driver was stretching back in his seat, taking a long drink from a
flask of hot coffee. Behind him, the sergeant in command of the
vehicle was at a videoscreen, reporting back to base via comsat
that they had reached their destination without mishap. The third
crew member, a corporal who was to accompany Hunt and Alberts
outside and who was already fitted out, was helping the professor
secure his helmet. Hunt took his own helmet from the storage rack
by the door and fixed it in place. When the three were ready, the
sergeant supervised the final checkout of life-support and
communications systems and cleared them to pass, one by one,
through the airlock to the outside.
“Well, there you are, Vie. Really on the Moon now.” Alberts’s voice
came through the speaker inside Hunt’s helmet. Hunt felt the spongy
dust yield beneath his boots and tried a few experimental steps up
and down.
“It’s like Brighton Beach,” he said.
“Okay, you guys?” asked the voice of the UNSA corporal.
“Okay.”
“Sure.”
“Let’s go, then.”
The three brightly colored figures-one orange, one red, and one
green-began moving slowly along the well-worn groove that ran up
the center of the mound of rubble. At the top they stopped to gaze
down at the survey vehicle, already looking toylike in the gorge
below.
They moved into the cleft, climbing between vertical walls of rocks
that closed in on both sides as they approached the bend. Above the
bend the cleft straightened, and in the distance Hunt
could see a huge wall of jagged buttresses towering over the
foothills above them-evidently the ridge described in Charlie’s
note. He could picture vividly the scene in this very place so long
ago, when two other figures in spacesuits had toiled onward and
upward, their eyes fixed on that same feature. Above it, the red
and black portent of a tormented planet had glowered down on their
final agony like.
Hunt stopped, puzzled. He looked up at the ridge again, then turned
to stare at the bright disk of Earth, shining far behind his right
shoulder. He turned to look one way, then back again the other.
“Anything wrong?” Alberts, who had continued on a few paces, had
turned and was staring back at him.
“I’m not sure. Hang on there a second.” Hunt moved up alongside the
professor and pointed up and ahead toward the ridge. “You’re more
familiar with this place than I am. See that ridge up ahead there-
At any time in the year, could the Earth ever appear in a position
over the top of it?”
Alberts followed Hunt’s pointing finger, glanced briefly back at
the Earth, and shook his head decisively behind his facepiece.
“Never. From the Lunar surface, the position of Earth is almost
constant. It does wobble about its mean position a bit as a result
of libration, but not by anything near that much.” He looked again.
“Never anywhere near there. That’s an odd question. Why do you
ask?”
“Just something that occurred to me. Doesn’t really matter for
now.”
Hunt lowered his eyes and saw an opening at the base of one of the
walls ahead. “That must be it. Let’s carry on up to it.”
The hole was exactly as he remembered from innumerable photographs.
Despite its age, the shape betrayed its artificial origin. Hunt
approached almost reverently and paused to finger the rock at one
side of the opening with his gauntlet. The score marks had
obviously been made by something like a drill.
“Well, that’s it,” came the voice of Alberts, who was standing a
few feet back. “Charlie’s Cave, we call it-more or less exactly as
it must have been when he and his companion first saw it. Rather
like treading in the sacred chambers of one of the pyramids, isn’t
it?”
“That’s one way of putting it.” Hunt ducked down to peer in-
side, pausing to fumble for the flashlight at his belt as the
sudden darkness blinded him temporarily.
The rockfall that originally had covered th~ body had been cleared,
and the interior was roomier than he expected. Strange emotions
welled inside him as he stared at the spot where, millennia before