Note for non-British readers – Tony writes using UK English spelling, punctuation and grammar, plus some US English words where appropriate. Miles and kilometres will both be used in the story.
It is strongly recommended that you read Moonscape before starting this sequel. Thank you.
‘If we don’t stop arguing, we’ll have lost the moon!’ said Neil Weston, NASA’s mission director for Project Moonstruck, the expedition to regain control of Moonbase from the alien entities.
The heads of NASA, Roscosmos, and CNSA, the Chinese space administration, looked around at Neil, who was ranked several levels below them.
‘Dr Weston,’ said Bob Michaels, severely. ‘We must sort out the costs and responsibilities.’
Bob was head of NASA and also Neil’s boss. He needed to speak less passionately to him. ‘But every two days that we sit here arguing about who should pay for what, those things are replicating on the moon – doubling their number. By the end of this week, we should have the means to destroy them but we need to act quickly or there will be so many that we’ll be overwhelmed.’ I was sitting beside Neil and nodded in support.
In faltering English, Nicholas Melopov, a short rotund man in his mid-forties said, ‘But, Dr Weston, there no evidence that the Lunar Regolith Parasites (LRPs) reproduce in absence of hosts. To our awareness, there be just five of them, perhaps six if Blake Smith survived.’
I said, ‘There is evidence! We know Dr MacIntosh extracted one from Roy Williams and then dropped it on the floor of one of the wards. We captured it and it lived in a sealed vacuum flask for several days before escaping and infecting me.’
‘Yes,’ said Lien Liu, a severe-looking, short, stocky Chinese woman in her sixties. ‘But the LRP didn’t reproduce on its own during that period.’
‘Correct,’ said Neil, ‘but we believe it wasn’t a full-strength parasite when it was removed from Mr Williams. We mustn’t take the chance that the LRPs could be reproducing outside the hosts. The mission timing is more important than the cost.’
I said, ‘We do know that each of the victims can produce a new LRP every two days and, if there are five of them, that means there are already dozens of LRPs and, if Blake Smith survived, perhaps a hundred plus. They could easily store the replicated LRPs somewhere.’
‘We aren’t just sitting here talking, you know,’ said Lien, looking at Neil and me. ‘We already have one ship ready for launch and a second should be available by the eleventh of April.’
‘We will also have two by that time,’ said the Russian.
Bob Michaels, a tall, gangly fifty-year-old, leaned back in his chair, ‘Okay. Neil has a point, but as Miss Liu says, we are all preparing for the mission. SpaceX has two new Dragonstar lunar landers already in Earth orbit. When the crews head for the moon, they will fly alongside us under remote control. That will make six landers in total which we can use to travel from the Lunar Orbiting Platform to the surface.’
Neil added, ‘We’ve also suspended all unmanned flights to Copernicus and postponed mining crew flights indefinitely. We don’t want to be supplying the aliens with useful materials.’
‘How radiation projectors come along?’ asked Nicholas.
‘Final test this Friday,’ I replied. ‘Once we know they work, it won’t take long to make a couple of dozen. The biggest problem, so I’m told by the lead scientist, was working out exactly what killed the LRP. The Van Allen belts contain such a toxic cocktail of particles and interactions that they had to use elimination to discover exactly what did the damage.’
‘But they have?’ asked Bob.
‘Well, they checked the detectors on the Orion and narrowed down the radiations to the only ones which didn’t penetrate regolith nor were commonly encountered on the moon’s surface. That only left a couple of radiation types which could have been the fatal ones. The projectors will emit both.’
‘And they’re sure they are the right ones?’
‘Yes, they’re pretty sure,’ I said. ‘The test on Friday will tell us if the number of harmful particles the projectors emit is at a similar level to the maximum dose for them without damaging us too much. I don’t understand the detail, I’m afraid.’
‘What about effective range?’ asked Nicholas.
‘Not good,’ I said. ‘Only three or four metres, but they are also working on a multi-directional projector which will concentrate the same radiations, over a shorter timeframe. That will be effective over a much larger area, but still won’t penetrate walls, et cetera. To penetrate solid structures, we’d have to add radiation which would be far too harmful to humans. The Van Allen belts are not good for us when we pass through them, even when shielded. We’ve had to be quite selective in choosing the radiations we use. The experts can provide more information than I.’
Wearily, Michaels leaned forward. ’Since we need the military folks and scientists to determine these factors,’ he said, ‘let’s reconvene tomorrow morning. I know we have all been putting in long hours, but we need to be as focused and as fresh as we possibly can and Dr Weston and Dr Noble have a press conference to attend.’
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Neil and I headed straight to the Johnson Space Center where a news conference was going to take place that afternoon.
The Chicago Tribune had somehow got hold of the story and released it the previous day. It had caused an explosion of interest which couldn’t be ignored or denied. NASA decided that Neil should handle the flak but would take me along to talk about the effect of the parasites on humans. This promised to be a lively affair. The agency had wanted to maintain secrecy, but when the Chinese returned to Earth from their Ben Lei habitat, it was realised that the moon had been abandoned, but for six individuals who made no contact. It didn’t take long for the media to find out about the LRPs. Their digging finally hit a raw nerve and one of the medics at the Wilmington Hospital, where I had been treated, blew the whistle.
By restricting the press conference to one mission director and one astronaut, it was hoped the real danger could be underplayed. Personally, I’d have preferred to see more honesty and less manipulation.
We walked onto the stage and sat behind a desk bristling with microphones. In front of us, a sea of journalists’ faces; among them, television and still cameras, handheld and on tripods.
Neil said, ‘I have a short, prepared statement which I will read to you now and you can also collect a copy from the pile here on the desk.’ He tapped the pile, took a copy from the top and began to read, ‘On the sixteenth of February, astronauts Mark Noble and Roy Williams were surveying Timocharis Delta crater. An entity, which we call the Lunar Regolith Parasite or LRP, was apparently hibernating in deep dust until it was disturbed during the survey. It became attached to the moon buggy wheel and was inadvertently taken back to Moonbase.
‘Once in the garage dome, it attacked geologist Roy Williams, overpowering him in seconds. It so effectively restrained Williams’ bodily functions that the rest of the crew, including the Moonbase doctor, believed him to be dead.
‘In fact, the LRP had taken control of Williams’ mind and body. Presumed dead, he was left in the cold store to await a post-mortem.
The LRP, using Williams’ body, attempted to escape Moonbase. We don’t think it understood the nature of the habitat. Leaving the base, perhaps to conceal itself outside, was never going to be effective, as it would be easy to track the buggy.
‘Noble and Dr MacIntosh followed the buggy. Williams was found and returned to Moonbase and, although quarantined, he appeared to have recovered.’
I said, ‘He seemed slightly odd to me, but only because I knew him so well.’
A journalist called out, ‘What do you mean by odd?’
‘Hold on now,’ said Neil. ‘Let me finish the prepared statement and then we’ll take questions.’
He continued, ‘The Moonbase doctor, while examining Williams, broke quarantine and was also infected, although no one realised it at the time. Williams’ entity had divided. This showed that the LRP was able to reproduce and was probably intelligent or it wouldn’t have worked so hard to conceal its infection of the doctor. It was learning about our thought processes and likely actions.
‘Two days later, the doctor transferred one of his own divided LRPs into astronaut Jennifer Hudson, and the two of them contrived to have the second new LRP from Williams dropped in the old ward where Williams had been kept initially. The rest of the crew found it and isolated it, thinking it was the original LRP and that Williams was now free of infection. He was kept in quarantine, but the rest of the crew were still unaware of the doctor’s and Hudson’s infections.
‘Later that day, when it was eventually discovered that three of the crew were infected, NASA called upon military advisers who advised Blake Smith, the Moonbase commander, how to proceed. The three infected astronauts were caught and imprisoned in the medical centre.
‘However, during the capture process, MacIntosh and Hudson had deposited two more LRPs in the com dome. During the night they took possession of Crystal Mitumba and either Deputy Commander Mary Carter or Commander Smith. They freed the three from the medical centre and Williams infected the remaining crew member in the com dome, leaving only Linda and Mark Noble uninfected. At the time, they were in their quarters.’
Neil had avoided mentioning that we weren’t married at that time. He’d told me that he didn’t want the media to make a fuss over single astronauts cohabiting on the moon.
‘The next morning,’ Neil continued, ‘the Nobles were attacked by Williams, but Mark managed to incapacitate him. They grabbed the container which had the specimen parasite within it and fled for the Dragonstar with Smith and Williams in pursuit.
‘During the Dragonstar countdown, Commander Smith and Williams arrived and tried to board the lander. Mark broke Smith’s faceplate as he reached the hatch, and they were able to blast off. We are assuming Smith died but cannot be certain.
‘Linda and Mark made it to the LOP and…’
‘What’s an LOP?’ shouted one of the press.
‘LOP,’ I said, ‘stands for the Lunar Orbiting Platform, the space station which orbits the moon, the way-station for moon landings, also referred to as the Lunar Gateway or just Gateway.’
Neil continued, ‘They then transferred to an Orion and headed back to Earth. The LRPs, normally two or three inches long, have the ability to squeeze through the tiniest gaps. The specimen in the vacuum flask managed to escape during the flight and infected Mark. This happened just too late for Linda to abort the landing and burn-up the Orion during re-entry. The capsule was already on automatic control.’
‘Wait a minute,’ shouted one of the journalists. ‘This thing is so dangerous that you were going to destroy yourselves?’
‘Let me finish the statement,’ said Neil.
‘During Earth approach, the Orion passed briefly through the Van Allen belts and the radiation within the inner belt killed the parasite. It had been weakened as the Orion passed through the outer belt.
‘It would be fair to say that the world would have been in real peril if it hadn’t been killed. We now know that LRPs cannot tolerate the decay of neutrons caused by certain cosmic ray interactions in the inner Van Allen belt and we have built a projector, a sort of cosmic ray gun, which we believe can be used to destroy them with the same radiation, without killing the host.
‘Early in April a combined US, Russian and Chinese Mission will be sent to clear Moonbase of the parasites and also reclaim the Chinese Ben Lei habitat. That mission will be led by Commander Mark Noble. Now, questions?’ We both looked up at the audience.
‘How sure are you that Commander Noble is clear of infection?’
‘One hundred per cent. Next,’ said Neil.
‘Are they really so dangerous, you’d have killed yourselves to stop them getting to Earth?’
‘Absolutely,’ I said. ‘Linda had just relinquished control to the computers when she realised that I’d been infected. She tried to override the system but was unable to do so.’
‘Why would they be a serious threat to the Earth?’
Neil replied, ‘The LRPs’ ability to divide and infect every two days might not seem too threatening at first glance, but think on this – two, four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four, one hundred and twenty-eight, and that is the first two weeks. We’ve calculated that everyone in the world could be infected within three months.’
Concerned murmuring arose from the press.
‘What happens on infection?’ asked one of them.
‘Total control,’ I replied. ‘The first thing it does is paralyse your speech centres so that you cannot shout out. Movement is controlled within a second. The next thing I felt was that it was learning how to move my arms, hands and other limbs. There is nothing you can do to stop it. As I tried to speak or move, it showered me with pain, first like red-hot needles, then equivalent to being sprayed with acid and finally it was letting me experience the agony of having my limbs, eyes and tongue ripped from my body. It was truly agony and I lost consciousness, despite having quite a high pain threshold. I can honestly say that it was a dreadful experience and one which I would never want to repeat.’
There was now a more open chat in the roomful of journalists.
‘How did they remove it?’ someone asked eventually.
‘Cut it out,’ I said and tapped my head. ‘I now have a titanium plate in my skull.’
‘So, if you are able to kill the LRPs, how are you going to get them out of the infected people on the moon?’
‘In the crew,’ said Neil, ‘will be two theatre nurses, an anaesthetist and a brain surgeon. Most of the equipment including a CT scanner is in Moonbase, although some other items will be taken on the flight. There’s a small surgery at Moonbase which can be made sterile.’
‘So, invasive surgery. Is that the only way?’ asked the journalist from the Washington Post.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Using the scanner to monitor the situation, as long as the LRP is dead and visible between the skull and brain, as was the case with mine, keyhole surgery can be used to enter the body under either ear and extract the creature through the same opening. That would rely on the dead LRP being clear of the brain tissue. They couldn’t use the keyhole system on me owing to urgency. Mine seemed to extract itself from my brain while it was dying so was lying against the inside of my skull.’
‘Why on Earth would it do that?’ asked the same journalist.
‘We think it was trying to escape my body, but, frankly, we really don’t know,’ I said.
‘When does the expedition depart?’
Neil answered, ‘We are hoping to arrive at the Gateway by the fifteenth of April. The fleet will be two Ming ships containing four astronauts each; two Uspekhs, each with three Russian astronauts; two unmanned Dragonstar landers, we already have four at the Gateway; and two Orions carrying five astronauts and one carrying four. Twenty-eight of us in total.’
‘And Mark Noble is commanding the expedition?’
‘Yes,’ said Neil. ‘That has been agreed and the twenty-seven other astronauts will be arriving at the Johnson Space Center for training in about a week.’
‘What’s the plan?’ asked a lady from the New York Post.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘That’s the classified element.’
Questions went on for the best part of an hour. NASA, in its usual way, trying to be as open as possible.