the space that was left at the end, they found the charred
skeletons of eight more Lunarians, some pieces of furniture, a few
items of technical equipment, and a heap of sealed metal
containers. Whatever had formed the remainder of the structure that
this gallery had been part of was gone without a trace.
The metal containers were later opened by the scientists at
Westwood. Inside the cans was a selection of assorted foodstuffs,
well preserved despite having been cooked. Presumably, whatever had
done the cooking had also cooked the Lunarians. Most of the cans
contained processed vegetables, meats, and sweet preparations; a
few, however, yielded a number of fish, about the size of herrings
and preserved intact.
When Danchekker’s assistant dissected one of the fish and began
looking inside, he couldn’t make sense of what he found, so he
called the professor down to the lab to ask what he made of it.
Danchekker didn’t go home until eight o’clock the next morning. A
week later he announced to an incredulous Vic Hunt: “This specimen
never swam in any of our oceans; it did not evolve from, nor is it
in any way related to, any form of life that has ever existed on
this planet!”
chapter eleven
The Apollo Seventeen Mission, in December 1972, had marked the
successful conclusion to man’s first concerted effort to reach and
explore first-hand a world other than his own. After the Apollo
program, NASA activities were restricted, mainly as a result of the
financial pressures exerted on the USA by the economic recessions
that came and went across the Western world throughout that decade,
by the politically inspired oil crisis and various other crises
manufactured in the Middle East and the lower half of Africa, and
by the promotion of the Vietnam War. During the mid and late
seventies, a succession of unmanned probes were dispatched to Mars,
Venus, Mercury, and some of the outer planets. When manned missions
were resumed in the 19 80’s, they focused on the development of
various types of space shuttle and on the construction of
permanently manned orbiting laboratories and observatories, the
main objective being the consolidation of a firm jumping-off point
prior to resumed expansion outward. Thus, for a period, the Moon
was left once more on its own, free to continue its billion-year
contemplation of the Universe without further interruption by man.
The information brought back by the Apollo astronauts finally
resolved the conflicting speculations concerning the Moon’s nature
and origins that had been mooted by generations of Earth-bound
observers. Soon after the Solar System was formed, 4,500 million
years ago, give or take a few, the Moon became molten to a
considerable depth, possibly halfway to the center; the heat was
generated by the release of gravitational energy as the Moon
continued to accumulate. During the cooling that followed, the
heavier, iron-bearing minerals sank toward the interior, while the
less dense, aluminum-rich ones floated to the surface to form the
highland crust. Continual bombardment by meteorites stirred up the
mixture and complicated the process to some degree but by 4,300
million years ago the formation of the crust was virtually
complete. The bombardment continued until 3,900 million years ago,
by which time most of the familiar surface features already
existed. From then until 3,200 million years ago, basaltic lavas
flowed from the interior, induced in some places by remelting due
to concentrations of radioactive heat sources below the surface, to
fill in the impact basins and create the darker maria. The crust
continued cooling to greater depths until molten material could no
longer penetrate. Thereafter, all remained unchanging through the
ages. Occasionally an additional impact crater appeared and f
alling dust gradually eroded the top millimeter of surface, but
essentially, the Moon became a dead planet.
This history came from detailed observations and limited
explorations of Nearside. Orbital observations of Farside suggested
that much of the same story applied there also, and since this
sequence was consistent with existing theory, nobody doubted its
validity for many years after Apollo. Of course, details remained
to be added, but the broad picture was convincingly clear. However,
when man returned to the Moon in strength and to stay, ground