Sacred Ground

by Richard Ong

part 1 of 3

Light exploded into darkness as a giant metal spider descended, tilting and swaying from side to side as it approached. A column of gas intensified and dust churned round and round into a thick smoke.

The smoke settled and enveloped the entity’s home.

Two shafts of light emanated from the spider and lanced through the debris of particles. Its legs hid the empty space above it like a shroud. Sunlight bounced off a gleaming surface.

Ground that had remained undisturbed for billions of years reverberated on impact when the giant spider finally landed on top of the entity’s home. A hole appeared beneath the metallic intruder. From its belly emerged beings that walked on two legs.

* * *

“This is Lamdru One calling Ice Station Polaris, over.” Captain Simon Thorpe fidgeted in his seat and looked over at his wife. Her restless body had twisted and turned for the past two hours since they put her to bed. Her nails dug deep into the creases of the thermal blanket and a piteous moan came out of her mouth.

Simon turned his attention back to the communications console and stole a glance at the blackness of the lunar basin outside the ship. “This is Lamdru One calling Ice Station Polaris, do you read, over?”

“This is Ice Station Polaris, Karpov speaking,” came a faint squawk over the speaker. “Your signal is weak but clear, Lamdru One.”

“Good to hear from you, Karpov,” said Simon. “For a while there I wasn’t sure whether our signal was getting through.”

“It’s that damn magnetic interference, you know.” A heavy-set Oriental man with streaks of highlight on his hair placed a cup of coffee on a small dispenser ring in front of Simon. Simon nodded his thanks to his copilot and mission specialist engineer.

Lieutenant Albert Wong gave a wry smile back and lifted his own cup and sipped through a straw. In spite of the weak gravity on the Moon, sealed containers for all non-viscous consumable fluids were mandatory for the safety of anyone working inside a Large Mobile Drilling unit such as the aptly dubbed “Lamdru One.”

Albert sat on the pilot’s seat next to Simon and began going through the motions of rechecking the instrument readings — for the third time since they had landed. The magnetic flux was still strong and did not seem to be getting any better.

“Hey, Karpov,” shouted Simon amidst the crackling communications static from the speaker. He glanced over his shoulder and noticed that his wife, Abigail, who was normally a light sleeper, was still tossing and turning on the bed. Perspiration beaded her forehead in spite of the temperate climate inside the ship.

He turned back to read through the display on the instrument panel. As he did so, his eye briefly caught the perpetually smiling face of his copilot. Having Albert Wong join him and his wife on an ilmenite prospecting mission south of Ice Station Polaris had never been his idea. In fact, he was against it altogether.

Under that friendly, chubby Hawaiian feature was a soul as black and conniving as the company he worked for, the very same enterprise that owned Ice Station Polaris. This massive ice-drilling complex was located on Anaxagoras crater, roughly seventeen degrees north of their position. He and Abigail owned the only mobile habitat unit capable of making the hop over the unstable region of the mare, extracting a chunk of ilmenite deposit and shuttling the sample back to Polaris for analysis in record time before anyone else could stake a claim to the region.

Heliopolis Hydro Enterprises had established an unsurpassed monopoly over lunar resource mining for the international market, and its CEO, James Willard III, had been known on occasion not to have scruples about certain questionable practices.

Lieutenant Albert Wong was just another strong arm imposed by James Willard on Thorpe Mining to ensure that he and his wife did not sell out to Heliopolis’ competition. Simon forced his attention back to the readout which at the moment occupied his thoughts more than Albert’s agenda in this mission.

“Karpov, I’m sending you the encrypted details of the scans over the last six hours. The lab boys at the barn can probably make better sense out of this than we do,” Simon said over the microphone.

There was a momentary delay during which Simon feared that he had lost the signal for good. However, Karpov’s strongly accented Russian voice replied from the speaker shortly after. “Roger that, Captain Thorpe. Sorry about the delay. We needed to reroute and piggyback our signal through the orbital surveyor that just crossed over your landing zone. How are you reading us, by the way?”

“Receiving you clear as can be for the moment, Karpov,” Simon replied.

“Good! Good. We are currently downloading the data you sent us and will send you the results of our analyses as soon as we can. In the meantime, can you please give us a summation of your status and initial thoughts of the mission, over?”

Simon glanced over at his copilot, then at the still-slumbering form of his wife before giving his report. I suppose they would find out sooner or later anyway, he thought.

“They might as well know now, especially since the mission may be at risk,” Albert said.

“Potentially, at risk, Lieutenant! We don’t know what we’ve got at this point. I see no reason to reach any unwarranted conclusions,” Simon’s voice came a little harder than he intended. Damn it man, he silently chided himself. Get a grip!

Willard’s stool was staring at him with a half-smile on his lips. He turned up the receiving volume of the microphone on his headset and replied. “At exactly 1800 hours nearside central standard time, Lamdru One landed without any incident on Mare Frigoris at fifty-eight degrees north and one point three degrees east. Temperature reading at sundown was at minus one hundred and ninety-five degrees Celsius and dropping. The last remaining sunlight was barely a glow over the northern highlands of Plato. Other than that, the mare was pitch black with a visibility of almost next to nothing, so we kept Lamdru One’s searchlights on all night.

“At 1835 hours, Lieutenant Abigail Thorpe, Lieutenant Albert Wong and I descended on the surface to scout the area. The regolith on the basin is thicker and finer than we originally thought based on previous orbital scans. The soles of our boots literally sank, and the regolith dust covered our ankles with every step. It was like stepping onto bone-dry quicksand and there was something else: our magnetometer readings were fluctuating wildly as if an intense alternating magnetic field was saturating the landing zone.”

“Can you ascertain the source and range of the flux, Captain?” Karpov interrupted.

“By our estimate using the ship’s magnetometer boom, its intensity was measured to within a hundred miles radius east and west of the landing site. Graphical mapping of the magnetic spectrum suggested the curvature of the affected field area as being elongated.”

“That is most unusual, Captain,” Karpov said.

“Yes it is and there’s more. We took back some samples of regolith and found that none of the powder showed any unusual signs that might have suggested a relation to the observed phenomena.”

“How do you mean, Captain?” Karpov asked.

“Well, my wife, Lieutenant Abigail, did several spectroscopic scans — infrared, gas, neutron particle emission — and concluded that the surface, at least, is composed of eighteen percent titanium dioxide, thirteen percent iron oxide and various mixtures of feldspar, pyroxene and other minerals expected to be found in a mare.”

“If I may point out, gentlemen,” — Lieutenant Wong had a smug expression when he spoke — “the higher-than-expected titanium grade in the basin holds an excellent prospect for this mission.”

“You are absolutely right, Lieutenant,” Karpov said. “This would put Heliopolis on the precipice of a very promising find, to be sure.”

Albert glanced at Simon and his upper lip curved up, though his eyes scrutinized his commander with a clinical stare.

Simon tried very hard not to be provoked and resumed his report, especially as the signal appeared to be losing its strength once again.

“There’s more. As my second-in-command clearly stated, the surface did reveal an unusually high grade of titanium basalt. And yes, I have to agree that coupled with Heliopolis’ already thriving ice mining operation on both the Anaxagoras and Gold Schmidt craters near the north pole, a find such as this would give the company a potential stranglehold on titanium and iron mining on the Moon.

“The oxygen extraction derivative from this operation alone would further bolster life-support and fuel-resource development at Ice Station Polaris. That is, however, assuming you are able to set up a rig strong enough to withstand the powerful magnetic flux in the area for an extended period of time.

“As I’ve said, we’ve only managed to extract a small sample of the surface. What I didn’t tell you is why we weren’t able to drill down any further than two meters after that.”

Albert quickly reached over and covered the microphone’s receiver with his hand. “Are you crazy? They don’t need to know the rest of the details at this time. I say that we get on and grab what we came for, then ship out. When the company sends down the main rig, then they can deal with it. Till then, I strongly suggest that you keep a lid on the matter. There is no need to alarm anyone else unnecessarily, do you hear?”

Simon slapped Albert’s hand away from the microphone and turned down the volume receiver so Karpov wouldn’t hear the argument.

“You are this close to insubordination, mister,” Simon retorted. “Let me remind you that as long as I am in command of my own ship, you are not ever going to contradict me or refuse to follow my orders.”

“And let me remind you, Captain, that your contract with Heliopolis was conditional to a binding discretion of the mission specialist.” Albert smiled. “If I were you, I’d take care not to become a liability,” .

“Er... gentlemen?” Karpov’s voice came over the speaker, much fainter than before. “I seem to have lost your signal. Can you read me, over?”

“What about my wife? When she lost consciousness out there, did she suddenly become a liability as well?” Simon gritted his teeth as he spoke.

“That all depends” — Albert leaned back on his chair as a momentary stalemate had been reached — “on your next move, Captain.”

Abigail continued to moan and turn in her sleep. The thermal blanket laid on the floor. Simon stood up and picked up the polyfiber aluminum cloth to cover his wife. He walked back to his seat and stared blankly at the instrument readout. A blinking red light on the console told him that their link to Ice Station Polaris was about to be cut off.

Albert glanced at the red indicator and smiled wider than before. “Well now, I guess that it’s out of our hands, Captain.” The blinking light became steady and Lamdru One was suddenly alone in the vast, dark expanse of the Sea of Cold.

* * *

Proceed to part 2...