlight blinds the corneas of his eyes with sinister, befogged rays of blue.)

*****

Angelina Carter paused at the door to Doctor Bob Mathias office. He was not at his desk. Had she taken a walk around his desk, she would have been amazed to see the framed 5x7 of a very familiar woman with him, arms entwined, sipping champagne from glasses labelled "bride" and "groom" respectively. But she did not see it, so it was not there. Instead she found the Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Helena Russell. There was something different about Helena, who sat at her desk munching a quick bite of a sandwich. A well manicured hand brushed back the feathered hair from her face.

"Ang," Helena smiled and nodded toward her.

"Helena," Angelina looked around the office. It seemed out of proportion. "I need to talk with you. I think I'm finally cracking up." She sat down and looked around. The proportions of the room, the walls, the door frames, the molding, all seemed normal again.

*****

Act One, Scene Three

(The lower levels of Moonbase Alpha; the security loop where our hero is ensconced, enduring cold tortures, and the brilliantine pomposity of Mssr. Chief Of Security. His interrogator on the right side was Harness Bull Duncan--but not the Duncan he remembered. His interrogator on the left was Harness Bull Starns, but the patriarch he remembered could never have conceived a hellspawn like the the Adolpho Miguel Donda Tigel that stood before him now.)

HB Starns: You know, I don't really like it when someone ignores me. You don't think you're better than me, do you Tool? Good old, useless, smells like a relief tube Tool?

Carter as Tool: The name's Carter, and yeah--I do sort of think I'm better than you (wide, Mickey Mouse Smile).

(Starns punches him in the groin, and the pilot collapses to the floor.)

HB Duncan: Mr. Carter you need to learn our patois, me thinks.

Carter as Tool: Where's the commander?

HB Starns (plucking rose petals): Chicken brain. What the hell makes you think the commander has enough time, or disinfectant to entertain company like you. The Squares on this base don't fancy having a Yorkshire hog for a pet. Just thank your lucky stars you didn't get waxed on Ninevah Ridge. We have a terrible overpopulation problem, you know.

Carter as Tool: Yeah, and most of them are bloody assholes like yourself (laughs). Couldn't help, but notice.

(Starns moves in to strike again--this time with a smelt-hot needle to the ear drum, but he stops as a greater, malignancy enters the room.)

*****

"What makes you say that, Ang?" The glare from Helena's lip gloss was blinding. Her manner was irritating as well. Helena reminded Angelina of a high school cheerleader: that ever present pretentious cheerfulness.

"I was having a discussion with the professor and the commander about ways to free Alan from that cloud and Professor Bergman mentioned that Dr. Chandra knows about it as well as the Hague, and the ILC and...well, he was talking as if we were still in earth orbit or something."

Angelina stopped to judge the doctor's reaction.

"That is odd," Helena acknowledged, "but are you sure you weren't hearing things? You are, Ang, under a significant amount of stress." Angelina stared back at her blankly. She heard what she heard. "Look," Helena removed a few pills from a bottle she took from the desk drawer. "You need to gets some rest." She came around to Ang with a glass of water. "Take these and get some sleep."

Funny...Angelina thought. When was a slit skirt part of the regular duty uniform? She took the pills, gulped them down then stood to leave.

"If you want to talk later, I'll be here," Helena called to her warmly.

"Sure," Angelina nodded then left.

The travel tube ride to her quarters was bizarre. Nothing ethereal or dreamlike but her fellow travellers who shared the car, Michelle Cranston and Pierre Danielle were acting very inappropriate and strange. They acknowledged Ang as she embarked into the car but made no attempt to hide and in fact resumed their previous activity. Michelle Cranston and Pilot Pierre Danielle were engaged in some rather erotic making out and foreplay. Ang sat uncomfortably trying to ignore their indiscretion but Michelle's heavy breathing and soft moaning made it difficult.

"You two should get a room," Angelina commented with a plastic smile, while blushing slightly. The last time she encountered a scene like this was on a bus ride in middle school.

"That's where we are going. Isn't it obvious?" Michelle retorted bitchily before Pierre interfered with her speech by sticking his tongue in her mouth again. The travel tube stopped and Ang jumped up.

"I'm off here."

They ignored her and the doors whooshed shut. 'It must be the sedative,' Angelina thought, walking on rubbery legs. She stopped at the quarters with the sign "Captain Alan Carter, Dr. Angelina Verdeschi Carter, Nicholas Carter", squinting to be sure she was in the right place. The lock responded to her comlock signal and she staggered in, collapsing on the lowrider couch.

*****

Act One, Scene Three

(Security Chief James Profitt remains standing. His flares are too tight, and a gopher bulges at his groin--proclaiming to all female alphans that he is indeed chief.)

Profitt: I don't love my wife.

Carter as Tool: I'm not going to think.

Profitt: The twin prime conjecture?

Carter as Tool: No solution.

Profitt: NP-Problems?

Carter as Tool: No solution.

Profitt (pointing rudely): Proof that ten is a solitary number.

Carter as Tool: Go to hell chief.

Profitt: Do you love your wife?

Carter as Tool: What's it all about?

(James Profitt transforms into a nine foot long praying mantis.)

The Mantis, formerly James Profitt: Death is best. That's what I want you to accept.

*****

In a dreamlike state, Angelina remembered the nurse telling her that Nicky was in his room and she was off duty. Ang murmured her gratitude but drifted back into a light sleep. Her son's laughter brought her to consciousness. Still dazed and in a drug induced fog, Angelina walked into Nicky's room on unsteady legs.

"Nicky?" She whispered, seeing no evidence of the child. The yellow light panels cast an amber glow on the upside down crucifix above the head of his bed. Perplexed, she righted it and stood back. Her attention was snagged by the picture on the adjacent wall of the Blessed Mother...a single tear of blood easing out of the corner of her eye. She blinked...no more bleeding image. Nicky's raucous laughter came from his closet. Angelina Carter stepped inside the closet; and out into another dimension. Surrounded by white and light and no substance yet all substance, she saw her child playing on what appeared to be a gigantic jungle gym.

As she drew closer, though, it was clear that it was not an object. Nicky swung on the super sized antenae of a giant mantis. Seeing his mother, he released, jumped and rolled, enthusiastically running to her and taking her hand. Angelina looked up at the image she was sure she had seen before.

"Who are you? What do you want with my son?"

*****

"???Who are you???" Carter shouted as he started to choke the Mantis. His hands barely fit around the most fragile part of the bug's thorax. "???What the blazes???"

This didn't go unobserved. Harness Bulls Duncan, and Starns took to walking in circles, high fiving each other after each repitition. Then he saw the others--beings he seemed to sense were alphans, but who were not on the base out of design, but rather galactic conquest. Then his concierge left him, and he was back to being violent again. They appeared to be neither human, nor humanoid, with internal organs that vented gaseous trace elements from dark, unevolved sockets. He knew they were there. They knew they were there. They were the Lords Of The Periphery--something from a corner in his deranged mind.

"???Where's my boy???" He demanded, torturing the bug's trachea with his thumbs. Then he realized that nightmares seem real--up until the last ten seconds before waking. He realized his opponent was slipping away. He felt the rotten floor buckle beneath his funky, orange EVA shoes.

The person he was strangling was Ang.'

*****

"Ang,'" The graying commander said, standing. "Glad you could join us." Her gladness was forced; more relative to the situation than any ill gotten mendacity for the Technical Section Manager.

Victor Bergman also pushed back his plastic, butt torturing dining complex chair, and greeted her cheerfully. On the other side of the line, Hugo Willet saw her coming. He carefully ducked back into the service area before he could be targeted for extracurricular duty. Somewhere in the back, whole grain muffins torched, and burned.

"We saved you one." Kathleen O'Leary said laconically, her black stripe moving across the gray formica as she pushed the cup of Caffeine-A in Angs' direction. "True, it's not as good as Vitaseed, but I thought you could endure--just this one time."

"Now, now." Bergman said, waving a cautionary finger. "Keep in mind, you only had her for one introductory class. She was with me at MIT for how long? "Enough time for me to recognize her good taste." The commander grunted.

Angelina stared, utterly confused. She had every right to be confused. You see, Kathleen O'Leary, one time former commander of Moonbase Alpha was at the wrong place at the wrong time on December 12, 1997. While taking her early morning jog, as she always did, navigating the ice and 3 foot high snow banks of that early surburban Bostonian winter, a frat boy from UMass Lowell plowed into her after a night and dawn of hearty partying, killing her instantly.

Ang blinked. The white and light environment where she felt secure and carefree re-emerged and engulfed her.

"Come Nicky, let's go!" She shouted to her son running and playing between the legs and pods of the great Mantis.

"He should stay with me," the insect communicated without speaking. "He will be safe here until you passed through the other side of it." Angelina merely nodded in unexplainable yet complete trust and blinked again.

She stared at the cup of coffee and looked around the Commander's office. Commander John Koenig sat next to her, leaning toward Professor Bergman, intently studying the Eagle schematics. Pierre Danielle, sitting next to Bergman, had a look of relief and hope in his face.

"This could work," Koenig nodded toward Danielle. He shrugged. "What have we got to lose?"

"You say that so easily." Deputy Commissioner Breck said coldly. He looked sideways at Ang'--checking to see if she were still alive, one would presume--and then bore a hole through John Koenig's forehead. "There are three billion people down there. I'd say we have a tremendous amount to lose. Even worse, the future of our programs is at stake." He turned his laser eyes on each, and every command conference attendee. "Europe could be decimated. Indochina. The Mediterranean.

"And Boston.

"Koenig, you act as though that doesn't trouble you in the least; as if you really wouldn't mind if the world--as we know it--ended; back to life of a satellite repairman while thirty years of glorious progress goes down the swill.

"Unfortunately, I do care. Moreover, my superiors demand that immediate action be taken."

"Mr. Deputy Commissioner." Victor Bergman said, fatigued. "We're already confident that the dish network can minimalize the dangerous elements. Dr. Murneau, and our highly skilled, Technical Manager there solved that problem. As soon as the dish network is deployed, we'll link the system, and fire off a counterbalancing charge of Orgone Energy--enough to bust the Cirrus Cloud."

"Oui.'" Murneau said modestly from his seat across the table. "Dat' is true."

"Breck, we have a 100% margins on this." Koenig argued vehemently. "I see no reason why we can't consider the human element for once. We have a trapped pilot out there. I intend to bring him back."

"Do you know what the hell you're doing?" The DC assailed Ang, his ascott smoking beneath his dragon nostrils.' "Can you look me in the eye, and say that Earth is in no danger?" His impatience was thermal, raising the office temperature to intolerable, and beyond.

Another dead person sitting at the conference table. The 'good' Deputy Commissioner Breck died of a severe myocardio infarction (heat attack to the layman) on July 21, 1999.

"Commissioner," Angelina answered without looking up, for if she looked up she was not sure who she'd be answering,"this method has a statistical confidence level of 99.99%"

"Zee precize pwobabiwity is 99.9943%," Murneau clarified, glancing at Ang over his thick bone rimmed glasses.

Angelina was slightly amused, despite the situation. She could not believe Murneau was sitting here. She knew this situation was not real because Breck thought Murneau was the biggest fool in the LSRO. However, the fact that Murneau's sister was the wife of the Prime Minister of France may have been a factor in his assignment to Moonbase Alpha.

"And yes, I do know what the hell I am doing, commissioner," Ang looked up, ready to stare down the departed deputy commander. It was not Breck, and Ang flushed slightly, looking away.

"Whatever the confidence level, we're not going to evaporate the Cirrus Cloud until the last possible minute." Koenig announced. This was followed by pop-up disgruntlement amongst team members. This feedback was ignored. "If we start bombarding the cloud while Carter is still in there, he'll die for sure. We're going to give him every possible chance.

"Ouma, what's the time factor on this." He said, swivelling in the direction of the now pastey, ever depressed computer chief.

"The cloud will envelope the Moon in less than one day." Ouma declared, with no mitigation. "Computer estimates a time factor of approximately 19 hours. To neutralize the cloud, we'll need a burst of no less than 180 seconds. We have to be accurate within three-tenths of a second. If the shut-down is premature, the operation will be ineffectual. If we shut down too late, the overdose of Bions will seed the other vesicles; the cloud will become stronger, and on top of that, Alpha will be contaminated with orgonomic fallout."

"We've heard nothing from Eagle One." The departed deputy commander, Paul Morrow, reported while returning Angs' humorless stare. "About 30 minutes ago, we received telemetry from 15,000 nautical miles out; in the core of the Cirrus Cloud. Astrophysics believes that the data probably escaped during a contraction phase in the cloud's cycle. "We have a Delta-F on the onboard tab." He said, looking away from Ang.' "Eagle One has lost RCS."

"Has he detanked?" The commander queried.

"No." The controller said. "It's well within limits."

"What bothers us." Bergman said, taking the wheel. "Is the fact that we have this data, but no noticeable changes in the Cirrus Cloud. Any thruster movement from Carter's ship should, by all rights, cause changes in the cloud's composition. There would be molecular movement; vibrations on the subatomic level. There isn't any.

"He's moved, but he hasn't moved." The professor said, completely baffled. "The RCS is only used for landing. Where did he go?"

Angelina glanced out the blue and violet filled viewports. Where did the stars go? Returning her attention to the table, Commissioner Simmonds sat across from her scowling at the Commander. Another dead person was attending the meeting. Angelina shook her head. She was either dreaming or hallucinating or both.

"Excuse me, but I need to get something for this headache," Angelina murmured as she stood, rubbing her temple. She did not look back. She didn't dare look back since she had no desire to see who, dead and alive, might be discussing the current situation.

She closed the door behind her as she left the room.

"But of course." Commander O'Leary said, gracious in the traces.

"Really, it'll be alright." Bergman opined, and offered her an optimistic pat on her single, black sleeve.

*****

In the lost city of the Cirrus Cloud, Alan Carter's shoulder blades, and pectorals grew taught. His face twisted, and contorted in red rilles of inflamed blood pressure. The jigsaw sky was resonated a bizarre magenta. His helmuted head expanded to ten times its normal size. He now looked like one of the better bears on "The Outer Limits," but not nearly as blessed, for there was no death. Beyond the fifth quarter Moon, Draconis, and Corvus, and 93 Ceti pelted him with arc seconds of razor blade light, and he shrieked, and shrieked.

*****

The 10 year old boy sat at the desk, carefully sketching the flower. It was a complicated Sunflower and he stared pensively at the color pallet, trying to decide which color to match on his canvas.

Jackie Crawford sat back and rubbed his eyes. The blue light from the viewport was not helping his perception of the yellow on the sunflower petal, so he stood up and activated the switch for the shutters. Upon returning to his student desk, he found himself tired and folding his arms on the desk, leaned his chin on his hands, staring at the flower.

His eyes flew open at the sound of a soft rustle but he did not move. Nestled on the flower, Jackie stared in awe at something he had never seen before, a creature that he only saw in pictures.

The Monach butterfly slowly moved its wings as it fed on the nectar of the sunflower. Jackie's eyes widened with delight. Such a remarkable creature! He wanted to touch it. The butterfly sensed the movement and lifted off gracefully from the flower.

Jackie jumped out of the chair and chased it about the room. It flew out the open door to the corridor. Jackie paused at the door. His mother told him to stay where he was until she returned.....but then the butterfly would be gone! He was sure that if he caught it, she would be pleased, so he took off down the corridor after the monarch.

Soon, Jackie found himself in the upper levels of Hangar 2. The enticing insect flew out an open door to the catwalk and settled on the arm of one of the great lifting cranes. The dark haired boy looked around and down...it was a long way down. He knew he was not allowed in this area. However, the butterfly was beautiful and he could not let it get away.

Jackie sat on the crane arm and slowly inched his way across it. He looked down and thought he would cry. It was at least 50 feet down and he felt a bit dizzy. Glancing back at the butterfly, he found the strength to move on, inching his way across his precarious perch.

Young Crawford slowly reached forward, within inches of grabbing the creature.

"JACKIE!!!!" The stern yell came from...somewhere.

Jackie sat up, startled and lost his balance. With one hand holding on to a cable, he dangled from the arm of the crane.

"Help!!! HELP!!!!!" He screamed in fear and anguish.

The cable let go with a snap......he shrieked as he fell.

Jackie cried out, sitting up on the hangar floor. He looked around, a bit dazed. He looked up at the crane....no dangling cables.

"What are you doing here, lad? You know you are not suppose to be in this area." Bram Cedrix approached the boy and pulled him to a standing position.

"I...I ...don't know," Jackie stammered, still in a daze.

Bram Cedrix nodded paternally, patting him on the shoulder. "Another blackout, Jackie?"

Everyone knew that possibly due to his possession by Jarak, Jackie Crawford was an occasional sufferer of epileptic seizures and blackouts.

"Yes, sir...I guess," He squinted at the crane above.

"Well, son...Let's call your mum and get you over to Medical to get you checked out. That's what you're suppose to do when you have one of these spells, eh?"

"Yeah..." Jackie took Cedrix's offered hand. "Let's go."

Jackie glance over his shoulder, looking around again then stepped into the travel tube with Technician Bram Cedrix.

*****

From the ever changing cast of characters at the meeting in the Commander's office, Angelina thought she was stepping into the corridor adjacent to Koenig's office. Instead, she stepped into the clutches of an unrecognizable mad man. She could not make a sound as the air flow was cut off to her trachea. The world was already going black and the sound of her own gurgling and rapidly beating heart amplified in her ears. Suddenly, whoever it was, let her go. Gasping, she fumbled for her comlock in an attempt to hit the emergency button though in the back of her mind, she doubt that it would do any good. The muscles in her arms were too oxygen deprived to hold the device and she dropped it to the floor, still wheezing and gasping.

"I can explain that." Carter proclaimed, releasing his wife's fragile neck. Oh, lucky for him, the corridor was empty. No James Profitt, the mad security chief; no TAC squads, armed with sciatic nerve blasters. He had no idea where he was on Moonbase Alpha now, since there was no such thing as a road map to alternate destinies. The only thing that looked even remotely familiar was the greek animated comstatations, which disappeared in a row to the end of the anywhere/ anytime corridor. The next time he spoke to Shai, the egyptian god of fate, he had every intention of climbing his grill for this. As circumstances decreed, he was having a bad day--made worse by this near strangulation. Then there was this thing with the beard, and of him smelling like wild animal shit.

Angs' anile gaze floated towards the gadget that was quartered on his hip. The commlock that had blue, red, and green bands; and a blue dot on the side; and an XSM model number; and a displeasing, morally revolting photo of himself with the label FRED TOOL, R 01-485.

"That's not who I am." He said, his mouth hanging wide open.

She looked up at the stranger. He did not look like Alan Carter, yet he sounded like Alan Carter, complete with Alan Carter's unique intonations and Aussie accent.

"Alan?" she rasped while shaking her head. Perhaps she had finally crossed the narrow threshold between sanity and madness.

"I have two arms, two legs, two eyes, and an indentation for a tale." The pilot said gravely. You might say he was 'retooling.' "The cloud." He said forcefully, holding her by her fiftyish, peanut brittle shoulders. "How long has it been here."

He pointed towards the ice blown aurora that filled the rectangular viewports. Then he looked away, with dismay, as he realized he was standing in oxidized pool of dry blood.

"Am I in the future, or am I dead. Eh?" This led to the classic, epistomological dilemma of infinite regress. Without justification, could he truly justify that he was seeing his wife as an old chook, or was this a vision born from his lack of foundational beliefs. He only thought that he thought that he was thinking of Angelina in this fashion. In reality, he was battling his own straight jacket somewhere while listening to Slim Whitman.

Then, the flying habadashers showed up, swooping through the corridor in tight formation. Their undersides appeared to be hollowed out, rendering visible a crystalline geode of pink guts, and fiery red veins. He pulled Ang' towards a nearby closet, and despaired again when he realized that his commlock was useless. He opened the door with her's, and locked the terror out.

"What are those things." He said, frowning in the dark.

"What things?" She looked around, up and down the empty corridor. Except for the two of them, it was empty and there was an eery silence and Ang noticed the constant background hum of the HVAC units was absent. A barely perceptible haze dulled the lighting such that the white walls appeared gray. Despite his physical appearance, his voice and now his scent, mixed with his aftershave, convinced her that this strange guy really was Alan Carter. "It IS you," she pulled him into an embrace.

She stood back and studied him. "But you look different." She hugged him again. "Things are not as they seem. If you are seeing the future, I have been seeing the past. I don't know what reality I'm in.

"I've just been in a meeting with, among others, Commander O'Leary and Commissioner Breck," she shook her head. "I don't think we're dead...maybe insane?"

"You've got a strange imagination, cream puff." Carter decided, in a very real sense, hugging himself. That was all the time they could afford for pleasantries, and mutual affection. "Maybe we really are the center of all things. Maybe that blue motherfucker outside has inspired you." The end was, after all, determined by the prime author, or mover. They were, but witnesses. An audience locked in a theater for the viewing of experimental films, and film art. Watch the fly zing down the barrell of a revolver au stethescope camera. Watch the Hindu's head split open to expel a ghostly supermodel. Witness Spot--500 pound, pet Tic of a boy who looks, and acts like young Bill Mumy.

It's a good life.

"Why?" The pilot harrangued thanklessly, and then rotated his ear towards palates that seemed to be emanating from the floor.

"...now is the time to forge alliances." A disgruntled male voice said from the other side of the vent. "He believes the cloud is augury; some omen from the divine. We can use that." The speaker said politically.

"Who is that?" she reeled toward the vent. "The voice is familiar. Who?

"You're in the cloud, Alan." Angelina turned and gazed out the blue viewport. "We are trying to get you back....back.....back..." Her words echoed but there was no physical reason for the echo. "Did you see the mantis?" Angelina asked, squinting through the prism colors of the strobe lit wall panels. "Nicky is safe with it. I trust it. It will help us."

Carter sssSSHHH'd her.

"...you could say." The icy, Voice Of Reckoning said on the other side of the grate. "I had an unusual childhood." His laughter was cement, hardening on someone's tombstone.

"Yes." The other person replied slowly. It was an erratic, brain damaged 'yes.' One that was barely uttered, and only half understood.

"The protocols aren't like they used to be a decade ago. Every step he took; every bad decision he made led up to this."

"A Paul Von Hindenberg?" The schizoid second party asked, by way of comparison. "Who?"

"Never mind. Your simile is appropos. In an illiterate sort of way."

"Yes." Brain Damage said humbly.

"You know, in my father's day--even after Breakaway, no one ever would have visualized a situtation like the one that now drives us to such extreme patriotism." The guttural, but somehow youthful, respondent said zealously.

"They were from Earth." Brain damage extrapolated. "Trask isn't."

"Trask was." The strident one argued, and then the floor turned upside down. Experience, and the fount of myths suddenly became carnival rides. The Electric Rainbow. The Sombreros. The Scrambler, and The Mouse Trap. The north pole was now the south pole, leaving Carter, and Ang' to look silly, hanging from the ceiling while castles of mist extirpated in the vaccum. The pilot felt sick. How sick did he feel, you may wonder. If someone filled an ash tray with cigarette butt, and then deposited upteen cigarette butt onto a greasy pork chop; and then--dousing the pork chop with chocolate syrup; and if he ate it, it still would not equate, by one tenth of a percentile, the total need to yak' that he enjoyed now. He felt like the aussie schoolmaster, meaning to console the prepubescent with the broken shinn bone, but deep throating her instead. Shame was the word.

Carter may have been successfully rapid swallowing his excess saliva, keeping the inside contents of his stomach from going outside but Angelina failed in the task. Sinking to her knees the bile edged the back of her throat and forcefully exploded out of her mouth. With barely enough time to draw in a breath she continued to dry heave, gasping and sobbing. Her physical misery was being fed by the mental images. The torture, the cruelty, the agony of a future Moonbase Alpha flased before her in digital, 3D images.

"No...no..." she cried on her hands and knees, still dry heaving the burning acids from her stomach. "It can't be...it mustn't be...no..." The source of it all was her...and Alan. "We can't let this happened," she looked up at Carter as Tool,"we must change it."

The mole at the end of the corridor was an omnivore. It's mushroom was a red-lit beacon, protruding through hellion eye sockets as the cold promontory of the SNB held true in cave man's hands. It debouched thorugh a quarter of a century of dust-covered decadence, easing behind a commstation to await the final departure of one of the flying derbys which lingered in the bend. The creatures were blind which meant that the point of his hiding was to prevent his rotten stench from reaching the monster's clairsentience. It could smell the lack of bath water, which was worse than being targeted visually.

"You started it." Carter said nodularly. "Don't think about the cloud. Think about the light at the end."

"My father died before I could see what kind of socks he wore." Brain Damage confessed through the rectangular gaps of grating.

"You know, you're almost too low functioning." His partner criticized. "Maybe I should do away with you now. You know. You're a high security risk. What's about to happen is nothing short of-"

"Evolution?" Brain Damage faltered.

"Why yes, actually it is."

He had to admit, he didn't think the dork had it in him.

"In my own defence, at least I haven't sold my own people out, in exchange for beneficent rewards, and a pot of extradimensional, alien intelligence."

"Beneficent?" Voice number two disagreed.

"Yes. Beneficent. I know how to spell it." Brain Damage said defensively. "You've spent too much time at the organ exchange. 150 years is far too long for you I think."

"I prefer to think of it as a 'treaty.'"

"If this ain't the black stump beyond." The pilot said, braceing his beard against the cold. It came to them through dolby speakers, set in a boom box from hell. The Fifth Dimension, reminding everyone that this was the dawning of the Age Of Aquarius, the Age Of AquariuuuUUUUUSSSS. !!!AQUARIUSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!

And then the mole thew open the door with it's artiforg hands. Carter's throat was stricken with the pale, blue light of the Cirrus Cloud as it filled the closet. He was blinded temporarily as the miscreation fired the SNB. A supernova of receptor block knocked him to the dirt. Sinew, and unrefined hemoglobin rained down on him as Angs' heart muscle exploded.

*****

Commander John Koenig stepped out of the travel tube into the primary corridor to Medical Center. Harness Bulls Pound and Duncan nodded to him as they stepped into the travel tube, looking irritated and exhausted. They had every reason to be exhausted. The first shift harnass bulls were now 5 hours past the end of their scheduled duty period. Their reliefs, Harnass Bulls Breck and Dubois never showed up; they were sound asleep. Koenig walked through the double doors of Medical Center and waited patiently as Doctor Russell finished up a consultation with Jerry Parker. The commander brewed a pot of fresh coffee, extra strong and prepared three mugs as Parker stepped wearily out of her office. Koenig handed one mug to Nurse Maureen Tan, who also had the overtime glazed expression on her face, as she thanked him gratefully and left to the nurse's lounge. Sitting down in front of Helena Russell's desk, he stifled a yawn as he slid the cup of java toward the doctor.

"What's going on, Helena?" Koenig sat forward in the modulform chair, holding his mug in one hand and his forehead in the other. "The entire second shift crew on this base is asleep...and most of the overnight crew is out cold."

He didn't have to tell her that...she already knew from several "housecalls" to living quarters from distraught significant others and roommates unable to rouse their loved ones and friends.

Sitting on the desk next to a chart labeled EPIDEMIC STAT, there stood the model of the fifteen inch, visible man. Palms open, and glaring at Koenig from his pedestal. His skull mouth wincing against the gastric tube that crawled from his mouth like a corn dog covered with Super Glue. Ubiquitous were its eyes, ears, nose, brain, small intestines, removable vital organs. It's heart refracted the blue Monday that was being emitted from the Cirrus Cloud. This undear, ten buck purchase originally came with a twelve page booklet, which Helena Russell had ignored. The pith of it all was that the 25 year old resident was forced to snap the thing together using smarts alone. It took 30 hours to complete, and to this day, the visible man had adnoids where his anus should have been.

"I know." Helena Russell acknowledged with an inestimable brush of the hair. There was a full-blown case of Samsonite briefcase beneath her eyes. She looked old, and appalling. The last time she had a good night's sleep seemed to have been in August of 1988, and one of her back teeth cried out for a bicuspid root canal like a mother. "It started about an hour ago, and it's getting worse. "Bram Cedrix is the latest. Gordon Cooper saw him sit down on the map room settee. He was reading an Alpha News Service digi-pack, and eating a vegetable calzone. When Coop' looked around again, he was laying face down with his nose in one of Yul Ostrog's work boots. Since it hit the ground, Marilys Sing decided to throw the calzone away.

"As nearly as I can tell, the outbreak started at one of the perimeter stations, and worked its way to the hub.

"Here, look at these." She said, passing him a stack of EEG traces. "We started recording them when Mike Oldfield collapsed at station seven. It's not a complete study. There are no EMG's, or EOG's. These reflect only the early cases. I wanted Nunez to do a followup, but..." She elucidated. "He got tired, and went to sleep."

Koenig scanned the anterior plate, which showed a representation of the hibernating, left hemisphere of Tom Graham's brain. The gross activity was measured in red, desynchronous spindles that peaked up, and down with an occasional increase in frequency.

"So there is no known cause and therefore, as of now, no known solution to the problem." Koenig set the plate back on the desk, glancing at the others. He was not a physician but he deduced from the scans that they were all pretty much the same with no evident conclusions. "Damn," the commander stood up and gazed out the blue viewport. "I would like to tell you that the cause is from the cloud. But I can't; there are no emissions, no energy readings reaching Alpha. All of our instruments show that it is not affecting us." He turned toward the doctor again, gulping down a few mouthfuls of coffee. "Helena, you're not going to like this but the people who are still conscious must be KEPT conscious. Obviously, we can't have everyone on the base asleep."

In the nurse's lounge, Koenig's extra strong brew was unsuccessful as Maureen Tan, RN lost the battle with the sandman and nodded off in the pretzel chair.

As did Carroll Severance--the most blindingly handsome man on Moonbase Alpha--nodding into a cool relaxing kip in Farm-A while the water canon hosed the Pear Trees to the point of consumption. Another one bites the dust; and another one bites, and another one bites--another one bites the dust....

"I can issue Dexedrine to all personell." The physician cracked, yawning. "That's not a permanent fix, though." She turned away, and excogitated on the swirling mass of blue gas outside. It was only 10,000 kilometers out now, and closing. The Cirrus Cloud wasn't particularly fast. Its constituents were urged on via pressure from the solar winds. It was established though, with a mindless determination that vanquished logic, and expelled all oomph. It would eat anything as exemplified by the disappearance of Eagle One. "What do you think is inside it."

Koenig had moved next to her, also gazing out the viewport. He could hardly see the lunar surface with the swirling masses of blue obsuring his vision. The yellow landing lights on Launch Pad 3 in the distance now glowed a sickly green. "It is suppose to be just a bunch of inert gases," Koenig shook his head, stifling a yawn. "Whatever else is in there, I guess we'll find out soon enough." He turned, leaning his right elbow on the viewport sill. "What's the word on Carter's and Morrow's conditions?"

"No change." Russell said with weary shellac. "Their brain wave patterns are normal. Cardiac, and phrenology are all good." She reconsidered the slopes of Ozymandius. Impurities in the Cirrus Cloud--the sizes of Chicago, and Lawrence, Kansas roughly--meandered by like the eyes of a Polypheme. It was an opitical illusion of course, but it confided to her, a symetry of cowardice. She beat, looking to a cold cup of coffee for warmth. "Strange." She remarked. "They're actually in the cloud, but there's not a thing wrong with them. Why is Alan just sitting there. And another thing too." She looked up, while Koenig sipped his own coffee. "We're getting other readings. It's biofeedback, but not from Eagle One. There are eight other sources out there. Victor, and Professor O'Brian felt confident that it was the product of polarized dust.

"John, I don't think it is." She shook her head, her eyelids growing heavy under the mesmerizing red lights. "I'm picking up an inordinate amount of Belarubin from one of them. It plays out as a glyph on the electrochemical analysis. It's not what you would call bizarre. I've seen it before here on Alpha. You have a person who may have suffered serious illness at one point in their lives, and this stain is the bi-product.

"The content I'm referring to matches Pierre Danielle's. I mean to a tee. He experienced viral Encephalitis when he was a child, but he can't be out there. He's here." She recovered her cup, and sipped disconsolately. "I don't get it."

Koenig stared at her momentarily with a blank look on his face.

"Sandra?" The commander removed his comlock and punched in the communication code to the Main Mission Data Analyst Station.

"Adisa Talic, here, sir." Her face appeared on the micromonitor. "Sandra stepped out for a minute. What can I do for you?"

"What were the results of the sensor array recalibrations?"

"No anomalies, Commander. The scanners were within .1% tolerance, which was expected and normal."

"Thank you, Adisa," She nodded as he cut the link. Koenig paused momentarily, holding his comlock in mid air. He punched in another code. No response. He hesitated then punched in another code. The disquietingly familiar image of the late Ivan Sloven appeared in the form of Umberto Garzon.

"Flight control," the unfortunate twin responded with a slight smile.

"Lieutenant Danielle. Is he around?"

"Haven't seen him, sir. He is on the duty roster though." Garzon stifled a yawn. "I thought he was in Main Mission. Maybe he fell asleep too?"

"Perhaps. Find him and have him call me, or if he is asleep, you call me."

"Right away, sir," Garzon nodded as Koenig cut the link.

"How long can we keep out people awake on Dexedrine? What's the maximum time factor and maximum dosage?" Koenig set his empty coffee cup down on the sill, while contemplating brewing another pot.

The hand that released the coffee cup was augustly feminine. The well manicured nails were pistillate, but also strong, and on the exigent pulse of hard living. There was only the most nebulous quiver as her body was divided into thirds by blocks of unperceived disestablishment. The transposition was to a situation that was similar in kind.

She was still speaking to a commander, only it was Arthur Strange instead of John Koenig. Koenig was there, sitting in one of the foam couches beside Lorna O'Brian. The black mantle of command was gone. He wore a plain, civilian sleeve in its place. She was still drinking coffee, and she was still uncrowned with a migraine headache. Then the memories that never should have been floated down like goose feathers, and made the Moon seem alright again. It made sense.

She was not Dr. Helena Russell. She was Dr. Angelina Verdeschi.

"According to Dr. Russell, we can only dope ourselves up for ex-amount of time." The commander said, scratching his chin. "If we go beyond that, we may do the cloud a favor, and kill ourselves."

Lorna O'Brian shifted impatiently on the couch. Behind her, Harness Bull Pound let out a lazy, unenergetic yawn.

"Sorry." Strange shrugged. "But you need to know the facts." He paced the floor of the Technical Hub, offering Ang' a heart felt--if somewhat stooged look of concern.

"Well, the Compton Dish network is already in geosynchronous orbit." Dr. Koenig said in summation. "Once the transponders are on-line we can smother it with orgone. It won't take 72 hours to transmit the code. We only need three minutes."

Strange nodded.

"That's assuming that Alpha will still have the power to transmit." He admonished, and answered his page. He was tired. He wanted to turn his commlock off. And do nothing. Except maybe eat.

"Pierre Danielle here, sir." The voice said on the other end of the link. "I'm on the loop. Still no word from Eagle One."

He paused, as if curious to know why he was summoned.

"That's a good place for you. The loop is where you belong." Strange said, pointing towards Heaven; cutting him off curtly, while offering Ang' a warm smile of reassurance.

"I take it Pierre is still with us." Koenig winked, patting Ang' convivially on the arm.

"I'm glad someone is." Lorna O'Brian said dismally. "I'm totally lost."

Strange frowned.

Angelina closed her eyes, shaking away the cobwebs. She could have sworn she was in an Alpha-like corridor with some dude who sounded and acted like Alan. Now..she was somewhere else, in a group of people which included another dead man. Former Moonbase Alpha Commander Arthur Strange had succumbed to the ravages of prostate cancer on October 20, 1998. She caught a glimpse of her image in the viewport reflection. She was as she was in 1995/1996 timeframe, a graduate student who was struggling through her final two years working on her PhD; no fine lines around the eyes, longer, darker hair worn in a simple pony tail and about 10 pounds overweight rather than 10 pounds underweight.

She glanced at John Koenig, who had a fuller head of black hair, not salt and pepper, and who was enviously lanky combined with his tall height; a much younger Koenig with far fewer lines and who smiled a great deal more too. If only he knew what was in store for him, for all of them. Lorna O'Brien? Well, Ang saw no difference but since Lorna O'Brien didn't even exist in 1996, she had no reference for comparison.

When she opened her eyes again, Arthur Strange was, not surprisingly gone. Instead, Commissioner Dixon stood in his place; Angelina burst out into a tearful, hearty laughter. His glare was as icy as ever.

"I'm sorry, Commissioner," she attempted apologetic damage control but still chortled. "I'm a little stressed out." She burst out laughing again.

"I'm glad you find it so amusing." Dixon, whose name reminded everyone of something else, said with flatulence as he handed Koenig a red flimsie that he had no intention of reviewing. Lorna O'Brian was fairly unsuccessful at hiding her contempt. He stood, pressing his palms against someone else's desk, and peered at Ang' over his black, bone rim glasses. Deep within the pop bottles, she could see a crazed, conical image of herself. "Perhaps you'll find this amusing too. We've decided not to go with this idiotic plan for dispersing the cloud with occult-form radiation.

"Unfortunately for you--and for Carter, I might add--we've decided to atomize it using cobalt aspersion.

"What do you think about that?"

He folded his arms over his chest, and waited.

*****

"Fellow citizens." Ro-commander Harrison Gento-Alatheus bellowed with great instability from the podium. His first name was unknown. Call it an embarassing security procedure, considering that there were only 3,000 people living on the Moon. Even more chagrinned, when one considers that half of this demograph was mentally, and spiritually retarded. A matter of form. "It has been five centuries since the catastrophe that cast our Moon into the chthonian void."

His wizened hands--real, and artiforg--began to tremble, and corrupt against a preprepared speech that he could barely read. The implants had begun 150 years ago, when he was still Destiny's tike. The proliferation of the nano purge had left him 25% human, with no cerebrum, or memory capacity whatsoever. His cortex consisted of a DAT dump, and barium chambers de jour kept him in the land of the continent.

"As you know, my own father, the honorable Michael Alatheus was there, and he fought until his death to maintain these execrable systems that would now--so very easily--sell us into cannibalism, and slavery."

Murmurs of discontent puffed, and blurted from the half-interested crowd of scuttlefish. The blinding, psychic, white-lit auditorium was completely full today--mostly with chicken brains, and tertiary artiforgs like himself. The awashed of Moonbase Alpha, AD 2583 had better things to do.

"Corrupt, hypocritical words." Nicholas with the white hair contested from his platform. "Such speeches would have inspired votes on Earth." He conceded. "However we're not on Earth. We have never been on Earth. We are creatures of space, and our stars are exalted."

A depressingly enthusiastic round of applause from John Q. Alphan. Ro-commander Harrison Gento-Alatheus hated it that the mutant was smarter than he.

"This bloody conflict with the Goar has lasted over a hundred years now." Nicholas argued. "Like the rest of you, I have been fortunate, and unfortunate to have had my days overextended through the use of technology. I have seen the death tolls, mounting, and surmounting. One million alphans, reduced to an indegent few. For that reason, I say to you that this alliance with the Goar will ensure our future. No longer will we fear what might come out of that dimensional rift on the far side. No longer will we live in fear of death, or what may be worse than death."

"Agreed." Alatheus acquiesced sardonically. "WE'LL BE TOO BUSY WATCHING OUR LOVED ONES BE SHREDDED TO A PULP IN THE MEAT GRINDERS OF GOAR'S IRON FARMS."

He sipped his water confidently.

"Shut up, you worthless, old fuck." Fifteen year old, Teresa Morrow spat, and chucked the remainder of her water at Alatheus' podium.

The scuttlefish chanted in assent.

"Out of the mouths of babes." Nicholas said, leaching power from the ro-commander's darkest misadventure. "Citizens, that blue cloud that we're heading into is more than nebulized gas, and vapor. I would suggest to you that it is an abeyance, and a portent of things to come. To paraphrase Thoreau: WHY TRUST OUR FLAWED, CONCEITED SELVES WHEN THERE IS MUCH GREATER WISDOM IN NATURE."

Alatheus found himself clapping with the rest of the cloud. He had to hand it to whitey's speech writer. The ro-commander's own scrivener's didn't give him fancy quotes like that. His whole campaign for freedom, and humanity, and individuality was a bust.

He also didn't like the way Nicholas' red eyed companion was lamping at him.

*****

Angelina looked down, quietly and suddenly felt enraged. How dare Commissioner Dixon take on the role of a god and decide who lived and who died. He was NOT God.

"I think...." Ang began still gazing down. "I think it sucks, Commissioner."

She looked up again and despite her best effort, a gasp escaped her. She was surprised to find she was both alone and with yet another dead person, wearing a black sleeve and sitting at the Commander's desk. However, this was one departed soul she preferred never to see again.

"You..." Angelina Carter seethed defiantly. "I thought she got rid of you and we had seen the last of you. What in the hell is going on? NOW what do you want?"

Dave Trask's grin was maddening and nauseating at the same time.

"I see you haven't changed a bit." The profane pilot ogled, turning slightly in the white leather swivel chair. "Same old canards. Admittedly, it's not the way to treat someone who wants only to help you." He exulted, his nose, and eyes obfuscated by shadows, except for the scarlett beams that puddled on his cheek bones. "Incidentally, you really should give up those mortal notions of cause, and effect. You see something as pestilent as certain parties--namely me--being eaten, and you think that's the end.

"Roll credits." He imitated the reknowned thespian, Porky Pig. "!!!Bleep-a-bleep-a-bleep--that's all folks!!!

"I don't think so, Ang.'" He chuckled condescendingly.

Ang' may, or may not have realized her place in the universe. She was spectroscopic. A lost kernel in the tides of time. A dumb huckster in the increasing, atmospheric pressure of the cereluean cavern that used to be the commander's office. There was no awareness of doors, or windows. There was no way to do a star check, or a sun check. She was in Trask's Corner, and that, dear friends, was all she was permitted to know. The galaxy was made by history. The being before her was history.

"You know." The alien said, looking fondly at the Cirrus Cloud. "It hurts me that you would lay all of this at my feet. It's all your fault, you know--including my return."

Angelina laughed maniacallly. "Hurt you?!?! Ha Ha Ha...Oh...that's a good one. You demons from hell are a riot. What a sense of humor."

She leaned casually on the corner of Koenig's desk. She decided that if she was dreaming, it was only a dream and it could not hurt her. If she was dead and in some interdimensional hell, there was nothing she could do about it anyway.

"Oh. Please...I beg for your forgiveness, calling you a demon," Ang quipped sarcastically. "I am a stupid lesser mortal. I don't know any better and any entity bent on destroying mankind to me, anyway, is a demon in my puny frame of reference."

She made direct "eye" contact and despite the red floaters appearing before her eyes, she did not break the stare. "Tell me. What sort of mind game are you trying to play? How is all of this "my fault" including your unfortunate return?"

Angelina sat on the desk, crossing her legs. The images she saw in the quasi corridor with the Alan Carter as Fred Tool person were still fresh in her mind."It interests me to know how my presence.. actions..my very existence... would bring about such a future brave new world of Moonbase Alpha."

"Your actions...your very existence?" The alien mocked, pointing a rude flangey in her face. "Bringing about a future, brave new Moonbase Alpha.

"Don't flatter yourself." He said standing. The swivel chair spun around completely once--anthropomorphic gratitude that the master of this house was gone. "Actually, you did very little."

He negotitated the stairs to the conference room level. At first glance, he appeared to be holding a pair of crystal balls. Somewhere in the blur, Ang' could see a pair of black holes in each one. The alien took to juggling them, while outside, flares erupted from the compressed chamber of the Cirrus Cloud.

"Losing an illusion." He recited, the red panel lights turning his blonde mane crimson. "It makes one wiser than knowing the truth."

He hurled one of the semitransparent balls at Angelina. Within the milky, quartz depths, she could see her brothers face--Tony Verdeschi, tortured, and screaming.

"Your fear brought me back, Ang.'" He explained while she handled the sphere like ultrahot smelt. "The last time I was here, we were having such a good time, I neglected to mention that as long as there's fear, I can never be gotten rid of."

Angelina dropped the sphere and it bounced down the steps, one, two, three, rolling to a stop at the alien's foot.

"Presumptuous," she retorted,"taking credit for a human emotion; that which is a part of humanity. Not the most desirable part of humanity but humanity nonetheless. Fear, in proper proportions, drives us...helps us survive and, yes, ultimately thrive."

She wasn't sure where she was receiving the courage to be so defiantly eloquent. She gazed at the cloud again.

"It was you," she blurted, jumping off the desk and standing at the top of the steps to the conference area, squarely facing him. She ignored the images on the conference table: images of the faces of each of the command staff, including hers, in their usual places around the table twisted in torment and unspeakable agony.

"Why did you create the cloud? What do you want with my husband? Why do you want my son?!?" She crossed her arms, standing her ground. "Surely you realize that by showing us a possible future, we will strive to change it."

She turned around and returned to the Commander's desk, sitting casually in the white leather chair. "You can't win." Her confidence was wavering. She was getting tired of it, weary of everything.

"We'll see about that, won't we." Trask said, reaching for his crystals. "You're a real bitch. I could kick myself for proposing to join with the likes of you. On the other hand, you are remarkably astute. Creative fear. Our greatest gift to the physical realm. Terror, horror, anxiety--applied rigorously for the betterment of your race. A boon from a universe that no longer exists. I'm glad to see there still exists a semblance of art in a dumb blonde like you. Your judgement of us is impeccable.

"Ang,' face it. Without us, you would have died many times over." He boasted, polishing the right sphere with the black sleeve of his tunic. "I didn't create the Cirrus Cloud." He explained, blowing the dust away. "I do find it amusing that the estimable Dr. O'Brian chose to name it after a weather front on Earth. Good astronomers are so hard to find these days. In layman's terms, the cloud is an offspring of the Kuiper Belt.

"Ang,' you don't pronounce that 'kipper;' you pronounce that KYEEEE-PER, just so your befuddled brain will know." The alien grinned, condescendingly, sarcastically. "It was wrenched away from the central mass by gravitational fields from the Earth's sun. As I said, you have only yourselves to blame. It's rather ununique, except for the tendency it has to damp electrical fields.

"I'm here because you wanted me here." He shrugged, admiring his own craftsmanship. "The power of your own mind brought me back. You're confused, and looking for reasons. You made a decision, and--through no initiative of my own--I find myself back on the very same Moonbase Alpha where I was treated so rough shod before."

He handed her the rejuvenated crystal. Inside, Alan Carter's ghostly image was screaming.

Angelina's face twisted in horror.

"NO!!!!!!" She cried out in anguish while hurling the crystal across the room. "You fucking bastard!!! What are you doing to him?!?!?!"

She was standing, in his face, trying to stop the stomach acids from regurgitating. His hot, putrid breath enshrouded her jaw and neck.

The crystal shattered against the far wall in a blinding light and explosion. The outline of a woman, a beautiful woman in white with strawberry blonde hair and the deepest blue eyes appeared, taking physical form. Her sheer white gown skimmed her perfectly toned, trim waist, her high breasts and curvaceous hips. Ang's memory was jogged but she could not remember her.

She walked, no, glided toward Angelina and gently put her hand on her shoulder. Ang instantly felt a sense of calm, peace and strength.

"You know that cursing at him and becoming enraged will do you no good. In fact, he feeds off of your anger." The woman in white said soothingly, lovingly.

She stared intently at the Conceit. "We meet again. Obviously..you are a slow learner. I have come to you, bearing the same message. Again." She spoke as if she was dealing with a toddler. "Why the great one tries, why the queen believes in your possible reformation is something I do not understand."

"Who cares what you think." Trask smiled. "Your days of dining out are over too. The scales of power are shifting, princess. Don't get on my bad side. You better suck up while you still have the chance. I made an acquistion recently that will ensure my supremacy. And you can tell that big, green motherfucker that he's at the top of my list.

"While you're here though, you may want to explain to this dummy why I am not the one who is responsible for all of this. Incidentally, Carter is fine. You're the problem."

"Wrong," the beautiful woman retorted in response to Trask, in a tongue which Angelina had never heard, a long forgotten language. "It was the arrogance of your race which caused its eventual destruction. It was his mercy which spared you; you are the last of your kind. You have your power because only he allows it."

Her blue eyes turned to ice. "Your complete and utter disregard of the Elan Vitala, your exploitation of lesser evolved races will eventually lead to your destruction as a race rather than evolution."

Angelina looked back and forth between the two entities, completely befuddlled.

The woman stopped and smiled tenderly at Angelina, taking her hand. 'Do not release my hand. I will protect you.' She paused her thoughts then continued politely. 'Please forgive me for speaking in a language you do not understand.'

She continued speaking to Trask in the ancient language. "You know he has chosen the child. You must not interfere with his evolution."

"No, you've been warned, princess." The alien reiterated in blunt English. "And for the record, the reason why I'm still here is because HE did a half-assed job of creating this swirling cesspool. Everything seems to pin on fear. HE--of course--realized that too late. HE--of course--made a boneheaded decision when he elected to collapse the Megaverse all at once. Now there's only me. Me, me, me. If you eliminate me, trillions will die.

"So you see, Ang,' I'm an important fellow." He grinned. "You should have married me when you had the chance. Now you're a loser, and on top of that, at the first opportunity I'm going to kill you." He announced, moving elegantly towards the big doors. A pair of fangs could be seen extruding from the shadows as he jammed his fingers into separation, and pulled the right door open. The giant shield rolled backwards on its track, revealing the procedures side of the Main Mission auditorium; Data Analysis, Technical, and the TELMU workstations. The areas were lit by a thin, flourescent veil, and an array of red, green, and yellow lights from the computer deck. There was a third of the big screen visible, and a fourth of the stationary, alpha test pattern. Low rider, Futura chairs were pushed haphazardly away in the hurried exodus. "I say with some pride that this is my Moonbase Alpha--not yours. This Moon has travelled beyond the confines of its universe. It now inhabits a relativistic portion of space. It's held up pretty well, considering that I killed the last of its human occupants a millennia ago.

"And you helped me to do it, Ang.'" He chuckled arrogantly.

Angelina watched him begin to descend the steps into Main Mission then...disappear. Her defiance had collapsed as her encounter with him drained her will and drive. His latest threat terrified her and she felt sick to her stomach.

"I can't do this anymore," she whispered hoarsely to the woman in white as she stared out the blue filled viewport. She felt defeated and deflated. Despite the woman's soothing presence, she felt completely weak and alone.

She turned and gazed at the woman. "What does he mean by 'you helped me do it'? How am I going to help him? How can I stop it?" She asked in quiet desperation.

But by then, the woman was gone too, and she was left with nothing, but a paper Moon.

*****

Hundreds of miles down....

...through the 23 degree centigrade cold...

...through the permanent darkness, and the million plus gallons of reserve ice...

...amidst the radiant impact debris, and the dark ejecta; over the wreckage of the spacecraft Clementine; within the echoing walls of Shackleton's crater...

...there existed a travesty.

"Shameful waste." Rosencrantz said--Dr. Julius Rosencrantz, and not the Rosencrantz who betrayed Hamlet. The flex plates, and bogus metacarpels in his right forearm were hurting like hell. "All those years spent working on the Genome project."

"The molecular machine." Dr. Butkus agreed. He could think of no Guildenstern jokes. "From DNA to life. They hoped to complete it in 2003."

They did--but not in the manner specified in the Powerpoint demonstrations of 1990.

The language they were speaking was Lojban--the regional choice for this hemisphere of metropolitan Moonbase Alpha. Over the centuries, crosspollinating with ET, and the ever increasing life spans, but with a diminished attention faculty, created a clarity gap in the alphan society. Hence, the need for a universal tongue for both humanoids, and robots. Carter understood the cognates, and he had no idea why.

Butkus opened the protective blister, and both men entered the cloning theater. Just behind them, Alan Carter popped into existence like a wraith in a cursed box. Neither researcher seemed to be aware of his presence.

*****

Behind him he heard a familiar voice and the familiar place was the office of the Chief of Technical Operations.

"Nick, I don't have time for this," the woman, his wife but at least ten years older, barely looked up from her PC.

"Mom," the boy, rather adolescent with the white hair, persisted. Alan Carter recognized the young man as well. "I need to talk to you. Really."

"What is it, Nick?" Angelina Carter, with blonde hair mixed with gray and lines of sadness and weariness etched around her eyes and brow, did not even look up.

Nicholas Carter began telling her about his teenage angst: how his peers thought he was a freak, how James Profitt bullied him, how he hated himself, etc. Angelina, out of politeness, had stopped typing but her eyes were glued to the stream of technical data streaming across the monitor. Slowly, though, her eyes shifted to the picture on her desk. She heard the teenager but she was not listening.

"So can I?" Nicholas stopped, imploring.

"Can you what?" Angelina looked up at him suddenly.

"Can I dye my hair blonde?" Nick reiterated. His expression fell. "You haven't heard a fucking word I've said, have you?"

"NICHOLAS CARTER!" Angelina yelled, standing up. "Watch your language!"

"WHY?!?!" Nick stormed around the desk and got in her face. "Why the 'FUCK' should I? HUH? You certainly don't give a 'fuck' about me! What the 'fuck', mother?!?"

He picked up the picture, the one she stared at; the one she always stared at mournfully and tearfully. "Why do you pay more attention to the DEAD than the living? Christ!! You act like you can't stand me!! I wasn't even two years old when he died! You act like I killed the lousy prick!!"

He hurled the picture against the wall, thru the unseen Alan Carter.

Nicholas Carter found himself reeling backwards from the unexpected open handed slap to his face.

"You did," Angelina spit venom and anger. Her expression did not change when he looked up at her, a single tear trickling down his cheek. Suddenly, he stood up and ran out of the office, giving her a middle finger wave goodbye.

She walked toward the picture and held it lovingly to her chest. "I miss you. I'm failing. I knew I couldn't do this alone." The tears could not be stopped and she sobbed,silently, kneeling on the floor.

Her comlock chirped as she placed the photo back on her desk, calling her away from the scene. Carter turned to glance at the photo. It was him.

*****

"Ahhhhhhhh," Rosencrantz swooned proudly while applying more perfume to his neck, and silico