Note for non-British readers – Tony writes using UK English spelling, punctuation and grammar, plus some US English words where appropriate as there are various nationalities within these stories. Metric and British imperial measurements will be used in the story.
It is essential that you read Trappist-1 before starting this sequel and it is strongly recommended that you also read Moonscape and Moonstruck as events in each of the stories are linked. Thank you.
Tony Harmsworth, 1st December 2020
In Moonscape, the first book in the series, Mark Noble, John MacIntosh (Tosh) and Mary Carter are introduced to us.
While working on the surface of the moon, a tiny hibernating creature is found which infects one of the Moonbase crew. It is thought to be a parasite and there is concern that it is trying to infect all of the astronauts and will then try to find its way to Earth.
Mark and his partner, Linda, escape the infection in a Dragonstar, only to discover that one of the parasites has escaped from the secure container they had taken with them. On their way back to Earth, it infects Mark, and Linda attempts to burn up the Orion capsule on re-entry to prevent the parasite reaching the population of Earth. However, she was just too late as the capsule had already begun its automated atmospheric entry and could no longer be guided manually to destruction.
On Earth, scientists discover that the parasite was, by a stroke of pure luck, killed as the Orion passed through the Van Allen radiation belts which surround Earth, protecting the world from the sun’s radiation.
The parasite is surgically removed from Mark’s head and it is found to bear a remarkable similarity to the hippocampus, a small organ found in pairs at the top of the spine in all vertebrates.
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In Moonstruck, the second book, an international team headed by Mark returns to the moon to recapture Moonbase from the six infected humans. Bill Wright, Chi Wang and Anna Stanbury, three more of Mark’s current team, are introduced to us in this book.
During the expedition, they discover that the creatures are not parasites after all, but are actually symbiotes related to the hippocampus which, it now seems, arrived on Earth and enhanced all vertebrates in prehistory.
These later, fresh symbiotes, however, add immensely to the intellect and intelligence of their enhanced humans.
The military on Earth become paranoid that the entities will arrive from the moon and take over Earth, but on the moon, Mark and his closest advisors, Bill and Anna, try out the symbiosis and soon become convinced that they have to stop the military’s plan to wipe out the aliens.
By subterfuge, the enhanced humans manage to fool the military and NASA into believing the entities have been destroyed, but, in fact, when they return to Earth, they are all already enhanced and carrying more entities to pass on to key people.
The entities are able to reproduce every two days and within a few months, most humans have their own symbiote.
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In the third book, Trappist-1, Mary Carter, enhanced by her entity, manages to perfect the spolding drive (a space-folding mechanism which permits travel as if faster than light).
NASA work with Boeing, SpaceX and others to build the first spolding ship, Spirit, and its two shuttles, Rimors, which will be used to land on and lift off from other planets.
Mark, Anna, Bill, Chi, Mary and Tosh set off on a test flight to Mars which seems to be a total success if one near-disastrous, aborted take-off is ignored.
The second expedition is to the dwarf red star, Trappist-1, which has seven interesting planets, including three which are potentially habitable.
On Haven (Trappist-1E), the first planet to be explored, Mark, Bill, Tosh and Chi land and carry out experiments. They discover that the planet has a very invasive plant which grows near the lakes, seas and oceans. The seas are home to vicious animals, the size of elephant seals, which prove extremely dangerous.
On the day they plan to leave, pollen is emitted from the plant. All but Chi have their visors down, but some of the pollen is breathed in by the Chinese pilot. It kills her within minutes, despite her entity trying to stop its invasion of her lungs and digestive system. She drowns in her own blood in Tosh’s arms.
There is much anxiety about how to return to orbit and to get from the shuttle into the main craft without bringing the plant with them. Eventually, they manage to do so, abandoning the shuttle and having to go through horrendous disinfecting routines to get back into the starship safely.
While they’d been on Haven, Anna and Mary had been observing planet F and had found an orbiting craft circling Haven. They believed it had come from planet F which might have a spacefaring civilisation.
The starship, Spirit, travelled to planet F and they found that there was, indeed, a sophisticated civilisation, but their efforts to make radio contact were unsuccessful. The planet also had many satellites, but all were ancient and running out of power. It was as if the people had given up space exploration.
It was decided to send down a rover-probe which was directed to a coastal city. It landed in a park within the city boundaries but could see no life at all. Eventually, it found that piles of rags which were lying around the streets were the remains of people who had died in the distant past. Even their bones crumbled when touched. Something had wiped out the inhabitants of F, which they renamed Quietus.
They went on to discover the same plant that originated on Haven. It seemed that a space mission, taken in antiquity by the people of Quietus, went to Haven and might have accidentally brought back the plant, without realising how deadly its pollen was. It established itself on Quietus and wiped out the entire population when it released its pollen clouds.
Planet G was considered uninhabitable owing to its icy surface, so the crew decided to visit the only other habitable planet, the small planet D, to see if there was any colony of the people of Quietus still living there in exile, but, from orbit, there was no sign of any intelligent life.
Somewhat depressed, the remaining five of the Spirit crew decided to head back to Earth where they would need to be thoroughly disinfected before landing.