Just as these words passed his lips, a tremendous throb caused the floor to tilt. Mary rushed over to an observation window and jerked the curtain back. Outside, off in the distance, she saw a dark line almost at the horizon. It was the fissure Rima Milichius. As she watched, it seemed to be moving. Now to her left, massive rocks burst through the lunar dust and rose some two hundred meters into the star-filled sky. To her right, the mountains on the horizon collapsed and vanished. From the direction of the Rima Milichius came long dark fingers reaching, racing across Mare Insularum directly for their dome.
"Stanley, come here. Look," Mary whispered, "the fissure is expanding, heading this way. If this dome falls in and the fissure should close up again, it will be crushed; I don't care how well it's made."
"What should we do?" Stanley asked.
Mary looked to Balaji.
"The meteorite shelter!" Stanley shouted. "We can survive there until rescue arrives."
"That's suicide," Balaji said, bracing against the wall as the dome shuttered and vibrated. "Why, we'd be—"
The dome jerked violently again, and they all fell to the floor. With a crack like a gunshot, the window separated from its frame by just millimeters, and the air started screaming out into space.
"Quick, everyone out!" Balaji shouted.
"Yes," Stanley yelled, "let's all make for the meteorite shelter! Follow me!"
Everyone rushed out of the meeting room and into the lab. Standing by the entrance to the office hallway was Martha Sandling, Stanley's secretary. Stanley rushed past her, seemingly not seeing her. She was in a petrified panic. Mary took her arm and said softly to her, "Martha, come with us, please." The woman nodded her head in the affirmative.
Bob came running toward Balaji from the other side of the room, wearing his lab coat which it seemed he'd gone to retrieve.
Looking over her shoulder back into the conference room, Mary saw a beige-colored foam rolling quickly down the walls over the leaking window. When it reached the window, it was drawn out the opening, and so sealed the leak. Very quickly, the foam solidified.
The dome was in a constant state of vibration and movement now, with repeated and violent shocks and jars. Mary, with Martha in tow, turned to head for the exit.
Where is Hugh? What if he's outside on one of those patrols? What are his duties in an emergency? Mary couldn't shut off her thoughts of Hugh, even as she ran for her life.
As she and Martha reached the exit from the lab, she saw Balaji counting heads.
"Stanley, Bob, Mr. Smith, Mary, and Martha," she said as they reached him. "That's six, including me."
Then Balaji shouted, "Is anyone else here?"
"Balaji, come on, man!" Stanley beckoned.
The hallway arched to the right following the footprint of the dome. Several meters down was an access-way to the next outer circle of halls. They turned left through it and again back to the right. Now, the lights flickered, and sparks leapt from a junction box. Alarms were sounding all over, and strobes were flashing. The dome jerked again, and the floor seemed to rise up under them. Martha fell and Mary pulled her up. The dome was tilting even more now. As they ran around the never ending curve, above the noise of alarms and klaxons, Mary heard a human voice. She stopped, and began to look for its source. A man was trapped behind a partially closed door. The warping of the wall and floor prevented its opening. "Balaji over here!" Mary shouted. Balaji arrived and started to pull desperately at the door.
Mary grabbed the wide-eyed Martha. "Stay here! I'll be back!" She ran after the others. "Come back! A man is trapped!" she yelled down the hall. Mr. Smith immediately turned and headed back. Stanley kept on running, but Bob paused.
"Bob, dammit, we need your help!" Mary shouted. Bob glanced after Stanley, but reluctantly returned. The five managed to pull the door open enough to drag the man through, and they all set off running.
Once again in the hall, now pitching at a considerable angle, they ran until they came to another access-way and entered into the hallway that would take them to the meteorite shelter. Again, the dome jerked as something very large outside slammed into it. The lights flickered once more, and then went out altogether. They were plunged into complete darkness, so total as to be palpable. It seemed all power had been severed, as even the alarms stopped.
"Oh, my God!" Bob screamed the words. "Light, there must be some light, turn on some light!" He was clearly panicked.
Before he could say another word the emergency lights came on. Gasping for breath, he apologized, "I have a phobia about the dark," he explained.
"Doc, you do know it's dark in space, right?" Mr. Smith asked as they continued to run down the hallway.
"Normally, I carry several chemi-luminescence sticks with me, just in case."
They continued to run. Mary realized this was the most significant geological event in humanity's experience on the Moon. Would they survive it? Would Hugh survive it? She knew that while they were running away from the danger to find shelter, Hugh would be running right into harm's way.
At last, they all arrived at the shelter, a safe room where people could gather in the event of a penetrating meteorite shower. There were several such shelters in every dome; this was the nearest one to their original location.
On their arrival, they found the door closed. Bob started to hammer on it with his fists, demanding to be allowed entrance.
"Excuse me, Bob." Balaji gently moved him out of the way and turned the wheel. The door opened. "This door cannot be locked."
Mary knew this was not entirely true. In the event sensors detected a loss of atmosphere in the dome, the door would automatically lock and seal. They had all been told this in training. If Bob were not in a panic, he would have remembered.
The vault-like door swung open, and Mary assisted Martha, who was shivering with fear, into the thick-walled chamber.
****
Hugh was conducting maintenance on his lunar vehicle in the motor pool section of dome number seventeen when the quake started. It was obvious from the onset that this was something more than the usual lunar tremors to which they were periodically treated.
The first jolt was so severe that all the vehicles shifted on the platform. Hugh immediately thought of Mary. She was in dome forty-five on the installation's far west end.
Rumbling and intense shaking continued, interspersed with jolts that felt as if the dome was being lifted several meters, and then dropped. Then, with a violent spasm, the entire dome tilted about twelve degrees toward the southwest. That quadrant of the dome seemed to sink.
Dropping his tools, Hugh ran for the tunnel that connected dome seventeen to sixteen. Mary was in danger, and nothing would prevent him from getting to her.
Arriving at the tunnel entrance, he found the airtight doors had already slammed closed. In the low lunar gravity, he bounded over to an operational vehicle. Inside, he secured the hatch and started the engine. Immediately, the radio lit up and a voice erupted from it. "LPC one niner five this is garage control. Shut that vehicle down and dismount."
"Is that you, Sergeant Mitchel?"
"Hugh?"
"Yes, it's me. Open the airlock doors, Dave. Let me out."
"Hugh, that vehicle has not been properly dispatched."
"Dave, the base is being shaken apart; you know I have to find her."
There was a moment's pause. "Proceed. And Hugh, good luck."
"You've been a good friend, Dave."
Hugh drove around the other parked vehicles at a high rate of speed. He was heading toward the air lock doors, one of which was opening. He slid into the bay and waited for the signal that would indicate the door behind him was closed, sealed, and the bay depressurizing. It seemed to take forever as everything around him shook violently; reminding him of the danger Mary was in.
At last, he got the signal and the outer doors started to open. As he peered out through the opening doors, he could see that this end of the dome was now almost four meters above the
surface, and rising. He gunned the engine for all it was worth and rocketed out through the doors before they were completely open. The low lunar gravity was helpful; nonetheless, the LPC came down hard on its front wheels.
Hugh turned the vehicle hard to the west. The quake was altering the Moon's surface all around him. Ancient mountains fell and new ones rose, craters collapsed, boulders came rolling at him from out of nowhere.
Ahead, the Moon's surface seemed to part as a fissure opened and started to spread. He spied the remains of a crater to his left, its outermost rim still partially intact. He drove into the crater and hit the sloped wall of the far side as fast as he could. It acted as a ramp launching him up and over the fissure. He landed only a couple of meters beyond the chasm.
Now he could see dome forty-five. It was already at a precarious angle leaning into a still widening fracture in the lunar surface, and the fissure he had just leapt was reaching out for it, spreading and growing like a living thing hungry for the humans inside.
As he approached the dome, he could see that the bottom half of the garage doors were already under ground level. He drove around to the north side. His luck seemed to be holding. The individual access hatch was still clear. He glanced over his shoulder just to ensure that the six Self Contained Environmental Protective Suits, or "Ess-CEPS", were in their places.
These were first generation suits and more like old fashioned space suits than Stanley’s new toys in the lab. Hugh pulled up and parked next to the hatch.
He climbed out of the driver's seat and, quickly as he could, donned an Ess-CEPS and exited the LPC. He was only a few meters away when the fissure reached the vehicle. First, it tilted violently back and to its right where it seemed to balance on the precipice, then it fell backward, and was swallowed whole.
As Hugh reached the hatch in the side of the dome, he noticed there was no power to the airlock control device. No indication if the airlock was pressurized or not, no signal to advise if the interior door was open or closed. He would have to risk it. The interior doors were kept closed by SOP, Standard Operating Procedure, as a matter of safety, the computer was supposed to ensure this, but with the power out, anything was likely.
The Moon lurched violently again, followed by the feel of rumbling. With a quick glance over his shoulder, he saw a tidal wave rushing toward him. This tidal wave was made entirely of lunar rigolith, tons of rock and dust, cascading down from the new mountains now rising to the north.
Hugh grabbed the manual override just to the left of the hatch. He pulled the safety latch out of the way, lifted and locked the handle, and pulled. The door opened outward with explosive force as the air in the chamber burst out and dissipated as mist into space. The interior door, thankfully, was closed. Hugh rushed inside and pulled the door closed hard behind him. It shut only moments before hundreds of tons of rock and dust pounded the side of the dome.
Chapter 11
Hugh was now trapped inside the airlock with tons of rock and dust piled against the side of the dome. The sergeant now turned his attention to the interior door. This door opened outward so the interior pressure of the atmosphere would make it extremely difficult to open from a room with no pressure. The door, he knew, was a standard seventy-six point two centimeters wide by two point zero three two meters high. The pressure on the other side should be at one atmosphere, thus there would be 16,002.738 kilos of pressure on the door. Unless he equalized the pressure, he'd never be able to open it. He looked quickly for the emergency manual controls which he knew were behind a panel to the left of the door. He threw the panel open and pushed the large red button marked "Emergency Air Resupply." He watched the gauge. Its indicator moved at an agonizingly slow rate. Next, he again grabbed the manual override to open the door. He repeated the same procedure he had outside, and the door swung open. He leapt into the next chamber, a room designed for final preparations before entering the airlock. He stripped out of his Ess-CEPS and headed out into the hall. As he did, the lights went out and the angle of the floor increased. The emergency lights came on, dim, but sufficient to defeat the total darkness that was the alternative.
Hugh tried to reach LCDD HQ on his COMde, but coms were down. Next he tried to contact Dave directly over a special, and classified, communications system called the Ismay net, “Dave this is Hugh, I’m in forty-five, there’s still pressure but the dome seems to be balancing on the edge of a cliff. I’m going to need transport and Ess-CEPS to get survivors out of here…Dave! Dave?”
Despite being completely cut off, Hugh decided to first look for Mary in her lab. Fighting against the tilt of the floor, he made his way there as quickly as possible. The emergency lights flickered and sparks erupted from several places along the hallway. The sound of stones and boulders hitting the exterior of the dome was deafening, and the shaking and vibrations were relentless.
The doors to the lab would not open automatically without power. He grabbed the two doors at the center and pried them apart with his bare hands, and then he staggered into the lab. Bracing himself against a table, he scanned the lab. No one was in the room.
"Mary!" he shouted, not really expecting a reply.
The only other possibility was a meteorite shelter. "C" was the closest one to the lab. Getting there now was an uphill climb. Without hesitation, he turned and fought his way upward.
He climbed out of the lab and into the hallway just as a great thump threw him to the floor, and he felt the structure tilt further making his footing that much more precarious. He scrambled up as fast as he could, following the hallway as it curved toward the right. Now, he was walking on the wall.
When he came to the door he needed to pass through to the next outer hallway, he found it above him on the opposite wall. The hallway was three-and-one-half meters wide. Normally, this jump would have been no problem for Hugh in the Moon's gravity, but the hallway was vibrating and being jarred terribly. He took aim and pushed off hard. He traversed the distance quickly and managed to grab the door frame, and pull himself up and onto the wall of the outer hallway.
Adding to the sound of the avalanche outside was the crash of furniture and equipment sliding down the sloping floor. Hugh ran along the wall looking for the next door when a sound akin to an explosion assaulted his ears and stopped him in mid-stride. Just behind him, a huge freezer storage unit came smashing through the wall above. It slammed onto the wall behind him, and for a moment, seemed to stop. But as Hugh was on the downhill side of the curving wall, the machine began to slide toward him. He ran as fast as he could. From behind him, a sound like fingernails on a chalkboard indicated the freezer was in hot pursuit. He watched the wall above. An open door came into view. He would have one chance. He leaped through the air and grabbed the far door frame. His feet swung ahead of him. On the back swing, he tucked his feet and pulled himself up and into the next level, the freezer just missing him. He would now have to descend the far hallway to arrive at the meteorite shelter.
Hugh noted a new sound amid the others; the moan of stressing metal.
Descending this last hallway would be difficult. The slope of the floor was now almost vertical and various pieces of broken tables, chairs, glass, and tools were falling. The only thing to grip would be the carpet should he lose his footing and fall. Carefully, but as quickly as he could, Hugh started to negotiate the steep downward slope of the hallway.
An odd sensation reached him through the noise, vibrations, and jolts. He could not quite identify it.
A heavy piece of something flashed past him, missing him by centimeters. Below, he could see the entrance to the shelter. The door was closed.
What if she were not there? What if she and all the others had somehow gotten out? Would she ever know he had come for her? Would she care?
****
The interior of the shelter was devoid of aesthetics. It was quite large having been designed to sustain thirty persons, with walls the color of concrete. It looked like a store room, and the place smelled dis
used.
Shelving units were attached to the walls and held food, water, air reserves, lamps, communications devices, medical supplies, and cots. Many of these supplies had already fallen from their designated places and littered the floor. On the long wall left of the door, there was mounted an eighty-inch monitor, now broken. When the door closed, most of the horrific sounds were blocked or softened; however, the small group could still feel the rolling, jolts, and vibrations. Worse yet, the dome was listing heavily, and the angle was increasing.
Balaji turned to have a word with Stanley, who stood in the far corner panting and wide eyed. Balaji walked toward him, trying to maintain his balance against the canted floor and the violent jerking and rolling. "You left us back there." Balaji said sternly.
"I had no idea you had stopped." Stanley was defensive.
"We had all stopped. Did you not miss us at the door here?"
"The damn place is rolling over," Stanley shouted back, also bracing against the wall. "How could I have known what had happened to you? For all I knew, you'd all been sucked out into space."
Just then, the man they had saved walked up, leaning on the wall as well. He stuck out his hand to Balaji and introduced himself, "I want to thank you all for coming back for me, I thought sure I'd be taking the special shuttle home in an aluminum box."
"No, my friend, you are not dead yet." Balaji took his hand.
"My name is Larry Gomes. I'm an electrician."
"Happy to have you here, Larry. I am Balaji Sharma. Are you aware of anyone else in the dome?"
"No, I think everyone started running out, headed for the larger domes east of us. It may be that some folks ducked into the other shelters, though."
Mary joined the small group. "Martha is in bad shape. I think she's going into shock," she said.
"There are blankets and communications gear over here," Larry said quickly. "And a med kit which will have a sedative if your friend Martha needs it."
Mary grabbed a blanket and tossed it at Stanley. "Go cover Martha," she said sternly, "and don't say anything discouraging to her!"
Dark Moon Rising Page 8
