“WHERE ARE WE?” wondered Mr. Barnett out loud while marveling at the range of vegetation in this sub-lunar ecosystem that Byron had led them to. Not only were there trees and ferns, but a wildly overgrown vegetable garden of carrots, spinach, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, bok choy, purple potatoes, and baby pumpkins (though pumpkins are actually a fruit). And beneath the waterfall grew a lush patch of orange seaweed, lately confirmed by science to be a kind of superfood.
“Come look at this!” called Governor Tang from around a corner. Everyone scurried to catch up to him. They found him standing in front of a cave within the cave, its innards all sparkly from reflected light.
“Lucky, I believe you can tell us what we’re looking at.”
“It’s a diamond mine,” Lucky whispered in awe, “formed in an ancient lava tube.”
“As in a lava tube to a volcano?” Taji said. “The Moon has volcanoes?”
“It used to have them,” explained Xing-Xing, the one true Lunarian in the group and even better than her father at lunar history. “Three and a half billion years ago, this was all eruptions and molten rock.”
“Byron,” said Governor Tang, “I believe you’ve discovered the underground palace of J. Marcus Mingus. This is the secret abode of Moonbeard Marc. And the legendary source of his wealth.” Watching Lucky run his hand along the thousands of rough diamonds embedded in the rock of this ancient lava tube, the governor added:
“There’s no private land on the Moon, so under normal circumstances, diamonds belong to whoever finds them. In this case, however, I should tell you that I’m going to designate this entire cave and all its contents an Historic Lunar Landmark, meaning it’ll become a trust of the Lunar League and preserved just as it is. But before I do that, Lucky, why don’t you take a few stones. To replace the ones you lost.”
“I suppose I could,” Lucky said unenthusiastically.
Lucky’s lack of appreciation for the governor’s gesture spurred Mrs. Barnett to give him a small scolding:
“It’s not every day a person receives an offer of free diamonds, Lucky. You don’t seem very excited about it.”
“No, no, it’s lovely that I’ll have replacement gems, but correct me if I’m wrong, Mrs. Barnett: won’t I still be trapped right here with them? It took half a century and a boy-explorer with the energy of a stellar explosion to find this cave. We have no portable oxygen to leave it again, and the rescue-rocket has no way of finding us or even knowing we’re down here.”
“True,” Mrs. Barnett said.
“Let’s keep looking around,” suggested Xing-Xing. “Maybe there’s an old radio we can use to send a signal.”
This being an excellent proposal, as so many of Xing-Xing’s proposals were, the group dispersed into various chambers of the extensive cave to see what they could find. Xing-Xing and Taji were the first to make a major discovery: a machine room full of whirring equipment, pumps, clusters of wires and bunches of bound copper tubes.
“Here’s the atomic generator that’s been keeping the power on,” confirmed Xing-Xing, “ … and here’s the recycling mechanism for the artificial waterfall … and the irrigation lines for the vegetation … and the air filtration pumps. It’s clunky stuff, very old-school, but it works.”
“Think of the diamonds it cost him to build all this,” said Taji, “and the hush-money he must’ve paid out to keep this place a secret!”
Nearby, Mr. and Mrs. Barnett had found and were now exploring the cave’s rather modest living quarters. Next to the living quarters, Governor Tang and Lucky had found a fifty-foot-tall chamber housing a telescope as big as the really big telescopes in the best observatories on Earth. The scope’s lens was peeking through the rock at the top of this portion of the cave, sealed with a rubber lid to keep the air in.
Byron too had made a discovery: another high-ceilinged room containing a small rocket-ship sitting upright on its launch pad. Directly above it and fitted into the top of the cave was a steel iris which presumably opened up when the rocket lifted off, providing an outlet for the ship to shoot through. The body of the rocket was only eight feet tall. Byron circled it slowly, until he came to the front portion, made of tempered glass—whereupon his eyes almost burst from their sockets.
“Everybody!!!” he hollered.
“Did you find something?!” called his mother from some adjacent chamber.
“Yes!!!”
“What is it?!”
“Ummm … Moonbeard Marc!!!”
The group came sprinting in and found Byron beside the little glass-paneled rocket-ship. Inside it Moonbeard Marc was positioned upright as if in a casket, wearing his oldtimer’s spacesuit, his gloves and helmet beside him. His body was shrunken a bit but otherwise intact, including the dozens of diamonds braided into his long beard and hair.
“It’s a space-coffin!” Byron said.
“What’s he holding?” asked Taji.
Moonbeard Marc’s hand lay on a small metal object. Mr. Barnett put on his eyeglasses and peered through the rocket’s glass casing. “That’s a triggering device. Old Mr. Mingus probably climbed in when he knew he was about to expire and positioned his hand to fall on it when he gave up the ghost. Looks like the connection failed.” Mr. Barnett took his glasses off again, absentmindedly setting them down on a rock shelf beside the space-coffin.
“But why isn’t he a skeleton by now?” asked Byron.
“Because he’s in a vacuum,” Mr. Barnett said. “The air was pumped out when he powered up. His skin dried, but there weren’t any microbes to break down the flesh.”
“So he’s a mummy! Maybe we can see through his nostrils straight into his brain!” Clicking on his flashlight, Byron jumped up onto the rock shelf to get himself high enough to look into Moonbeard Marc’s nostrils—and stepped directly onto his father’s eyeglasses.
“Byron!”
“Sorry!!!”
“Oh, Byron, this is not good.”
Byron bit his lip. Then asked nervously:
“Don’t you have your spares?”
“In my blazer. On my dresser. In my bedroom. At Cosmopolis.”
Grasping the seriousness of his blunder, Byron threw himself into such a monumental apology that his father had no choice but to forgive him. Xing-Xing, meanwhile, went over to examine the launch-chamber’s wall of machinery.
“Is there a radio?” Governor Tang asked her.
“No. This man was a true hermit. But I see why his capsule didn’t blast off: there was a short in the sequencing system: it’s all blown out.”
Governor Tang whirled to face Mr. Barnett. “If we could patch it up,” he said, “why couldn’t we send up the capsule as a kind of flare when the rescue-rocket passes overhead? They’d see the fire-trail and be able to follow it straight down to us.”
“But how will we know when the rescue-rocket’s overhead?” Taji said.
“There’s a telescope in the next chamber. I’ll stay glued to the eyepiece.” To Mr. Barnett the governor added: “Barnett, you’re the best engineer Amalgamated MegaPhysics ever produced. Surely you can fix a fifty-year-old sequencing system.”
“I’m afraid not, Mr. Governor. I have hyperopia. I’m farsighted. Things in the distance I have no trouble with, but up close, without my glasses, I’m blind as a bat without sonar.”
Disappointment all around was the result of this admission, while Lucky, in his mind at least, started to actually panic. But then Mr. Barnett finished his thought, telling the governor: “However, as I’ve tried explaining every time it comes up, I’m only the second best engineer AmPhys ever produced.”
“That information would matter more to me,” said the governor grimly, “if you could snap your fingers and deliver me the top man.”
“Who says I can’t?”
It took a moment for the governor to understand; then, when he did, he turned to Mrs. Barnett.
“I give you the former Bianca Barcelona,” announced Mr. Barnett proudly. “The best engineer there ever was.”
“Until I got a better job offer as CEO of the Barnett Family,” Mrs. Barnett said. “The hours were worse, but I liked the perks.”
“Well, well!” said the governor. “You Barnetts are one talented clan! To Mrs. Barnett he added: “Now, Barnett, let’s find you a toolkit and get you started!”
Within the hour, Mrs. Barnett had opened up the wall of machinery in the launch-chamber and was deep into the task of repairing the space-capsule’s sequencing system, with Xing-Xing and Taji assigned to help out by handing her the tools she needed one tool at a time. Mrs. Barnett’s job was a large one, akin to taking apart a hovercraft engine to locate a worn-out part the size of a hairpin before replacing it and putting the engine back together again. Dozens of pieces of the dismantled sequencing system were now laid out neatly on a shelf, waiting for the hairpin to be found.
Mrs. Barnett herself, wearing safety goggles, was wedged inside the bank of machinery, beyond sight of Xing-Xing and Taji. Xing-Xing stood between the machinery and Taji; Taji stood at a workbench where he’d laid out all the tools from the toolkit.
“Wire strippers!” said Mrs. Barnett from inside the wall.
“Wire strippers!” Xing-Xing repeated to Taji at the workbench.
“Wire strippers!” confirmed Taji, selecting the requested tool. He winked at Xing-Xing with his right eye as he passed it over.
“Um, these would be bolt cutters,” said Xing-Xing, “those are the wire strippers.”
Unembarrassed, Taji selected the correct tool and passed it along. “Wire strippers!” he said again, winking at Xing-Xing with his left eye this time.
Half-flirting back at him, Xing-Xing said:
“Don’t be winking at me! This is a life-or-death operation! You need to concentrate!”
“Winking helps me concentrate.”
“Mole grips!” called Mrs. Barnett from inside the wall.
“Mole grips!” repeated Xing-Xing.
Taji turned back to the workbench, but hesitated selecting a tool. Xing-Xing could hardly believe the things this Earth-boy didn’t know. “Second from the left,” she said, shaking her head.
“Mole grips!” confirmed Taji, passing them along.
“Are you really the son of two brilliant engineers?” Xing-Xing teased. But Taji was a master of turning a tease his own way. “I know!” he said. “Thank goodness being an egghead can skip a generation!”
“That’s not what I meant.”
Taji only smiled. And unlike his little brother’s various facial expressions, Taji’s smile usually did do the trick. “So in the end,” he told Xing-Xing, “I guess you’d have to say this whole day has turned into one long date.”
“In a very strange way.”
“So if we don’t manage to signal the rescue-rocket and this really is doomsville down here, and I turn out to be the last boy you ever kissed, would you say you went out in style?”
“I’d say it’s a flawed hypothetical.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I have confidence your mother’s going to get us off the Moon.”
“So … what you’re saying is, you want to start dating me back on Earth.”
Xing-Xing was sure by now that never in her life had she met a boy with more chutzpah than Taji; but before she could say so:
“Monkey wrench!” Mrs. Barnett called out.
“Monkey wrench!” Xing-Xing repeated.
“Monkey wrench!” Taji confirmed.
In the cave’s lava tube, Lucky was using a chisel and hammer to dislodge diamonds from the rock wall, his jacket pocket bulging with ones he’d already collected. At the moment he was working on freeing up a very large and no doubt extremely valuable stone.
“Don’t take more than you lost,” warned Byron, watching from the mouth of the tube.
“What are you, the Moon Police? I heard what the governor said!” With a good thump on his chisel Lucky loosened the diamond and yanked it out. “There! I’m done!”
He exited the tube in a rare state of satisfaction and sat down with Byron at a small picnic-type table in the adjacent chamber. There his mood turned morose again. Examining his new gems, he complained:
“I don’t know why I bothered: there’s no guarantee we’re ever getting out of this sub-lunar prison.”
“Will you whack a diamond for me?” Byron said.
“I don’t think so.”
“Oh, come on!”
“You know my sad history with diamond-cutting! It’s what sent me up here in the first place!”
“But what else do we have to do? Please? I want to see you whack it!”
“It’s exceptionally delicate work, Byron. If I’m off even by a hair’s breadth, I’ll shatter the stone.”
“You’re gonna have to start again sooner or later. Might as well be now, where it’s only me watching. I won’t be mean if you mess up.”
Lucky thought it over, sighed in his sing-songy way, removed his loupe from a pocket and fitted it into his eye like a monocle. Next he placed the chisel against the largest of the new stones, raised the hammer, got ready to whack it, and:
“Good luck!” Byron cheered.
Lucky brought the hammer down right onto the table, missing the stone entirely.
“Byron!”
“Sorry! I didn’t want you to be nervous!”
“I wasn’t nervous! But I am now!”
“Take a deep breath and try again.”
While Lucky shook off his agitation, Byron turned to José Ignacio and made an exaggerated face—including an out-stuck tongue—apropos Lucky’s chance of success. But Lucky surprised him: he raised his hammer a second time and brought it down hard against the chisel. The stone split neatly in half, revealing a smooth interior facet of the diamond. It was, indeed, a masterful whack.
“Nice job!” Byron said. “Keep going!”
In the observatory-chamber, Governor Tang was looking through the eyepiece to the telescope. He saw the rescue-rocket on the far side of a vast, rotating cluster of meteoroids: the ship was apparently waiting for the space-rocks to clear before making the crossing to the Moon.
Next he turned a knob on the fifty-foot scope, zooming in on the white worm itself, which had drifted by this time to the near side of Mars. It was the back half of the worm to be precise, two and a half thousand miles long, with an electrical coil around the rear that packed enough voltage to have zapped open and tunneled through the very stuff of space.
Something about it alarmed him. Fiddling with the scope’s controls, he increased the magnification and looked back through the eyepiece. Now he could see the worm up-close. Something odd was definitely happening to it: something huge inside of it was trying to squeeze through and pop out, something too big for it, a round object causing it to balloon up in the middle, the way a swallowed ostrich egg would balloon the body of a snake.
Again the governor worked the scope’s control for greater magnification—until he reached its maximum setting. Again he looked through the eyepiece, still trying to see into the worm, still trying to get an angle on the danger, still trying to figure out what was coming next. It took a good twenty minutes, during which he had to try to blink as little as possible. Then, finally, he saw it: the round object making slow but definite progress through the body of the worm had just begun to peek out of the worm’s anal situation. Recognizing it for what it was, the governor gulped in dread. Because what was inside the white worm trying to come out was nothing less than some other solar system’s full-sized moon.
In the cave’s main chamber, prevented from being much help to anybody else due to the accidental crushing of his eyeglasses by Byron, Mr. Barnett was instead taking care of a piece of personal business. He was collecting a bouquet of assorted flowers from the artificial ecosystem’s various forms of plant life. True, some of the flowers were more the sprigs from vegetables than actual blossoms, but when trapped in the closed system of a sub-lunar cave, it pays to use your imagination.
Eventually Mr. Barnett decided to check out some of the other chambers for further floral possibilities, which is when he came across Lucky and Byron near the lava tube.
“Dad, come over here! Look what Lucky did!”
Lucky had by now whacked away at his diamond in the rough, gaining confidence as he went along, slicing the stone into a beautiful, multifaceted jewel. Mr. Barnett stepped up at just the right moment to see Lucky whack it one last time.
“That’s fine work, Lucky. I’d like to buy it from you.”
Lucky made a strange face, the kind of face you make when you hear a joke you don’t think is as funny as the joke-teller thinks it is.
“I’m in the market for a diamond for Mrs. Barnett,” Mr. Barnett said. “This is just what I had in mind.”
“Yes, well, the real question is, who doesn’t dream of owning a von Stroganoff diamond?”
“How much?”
“I’m awfully sorry, Mr. Barnett, but if you have to ask, you can’t afford to buy.”
“Oh, don’t be a snob. I’ll give you half a pack of gum for it.”
Mr. Barnett pulled the half a pack in question out of his jacket pocket and slapped it on the table. He would’ve offered the whole pack, but he’d chewed a few pieces on the way up from Earth aboard The Biarritz. So half a pack was his best and final offer.
“You cannot be serious,” Lucky sniffed.
“Think of it this way: if we’re stuck here, the gum’s worth more than the gem. If we’re rescued, you can always chip off one more stone to take home with you.”
Lucky made a cross-eyed face, groaned his botheration, and said:
“First I’ll need to taste-test.”
“Naturally.”
Lucky popped a piece of gum in his mouth and chewed in irritation for several seconds. The flavor, spicy orange, was actually one of his favorites. Still, he didn’t seem to want to make the trade. Turning to Byron for support, he said:
“Purely on principle, swapping a Stroganoff for only half a pack of gum feels deeply unjust.”
“Such is life,” Byron replied with a shrug of his shoulders.
Lucky pouted about it for another few seconds, then gave in. “Fine,” he said, complaining even while agreeing.
Mr. Barnett reached for the diamond on the table, but Lucky smacked him away. “You can’t just press a gemstone into a lady’s hand all on its own! Not even a Stroganoff!”
“Why not?” asked Byron.
“It’s not a marble! What’s she supposed to do, carry it around in her pocket?”
“What’s wrong with that?”
Lucky rolled his eyes at Byron and turned back to Mr. Barnett. “Come along, then. Let’s find you a suitable setting.”
In the launch-chamber, Mrs. Barnett finished sealing a bundle of wires inside the bank of machinery that she’d been working on, then stepped out and told Xing-Xing and Taji:
“Let’s close her up.”
“Ladies,” said Taji, “I think I can handle this.”
With Mrs. Barnett and Xing-Xing exchanging amused glances, Taji put some muscle into the proposition, pushing the bank of machinery back into place. Afterwards he was clearly pleased with himself, which only made Xing-Xing shake her head at him one more time.
“Now we fire up the sequencer,” said Mrs. Barnett. She flipped a switch. “We’ll just let the tubes warm up and see if the system takes the current.”
This is when Mr. Barnett entered the chamber, one hand behind his back. “Mrs. Barnett,” he said, “could I see you over here by the space-coffin?”
Mrs. Barnett crossed the chamber to join him, leaving Taji and Xing-Xing to watch them from a distance. Lucky and Byron were here too, looking in from the archway into the hall.
With a warm little laugh, Mrs. Barnett whispered to her husband:
“A mysterious rendezvous beside a space-coffin with a dashing, farsighted man. Intriguing.”
“I have something for you.”
“Even better. Go on.”
From behind his back Mr. Barnett pulled out a bouquet of handpicked flowers and ferns. “Roses,” he said. “More or less.” From his jacket pocket he produced the gem bought from Lucky, set into a pendant necklace made out of vines. “And diamonds.”
“Well, diamond,” said Mrs. Barnett.
“Be that as it may, let the record show, whether we leave here or we remain, that before my work was done, I kept my word to the goddess who married me. Roses and diamonds are what I promised her for agreeing to become my wife, and roses and diamonds, give or take, are what I’ve delivered.”
“Wallace, they’re beautiful.” She kissed him, which even Byron found acceptable to watch this one time, though normally such public displays of affection were, of course, revolting.
“And this diamond is exquisite!” Mrs. Barnett said, examining the stone in its attractive if vegetative pendant. “Though I don’t know how you could possibly afford it!”
“Ah, well, what’s money to a man in love?”
Across the chamber, the wall of machinery suddenly lit up and began beeping. Mrs. Barnett left her husband by the space-coffin to confirm the status of her repairs just as Governor Tang appeared through the archway.
“Good news, Mr. Governor!” called Mrs. Barnett. “The sequencing system is fixed: this bird will fly!”
“I’m afraid my news is less pleasant: the white worm is drifting closer, it’s halfway between us and Mars—and next time it’s not going to shoot out any mere meteoroids, it’s about to eject a full-sized moon that it swallowed on the other end and that’s been struggling to squeeze through.”
“A whole moon’s stuck in it?” Byron said.
“A whole moon. And when it finally does shoot out, unless I’ve guessed wrong, it’s going to smash into our moon and blast us into a hundred trillion pieces.”
Xing-Xing was first to realize the consequences:
“But daddy, without the Moon, Earth might deviate from its orbit. That could mean scorching heat in the Arctic and freezing cold in the tropics. Ecologically it would be the end of the world.”
“The end of the world?” cried Lucky. “What about the end of us?!”
“That too,” said Xing-Xing, causing Lucky to gag, heave, and throw up his lunch of butternut squash soup, cheese soufflé, and Parker House rolls, right there on the floor of the cave.
For once his vomit seemed exactly the right reaction.