Testament of Arkadia: Extended Version

Episode 35

The Hook

It was much better than what was depicted "On The Beach."

Earth, in the Year Of Our Lord 1999 AD was vastly different on September 14th, than it had been at the September 13th breakfast table. The honey that now dripped did not come from succulent combs. It was the toxic, nightmare secrete that oozed from trees, blackened by the firestorms as the Moon orbited out, and out, and out, and out, and out, and out. The farms, just as beauteous--in a sense--were riveting to behold; after all, who could resist the demonic allure, the nebulous plumes of smoke as they contaminated the atmosphere; the soot, and the ash rising high on their own heat to picaresque altitudes...just drifting there...crap in the sky...waiting in vain for precipitation to return the tarn to the ruined continents, where it rightfully belonged as a birthright.

And as the seconds, and the hours; the days and the weeks; the years on Moonbase Alpha teemed like dangerously unreliable, hot fusion rectors, you began to see certain patterns forming on the skin of the apple that does not fall far from the tree.

Earth. Four years after Breakaway, tons of radioactive fallout rafted across the sky, impelled by muscular west-to-east winds forming a uniform belt of particles that asphyxiated the Northern Hemisphere from 30 to 60 latitude.

On Moonbase Alpha, the guilty pleasures were more aesthetic, and internal. The joy of a starvation diet. The pleasure of water rationing to prevent god-fucking-awful hydrogen distillation units from flaming out. More dialysis. Please. The high of bad dreams, compliments of CO2 scrubbers, and Heppa filters that needed to be hosed out with Ed Malcom's pressure gun.

On Earth, the sun vanished for four weeks after the satellite departed, and when it finally returned from this bender, the blackest of all sabbaths was fully formed as the eyeless sockets of skulls stared upwards from the 200 below zero snow in the Kalahari desert in South Africa. Every now, and then some sunflower rays would make it through the subfreeze to the glaciers below, but the corpses were too dead to enjoy it.

On the Moon, humankind never vanished. Well, some of them did. A whole lot of them, really. Wholesale carnage, actually...over the years; in Bob Mathias' crematorium as the cost of survival rose to the comparative price of a Karmarbandh. Light did reach them through the Fridgidaire of deep space, but it provided no warmth--only a memory of a lost Valhalla that never was.

On Earth, the fraction of the population that managed to survive modeled their existence after the Flintstones--in Lascaux's, and caverns far beneath the surface. Before Breakaway, if those whom we loved passed away, it was accompanied by salty tears. After the Moon left orbit, if someone died, it meant that dinner was served.

On the first, permanent, lunar settlement, Alpha, the race survived by servicing the machines. In return, the machines kept them alive--like a cadaver's spleen, floating in a jar of formalthehyde. Cogito ergo sum. They thought, therefore they existed. How odd that they were so much like the falling star that streaked out of the Cassiopeia Aurora, and then plummeted past the western RADTEL assembly, and then impacted in the crater chain Dorsum Scilla, hundreds of kilometers from the base. They were out of control, but hoping that 'dirt' was not their destiny, even if it was.

**********

"Dr. Carter." Pete Garforth's neutral face appeared on the commstation monitor in their quarters. "I'm sorry to trouble you."

Alan Carter looked pensively at Ang' from his desk, temporarily setting aside a detailed main stage schematic for Eagle 3-2. On the foam sofa, their son snoozed away his night mode with his face planted in an open, coffee table book titled "Aboriginals, And Cockatiels."

"A meteorite came down." The assistant director explained. "Thirty-two point eight degrees north, sixty point four degrees west."

"Now that's something that doesn't happen all the time." Carter commented mordaciously, returning to his blueprints. "Rocks hitting the Moon. Thrilling."

Angelina Carter, who had been relaxing on the pretzel chair in tank top and Alpha pajama bottoms, set aside the laptop on the coffee table. She had been engrossed in another reality far away from Moonbase Alpha; Ang had been devouring the latest chapter in Pete Garforth's fan fiction story of "Mission:Impossible".

She glanced at Alan, quizzically. "What did you say those coordinates were again, Pete?" She asked, now standing at the commstation. He repeated them. That got Alan's attention. Based on their present trajectory and position, it was highly unlikely they would be hit by a meteorite in that area.

"Another piece of info," Garforth went on. "Preliminary data scans of the object as it was coming in do not show a standard iron ore structure. 'Unknown' was the best computer could do to categorize it."

Angelina frowned.

"And there's more," Pete continued. "The shape of the object was not irregular, like you'd expect with just any ole rock. It was...cylindrical."

"Like a missile?" Ang vocalized. Garforth remained impassive but did not object to her description. "I think as a precaution, it should be checked out," she continued, more for the Chief of Reconn's benefit than Pete Garforth. "Thank you, Pete. Stand by for further instructions."

She cut the link then initiated another call. "Commander Koenig."

"Ang,' it's Lorna O'Brian." The astrophysicist politely interrupted, replacing Garforth's image on the commstation. "The commander is en route to the ISOLAB Unit on the Montes Teneriffe."

"There's a keeper." Carter informed Ang' via his extrasensory perception. He was wide awake, and standing now. It was strange how a quiet Midnight cycle on the Moon could suddenly become an elbow-to-nostril, smorgasbord of frenetic activity. This, and usually after months of sitting on one's thumb, with no agenda, other than watching the too distant stars pass you by.

"The close-out crew has exited the white room on Launch Pad Four." O'Brian continued. "The countdown for cargo Eagle Five is on hold until Captain Carter gets there. The commander would like him to take Eagle One into a low, parking orbit so he can monitor the retrieval procedure. The object is easy enough to find. It's in a bed of shocked breccia." The scientist added, turning the pages of her blue flimsie, and conversing with Ang' at the same time. "He also wants to know if you can join us at the ISOLAB module. It's fully equipt, and nowhere near the network in the event that the thing blows up in our faces, or something equally unpleasant."

The astrophysicist's brow became runneled.

"Looks like the bells have chimed, cupcake." The pilot said as he was already heading out the door with his son in tow. He, to the Reconnaissance Hub; Nicholas to the care unit. Carter would mock the gods, taking his life into his own hands as he essayed the great mystic. Nicky would have to be babysat by Dr. Wiseacre, Bob Mathias, and probably Ed Malcom, who chose the strangest hours to undergo therapy for his corns.

Carter liked his mission better.

"Be careful out there," she called after her husband and smiled tenderly at her son. Nicky's head rested on his father's shoulder as one half opened eye glanced sleepily at her. Then he yawned and was off to dreamland again as the door slid shut behind them. Angelina quickly exchanged her loungewear for her tunic with the rust colored sleeve, belt and tan flares. She grabbed her cup of reheated imitation Moonbase coffee and headed for the travel tube destined for the ISOLAB module.

Her mental thoughts were translated into various instructions into her commlock to the pertinent Technical departs which would deal with the strange object. She alerted the department heads to the situation. The adrenaline flowed like white water rapids. After months of quiet and even tedious routine, the event was almost morbidly...exciting.

**********

Commander John Koenig sat pensively at his desk with the white gooseneck lamp in his quarters. Once again, it was another quiet nightmode. In the background, Helena Russell had fallen asleep on the white foam couch while watching the Part 3 of the video series "The Ascent of Man".

"Helena," Koenig softly tried to rouse her. "Come to bed. You'll be more comfortable."

The doctor murmured something unintelligible and turned over. The commander covered her with a gray Moonbase issued fleece blanket and plopped wearily in the pretzel chair. He stared blankly at the television and was reaching for the remote on the white plastic endtable when his eye caught the burgundy leather journal.

He reached for it and opened it, intending to review his most recent entry concerning the alien cylinder. Instead, it opened to the events of nearly 4 years ago. It seemed like a lifetime.

The 'probe' (and calling it that took quite the exalted imagination, according to Bram Cedrix) was still out there on the Montes Teneriffe. They would have taken it to the Experimental Laboratory, but A) There were no bay doors for transferring the cargo; and B) Phil Geist felt that the copious amounts of loadstone, endemic to the plateau, would be a boon to them for effecting repairs on the capsule. The foreman asked Koenig when they should start? After towing it in, it only took two minutes to lift the security clearance (the amount of time it took Paul Morrow to return from the MCR Cantina with his cup of turgid coffee), and even less time for the endeavor to get on their nerves.

Oddly enough, unlike terran-made torpedoes, missiles, and the geometric solidarity of most complex satellites, this thing was shaped like a Valentine's Day box of Smartie's chocolate bon-bons with a crown-shaped engine bell feeding into an elementary solid fuel combustion system.

It did not represent a hazard to the base. If only it had been that romantic. The service system panel almost fell off the minute it was lowered onto the examination room dais, which made for embarrassingly easy access.

As he recalled, Ang' Carter asked him then what they were planning on doing with it, so betwixt she, and Cedrix, that made two.

"Our technology is more advanced." Victor Bergman determined assuredly, slapping Koenig victoriously on the shoulder.

"Ya' THINK?" The commander said sarcastically as he stooped to pick the thing off his boot. If someone had sneaked a kick right then, his feeling was that he would have deserved it.

The x-ray analysis of the Dorsum Scilla told them this was nothing as destructive as a 'Dark Energy Bomb,' or a Quark Scrambler, or even a good old, boring thermonuclear device. No stiff necks being reproved from godly lightening bolts. Geist made a shocking observation about the module inside. The compartment was covered with an application of Styrene, and Butadiene.

"Funny." Koenig groused. "I thought it was called 'rubber.' Thanks Phil."

The coating of Styrene-Butadiene provided cushioning for the sealed, transparent flasks inside, and this is where the commander's quandary truly began.

"Hello pal." Carter exclaimed, wanting to help, and pushing Lorna O'Brian politely aside as he reached into the capsule's brain case. "Here's the problem." He told them, swinging a metal (Geist called it 'nickel hydride') armature back, and forth on its hinges. "It's not making flush contact with that gyro." He deduced, pointing towards a black, static free globe, widget thing in the center of the block.

"A navigational failure?" Cedrix consulted the pilot.

"I'd say so." Carter answered. "It's no fun flying if you don't know where you're going."

Altogether, the foreman asked Koenig thrice if he intended the capsule to be repaired.

'Our struggle to survive in a hostile universe....' 'Koenig chewed at the edges of one particular journal entry hectically. He stopped once before reading on to see if Russell was sound asleep. His disgust, and his distraught probably wouldn't fill the room like smoke, but still, he felt a censuriousness building in him--one that threatened to pound a loud gavel at any moment.

'Our struggle to survive in a hostile universe had long erased the memory of the cataclysmic disaster that first hurled our Moon out of Earth's orbit.' He read on, this time more thoughtfully. The thoughts were 48 months old, but they still lived inside him, somewhere beneath the grief, and the failure.

'The recent events that occurred on the planet Arkadia have revived that painful memory, and forced us to reconsider our purpose in space.' More compulsively now, he turned the page on his own handwriting, temporarily exchanging one, contemporary predicament for a quietus that was very old.

'And when it started, it was to prove terrifying.'

CHAPTER ONE

"!!!KIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!" Koenig cried his unstoppable ambition to succeed which was ritual in the fine art of Kendo.

"!!!THE SEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEDS!!!" His helmeted sparring partner replied, vociferous enough to rattle the 75 pound iron dead weights on a nearby Nautilus. The floor of the Gymnasium rumpled from the bulk of unbridled antagonism.

The seeds? Koenig foundered, embarrassed, but not saying anything. His eyebrow did it for him. Carter Jackson was supposed to be the victim de jour, as the commander's acumen at this type of swordplay was unequalled. Then, at the last minute, Jackson bowed out in favor of hip replacement surgery, so now he was stuck with this funky stellar cartographer. Little did he realize, Luke Farro's 'Ki Ken Tai Itchi'--his 'spirit, sword, and body'--as it were, were intent on massacring the commander using any means at his disposal, short of giving melvins.

He should have known, Koenig told himself as he prepared his bamboo 'shanai' in a graceful Shudan no Kamae posture. His shoulders were squarely facing Farro's. His left hand was expertly three, or four inches from his navel. His right hand rose to the tip of his shanai, projecting a line to the cartographer's padded throat. He prepared to thrust in a deceptively lean maneuver that won him the championship at MIT in 1982.

But he was about ten seconds too late.

"!!!THE SEEEEEEEEEEEEEEDS!!!" Farro bellowed loudly again, and brought his artifice down on Koenig's head guard.

Angelina Verdeschi, in the cardio room working up a sweat on the elliptical machine, gulped recycled water as she watched the match through the observation window. It was infinitely more interesting than watching another music video, one she had seen at least a thousand times.

Koenig ducked spritely sparing his head but the weapon landed squarely and hard on his shoulder. There was no time to stop and fret over the sting. The commander turned completely around and surprised Farro with the speed. Farro hesitated and Koenig's shanai whacked the cartographer, unshielded, in the side in the ribs.

"Good one," Farro grumbled behind his mask, taking the ready position again.

The commpost interrupted Koenig's thoughts while contemplating his next line of strategy. Paul Morrow's slightly tense face appeared on the blue and white monitor.

"Commander Koenig?" queried the Deputy Controller.

"Yes, Paul." The commander relaxed and removed his mask as he trotted to the commpost.

"We have an emergency. Could you come to Main Mission?"

**********

"We're not taking the back passage to give you data collection time you don't need." Deputy Controller Zed Astrin informed his subordinate, Klaus Rotstein, who took his unbridled anger out on an innocent, machine dispensed FE Bar. He looked accusingly at overnight controller Mark Winters, who had gone to bat for him, but now the bat was broken. Next, he turned his half eaten FE Bar on Andy Dempsey as though it was a sword, but the STC refrained from making any comments.

At times like this, some people turned to drink; some turned to slavish obeisance to food; some wept. When under duress, Rotstein paraphrased Blake. He was proud to be the only person he knew who did this:

"There is a smile of love,

"And there is a smile of deceit,

"And there is a smile of smiles,

"In which you mutilate, and take revenge."

He knew the fools wouldn't understand.

So...he burned.

They were in the Mission Control Room Cantina, and the only person who seemed to be enjoying his faux coffee, and nutrient sticks was Sloven, who finished his security patrol two hours ago. Pitting one person against another completed him.

"The fact that you were...not aware...when Eagle 1-5 did that propellant slosh last week?" Astrin enumerated, his unctuous, satisfied grin widening. "Well, that didn't help your case any--sorry to say."

"That's rather interesting." Sloven mused, pointing towards the caffeine swirl that had formed in the senior controller's coffee cup.

He didn't give a shit.

**********

Specialist Samantha Storey of Hydrofarm Number Two was bringing a Cactus Of Peace to the geology building when she lost her balance. She had no idea why it was deemed a 'Cactus Of Peace,' but since she had spent over a 100 hours cultivating the stabbing, sadistic sucker with CO2 grow medias, and HID lights, she felt that it should serve some useful purpose. Having resolved herself to this end, she sat it atop Edward Nye's desk, where it would wither away from cold neglect.

"What's this?" The bespectacled Ph.D. inquired, lancing his finger the first time he tried touching it. The Cactus Of Peace quivered back at him defensively.

"Beautification." Storey explained. "Alpha needs a face lift. God knows, I-"

That was when her equanimity betrayed her. One minute she was standing beside a six foot, floor display of purple quartz, extracted from the Descartes Region. The next minute she was wildly grabbing for a pretzel chair in the waiting area. Fortunately, Sedimentary Specialist Trang arrived in time to scoop her up again. Nye bolted from his desk to assist.

"Hey." Trang espoused, making sure that Storey wouldn't fall off the face of the Moon. "You alright?"

"I don't know." The agro technician admitted, sheepish, and dishelved. "For a minute there, I thought I felt the floor move.

"Strange." He said, pulling a long, black bang away from her upset cheek.

**********

True, the black haven was 975,000 nautical miles away, but it could not stand having an invitation thrown back in it's face. At first it was visible only as a crescent of orange light that engulfed the ruined eastern hemisphere. Gradually, the gracelessness of her continents became visible through the cumulous cinders. The seas were an unpotential, and blighted chloranemic that electrified, and expanded during the alignment with the planet's fusion fired main sequence star.

This was the other side of Death's epoch. As the former Moon of the planet Earth felt the initial impulsions to its axis--as it did a slow, but discernable about face to conclude the ouroboros, it was made to confront a dark eminence, and a disclosure as insipid as a warlock hiding behind a boulder.

Pure causality could not be evaded, or forestalled, even by an enthymatically high velocity.

**********

"Well, what is it?" Koenig asked, urgent, and still wearing his black Hakama robe.

Sandra Benes arose from the Data Analyst station, passing the Commander a red flimsie report.

"Our course is altering, sir," Benes began, "Seventy five point three degrees relative," she continued as he thumbed through the report. "There is no mistake."

The report in Koenig's hand bore the data and calculations of cartographer Miranda Darvin: where they had been, where they were now and where they were going. Except, where they were going had changed drastically since yesterday. Before, they were on the way to nowhere in deep space for at least the next 4 months. Now, they were on their way to a planet, an earthlike planet, but one which was devoid of life due to an environmental holocaust.

"That is strange," he mumbled to Victor Bergman, who approached him on his right side, standing behind Paul Morrow. "We're nowhere near the gravitational pull of that planet."

"Whatever's directing us towards it, it's not gravitation, and it's not magnetism either." Victor Bergman said, leafing through a digest compiled with haste in astrophysics.

"Visual," Kate Bullen reported from her station.

"Put it up on the Big Screen," Koenig requested and behold, there it was!

The planet on the big screen was orphic. It was blue consume--a barren scratch of coral in the void of space. Near the equator, pigments of vegetation had attempted to escape the black, radioactive mists, but life had no place here. This was the world of the dead, and it heralded images of classic demise--it was Atlantis in space; it was Terra Australis, the great southern land, only with a burning band of sunlight that tried, and failed to illuminate the eastern rim; it was the lost City Of The Monkey God. It did not talk, but it did pull.

Further contemplation was interrupted by static as the image dissolved.

"Scanner malfunction?" Koenig queried to Kate.

"No, sir" she replied, typing queries and commands. "Power surges."

"Chief Kano," Angelina Verdeschi's perplexed image appeared on the right blue and white monitor under the big screen. "There is a problem with Generators 2 and 3. We are suffering a 5% power loss right across the board."

Her attention was diverted to someone off screen then she returned. "Generators 4 and 5 are now malfunctioning. Power loss is now 7%"

**********

"Keep your hands to yourself." Anchor Tara Bathory fumed from her cubical in the Alpha News Service clamshell. We are deep in the heart of Ball's Crater now. A la lums. Her word processor document was blank--blank as her mind, some might argue, and she was agitated by the static that accompanied the fingers that taloned down the spine of her tunic.

"Man, you're nuts." Duke, the videographer replied truthfully. A juiceless Canon Optura lay before him like a pet awaiting brain surgery. After a quick check of the battery charger, he concluded that like everything else on Moonbase Alpha, this too was corny. From the neck up, he looked like an ape--rebelliously hirsute, and too sexy for his Hawaiian shorts which were pulled up over his flares. "I didn't lay a hand on you."

"Yes you did." The anchor argued, wiping away the derelict germs with her snotty hand.

"Man, go have yourself a Midol, lady." Duke suggested, reaching for his backup camera while attempting to put a sweat leaf on the topic of sexual harassment from invisible perverts.

"Don't start in on me today." Bathory warned, shaking her yellow highlight pen at him. "I'm not in the mood." She educated him, baring her fangs. "Were it not for my benevolence, and my good graces, you would have been shoveling sludge in the Alpine Valley a long time ago.

"Mea Culpa?" She thought he was a bum, and was prepared to tell him so. "What's wrong with you?" She stopped, noticing the videographer's sudden onset of sallow complexion. "You look like you swallowed a rat.

"YES A RAT. HA, THAT'S FUNNY. A RAT INSIDE A RAT."

"Man...." Duke wheezed. "I don't feel so good. I feel totally bogus...like someone dropped a brick on my head."

He also had been touched.

Too bad it was not a touch of class.

**********

Truman Starns, Security Section's chief investigator was heading towards Travel Tube-B, en route to his quarters, and comparing chambers of boredom with Harness Bull Velma Hill. The patrolman was feeling philosophical today so for variety, she had taken to discussing Auschwitz survivor Victor Frankel, and man's search for meaning. The quest for relevance did not last long, though. The moonquake started the minute they entered the brightly lit departure area.

The first revelation was auditory.

"Do you hear that?" The detective queried, interrupting the harness bull just as she was getting to the part about the one thing that can never be coveted--human freedom.

Hill nodded uneasily, turning, and looking upwards at the gray ceiling panels.

The sound was unlike anything on Earth, or in the confinement of the Moon. It was the motif of a midnight storm. It was the frozen ambience of deep, infernal caverns. It was the wailing of the damned in the nursery schools of Hell's ninth circle. There was art nouveau desperation. There were the chilling sirens of metallurgical stress.

Starns headed towards the nearby commstation, but like the degression on Victor Frankel, it was a no-go. He, and Hill falling forward, eating tile, and remaining supine under centripetal acceleration--that was the quintessential meaning. As the Plato Crater began to grind against the foundations of Moonbase Alpha, Starns made a valiant attempt to brute force himself to his feet, but the roller coaster G-Forces promptly returned his nose to luna firma.

**********

"We're slowing down." Paul Morrow blenched, defying the elephant with one hand on the tracking computer space bar, and the other on his unmoored gooseneck lamp. His face was a friction of high blood pressure, and crevasses. The laws of mass, and inertia were his botheration.

**********

"AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!" Joan Conway shrieked as her flight over the mezzanine was abruptly end when her tailbone impacted the metal grated steps.

If anyone in Main Mission was still paying attention to the monitor bearing the image of Angelina Verdeschi, he would have seen her vacate the screen in a blur to the right. Not that anyone was paying attention. Everyone in Main Mission was attempting to spare themselves physical damage as the Moon came to a grinding halt.

In Medical Center, Dac Capano who had been drumming his fingers on the exam couch while awaiting the arrival of Dr. Mathias to perform his 6 month physical, suddenly found himself on the floor, sliding toward a medical supply cabinet. Mathias, though he was still standing, was holding onto the edge of the door after dropping the vials containing blood samples for Capano's general heath profile analysis.

"We've stopped dead," Koenig observed as he assisted Bergman from the ground.

"Commander," Angelina, shaken and disturbed, had managed to pull herself up to her desk again in front of the monitor. "Power loss at 8%."

**********

'The unbelievable had happened.' John Koenig rode the wormhole back to the future. It was four Septembers later, and he was in his quarters, searching for answers, he supposed, in an ambivalent memoir that all too often seemed sappy, and naive to him. He remembered with chill denial that first, incredible scan--a laserscopic image that was bounced off the planet's atmosphere by one of the SATCOM orbiters, which rebounded in the void, and returned to leave a dismal, high resolution, Egyptian hieroglyphic of their fate. The planet; it's host star; and it's captivated satellite, all in necromantic conjunctivity.

'Our Moon was locked fast in space.'

CHAPTER TWO

With her laptop under her arm, the director of the Nuclear Power Generation section stepped into the Command tower elevator and pressed the button for Level B. Angelina Verdeschi's nervousness attending a Command Conference on invitation from the Commander was suppressed by her analytical thoughts and preoccupation with solving the power loss situation. Angelina was ready though and well organized. Her department was one of the few in Technical Section to consistently excel in performance. Her boss, David Kano, only seemed to be interested in computer operations. The rest of Technical section swam its own courses and with Ang's group being the notable exception, was in organizational shambles.

"Be patient, Ang," Professor Bergman told her with a strange twinkle in his eye just two days earlier. "Things are bound to be changing in that department soon."

Confidently walking through Main Mission, she smiled politely at Kate Bullen and June Akaiwa and returned Klaus Rotstein's lustful stare with a cold glare. She stepped through the privacy door, followed by Bergman, who put a paternal arm on her shoulder and motioned to a chair next to Alan.

Kano acknowledged her with a slight nod but otherwise said nothing, returning to his software diagnostic notes.

Carter winked amicably at Ang' from his scheme of things, third chair to the left of the white leather deck seat. Helena Russell compulsively rolled, and unrolled a red flimsie that was christened: MEDICAL FORECAST HR9999. It consisted of one paragraph that read like a Toffler discourse on knowledge; "You can use all the quantitative data you can get, but you still have to distrust it, and use your own intelligence, and judgement."

Or, to quote Arthur C. Clark: "It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value."

She supposed that the cover needed to be red for security reasons. Though, given what they actually knew, it could just as easily be azure, or brown, or pink, or neopolitan. Morrow caught a glimpse of her 'classified' information when she used it to scratch her back. The physician simply shrugged, and wiping the dust away, returned the document to the table.

"Sorry, I'm late." Commander John Koenig apologized, closing the hatch behind him, and hurrying into the sunken meeting room with an odd, and even stack of statistical information, and exposures of the planet, printed on Kodak stock. All courtesy of Stellar Cartography. Carroll Severence, the director of the department, was in tow.

"You look busy." Bergman remarked.

"Yeah? Ten hours from now when we've got frost hanging from our noses, you'll look busy too." The commander quipped. "Dr. Verdeschi, this one's for you." He said, politely setting one of the packets in front of Ang.'

Ang nodded appreciatively and mumbled a 'Thanks, Commander.' She remembered when she first met John Koenig. She was a freshman at university taking the General Physics with Calculus course. Associate Professor John Koenig, newly acquired of Ph.D. had been assigned to teach this course otherwise known as "the hacksaw". The intention was to cut the class of 500 Freshman to approximately half its size with unrelenting studying, homework and dreaded intense and time limit exams. To make matters worse, WWT had just begun and no doubt the need for young able bodies to fight against 'the enemy' and young men who flunked out after that first grueling semester were welcomed into the arms of the military via a draft notice.

Angelina had a very favorable impression of the young professor. An afternoon break in the student union one day, where she chatted with Koenig and his wife, the lovely and musically talented Jean, convinced her that he really did not belong in the ivory towers of academic elite but out in the real world, making a real difference in life.

Little did she know what was to come.

"How bad is the power loss?" Russell inquired.

"Bad." Kano said, demurring to Ang' for further negative prognoses.

The room temperature had already dropped to a crisp 55 degrees F. This fact alone gave credence to the statement 'We have a problem.' Sandra Benes rubbed her hands together and blew into them for emphasis.

"Power loss continues at a rate of 1.5% per hour, though that change is not linear, Commander, rather it will become exponential, likely within 12 hours." Angelina reported after closing the lid of her laptop. The grinding and whirling of a hard drive that was nearing end of its useful life underscored the downfall of technology. Kano curiously eyed it, his attention now diverted to his favorite subject, and made a note to have the hardware computer techs check it out.

"We have already implemented conservation measures which has actually bought us time up to 12 hours before the...precipitous drop in power." She stopped, taking a sip of distastefully coffee.

"However, that will only delay the inevitable, if we can't find what is causing the power loss. So far, we have eliminated anything mechanical as well as numeric controllers as possible causes. All systems check out and we should be operating at peak efficiency minus, of course, reactor #1 which was already down for routine maintenance."

"There is nothing explainable, nothing inside this base which is causing the power drain."

"An external force?" Helena Russell ventured.

Angelina winced slightly and nodded. She didn't care for that assessment but after all the technobabble, a layman summarized it the best: external force.

"Well...as for gravitational assists...most of you know the score." Koenig supposed, donning his physical science chapeau. "There are only a finite number of possibilities: V/OUT, or V/IN. Both are irrelevant in this case because we're nowhere near that body. A planetary orbit depends on the amount of pull, but we aren't making revolutions." The commander enunciated, leaning. "We're just sitting here motionless.

"Victor?"

"I agree." The professor concurred, dogearing a long range, satellite photo of the planet that was taken six months ago. A speck of dust, but a demanding one all the same. "Whatever the force is that holds us, it doesn't appear to be relative to any type of magnetism we know about."

"Professor, there are many forms of magnetism." Paul Morrow argued hopefully.

Until his contentions were unceremoniously shot down.

"Computer has been unable to reference this effect with any known, scientific laws." David Kano decreed, arms folded smugly over his chest. "It's not ferromagnetism. It's not ferromagnetism. It's not antiferromagnetism, nor is it paramagnetism, or diamagnetism."

Once he was done listing, the mainframe chief wondered why Angelina Verdeschi's eyes crossed whenever she looked at him. Ang resisted the urge to shake her head. He was spouting off terms again without analysis. It was what the printout told him.

Angelina could not understand what was happening to Kano. He really wasn't that bad of a guy. But the reality was, he spent 98% of his time in the central computer complex, 1% at his desk in Main Mission and 1% managing the rest of technical section. The technicians referred to the Chief as "Robo-Kano" and that nickname was perhaps the kindest reference to the supervisor.

And through it all, David Kano was oblivious to the disintegration of his section, despite Ang dropping hints concerning the dissatisfaction of his people. A number of his own people went straight to Koenig to complain; not just Ed Malcom and Claude Murneau but competent and talented individuals such as Pete Garforth and Patrick Osgood. The Commander then invited Ang into a skip level one to one meeting and they discussed the situation.

"Now Captain." The commander segued, swiveling in his chair to face Carter. "We're all 'go' on the countdown for the reconnaissance flight? Have there been any changes?"

"No sir." The pilot replied.

"The minimum requirement will be a five minute, 500,000 fps burn." Paul Morrow explained. The Dream Team was there--Astrin was to his left. Winters was to his right, which isn't to say that Winters was ever really 'right,' but he was 'to' the right. Right. "We put together an Atmospheric Entry Assessment that seemed promising--at least until we had to take the designator off-line to save power. After two point five orbits, your velocity will have decreased enough to begin retrofire over the target area."

"If all goes well, landfall will occur at dawn, 15 hours EMT." The pilot rejoined non-committally.

"What if it does not go well?" Sandra Benes speculated dismally, but no one answered her.

"That's a fairly long bounce." Astrin pointed out. Like the rest of them, he was bogged in ignorance.

"A day, and a half." Truman Starns agreed from his position in the corner next to a Gorski rubber tree plant. He had already been chosen to head the security detachment to the planet's surface.

Ang glanced neutrally at the Chief of Reconn. She had told him his job didn't bother her, but that was a small lie. Any time he went out "there", even for a routine fly around the lunar poles she felt nervous and her stomach would be unsettled until he returned. So, she kept a bottle of antacid handy and she supposed she benefited from the extra calcium intake.

Right. Her beloved might die a horrible death but at least she had strong bones. Ha..ha..ha: she wasn't laughing.

"Based on the projected power loss rate," Ang continued on Starns line of thought, "in about 30 hours, the crops in the hydroponic farms will begin to freeze, with all crops succumbing at 36 hours. The water in the recycling plants will freeze at 44 hours. By 48 hours, the ambient temperature of this base will be below zero." She finished quietly then took another sip of tepid coffee.

"Enough of the slag." Winters suddenly ventured beyond the bounds of his know-nothingness to participate in these proceedings. "What can we count on between now, and the return of the reconnaissance Eagle?"

"You can count on being stone, cold dead." Carter told him belligerently."That's what."

"Phased economies will provide us with an additional day." Sandra analyzed. "Thirty hours roughly, but certainly no more than that."

"Right," Ang nodded in agreement, "though that still won't help the crops. Our ambient temperature will still be below zero at 48 hours though we could probably keep the oxygen exchange units going another 24-30 hours."

"Thirty hours roundtrip," Victor repeated gulping the last swallow of his Vitaseed then clasping his hands, already knowing the schedule. "I suggest then we'd better get going."

"Right," Koenig replied standing. "Victor, Helena, meet me at Launch Pad 2 in 15 minutes. Starns, you and Pound round up Luke Ferro and Anna Davis and escort them to Pad 2 in 20 minutes. They have already been notified so they should be expecting you. Now, with our long range systems not functioning we won't be able to rely on Main Computer down there, so we're taking along everything we'll need on the surface. Alan, you know what you need to do."

"Paul. Power economy starting right now. Coordinate it through Ang."

With the exception of Mr. Slag Overnight, everyone saw the downer-reminder that graced the commstation screen as they were leaving:

POWER LOSS RATE 11%

CHAPTER THREE

Adventures with Luke Farro.

"The what?" Gonzales repeated back to him, dropping instant Moonbase mashed potatoes onto the cartographer's plate. His eyes were a misandrous squint. The Dining Complex wasn't half empty. It was half full, and everyone loved the food.

"The Seeds." Farro ran it past him again, elevating the word to a proper noun, but impatiently this time. He pronounced 'seeds' as 'sids.'

"I don't have any seeds." The dietician told him. "I've got meatloaf."

**********

After the Moon stopped on a dime, Farro intensified his efforts.

"Bloody Hell." Carroll Severance swore. "What in the name of God are you babbling about? What seeds?'"

"You've never stopped to consider the possibilities." The specialist criticized the senior researcher mystically while shaking an angry fist. "All of this equipment, and you still can't see." He remarked, waving his hand over the RADTEL panel disapprovingly. "That is why you, my friend, will live--and die--on Moonbase Alpha."

Farro's inner child lived by the sword. He said what he thought...and they would like it. He waited for the other cartographer's response, his equipoise unabashed.

"From the cold, you mean?" Severance spat back a comet of phlegm. He pitied the man's derangedness somewhat, but not a whole lot. "You're probably right, and you standing here preaching won't cause the temperature to go up.

"GET GOING."

He had no idea why Farro had been chosen for such an do-or-die mission. He had long accepted the fact that the man was an adnoid.

**********

"Angelina Verdeschi." Luke Farro accosted the manager of nuclear generation while they waited for Pad Leader Tom Morningstar to pressurize the boarding tube to Launch Pad Two. "I'm not sure you understand the Seeds either."

Through the open door to the Ready Room, Alan Carter could be heard arguing with Pete Irving about the coming GNCS control maneuvers. But that was fifteen hours down the road.

"The seeds," she pondered half interested, checking the voltage on back up portable generator. Most of the supplies had been loaded but Bram Cedrix suggested maybe it was a good idea to have a back up, in case the solar powered generator proved to be inadequate due to..lack of sun. Ang agreed and so did Commander Koenig.

"The seeds of life?" she replied, nodding with satisfaction that the generator was fully charged.

"Have you found religion, Luke?" she joked, since he had let it known in the past that he was an atheist. Lately, though, he had been rather preachy, in a loony, 'John the Baptist' sort of way.

The stargazer did the drab, a moment of reflection causing him to shake in his Hush Puppies. An invisible cuff upside the head zipped the fly of his arrogance, but only for a moment. His nose seemed very long, and his eyes were polka dots in convergence. He looked like scribblings of a goon with his nose hanging over the wall. Once a dim, mouthy lad who lived in the ankle of the boot--otherwise known as the town of Abruzzo, Italy--time had taught him few things, but he did learn that true lightness must come from a place very deep; if you were lining up alphabetically, you had to do so by height. The Seeds could be found nowhere on the trackless Moon. Abruzzo was home to monks, and hermits, and thugs but also to Ovid.

So chill, he told himself, or find yourself 'metamorphosed' right off this mission. He prided himself on his knack. He did not rise to become the only Nobel Prize winner at the Scuola Normale Superiore by being a big dummy. He did it through excellent plagiarism and academic forgery, after all.

"I kid." He said with a lying snicker, and gave Ang' his very best teeth. "What I meant to say was that I would very much enjoy a discussion with you sometime about evil...and destiny."

(youcandobetterthevoicethattouchedhisheadearliertoldhim)

"Bad choice of words." He said with flamboyant 'warrrrrrrrrrrds.' "Maybe the phrase 'philosophical discussion would be better?

"Yes?"

"Uh, sure. I guess so," Ang eyed him tentatively as Truman Starns and Harness Bull Pound wheeled the generator toward the doors of the boarding tube.

Anna Davis stepped into the embarkation area with her laptop case, slung over her shoulder.

"Hi Ang," she began warmly, "I haven't seen much of you lately. I guess you've been spending time with...others." She snickered and nodded toward the Ready Room.

Anna completely ignored Luke Ferro. In fact, she couldn't stand the man.

"I suppose I'm ready to go," she continued, her back to the 'invisible man', i.e. Luke Ferro.

"Excuse me," Ang interrupted further discussion as Pete Irving left the Ready Room and Ang stepped toward it. Anna gave Angelina Verdeschi a look that said "please don't leave me alone with this nutjob" but Ang missed the nonverbal plea.

"Hey," she said to Carter after she stepped inside, nudging him against the wall out of anyone's line of sight and embraced him tightly. "Be careful out there. Don't take any chances, hot shot."

She kissed him for luck and was grateful for the love and warmth. Admittedly, the real body warmth was just as good as the love right now, considering the ambient temperature was barely 45 degrees. In the corridor, Harness Bull Duncan was multitasking as both cop and clothing distributor, passing out silver thermal jackets from a cart while checking off his list of names.

"Thirty hours of procedures." Carter shook his head with a wry grin. "Well, I hope we get more than sand for our troubles."

Dirt was a consequence, but hypothermia, and asphyxia were worse.

**********

"I think you are completely insane, Luke Farro," Anna Davis blurted with disgust, crossing her arms over her chest. What a weirdo.

She looked toward the Ready Room, hoping Ang, or Captain Carter or both would emerge. She glanced down the corridor as Harness Bull Duncan grinned widely and rolled his eyes, laughing at her rather than with her predicament.

"I would appreciate if you would keep your distance from me and only speak to me in a professional capacity." She finished, haughtily.

"I'm just so full of bad taste today." Luke Farro laughed ironically, giving the pilot a high, testosterone slap on the shoulder when he emerged from the Ready Room. "How about that Carter? You know, I think it's because they find me desirous."

He gave Anna a XXX, unsparing, sadistic sneer that was the result of his very best attempt to be cordial.

"Yep." The captain said neutrally, and headed for the White Room. "CPN here." He called to the blockhouse using his commlock. "I'm ready to ingress."

"CARTER." Luke called cheerily as he watched him go. "Ciucciami il cazzo, my friend."

Which meant 'suck my dick,' but who would translate for him? Angelina Verdeschi was from the other side of the tracks, and not spoken in the ways of the Abruzzoids.

**********

The countdown held at T-Minus three minutes.

"We'll have some time before we deorbit." Koenig told Carter busily over the command module loop before liftoff. "We can use that to our advantage...make some close scanner, and sensor passes over the topography...get a feel for how the land lays."

"Or discover something else sir?" Carter said, clearing the telemetry, and summary messages from his board while Eagle One's propellant tanks flooded.

"I hope so, Alan."

"According to the latest sensor scan," Berman leaned casually against the hatch of the command module, holding his register tape, "there is no life on that planet, not that our sensors can detect anyway,"

"It appears to be a dead world," the professor shook his head mournfully, hundreds of thousands of years too late. "We'll know more, of course as we get closer to the planet."

"Commander," Angelina Verdeschi's image appeared on the blue and white copilot's monitor. "Power loss now at 18%"

"Eighteen percent?!?" Koenig's brow furrowed. "Exponential increase? But I thought that wasn't suppose to occur until..."

"I know," Ang finished. "At least another 12 hours. I've done some quick recalculations. If we start rolling brown outs, we could regain another 6 hours but we would also have to cut out long range communications now." She sighed. "That means, of course, you'll be on your own shortly after you leave lunar orbit."

Koenig's immediate reaction was to return a palsied stare while dormant indicator lights suddenly became animate all around the CMP's couch that he was sitting in. Carter studied him for a reaction briefly before pressing a stud that revealed a barber pole on the reset communications panel.

"Path adaptive guidance is a 'go.'" The pilot informed Paul Morrow over the link. Decorum dictated that he not stare at the commander until the verdict had been rendered. "Sequential systems are 'go.'"

The cabin was filled with the usual loop noises--desperate all:

"...way behind on the checklist." Operative Dempsey's voice intruded over the updates, and the overall radio maelstrom. "How long will the lode be there?"

"...that's prior to the four hour cycle." Pete Garforth harmonized with Claude Murneau from the engineering cracker box in the MPSR Room. "Also, that CM Delta-P is less than, not...."

"We can't have the hardware crashing before they reach the planet." The commander to hear computer specialist Lars Manroot arguing with David Kano on another channel.

"Check." The controller replied over the speakers. "Eagle One, Main Mission--your engines are running; thrust build up is at eighty percent."

**********

The spacecraft's quad-ascent engines fired, blowing clear the bygone, longevous lunar dust which billowed around the passenger module like garish shades from some antediluvian underworld. The ship's bowsprit searched for stars at a forty-five degree angle--graduating up, and up, and up until the launch complex's landing, and depot lights looked like organized atoms in a microscope. Koenig held the vehicle in a holding pattern over the command tower while Carter completed the primary guidance upload. After switching his scanner tab to FLIGHT, he took up the yoke again, and taxied away from the base towards the Plato highlands.

Belkovich was the last great sea they passed over before the Moon disappeared from beneath them. Beyond that, there was only conclusive, alienating space, and the long coast towards alien elevations.

**********

'The planet had been under routine observation for some time.' John Koenig read quietly from his journal four years later, amazed by the intensity of his painful recollections. They had persevered. That did not mean it was fun. 'Every indication told us it was devoid of any form of life. As the power loss was affecting our long range systems we would shortly lose contact with Alpha.

'Upon landing, we would truly be on our own.' He scanned the page with only the downmoded sounds in nighttime corridors to accompany him on this new visit. 'With us went the future of our people. For if we failed, our existence, like the Moon, would come to a full stop.'

CHAPTER FOUR

Anna Davis stirred at the pinging of the monitor. The first thing she noticed, through half closed lids, was the flashing notification: Eagle One In Orbit. The second thing she noticed was the Commander sitting up in the double passenger chair directly ahead of her, nodding to Dr. Russell and taking the offered orange cup of Moonbase brew. She dreamily watched the mutual smile as he mumbled thanks and the exchange of human touch as the cup passed from her to him, lingering a second longer than necessary. Anna Davis was a perceptive individual and long before it became general rumor, she had a "feeling" there was something going on between the Commander and the CMO on a personal level. The third thing she noticed was that she was resting her head against an unfamiliar broad chest and shoulder. The owner of said physique had his arm squarely wrapped around her.

She suddenly became fully conscious…. and furious.

"Don't touch me!" Anna recoiled, incredulous, sitting up in disgust. Her twisted, angry though bewildered face was the complete opposite of Ferro's radiantly toothy grin.

It had been 6 hours and she remembered being completely exhausted as she succumbed to sleep. In a dream (so she thought), she relaxed against a man who she loved and lost after she found herself trapped on the moon on September 13, 1999.

But it was...him, instead: the crazed and bizarre Luke Ferro.

"You act like I'm crazed, and bizarre." The cartographer retaliated, spewing dumb vitriol at Anna Davis. It did not achieve the desired effect. "Last night, you let me take your picture." He said, looking for the digital Hasselblad, and discovering that he had slept on it--ergo, his achy breaky buns. "Today, you demean me. Tomorrow, you seduce me.

"Enchantress.

"You are a fickle woman Anna." He told her, throwing the quilt he stole from her on the floor, and storming towards the lavatory to gnaw at his fist, and other things.

She would miss him when he was gone.

**********

Angelina Verdeschi's commlock beeped incessantly. She knew exactly who was calling her. She had been ignoring the call because only 30 minutes earlier she had transferred precious power to Medical Center. Doctor Bob Mathias was calling her again and she was mildly annoyed that he was bypassing the power generation number, now being answered by George Crato, in favor of her commlock code.

"I know what you want," Angelina finally answered. "Christ, Bob, I'm doing the best I can but you can't squeeze blood from a stone."

In fact, that is exactly what she was trying to do. Juggle and deprive to help give the sick and infirmed in Medical, though only 2 in number, an equal chance to survive.

"Really?" Mathias asked with smooth deprecation. The high definition image on Angs' commlock was a streak of silver, and gray as the physician tucked his own receiver under the crook of one arm. In the background, she could hear the wheels creaking across the tile as Mathias rushed a ventilator unit to ICU. "Then I guess you're okay with letting people die.

"Then again you would be." The physician railed, staring directly into the camera again. "You're not here. I don't give a damn about the Phase III power cuts. If we were going according to Hoyle, which we're not, by the way, this section would be considered critical until we downgrade to Phase VI.

"We're nowhere near that mark. TURN THE HEAT BACK UP."

"For your information, DR. MATHIAS," she retorted, emphasizing 'Dr. Mathias' with barely contained anger and coldness (figuratively, though she was literally 'cold'), "We are now AT Phase IV power cuts."

Her frustration and feeling of helplessness was diverted by the shouting match on the other end of the room. "Pardon me for a minute," she jumped up though not closing the link so that the equally frustrated Assistant CMO could hear everything.

"CRATO!!" Ed Malcom, dripping wet and miserably stuffed into his undersized wool uniform. "WHERE WAS THE GODDAMN HOT WATER FOR MY SHOWER?!?!?"

"You look like a BIG FAT Arctic WHALE to me, Malcom!" Crato bounded toward the obese Electronics Technician. "What's the matter? Your blubber not keeping you warm, lardass??!?!"

Marcus Profitt stepped inside the cavernous room with his tool cart and he assessed the situation.

"Aren't you a raz?" The welsh technician got his digs in. "You let me down, Ed. I knew you were a munting bleep-heel, but I never imagined you'd put your shower before the safety of this base."

Deadhead Ed wasn't hearing him, though. He was too busy being throttled, and pummeled under the cold-inspired, knee-jerk violence of George Crato.

Carter Jackson jumped into the melee of fists and peeled Crato away from Malcom. Profitt dragged Malcom backwards, pulling a major back muscle in the process, as Ang stepped in the middle.

"WHAT IN THE FUCK IS GOING ON?!?!?" Angelina yelled, furious, at the top of her lungs.

Everyone froze.

"ARE YOU STUPID OR SOMETHING?!?" Angelina got in Crato's face. "THIS IS NOT A GODDAMN BAR!!"

"What's going on in here?" Tony Verdeschi slurred as he sauntered in with Harness Bull Saukel. He reeked of beer and was drunk once again.

"Nice timing," Angelina answered him flippantly, still enraged.

"HE started it!!!" Crato yelled, pointing at Malcom with renewed energy.

"You shut up!" Ang cut Crato to the quick. "Get back to work."

"You!" She marched up to Malcom. "Stay the HELL out of my area!" She looked at Tony then motioned to Malcom. "Can you escort him out of here?"

An evil though delighted grin spread across his lips. "Anything you say, sis," he replied as he grabbed the fat technician by the thick wrist and twisted his arm behind his back as he pushed him out the door.

Malcom howled in pain.

"For God sake, don't HURT him!" she called after Tony Verdeschi, shaking her head.

Her charity was interrupted by the disturbing quartet of chords that comprised the update tone on the commstation. The monitor remained blank with no screen saver, but Tanya Alexander's voice could be heard echoing throughout the labs, and workshops of the Technical barracks. Marcus Profitt's jaw dropped. Specialist Julio Armando entered the room with numb hands, and an iced-over, goose-stepped artery. Chief Tony Verdeschi managed to remain standing long enough to hear the blurred message before fumbling back into brutal, excessive force.

"Attention all sections Alpha." The Main Mission operative spoke incontrovertibly. "Crews will assemble in the MCR conference room at 1400 hours to discuss possible Torsion field reductions, and modifications to the electrokinetic generators."

And that was all.

"Mother Mary, what's appnin?" Marcus Profitt strained. "She's talking about tampering with the spin reactors. THAT'S THE HEART OF OUR ARTIFICIAL GRAVITY SYSTEM. ARE WE SO DESPERATE THAT WE HAVE TO TROD AROUND LIKE WE'RE WALKING THROUGH MUSH?"

He looked to Ang' to ameliorate his panic.

"We will do everything we can to avoid that possibility," Ang admitted truthfully. "Fortunately, we are a long way from having to implement such drastic measures."

'Long', of course, was relative: Long in minutes but not as long in hours.

She returned to her desk to find Dr. Wiseass still on her micromonitor. There was no way in hell he was going to let her break the link until he got what he wanted.

"I can give you a bit more power for awhile," Ang informed the physician as she typed and rerouted the circuitry. "At the expense of computer."

She cut the link before hearing his short lived gratitude. Within 30 seconds, though, her commlock began chiming again. This time the caller ID flashed the name "Kano,David" on the micro-screen.

**********

The sky became an eerie, contamination of pink outside of Alan Carter's etched rendezvous window. In the passenger module, Helena Russell grasped the sides of her couch, feeling something a bit more aggressive than the phony G's coming from the service compartment. Grasping one of the padded roll-bars, John Koenig stood beside Victor Bergman who remained seated at the workstation amidship. Both monitored the powered descent of Eagle One. Gradually, the ugly, mauve horizon turned orange, and then red, with a shower of microscopic, inflamed particles blocking the camera's view as the spacecraft's heat shield cleared the Ionosphere.

"How about it?" The commander asked the professor again as they leveled off at 50,000 feet.

"We've never been able to accomplish it." Bergman told him, scratching his forehead vaguely while consulting the useless data on his monitor. "Oh, we've done it using helical laser beams--with some success in manipulating cell structures, and microchips.

"But never anything of this caliber." He proffered, closing the cover on a superfluous red flimsie. "There's nothing coming from that planet, John."

Koenig released his hold on the bulkhead, still crestfallen, though he was standing easy now.

"Commander." Carter's voice broke in over the cabin speakers. "We've got contacts now. You'd better have a look at them."

Twenty-thousand feet below, and growing larger, more discernable--it was ruins; kilometer after kilometer of toppled kingdom.

CHAPTER FIVE

Long before the first wave of primeval bacteria saturated the blasted, roiling beaches of prehistoric Earth; long, long before the settlement of the Indus Valleys, and the Muslim invasions; long, long, long before Nebuchednezzar; Socrates; Gautama; and Jesus, Of Nazareth, there was this. Like oxidizing coins beneath the cracks of the ancient, First Temple, it was almost visible. It was here; it was not. It was a wraith of collapsed, multi-tier superhighways that boasted of no rubberized asphalt--only sheets of dust, and decay. It was prosperity in world-free markets, arm-pitted out of existence by political dispute, annihilation, and ice wedging. The skyscrapers weren't even a footnote now, but the jungle of vines that rose from the conglomerate foundations were telling. It was pillars, and obelisks aged out of existence by technopolies with their hearts set on a nuclear nightmare. It was privatized businesses buried alive in an ice age, and communal areas made of hypertransparencies-too much so for their own good, one might argue, but why worry because it was wiped clean now. Nature, the everlasting apologist, had taken her mop to the race who once lived here. Nothing solves a problem quicker than a good, old fashioned dose of death. The acid rains had long ago cleaned up the obviate ravages of war. For this planet, the future was in the dust pan.

Only the pillars of the acropolis remained, the sculptures on the library roofs had no heads.

"Victor?" John Koenig said, turning away from monitor to dispose of his crushed coffee cup. The forward camera was briefly obfuscated as Eagle One instrument navigated through a stetson of black clouds. Upon emerging, there was still no sun to cheer them up. "I reviewed the early telemetry data on this planet two months ago. I don't recall seeing any chapters, or annotations dealing with archaeology, or extinct civilizations."

"That's because our early data was skewed by the meteorological conditions of this planet," Bergman nodded, closing the cover to his field sensor case after checking the charge of the unit. "There is also evidence of nuclear holocaust, particularly with the higher than natural levels of lead, which is the end degradation of uranium."

"After tens of thousands of years, of course," Bergman added.

"And, what you see is what you get for weather on this planet," he continued, scratching his sideburn. "A cloud cover of approximately 75% is the norm."

"That would certainly make growing crops tough," Helena Russell joined the conversation.

"Indeed," the professor nodded in agreement.

"Well...I don't think growing crops is what this planet does best." Koenig joined, thinking of the Moon out there at the LaGrangian Point. Like the rest of the passengers--experienced space travelers, but hating every minute of it--the commander never faltered as the camera image tilted to the left upon emerging from an offal, indigo rose bank. In the murkiness below, the scorched, kaput edifices of the republic sprawled before them again. In the passenger module, Carter toggled the camera effectively to port in order to obtain a better view of what looked like one hundred story editions of the Petronas Towers in Malaysia. Whole sections of the interior, and flooring were visible in the condemned rubble. "Over there." Koenig said, pointing towards a northwest trapezoid of bleached jungle, framed by a shattered transportation network. "That area is wide open.

"Most of the roads appear to be leading into it."

"Commander, those look like fairways." Truman Starns hypothesized, nodding his head at a growing reticulation of interlocking surface stones. "Each one must be well over a kilometer long.

"Almost like tarmacs." The investigator told Helena Russell.

"An airport?" Koenig concentrated, walking near the monitor for closer inspection. "Or maybe a spaceport."

"Judging from the complexity of the structures, it is certainly feasible that whoever they were, may have had the capability of flight." Bergman sat on the arm rest of the passenger chair. "Also, assuming that the increase in radiation was due to a self inflicted nuclear genocide," he winced then continued to philosophize, "achievement of space flight would not be out of the realm of possibility either."

"Self inflicted nuclear genocide?" Helena questioned. "Do you think you are jumping the gun a bit, Victor? Afterall, we know nothing of these people."

"Perhaps," Bergman leaned back, right ankle crossed over left knee, "but based on the condition of the structures and the presence of radioactive isotopes but natural and artificial..."

Helena Russell raised her eyebrow in surprise.

The professor nodded. "It would indicate the strong possibility of a nuclear war."

"On Earth, our space centers were located near huge bodies of water." Anna Davis reflected. "Most of the time they were nowhere near highly populated areas."

"Who are we to judge." Brother Luke Farro disrupted. "Obviously this race was technologically more advanced than us, even an millennia ago."

He could not resist looking at the bursting threads that contained Davis' fragile, bubbly glutes inside her flares.

"Must be." Koenig nodded appreciably, punching the black stud on a nearby communal. "Alan, have you seen anything yet?"

"No sir, not a thing." The pilot replied in frustrated tones. "We got zero feedback from the scanning, and sensing runs. Nothing visually, either. There's just desolation, and more desolation."

The commander gave Bergman, and Russell a long, pregnant glance of burgeoning intent.

"We won't know more until we can get a closer look, John," Bergman stood up, itching to learn more about the mysterious planet.

"Radiation level are well within safe limits for exposure, John." Russell added. "Even for long term exposure."

The last statement captured Luke Ferro's interest.

"Carter." Koenig resumed, punching the black stud again. "Bring us around 365 degrees. Head back into that urban area we just passed through. Try to find a place near the nucleus of the city, and set her down there."

"Right." The pilot replied without objection, and terminated the link.

**********

"It's getting colder," George Crato whined while rubbing his gloved hands together.

Angelina Verdeschi was chilled to the bone despite the thermal underwear, wool uniform and funky silver thermal jacket and fleece gloves. Dr. Bob's image was on the blue and white monitor...again. In the background, she heard the frantic sounds of Jerry Parker, MSRN giving CPR to a critical Mustafa Vasil.

Bob Mathias was comfortably impertinent with his demands for more power.

"Increase power two units to Medical," Angelina Verdeschi once again acquiesced and nodded to Joan Conway.

"Thank you, Ang," Dr. Bob Mathias nodded somewhat gratified, though she knew it was temporary.

As the Assistant Chief Medical Officer cut the link, Angelina followed up with "Decrease power two units to Hydroponic Farm #2." Almost immediately, the face of her closest female friend appeared on the monitor.

"Angelina," Melita Kelly protested in moderate Italian accent, "I need more power."

Yes, that was the common complaint of the day: Need more power. Angelina listened sympathetically.

"I have green vegetables that are close to harvest. If the temperature goes down any more, there will be a frost in here and the crop will be destroyed. Please, I need more power."

In the background, yellow sleeved personnel from other various Service Section departments, including the chief, Sandra Benes, were frantically working in the cold to cover the delicate vegetation.

"I'm sorry, Melita," Angelina shook her head glumly. "I had to transfer the power to Medical Center." Melita said nothing as she moved aside and Sandra stepped into her place.

"Ang," Sandra protested," I understand Medical is priority but are there not other areas you can transfer power to us? If we lose this crop, it will be a major component of our food supply and it will take weeks to replenish."

Ang wanted to reply that they probably don't have weeks to live anyway. She did not. The monitor that flashed "Power Loss 31%" clearly portrayed her thoughts.

"I'll see what I can do," Ang answered, not making promises. She pondered as she cut the link. She turned to Joan Conway "Decrease power to this room two units. Transfer to Hydroponic Farm #2."

"What?!?" Crato blurted. "We won't have any..."

The lights went out in the Main Power Generation area, changing the wall panels to the haunting glow of the red emergency lights.

**********

Eagle One hovered over the wasteland of crumbling buildings. A jetstream of propellant from the forward RCS quads caused an already crippled, tech noir lamp post to collapse against the porch of a private dwelling that was capped with a recognizable, but peculiar mosque roof. As for the damage, and the inclement insurance claim--our heroes worried not. Capable at the helm, Carter yawed right to avoid striking the none-too-stable sixth floor of what looked like a factory that had been hurled by vortex, or magic into the center of the town common, landing atop the gnarled angle iron of a once efficient light rail system. There were stone benches visible beneath the drift of orange leaves, but no one was sitting in them--they were nothing, but blackened calcium particles now, urged away by the blazing winds, and the warm season fescues, and carpet grass that broke through the promenade to reclaim a world.

A final burst of peroxide cleared away enough of the crap, and carious artifacts for the spacecraft to soft land in the center of the square. The shock absorbing pads in the vehicle's landing system were ample, and contact was historic.

Welcome to Planet Attic--after the bomb; where lanterns occupy space, but are never lit; where empty picture frames constitute an almost-memory of a community that was geologically turning to gravel as the foliage conquered it building, by building.

**********

'Overpowering impressions crowded in on us as we stepped out onto the alien planet.' Commander John Koenig would recall years later, but not from looking at his journal, which he held now at his hip as he gazed beyond the vision ports of Residence Building-A on Moonbase Alpha.

(...very...Vedic...vanquished....) A canker with an eastern accent alliterated to him then, touching more than his ear, surpassing his soul. Too bad it had to be his imagination.

'A sense of timeless solitude.' He read, turning away from the ghost in his quarters, and consulting his memoirs again. 'The silent touch of an empty world.'

(...contingency for disaster...solar retinue....) The voice chanted back--in real time which caused Koenig to reel at the doorway, which was sensibly closed. Helena Russell slept securely, bathed in beams of rusted starlight. The digital clock on the commstation added one more, lunar minute to 24:00 hours. The commander felt the frigid jack of his spine.

(...the total absence of life....)

Experienced the hackles on his neck--the product of an obviously overworked, prodigiously cruel psyche.

'Death had visited this world.' The open slice of journal page read in the shadow of his commlock, which he ultimately did nothing with. The base was secure.

('Or so our data told us.')

(...Samskar harnessing stations destroyed...neutralization outposts....)

As John Koenig moved around his quarters, he could still feel it.

(...history, closing in around us like....)

**********

"A shroud?" Manoj preempted the Sage's rodomontade by seizing the Wasp cap from the lackadaisical forehead of his wife Gita, who was already precipitous. "The Samskars level an unoccupied province, so the hour of our death is at hand?"

Her agitation, and her failure to trust in the wheel disappointed him.

"I see it," she boasted, her clairvoyance, a rare but often ignored gift by others. "The arrogance of our people will destroy us. Soon."

Gita lit the obelisk shaped candle in the center of the modified pentagram.

"It is unfortunate that only the Samskars have left leaving our people, the Vedas, to extermination." Her eyes narrowed as she studied the flame. "No....not quite, my husband. Extermination yes, but only physical extermination." She glanced at Manoj, confused. "I do not understand the choice but it is not my place to question those greater than ourselves."

"Come," she motioned to him. "I will prepare our final meal as we approach the last hours. Ah, a sumptuous feast it will be!"

"Feast?" Manoj wasn't even hungry. "Last hours? Pardon me beloved, but in accordance with the Tomal Culture which demands abject honesty between marital partners, I am now informing you of an issue that has developed in our relationship.

"Namely, your powers of reason. This has happened before.

"Would you like me to forward a copy to you, and your counselor in writing?" With a deft wave of the hand, he activated the Snoop cylinder so that they could have an audio transcript for future arbitration.

Gita laughed with apparent insanity. "HA! You know you won't have me committed in the land of the mentally deranged, my dear." She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him lusciously. Then she released him.

"It is my father's wealth which brought you to your position of power but where I go, the wealth goes. Send me away and your political future crumbles away, not even leaving the cornerstone."

"I also sense that your depth of feeling for me is sincere and perhaps you keep me out of endearing habit than monetary gain." She stared at her reflection in the crystal.

"Not that it really matters anymore." She whispered. "No. I tell you. The end is truly drawing near. I wish...I wish it was abstract rantings. I see it very clearly. I see the time. We do not have much time."

"Allow me to point out the flaws in your supposition that the end of the world is at hand." Manoj graciously offered, pulling a perfumed, black stick from the crystalline decanter, and sticking it in his mouth. Sometimes, he needed hallucinogens. "There are three: First, dear one-the only vessels to leave these happy shores have been prison barges filled with heathen Samskars, and Bengalese...recreants mostly who attempted to subvert the Aarjava.

"Banishment to the void is, at the very least, their just desserts. Arkadia has decided to take out its trash. The patient ones never leave the path of justice." Manoj knew these things intimately. Being the adjunct Adah to Mahesh Kyrem assured him a place in the battlefields of degradation, and indecency; a difficult task, but someone had to do it. "Secondly, Mahesh Darpa has assured us that the conference with the Dasen-Driyas was effective on seven, critical levels.

"Therefore, the more refined Samskars--the ones who actually bathe, and talk--bear us no enmity. They are happy with the land reserves being afforded to them, and their squat living units."

"Listen to yourself, Manoj," Gita remarked while gracefully seating herself in a papasian type chair with an overstuffed satin like cushion. "I am not the experienced political pundit like you but to blather on about the contentment of the Samskars in their cesspool neighborhoods is ludicrous while their discontent is obvious and growing. They are the ones we must embrace otherwise we are..."

"Third." Manoj hushed her with a prominent, upwards palm. "There is nothing to suggest that it was a Chakra Bomb that leveled our noble, noble city of Krishna--the land of the cowherds." He rasped tragically. "There are bureau reports which, just as credible, suggest that it was an atomic spill from one of our breeder reactors.

"It was wise of Mahesh Darpa to forbid our wretched journalists access the contaminated zone, even if it was to save their own, deplorable lives."

Manoj was proud of the egalitarian regime under which he served.

"DARPA," Gita spat venomously as if the very name was painful to utter. "Why do you worship that treacherous egoist? My father narrowly escaped an assassination attempt orchestrated by him."

"Yes, orchestrated by Darpa! He says that a 'prominent' Samskar leader tried to murder him and Darpa's men 'foiled' the attempt. Darpa the hero. Now my father has abandoned his senses and trusts the devious fiend."

"Even you, dear husband, are duped and refuse to see Darpa for what he is."

Manoj chomped his black stick. The floral patterns on Gita's robe were in green, and blue bas relief. The drugs were turning his skull to rubber just in time. The last time she critiqued his incisiveness it became necessary to bring in Yogis on a commitment stipend. The dwarfs chanted the Antah, politely superimposing Gita with guilt; lambasting her for her nagging ways with a pleasing tune, which was part of the Holy Rite. In the end, the blessed lotion of healing filled the bleeding crevasse of their marriage, and all was right with Nama who was God. Manoj tipped them, and sent their wide carcasses out the door. Now here they were, one sun cycle later, and she was hectoring him again with her treason, and her paranoid delusions.

He pitied her lack of control, and self-esteem.

"Have one." He insisted lovingly as he opened the decanter again. "Avoid the violet colored sticks. They're for advanced meditations-not recommended for a person who experiences chronic emptiness, depression, and flight of ideas. The cyan sticks are for acolytes."

"Your reliance on hallucinogenic drugs is merely a testament of your utter denial and blind following of the evil that is Darpa." She shook her head. She had no need of agents to numb her consciousness. Her vision was clear.

"Oh wife, I fear you are akin to those anatmon's in the tabloid press who claim that gentle Mahesh Darpa is an alien mad man, here to wreak havoc, and despond." He tipped his ash into a ceramic dish. "That is not Nirvana." He reminded her, plopping wearily onto the dining triad which stabbed his appendix. The rumors began years ago when Darpa was only a foreign affairs consultant attached to Mahesh Kyrem. Initially, hysteria broke out amongst the minority of taciturn, blockheaded Bengalis who questioned the way the politician's appearance metamorphosized--sometimes appearing young; sometimes appearing old; appealing to the ladies during one press conference, and butt ugly in the next--always knowing the precise thing to say caused a storm of controversy which propelled the lunatic fringe into accusations that he was a hypnotic intruder from another universe.

Possible, Manoj realized--afterall, the Anitya had been discovered centuries ago when the first Arkadian explorer set foot in another dimension (and immediately had said foot hacked off by the godless, wheeless, alternative cannibals in that slipstream).

Darpa was youthful; a revolutionary; a modernist; he was light skinned, whereas most Vedans were darker in hue. He was Samskar. In rational summation: He was an unknown quantity.

So the remarks were possible...but not likely.

"I will prove to you the justness of our leader." Manoj told Gita, emphasizing his promise with a tap of the black stick against the plant receptacle. He disappeared into the solarium, and returned with a small, goldleaf cage that was covered with a moth-eaten veil. When he removed the cover, Governor Bow Hunter squinted, and hissed at him over his water bowl.

"Now my dear Governor," Gita soothed. "Manoj is attempting to assuage his conscious." The odd canine type being nodded. If it had not been for Gita's protection, he would have been dead, tortured to death in cruel sport like most of his race under the conquest by Darpa. Some of his species had survived as 'pets'.

"It bothers you to assist me?" Manoj agitated him, winking with cruel bravura at Gita. The one pound, canine offworlder was the supreme ruler of the pestilential sub world of unAor. Toppled from his despotic throne when the forces of Darpa conquered his crummy little corner in the galactic feast, the dignitary had somehow landed atop Manoj's desk at the Paramapada with a note attached to his cage that said: FEED ME.

"I had thought so." Governor Bow Hunter said, grabbing bits of milkbone from his food dish, and chucking them at Manoj.

"I like myself." Manoj bolstered his own ego immediately while admiring his own, roughshod, masculine rictus in the wall pane. "This is my house, my food."

"You're a moron." Governor Bow Hunter diagnosed him. "You may even have some foundational disorder. I haven't decided yet."

Gita opened the cage door, and let him out.

"My dear husband shows a grain of belief concerning my latest prophesy that the world is indeed coming to an end. I believe he would like to disprove my prophesy. However, since you and your kind welcome death, I am certain that you would not tell him the truth anyway."

Governor Bow Hunter made a guttural sound that was the equivalent of a grunt as he hopped into her lap.

"My time is valuable." Governor Bow Hunter admonished him, and switched his tail. "What do you want?"

"The future." Manoj declared.

"It is not for us to know, only the present, and the past." Governor Bow Hunter argued, and hugged Gita with small arms, purring. "I prefer her to you. Could you please scratch me behind the ears, kind lady?"

Manoj pried the possum's mouth open, and began the ceremony with the customary invocation.

"BEHOLD, I SEEK TO KNOW OUR KHARMA." Manoj bellowed.

"Here, or in the hereafter?" The clairvoyant canine gagged, choking on his own tongue while his upper, and lower jaws were brute forced.

Manoj compromised.

The deposed emperor twitched his rodent-like nose, and lapsing into a trance state, began to sing:

"IN THE YEAR 2525

"IF MAN IS STILL ALIVE

"IF WOMAN CAN SURVIVE THEY MAY FIND

"IN THE YEAR 3535

"AIN'T GONNA' NEED TO TELL THE TRUTH

"TELL NO LIES...."

Manoj released his unruly indenture, and beamed at Gita.

"There." He said, sated with confidence. "Did you not hear? That was the voice of our descendants, doubting wife. We obviously do survive. We are not happy, but if misery is good enough for the offspring of Arkadia, then it is good enough for us."

Gita laughed. "He has told you absolutely nothing." She chortled as she stroked the Governor from neck to tail. The creature purred loudly, lips upturned as if mocking her spouse.

She grew serious as the creature locked her in a gaze. "We will survive but Arkadia will surely perish."

"I think...." Manoj puffed impeccably, stabbing his poppy stick out on the floor of Bow Hunter's cage.

"Recreant." The governor responded while cleaning his paw.

"...that feminine biology has something to do with these platitudes you're evincing, honorable wife."

He strolled to the kitchen window for his favorite pastime on the Day Of Diva. It was a senior moment for him to observe the old folks take their daily constitutional, naked, and orbiting the statue of the impossible Mantis.

"Hey, look at that." Manoj blurted, excited, but confused by the yellow hull with black piping that shot high into the blue, Arkadian ether. "That looks like Mahesh Darpa's Flag Spider, moving at three times the normal escape velocity."

The vessel was powered by the Red Shift which propelled it to 150% of light speed.

"I wonder where he's going?" Manoj said unfathomably, just as the Chakra warheads began to fall from the sky, thereby decimating the planet.

CHAPTER SIX

"Not good." Victor Bergman said, and allowed biogenic stuff to fall through his fingers. Beside him, the open cooler contained two grams of ebon, indigenous, invariably useless dirt. Near the monitor atop the SWPG container, an oval gauge flashed red--on and off, and over, and over again like a stuck traffic light. "Not good a'toll." He repeated standing.

Half a city block down from the cataclysmic square, Harness Bull Pound emerged from the blasted, windowless two story I-house--blandishing in its day, perhaps, but ready for a demolition crew now. Anna Davis delayed her visual observations long enough to assist him across a pile of undone porch while he carried his laser rifle. Even if the glass didn't get him, he would surely get nailed.

Life on the galactic rim.

"Whatever type of weapon it was that they used, it appears to have damaged the ozone umbrella. Ultraviolet radiation has done its work.

"Very hard on grain acreage, or any other type of life sustaining agriculture." He exhaled deeply, straightening his flares. "A tree may grow, but an artichoke won't. So much for evacuating the base, eh?"

"Are you sure?" Koenig asked, hoping beyond hope. Afterall, he reasoned to himself, Victor was not a botany expert. "What is the difference? If one plant can grow, why not another?" His fragile optimism was shattered by Helena Russell.

"It is not the plants but the bacteria in the soil, John," the physician explained gently. "The bacteria in the soil will not support growth of our plant life. We would have to introduce the bacteria and that would take two, possibly three growing seasons before it may successfully thrive enough to support our vegetation."

"Even then," she sighed, "I say 'may' successfully thrive. The bacteria could be introduced only to be irradiated and mutate, damaged to the extent that it would not support the growing cycle. Whoever once lived here, really did a job on the ecosystem of this planet." The doctor shook her head sadly, studying a sample of water.

"You can drink the water though it is definitely 'hard." She went on. "It has slightly higher than normal concentrations of metals but it won't hurt you."

Koenig sampled the water and frowned. It left a metallic aftertaste and was not pleasant. Fresh mountain spring it was not; Arkadian water tasted like the inside of an aluminum can.

Beyond a masonry salvage job of toppled, Zircon blocks, the open hatch was visible on Eagle One's passenger module. Carter stood atop the gangway, red of face, and herniated of disc as he strained to assist Truman Starns with the unloading of the portable, diesel generator.

Luke Farro was whirling like a dervish--his head ogled radically upwards at the alien star, and brimming with titillation, and psyche. The hills were alive with the sound of music.

"He's a strange bird, John." The professor stated bluntly, and tipping a bewildered nod at the gyrating cartographer. "Why did you pick him for this mission?"

"His graduate experience is atmospheric physics, Victor," Koenig explained. Naturally, without an atmosphere on the moon, the utilization of his experience was minimal; he spent his duty periods in the astronomy department since Breakaway. "I thought, perhaps, he would be able to give us a reliable assessment of the atmosphere of the planet."

Koenig did not offer further comment. Ferro's behavior was weird and the Commander quietly castigated himself for not taking Angelina Verdeschi's advice and not bringing Louis Picard instead.

***********

In an area that was once a courtyard, Anna Davis studied the inscription on the murals. It looked familiar. She opened her laptop and queried the language database, looking back and forth between the mural and the alphabet on her screen.

"Commander," Anna pulled her commlock from her belt and spoke with barely contained excitement. "I think I have made a ...discovery."

**********

"I don't expect an answer." Luke Farro conceded, taking the golden, fresh air into a pair of lungs that had long become attuned to gulping in the cold, aseptic, canned cryo-mix, piped into Moonbase Alpha from the Alpine Valley. Had it been two years? Three years? Calendars were trumpery.

He suddenly felt like a paramecium, a lepton. Something manky, and squashable. He exalted in not walking on sterile tile, or wall-to-wall carpeting. The ground was rock strewn. His boots were killing him. Deprived of the unfertile, artificial biosphere, this body was now at genuine risk of diseases again--the Flu; Smallpox; Botchelism; Marburg.

Luke Farro soared.

"You're watching me." The cartographer simpered. "Koenig ordered you to. Right? You think I'm a nut? Right?"

Would you like some salt for those cashews, buddy? Truman Starns felt like saying, but his expression remained casehardened, and stoic. Everything Farro said was true, of course, but the investigator was tranquil, and unintimidated--and he wouldn't allow the cartographer to throw a wrench in the spokes of his expertise. Bringing along Cardinal Luke may have been an inexact judgement call--a bad, totally human decision that was wrought under duress. On the other hand, Starns was no profiler. Farro's sins were white as snow, until such time that he proved himself to be a liability. He would not resort to name calling, even when baited.

You could be sure--this crackpot would not unsettle him.

"The commander asked us to divide into pairs." The investigator gesticulated. "You, and I are just like two peas in a real good pod."

Heads, I like you, tails I don't. Starns reckoned to himself.

"You insult me." The cartographer realized, his smirk growing even more impaired. "But I tell you, my presence here is vital to the success of this mission." He boasted, taking up his digital Hasselblad camera, and aiming it at a row of tall trees. "My experience is unsurpassed." He gasconaded, acquiring a subject in the crosshairs of his comp-lense. "These trees...." He noted, walleyed as he proceeded to snap pictures. "There's something odd about them. No?"

The investigator refused to answer that question on the grounds that might incriminate him.

**********

Dr. Helena Russell stood back, staring at the mound of overgrowth in the ruined back yard of a once opulent house. She surveyed the area carefully and a memory was jogged, as Koenig studied the inscriptions on the wall, taking digital pictures. Koenig became the data gatherer while the professor had gone to fetch Anna Davis.

"What is it, Helena?" Koenig stood beside her, squinting in the direction of her gaze.

"It looks like," she started walking toward the area. She pulled the overgrowth aside and her hunch was correct, revealing a door.

"A storm cellar?" she surmised.

Koenig nodded and pulled his ax from his belt, attempting to pry open the door.

**********

"Are you sure?" Professor Bergman sat next to the pretty archaeologist on an overturned and pitted column.

"It is very similar to Sanskrit." Anna Davis nodded enthusiastically. "Perhaps it is a branch of it. Sanskrit is accepted to be the root of all earth languages. However, it is possible that Sanskrit itself would have a 'root'. From such a root language Sanskrit and possibly this language would emerge. It is much like the romance languages of French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian all derived from the same Latin root."

"You know what this could mean," Bergman glanced at her with raised and barely contained excited eyebrow.

"Yes," she smiled. "I most certainly do."

**********

"It's dry enough here." Carter said, releasing the grips on the generator, and blowing the rest of the air out of his lungs. "This is a nobhead kind of planet, isn't it?" He told Harness Bull Pound as he wiped sweat from his forehead using the sleeve of his tunic. "On the other side of that barrow it was almost freezing. Now it's like a desert."

"So...maybe it's some time of meteorological phenomenon?" Pound replied. He felt like a drummer was playing "Wipe Out" against his lower back, and shoulder blades. He was trying to keep his mind infinitely open, and as a result, ideas slipped right past him.

They were standing atop a gemstone chopine that was filled with spiderweb cracks. At one time it was possibly a podium for public addresses; maybe a bandstand; maybe a glorified sewer lid. Interlocking, black diamond shaped patterns covered it. Quality-wise, they ranged from the okay, to the worse-for-the-wear after 25,000 years. Beside this, a gentle brook eroded both banks as it fed its way into an undiscovered abysm.

"This is as good a place as any." The pilot said, resting his palm against a gnawed, wooden arch that had been sculpted in the form of twin daggers. "The professor wants to set up shop in a place that's centrally located, but close to the ship in case we wear out our welcome."

"How would we do that?" Pound solicited.

"I don't know." Carter replied, gazing intensely at the meandering stream. "But being as how you have a purple sleeve, jake, you'll be on the receiving end first. We'll find you laying dead as a doornail in some ditch, or possibly ingested as human fuel by some disagreeable, carnivorous behemoth.

"I'll light a candle for you." He offered, taking a few exploratory steps forward. "By now they're all over Alpha."

"Why do I not like the sound of this?" Pound questioned. Kilometers above, the Moon hung over his head like an innovation. All of the usual consequences awaited them. The Mare Imbrium, misty, and obscured by the native strato clouds, cast a cold, black eye at the foreordained harness bull.

"Kick me if I'm wrong." Carter changed the subject, leaving behind all predictions of Pound's untimely demise. "But is that creek running upstream?"

The kvetch in the ass was not necessary because he was exactly right.

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

She gazed out the viewport at the distant planet through the small circle she had cleared of the frost. If she was on Earth, she would have quit without notice, walked away from a job in which she had suffered more verbal abuse in the last 17 hours than Angelina Verdeschi had endured her entire career. A short two hour break was all she would allow herself. Somehow, she had managed to drift off for about 45 minutes, wrapped in two thermal blankets on the couch in the recreation room. The commstation monitor blinked the ominous warning 'Power Loss 44%'.

She was alone now with her thoughts. Pierre Danielle and Tom Morningstar had been playing pool on the opposite side of the room but it became difficult handling the cue sticks with frozen, gloved fingers. The door slid open silently. She glanced up and saw...nothing. She relaxed, glancing out the viewport again.

"Crazy Italian," the Pomeranian like creature admonished, as he sat on the arm of the couch.

Ang sat up startled, gasping and confused. Caesar the cat stopped momentarily in mid tail lick to glance curiously at her then continued his grooming.

*********

The ancient air from the shelter was thick and rank, as tendrils seeped through the ever widening crack of the door. Commander Koenig grunted and strained with the ax handle. Helena Russell surmised that he was not going to succeed much more with his own physical strength.

"Stand back, John," she had already unholstered her laser and set it on the wide cutting beam. She aimed at the stubbornly rusted hinges and fired. The metal of the hinge disintegrated and the ajar door tettered and toppled to the ground.

"Nice shot," the Commander complimented as they stepped toward the entrance. The inside was pitch black as expected. They removed their maglight from their belts and stepped inside.

The spadix hallway was impossibly dark. A time ravaged, wine drapery merged with the floor in a thin line of decay, and detritus. Beyond the too short hyperbola of light against the scorched tessera, Helena Russell found herself in a gothic neverland. Her arms and legs were there by sensation only until Koenig found her with his maglight. Out of the battery powered illumination there were spores, and the airborne radicals of an eon. Dipoles fell from the unstable ceiling like sawdust as Koenig accidentally stumbled over the coat rack.

"Well, if worse comes to worse, and we're pressed into settling here, it's a relief to know the accommodations are already furnished." Victor Bergman mused, leaning against the bright entranceway with Anna Davis flanking him.

"You're a riot." Koenig affirmed--his hair almost gray from falling clay, and hacking away from the ten million allergy sources that had been sealed up in the house before it died. "Ordinarily, I'd recommend scanning the area geothermally, and with x-rays." He explained, studying the canted, non-sensical, uber alien artwork that adorned the crumbling walls in oval frames. A rendering of humanoid teeth revealed one characteristic of a race that bore a close, dental resemblance to the people of Earth. A bizarre study of an earlobe, laid down in brazen, pastel strokes told Koenig that they were alike in the auditory sense, and that they were queer. "But we're running out of time."

The fact that they had extirpated themselves in some ancient conflict told him other things entirely: They were aggressive, and warlike.

"There may be books available." The professor scrabbled. When in Rome, pretend you're empty handed, just like the rest of them. "They might provide us with some sort of lead."

They might also turn to powder the second Koenig breathed on them, but for want of a better course of action, it was time to explore.

"As a matter of fact," Helena Russell began, crouched down in front of a stand. She picked up the dust and grime covered tome and turned to the rest of the group.

Anna Davis immediately took it from her. She gingerly opened the fragile cover as the doctor shone her maglight into it.

"Yes," she nodded to the expectant Koenig. "It appears to be the same language I encountered outside." She carefully turned the pages. "I am still working on translating the text but this has more examples of the alphabet and phonics. It will still take time."

"Work on it," Koenig glanced at his commlock. They had two hours before they had to lift off.

"Victor, Dr. Russell, and I are going in." The commander said, watching the beam from his maglight disappear in the lightproof hallway like gravity in a black hole. "We'll report back via commlock every five minutes." He winced, hearing the aphotic creak from a roof that could turn to confetti at any moment.

"If you hear a loud crash, the continental shelf will probably be on top of us." He added, the jive totally unintended.

"Be careful," he warned paternally as he studied a bizarre, almost art deco type sculpture. "I'll call Alan and have him bring more lights."

Anna sat on a small stool, intently studying the text with the maglight and typing into her laptop. It was comparable to breaking a code and it required merely time and patience working with the macro before the formula, the language was completely revealed. She had all the patience in the world but naturally very little time.

"Professor," she asked curiously, "do you think they destroyed themselves? A nuclear holocaust?"

"It certainly looks that way," Bergman agreed, still studying the statue of the creature similar to a small dog.

"Before we broke away, Earth was headed down the same path. Weren't we." It was said as a statement than question.

The professor did not answer.

**********

Carter flipped the ON switch, and all he got for his pains was fumes that left him featherbrained.

"We probably should have saved that." Harness Bull Pound spoke out in the name of survival. "You know? Just in case."

"The base is huge." Carter contravened, wiping a palm of oil from his left cheek with an absorbent towel. "What in Sam Hill makes you think this rusty can will save the day?

"It would make a fine gas chamber." He allowed, always looking for a silver lining.

Pound grunted, and returned to his examination of the antithetical stream without further rebuff.

"What do you think causes that?" He queried scientifically--watching the moss-filled current run up, and over a pair of boulders.

When the conversation started, it was day. Suddenly, the barely visible host star dipped below the mountains in the east, and unfamiliar constellations filled the sky. The interval transpired so quickly, the harness bull didn't have time to wonder why the algae had changed color. Sprouting weeds retreated into their pods.

"Probably the same thing that caused that little ripper." Carter exclaimed, anxious and irate. He was already gripping the palm of his laser.

**********

"What happened to the light?" Luke Farro bleated, turning away from his next, intense photographic study--the weeping leaves of a tall tree that made him think of armadillos for some reason. Prying his eye away from the lense, he looked into the sky, and saw instantaneous nightfall all around him. Truman Starns was holding a plastic bag filled with wisteria, destined for analysis, as he searched the sky for a reason, but found only a refrigerated Moon.

"Oh." Farro loused up, surveying the land, and pleading no contest to the things that were beyond him, and they were many. Knowledge scorned him like a moody woman.

**********

"Oh.." Anna Davis blurted in surprise at the sudden onset of nightfall. There was not even a sunset to herald the darkness.

The professor turned up the intensity of his maglight. "Planetary rotation was calculated at 19.7 lunar hours." He stated the results of the theoretical calculations as he stepped outside to witness the reality.

**********

"STARNS ARE YOU SEEING THIS?" Carter blurted insensibly. His commlock keys glowed with a deep, backlighting blue in the blanket of nightfall.

Before the investigator had a chance to answer, the supercycle ended, and Carter was shielding his eyes against the birth of good morning sunshine.

**********

"This door is lined with lead." John Koenig noticed as he ran his hand along the cool hinges that held it in place. The cellar had been like a haircut story--slightly interesting, but a slap in the face of pertinence. "Someone was making a last ditch effort to keep the radiation out."

Helena Russell invited herself in, pulling the door latch outward, and turning her maglight towards a wooden table that lay beyond the dreamweave of gossamer, translucent curtains.

Instead of horror, the doctor was overwhelmed with tragic sadness. "John..." She turned around as Koenig entered, stepping through the tiny Alice in Wonderland door and crouching down to avoid bashing his head.

When he looked up, he was not completely surprised at the sight.

The owners of the house were still there, and moreover, they were in the company of friends. For this party, dark, monk-like robes were the rave. The lord of boneyard manor sat prominently at the head of the table, and he had a courageous, fleshless clavichord, and exposed sternum. The mistress of the house could be identified only by her elegant, resourceful, but somewhat smaller, maxilla. Osseous rib cages protruded from their heavy garments-a sign that this gathering was for the purpose of work, and not lunch. One of the guests was obviously a debauch, having lost his head, and there it sat in the center of the table, bleached with dust, and dried mucor.

Had the entourage known that the sight of them made John Koenig's stomach churn up, they still would not have taken offense. Better than anyone, the dead know that their best years are behind them.

Chapter Six

Harness Bull Pound, with a back that was already throbbing and sore, marveled at the fact he paid for college from funds he earned in the summer as a hired hand at 'Ray's Movers'. The fun part of the job was traveling up and down the east coast of the US from Maine to Florida and back. The part of the job that was not 'fun' was the actual 'moving' part: lifting furniture, lugging grandma's antiques carting box after box after box of items labeled 'kitchen'.

That however was 20 years ago when his back was only 20 years old and he was a virile, strapping youth. Had he known where he would be after September 13, 1999, he would have quit school and contently worked as a fry cook for McDonald's. Flipping burgers for the rest of his life would be paradise compared to Moonbase Alpha as living quarters and likely tomb.

Pound was not sure why they were still on the planet. Evacuation wasn't looking good according to the professor. All that kept them there at this point were a bunch of skeletons. He tuned the switch on the generator and the flood lights brilliantly illuminated the room.

It was still...creepy.

Koenig stood by one of the tall, cracked, urns that were stationed in each corner of the chamber. The light of the generators revealed in him undoable eyes, an unrealistic chin, and infeasible furrows beneath ashen cheek bones. His black command stripe was prominent, but unhelpful as he listened, and waited for Carter, and Pound to finish regaling him with their unlikely tale. Helena Russell moved with the grace of a curator in a museum, examining each of the macabre participants in the planet's last supper.

Anna Davis was sitting at a collapsible utility table with her transword calculator, dotting her 'I's,' and crossing her 'T's' (or if you like, slashing her aspirates, and wrenching her retroflex letters)--zooming to add the finishing touches on the memorial, but incomprehensible, alien inscriptions that were etched on the wall. She was getting better.

The cracked jug that Koenig was parked beside was engraved with the hypothetical, pre-Tibetan relative 'ghanta,' which might have meant 'bell,' or 'gong.' Then again, it may have meant 'pain,' or 'hysteria,' or 'cold,' or 'emergency power,' or 'spitoon.' The commander often hated that he had to be blasted billions of miles from Earth to learn such vital factoids.

Swami Farro was standing beneath an object that looked like a mangled lampshade, metallic, that depended from the ceiling like a robot brain sucker. He was grinning like an idiot, and running his hands up, and down the wasting surface as if he were trying to arouse the damn thing. He knew not the meaning of the word 'fear,' but then again he probably didn't know the meaning of any word.

"Do you realize how impossible that story is?" Koenig told the pilot, and the harness bull. "No orbit is that accelerated. It takes a certain amount of time for a planet to revolve. There's no such thing as an express lane in space."

Pound was not a scientist but he was particularly keen at observation and had a sharp memory. "It's true, sir," Pound affirmed. "The stream was actually flowing backwards and one minute it was day, then night then day again."

"It happened alright." Carter persevered. "I know Christmas from Bourke Street, commander. One minute that sun was blazing, and then it was dark as midnight."

"I saw it too, John." Bergman testified, rubbing his palms together, and staring into them as if hoping to find an equation that fit all of the random numbers they were encountering. "There is one thing that could cause it."

"That's a very remote possibility, Victor." The commander pointed out, but not securely.

Helena Russell studied the skeleton remains of a canine-like creature, curled up on the lap of what appeared to be the mistress of the house. She was intrigued by the enlarged area of the skull containing the frontal lobe.

"Interesting," Helena mumbled, more engrossed in the biological artifacts in the room than in the astrological anomaly, "John, there may have been another intelligent species on this planet besides the humanoid ones around the table."

She pointed to the seemingly contented remains of the dog creature. "This creature has evidence of extensive cerebrum development which is only found in highly evolved life forms."

"A smart dog?" Koenig glanced toward her, taking a mental break from his mental astrophysics and integrated equation calculations.

"A very smart dog," Helena responded neutrally.

"What about the others?" he motioned to the skeletons, silent and unmoving.

"They appear to be humanoid, alright," Russell nodded. "I would say they are remarkably similar to us. Almost too similar." She scraped a sample of bone from the male at the head of the table for DNA analysis. "Of course, I would like to run some more tests. It is not out of the realm of possibility that there are other species which have evolved similar to us."

**********

Mahesh Darpa was a fink.

Conventional wisdom taught that the hominid we would call 'human' appeared a scant three million years ago. Screeching in the cradle of life, the hot goop spewed forth a marvel of creation. Australopithecus, who was smart because he could stand up. Then there was Homo Habilis--the father of all maintenance men, who made his own tools, lived in Africa, and never, ever embarrassed the rest of the community with his butt-crack plumbing jobs. There was Homo Erectus, they say.

A race that taught us how to hunt...and kill. Occasionally for thrills.

Then came Neanderthal, who was decent enough to bury his dead, but petulant enough to make spear-chucking a hobby, along with bear skins, and bone fish hooks. Cro-magnum sweetened his food with honey; constructed huts, and hearths; and made ivory statues that looked for all the world, like big ding-dongs.

Homo Sapiens stockpiled nuclear waste on the far side of the Moon, and blew the goddess out of orbit. From this we can conjecture that intelligence is a devolution--a backward swirl down the dialectic drain of the universe.

Perhaps there was a missing link in the bicycle of this noble, noble race--along with wheels, pedals, a kickstand, and a banana seat; an order which was frozen solid (in much the same way that the alphans were coming to terms with long johns, and toboggan caps) at the end of Earth's last ice age, 10,000 years ago.

On Earth, there were spineless caitiffs.

Even worse, it was not uncommon to find human crabs--a man, or a woman who was a flat, died-in-the wool-

"-coward." Manoj charged. It was a quarter of a million years before, and he could feel the open sores around his irradiated mouth as he helped himself to some last minute abuse. "You can't palate the taste of death, can you?"

He had figured as much from his long association with the canine diplomat.

"DULLARD. THAT'S NOT WHY I REQUESTED A SHIP." Governor Bow Hunter howled back insistently, chasing his tail beneath Isa Hemadri's chair. "WHAT KIND OF LOATHESOME PEOPLE ARE YOU TO ALLOW ONE OF YOUR WOMEN TO PERISH?"

He clamored for Gita to pick him up, but first he bit Manoj on the exposed ankle of his ceremonial robe.

The rival politician cried out, and stood--ready, willing, and able to put the boot to the hound with his good leg.

"You will not harm him," Gita, gaunt of face, glared at her dying husband as the Governor, skin and bone, found the strength to jump out of harm's way and into her lap. "Besides, you will be dead before the bite becomes infected." She laughed though it was not humorous. The canine diplomat joined her amusement emitting a bizarre hee-haw sound.

The open sores on her knuckles were in a terribly inconvenient place. Ever time she moved her fingers she was in pain. Yet, she was compelled to write with the last of her strength.

"I fail to see why you are amused," Gita's father, equally covered in sores, squinted at her. "He will come back. Mahesh will not forsake us. He promised me. We need to be patient."

Gita and the Governor stared at the dying old man then at each other. They resumed their laughter.

"You disrespect me, daughter," the frail parent stated icily.

"No, father," she chortled, wiping the tears from her eyes. The Governor was hacking from humor and fast onset pneumonia. "I respect you. You, however, place false hope and trust in that bastard." She grew serious. "I warned you. I warned you BOTH about the devious fiend."

***********

"I believe I've translated the document," Anna Davis looked up from her laptop as the attached printer whirled and ejected the freshly inkjetted paper.

"Go on," Koenig stepped toward her, as the rest of the group did, with interest.

"To you who seek us out in the ages to come...." Anna Davis recited, her computer paper feeling more like vellum; her permanent marker more like a quill. "We salute you."

The felicitations ran contrary to the lachrymose, frosty departure that awaited high above as the dimmer lights ran bronze through the vision ports of Moonbase Alpha. The welcome was not warm beyond the tablet of translation. Luke Farro got his greeting from Headless, and the other Judges who legislated from the warped, wooden table. There was no fear of gophers, or termites.

Simple.

Simple.

Dipth ongs.

Guna.

His skull was on the probate, not theirs....

**********

'I the Guardian....' Gita began, styling her characters against a melting, clay wall that survived centuries after her death. Isa Hamadri was gone--still seated at the table, but only barely. Manoj was history--a duck to the end, he had endured longer than his dearest enemy who remained loyally in her lap. Governor Bow Hunter shifted gently, and slowly expelled the remaining air in his fluid belabored lungs. He was absentia long, long before Gita's fevered mind could realize that he had passed on.

Baldev would go no more aroving, and Gita praised Bhanu that he was dead--even as the god burned, and purified her, at least she had been spared a maniac's final, once-and-for-all chance to violate her. He waited until Manoj, and Governor Bow Hunter were in Nirvana. The planet was deluged. There was no etheric, or visual communication. The Holes In The Sky were all closed. The crisis response services had fallen silent. With the onset of genocide, and decay, all that was left to Baldev was the opportunity to rape, and pillage.

Even if there were witnesses, they would not survive the post-holocaust winter. As Isa Hamadri's corrupt, sexually insane Minister of Justice, it was only right that he get what goody he could while he was yet breathing. But for poor, talented Baldev, the wheel had stopped spinning.

As he came around the table at her, he clutched at his airless throat with terminal hands, and watched in dismay as his gamma saturated liver barfed its way up, and over his tonsils. He fell backwards onto the table with a sickening thud, and spasmed once, or twice as the abattoirs of Cocytus came up to claim his flesh.

'...the Samskars have what they wanted...the production-rich outposts....'

"Why am I wasting time with that?" Gita asked Baldev, who was dead. She was Guardian by defacto. Isa Hamadri was an unencumbent mahesh, which disqualified him. He was dead too, which didn't help. Atul, her late father, was also unavailable to write the epitaph for their race, which was the only thing their meeting could have possibly accomplished. Manoj would not have written it. Then, or now. His spirit was probably out there somewhere, peering through the smoke, and disaster in the hopes of being the first one to see Darpa's fleet when it returned.

Her mind was half in bunker, half in the light of souls when she continued writing.

'This is...' Gita dizzied. 'Was the planet...."

**********

"...Arkane, or Arkadia." Anna Davis battled to finish the theoretical log. "That's what they called themselves."

"Arkadians." Victor Bergman tried the phrase on for size.

"Arkadia," Koenig repeated, reflecting on the stupidity of the loss of what appeared to be a great civilization.

Dr. Helena Russell glanced up from her laptop, shocked though not altogether surprised. "John, the Arkadias are human. Their DNA matches 100% with ours." Everyone in the group was stunned into silence. Anna Davis swallowed and continued.

"'The desolation you find....'" The philologist fought the document, one word at a time. "'Distresses?' No 'grieves' us. 'Our world is poisoned...dying. We who happened...." Davis squeezed her ink pen, bristling with frustration. "Uh." She putted cluelessly. "Sorry." She told Koenig who, all things considered, thought she was batting a thousand. "'Caused.'" Davis amended. "Yes, that's the word, I think; 'caused' our own...something...."

"Destruction?" Victor Bergman assisted.

"Yes...destruction." The philologist smiled, regardless of the gruesome import. "'No need to say'...no 'tell' of the final 'event;' 'happening?'"

"Holocaust?" Helena Russell came forward to fill in the blank this time.

"Yes, that fits." Davis thanked her. "'The final holocaust when our world flamed in the inferno of a thousand exploding suns.'

"There's more, but the imagery is difficult." She explained.

"Keep trying." Koenig adjured her. This had nothing to do with a value great enough to stop the Moon in its transgalactic traces, but they had nothing else to go on.

"'Arkadia is finished, but she, Arkadia, lives on in the few who left before the end, taking with them...the life,' the something...."

Drum roll:

"The SEEDS." Luke Farro proclaimed (and he was wrong, wrong, wrong), finally finding an eerie niche for his sublime, and his evangelism.

"'The seeds of a new beginning." Davis nodded ambiguously.

***********

"That's it," Melita Kelly shook her head miserably, studying the wilted, frozen and brown spinach leaves. "The crop is gone."

She exhaled deeply and her breath engulfed Angelina Verdeschi in a nimbus cloud of condensation, rivaling the Power Generation Manager.

"I'm sorry," Angelina replied sadly. What else could she say.

"You did your best," Sandra Benes conceded, hugging the scarf draped around her neck and head. Her elfin face was red from the cold as she blew into her gloved hands. "Now we much keep the water in the recycling plants from freezing."

"It will be awhile before that happens," Ang admitted ambiguously.

"Do you think they will have any luck on the planet?" Melita asked, motioning to the frost glazed windows and the obscured planet beyond. "Perhaps we will be evacuating to a new home soon, then we can plant anew on REAL home, yes?"

"Maybe," Sandra did not want to dampen Melita's optimism. "We have not heard anything from the reconnaissance team." Sandra continued, more for Ang's benefit. "Because our long range communications are down, we won't hear from them until they return to lunar orbit. However, Paul has arranged to send an Eagle after them if they do not return within the next 17 hours."

Ang, of course, already had her sources and knew of the 'plan' already. Pierre Danielle was standing by in Eagle 4 on Launch Pad 3. She admired Melita's optimism, though she had a feeling it was seriously misplaced.

**********

"'To seek out and....'" Anna Davis waned in her pre-indic illiteracy.

"Discover?" Victor Bergman tried yet again.

"NO." Luke Farro let out an impassioned burst from beneath the brain draining lampshade. "BEGIN."

"Yes, that's it." The philologist supposed. "'To seek out and begin again in the distant reaches of space. Heed now the teachings...testament? Yes, the Testament Of Arkadia.'

"There's a passage here that I can make no sense of. I'll need the Reference Library." She told Bergman. "Then it continues: 'You who are guided here, make us fertile.

"'Help us...live again.'"

She dropped her pen, and rubbed the apocalypse from her eyes. Breakaway had been enough. Now this. It tormented the nerves, and blew the emotional bus.

"Guided here." Koenig questioned. "To a planet with an Earth language, but how could the people of Earth be here twenty-five thousand years ago? The oldest recorded human history only goes back five thousand years."

And that did not speak to the problem of supralight travel, or charting the cosmos. It was more along the lines of Gilgamesh, and the Bull of Heaven, and slaughtering porkchop bones from Hades.

"NO." Farro again, mouthing hard, but with conviction. "Earth people didn't come here. The Arkadians. THEY FOUND EARTH. ASK STARNS. HE KNOWS.

"TELL THEM." The cartographer badgered the investigator. "THE TREES. TELL THEM."

"I'm no botanist." Starns stated moderately. "But I was there when he scanned the foliage. Seeing it was enough, though." He quipped. "I thought there was something familiar about this planet which seemed odd, considering I'm a canuck, and this planet isn't anywhere close to North America.

"I know there were oak trees." He affirmed, beyond remonstration. "There also appeared to be pine, willow, and beech trees...I think."

He scratched his tunic warily.

"YOU HEARD THE INSCRIPTION." Farro took over, embarrassed by Starns' mugwump. "THE ARKADIANS TOOK THE SEEDS WITH THEM. THEY FOUND A NEW ARKADIA. EARTH. OUR PEOPLE ORIGINATED ON THIS PLANET."

Chapter 7

The night sky was not much different from the day. The howling dust raged continuously, effectively blotting out the sun.

Standing outside, looking up at a moonless sky, which had been deprived of Luna for almost 4 years was not only pointless but dangerous, due to the possibility of contracting contaminate pneumonia. The man, one of only a few, shook his head, wiping the single tear from his grime covered face and returned to the dank cave.

"Pappa," his daughter, weak and dying of a Staph infection which had ravaged her body, stretched her emaciated arms to him. He took the child, who should have been a robust 12 year old but due to malnutrition, was stunted in growth and no larger than she was as an 8 year old, into his arms.

"Theresa, be still," he soothed affectionately. She was his last surviving relative.

His parents had died instantly in the tsunami which swallowed their ocean side home. They were fortunate. His wife and older daughter had been brutalized and murdered by one of the lawless, roving bands of despicable humanity while he had left them to forage for food. His younger daughter had been hidden in the shadows and the bastards did not see her but she had seen them and witness the horrifying ends met by her mother and sister.

His sister and brother were on the moon on September 13, 1999. Those who cared said they were dead though Guido often wondered and felt that somehow...they had survived.

"I saved these for you," the little girl reached into her pocket with a shaking, delirious hand. "When spring comes, we can plant them?"

She gently placed the seeds in his outstretched palm.

Chapter Eight

"The discovery left us shaken." Commander John Koenig told Lars Manroot unassumingly as he consulted his hand, and regretted throwing away the four of spades. "You remember."

He leaned further over the mainframe desk to relinquish his Blackjack hand, lost to an overdrawn King of Hearts, which brought his thoughts full circle to the alien probe again. From the Moon, to the planet Arkadia, and now five years later he was still ensconced on Alpha, and up to his eyeballs in the 'sterile precautions' again.

"Yes I do." Manroot assented to having such a memory. Yea' verily. He remembered that it sucked. He did not come away from it feeling the least bit transformed--unless it was by the puss of a viral infection that had invaded both of his lungs during the frosty, Phase Five blackouts. The fact that the people of Earth were the esteemed offspring of transplanted Arkadians did nothing to restore the heat, or the lights, nor did it prevent Controller Paul Morrow from such dark considerations as issuing environment suits to those who were on-duty, while allowing off-duty personnel to walk around like snowmen in the twenty below zero biosphere. His hand was dead too. Drawing that Ace of Clubs had polished him off. At the rear of the trench, Winters was sitting atop his workstation with his back to the big screen, and chatting with his bud,' Klaus Rotstein who was sitting on the stairs, and looking anxious at the promise of work. "I recall it so well that I still have a hard time opening the refrigerator in my quarters."

Koenig waved casually to Claire Profitt as she dismounted balcony stairs, and began entering data at the services desk. He had given up on the idea of getting a good night's sleep, so he got dressed, and headed for the travel tube. His journal was sitting on his desk with a piece of yellow stick paper serving as a bookmark.

"You're doing good." The commander complimented, reshuffling the cards.

"Good with what, sir?" Manroot asked, his thoughts drifting vaguely out of the vision ports.

"You haven't asked me about the alien probe yet." Koenig explained, and then regretted it.

"Oh yeah." The computer chief exclaimed, temporarily jettisoned from his muse. "You think we'll get it going again? Professor Bergman is confident that we can-"

"-fortify the guidance system, and put it back on a hypothetical course based on it's angle of approach, and the impact marks that it left." Koenig finished for him by rote. So he had heard. A thousand times, in fact. "For chrissakes, Manroot. The cargo that thing carries is one pound of alien bacteria that subsists by feeding parasitically on the weaker strains.

"Here, you deal." He chucked the deck over the gooseneck lamp, unhappy again.

Blackjack was a cruel mistress.

**********

"Commander, we're running out of time." Carter had once told him while a more termagent mistress evaporated the odds with each passing second.

Dusk was creeping up on the planet that they now knew as Arkane, or Arkadia, but probably Arkadia, according to Anna Davis. As far as Koenig knew, this was a normal nightfall, judging by the modest disappearance of the sun in the east, and not the deluxe, breakneck, NASCAR edition that Bergman, and the others claimed to witness.

Lift off absolutely, positively had to happen within 30 minutes. Starns and Pound had already loaded most of the equipment into the Eagle except for the generator and the lights adorning the last stand room of skeletons. Anna Davis and Luke Ferro were still in that crypt.

"Well, what do you think?" Koenig looked at the faces of his team: Bergman, Russell, Carter and Starns, Koenig wanted their input though the weight of decision was ultimately his alone.

"I don't know, John," Bergman answered first. "The soil does not look good. It lacks the necessary bacteria needed to grow edible vegetation."

"We could introduce the bacteria into the soil but it would take 2 perhaps 3 growing seasons for it to reproduce sufficiently to begin the cycle and produce enough food for nearly 300 people," Helena Russell added neutrally and without emotion.

"Yes, but what concerns me is the possibility of mutation of the bacteria by the irradiated soil." Bergman added sternly. "That of course would lead us to nothing..and a death sentence by starvation."

"What is the possibility of mutation? How do we know the bacteria won't take to the soil and be successful?" Koenig persisted. If there was any chance of revitalizing this dead world, it was infinitely preferable than being dead on Alpha.

"I can't tell you, John." Bergman shook his head. "There is no way of knowing. We would just have to try it."

"John," Russell finally showed her opinion, "is it worth the risk to 'try it' on the lives of nearly 300 people?"

"Helena, unless there is an improvement of the power situation, in 24 hours, everyone on Moonbase Alpha will die."

"We've got a launch window." Carter added morosely. "I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if we're not out of here by 08:30 EMT, we might as well stay."

There was more to space travel than just aiming your tub at the Moon, and plunging towards it like a blind man throwing a dart. The satellite had to be in the proper position, or multitudinous power control burns, and course corrections (which would require Aerozine that they did not have) would be necessary to modify their trajectory. It took fifteen hours to reach the planet, but it might take fifteen days to get back if they ignored the countdown clock.

Starns followed him, and then some.

"There's also the amount of time it will take to organize an evacuation?" The investigator surmised. They had never been able to achieve Operation Exodus, so he had no standard upon which to base his assumptions. Drills, and simulations were not helpful because they only revealed the amount of time it would take to fill Eagles with warm bodies. Transferring essential Moonbase systems to the planet's surface was an entirely different matter. They would need more than a change of underwear if they were going to survive.

"How long could we make it on survival rations, commander?" Harness Bull Pound inquired hopelessly.

The question was too depressing to answer so Koenig deferred to Helena Russell on this one.

"Speaking strictly in terms of bread, and water...six months." The physician replied, and Pound's blood pressure pounded.

"I know it is a long shot," Koenig continued after pondering the facts for several minutes. "But its a shot. Its better than being dead in 24 hours." He looked around at the faces again. "Unless the power situation changes on Alpha, we have no choice but to plan to implement Operation Exodus."

Bergman patted the Commander supportively and confidently on the shoulder as he turned toward the Eagle.

***********

"Such tragedy," Anna Davis murmured at her bench in the room of the dead. "It was such a wonderful civilization."

Luke Ferro was for once silent. Anna Davis looked up from her laptop as she closed the lid. He was transfixed.

"Luke? What is it?"

Then she could see clearly.

Chapter Nine

Last verse same as the first:

"Anna." Luke Farro cringed like a big woompus.' Stress showcased his cowardice, and the strap that held the Hasselblad around his shoulder suddenly felt like a noose. One by one the utility lights had been squelched. Darkness was again on the face of the deep, and he had no Teddy Bear to placate him. "Anna." He whispered again, choking on his own, well nourished fear. "You stay here, and keep watch." He commanded as he bumbled towards the door. "I will fetch the others."

"You are not leaving me alone in here," Anna countered, also stumbling toward the door. Equal rights was one thing but Ferro was exhibiting cowardice more than advocation of gender equity.

'No.' A voice ca