‘Well, it was enough to make the fossil energy market collapse on Earth.’
‘It collapsed prematurely. How many machines are in use at the moment?’
‘Thirty. Believe me, Oleg, helium-3 represents a lasting solution to our energy problems, and the Moon can provide it. But you’re right of course. We need a lot more machines to be able to graze all the terrain.’
‘Graze,’ echoed Amber. ‘That sounds more like a cow than a beetle.’
‘Yes.’ Julian’s laughter was a little forced. ‘They really do move across the land like herds. Like a herd of cows.’
‘Impressive,’ said Rogachev, but Evelyn thought she could detect a hint of scepticism. The silhouette of a third beetle came into sight in the hazy distance. It seemed to be standing still. Evelyn’s attention was drawn to something agile, something smaller, that was approaching the machine from behind, at first glance a flying machine, until the suspicion took hold that the thing was hurrying over on high, intricate legs, and she couldn’t help thinking of a spider. The apparition paused underneath the monstrous abdomen, ducked down, and seemed to temporarily merge with the beetle. Evelyn stared at it curiously. She wanted to ask Julian, but Momoka’s silence weighed heavily over the group like a stormy sky, so she held her tongue, deeply unsettled. This insectarium was not at all to her liking. Not that she had anything against technology: she conscientiously drove her environmentally friendly electric car, had converted her home to Locatelli’s solar technology and always separated her trash – though she certainly couldn’t claim a devoutly green mindset. Phenomena like robotics, nanotechnology and space travel were just as interesting to her as waterfalls, giant sequoia trees and the endangered tufted-ear marmosets, whose continued existence couldn’t necessarily be regarded as essential to the Earth’s ecological foundations. New technologies fascinated her, but something about this realm of the dead exuded a horror that even Rogachev’s less than squeamish industrial nature seemed to be developing antibodies against.
Hanna’s tracks veered off in a wide arc. The huge imprints suggested that he had been forced to dodge one of the mining machines. The crater-like tracks were joined by some of lesser diameter, and less deep too. Evelyn looked behind and saw a beetle shimmering in its cocoon of dust like a mirage. She couldn’t make out the spider-like creature any more. She closed her eyes, and the image of the colossal machine left a ghostly afterglow on her retinas.
The beetle was eating.
It worked its way unceasingly through the undergrowth with its shovel-like jaw, loosening the rocks, sieving out the indigestible fragments and guiding the finegrained matter that remained into its glowing insides. Meanwhile, huge reflectors atop its hunchback followed the course of the sun, bundled photons and sent them off to smaller parabolic reflectors. From there, the light made its way into the cybernetic organism and created a burning hell of 1000 degrees Celsius, not enough to melt the regolith, but enough to divest it of its bound elements. Hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen and minute quantities of helium-3 rose in gas form into the solar oven, and from there made their way into the highly compressed counter-world of its abdomen. At minus 260 degrees Celsius and under enormous pressure, the obtained gases condensed into liquid and were then transmitted to batteries of spherical tanks, separated according to their elementary affiliation: minute amounts of helium-3, every drop a carefully protected treasure, and everything else in huge quantities. Despite the potential value of the hydrogen for fuel production, the nitrogen for the enrichment of air supplies and the carbon for building materials, vast as the beetle was, it still had to release most of these liquefied elements back into the vacuum, where they instantly evaporated, forming a fleeting, cyclically renewed atmosphere around the machine. In this way the beetles altered everything surrounding them: the lunar soil, which they regurgitated in the form of baked crumbs, and the vacuum, which was constantly enriched with the noble gases that the machine constantly expelled.
As a result of the gas emissions, the dust around the machine became even denser. Strictly speaking, given that there were no air molecules to hold the floating pieces of rock in suspension, they should have been incapable of forming the kilometre-high barrier. But it was the very lack of atmospheric pressure, as well as the scant gravity and electrostatic phenomena, that caused their extremely long and high flight-paths, from which they sank down, as if reluctantly, hours later. So, over time, a permanent haze had descended over the mining zone. The clouds produced by the beetle under high pressure formed additional dust in such large quantities that the chewing apparatus and insect legs completely disappeared behind it at times. In addition to this, there was an iridescent gleam on the crystalline structure of the suspended matter, almost like aurora, which made it even harder to see.
This was exactly what happened to Hanna on his solitary trek; the reason why he only became aware of the proximity of one of the mining machines crossing his path once its shovel had practically swallowed him up and passed him through the sieve – only a jump of possibly record-breaking proportions had saved him from being industrially processed. He hastily put some distance between himself and the beetle, aghast that he’d overlooked something so colossal that it could make the ground shake. The machine had towered above him, but it was a well-known fact that small creatures tended to be blinded when they got too close to large ones. He aligned his course to the path of the machine and carried on. From the inexhaustible information provided as part of the conspiracy, he knew that the beetles ploughed the regolith in rectangular paths on the imaginary line between Cape Heraclides and Cape Laplace, and that you couldn’t miss the station as long as you kept at a ninety-degree angle to the pasture routes – the only orientation device in a world where, due to the lack of a magnetic field, even compasses didn’t work. He had been on the go for well over an hour now since the buggy had served its last, and his long, springing steps had necessitated his breaking into his first oxygen reserves. But he still didn’t feel any sign of fatigue. As long as nothing unexpected happened, the mining station should appear before him in the next fifteen to twenty minutes. If not, he would be in serious difficulties, and there would be plenty of time to worry then.
Totally unexpectedly, they met a spider.
It emerged from the shadow of a beetle and crossed their path with such speed that Julian had to whip the steering wheel around to stop them from colliding with it. For a moment, Evelyn was reminded of H. G. Wells’ tripods, the machines from Mars in War of the Worlds which attacked entire cities using heat rays, burning them to cinders. But this thing had eight legs instead of three, daddy-long-legs-thin and several metres long, making it look as if its body were hovering in space. There were dozens of spherical tanks lined up right behind its pincers. Another thing that set the spider apart from its Martian colleagues was its complete lack of interest in human presence. Without Julian’s quick-wittedness, Evelyn suspected it would simply have run right over the vehicle.
‘What in God’s name was that brute of a thing?’ shrieked Momoka.
She was communicating again now, although admittedly in a way which was provoking wistful memories of her silence. Any trace of grief seemed to have been transformed into rage. Evelyn suddenly wondered whether Momoka’s joyless personality was less shaped by arrogance than by pent-up aggression, hoarded over many years, and she became less and less happy about her driving the rover. Her heart racing, she stared after the robot as it hurried away. In front of them, Julian slowly began to drive forwards again.