Moon 2.0: A Hard Science Fiction Thriller (Eighth Continent) by Rhett C. Bruno & Felix R. Savage

Author:Rhett C. Bruno & Felix R. Savage [Bruno, Rhett C. & Savage, Felix R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aethon Books
Published: 2023-10-23T16:00:00+00:00

43

Joe’s asteroid did not look like the average person’s idea of an asteroid. It looked like a broad plain scattered with rocks ranging from pebbles to house-sized boulders.

None of these rocks were the asteroid.

The asteroid was the plain, which sloped very gently to a center point about seventy klicks from base, and fifty-odd from Amundsen Crater.

This wasn’t the best location from the standpoint of security. Nothing had been heard from the Five Stones crew in the three days since Nick’s escape. Not that he was expecting an apology. He gazed warily southeast as he parked the ILI rover on the plain, in the same place where Joe must’ve parked on his asteroid-sampling expedition two and a half years ago.

Just follow the old rover tracks, Joe had said, and that’s what Nick had done, with his three companions fidgeting in the back of the rover like a pack of children.

Dev got out first. He’d designated himself chief of security. It wasn’t clear what he planned to do if the Five Stones crew did catch them out here. Throw rocks at them, maybe. Complete the descent back into Stone Age savagery. It couldn’t hurt to have a lookout though. Dev trudged a short distance away and climbed one of the house-sized rocks.

“All clear,” he announced.

Nick stepped out into the breathtakingly empty landscape. The sun-drenched plain undulated to the horizon.

Livvy got out next. She wasn’t going to miss this chance to explore, even if Joe had explored this area first.

Nick took the MoonHopper equipment case out of the rover’s rear toolbox. Grayson got out and helped him inflate the airbags. Dev, who hadn’t seen this before, watched from his post beyond the crater.

“Fuuuuck,” he said. “Those look alive.”

The MoonHoppers soared away from the rover to every point of the compass. This asteroid impact zone was even broader than the Mount Arthur crater. They might need days to image it fully, although they’d parked in the middle of the barely-concave plain, to give themselves the best chance.

But Nick had another idea. This crater had no central peak. Either the C-type impactor had a loose rubble structure and shattered into a trillion pieces on impact—or it had struck very long ago… so long ago, that slow erosion by the solar wind had worn the central peak away. In that case, the impactor material would be buried under dust. In fact, Joe had told Nick he’d dug up his samples on the bet that the old-impactor scenario was true.

Nick got out a shovel and started to dig.

Grayson joined him, followed by Livvy.

“Just like old times,” Livvy said.

They cleared a trench about three feet wide and a foot deep, flinging the loose top layer of dust and gravel to either side. The dust hung in the vacuum, sparkling.

“I don’t want to jinx it,” Grayson said, “but I feel like this time is different.”

“Call one of the MoonHoppers back,” Nick said. “I think we’ve exposed a big enough area now.”

And if this time was different? Nick’s original plan was DOA.

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