The Moon — A Short Story

The nine black ovoids emerge from the dark side of the moon, flying low and fast out into the silent gray wasteland. They stay close to the terrain in perfect formation, just meters above the ridge tops and crater bottoms, dipping and rising across the landscape like dancing shadows, the pitted lunar surface passing by in a dull blur of speed.

Minutes pass before a wide hill looms in the distance, approaching quickly. The ovoids reach the base and race up the gentle slope onto a flat ridge that suddenly gives way to a vast darkness below — they’re over a massive crater many kilometers across, its steep sides disappearing into the inky depths.

They seem to hang motionless above the emptiness until the horizon tips and they’re banking left for the side of the crater, where a string of domed buildings winks into existence on the rim, bright against the solid black of space. The ovoids approach the crater wall and skip over the edge, steering clear of the buildings as they aim for a line of massive solar panels pointed at the distant sun.

Decelerating as they approach the last panel, they smoothly reform into a single line and hover. One of the ovoids separates from the group and floats over to the base of the solar panel. The others settle to the ground where they sink slowly into the fine gray dust, and disappear as silently as they arrived.

* * *

“Hmm, that’s odd.”

Kiran the base commander is seated at a semi-circular desk of transparent glass that flickers with colored displays. Clad in the blue coveralls worn by all employees of SpaceCorp, he pulls up a holo in the air before him. It shows a solar panel set against the dark backdrop of a lunar sky.

“Greg,” Kiran says, louder and still staring at the holo.

A younger man is tapping a wall screen at the back of the room. “Yeah, boss?” he says, turning and walking over, his velcro shoes sticking to the floor in the low gravity. Greg puts his hand on the back of Kiran’s chair and bends lower to get the same view of the holo as the commander.

“It’s the array. Looks like solar tracking is lagging on panel two-zero,” Kiran says, reaching up to stroke the fresh stubble on his chin. A sign that another long shift is almost over. “We’ll need to check it out.”

“You got it.,” Greg says, standing up and already heading for the doorway. “Shall I wake Hiroki?”

“Let him sleep. Probably just dust on the camera.”

***

Outside the windowless dome everything is quiet and still, the gray featureless lunar surface extending into the distance until it meets the sharp black horizon of space. A small section of the dome slides open and Greg appears in a spacesuit at the entrance, framed by the bright light of the airlock beyond. He exits and as the door closes silently behind him, he takes a skip-step, and then a longer one until he’s bounding gracefully away from the dome.

Kiran is watching a holoscreen showing Greg making his way along the long line of solar panels, his suit looking tiny in front of the massive array. Over the radio Greg is singing.

Starships were meant to fly,

Hands up and touch the sky,

Can’t stop, cause we’re so high

Kiran watches him for a while, and allows a small smile. “Okay, let’s focus,” he says softly.

“An oldie but a goodie, boss. Coming up on panel two-zero.”

***

Kiran types out a command on his desk and the holo switches to the feed from Greg’s helmet cam, showing Greg coming to a stop at the base of the solar panel tower. His gloved hand reaches toward a handle on the base and opens a small door. Inside, a small screen glitters with schematics and numbers. Greg’s breathing is calm and steady as he taps the screen.

“Hey, Skipper?” Greg’s voice crackles over the radio. “You nailed it. Tracking camera’s not happy.”

“”Okay, let’s check it out,” Kiran replies.

“You bet.” Greg turns to his right and the lunar wilderness slides into view as he moves to the other side of the round tower, stopping at the window of hardened black glass that protects the tracking camera inside. It’s shattered. A web of cracks spreads outward from a centimeter-deep pit in the center.

Greg whistles into the mic. “Now that’s weird.”

Kiran sits up, as the radio hisses with a burst of static. “Say again?”

“It’s totally cracked, boss. Like it took a direct hit from a meteorite. But what are the odds?”

As Greg talks, behind him, a small patch of ground seems to tremble. Tiny grains of lunar dust start rolling away as a black orb emerges, slowly, while eight segmented legs unfurl from its sides and place their tips on the ground. With the body almost free now, the front of the ovoid rotates up, revealing a sharp proboscis that was hidden underneath. Now fully emerged, the spider-like drone pauses briefly as the last lunar grains roll off its back, then it darts quickly forward.

Greg is still studying the glass when he feels a soft thud on his back. Almost immediately the interior of his visor flashes with a red warning light — the suit is depressurizing. An image of his suit appears on his heads-up display showing a stream of gas escaping from a hole located on his lower back.

“Skip, I have some trouble. Suit’s breached.”

“I see it,” Kiran barks as he leaps from his seat, training kicking in instantly. “Patch it! Heading to the airlock”

Kiran hits a red button at the side of the doorway while he races from the room, activating an ear-splitting alarm as he speed walks down the passageway, silently cursing his velcro shoes.

Greg is still calm. He’s breathing more quickly but not panicked. The heads-up display shows at least 10 minutes of air left. Plenty of time to get back. Reaching an arm behind his back to find the hole, he’s slowly turning to his right when he sees a movement in the dust. Just as thinks he must have kicked a pebble in that direction, he sees a black spider climb out of the ground. Greg stares, frozen, as the spider drone suddenly lurches toward his boot and starts climbing his leg.

Kiran reaches the airlock door at the same time as another man, Hiroki, woken by the alarm. Kiran slams a wall button and the door slides open. Just as he’s about to say something to Hiroki, the base intercom crackles.

“Oh Jesus,” Greg shouts, followed by grunts and gasps of pain that turn Kiran’s blood cold. He exchanges a look with Hiroki and they both rush into the room.

“Suit breach. Panel 2–0,” Kiran says in a tight voice as he walks toward a suit that’s hung against the wall and split open down the middle. He turns and backs into it while Hiroki steps forward without a word and quickly seals Kiran inside.

“Greg, ETA 30 seconds, hold on,” Hiroki announces as he runs through the checks on Kiran’s suit. “Greg, you read me?”

Kiran and Hiroki move to a second door, hit another wall button to open it and Kiran walks into the airlock. The door slides closed behind him and Kiran immediately punches the wall to release the outer door. Air rushes outside, sending a blast of dust away from the entrance and into the dark beyond.

As Kiran moves toward the exit, his eye catches movement to the right and he turns to see a slender black leg creep around the edge of the door, followed by three more. A metallic spider moves smoothly into view, a vicious proboscis embedded in an eyeless face. The spider drone clings to the frame as Kiran freezes, his eyes wide, not seeing two more drones scuttle towards him from the gloom outside.

Too late, he spots them as they’re already in the air and leaping onto his suit where they instantly move to either side of his neck — stabbing, tearing and burrowing inside — while the first spider drone remains motionless on the side of the door, Kiran’s dying struggle reflected in the black gloss of its carapace.

At the interior door of the airlock, Hiroki’s face fills a circular window, a look of horror, before he disappears from view. The spider drone on the outer door frame launches at the window quickly followed by the two drones exploding out of Kiran’s spacesuit. They land on the window and inner airlock door with a staccato of thuds, their proboscises instantly hammering at the glass. Nothing happens. One of them jumps sideways to the door-open button, using its legs to effortlessly rip off the cover and disappear into the wiring. The door opens and the building’s atmosphere rushes out of the airlock to the vacuum outside.

Hiroki flees toward the control room, fighting the hurricane of escaping air while his legs jerk awkwardly at the velcro floor. He looks back to see the spider-drones enter the corridor and accelerate toward him along the ceiling and walls. Too slow and with nowhere to run, Hiroki turns and stumbles for the last time, throwing his hands up uselessly as all three spider drones launch themselves through the air.

Hiroki’s scream fades into a soft hiss as the base’s atmosphere, loose equipment and other debris pour through the open airlock. An empty spacesuit hits the top of the door as it exits and cartwheels effortlessly across the lunar surface, past the solar array and toward the deep crater beyond where, just visible above the rim on the other side, the Earth is rising, a blue-white jewel in the black sky.

#story #sciencefiction #fiction #shortstory