The world was nothing but stone, and yet it was so much more.
The soft, undulating structure of its plains led you to forget that the maria were not true seas, nor the crater bottoms lakes. Curious structures suggested former habitation, as if H. G. Wells’ space-travelling heroes had actually encountered insect-oid selenites and herds of moon-cows here, before being abducted into the machine world of the lunar underground. They had seen a lot that day, Carl Hanna, Marc Edwards and Mimi Parker, Amber and the Locatellis, Evelyn Chambers and Oleg Rogachev, whose wife lay grimly by the moon pool, but Julian insisted that the highlight was still to come. The first spurs of the high plateau appeared in the north-west. Peter Black made the shuttle climb high above the Aristarchus Crater, which looked as if it was cast out of light.
‘The Arena of the Spirits,’ Julian whispered with an air of mystery, a youthful grin playing around the corners of his mouth. ‘An observation point for sinister light phenomena. Some people are convinced that Aristarchus is inhabited by demons.’
‘Interesting,’ said Evelyn Chambers. ‘Perhaps we should leave Momoka here for a while.’
‘That would be the end of any sinister phenomena,’ Momoka observed drily. ‘After only an hour in my company the last demon would have emigrated to Mars.’
Locatelli raised his eyebrows, full of admiration at how coquettishly his wife was twisting and turning in the mirror of her own self-criticism.
‘And can you tell us something about the cause?’ Rogachev asked.
‘Yeah, well, there are a lot of arguments about that. For decades light phenomena have been witnessed in Aristarchus and other craters, but until a few years ago ultra-orthodox astronomers refused even to acknowledge the existence of such “Lunar Transient Phenomena”.’
‘Perhaps volcanoes?’ Hanna suggested.
‘Wilhelm Herschel, an astronomer of the late eighteenth century, was convinced of that. Very popular in his day. He was one of the first to spot red dots in the lunar night, some of them around here. Herschel supposed they were glowing lava. Later his sightings were confirmed, other observers reported a violet haze, menacingly dark clouds, lightning, flames and sparks, all extremely mysterious.’
‘To spit lava, the Moon would have to have a liquid core,’ said Amber. ‘Does it?’
‘You see, that’s the rub.’ Julian smiled. ‘It’s generally assumed that it does, but so deep underground that volcanic eruptions are ruled out as an explanation.’
Momoka peered suspiciously out of the side windows into Aristarchus’ gaping mouth.
‘You can stop trying to make things so exciting,’ Evelyn said after a while.
‘Wouldn’t you rather believe in demons?’
‘I don’t see demons as romantic,’ said Parker. ‘It would mean the Devil living on the Moon.’
‘So?’ Locatelli shrugged. ‘Sooner here than in California.’
‘So the Devil is someone you make jokes about.’
‘Fine.’ Julian raised his hands. ‘There is a bit of volcanic activity up here. No lava streams, admittedly, but it’s been noted that the phenomena always occur when the Moon is closest to the Earth, so when gravity is tugging at it particularly hard. The consequences are lunar quakes. When that happens, pores and cracks appear, hot gases emerge from the deeper regions to the surface, bursting out at high pressure, regolith is fired out, albedo accumulates at the exit point, and already you have a glowing cloud.’
‘I get it,’ said Momoka. ‘It needs to fart.’
‘You should stop giving away all the tricks,’ Amber said with a sideways glance at Parker. ‘I thought the demons were more exciting.’
‘And what’s that thing there?’ Edwards narrowed his eyes and pointed outside. Something massive was twisting its way north-west of the crater, across the plateau with all its furrows and potholes. It looked like a huge snake, or rather like the cast for a snake, a beast of mythical proportions. The funnel-shaped head joined a twisting body that narrowed until it opened up, thin and pointed, in the next plain along. The whole thing looked as if it had once been the resting-place of Ananden, the ancient Indian world snake that carried the earth and the universe, the scaly, breathing throne of the god Vishnu.
‘That,’ said Julian, ‘is Schröter’s Valley.’
Black soared above the formation at great height, so that they could admire its vast dimensions, the whole of the great Moon valley, as Julian explained, four billion years old; and other people had in fact been struck by its serpentine nature. The head crater, six kilometres across, was called Cobra’s Head, a cobra that twisted 168 kilometres to the shore of the Oceanus Procellarum. On a plateau that overlooked Cobra’s Head from the north-east, a levelled area came into view, lined with hangars and collectors. A radio mast gleamed in the sunlight. Black brought the vehicle down towards the landing field and set Ganymede down gently on its beetle legs.
‘Schröter space station,’ he said, and grinned conspiratorially at Julian. ‘Welcome to the Realm of the Spirits. The chances of us seeing any are slight, and yet, ladies and gentlemen, stay away from suspicious-looking holes and cracks. Helmets and armour on. Five in the lock at any one time, like this morning. Julian, Amber, Carl, Oleg and Evelyn first, followed by Marc, Mimi, Warren, Momoka and me. If I may ask you.’
Unlike the landing module of the Charon, in a Hornet shuttle you didn’t have to suck out all the air in the cabin, but left it via a lift that doubled as an airlock. Black extended the shaft. They took their chest armour from the shelf and helped each other into their tightly fitting suits, while Julian tried to banish the shadow that stripped his mood of its usual radiant power. Lynn was starting to change, he couldn’t deny it. She was showing signs of inner seclusion, had developed unattractive rings around her eyes and was treating him with growing and unprovoked aggression. In his puzzlement he had confided in Hanna – a mistake, perhaps, although he couldn’t say exactly why. The Canadian was fine, in fact. And yet he had recently started feeling slightly shy around Hanna, as if he would only have to look a bit more closely, and unsettling trigonometric connections would appear between him, Lynn and the ghostly train. The longer he brooded about it, the more certain he was that the solution was right before his eyes. He saw the truth without recognising it. A detail of banal validity, but as long as his inner projectionist slept the sleep of the just, he couldn’t reach it.
Along with the others, he entered the lock and put his helmet on. Through the viewing windows he could see the interior of the shuttle, while the air was being sucked out of the lock. He saw Locatelli delivering speeches, Momoka helping Parker into the survival backpack, then the lift cabin plummeted, emerged from the belly of the Ganymede and travelled down the shaft to just above the asphalt of the landing field. A ramp emerged from the floor of the cabin and they stepped outside along it. It had not been planned for shuttles to land on anything but solid surfaces, but if such a landing were necessary, any contact between the cabin and the fine dust of the regolith was to be kept to a minimum, because otherwise—