Wavelength

Space:1999 The Classic Adventures

Season 2: Episode 34

"Firstly the power of invention, so rapidly intensified...by the rationalized collaboration of all the forces of research that it is already possible to speak of a human rebound of evolution."

--Janice B. Paulsen

THE HOOK

The confluence of stars. It never varied. For months the quasar blinked in the forefront, growing somewhat larger, but insignificant to the desperate intellect. There was the usual web of blue argon with blinking volcanic asteroids--backstage observers in the grand scheme--byproducts, but hardly a Big Bang, in and of themselves. Ionic showers broke the monotony at irregular intervals, but nothing could surpass the brag, and flatulence of a stationary star that had begun to move. The question of what orbit, and what host was irrelevant in the face of slate-wiping death which was not destined to happen. Fortunately. The cool face of Hyakutake was a problem if one considers the larger piezo effects. On Earth, this was never any threat to a good night's snooze, but in deep space, the comet's tendency to bust AC/DC power grids must give us pause.

Far beneath the 1,000 kilometer, diaphanous tale of gaseous illumine, and substrate ice, another type of light poured from the secures, the bells, and the resets of Moonbase Alpha's master computer bank which fell dormant the minute Commander John Koenig exited the MPSR room at the end of panel six.

At the mainframe desk, Benjamin Ouma folded his arms over his chest patiently. A grudge was in the making, but since no one would listen, he seemed content to sit with his thumb up his butt.

"Hyakutake in ten minutes, commander." Controller Paul Morrow reported distantly, his over arching concern was on pulling the RCA jacks from the main rendezvous panel. "All secondary systems have been powered down. We're focusing on the primary now."

"Right," Koenig stood at the top of the landing, arms crossed, as Bergman and Russell joined him, one on either side. All eyes focused on the comet on the big screen. "Commence phased shut down on the primary circuitry. Implement 30 second test of solar batteries." He paused then continued, "Complete shut down in 8 minutes."

Everyone had expected those words 'complete shutdown', but it was still alarming to hear. For 10 minutes Alpha would be completely in the dark and until the grid powered up and stabilized, it would be another hour in the red glow of the solar batteries.

"We need to hurry." Professor Victor Bergman advised after his tonsils were free from a mammoth glob of concern. He was not smiling. "The comet may be 15 million nautical miles out, but there are enough orm particles in there to damage our systems irreparably.

"It will be far worse than a voltage drop." He commented, nodding towards Angelina Carter who was working diligently at her desk.

The bile crept into the back of her throat...again. She felt physically awful and she was so pale, it appeared she had not seen sun in months. Well, she hadn't seen sun in months: correction, not been to the solarium in months. She'd given up coffee in favor of the horrendous Vitaseed. She had tried to kick the caffeine habit before and she would certainly try it again.

"True," Ang nodded glumly. "If we don't completely power down we stand a very good chance of frying our circuitry, literally degrading the conductive properties of the copper to insulators. Not good." She took a sip of the Vitaseed and scowled. Crap. She was tempted to grab a cup of coffee from June Akaiwa's tray but decided against it.

Adisa Talic, 4 months pregnant, gingerly negotiated the steps down the balcony to the computer deck as she glanced curiously at the beautiful but deadly comet tail on the big screen.

Alan Carter was standing casually by the CapComm desk, his unjeopardized chin in his palm, and with one Hush Puppy propped in the futura plastic chair. The quiescent hardware of his workstation reminded him of his fifth wheel, dangerless, Eagleless status. After yawning with extreme torpor, he winked discretely at 'Ang, and returned his attention to the ball of frozen water in high resolution.

"Right." Morrow said, perspiration forming on his tentative upper lip, and closing out a pre-event dialogue box with security. "MAIN MISSION TO ALL SECTIONS ALPHA. THE HYAKUTAKE SWEEP WILL OCCUR IN T-MINUS SEVEN MINUTES."

Abruptly, the line power cells were terminated in a row, driving the green geometric wall panels to extinction. Before, there was radical progress, but that was bum rushed by the advancing harbinger. Now the auditorium was a dark cave, lit only by lamps that were powered by local stars. It was 1,000,000 BC, with demonic spirits dancing for sacrifices in the firelight.

"SHUT DOWN OF THE NETWORK SUPPLY IN T-MINUS TWO MINUTES." Morrow went on, hearing his own voice echo, and bound back to him from the sterile bulkhead walls, and the mounted Dolby speakers. After giving Sandra Benes an ambiguous, iffy glance, he broke the link.

"Prep closeout confirmed." The analyst noted in the mathematical light of a digital spreadsheet that was powered by good karma, and little goddamn else. "Central reactor closeout confirmed; auxiliary transfer to accept." She said, studying the data.

A quiet scowl tap danced across Victor Bergman's cheeks as the red backup blip began to blink, and morse across her wool tunic--a versatile caution, and warning light from what should have been a limited control panel.

"We have a fifteen minute hold." She stressed, looking at the commander, and the professor. "Bus activity from the Experimental Laboratory."

"John, we can't have it." Bergman said urgently. "One infiltrated system could cause a domino effect that could bring down our reference circuits for months, or even years."

This was assuming that they lived to tell. Everyone on the base--without exception, everyone, including the village idiot, and Ed Malcom knew that the electrical meshwork was inextricably woven with the biosphere. If they didn't breathe air, they died. End of story. They were in a bamboo, and straw hut looking at the eye of Hurricane Hyakutake.

Space was a cold place.

"Experimental Lab?!? I thought that was shut down with the secondary systems" Koenig's brow knotted. Extreme urgency flashed across Bergman's face. Russell looked toward Ang neutrally.

"It was suppose to be," Ang acknowledged as she pulled the online circuitry and attempted to trace the demand. "I'll shut it down from here."

She typed in a series of commands and was surprised when the following message answered her: ACCESS DENIED.

"Huh?!?" She tried again with the same result. "Commander, I'm not able to access the override protocol."

"Send it to me," Koenig whirled and dropped into his chair swiveling toward his screen. The email message came from "avcarter" and he studied the circuitry route. He typed in the same commands as Ang followed by his authorization code.

ACCESS DENIED

"Its not letting me in either," Koenig jumped up, followed by Russell and Bergman and he trotted down the step toward the Technical desk.

"We're running short on time," Bergman stated the obvious, clearly distressed.

"JIM!" Angelina punched the white comm stud to the Experimental Lab, calling the manager, Dr. Haines. "All systems for the lab are suppose to be powered down. There's one open and the Commander and I can't get in to shut it down. What's going on in there?!"

Carter was now positioned behind Morrow where he waited with a look of laconical leeriness on his face. The end was drawing nigh, but he took it well. Kate Bullen tried not to stare from her seat at the Procedures desk, though it was probably not 'inappropriate' to stare when one was on the verge of cashing in. Lars Manroot misremembered what he forgot to tell Umberto Garzon about the power domain association problem they would have once the Moon was liberated from the comet's sphere of influence. The anomaly was now his kiester, and his concern was extreme. Physicists, engineers, and astronomers poured from the crampt MPSR to pause by the trench. Among them was Dave Hyakutake, the stargazer who had discovered the instrument of their genocide. He cobbled up an informative cringe of dismay that was not lost on Victor Bergman.

The wait suddenly ended, Sandra Benes' brow relaxed as she inhaled deep, relieving air. Haines replied quickly, and with high octane; with action, not words.

"Blackout initiated." She announced with her eight other lives intact.

John Koenig, relieved but ticked, exchanged gratified glances with Bergman, and Russell. Paul Morrow shook his head ruefully which did nothing to evacuate the steam of umbrage that roiled, white hot, between his ears. He wanted to disembowel someone. Carter was mute, save for the satirical look that he passed on to 'Ang before returning to his useless workstation.

"Ouma!" Koenig honed the radar toward the Chief of Computer Operations. "Why weren't we able to override the circuit protocol and disable Experimental? What's going on with the command access codes?" The commander was incensed as he thundered toward the swivel desk.

"Doing a preliminary system scan now, Commander," Ouma replied tensely. Ole Faithful (ie computer) appeared to fail them again and he was determined to jump to its defense.

"You won't be able to complete it," Sandra announced, watching the shutdown countdown clock. "Primary circuits to central computer closing down....now.."

"DAMNIT!!!!" Ouma blurted as the lights went out on his computer station. Even the power was cut to his desk as he halted in mid swivel. "I need power to complete the diagnostics!"

"There's no time for that, Ben," Ang stood up as Bergman nodded his agreement.

**********

"!!!WHAT THE HELL KIND OF BRILL WAS THAT???" Dr. Haines consulted with hardware specialist Ian Garvey. He nearly tripped in the dark on his way to the meeting--a congress without donuts, or even water. A symposium that was not announced, though Garvey must have seen it coming. No agenda, or Franklin planner was needed. A hatchet probably was. The senior researcher's bitonality alternated from the chords of "E" to "B" flat major, and the melody was on a key of fucking pissed off. "!!!I TOLD YOU TO SWITCH OFF!!!"

Specialist Gloria Eason stepped cautiously aside to avoid being coco butted by Haines, whose ripping, honked off wings fell over Garvey symbolically, though actual bone crushing was a real possibility. Behind her was Garvey's print of the Big Horn Medicine Wheel, it's rim measuring 245 feet, with five aboriginal spokes that connect to the central cairn. There were also 27 aboriginal spokes that supposedly symbolized the number of nights between the old Moon crescent, and the new Moon crescent. To some, this lunar visibility was thought to characterize forces of darkness, and evil.

To Gloria Eason it was a comparable, dionysian, paradise in Aruba. If the Uto-Aztecans could have seen how Haines yelled through bared teeth, they probably would have felt the same way.

"!!!ARE YOU A DIVVY, OR ARE YOU JUST PLAIN DAFT???" Dr. Haines went on, hectoring Garvey.

The specialist with the bright red hair, recently transferred from EOG Station #2, looked up meekly. "There's an experiment I thought we could perform. It involves the effect of orm particle infiltration into an electromagnetic field. If we can determine its effects on EM fields, we could find a way to protect our electrical systems without having to go through the shutdown routine every time."

"It really is an interesting experiment, Jim," Gloria jumped to Ian Garvey's defense. "We thought that the system was self contained...or at least we took steps to contain it without affecting the rest of the circuitry for Alpha."

Somewhere in Haines' mind, the wallet was found; a way of retrieving the car keys without calling the locksmith was achieved, and he acquiesced. The PhD was quick to anger, but in direct proportion to his ability to exude compassion. He groated in the dark, staring down at Garvey's contribution with unhinged, emotional hangover. Gloria Eason had picked up the ball before it could burst into flame.

"Any road." Haines said rationally. "I'll support, in principal, any effort that will improve our situation on this ball of crap." He explained, noting as how there were satcom uplink cables connected to Garvey's enigma machine (And oh how little did he realize--the phrase was beyond apropos.). "On the other hand, I don't think it's a good idea to reserve power for a systems integration test when we're about to be showered with a googol of orm particles.

"Try using the simulators next time." He instructed, his rage bypassed.

He exited into the Thermo-Separations observatory flapping red flimsies against his distraught flares. Eason looked neutrally at Garvey, neither agreeing, nor disagreeing with the outcome of the argle-bargle, and after sparing a last look at the specialist's alternator invention thing, she departed for her station in new ware development.

Ian Garvey was left alone, and in the dark.

**********

"Complete shutdown in 5 seconds," Sandra announced. " Four....Three....Two....One...."

Moonbase Alpha was plunged in darkness without even the luxury of the solar batteries for lights. With stations now useless, everyone in Main Mission gravitated toward the viewports to watch the show as they passed through the tail of the comet. Angelina felt Carter's arm wrap inconspicuously around her waist as she gazed at the show.

"Cool, huh," she whispered, anxious beyond words but still trying to appreciate the beauty in something potentially deadly.

**********

The photons that engulfed the Moon were a Mythraic mystery.

**********

Specialist Garvey stared past the row of vision ports in the SIT chamber with a cold cup of coffee clenched in his forefinger. Following the power down, the science polygon was a dark cathedral. From the curtain of light that began to descend on them outside, images began to form against the laboratory bulkhead. Shades, and vestiges of the underworld; pagan gods in the act of killing bulls while accompanied by dogs, snakes, ravens, scorpions. At his workstation, the alternator--his apparatus for preserving the life of baked circuits--began to tick as the lambent light fell over the bluffs, and valley sides of Plato.

**********

The smallest craters on the Moon are a mile in diameter. They were the last to be flooded by the apocalyptic ions. The largest crater was the Mare Imbrium--the Sea of Rains. It's ancient tiers, and consigned depths were made visible by the exotic wave. Extraterrestrial molecules saturated, and plumed, insidiously, the towers, and flatirons of aluminum, and calcium; rocks formed of magnesium, and oxygen. The satellite was neutered, and reborn into a hermaphrodite of ohms, and orms. Near the polar wastes, Moonbase Alpha shimmered, and defused somewhere in the aureole.

**********

The alien was blunt, and Garvey fell under it's spell immediately. The image that appeared on a monitor without power appeared through waterfalls, arrangements, and set ups of red, green, and blue light. Needles of warm, mesmerizing energy breathed in, and out--stabbing at the thin paper of his subconscious with goofy, uncustomary hands. Within, between, and beyond the vowels, and consonants of communication, the alternator was profane, the message was superluminal. The pixilations on his monitor transcended the working hands of evolution, and Garvey was zonked backwards through the arch of archaic, old sock realities. He fell behind the refrigerator; he was lost in the rinse cycle. The laboratory behind him blurred. His other mind opened, and it was scintillating. Through the dank, cumulous mists he saw sublime chariots. He met Pleiades, the daughters of Atlas, harvesting, and hiding for forty days, and forty nights. The specialist vied beyond the Scorpion, the Archer, and the Sea Goat to the ancient history beyond Atlantis, with sunken barges of Lemon Citrine, and barnacle covered bronze fibula.

The alien on the monitor parted lips that were covered with a billion years of dirt, and Ian Garvey listened.

**********

High above the barracks tops of Moonbase Alpha, the Hyakutake comet burned.

In the observation room of Hydroponics Farm #2, Melita Kelly-Geist doubled over, the stabbing abdominal pain spreading from her lower gut to her navel, to her back and down the backs of her thighs. She felt the blood gush between her legs. Her scream echoed through the room.

In corridor 16, Jeanine Farrow gasped and cried out, holding her barely third trimester pregnant belly as the daggerlike agony seared through her body. If there was light security guard Tony Allen would have seen the fluid was copious and clear. Her scream echoed through the corridor.

Adisa Talic shrieked and dropped to her knees, holding her abdomen. The pain was unbearable as she too felt her womb implode and blood and amniotic fluid gushed out of her body. Her scream echoed through the Main Mission.

Their screams echoed through Moonbase Alpha.

CHAPTER 1

Dr. Helena Russell smiled as the Farrows left, carrying the tiny infant girl with the bright red hair. She returned to her PC and reopened her personal journal.

"December 24, 2006. Briana Farrow was discharged today and although all babies born on this base are unique, Briana holds a special place in the hearts of the Medical Center staff. It has been a long road for Briana in her struggle to survive and yet her journey has really just started, as we all continue to travel uncontrollably on this prison that we call Moonbase Alpha, in search of a home."

"The events surrounding Briana's premature birth as well as the other losses at the time however remain a mystery. Were they connected to the passing of the Hyakutake comet or was it caused by Ian Garvey's experiments?"

**********

Fortunately, each woman was granted a private room. The loss was sudden and shocking for Melita Kelly-Geist and Adisa Talic. In Adisa's room, she lay sedated, still coming out of the D&C to remove the remnants of placenta. Her significant other sat quietly, in the moduform chair, gazing mournfully at her. In his hand, he held the photo of his unborn child, taken the day before during an ultrasound. In fact, only an hour earlier, he insisted on holding his perfectly formed 17 week deceased son, who did not even fit into his hand. At the time, Russell thought it might be a good idea to allow "closure" for the loss. Now, she was not so sure it was the right thing to do.

In Melita's room, she sobbed softly on Angelina Carter's shoulder. Phil Geist was at a loss of words as he leaned against the wall. Melita was only 9 weeks pregnant but her loss was just as profound as Adisa.

The scene in Ward A was not much better. Jeanine Farrow lay sleeping while in the opposite corner, her premature daughter, born 13 weeks before her due date, barely clung to life. The wires and tubes connected to the monitors and life support equipment overwhelmed the small form that was barely visible under all the technology.

Paula Johnson, MSRN spoke in a near whisper as she instructed Raul Nunez on the intricacies of inserting an IV into a vein only a few times larger than a human hair and how to handle a person whose skin was as fine and as easily torn as tissue paper.

Dr. Russell turned as Commander Koenig stepped into the room and up to the observation window.

"If we were on earth and she was in a Level 3 Nursery, her chances at 27 weeks would actually be fairly good." She shook her head. "But we aren't. We barely have adequate knowledge to care for full term infants. I have one person who has any useful experience with preemies." She motioned to Nurse Johnson. "Do you think passing through the comet tail could have caused all our pregnant women to miscarry or deliver?"

"Not according to Victor, and Dave Hyakutake." Koenig said funereally, staring through the open doorway to where Ratko Talic sat wringing tortured fists over his decimated eyes. The satellite technician's dark complexion had bled away to a sickly, demented spackle. "Helena, the nucleus of that comet wasn't radioactive--if that's where you're going with this. There was agglomerative rock, interstellar dust, nitrogen." He pondered his folded arms cluelessly. "Orms, of course. Astrophysics is poring over the data now, but to be honest with you, they really don't know any more than the rest of us."

"Sandra, what's the status on the power-up procedure?" He said, activating the direct connect on his commlock.

"All Moonbase systems have been restored." The analyst replied tepidly. "There appears to have been no damage caused by either the fly-by, or the shut down. 'Ang is working up a performance report, but so far the Data Core appears to be unaffected."

"Inform me if there's any change." The commander said, and speed dialed the physics MPSR. "Victor, have we learned anything else about that comet."

"I'm afraid not, John." The professor said regrettably. "We've evaluated the high bit information three times now." He qualified. "We don't really know any more now than we did before. Hyakutake was a fast moving iceberg in space."

"What about the orm saturation?" The commander interjected. "At its closest point, that comet reached a statute of only 975,000 kilometers."

"Doesn't mean anything." Bergman predisposed. "Orms have no radiating properties. The danger was to our electrical wiring. Nothing else. There may be a connection, but I'm afraid the possibility is remote."

"Damnit." Koenig swore, his cheeks contorted, and perplexed as he returned his commlock to his belt. "Helena, if the problem didn't originate from out there, then it's in here. If that comet had nothing to do with it then we're dealing with a contaminated biosphere."

"We've already been checking for that possibility, John," Helena answered as soon as he finished. "Bacterial and fungal analysis of the biosphere are within normal parameters. Although we have a few more tests to conduct, the tests for virus levels and content so far show nothing out of the ordinary."

She sighed, brushing back a strand of platinum blonde hair behind her ear. "Atmospheric analysis shows the gas mixture and components to be within normal spec and has been since our encounter with the Constellate."

"So, no, the biosphere does not appear to be contaminated," she shook her head, wishing for the easy answers. There were no easy answers.

"Besides," she continued, "what happened to these women was inexplicable and not likely the work of something organic." She crossed her arms and began to pace. "Sure, there are some bacteria or viruses which could cause a pregnant woman to miscarry but most that I know of would be proceeded by a period of illness in the woman. All of these women were healthy and the fetuses were all healthy as well. Then," she walked up to him. "the circumstances...the chances of all three miscarrying like that at the same time." She shook her head, unconvinced. "Like I said, not likely the result of any organic cause. The only occasion that I could think of miscarriage happening so quickly and so violently would be as a result of physical trauma. But this was not the case either."

Bob Mathias stepped into the pillbox unnoticed. His distraction had been such that he forgot to remove his thick spectacles after returning his lab coat to the hanger in his office. In the crook of his left arm, there was a black zippered pouch that he held closely, and confidentially. As he was removing his bunglesome glasses, it occurred to him that Talic might not be ready for the revelations, and potential causes that were contained in his report.

So, he closed the door.

"Doctor?" He said inexorably, approaching Russell while laying his bifocals on the bookshelf partition. "I have the post-mortem results. The document contains a detailed, forensic analysis as well as a visual record."

Helena Russell opened the file while Koenig looked on. Koenig was disheartened at the photo of the Talic fetus; a tiny human being who was thriving one day and laying dead in a specimen tray the next. The only reason why he was not in the ICU like the Farrow baby was the fact he was too young to survive outside the womb.

"Oh," Helena mumbled as she skimmed the report of the Talic delivery. The Talic baby had actually lived for 4 minutes after his birth. He fought the valiant fight, trying to breath but in the end, his lungs were just too immature, unable to be supported by ventilators.

Death was a cruel but undeniable fact of life.

The other photos showed pictures of placenta which to Koenig had no meaning and resembled slabs of cube steak.

"See," Helena pointed to the slab like placentas for Koenig's edification, "this placenta is worse than what we would see in a pregnancy which was two weeks overdue. It rapidly aged and deteriorated and was unable to support the pregnancy."

She switched her focus to the picture and the report of the tiny fetus. "And even though he looks normal, blood tests confirm rapid cellar breakdown."

"We didn't learn much." Mathias admitted gruesomely. "At least not enough to render a diagnosis. Most of the information comes from our analysis of Adisa Talic. The others showed a similar pattern. In each case there was a sudden, pressed incorporation of placental tissues caused by hyperactivity in the cells of the unborn fetus. The result was a kind of gross molecular depletion--almost like aging. The increased permeability led to numerous developmental failures.

"If I didn't know any better, I would swear they were bombarded with a lethal dose of x-rays." He told Koenig inexplicably. "All of the usual causes--TBP genes, physical, and emotional trauma--none of these were present at the time of the miscarriages."

Koenig cocked an eyebrow and otherwise said nothing. The door chimed and when Mathias determined who it was, he opened the door.

Angelina Carter stepped inside and the door slid shut again behind her. "Commander, the operations performance report is ready and I just forwarded it to the Command Staff alias. I apologize for taking extra time to get it out...I was distracted."

The large wet area on her left shoulder caused by Melita Kelly-Geist's tears was evidence of the distraction.

"Nothing unusual to report from power perspective. The orm saturation did not affect the plutonium or the beryllium rods as expected. The power up was uneventful and we did not record anything unusual," she sighed, another migraine had exploded in her head the minute she left Melita. She sighed. "It's all in the report."

"Can I get some Toradol?" she squinted toward Mathias, the light now increasing painful as characteristic of the migraine.

"Nothing?" Koenig said impossibly as he studied the table of contents. "You got that right."

"Is there an essential need?" The wry physician asked Ang' as he unlocked the medicine cart. He uncapped one of the child-proof, puke yellow bottles, and tapped two of the capsules into a two ounce plastic cup. "I think you just want to get wide. Every time I turn around you're coming in here with a headache. Next time try a twelve step recovery program."

There was no such animal on the Moon, so Mathias handed her the Toradol dosage along with a paper cold cup filled with water.

"Next time I won't let greed get the best of me and come to this shithole 30 days before my October 11, 1999 official start date for an extra 30% bonus," she replied flippantly as she downed both tablets in one swallow. She didn't need her buddy the curmudgeon on her case today.

"By the way, I don't want you to awaken me from my beauty sleep when you start to have night sweats, and hallucinations."

She shrugged neutrally, refusing to comment. It wasn't worth the time and effort. Mathias was in a mood and if she retorted he would just become more and more caustic. She knew his day had sucked. He just assisted with a D&C after delivering a premature baby who lived for only 4 minutes and just did an autopsy on same baby. He was also probably going to do another D&C, this time on Melita. After checking the latest entry on her chart, he saw her bleeding was not subsiding. It was the worst that gynecology had to offer, all served up in one huge gory platter.

John Koenig dimly heard the colophon from the damaged doctor. He held a perfect OPR report in wispy hands. It was flawless--a condition that did not occur even during the pre-breakaway drills in Earth orbit. It was immaculate, despite the half-assed rigging they had so desperately deployed over the years to save them being choked out, and mutilated beyond recognition. It was consummate which was as insurmountable as a tray full of stillborn placenta. A remembrance of horror caused him to quail as he watched the ground crews below the vision port stake their claim to forty acres of ormandized Moon rocks. There were at least five rovers out there, but he knew there were more. As predicted, the Geophysics lab had made hay in the morning--an atrocity of common sense considering all that had transpired in the last two hours.

The phrase "delegation of authority" befell him along with the phrase "I hate the fucking Moon."

"Wait a minute...what about Ian Garvey?" The commander perceived as he turned from these reflections. "He was willing to risk doing an SIT of his alternator during the Hyakutake pass. He has a PhD in electrical engineering. He must know a lot--I hope--about the nature of orms, and conglomerate energies. I wonder if he could tell us something we don't already know?"

"That's true," Angelina brightened, a ray of hope coming across her face. "Yes, Jim said he had an idea for an experiment which might eliminate the need for shutdowns in similar situations in the future."

Ang was all for that idea. With every complete shutdown, there was always a chance that power ups would not go smoothly; it had happened before. It was also a tremendous drain on resources since it almost always required fresh plutonium fuel rods; and that was a mineral was not exactly in abundance on the moon.

"Its worth chatting with him," Angelina acknowledged. "Should I bring him along to the Command Conference?"

CHAPTER 2

"I don't have time for a command conference." Garvey said, removed and working diligently to convert his flat head into a Phillips. If only Ed Malcom could be so lucky. "I have a ton of work to do here, and on top of that I owe Gordon Cooper an SEQ for Eagle 3-7."

The alternator was deactivated to avoid death by electrocution. The specialist was laboring over one of the removed modular panels. Within was a brain box of solid state circuitry, and a capacitor that wouldn't not blow, even if it was to save Garvey's soul. Following the Hyakutake Event, as it was called, he had worked vehemently to discover why his prodigious innovation--an umbrella for orms--had flamed out the moment power was restored. In between intervals of speculation, and severe foul language, it had also occurred to him to wonder why he had been in an apparent coma for fifty minutes, and forty-three seconds.

Blair's jocose was no doubt part of the cause.

"No offense old chum, but I think your presence is 'required' on this one." Oliver Blair told his colleague while Gloria Eason gazed into the guts of the open hardware. His 'buds called him 'Nol.' "The invitation came from Dr. Carter. You could be shagging up a storm back there in your flat, and she would still expect you to show up on time. Black tie, and tails. You know the routine."

His role on Moonbase Alpha was that of ADV Electronics and Analysis. The title embraced preproduction, production, and implementation of all experimental systems, which meant that he was qualified to know everything about nothing.

**********

The Chief Medical officer answered her commlock and smiled at the image on the micromonitor.

"There's to be a Christmas Court," John Koenig stated regally.

"Where?" Russell, identifying the line from the Oscar winning movie, replied in queenly sweetness.

"At Chinon." Koenig broke into a smile. "What's up? Movie starts in little over an hour."

The movie was a favorite for both of them. 'The Lion In Winter' featured the relationship between England's great King Henry II and his dynamic queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Ironically, when Eleanor received the messenger who bore the news of the Christmas court, she had been imprisoned ina castle by her own husband...for the last ten years. Helena Russell identified with the "prison" part and longed for "liberation" of a Christmas court: an earth type planet.

"I'm just typing in some notes and finishing up," she sat back, relaxing. "You?"

"Having a little discussion with Victor concerning theories of time space continuum." He paused and glanced as Bergman guffawed in the background. "He's not following my logic."

"Your argument lacks logic," Bergman chuckled in the background. Koenig scowled.

The Chief Medical officer laughed. "Give me another 45 minutes and your entourage can fetch me."

"As you wish.." Koenig nodded in mock servitude, cutting the link.

Helena Russell enjoyed the moment then returned her attention to her journal on her PC.

"Except for Medical, the rest of the base returned to apparent normality. Or so it seemed on the surface. In Experimental Labs, Ian Garvey began to spend an inordinate amount of time working in his area. At first, his efforts appeared to be as a result of enthusiasm and on Moonbase Alpha, enthusiasm for anything tends to be encouraged...except when it begins to become an obsession."

**********

Garvey looked genuinely inconvenienced. The boss was the boss though and short of death, he could see no way out of it. In fact, he knew if he did not comply, he risked being sent back to EOG#2 where he would not be able to work on...

"Why does she want me to go?" he asked Oliver and Gloria, not looking up but mating a connector to a backplane. "I mean, you guys know as much as I do, maybe even more about..." He finally looked up. "What does she want me to talk about?"

Ian Garvey was getting nervous. He was normally shy, kept to his close group of friends and did his job diligently.

"You're the resident 'expert.' Critical knowledge of orm dynamics." He pew'ed. "The way blondie spoke, you'd think the rest of us were a bunch of dustmen. It looks like that comet dumped us a good one. I hear tell, they've sequestered a bunch of mums over in Medical Center, and there's another news blackout to go along with it. Jim has tried to wring the news from those pillocks in Main Mission, but they're not exactly forthcoming with the information." 'Nol relayed with mock gravitas. "Cheer up skip. How many opportunities have you had to feel needed. Since you'll probably live, and die here, you ought to go ahead, and grab your fifteen minutes of fame, me thinks."

After driving Garvey to despair, 'Nol slapped Garvey on the back cheerfully.

"Sure," Gloria agreed, "and look at it this way. You'll get all the dirt on what's happening and you can tell us!"

"I suppose," he answered, attempting to slice a shorter cable into a longer one with the soldering iron. "I guess as long as Hendershot and Bathory from Alpha News Service aren't hanging out here waiting for me to get back...I'll go." He sighed, resigned.

"That's a good man." Blair lauded, opening the hatch with his commlock. He noticed that Phil Inoshiro was still waiting for him outside. It caused his beard to itch. Stress did. "I'm sure you'll live to regret going." He predicted wrongly. "Now, if you'll both excuse me, I'm going to go hang with metal staff for a while. I'll solve their problems, and they won't thank me for it."

The door closed on some specialized naivete.

Eason ran her thumb along the high speed cable that Garvey had spliced, and fed into the output of his alternator. The thing drew so many amps, he had found it necessary to install a separate fuel cell. The backup power supply was married to the high voltage box on the east wall of the lab. She had no idea why it had gone "POOF" earlier, but the burnout had caused Garvey's surrogate to leak water prodigiously. Her black bootheels splashed moderately against the tile floor causing some of the river to funnel into the floor drain. A squeegee was what he needed. She hoped to God that was on the list before he added lightening, and Jacob's Ladders to his Frankenstein monstrosity.

Monstrosity? She cackled nervously to herself. Why did I think that?

"I'd better make a run for it too." Eason cracked, so unnerved by the open case that her long, brunette hair nearly throttled her in the attempt to get away. "Busy day, tons to do. Incidentally, if I were you, I'd dry this place out before you turn that thing on again. The results could be 'shocking,' if you know what I mean."

Garvey said nothing and was already completely engrossed in his own world. He did not notice Gloria's soft touch on his shoulder, which would have gained his complete interest two days ago over cables and wires and machinery. The reflection of the lunar clock in the Plexiglas told him he had to leave in another 15 minutes. He scowled and kept working.

So, she left him at the mercy of George Westinghouse, stopping at her cluttered cubicle briefly to fetch the notes she would need for her meeting with Physical Plant. The bewray of a new radiator-outlet temperature was lost, hopelessly lost, on Antoni Anka--the services deputy who preferred candles instead of lamps; who ate raw meat instead of cooking it; who walked sideways like a hyena rather than assuming the straight, progressive promenade of modern thinking. Her legal pad was under a mountain of files that begged to be converted to disc. Also, somewhere beneath this pile of shit on her desk, there was a black permanent marker. After stabbing herself with a paper clip that she had mangled during a blowzed, crimsoning commlock argument with Claude Murneau, she happened to notice that the white light over her pile had changed to a seasick blue.

She looked over her shoulder to the transparent door panel of the SIT Lab. The chamber beyond was dark except for the blinking lights of Garvey's alternator. He was alone with his cybernetic offspring, and somewhere in the digital embellish, she could see the specialist's tubercular jaws moving up, and down, his mouth gaping open--hearing something that froze his teeth like fossils, that caused language to depart from him.

Who is he talking to? Eason wondered, feeling alarmed, and surreal.

She wasted no time boarding the next travel tube, and got the Hell out of Technical Section.

CHAPTER 3

It was not just a cup of coffee but a huge 32 oz cup of "iced" coffee, which sat in front of Angelina Carter's laptop. Time off caffeine? Approximately 46 hours. Caroline Kennedy, normally not anyone's waitress, happily jumped up from her desk to serve up the Technical Chief the mega sized iced coffee, before Ang left for the Command Conference.

"I'll work on getting off caffeine when this is all over," Angelina explained to Bergman, responding to his look of paternal disappointment, as he sipped on the noxious Vitaseed. She didn't care. Ang's headache was disappearing and the caffeine junkie was feeling better since she took her 'hit'.

It was too much too soon and she would try again next Monday.

Most of the staff had gathered in the room, milling around when the door on the corridor side chirped. Pierce Quentin opened it with his commlock.

"Ian!" Angelina gave a friendly nod. "Glad you could make it."

Well, really, he had no choice.

"Get yourself some coffee or whatever else you want to drink and grab a seat."

"I'm not sure how much help I can be." Garvey said awkwardly, and in otherwise, disinterested tones. He nearly stumbled over the landing as he approached the steps to the well.

Benjamin Ouma finished his plate of Soy Surprise, and dropped the napkin into his disguarded plate.

**********

"Hello, Eagle Two Niner." The system test conductor greeted pleasantly over the commlink to CMP Belzec. At the same time, the red light began to wink over co-pilot Strom's pre-flight module as the Pad Four white room began to retract.

"Right." CMP Belzec told Umberto Garzon, tightening his couch harness. It was the usual circum-polar reconnaissance--the type that occurred three times a day whether anything occurred, or not. "Do you think we'll get lucky today?"

Boredom had wrought a loss of words, and witticisms.

"No." Garzon said honestly from the Main Mission tower, and proceeded with the checklist. "STC-V-CMP, stand by for cabin leak check."

"Understood." Belzec reported as he actuated the valve to drain the hydrogen, and pressurize the spacecraft. This was accompanied by a loud hissing, and the closing of metallic radiator vents. "Commencing cabin leak check now. Our seal indicators are positive."

"STC-V-COP." The conductor broke across co-pilot Strom's headset next. "Verify the following pitch positions: RPU, and RETRO to ON."

"Copy." Co-pilot Strom yawned, flipping toggles. "RPU, and RETRO to ON."

Call it a typical day on Moonbase Alpha. Most were not life threatening. They blighted the heart, and mind by virtue of the endless, impotent nothingness. It was future abstracted. An Eagle was about to lift off, and circle the rock, and they would see nothing, and endure another post-flight debriefing that did not further their knowledge of the cosmos. It was something like Sominex.

Consider it interesting--the tall, tenebrous shadow that fell over the floor, and workstation of the passenger module as the ship's main engines began the slow power up. Co-pilot Strom thought he saw something reflected in the sensor sweep, but then he forgot.

**********

"No." Ian Garvey struggled to answer Victor Bergman's question. "I don't believe orms could have an organic effect. It is...an electrical phenomenon...."

He didn't know what to tell them.

"I don't pretend to be an expert in physics," Helena Russell spoke up weary but annoyed, "but from my premed college physics course, I remember that electrical phenomena certainly do have effects on organic matter, often with damaging results."

"In sufficient enough concentrations, yes, " Bergman concurred over the rim of his Vitaseed.

"Right, and since we were literally inundated with orm particles, wouldn't we at least rule out that as a cause for the..." Helena stopped, realizing that perhaps Garvey did not know what happened.

"Ian," Ang eyed the aggravated Russell then glanced at Garvey. "While we were experiencing the Hyakutake event, all three pregnant women on this base suddenly miscarried. Adisa Talic and Melita Kelly-Geist's children were too young to survive. Jeanine Farrow's baby is very premature and may not survived. Anyway, all other potential causes of these tragedies have been ruled out and the only common factor left is our passage through an orm shower."

She could sense his nervousness. He was not accustomed to being around Command staff, especially not accustomed to being examined under the microscope.

"Is it possible that exposure to orm particles could have caused these miscarriages?"

Garvey rubbed his anguished, intolerant skull with leaden fingers.

**********

"STC-V-COP, the ABORT light is off." Strom said, dizzying. "Our O2 tanks are good."

"Roger, COP." Garzon radioed from the tower as Lars Manroot passed him a cup of black coffee. Controller Zed Astrin stood confidently at his workstation, studying the spacecraft on the big screen as it powered up for ascent. "CMP, verify propellant deluge in five seconds."

That's when crew of Eagle Two Niner stopped communicating.

Inside the command module, Belzec scratched his beard as the whine of the main motors became indistinct. Everything around him seemed vaguely unfamiliar. The yoke; the eight ball; the deep space tracking system; all closeout station, and ingress preps; the fecal containment system; his name. Warm, sentient limbo poured over him as he plummeted into a whipped cream of stupidity. In the co-pilot's couch, Strom looked over at a partner whose name he could almost remember. Behind them, the aft equipment bay was an onyx rectangle as the shadow grew closer. A chill draft ran across the back of Belzec, and Strom's necks as the throttled engines extinguished all other sounds.

"I repeat, CMP verify propellant tank pressurization." Garzon said again over the microphone.

Belzec was falling through diaphanous, white clouds sans parachute. His heart was empty. His mind was a vacant closet. He enjoyed the gift, and relished same. Suddenly, he was a dork, and a dipstick. The only thing dumber was his co-pilot.

"Eagle 2-9 this is your CapComm." Pierre Danielle intervened as Garzon's face maddened. "We need you to check your tanks, and see if they've flooded."

They waited without requite.

Gordon Cooper joined Zed Astrin at his workstation. Both grew irate as the cold silence persevered.

**********

"These aren't Alpha, or Beta waves we're dealing with." Garvey argued--loudly now--with Dr. Helena Russell. "It's not a somatic relationship. These are quantum impulses. They have no known effect on the human brain, or the nervous system. Oh, and incidentally--HOW MANY FEMALES HAVE THEIR OVARIES HOOKED TO A DC POWER SUPPLY?"

He felt like he was surrounded by bovine folks who wanted to sell him plumbing fixtures.

"A female's ovaries have never been hooked to DC power supplies," Angelina answered neutrally as Helena Russell slammed her pen down in frustration.

"Dr. Garvey," Koenig jumped in. "This is not an inquisition. We are only interested in trying to find out what the hell happened with the women on this base during our passage through the comet tail."

He lean forward authoritatively. "If we can't prove that the orm saturation had nothing to do with the miscarriages, then we certainly cannot rule it out as a possible cause."

"Right," Bergman continued, "We are also concerned about other possible biological effects that may or may not be present."

"I've answered that question." Garvey supervened. "There are no biological effects. We've been studying these phenomenon for over fifty years." He boasted empirically, clenching his fist, and projecting on Koenig, and Bergman. "Apparently, some people have forgotten that infamous, Harvard clinical study that was conducted in the eighties--those highly embarrassing control tests on the effects of hyperactive molecules, and charged cells in the human body." He was looking directly at Helena Russell now. "A hypothesis followed by a six year imposition of the scientific method on human subjects, and the only thing it taught us was that ormandized electrodes aren't worth a shit.

"In each, and every case, the human participant came away unscathed." The technician reminded the hacked-off physician caustically. "There were no residual effects, except for the millions of dollars worth of medical hardware that had to be scrapped. The only thing more ridiculous was the Rubles, and Pounds Sterling that were squandered on similar European studies.

"Now." He paused, collecting darts tipped with Cholera. "Let's suppose for a moment that you actually know what you're talking about." The technician proposed subjunctively to Russell. "If passage through the field led to molecular deterioration, then why hasn't everyone else suffered some horrifying side effect?"

He crunched his flimsie, and awaited her response.

"BECAUSE NOT EVERYONE ELSE ON THIS BASE WAS PREGNANT, THAT'S WHY!" Russell countervolleyed while Koenig glanced between the two of them. Sandra Benes sipped her cold coffee and watched from the sidelines. "I'm WELL aware of the study you cite, Dr. Garvey, and what you left out was the fact that the sample was both flawed in control and in adequate size. You also forget the Orm saturation levels were 37 times LESS than what we experienced in passing through the Hyakutake event." She took a swallow of coffee and a deep breath, then continued several decibels lower. " Ergo, there was NO valid conclusion that could be made from that study."

Angelina had gotten up to refill her coffee as the discourse continued. They seemed to be getting nowhere and she wasn't particularly enjoying watching one of her people displaying the stereotypical technical section sanctimonious ego while engaging the CMO. Many of the physicists had little regard for the "medical arts" degreed doctors, viewing them as mere libraries of memorized biology facts with a distinct lack of problem solving ability. If it wasn't in a textbook, it confounded them. As Ang was about to turn and put an end to it, she glanced out the viewport and noticed Eagle 2-9 in the distance.

Carter had also come up to the coffee table and gave her a look mixed with amusement and pride. Pride because her ability to manage the difficult personalities of technical section was admirable. Amusement, demonstrated by the slight upward twitch in the left side of his mouth, instantly returning to complacent, was a reminder not to let the stress of managing egomaniacs get on her nerves.

Ang saw his look out of the corner of her eye. She was still studying the flight path of Eagle 2-9. When Carter saw her frown and furrowed brow, he followed her gaze out the viewport.

Then, his jaw dropped to the floor, and stayed there.

The space vehicle was ascending parabolically at a berserk, 90 degree azimuth. Beneath the command, and service modules, the ACS mini-jets continued to burn long past the point when the inertial guidance system should have sent the ship on an easy, horizontal coast. Instead, it was racing upwards, higher, and higher, and with no respect for map, or sextant. It had long cleared the five mile, standard abort area as it rocketed upwards into the gulf of deep space, her hull, and transom spun wildly while the engine bells continued to spray nonsymmetrical crystals in delirious, incongruous, mental circles.

"WHAT THE HELL KIND OF TEE UP IS THIS?" The pilot blurted as soon as his voice returned.

"COMMANDER KOENIG. URGENT. REPORT TO MAIN MISSION IMMEDIATELY." Tanya Alexander boomed suddenly over the commstation speakers.

Koenig immediately bolted out of the pit, proceeded only by Carter's lightening speed into Main Mission. The Chief of Reconn was already at the cap-comm station as the others were still making their way out of Koenig's office.

"THEY WEREN'T CLEARED YET." Controller Astrin explained tumultuously to Koenig, and Carter. His eyes remained glued to the hassle of data that poured across the flight dynamics tab. "WE WERE HALF WAY THROUGH THE BODGEING CHECK LIST WHEN BELZEC THROTTLED UP HIS ASCENT STAGE."

"???WHAT HAPPENED???" Koenig blared, watching death unfurl on the big screen. "???IS THIS A HARDWARE MALFUNCTION???"

"???HOW CAN THAT 'FRIGGIN BE??? THEY'RE IN MANUAL MODE." Carter resounded unachievingly, almost tearfully before engaging Gordon Cooper. "RESCUE EAGLE NINE IS ON PAD ONE."

Cooper, who had been studying the erratic flight path from lift-off to five minutes EMT, was about to tell the pilot that he was crazy, but Koenig did it for him.

"ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND, CAPTAIN?" The commander asked with irrevocable finality. "THERE'S NO WAY TO DOCK WHEN THEY'RE IN A ROLL LIKE THAT. BOTH CREWS WOULD BE LOST."

The truth of the matter was obviate. Belzec, and Strom were already dead, in substance if not in fact.

Angelina Carter stood behind Michelle Cranston at the Technical Station, reading the Eagle status data streaming on the monitor. It appeared Eagle 2-9 was about to become salvage.

Ben Ouma, who gave Tanya Alexander the "beat it" look when he returned to his swivel desk, had typed a series of commands to query the projected flight path of Eagle 2-9. He turned the desk toward Koenig, a look of doom on his face.

"Commander...Eagle 2-9 is on a crash course to the lunar surface. Estimated impact 90 seconds. Estimated impact area...Main Mission tower."

"Activate the shutters," Angelina blurted automatically as she keyed in the codes and the reinforced steel began moving over the viewports. It was probably an ineffective gesture.

Everyone's attention turned to Commander Koenig and Captain Carter. 90 seconds. There was no way they could evacuate to safety in 90 seconds. Everyone in Main Mission was dead.

"John." Bergman said quietly, with ghastly, selfless logic. "The meteor screens. If we raise them we can save everyone else. They're calibrated to repel debris much larger than Belzec's Eagle."

Alan Carter was leaning on aggrieved elbows as Pierre Danielle looked dreamily away to the west wall of vision ports. Gordon Cooper turned away from Zed Astrin, and considered returning to the SPAN room. He bowed his head as it gently occurred to him that there would soon be no space vehicle to analyze. His exit through Koenig's office was a statement--a symbolism for the ages.

Repel was perchance too small a descriptor. The calefacting barrier could vaporize the core of a 300 ton boulder. Nickel iron, aluminum, magnesium, volcanic glass--the fuselage of an Eagle, and human flesh--none could survive the incinerating effect of the field. Belzec, and Strom's fate was sealed in scorched, coagulated blood.

"'Ang." Koenig whispered inexorably. "Raise the screens...highest possible calibration. Alert Condition Red."

She knew the reality of Koenig's command. Ang felt her cheeks flush from the stress and impending death as she glanced at Carter. His expression as unreadable as a black hooded executioner, he locked her in a painful gaze then....she perceived the color of his eyes turning to ice blue as he gave her a barely perceptible nod.

All of this happened in the span of 3 seconds.

"Yes, Commander," she acknowledged and began to initiate the death warrant.

"Meteor defensive screens to full power." Her voice echoed through evil mushroom as well as the power generation area.

"Acknowledged," Yuri Petrov's flooded through the Main Mission speakers 10 seconds later.

Another 10 seconds passed as chatted ensured in the background between Petrov and Carter Jackson in Power Generation .

"Full power in 10 seconds." Jackson reported, stoically, replacing Petrov's image and voice..

Paul Morrow appeared in the open MPSR couloir holding a copy of Eagle 2-9's expired flight plan. His stressed lips parted, but the gesture seemed sterile, so he forced them closed again following a deep, delusive breath. At the controller's workstation, Astrin glanced knowingly at the senior operative. A tag team would not suffice. Two brains were not better than one unless it was to double the flummox. There was an "I" in the word "team," and it stood for "insufficient." Tanya Alexander backed away towards the steps, bracing for a concussion that would never occur for her. Sandra Benes watched the Comsat telemetry as the spacecraft plummeted 4,000 feet per second, towards flaming squash, and unquestionable annihilation.

Ian Garvey was standing quietly by the balcony stairs, and if the look of censure, and slur--both coming from Helena Russell--could have killed, he would have been a goner.

Eagle Two Niner re-entered the prime recovery zone just short of Perimeter Station Five. Her swooping pads clipping the top of a three mile, microwave communications tower before the vehicle plunged into the charged, ion barricade. The actual impact occurred 100 meters above the dining complex where everyone was destined to have their meals interrupted. The command module vanished in the intense incalescense while the remaining scrap metal from the super structure was amalgamated into a fiery, unrecognizable crag that pelted the Plato basin sending up geysers, and plumes of fluxing regolith.

Afterwards, with crude, inconsiderate evil, the shield faded back to its perdu incandescence as the fire fly remainders fell to the ground like a snow storm in Hell.

CHAPTER 4

Annoyance was written all over Michelle Cranston's face.

She glanced at the physical checklist then back at the spreadsheet on the monitor. The discrepancy in the numbers of certain types of printed card assemblies was plain and it was a disturbing mystery. Cranston did not want to report it..yet..for reporting would mean notifying Ang and bringing the Truman Starns group into the scene. However, it was imperative to find those boards soon not because it would trigger an order to refresh the inventory. The boards in question were power amplifier circuits and could be used for anything that required a huge drain of power. Anything included something as insidious as explosive construction, a bomb.

She nervously picked at her cuticles, wondering if she really should let Ang and Security know what was happening then rationalized that she was probably being overreactive. But still... Michelle sighed torn by indecision. She glanced at Pierre Danielle who had come to wait patiently for her to get off duty and promptly crashed on the couch. He was out cold: there was no way she would get any sort of coherent advice from him.

The icy dagger plunged into the back of her neck and her head exploded with pain. She couldn't see....she couldn't scream. Her whole body shook with chills and her skin turned blue.

Then....it was over. Stress, it has to be stress, she reasoned, a little weak and the headache lingering in the back of her skull. It's also freezing in here, she determined, though the large digital thermometer indicated a comfortable 68 degrees F.

Cranston arose from her desk and walked shakily over to the sleeping pilot, covering him with a blanket. She sat on the edge of the couch, her petite frame requiring very little room and gently ran her fingers through his hair. Two more pilots dead. She secretly thanked God Pierre wasn't on that ship then felt guilty for being so greedy, considering pilot Belzec's girlfriend had suffered a nervous breakdown and was now in Mathias' padded room.

When Michelle stood up again, determined to return to her inventory mystery, something caught her eye through the observation window. The view of one of the 5000 gallon plating bath tanks was usually unexciting but this time there was something unusual. She was out the door within half a second.

"Death Becomes You"

The writing across the giant tank was disturbing enough but upon closer inspection, it was not paint but oxidize metal. Oxidized metal of the plating tank. Small rivulet of blue plating solution began to ooze out of the oxidized areas turning the writing from dark orange to black.

The plating technician rounded the corner and stopped, wide eyed. "What the ???" He blurted when he found his voice. "We need to empty this tank...NOW!"

Michelle was already turning the main valve to the 'open' position.

**********

The amber glow of the light panels only emphasized the man's depressed mood. The woman listened attentively as he lay back, unable to sleep, trying to release the anguish of losing yet more people.

Despite it happening several times before, despite his all too familiarity with death, it never got any easier.

The woman continued to listen, embracing him, providing him the comfort of physical touch. Comfort led to feelings of mutual sensuality and the woman imparted tender kisses to his mouth, his jaw; slowly down his throat then his chest. He drew in a sharp, anticipatory breath as she kissed and caressed him, working her way down to his abdomen when the small shadow in the doorway drew her eye and caused her to abruptly stop.

The child, rubbing his eyes, climbed up on the foot of the bed as Angelina moved to make room for him.

Nicky Carter positioned himself between his parents, looking intently at his father through dazed eyes.

"What's up, ace?" Alan Carter whispered.

Nicky cupped Carter's face with his small hands and his lower lip began to quiver.

"He's here, Daddy," He whispered. "Make him go away."

Then, the toddler threw his arms around the pilot's neck in a frightened embrace and began to weep.

Carter took a break from his pity pot, and comforted his son, hugging him closely, but somewhat absently. In his thoughts, the caissons kept rolling along--not that they were needed--what was left of Belzec, and Strom could have been poured into BlarneyTea Bags. According to 'Coop, there would bean inquiry. The remains of Eagle 2-9 would be pored over by every EPS guy on the base with uncompromising, acrimonious scrutiny. It didn't seem to matter that all that was left of the spacecraft was a single, half ton extension nozzle that was melted around the output like Fetta cheese. Plant specialist Horace Pick reportedly watched it fall to the ground from his almost underground, anti-social, concrete supply bunker near a busted lunar instrument pack. According to legend, it landed not fifty meters away from where he stood before his narrow, hermit's window, and opened for him like a butt.

Carter nodded, acknowledging the child's trepidation.

"Tell Mathias if he doesn't want any sprogs running around Medical Center, he needs to find some other way of getting rid of them." He told 'Ang, and then, standing, he carried Nicky with him into the living area, and looked sardonically at the preliminary report from Technical Section that had somehow landed on his funky, plastic desk. The verdict from those who were "in the know" was that the Eagle had encountered some special effect, or extraneous circumstance which led to an unfortunate progression which may have been systemic, and it may, or may not have led to the death of the prime crew.

It was Pete Garforth's exact words. There, for all to see, and scratch their heads at the ludicrous, vaguery of it all. The report was fluff, without ice cream. It was a desk without drawers. Even if you understood the full implications of this piece of paper--the fundamental indispensableness of this analysis--you would still be tempted to blow your nose with it.

"Does Garzon buy this crap?" He asked, and gave it an ornery left eyebrow.

"I doubt it," Angelina replied from behind him, not really caring for his blunt assessment of the Technical section report but not disagreeing with it either, "Pete tends to get wordy in his reports."

Pete Garforth was a creative writer in his spare time. His "Mission: Impossible" and "Hawaii-5-0" fan fiction stories were usually top notch and he had a strong reader following. However, he also had a tendency to blur the line between technical writing and creative writing styles when he just did not know what to say in his reports.

"Bottom line: We don't know what causes Eagle 2-9 to go haywire."

Of course, it all pointed to something the crew may have done but it was not the time to mention it. Carter knew they were in manual and pilot error was a likely conclusion that could not be ignored by anyone.

Her attention was focused primarily on Nicky. Wide eyed with tear stained face, he stared in the distance as he rested his chin on Carter's shoulder, left arm wrapped around his neck with right hand gripping the pilot's bicep. Alan had assumed he just had a bad dream, typical of any normal person. Initially, so had Angelina.

Ang's intuition and Nicky's reluctance to go back to sleep told her something was wrong.

'What's the matter, baby?" She soothed, caressing his cherubic cheek. "Who's here?"

He pointed his small index finger in the direction of the open door of the dimly lit lavatory, staring at it while tears filled his eyes. Angelina glanced in the direction he pointed.

"'Buddyroo, there's nothing here, but malarkey." Carter assuaged the boy, hugging him while feeling his attention drawn angrily back to Garforth's poetic, useless hypothesis. How 'bout those special effects? How 'bout those unfortunate progressions? How 'bout balls, my good fellow? "Belzec, and Strom were top flight." He informed 'Ang with unyielding certitude. "We've got a handful in the rotation who aren't stand-up guys--I'll grant you that--but those two? They were highly trained astronauts, and engineers. Both of them spent thousands of hours in the simulator, and their psyche profiles were 'frappin concrete. What happened up there was almost like suicide." He observed while trying to force the conclusion back into his temples with his left fist.

Residence Building-A was a four story domicile that was hooked to the web between the east ring, and the rear wall of the Technical Hub. Beyond the vision ports, there was a seldom traversed concave of lunar soil that he jokingly referred to as the 'courtyard.' Looking down, the pilot saw this uncorrupted, sanctified slice of bullshit dirt trodden upon by Bea Acton, and her boys in the geology room. Metallic pales sliced the one-sixth gravity as though it were quicksand. Underestimating the adamant nature of the rocks, a few of the shovels bowed, and bit them back. Carter watched humorlessly while one of the fools fell backwards--helmut down, lunar overshoes up--onto their can. Another looked like he was pounding off--slowly battening, to no avail, on an intransigent brass plate.

Whoever it was, they would probably be more successful using their head, the pilot knew.

"Now, that arse in the care unit is wanting new profiles on everyone." He went on, speaking through clenched teeth. "'Coop is wanting cancel all flights until further notice, and the commander isn't arguing with him. On top of that, they've scrubbed the pre-flight testing on the Mark XII Eagle.

"We've got to have that ship." He insisted, gaining a new interest by observing the rock hound who appeared to be squandering his, or her valuable time by doing shadow play against the bulkhead beneath Claude Murneau's office.

Nicky blinked and his face relaxed, though he still eyed the lavatory warily.

"You know its just temporary, Alan," Angelina's attention now drawn into the discussion. "It's better to be cautious, especially in test flying a new ship." And to ensure the pilot doesn't go nuts, she thought but did not add.

"Besides, the psychological profile request is also a precaution too. Bob told me you guys were long overdue for an update anyway; you know updating the psyche profiles are standard procedure just like the physical every 6 months." She sighed. "Besides, he didn't say they lost their minds."

Though later she would realize just how close to the truth she really was.

"Overdue?" Carter said fantastically, shaking the boiling pot between his ears. "'Well, that's a fine 'how you going' Angelina. Kind of funny, isn't it? Two of my men die questionable deaths at precisely the same time that good, old Dr. Bob decides to empty his hard drive. Hey you--'love 'ya, love your work. By the way you're bleeding bonkers.'"

He wished to be a Hindu reincarnation--a koala bear, stoned on eucalyptus, but he wasn't.

Ang said nothing but gazed at him sympathetically. It had taken her over an hour to bring the Chief Pilot's blood pressure back down to normal levels and in 10 minutes, Pete Garforth's report managed to undo all of her efforts. All arrows were pointing to 'pilot error' whether Alan Carter believed it or not.

Nicky turned curiously to study the activity outside the viewport. His eyelids slowly drooped as if attached to leaden weights, as he watched the orange suited figures lumber along the dusty lunar surface. It wasn't very exciting since he was accustomed to watching activity 'outside.'

His eyes abruptly widened and his jaw dropped, lower lip slowly beginning to quiver.

"!!!GO AWAY!!! !!GO AWAY!!!!" Nicky screamed angrily at the viewport, startling both of his parents out of their conversation.

All thoughts of Bob Mathias, and his Freudian overtures--his computer, yes, yes yes--were immediately slammed shut by this alarming wrinkle that barged into an already intolerable situation like a brute demanding a ham sandwich. Carter studied 'Ang, hoping for some maternal wisdom that would foster some semblance of sanity. He's been staying up too late. Always a good one. No more tube. That could almost be the case, were it not for the fact that on Moonbase Alpha, your only choices were classic, reference library DVD's like "Othello," and the fucked up dreck that Barbie Doll Bathory spewed out during the irregular Max Factor/Alpha News Service broadcasts. He supposed that the child may have seen how the bull was breaking the rest of them down, and as a result, was suffering a sympathy breakdown.

If 'Ang had a handle on things, she evinced no sign. She needed to lift the hood. This parental conflagration was not only out of control, it was urged on by the winds, and heading for sensible civilization.

"Heyyy, Bugalugs." The pilot sibilated comfortingly. "There's nothing dodgy out there."

He looked to make sure himself, but he didn't know why. Beyond the vycor plates there was eternity. The universe was nothing, if not bleak, and ill-boding. There were no tulips, or rainbows to be had. There was only magnificent, terrifying isolation. Well, that and the dead cert dumbbells that formed Bea Acton's geology team. He saw one jake sitting in the lunar rover with his feet propped up.

Heck of a team.

Since they were nearly nose, to nose with their petrified son shielding their view, neither he, nor 'Ang saw the transparent glint of the apparition which appeared somewhere between heart palpitations. It gained substance briefly, alternating between flesh, and bone, and a badly aimed projection image, and canted away from Pete Garforth's fluff report. Feeling his neck hairs prickle, Carter turned to look in the direction of his desk, but saw nothing except for the furniture, and the Melbourne Family crest that was anchored to the light panel.

Angelina suddenly felt a little sick to her stomach and weak.

Nicholas Carter writhed with rage so violently that Carter put him down, almost dropping him.

"GO AWAY!!! GO AWAY!!!" He angrily picked up his matchbox cars, his blocks and his balls, whatever he could grasp with one small hand and start throwing them in the direction of Carter's desk: hitting the desk, knocking Garforth's poetic technical report to the floor, hitting the chair, narrowly missing the laptop, hitting the Melbourne Family crest on the light panel.

His parents were stunned at the display of extreme ire until Angelina scooped the hysterical child up and gently but firmly held him, navigating backwards toward the rocker. The security of his mother's arms along with the rhymic rocking, gradually caused Nicky to succumb to the exhaustion and fall asleep.

Angelina's back ached. She wanted to put him to bed and get some sleep but judging from Nicky's twitching and grimacing, he was not in a deep enough state of sleep yet and if she moved, he would probably wake up screaming. She continued to rock him, holding him tightly.

"Do you think he actually saw... something?" she whispered to Carter, who was sitting silently and completely unreadable on the low rider couch.

No, cream puff, the man don't believe in ghosts. The pilot was about to say, but a gander at the hard linoleum floor, partially covered by an El Cheap-o Persian rug--a relic from his days as a wanton, tasteless bachelor--convinced him that he needed to keep his opinions, and his ire to himself. The oxidized pattern formed an incurable, haphazard S-shape that looped from the open closet, past the vision ports, and circled back around to his desk. Carter didn't notice it until 'Ang turned on the art deco floor lamp in passing. The most deteriorated portion was beneath a frameless shot of galaxy M33 that hung between their bedroom door, and the glue for a century. The tile was buckled, and flaking like particles of infected, yellow rust. The grains were as fine as sand. The decay appeared to reach its limits since the pellicles returned to the familiar, gunmetal gray color beyond a two foot radius. A closer browse revealed his own size ten boot prints all over the floor from where he had walked ponderously through the dust. 'Ang's heel prints crisscrossed his own big feet.

"What rhymes with 'snit?" He asked her, confounded, and stooping before the peels to acquire a sample on his left thumb, and forefinger.

The answer was 'shit.'

"Dr. Carter." Caroline Kennedy called asuddenly from the commstation. "I'm sorry to bother you, but could you report to the Dissembly Lab, and ask Captain Carter if he can come with you."

The pilot had to change his flares first. The foiling was all over him.

CHAPTER 5

Garvey was heading away from Koenig's office, and down the accessway when his decapitation arrived in the form of a splitting, nauseating, almost vomitous damn headache. The synaptic pain massaged him with barbed wire, and blew sweet nothings in his ear, hard enough to burst his ear drum. He was so overcome that his green flimsie fell from scrutiny as he leaned against the commstation, and waited for the buoyant torture to subside. A hundred kilometers back, the door to the commander's office closed in dislocated slow motion while the wall panels dimmed briefly, and then erupted to va-voom both retinas. Then the Flu Pixie soft landed on his shoulder, and added abdominal cramps to the proceedings.

He wanted to croak.

His mouth tasted like bat guano.

Then...just as quickly, his mucous subsided, and the paroxysm was gone.

Sheened with a queasy sweat, and still feeling the after shock of the sledge hammer against his temple, he entered the MCR cantina, and found 'Nol Blair sitting at one of the round tables with a mug of Glucose-A. Umberto Garzon was there too. His break time having gone, he deposited his empty coffee cup on the dumbwaiter, and nodded his regards to both men before returning to Main Mission.

"Alright." The ADV-E specialist told Garvey. "Clue me in on what happened. Was the command conference a bang, or were they all brassed off, and in your face? I hear blondie is all cheeky over what happened to that Eagle. Doesn't matter that our section had nothing to do with it. The Evil Queen demands change, and all of our asses are on the line; mayhap Jim is lapping the whole thing up.

"By the way, what the hell is wrong with you? You look like you swallowed a box of tacks."

"I'm fine," Garvey lied, pouring himself another cup of cruddy Moonbase Alpha coffee; flavor of the month was "Breakfast Blend". It still tasted like cat turds. "The boss wasn't bad but that Dr. Russell...what a bitch. Typical 'medical arts' doctor," he sneered superiorly, "they spend years memorizing every comma in their anatomy books but never learn how to solve problems."

He gulped and scowled. "God! I can't stand that woman! All three preggers women lost their kids at the same time. The Farrow kid is premature and probably won't make it." He shook his head. "For some reason, Russell and her medical midgies think Orm saturation has something to do with it. Can you imagine?!?!?" He laughed loudly. "The dumbasses..."

"Well," 'Nol said considerately, sipping his soda. "I take it she's trying to hustle us along too. Hmmm. You know what they say. Anyone who does the job is a cock up. Anyone who doesn't have to do the job is an expert."

He mourned the sentiment, simultaneously noting the green discoloration of Garvey's cheek line in the harsh lights of the canteen. He found it odd. Most people didn't turn green when they sat near a bright light source. It made the ADV-E uneasy. He also didn't particularly care for the way the specialist had mixed humor with the concept of miscarriage. It seemed right strange. Then again 'Nol Blair didn't have Haines, and the commander handing him codswallop. Likewise, he did nothing to promote administrative action, so in that respect, he had no sympathy.

He was beginning to wish for some disaster to occur which might extricate him from this little social meeting. Every power line on the base has just come to life, has become ambulatory, and is in the process of goosing everyone in their hindquarters.

Right, I'll be there momentarily.

"Cheers." Gloria Eason interrupted, burned out, and chaffing as she entered the break room, and stepped up to the neon-lit beverage dispenser. She was fresh from her consultation with Antoni Ankah in Main Mission. The conference had taken place on the balcony--a relaxed enough locality, considering that the plant manager had no intention of listening to her ideas on radiating temperatures, and for that matter, refused to acknowledge her native IQ as a human being. So, she soon departed from him, urged on by his borderline, asshole sneer.

"Gloria!" Blair motioned her to a chair, "Meet Ian Garvey, Alpha's first serial baby-killer." He chuckled as Gloria's face dropped in dismay.

"Uh?!?!" Eason uttered, as she lowered herself into the moduform chair, crossing her right leg over her left knee in ladylike fashion.

"That's not funny, asshole," Garvey growled at his buddy, Nol.

"Aren't we tender?" Blair noted, setting his drink back on the table. "You started the cor with your 'baby-in-an-orm-wave' jokes. Now you want to get bloody serious on me again."

The specialist ignored the ADV-E as the Moon turned sideways on him again, and did the Hokey-Pokey. The brain melt-down had commenced afresh with clogged sinuses pounding away at the back of his eyeballs like cursed researchers digging into Tut's Tomb. There was a hot pulsating they threatened to turn his lunch into bulkhead paint, and he was having difficulty hearing too.

"Stay sharp." Garvey alienated them, and left the canteen enroute to the command tower lift. He was past Koenig's office, and heading for the elevator doors when all at once, every power cell on the base was extinguished again. He uttered expletives as he stumbled in the dark, groping for something to orientate himself with. The panels slowly came to life again, but it was with an unfamiliar, alien orange glow, mystical, and barely visible that he had never seen before. It reminded him of temples, and burnt offerings. There was no sound at all in the accessway. No commstation blips; no monotonous ring from the local life-support apparatus. It was as silent as a church yard.

"Blair?" He said, wending his way cautiously back towards the canteen with his green flimsey rolled into a ridiculous club.

The vending room was completely empty. The ADV-E, and Eason were gone. Jimmy Hoffa gone. Even their drink cups were no where to be seen. The lid to the dumbwaiter was closed, the machinery was off. The tables were wiped completely clean like silver casket lids.

Garvey turned around, confused. He stepped out into the corridor and punch in the commlock code.

"Haines, Are you there?" Garvey waited, listening to the popping and cracking of the static. "Haines?"

He tried another code. "Gloria? Gloria, are you there, babe?" He tried to sound cool but his body temperature was on broil, a raging hot furnace from the inside out.

Another code. "Nol?" No answer.

He stepped up to the commstation and hit one of the preprogrammed white studs. "Main Mission...Astrin...are you on? Helloooooooooo? Anyone home?"

He glanced up and down and realized corridor 15, a busy thoroughfare with almost continuous traffic was...empty. Even during the graveyard shift, he would not expect it to be...abandoned.

Ian Garvey walked around the technical hub utterly confounded. Caroline Kennedy was not at the reception desk. The vast technical cubicle land did not harbor a single soul. He glanced at the fishtank.

The filter no longer humm-hummm-hummmmmmmmmmmm'ed. Alternately, the appliance was dead, and without juice. The salt-water vat, along with its seaweed flora, and faux castles were inhabited by no exotic fish. Light from the dismal orange panels crept up the marble base to reveal a vacated interior. They had apparently evacuated the Moon along with everyone else, and now Ian Garvey was the last man on Moonbase Alpha. He would be the most dejected emperor in human history. On the plus side, there was no one there to complain about him being a tyrant.

He shook off the weird feeling and began walking toward Residence Building A, to his quarters. He had to pass the Carter quarters and was surprised to find the door open.

"Dr. Carter?" He called from the corridor, into the quarters. "Captain?" He smirked. "Nicky?!?"

No answer.

He stepped inside and looked around. Everything appeared to be in place but no sign of the Carters. His eye was drawn to Nicky's corner of the living area. Bram Cedrix had constructed a flexible race track for the child's matchbox cars from crane lift belts. The track began at the edge of the table, angled down to the floor followed by two complete loops. Three small cars were curiously lined up neatly at the edge of the ramp.

Garvey sat on the floor next to the track, pushing the first miniature car onto the ramp, watching it cascade down the track and successfully navigate the loops. Instead of continuing off the track and across the floor as physics would ensure the proper expectation of momentum, it...stopped..as soon as it reached the end of the track.

Garvey furrowed his brow.

Then, a theoretical, and meteorological nodus. Wind was blowing on the Moon. He could feel the rush of the jet stream as it blew his bangs across his eyes. I need a jacket, he thought to himself. An article that had not been necessitated since leaving Earth orbit. He turned slowly on his ankles, and knees, looking past Carter's desk, and the black pillar of the commstation to where the east wall of the quarters had once been. The vision ports were gone now, along with the bulkhead itself. Beyond lay a wide, black hole into infinity. Where normally he should have been able to vie the outer cityscape (That is, if he managed to somehow survive screaming mutilation by explosive decompression.), now there was only a field of fathomless ebony.

A yawning cavern. A collapsed star, folded into the Carter quarters. A gale force ushered in, blowing papers across the room, while an invisible hand urged him back, and sideways towards the sofa.

As I was saying....

Garvey recoiled as the vortex turned the room upside down. The pagan lights died away, and were replaced by a blue spotlight that fell upon him, and drenched him with sweat, and appreciated his skeletons. The specialist tried to con, and barter his way towards the open door, realizing too late that the hatch was already closed, and his back was pressed against it by supermassive G-Forces. The voice that beckoned him from the darkness emanated from a pale outline somewhere in the bowels of the hollow.

Remember what I told you....

When time died. Garvey did remember it, and it took every rational defense mechanism in the box to keep him from the rubber room. He saw armies with a syllogism, but no weapons. Corpulent soldiers of fortune, and their hegemony on a billion worlds. It was a place outside this galaxy, a rift the human consciousness. A universe between thoughts. The cadavers marched forward with bees protruding endlessly from the blackened orbits of their skulls. They proceeded past the rows of pitted obelisks, with lapping cerebuses at their sides. Beyond the decaying coliseum, five moons were trapped in the polluted clouds. Beyond them, a brown dwarf baked the planet with solar flares that extracted the last of the star's precious hydrogen.

They killed their females, and their offspring. They killed one another, but somehow, Ian Garvey found that wise considering.

Garvey looked up and the contours of the Carter quarters returned once again. The first car was again moving off the ramp, gliding across the floor until its movement was abruptly halted by the collision against the far wall.

The second car was on the edge of the track, though he hadn't remembered moving it. He hesitated for an undetermined amount of time. Finally, with a push it was on its way. Down the ramp, up, over, down the first loop, it approached the second loop and up, over.......

It stopped. The matchbox car was completely upside down at the top of the loop. He crawled on all fours as he studied the car curiously, seemingly hanging in mid air.

The specialist jerked away, hyperventilating, and watching the matchbox oxymoron through glazed eyes. He was perspiring all the way down, and past the stark neckline of his tunic. The diecast 'Chev with flaming quarter panels rolled forward, and righted itself to the finish line. His leer was bracketed as he breathed a jejune sigh of relief. Then his red hair follicles began to stand, as if statically charged. He pivoted on his heels, and saw down the hallway, and through the open door of Carter's bedroom. On the modular dresser sat a dime store rip-off of the pulchritudinous Aphrodite of Melos, the Venus de Milo in all of her paraplegic beauty. Ten inches tall, and valued at a nickel ninety-five, she had come with a bullshit, fake marble base, and with a rough-hewn, untalented corrugated milkweed construction. Engineering cement held the robe in place which kept her innocent, a rig-job that mythology connoisseur Alan Carter had failed to notice when he purchased it.

As a mark of good taste, it was only a step above a water bong.

Garvey watched the dreadful aspect of this yard sale goddess as she came vivaciously to life, and began to thrust her spackled titties, and clothed pubis at him.

Then the wall behind the sofa faded to a cypher of addition signs, a million rows each. One, by one they were eclipsed as the cold storage cavern opened up for him again. The pale intruder was somewhere near the end, holding his cloaked arms up, praising the inferno, and its pandemonium. Ian Garvey, respectably garbed in his boots, tunic, belt, and commlock felt like a frozen caveman in the light that poured over him from the triad above the being's head.

What they did to us....

Yes, the specialist recalled that too. It came back to him like a yellow stick memo that had been injected into his skull. The worst part of the narrative was when the humanoid being, after being starved, and dehydrated for nine days, squinted at the creaking hinges which cast dirt upon the despoliation. Rodents crawled into the mire to escape the narrow beam of light that signaled the approach of the Minister from another world, the judgement of the conquerors.

Within the Carter quarters, Ian Garvey stood transfixed in the Doric, dungeon column that had been cast over him. Only his trembling hands, his eyes, and his open mouth were visible through the compound, ancient layers of nitre, and cement. In the demonic glare of the wall panels, his eyes were black coins.

Within the accessway outside of John Koenig's office, Ian Garvey stood transfixed, crushing his green flimsey in one hand, while gripping one of the commstation's panic handles with the other. Kate Bullen strolled by on the way to Main Mission, eyeing him curiously, but the surfeit grin misled her into believing that everything was just hum dinger.

Within the Carter quarters, Ian Garvey's teeth ripped maniacally into a human brain. Clarets, of plasma, and meaty sinew covered his demented face like jigsaw cracks.

Within the accessway, Phil Geist was towed along by Kate Bullen, who wasn't even half-way to the service workstation before she decided that the situation outside was all nuts.

"Hey, Garvey." Geist interceded, half-in, and half-out of the commander's office.

Within the dingy gaol of the Everyworld Conquerors, Ian Garvey knelt in the sacrificial position. Insects gorged themselves on the hirsute sores, and the dysentery that covered his face. As the corrupted vellum scrolled towards the floor, the Minister read his sentence while the Hatcher sharpened his blade with a carrion covered whetstone.

Within the Carter quarters, Ian Garvey was buried alive by an orgy of naked women--as calcimine as vampires--who tore away his eyes, and his genitals as an offering to the creatures from beyond the five moons.

Within the gaol, blood splattered from the open artery in his neck, and evenly soaked both hemispheres of the brain the rested in a wooden bucket of pestilence. The crevasses were flooded, the cerebellum, the cerebrum, the hypothalamus. The organ was saturated until all that remained was dry blitz, and old massacre. Between dead nerves, and impulses, the knowledge of a race wended its way towards the after extinction. It was the ultimate 'I don't like you.' The fate was incomparable to execution. It was eradication from the pool of consciousness.

Somewhere on the other side of dark experience, a sense of obligation began to trickle through the specialist's mammalian psyche like drops of water from a lime encrusted spout.

Garvey reluctantly studied the 3rd diecast car as it slowly...slowly edge to the starting line.

"No.." he whispered, nearly overcome. "Please...no..."

Gentlemen, start your engines! The miniature began its descent down the ramp...

The lights in the breakroom burned his eyes, as the lids slowly flickered open.

"Ian...Ian....Didn't they say they would be here right away!?!?"

Gloria Eason's voice. He realized he was horizontal, supine on the gray tile floor. It felt cold, ice cold to the touch. He shivered, probably because he was drenched in sweat, so much that he looked like he just took a shower, fully clothed.

He began to realize his head was propped in Gloria's lap, her soft hands cupping the sides of his face.

"Ian...just relax...Medical is coming," She assured softly.

He was beginning to focus. It was Gloria. She smiled slightly but the worry was etched in small lines on her pretty face.

"Nol," she glance up, "I think he's coming around."

"What happened?"

Garvey heard Helena Russell, the medical midgy's voice ring in his ears, along with the amplified banging and creaking and clanging of the gurney. The loud voice of Jerry Parker in the background made his head throb.

"He was on break with us and he just...passed out," Eason explained to Russell as she relinquished her position as comforter while Garvey was lifted onto the gurney. "Doctor, will he be alright?" She asked apprehensively as the CMO passed the bioscan over him.

"Nothing is registering." The physician said coldly, running the scan over the specialist's abdominal region again. If the spike detected a broken bone, it would blip. If the spike detected extraneous H20, it would blip. If it detected a wart on Garvey's ass, it would blip. Sense it did nothing, she merely shook her head, and closed the unit out. "I can't find anything wrong." She reiterated, standing, and looking at the specialist like he absolutely deserved his misfortune. "How many hours have you put in on your orm research, Dr. Garvey?

"Maybe the problem is too much midnight oil." She remarked to Parker sarcastically. "In any event, we'll consult with Dr. Mathias as soon as we get him back to Medical."

Garvey swooned, the bodacious taste of cesspool was still rushing under his tongue. He honestly didn't know if he was eating brains, or being smothered by blood sucking, Karma Sutra women, or if he was still standing in the corridor. He did know one thing--the last time he was in Medical Center, Dr. Chess Pro had been a bitch to be around. He looked at the specialist sideways, and snickered something to the dentist--epithets that Garvey feared had to do with his subtle (Nay, or is it extreme?) Hypochondriasis. Everyone on Earth took fifty mega-complex vitamins per day, didn't they? Either way, he wasn't welcome on the table, and Doctor A-Hole ended up stabbing him with a hypo filled with 100% mineral squash; calories zero; additives zero; protein content, non-existent. Odd how this innocuous cocktail led to an outbreak of the shingles.

Dr. Bob said that was in his mind too before impaling Garvey again.

"No." He said lucidly as Parker pulled him past a nullified 'Nol. "That's not necessary. I don't require hospital care. I feel fine."

But away they went.

CHAPTER 6

A quick glance and study of the monitor told Dr. Helena Russell that Dac Capano was recovering well from the mild heart attack he experienced yesterday while pruning banana trees. He would remain a 'guest' in Medical Center for a few days.

She closed the door to muffle his critique of his egg salad sandwich to Raul Nunez. A glance at the clock told her John Koenig would be picking her up in 35 minutes.

"The tragedy of the loss of Eagle 2-9 seemed to be an isolated and unfortunate incident," she continued typing. "Ian Garvey's mysterious fainting spell also seemed to be a separate incident. Then, however, something else happened that began to change our thinking and that perhaps, there was some sort of connection."

**********

"Not good, not good at all," Structural Engineer Andrea Matthew stated in a voice deeper than 90% of the men on Moonbase Alpha, while glaring at the remnant of Eagle 2-9's engine bell.

Andrea Matthew was a dead ringer of Brigitte Neilson, a la mid 1980's, but more muscular; much more muscular. Andrea spent her free time in the gym body building on the Nautilus machines, sculpting, working out, following the "no pain, no gain" mantra until her body fat fell to an unnaturally lean 12% with an inordinate amount of testosterone coursing through her veins.

"Soft" and feminine, she was not.

"I can't explain it. Of course, metallurgy has taken samples and so far, they have no clues. Oh, yeah, they tell me the metal is "changing" on the atomic level," Andrea waved her prominently veined hand dismissively, "Duh...I could have figured that out."

Angelina and Alan Carter were looking over the remnant. The matter was urgent enough to bring Commander Koenig and Professor Bergman to the Dissembly Lab as well. Bergman studied the computer register tape printout with fascination.

Koenig, deep in thought and mildly dismayed, stood next to the structural engineer, cupping his chin.

"Oh, and guess what, Commander?" Andrea continued with more depressing news, "It appears the problem is not just confined to metals of an Eagle. We're beginning to see it elsewhere too."

"No kidding?" Carter crowed, remembering the new decor in his living room. Linoleum as rust. It was the latest thing.

Behind them, the double doors parted to allow Phil Inoshiro, who was still wearing his polarized safety goggles, access to the chamber. He carried with him a red flimsie that rested atop a cake plate piled high with black sand. He excused himself as he cut between the pilot, and 'Ang, and assumed his position behind the shield of an x-ray cubicle. Transients could be heard as he pulled the trigger, and flooded that corner with laser optics.

"I've seen some strange things." Yul Ostrog admitted, handing his introductory two sentence report to John Koenig. "During the war, I helped to retrieve a Condor that was hit by a Tri-Con fusion torpedo in high orbit. Except for the point of entry, the outside was completely unmarred." The mechanic recalled. "Inside, it was roasted like a duck. But this?" He said, shaking his head, and lacking confidence. "Commander, that engine was rated to sustain a minimum vacuum thrust level of 20,000 pounds. That's a thrust-to-weight ratio of zero point four for lunar lift-off weight. If it's a planetary ascent, the stats are larger." He pointed out, and behind him, Inoshiro was preparing another slide. "It's a wreck. There's just no way the meteor screens could have caused this. There's a reason why this unit survived.

"It's too damn big, and heavy to burn up." He extrapolated, scratching his eccentric head. "Especially the flange mountings, and the ablation chamber seals. They're cast from one hundred percent Hydronium. It would take a 'nuke to put a dent in them, but even then, the damage wouldn't be much. Now, they're nowhere to be seen.

"I could put my lousy fist through this thing."

Too true. More to the point, a ninety-nine year old geriatric could put his fist through the charred relic...or his thumb, or his nose, or a toothpick. The extension nozzle, propped on jack stands, was resting on the same dais that was used for 175 second static test firings of newly developed SPS blocks. It had begun to look less, and less like a technological portent, and more, and more like a begrimed, besprayed foam cup that had sat next to a campfire for too long. Freckles of orange dust marked the areas of greater, last bastion endurance on the titanium shielding.

"I've got your mountings, and seals." Phil Inoshiro apologized, removing his goggles as he approached the group. "Fifteen pounds of Cadmium Hydronium." He told Koenig, and handed him the specimen tray that was piled high with black sand.

"No way," Matthew blurted in disbelief, taking the proffered slide and held it up in the light. The color drained from Andrea's face as she studied the spectrometric wavelength graphic.

Angelina joined the group, glancing up at the slide, though besides the basic elemental wavelengths, she was not a metal expert and would not be able to identify specific metallic refractive study graphs.

"Cadmium Hydronium?" Ang asked the pale specialist.

"Yeah," Andrea answered without emotion. "Cadmium Hydronium."

"We use cadmium hydronium in the construction of our bulkhead structures, don't we" Koenig finally spoke, though more in fact that in question.

"Yes we do, Commander," Matthew nodded solemnly.

"What about corrosion and breakdown of other metals?" Koenig held up the slide to the overhead light. "Is your team verifying the structural integrity of our exterior walls and struts?"

"There's a group working on the surface now taking readings," Matthew nodded. "We are also taking sample of steel in inventory and doing electromagnetic scans as well. It will take some more time though."

"How much more time?" Angelina asked, unintentionally impatiently. She relaxed a little. "Do you need more help? Are you taking samples of whatever it is from my quarters?"

"Phil's coordinating that effort as well," Matthew glanced over at the specialist.

"What do you think it is?" Angelina asked Phil Inoshiro.

"Not sure yet," he answered, setting his cake plate of blackened cadmium hydronium on the table. Another tech took the sample away and left him with 5 steel blocks, displaying various date codes. "But your living room isn't the only place reported with the "problem".

"Oh?" Koenig set the slide down. "Where else?"

"Experimental labs," Inoshiro picked up one of the steel blocks and returned to the x-ray cubicle.

"John." Bergman said grimly. "I'm no expert--Rudolph Albert von Mohl, I'm not but I know a thing, or two about basic chemistry." The scientist qualified as he studied the figures on the multiple slips of register tape. "Every compound on the periodic table serves as a building block for other elements.

"You can't derive something from nothing." He laymanized for Carter who nodded appreciably. "Our Eagles are fueled with Aerozine 5.0--a rocket fuel that's formed from other agents, and oxidizers. The same is true of the bulkheads." He enlightened 'Ang. "The same is true of everything else on Alpha, right down to the food we eat.

"What we're looking at here is some sort of...." He clenched his fist, groping for articulation. "Degradation?" He pondered aloud, and then snapped his fingers, as he did a turnabout on a truer tangent. "Or retrogression? Look, what we have on these computer reports is basically a list." He told Koenig, as Ostrog, and Matthew stepped back to allow him room for erudition. "This engine bell was partly a Titanium construct, right? But that's not on the list--instead we have ilmenite, and rutile."

"Oh my god," Angelina blurted in amazement. "Do you mean the metals are going back to their basic elements? Some sort of reverse evolution for inorganic substances?"

"Exactly." Bergman congratulated her, smiling at nothing that was particularly pleasant. "Likewise all of the polymers. They're still here, but they're registering now as cellulose derivatives, caseins, and milk proteins. Whatever this effect is, it has the ability to deconstruct matter, and return it to its constituents, but it's not by destruction--it's by regression." He stipulated, and then grimaced as he realized that this was only a preface.

"John, look at your commlock." He advised while essaying his own.

The commander looked down, and admired the xanthous, unhealthy parchment that was once the registration tag on his multitasked communicator/door key. The mug shot was gone. All that remained was sticky, photochemical mess of faded, waterlogged paper, and melted lamination. All that remained of the supply sergeant's bookkeeping was an impossible month, and an impracticable year. In the DATE ISSUED block, the typeset read: 8/4/68.

Dr. Helena Russell, looking utterly exhausted, stepped into the Dissembly Lab.

"Ian Garvey apparently passed out in the MRC cantina," she informed Ang, as Koenig stared at his commlock.

"What's the matter with him?" Ang asked in alarm.

"Nothing..I can find nothing wrong with him," the CMO replied, slightly irritated, as Angelina raised a querying eyebrow. "I'm keeping him in Medical overnight until Dr. Mathias can do a psyche check in the morning but I think he is overdoing it with his research. Perhaps you should talk to...." Russell stopped, noting that Koenig was staring in amazement at his commlock for too long. "John? What's wrong?"

"That's impossible." Koenig said, totally sandbagged, and yet there it was. "Victor, you handed me this commlock yourself the day I took command. You know the date can't be right. Helena, what does yours say?" He solicited, helping himself to the device hooked to her belt. By all rights, the badge should have predated his own by eight months, in the year 1998.

The doctor glanced at her commlock then unhooked it to get a second look.

"1/3/68" Helena replied, totally bewildered.

"8/6/68," Angelina frowned at the date of issue on her commlock. "I did arrive on Alpha two days after you did, Commander." She chuckled from the stress. "Of course, I wasn't even born in 1968!" she shook her head as everyone else in the room curiously checked the date of issue on their commlocks.

A horrifying thought occurred to Ang. "Professor, you don't suppose that whatever is affecting the metals, polymers and perhaps everything inorganic could possibly affect organic material?" She swallowed. "Like us?"

"Ahhhhhhhhhh," Bergman enunciated, having no idea, in toto. Mad science caused his hair to spike in three different places "I could make an educated guess. On the other hand." He said, passing Koenig his own commlock for inspection. "Mine appears to be unaffected. The date is accurate.

"It could be two ways." He extemporalized as the photo on 'Ang's commlock began to bleed. "First, the effect is so subtle that this rollback takes time to establish itself. Then there's the remote possibility that this field has a limited range of influence. Anything beyond its borders remains uncontaminated."

As to whether, or not everyone on Moonbase Alpha would consign, backwards through the adult milieu, becoming deformative teens again, and then pre-adolescents, and then children, and then toddlers, and then infants, and then fetuses, and then zygotes, and then protoplasmic mush--that question remained unanswered.

A burke fell over the laboratory, interrupted only by Phil Inoshiro's antsy realignment of the spectrographic probe lens. For thirty seconds, there was nary a ripple. After half a minute passed by them, behold, there was a ripple.

"COMMANDER KOENIG." Umberto Garzon hailed from the commstation. Behind him, Clare Profitt nearly tripped in her rush to expedite the newest of red flimsies across the blue screen. "THERE'S A GIGANTIC SPACECRAFT APPROACHING ALPHA. IT'S 600,000 NAUTICLE MILES OUT, AND CLOSING."

CHAPTER 7

The oldest extant satellite in lunar orbit was Hipparcos.

It was an ugly commodity, to be sure with its bowl-shaped antennae reflector being the only feature that was evenly remotely elegant. This wasn't saying much. It's gizzards--the apogee kick motor; the solar cell array; the control thrusters, and the travelling wave tube amplifier were encased in a huge drum that was insulated from top to bottom with mylar, and capton nickel foil. So it clunked, and clanged along in its geosynchronous orbit, passing over Moonbase Alpha to dump its telemetry once every nine hours. It occasioned to stall once over the fourth parallel, and high atop the Spitzenberg Mountains. Klaus Rotstein was dispatched to execute the repairs during an EVA, and he bitched, and caviled until his helmut visor was steamed white.

As it turned out, the repair could have been made just as easily using a realignment program transmitted from the Technical Hub, so his spacewalk was in vain. Too bad.

Hipparcos looked like a great, twirling hot water heater in space.

On the other hand, the satellite was also a prize winning snoop. Surveillance was the name of its game, and the digital camera array irised open immediately when the Polypheme dreadnought from another world lumbered past its sensors. It was the erector set from space. An ultra-modern building with engines. There were five, rectangular units--blocks of penitentiary perfection, and each one was detailed with twenty terraces worth of cellar green, glowing, transparent, crystal viewports. A pair of starburst, deep space tracking dishes revolved on turntables, to port, and starboard. They were in turn, linked to a massive network of rusted girders that pitched themselves on archaic astronautics, and used futures. The centraline, which basked in rays from galaxy M73, was an exposed, anaconda pit of frozen lubricant, and polluted pipes. The only distinguishable markings were on the bow of the spacecraft, and it could best be described as a fluorescent, alien, chic rendition of the Roman numeral "X."

Commander Koenig, Professor Bergman and Doctor Russell burst into Main Mission under the left archway, followed closely by Alan and Angelina Carter.

"Visual," Sandra reported on cue and the static and snow on the big screen yielded to the image of the alien ship.

The only aliens who were ever friendly to the inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha were the Kaldorians. No one expected the statistics to change in their favor. The ship had appeared out of nowhere.

"Sandra, try to communicate with them on all frequencies." The commander now stood behind the data analyst.

"This is Moonbase Alpha. We are from the planet earth and we are peaceful." She began. "We are asking you to state your intentions and identify yourselves. We are from Earth and we are peaceful."

Static replied. Angelina wondered for a split second what her son was thinking or seeing, if anything, then returned her attention to the sensor data scanning the ship.

"DATA ON ALIEN SPACE VEHICLE...." Computer began to drone, adding a monotone soundtrack to the image of the slow moving barge that was galumphing across the silver capped, Chandler highlands. "...INCONCLUSIVE...."

"I HAVEN'T EVEN ASKED YOU YET." Benjamin Ouma scowled while angrily punching the vertical, red input keys at his terminal. Koenig acknowledged his hassle with a stern glance while continuing to lean over the analyst's workstation. Dr. Haines materialized somewhere in between. The scientist emerged from the MPSR room, and walked to the end of panel three to take up residence in the weird dusk that emanated from the overhead track lights. The diffusion made his graying sideburns seem mightier than they appeared on a subdued Tuesday. Truman Starns stood above his reverie, leaning quietly against the rail, and mesmerized by an image that the big screen was not big enough to hold.

"Who said that you did?" Victor Bergman elucidated. "It could be that someone else is asking the questions."

"Well, I've got their answer." Carter postured confidently at the CapComm station. "Right here. Commander, there's still time to send the welcome wagon out."

"I don't think that would accomplish much." Bergman opined. "Look at the size of it. I'd wager that they have weapons on that ship that could make junkyard scrap of our Eagles. In fact, they'd probably find our best defense to be insulting."

"So what should we do then?" Paul Morrow chimed in, crushing a firing room report into an unloved ball. "Let them crash through our screens, and annihilate us?"

"How do we know what their intention is?" The professor replied calmly, but argumentatively. "One thing you can be real sure of--aggression begets aggression."

Koenig raised an eyebrow but otherwise said nothing. On the one hand, the base was threatened and he was tempted to take up Carter's welcome wagon suggestion. He then considered Victor's advice. If they touted peace then send their armed Eagles after the aliens, the contradiction would certainly be deadly for Moonbase Alpha.

"Whoever they are, they appear to have stopped, and now they're taking up a parking position near Avagadro...on the far side." Ouma reported unassumingly while holding his register report with suspicious hands.

Except for the pinging and clicking and whirling of computer, there was not a sound in Main Mission.

Angelina started to breathe again. "Maybe they just want to observe us?" She offered, unsure.

"Yeah, but why? What for?" Paul questioned her. She had no answer.

"If they were peaceful," Sandra interjected. "Why don't they respond to our attempts to communicate."

"Maybe they can't or don't understand?" Angelina offered, this time unsure why she was playing devil's advocate.

"I don't buy that bunch of bullshit," Klaus Rotstein sneered condescendingly at Ang.

Koenig threw Rotstein an irritated glare then glanced around the room. He turned to Carter.

"Alan, prepare 5 laser eagles for lift off and stand by on the pads. Do NOT launch until I give the order." He paused, glanced at Russell then continued. "We won't be aggressive. However, let's show them that we will defend ourselves."

"Paul," he turned to the deputy controller, "evacuate all non-essential and off duty personnel to the underground bunkers."

The commander started up the balcony stairs, and was three steps away from the first landing when he realized that Bergman was tailing him.

"You're getting rather paranoid in your old age, aren't you John?" He said agreeably, but there was a recognizable, cautionary appeal--evident, but between words.

"Not paranoid, Victor," Koenig stopped and turned thoughtfully. "Just careful. We've only had one alien encounter where the intention was any warmer than indifference. We have to take a defensive posture to ensure our...."

"WE HAVE AN INCOMING TRANSMISSION." Sandra Benes declared, rattled from her anxiety by the red light that blipped before her on the UHF meter. She shifted her monitor from the Local to the Interstellar tabs, and then back again, hoping to pinpoint the exact frequency band. Multiple windows popped a little luck, she would have results, and soon.

Unfortunately, the result was that she was out of luck.

"Perhaps they are trying to tell us they are not aggressive," Angelina suggested.

"How bout you taking off those rose colored glasses and seeing things as they are, Dr. Carter," Rotstein smart mouthed to her.

"How bout you shut up, Rotstein," She retorted, having enough of the egomaniac. The growing look of disdain on Koenig's face did not have a chance to germinate into full blown ire.

"There is more. I don't know how we received this signal." The analyst admitted, clicking her mouse, and watching the screen scroll downward in a litany of endless, intelligenceless, empty-headed zeros. "It's unzipping from inside our own server. Somehow they were able to download it quickly, and without us knowing."

"It's that easy?" Truman Starns commented from above in a glacial draft of unbelief. "To invade computer?"

Benjamin Ouma abruptly turned and gave the detective the dagger glare but other than that said nothing.

Jim Haines relaxed his neck muscles, and studied the computer terminals, and the human operators that lined the sacred, trusted square of the Main Mission trench. Like everyone else who believed in Santa Claus, he hoped for a plausible explanation to this phenomenon, but he was not optimistic.

"Looks that way, doesn't it?" John Koenig answered sarcastically. He expected no more, no less, and all eyes were upon the incredible, shrinking Ouma. "Sandra, whatever it is, let's hear it."

"There is no sound." The analyst explained. "Transferring image to the big screen now."

What appeared was a high definition image that required more memory than the unit could provide. Consequently, the image was slightly blurred, and pixeled from right to left, and in diagonal variations as it verged on locking the system up. There were seven rows of rectangles, from top to bottom on the alien grid. Each row was ten parallelograms across. Every other box represented a black pigment. The remainders were clearly, incontestably white. At sixty second intervals, one foursquare would vanish from the mistime, and then the entire quantification would reconfigure itself.

"This is an attempt to communicate?" Helena Russell said strangely. "What does it mean?"

"It's impossible to say." Bergman said as a law. "This may be some sort of test broadcast. Maybe we've been put on hold...those both seem like reasonable enough assumptions, right John?"

Koenig looked over at Carter. "Put the laser Eagles on standby and keep them underground for now."

"So, given a choice, sir, you've decided that the thing to do is for us to have our asses shot off?" The pilot cranked as he followed Koenig to the rear of the auditorium. The fact that both 'Ang, and Big-P Danielle threw themselves in the way as human shields didn't seem to deter him much. "Is that a military strategy, or are we trying to build peaceful intergalactic relations by having them over for dinner, and we're the bloody main course?"

The cocky sneer. Koenig could see it all over Carter's puss, even with his back turned to him. The objections, and the fulminations from one who believed a bunch of white hot, CO2 photons--designed primarily for cutting defenseless moon rocks--could save them all from the horrors of alien technology. Witness Alan Carter, with his laseing medium, pitted against these extros, and their probable ability to filet the Moon with a massacre of uber ballistics, and exotic radiations. He could already feel the flesh oozing from his bones. Let the match be joined, with Alan Carter--his hideous, and inhumane weaponry; observe how they reduce him to a puddle of hemoglobin, and suspended proteins with the equivalent of a Martian death ray.

It was Bambi V. Godzilla all over again, but what the pilot lacked in soft, fluffy charm, he made up for with his big mouth.

"Prepare an unarmed reconnaissance Eagle. Victor, you, Helena and I are going out meet our visitors." The Commander climbed the three stairs to his desk.

"That's the only course of action you can think of, sir?" The pilot challenged, argy-bargy, and with fresh egotism.

"Yes captain, that's the only course of action I can think of." Koenig replied wearily, but autocratically. "Oh, and I suggest taking along hard suits." He grinned, turning. "It will put a protective film over your butt."

"???SO THAT'S IT???" Carter raged, the blood vessels in his forehead swelling, and turning crimson.

"No." The commander added leisurely. "There is one other thing. If we have to do an EVA out there, I'm going first, and you're going to assist me...unarmed."

He closed the big doors on him.

By the time Ian Garvey attached the high voltage cables, from his alternator to the gigantic KV-75 power cell, there were only fifty rectangles left.

CHAPTER 8

Angelina sat on the table, strewn with equipment in the small cubicle area. Even though she was talking with Technician Garvey he was still intently working. He appeared to be...obsessed.

"Everyone needs a hobby, project or some kind of distraction, Ian," she spoke though she might as well have been talking to the wall. He was only half listening to her as he grunted his acknowledgement.

Off duty time on Moonbase Alpha was the toughest time to live and breathe. For sanity's sake, even those with significant others, discovered or rediscovered hobbies. Ian Garvey had an interest in creating computer games. Now, however, that interest was all but abandoned in favor of....what WAS this suppose to be?

"And I think that it is great you have a new interest," Ang continued, eyeing the battered copy of 'Investigating The Unexplained:Explanations Into Ancient Mysteries, the Paranormal & Strange Phenomenon'. "But there is that old saying...everything in moderation?"

*********

Dr. Beatrice Acton, geologist by trade and "Bea" to her friends, trodden along the lunar surface in the 'courtyard' beside Residence Building A. The scans of the structural integrity of the bulkheads were taking more time than expected. It was her third trip out to the surface with her team in 6 hours, the other two trips requiring them to return inside to re-calibrate equipment.

Of course, the second time they were also called in because of a rumored alien space craft but since they were allowed to go outside again, she dismissed it as rumor. She looked up curiously as an Eagle launched from the distant pad 3 then returned to her readings.

**********

"Alpha, Eagle One." Carter ate crow, but not humbly, from the CMP's couch. "We're at 18:30 EMT, and ready to roll pitch over the Sea Of Serenity."

John Koenig offered him a neutral glance before returning to his yoke, and an inertial guidance firmware that never talked back. Beyond the metrically notched rendezvous windows, a shroud of black faded into the glow of the space vehicles forward running lights. Taurus Littrow was not visible. No stars were visible. At this altitude, there seldom were any. The glare from neighboring NLO's created an electromagnetic camouflage that concealed everything that wasn't obviously, drastically, black or white. The environment, minus four hundred degrees even in the shade, didn't tick away like an alien telegram, but the metaphor was no less dramatic. The commander squeezed his left toggle with gloved hands, venting hydrogenperoxide crystals into the submissive void.

"You're a roger, Eagle One." Paul Morrow said busily across the Simitar digital link. "We have you as ten minutes out, and approaching parasynthion. Remember to switch over to the interstellar band before you head over the hill, or we'll lose contact with you."

"Paul, what's the status on the alien ship?" Koenig inquired while actuating their reserve power cells. Helena Russell appeared behind them, befuddled, in the aft equipment bay holding a strip of register tape that may as well have been a grocery store receipt.

"Nothing so far." The controller ascertained. "We're keeping a sharp watch though."

"Nice." Carter reflected. "It's always good to have a warning before you get creamed."

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

"You're too kind." Garvey said, annoyed by the technical manager as he closed the circuit on the KVA Main. "Actually, this is my only project, and I've been delinquent in fulfilling my objectives.

"Excuse me." He said, reaching past Ang'--another in a series of insurmountable, human obstacles; a wall of aggravation, with shitty opinions instead of bricks, for the silver ratchet wrench on the utility table. "Most people don't understand-

(Translation: 'YOU' do not understand, managing bimbette.)

-this problem with orms is nothing new. While we were in Earth orbit, we were shielded. Since we broke away from our own solar system, the problem has mounted, and mounted until now, we're at the mercy of just about every negatively charged molecule that floats our way." He tried to hide his look of disdain, coupled with serious doubts about Angelina Carter's intelligence as he carefully deposited a stack of unified field research on top of the book she was reading.

The effect was, she began to stick her big, privacy unrespecting nose into other closets, and Garvey's neck broke into nervous hives above the neckline of his tunic.

He chuckled unabashedly.

"There are, I would concede, certain individuals in this section who would agree with you-

(Translation: Mr. Assistant Director of experimental services is riding me like a pony. What rhymes with 'pains?' The answer is 'Haines.')

-and they would prefer that I devote my time to zeemanizing atoms so the LSRO-

(Translation: The Rocket Jocks.)

-will have a new type of propulsion system to abuse...and blow up."

Being blown continuously, it bothered Ian Garvey.

"Look," Ang countered, "the new propulsion system is critical to the next generation of Eagles and in beta testing the new Hawks. That project IS important and does have a great deal of experimental's resources devoted to it."

"There are several projects that need to be done in experimental but the question is one of prioritizing." She continued, stating the same argument Haines had given Garvey earlier. "Our priority is survival and in the grand scheme of things, this is not a number 1 project...or two or three."

'How about #20,' she thought but did not verbalize.

***********

Construction Engineer Ahn Nguyen bounded gracefully in the Lunar gravity to Bea Acton.

"Uh oh," Nguyen mumbled, as she scratched at the oxidation on the metal, the base of the technical hub. "How can this be?" She turned perplexed. "There's no oxygen out here." She exclaimed in disbelief.

The lights on her sensor lit up like a Christmas tree.

"Is it getting any worse?" Bea asked.

"Doesn't appear to be," Nguyen. "But I can't tell for sure. I'm getting some interference on the sensors."

"Bea, Ahn," the voice of Reginald Bostwick broke through the speakers inside their helmets. "Come here. Look at this!"

They turned to see Bostwick frantically waving them back to him, as he stared at the bulkhead of the east wall of Residence Building A. Acton and Nguyen returned to Bostwick and turned in the direction he was pointing. A strange corrosion pattern was on the bulkhead.

"It looks like..." Ahn gulped, chills running down her spine despite the constant temperature of the suit, "a skull."

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

"Commander, we're coming up on Avagadro." Carter alerted as he used his index finger to open the safety covers over the retrofire system. "Our approach is good. Expect to reconnoiter with the alien spacer on its starboard side. Braking maneuvers in two minutes."

He still found the whole thing preposterous.

"Victor, anything new on the sensor readings?" Koenig called to Bergman through the internal comm link.

"Nothing," Bergman's face appeared on the co-pilot side monitor. "Nothing substantial, John, but we are picking up more EM interference. Not sure the source yet but still analyzing."

The professor sat at the terminal scratching his head. Something wasn't right about the readings and he sat pondering, parting the cobwebs of his memories in search of some answer. He relinked to the Main Server on Alpha, searching the archives.

The giant vessel appeared to be invisible--a Houdini byproduct of the magneto curtain that was draped over the evaporated edges of the crater; an optical illusion that had crashed many a ship in this region. Those who survived were just grateful to be alive, and the dead didn't have a problem with it. As Eagle One surfed past the ruined, soliton boulders, and the wasteland of impact craters that lay below, the blinking light on the sensor swipe--as large as a microwave light at this range--grew more lambent, and increasingly iridescent to the point where it appeared that Carter was staring into the filaments of a black light bulb. The neck dam of his suit grew fluorescent as he checked, and rechecked their approach vector.

"We'll see it eventually." He affirmed with wry mirth. "When we're right on top of it, that is."

Koenig threw Carter a sidewise glance but otherwise said nothing. He knew the pilot was not a happy camper. Too bad.

"Incredible," Helena Russell mused, crouched beside Koenig and gazing out the viewport over his shoulder. "I wonder who they are..." They exchanged mutually curious glances then returned to staring out the viewport.

Then they drudged through the ice as their velocity decreased suddenly, anomalously to 400 feet per second. Doctor Russell grasped onto the back of Koenig's pilot couch to restore her balance.

"That's a bit more choke than we would have started." Carter remarked again, and then his visage grew grave as he picked up on the dizzying wash that laved against his vision port. The atmosphere inside the command module began to feel infinitely compressed. The pilot felt the ghost of an anvil as it was lowered on top of his head, and strapped to his chin. "Paul, this is Carter." He said with fecund disquiet. "There's a shimmer out here. Is that ship causing some sort of ionization effect?"

They waited a long time before the response came. It was the last message they would receive in this universe.

"!!!JOHN!!!" Victor Bergman cried, frog throated, and electronically distorted by eons of history over a telecommunications network that was now as archaic as a Neanderthal waving its arms in the Pleistocene heat. "!!!YOUR KINETIC ENERGY VALUE IS ZERO!!! MASS EQUALS 'X!!!' MASS EQUALS 'X!!!'"

In a picosecond, everyone on Moonbase Alpha was dead, and Earth's former satellite disintegrated in the rings of a jovian planet that was a billion astronomical units, and 10,000 light years away from Earth. Only their mythology remained, there to educt generations of humanity who would call themselves Offspring Of The Moon. Their time reference, and the culture that had developed therein was gone. A few held out hope that Eagle One might some day return, but after seventy years of staring into the relativistic depths, they could no longer defy their own hopelessness. So, they turned out the porch light. Carter watched the elapsed mission time through a blinding, anti-gravity supernova as the counter climbed from a flight duration of 1,156 years to 5,000 years, to 100,945 years. As the milleniums passed like water through a faucet, John Koenig's Rip Van Winkle beard overflowed the 02 purge tank of his suit. The couch he sat upon was eroded to vinyl flakes as the keel of their Wooly Mammoth spacecraft exponentially decayed in the hydrochloric spacestream, and exploded from aerodynamic forces that were beyond theory.

Over his shoulder, Carter could still see the after image, a superluminal mirage that would hang there for all eternity. It was a phantom image of himself, and Koenig, only seconds before being caught in the Einstein-Rosen Bridge. Helena Russell, rest in piece for as much as she hath given pleasure, was one of the museum pieces, still standing in the aft equipment bay as she had ten billion years ago; still not apprehending the data on the register tape, and ignorance was bliss.

"!!!COMMANDER, WE'RE CAUGHT UP IN SOME SORT OF LOOPHOLE!!!" The pilot cried, his Methuselah, old man's lungs clogged with the dust of creation. "!!!THE RCS IS NOT RESPONDING!!!"

Koenig was enraptured by the moment of creation. It was the beginning of time and God said 'Let there be'...and the incomprehensibly large mass exploded into billions and billions of pieces, launching in all directions in the black void. He did not respond.

"JOHN!!! ALAN!!!! Cut power to the engines!!!" Bergman shouted from the passenger module. He saw the illusions intermixed with reality. "JOHN!!!! ALAN!!!!"

No response.

He would have to attempt to do it himself. But for what he retained in mental reality, he lacked in physical strength. He could not walk and fell to the floor, his legs refusing to work.

So he crawled his way, like the serpent, up the passenger aisle, gasping for breath as he reached the service module.

"John!!! JOHN!!!!" He looked up. "HELENA!!!"

No response from the catatonic doctor.

Bergman continued his torturous crawl and the command module seemed to be a 100 meters away. His mechanical heart pounded in his chest and sweat poured over the top of his eyebrows, stinging his eyes. His vision was blurry as he reached the Command Module.

**********

"You would prefer if I abandoned this project?" Ian Garvey fumed, cl