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talking again.
In a low, measured tone, Kane asked, "You expect us to believe you found a
nest of Sumerian gods up
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James Axler - Outlanders - Devil in the Moon here?"
Philboyd's eyes flashed with sudden sparks of an-ger. "Hey, back off, man.
We're scientists."
"You're not sounding like it," Brigid pointed out.
None of the four people said anything. They just looked at one another in
discomfort, all but squirming in their chairs.
"Time for your contribution to the story hour," Kane declared firmly.
"You want it from the beginning?" Mariah asked peevishly.
"That would help," rumbled Grant.
"All right," the woman said smoothly. "The effort to colonize the Moon started
with the landing of
Apollo 11 in the summer of 1969. Other landings were scheduled from mid-1969
to 1972. The second, Apollo 12, aimed for the maria on the western side of the
Moon. The third targeted a highland formation like the Fra Mauro Crater in the
western highland region. The fourth was aimed at the eastern cratered
highlands near Censorinus. The fifth explored the re-gion of the Littrow
craters east of the Mare Serenti-
tatis the sixth, the great crater, Tycho. The seventh landed on the volcanic
domes of the marius Hills, the eighth was aimed at Schroter's Valley, where
lumi-nous gas emissions had been reported by Earth ob-
servers for more than a century. The ninth landing was in the Hyginus Rille,
one of the most prominent faultlike structures on the Moon, and the tenth was
in Copernicus, where it was hoped that material blown out of the interior
would be found. Apollo 17 was the end of the line. Officially."
She tapped her chest with a forefinger, "I was part of the twenty-first manned
landing here in the Man-
itius Crater region& one the American public knew nothing about."
Neukirk said, "I was on that flight, too."
"I was on the twenty-sixth," Eduardo put in.
"I'm the latecomer," Philboyd said. "I didn't get here until after the
mat-trans unit was installed. I think that was the thirtieth manned landing."
Kane arched an eyebrow but said nothing. Mariah caught the brow motion.
"Please don't expect us to explain the mat-trans gateways. I barely understood
it even after it was explained to me. I refused to use it. I preferred the
eight-day flight back to Earth."
"Yeah," agreed Neukirk. "I was a quantum phys-icist, and it was almost beyond
me how the damn things worked. You'd have to ask the boy genius about it& and
for that you'd need a medium or a swami, since he was Indian."
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James Axler - Outlanders - Devil in the Moon
Kane saw that Brigid did her best to repress a smile. "We know what the
mat-trans units are. But the question begs to be asked "
"Why didn't we use the one here to gate ourselves off this rock?'' Philboyd
broke in. ' 'First off, after the nuke, we figured we were safer here."
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"So you know about the nukecaust," rumbled Grant. "I wasn't sure."
Mariah made a gesture toward the door and the chute beyond. "We watched it
from where the hy-
droponic farm is now. Hell of a light show." She smiled, but it didn't reach
her eyes.
"You don't seem too broken up about it," Kane observed dryly.
"It's been two hundred years," said Eduardo flatly. "Little late for a wake,
don't you think?"
Mariah sighed, shifting in her chair. ' 'To be honest with you, a number of
the base personnel went com-
pletely off the deep end. Some committed suicide, some simply took long walks
outside& without wear-
ing space suits. After a few years, a group of us, the main DEVIL crew,
decided to go into cryostasis to keep from straining the base's resources."
"How long has the base been here?" Brigid wanted to know.
"Construction began in the late 1970s," answered
Neukirk, "after the shuttle-craft program kicked into gear. This site was
chosen because the early Apollo missions reported a base had already existed
here. There were chambers and tunnels dug into the rego-
lith the crater walls that extended for miles."
"At the time," Eduardo offered, "God only knew how many thousands of years old
the base was or who built it."
Grimly, Mariah said, "We found out later."
As Mariah described it, the objective of the Man-itius base was twofold to
establish a self-sufficient colony and to provide a jumping-off point to ferry
materials and personnel to build a space station on the
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