THE LUNA MONOLITH 3

Hard Science Fiction

The Black Monolith

Book 3

BRANDON Q. MORRIS

Contents

What’s happened so far

The Luna Monolith 3

Dewar Crater, March 12, 2082

Unknown Place, March 12, 2082

Mare Orientale, March 13, 2082

Orbital Station Blue, March 13, 2082

Lunar Gateway, March 13, 2082

Pico del Teide, March 13, 2082

Unknown Place, March 13, 2082

Place 1, Time 1

Mare Orientale, March 14, 2082

Orbital Station Blue, March 14, 2082

Lunar Gateway, March 14, 2082

Pico del Teide, March 14, 2082

2004 GU9, March 14, 2082

Place 2, Time 2

Dewar Crater, March 15, 2082

Orbital Station Blue, March 15, 2082

Mare Orientale, March 15, 2082

Lunar Gateway, March 15, 2082

2004 GU9, March 15, 2082

Place 3, Time 3

Dewar Crater, March 16, 2082

Orbital Station Blue, March 16, 2082

Mare Orientale, March 16, 2082

2004 GU9, March 16, 2082

Lunar Gateway, March 16, 2082

Orbital Station Blue, March 17, 2082

Mare Orientale, March 17, 2082

2004 GU9, March 17, 2082

Lunar Gateway, March 17, 2082

Orbital Station Blue, March 18, 2082

Mare Orientale, March 18, 2082

Orbital Station Blue, March 18, 2082

Dewar Crater, March 18, 2082

Orbital Station Blue, March 18, 2082

Lunar Gateway, March 18, 2082

Mare Orientale, March 18, 2082

Pico del Teide, March 19, 2082

Orbital Station Blue, April 10, 2082

Mare Orientale, April 30, 2082

2004 GU9, May 12, 2082

Around the campfire

Also by Brandon Q. Morris

Trojans, Greeks and Pseudo-moons

What’s happened so far

Experienced engineer Yang Liwei, 46, and his young colleague Zhang Jinjin, 26, are supervising the construction of a giant hypertelescope in the Dewar crater on the far side of the moon. The floor of the forty-six-kilometer diameter crater is to be covered with liquid mirrors. However, it must first be prepared by automatic excavators—giant machines—and cleared of stones and dust. From time to time, however, inclusions of hard rock have interfered with the work. They set to work with Excavator Zero, which is particularly powerful.

While exploring the area with the help of depth radar, Liwei comes across a strange formation. At first he thinks it is the discreetly buried result of a failed experiment by one of the nations represented on the moon. Out of sheer curiosity, he lets Excavator Zero dig up the object without the permission of his superiors. It turns out to be a peculiar structure in the form of a mighty black stele that emits more energy than it absorbs and is much heavier than it should be. It cannot have been created using human technology.

This means Liwei is dealing with an extraterrestrial construct. However, he doesn't manage to inform his superiors of this, because everything around him freezes when he touches the black stele.

Although Liwei had the foresight to hide the excavation under a kind of tent, the discovery did not go unnoticed. The crew of the Lunar Gateway, an international space station in lunar orbit, is ordered to take a closer look at the find. Ronald “Ron” Hudson, an American, and the French ESA astronaut Jean-Pierre “JP” Jeunet make their way to the surface.

At the same time, ESA colleagues Ernie Schwarz and Antonia Marucci and their dog Bree leave their station in Mare Orientale, where they monitor the MIGI gravitational wave telescope. They are worried about their Chinese colleagues at the hypertelescope construction site, whom they have not heard from since the excavation of the stele.

On the recommendation of the secretive Eleventh Bureau, the Chinese government decides to destroy the stele, because if its advanced technology were to fall into the hands of a single nation, it could lead to a huge global conflict. They also fear that the structure could be an attempt by a malevolent alien force to test humanity. According to the Dark Forest Doctrine, which has many supporters in China and is advocated by the Eleventh Bureau, peaceful contact with other civilizations is impossible. So Liwei's colleague Jinjin is given the task of blowing up the black stele. 

Jinjin feels conflicted. An explosion of the nuclear fission bomb made to destroy the stele would also kill her esteemed colleague, Liwei. And then there are the astronauts from the Gateway in the way, Ron and JP, who are investigating the stele and oppose blowing it up. The two ESA astronauts Ernie and Antonia initially just watch as Jinjin prepares the explosion. But when things get serious, they intervene. But apparently Jinjin's superiors have allowed for the young astronaut's failure or refusal and have ordered a couple of robots to bring the bomb close enough to the stele to guarantee its destruction.

Jinjin and JP join forces to prevent the explosion and also save JP's colleague Ron, who has ventured too close to the stele. However, Liwei, who has touched the stele and suddenly disappeared, remains out of their reach.

Liwei himself, however, notices little of these conflicts. The stele transports him to an unknown place. There he comes into contact with the strange inhabitants who live in a world without visible light. With their help, he manages to find another stele. However, this does not lead him back home, but to another planet, still young and in the prime of evolution. Via another stopover on Proxima Centauri b, Liwei eventually reaches a world outside our galaxy.

There he meets a being made of light who calls itself the Source and explains the nature of the steles to him. According to the Source, humanity exists as a projection within a holographic universe formed by the inside of a giant black hole. Physical life forms such as Liwei cannot access the holographic realm. Although the steles offer a way to transcend space and time, they aren’t made for that purpose. They are not pre-programmed stargates, but projectors that span our four-dimensional universe. They exist only partially within our universe, which means they cannot be completely destroyed.

However, they can certainly fail if their material representation in our universe is damaged. The Source suspects that the universe in the vicinity of the affected stele will then be reset to the basic state that prevailed when the universe was created. Liwei realizes that this could mean the extinction of the entire solar system—and all this is only happening because humankind cannot agree on how to deal with the alien artifact. His self-imposed task is now to prevent this damage.

It proves to be too late for that. The explosion that Jinjin and her colleagues supposedly averted happens after all, facilitated by Chinese backup robots. It leads to an absolutely extraordinary phenomenon on the moon: a dust storm. The dust, which covers the surface of the moon to a depth of several meters, is electrostatically charged by the destroyed stele and generates further charge as it moves. Eventually, the dust cloud becomes dense enough to damage spacesuits. This is life-threatening for Jinjin and Ron, who are traveling on the surface. In addition, the crew of the Russian moon base are now also trying to get their share of the discovery. The two cosmonauts are barely rescued by the ESA crew. However, Mikhail Sokolov, a brilliant physicist working at Lunnui Gorodok, seemingly has a theory about the stele. He believes it to be a multidimensional object whose portion located in our dimension has been damaged. The resulting leak, he claims, must be closed with the help of microwave radiation. The source of the electrostatic charge would also be depleted and the dust would settle again.

The situation is urgent, as the defect in the artifact has the potential to damage spaceships in lunar orbit. Orbital Station Blue is currently on its way to Earth and must slow down at the moon to reach its destination. The space station is in grave danger of being destroyed by the defective artifact.

This means that Jinjin and Ron, the only people close enough to the stele to be able to repair it with microwave radiation, have the weight of the world on their shoulders. In a dramatic finale, everything works out just as Sokolov planned. However, during the repair, Jinjin and Ron also disappear.

What almost nobody knows at this time: Asteroid 2004 GU9, a quasi-satellite of the Earth measuring only 300 by 50 meters, has changed in a strange way. Could it be because another stele has appeared on it? JP, who is on the Gateway in lunar orbit, is ordered to investigate. Will he find the Chinese space travelers and his friend Ron?

The Luna Monolith 3

Dewar Crater, March 12, 2082

The Rover bumped through a pristine, snowy landscape. Antonia had once been in Finnish Lapland, where she had driven a dog sled across a frozen lake with lots of little islands rising out of it. It had been night, but the moon cast a silvery glow over the blanket of snow.

That was exactly how it looked here. The light from the headlights was reflected by the dust covering the valley like powdered sugar. Where the moon had been hard and jagged on their last visit, they now drove past small, rounded islands. The swirling dust had settled again, evened out all the irregularities and laid itself gently like a blanket over the hard ground. The silicon crystals of the regolith, unaffected by normal erosion, sparkled and glowed much more brightly than desert sand on Earth and could easily compete with the glittering snow crystals in Lapland. Although their basic color wasn’t white but grey, this was compensated for by the bright, almost bluish spotlight.

“Stunning,” said Popov, who was sitting next to Antonia. “I'm glad we took on this job.”

Bree barked briefly. Antonia gave her a look. Ah, Popov had stopped scratching her. That wasn’t possible to maintain, of course. Bree had settled on his lap several hours ago and hadn't moved from her spot. Popov couldn't be such a bad guy. Bree, Antonia believed, had a pretty good understanding of human nature. Popov tended to grumble more than he talked, but that was okay.

“Yes, like winter in the north,” said Antonia.

“You know winter in the north?”

“Of course I do. We did some of our training in Scandinavia.”

“Ah, but then you don't know Siberia. You have to imagine it like here, but endless. I love that. I'm from there, just over the Urals.”

“Then you must feel at home here.”

Popov nodded and swallowed. “Except that you need a suit to go out here.”

“You do in Siberia too!”

“Not if you've just come out of the sauna.” Popov laughed. “You jump into an ice hole in your birthday suit, or roll around naked in the snow. That's great.”

The Rover rumbled. Antonia braked. They weren’t in Siberia. Here there were holes hiding under the snow-like dust. She switched the radar to the highest setting, but it still couldn't penetrate the dust. She turned the rover sideways.

“Can you please open the outer bulkhead of the airlock?” she asked.

“Without a suit? I don’t have a death wish.”

“From the inside, of course!”

Popov looked at her with narrowed eyes, but didn't ask any more questions, instead opening the door via the panel on the inside. The airlock emptied.

“You can close it again.”

Popov followed the instruction. Antonia turned the rover again so the bow faced forward. Most of the dust in front of them had been blown away. Now the radar showed a dip in the surface.

“How did you know...?” Popov pointed to the hole on the screen, which must lead into a magma cave.

“It was just a...feeling.”

“Feeling?”

“Well, not only that. The area looked familiar. I don't know exactly where from. Maybe from a map, or from a previous excursion. That could be one of the excavators over there.”

“You remembered.”

Antonia nodded. Popov could probably deal better with that than with a feeling. But if that really was one of the big Chinese machines, they weren’t far from the stele. She had to call Ernie. Time might still be distorted here.

* * *

“Ernie, can you hear me?”

“Loud and clear.”

Bree barked.

“Hello, Bree!”

The dog barked again.

Antonia grinned. “Enough, you two. We've arrived near the stele. Can you run my voice through the analysis?”

“Yeah, sure, good idea. Just a minute. Say something.”

“Trentatré trentini entrarono in Trento, tutti e trentatré trotterellando.”

“Haha, what was that?”

“A scioglilingua, which translates as a ‘tongue melter’.”

“We call them ‘tongue breakers’ in German.”

She had felt like her tongue was broken when she had once tried to learn Ernie's native language. “That's the difference between German and Italian. What does the analysis say, Ernie?”

“It’s not detecting any distortion. Are you that close to the stele?”

“Yes, you should definitely be able to pick something up.”

“I see. But please be careful. The effect could come later or be weaker. I don't want to see you frozen there.”

* * *

“Sotto la panca la capra campa, sopra la panca la capra crepa.”

“Was that a ‘tongue melter’ too?” asked Ernie.

“Exactly.”

“And what does that mean?”

“On the bench the goat lives, under the bench the goat dies...”

“Ah, that sounds very sensible.”

“Always keep your head down, you might say.”

“Well, do that, then. It’s clear from my side. I'm still not measuring any distortion. But remember, in half an hour the relay will disappear behind your horizon.”

Thirty minutes should be enough to convince them of the existence of the stele and to search for Jinjin and Ron in its vicinity. Antonia ended the connection and stood up. She was already wearing the LCVG. Popov held out the bottom of the spacesuit for her. Antonia wiped the sweat of her pre-breathing training from her forehead and climbed in. Bree barked. She could probably sense what was to come.

“It's time, Bree. We need to get out there and do some checking. You stay here.”

Bree was still barking even as they stood in the airlock in their EVA suits. Antonia sighed. This was uncharacteristic, but the dog must have her reasons.

“Sorry, Popov, we’ll have to take her with us.”

“What? Let her bark. She’s a dog!”

Antonia shook her head. Popov had no idea. Bree was much more than just a pet.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Bree was waiting with them in the lock. Of course, the dog also had to complete pre-breathing training beforehand. Same rules for everyone.

“You're crazy,” Popov said over the helmet radio, looking down at the dog.

Bree barked in reply. The red light turned green. Antonia pushed the bulkhead open. A few wisps of air seeped out as vapor. She jumped onto the surface of the moon.

“Ernie? We're outside now.”

“Twenty-two minutes late. I'll be gone in eight minutes.”

His voice didn't sound reproachful. He was just stating the facts. Ernie knew there was a factual reason for the delay.

“We had to wait for Bree,” Popov explained.

“If that's the way it is, then that's the way it is.”

Antonia appreciated Ernie's pragmatic nature, even if she thought he could show emotion more often.

“I’ll be quiet,” said Popov.

They set off one after the other, connected by a safety line. Bree led the way, and Popov was at the back.

“Should I close the airlock?” he asked. “Could get dusty otherwise.”

“No, don't bother. There's no wind here, and we might be in a hurry later.”

“Oops, that was silly of me,” said Popov.

Antonia shrugged her shoulders. They had just experienced the biggest dust storm in the moon's recent history. After something like that, one looked at the meter-thick layer of dust with different eyes. Especially as it still posed a danger, since it now concealed hazards in the ground.

* * *

This time, however, they were lucky. They reached the crater around the stele without incident. From the edge of the crater, it looked as if two similarly sized meteorites had struck here in quick succession. Antonia saw two overlapping, almost circular cauldrons below them. She had to stop Bree, who wanted to run down the slope.

“Stop, Bree! That could be dangerous.”

Antonia had grown up in the Italian countryside. She once witnessed a child being buried by a mountain of grain. Piled-up material could be dangerous if the angle of repose was too great, i.e. if it was piled too steeply. Electrostatic forces were at work here, not gravity. That might lead to an unstable configuration.

“Just let her run,” said Popov. “Bree is our canary.”

He understood her reasoning. Nevertheless, she flipped him the middle finger and hoped that meant the same thing in Russian. Bree was not a canary, after all!

Popov merely laughed. “Do you want me to go down there?”

She looked at him. The Russian was taller, wider and heavier than she was. Antonia nodded. She should still be able to pull him up again easily in the moon's low gravity. And if he didn't cause an avalanche, she and Bree would definitely be safe.

“Let's go, then,” she said. “Ernie? We're entering the crater now.”

Ernie didn't answer. So there was no one above them to relay the connection.

Popov set off without another word. He left deep tracks in the dust, which filled up again almost immediately. The deposits must be at the limit of the critical range. Every now and then he triggered mini-avalanches, but they quickly subsided.

Finally, he reached the bottom of the nearer crater and waved from there.

“All good,” he said over the helmet radio.

“Okay, please wait there. I'm on my way.”

She started to descend as well, reeling in the line she had used to secure Popov. Bree passed her. Popov dug in the ground with his boots until he evidently hit an obstacle. He pulled it out with his hands. It looked like half an eggshell.

“Could this be the remains of the Chinese bomb?” he asked.

Antonia made her way over to him and examined the object. It was clearly artificial, made of metal and melted at the edges. If it wasn't part of the bomb itself, it had definitely been at the center of the heat development. The crater at the front must be the result of the explosion caused by the Chinese robots. The second crater must be the one dug by the excavators to uncover the artifact. Antonia briefly checked the dosimeter. It was ticking faster than she would have liked. They shouldn't make themselves comfortable here. The stele was no longer visible. In the pictures Antonia remembered, it rose thirty meters into the air.

“The stele must have been over there,” she said.

The craters were separated by a kind of wall, five or six meters high on either side. It must have been created when the enormous heat of the explosion caused the dust to condense. Popov tried to jump over it, but failed because he couldn't find a good position in the soft dust to get up momentum. He got down on all fours and climbed over it instead. Bree followed him, barking enthusiastically. She probably thought it was a game the Russian was playing.

“Bree, stay!”

The dog obediently sat down next to Popov on the narrow ridge of the partition. Antonia followed them both, but it was difficult because she was so light. Popov helped by pulling her up with the safety line.

The three of them peered into the crater. It must have been an impressive sight. Antonia could understand Liwei. She would have tried to touch the alien artifact too. Unfortunately, there didn't seem to be anything left of it.

“What are you doing?” Popov asked.

“Bree doesn't have a good feeling about what you're doing.”

“You're pulling me up because the dog...?”

“...doesn't have a good feeling, yes. Wait, please.”

Bree settled down. Popov sighed and pulled himself up onto the ridge while Antonia climbed back down into the blast crater. There she searched the ground until she found a head-sized lump of rock. Carrying it, she let Popov pull her back up onto the ridge of the partition wall.

“Now what?” said Popov.

Antonia took the lump in her right hand and propelled it towards the center of the crater, to where the stele must have once stood. The lump hit the layer of dust about a meter and a half before the deepest point, then rolled a little further. Suddenly it shot upwards. Antonia couldn't follow it fast enough with her helmet headlamp. It reappeared after a minute, but landed in the neighboring crater.

Bree barked. “Good girl,” said Antonia.

“She couldn't have known that,” said Popov.

Antonia didn't comment. Maybe it was a coincidence, and Bree was just barking because she felt like it. It didn't really matter. If Popov had gone down there, he certainly wouldn't have survived the trip.

“You can thank her later,” said Antonia.

Popov rose. Antonia shone her helmet lamp into the center of the crater. A hole had appeared there. Popov approached. It was probably safe. After all, the lump of rock had not reacted at a distance of one and a half meters. With every step, the Russian bent down, took some sand in his hand and threw it towards the hole. When he hit it for the first time, the sand sprayed upwards.

“The critical distance seems to be one meter,” said Popov.

Antonia was curious. She would have loved to follow him, but someone had to stay safe.

“Can you share your helmet camera with me?” she asked.

“Sure.”

She switched to it and was able to see in her helmet visor how the hole in the crater grew with every step. But no details could be seen. The spotlight was not illuminating the hole. How could that be? If light entered it, it should get brighter inside, right?

“Can you shine the spotlight at the dust when you throw it?”

“The spotlight? It's attached to my helmet.”

“You have to throw the dust and shine it at the same time.”

“Oh, I see. Hang on.”

Popov squatted down at a safe distance from the hole, threw some dust and shone a light on it. The dust glistened unusually brightly. That was it.

“You know what? The light is bouncing off the hole. That's why the dust is so bright.”

“Do you think the light is coming back?” asked Popov. “No, to force light to turn back, you would need something with the mass density of a black hole.”

“That's good. Because then we haven't accidentally created a black hole here.”

Antonia sighed. After the events of 2072, that would have been pretty bad news for Earth.

“Ernie here, can you hear me?”

Oh, good. A new relay appeared to be moving in orbit above them.

“We've reached the stele,” said Antonia. “No sign of Jinjin or Ron.”

“And the stele itself?”

“It's hard to say. Where Liwei found it, there’s now a phenomenon, something that reflects matter, let's say. We can't possibly determine its extent. In any case, it’s below the surface.”

“Can you please film and scan everything thoroughly? I'm very interested in this phenomenon.” That was Sokolov's voice. “I'd love to come to you.”

“For now, come back to me,” said Ernie. “We can examine the phenomenon later.”

“That would suit me fine,” said Antonia. “I'm already looking forward to a shower.”

Bree barked as if she had been listening to their conversation. “One more request—not a word to anyone about what we have found here. Otherwise, the same thing will happen as during the battle for the stele. Do we agree?”

“Absolutely,” said Sokolov. “It's very important to me to be the first to properly examine this strange phenomenon.” Antonia suppressed the urge to answer him sharply. She and Popov were actually the first to discover it.

“Popov, can you hear us?” the famous physicist asked. “We'll brief Earth later. I'll take the responsibility for this.”

“Whatever you say, buddy.”

Popov squatted down again, threw dust toward the hole and filmed the sparkling crystals that shot skyward. Antonia was reminded of the rocket tail of New Year's Eve fireworks.

Unknown Place, March 12, 2082

It looked like the moon, but it wasn’t the moon.

Gravity gave it away immediately. It didn’t pull him downwards, but towards the stele. Its base seemed to be the lowest point. The celestial body on which he was located towered up like a mountain next to him. He estimated its height at no more than a hundred meters. It was a little larger on the sides, but not by much. This was an asteroid. He scraped at the dirt and used it to stir up smaller chunks, some of which glistened in the light of his helmet lamp: ice and rock. He was standing on an asteroid or a comet. The material his foot was digging into must be billions of years old. He was definitely the first person to set foot on this celestial body.

He moved away from the stele. That wasn’t difficult. Its gravitational pull was weak. If he were a physicist, he would be able to calculate its mass and thus its density. He would probably come up with similar values to those obtained when the stele on the moon was measured. Back then. In his mind, it seemed like years ago. In reality, it had been perhaps two weeks.

Liwei wanted to know what he was dealing with here. He climbed higher. Soon his sense of space changed. Moving away from the stele disrupted his sense of up and down. Before long, it seemed as if his feet belonged on the surface. But when he tried to stand up straight and walk normally, he lifted off. It didn't work that way here. He needed to keep one hand on the ground at all times in order to move forward.

He was exploring new territory, meter by meter. He signed up for the moon project back then because he wanted to break new ground. Setting foot on a piece of land that no one had ever stepped on before had been impossible on Earth for a long time. It was also becoming increasingly difficult on the moon. But after his long journey, he would have been glad to see something familiar.

He sat down on the ground, wedged one foot under a heavy rock for stability, and then looked up at the sky.

The Source had been wrong. He hadn’t ended up back where he came from, as it had promised. But the millions of stars above him represented the Milky Way. He recognized the area of the Imperial Palace. There was the ox, and the weaving girl. His mother had often shown them to him.

The Earth had not been visible in the sky at that time. On the moon, he had learned to look for it. But that didn't help him now. He looked back at the stele. The beam of his helmet headlamp moved over gray-black blocks, between which dust had settled. Then he looked up at the sky again. The Imperial Palace, which was located near the north celestial pole, had moved. The asteroid where he had ended up was apparently rotating. So, he just had to wait for Earth to appear—or any other planet, if it wasn’t in the solar system.

The first significant change he observed was a semicircular outline that appeared on the ground in front of him. It was the shadow of his helmet. On the irregular ground, first his head appeared, then his upper body. Liwei waved to himself, whereupon his hip could also be seen. The legs remain hidden. He turned toward the light. It came from a cold white star. That must be the sun. It had moved across the moon's sky in exactly the same way. This also meant that the distance between the sun and the moon must be roughly the same as the distance between the sun and the Earth.

Perhaps the Source had fulfilled its promise after all. The fact that it hadn’t sent him to the moon was worrying. It would mean that something had happened to the stele there. What could that be? Had the Americans attacked it because he found it first? Was there a problem with their investigation? Had Chinese scientists been too eager to uncover its secrets? It must have been a great experience to study such an artifact. A gift to the Chinese people with the potential to change the destiny of humanity.

Liwei sighed. He knew too little. It was also too early to worry. At that moment, a small blue spot rose above the horizon, which was formed here by a somewhat larger piece of rock. Liwei turned on the magnification. The small spot grew into a larger one. Blue, with white washed-out edges. It was the Earth, but it was awfully far away. He suppressed the urge to weep.

“Source, where did you send me?” he asked loudly in Chinese.

“Liwei? Is that you?”

A four-legged creature came crawling over the boulder in front of him. It lifted its head as if it were sniffing the air. Then it turned on the lamp on its helmet. Only now did Liwei understand what he had just heard. Who he had heard.

“Jinjin!” he called out, and leaped towards her.

They met in an embrace.

Mare Orientale, March 13, 2082

The computer emitted the typical ringing of an incoming call. Ernie picked it up.

“I just wanted to let you know that I am no longer responsible for you, effective immediately,” said Colonel Lehmann without saying hello first. Typical military!

“Oh, we're sorry to hear that,” Ernie replied.

“You don't have to say that. I know I've asked a lot of you. These have been extraordinary times, haven't they?”

“You're telling me, Colonel,” said Ernie. “Who will be responsible for us in the future?”

“To be honest, I don't know. I'm returning to my old staff position.”

“Then we wish you all the best.”

Antonia would never have been able to butter up Colonel Lehmann. But Ernie was right. There was no point in ending on a sour note.

“It is a bit strange that the stele didn't leave any traces.”

Antonia smiled. Lehmann was still beating around the bush a bit. There was probably someone standing right behind her, whispering what she should say.

“Those two craters aren't exactly nothing,” said Ernie.

“They're the legacy of our Chinese colleagues,” Lehmann objected. “I'm talking about the stele itself. Would you expect a giant mass like that to just disappear?’

“The Americans haven't found anything either,” said Antonia. “And I heard that the Chinese have called off their latest mission to the moon.”

“You're well informed. Supposedly something is happening on a nearby asteroid. A German at the UN apparently found out about it.”

“Oh, congratulations, Colonel. So, you'll probably have direct access?”

Antonia was trying to divert Colonel Lehmann’s interest from the moon. She wanted to have some peace and quiet here. She had Ernie, Popov and Sokolov on her side. Too much attention was damaging to science, putting her under pressure.

“Well, unfortunately that's not the case. The Americans want to send the Lunar Gateway there.”

“Which is currently manned by an ESA astronaut.”

“You don't know what it's like, Antonia. Whoever controls communication has everything in their hands. Whether Jean-Pierre Jeunet is paid by the ESA or not, his results will initially arrive in Houston.”

Lehmann might be right about that, but it wasn’t her problem. At least it was a good thing that the asteroid was relatively far away. Nobody could quickly get a nuclear bomb there. Perhaps humanity would approach the artifact in a more civilized way this time.

“We have to get back to work,” said Antonia. “The MIGI is completely out of alignment from all the dust.”

“Of course. Perhaps your Russian colleagues can help you a little, to balance out the help you gave them.”

Ah, the colonel was making an offer she couldn't refuse. Antonia had already been wondering how she was going to justify the continued presence of the two Russians on her station. One hand washed the other, of course, that was understandable.

“You won't believe it, colonel, but that was the first thing Popov and Sokolov offered us. Fortunately, we have enough room on the station.”

“I'm glad to hear it. My colleagues in the science department and I are eagerly awaiting the restoration of the interferometer. But if you do find something where the stele used to be, be sure to let us know, okay?”

“I promise. I really have to go now...”

“Wait, I'll give you my home number. It would be better if you didn't say anything in public, but rather told me personally…”

The sentence broke off abruptly.

“Colonel Lehmann?”

No answer.

“Hello? You wanted to tell me…”

“The connection's gone,” said Ernie. “She can't hear you.”

He typed something. Several messages appeared on the screen one after the other.

“Connection is being established.”

“Addresses assigned.”

“Error in routing. Route table empty.”

“Destination unavailable.”

“Connection failed.”

Ernie typed something again and Antonia read along.

“Resetting connection.”

“Creating new route table.”

“Route table is empty.”

Ernie shook his head and looked up at the sky. “That can't be. There doesn't seem to be a relay. But it was there a moment ago.”

They needed the relay to be able to transmit to Earth despite their location on the far side of the moon. “Maybe it's behind the horizon,” Antonia suggested.

“Ping … … … … 5 milliseconds.”

“You see, it's not the relay,” said Ernie. “It’s receiving our data. But it’s not passing it on.”

Antonia tried it herself, pulling the keyboard towards her.

“Connection request started.”

“Resolution of receiver address failed.”

Ah, Mission Control was apparently no longer in the relay satellite phone book.

“You could get the address from the cache,” said Ernie.

“I'm on it.” Antonia scrolled through the data from the last connection with mission control and copied its numerical code. The code changed from time to time, but not within a few minutes. She entered the code instead of the complete address, bypassing the empty or non-functioning phone book.

“Connecting to IP.”

“Connecting to IP.”

“Connecting to IP.”

Ernie shook his head. He was right. It shouldn't take this long. It wasn’t like she was trying to talk to someone on Mars.

“Connection failed.”

Antonia let out a sharp breath. Always problems with technology! But she hadn't had any problems with the relay satellites for a long time. Maybe one of them had been damaged by the dust storm? In that case, they just needed to be patient until the next one arrived. They could even use the Lunar Gateway as a relay. Antonia looked at the plan. The next regular satellite would come into range in fifty minutes. In an hour and a half, the Lunar Gateway's orbit would pass over their station. JP could even transfer their call manually if necessary.

“Come on, Bree, let's go play.”

The dog wagged her tail enthusiastically. Antonia smiled. She had a bad feeling about this. But as Ernie always said: it is what it is.

* * *

“The other relay isn't working either!” Ernie called.

Bree tilted her head. She had retrieved Antonia's slipper about three hundred times and could continue the game for several more hours.

“I'm sorry, I have to take care of this.”

Bree barked once briefly, dismissing her. Antonia floated back to the control center. Popov was no longer visible. Instead, the physicist Sokolov was now sitting at the main computer, looking at her curiously.

“What is it?” she asked. “Is there any news about the hole in the crater?”

Sokolov shook his head. “There's still something missing from my theory.”

“The thing with the light?”

“No, on the contrary. A mirror would have caused a similar behavior, or rather a prism. But the fact that the stone and the dust were equally reflective is strange. You would think that they would behave differently.”

“Why?”

“Have you ever thrown something into a mirror?”

“Well, with an elastic collision, the glass reflects the object just like light.”

“But we had an elastic impact with every kind of object. It's as if your mirror would even reflect a piece of chewed gum. But then neither the angles nor the impulses would be right afterwards. I estimated it from the recordings. None of it adds up. It's as if someone is sitting in the hole and deliberately kicking things into the sky when they get too close.”

“Ha-ha, maybe an alien?” Antonia imagined a little green man hiding in the hole.

Sokolov shrugged. “It would be a simple explanation. But I prefer to look for the science behind it. When something seems unsystematic to us, it’s usually because of the existence of an unknown variable.”

“And you look for that all the time?”

“To be honest, I’m putting it on the back burner for now.”

“Why is that?”

“I find your problem more intriguing. It can't be a coincidence that two relay satellites have the same defect.” Now it was getting interesting. She thought it was strange, too, but two events were not enough to constitute a statistic. Besides, the two satellites had something in common.

“You're forgetting that they were both exposed to the dust. Not as much up there in orbit, but a small disturbance might be enough to misalign the signal processing. I know how sensitive the superconducting paths of the MIGI are to external influences.”

“I've done the math,” said Sokolov, leaning back in his chair. “The second relay satellite never flew over the area with the artifact, so it never entered the extended dust cloud.”

That was really strange. It must be a systemic error. What had Sokolov said about the unknown variables? What was hidden here?

“Cat got your tongue?” Sokolov asked. “Is there no way to log into the satellites’ operating system?”

He was right. A search there would probably be the most promising. She shook her head. “We would have to request the necessary access from Earth first. That's like a dog biting its own tail.”

“Won't we be able to connect to the Lunar Gateway in a few minutes?”

“Yep. JP can connect us manually, if necessary.”

Orbital Station Blue, March 13, 2082

Sebastiano was floating under the restaurant's glass dome. He had never seen the moon up close like this before, even though the closest point had already passed. How quickly that huge dust cloud had disappeared! He had never missed gravity, but in cases like this, it was an advantage that everything fell back to the ground.

Since the guests started enjoying ready-made meals in their cabins—not that he would really call that ‘enjoying’—he’d had almost the whole day off as a chef. That would hopefully change again when they finally reached Earth's orbit. The operator was counting on a lot from this. Sebastiano sighed. He was a good cook, but marketing wasn't his thing. For that, he relied on others—something he hated to do but couldn't avoid.

He turned back to the view through the dome. In a moment, the Earth would rise behind the gray disk of the moon. The contrast was striking. Dead and cold on one side, alive and warm on the other. And seemingly fragile.

It was the same every time. Even from the distant Lagrange Point, around which Blue had orbited many times, his home planet always seemed so delicate and sensitive, although it was only a blue spot in the black sky. Maybe it was his imagination?

Speaking of which, where was the Earth? Sebastiano looked at his watch. The station's main computer calculated the exact minute of the Earth's daily rise. This was part of the tourist program for the guests, who didn't have much else to do. Trips outside were expensive and, once you were out there, quite uncomfortable. In the long history of the Blue, there had never been a tourist who would voluntarily do a second EVA.

He himself had been outside almost a hundred times, usually standing in for the guide. He didn't mind the cramped suit much. Sebastiano had spent most of his life learning how to do without his lower limbs. This was quite an advantage in microgravity and even more so during an EVA. Most guests quickly got their limbs confused during the exit.

He glanced at his watch again. Now it was nineteen minutes past ten.

“10:17 a.m. standard time—rise of the Earth over the Moon,” the computer noted. Tourists were sometimes late. He himself sometimes overslept. An ingredient occasionally took longer to reach the perfect degree of doneness. But planets were never late.

Sebastiano suddenly felt like his heart was going to burst out of his chest. There must be some kind of mistake. Perhaps there had been a power outage during the night that reset all the on-board systems. He checked the system time. 10:21 a.m. To be on the safe side, he checked his watch, using a news portal's website. That was also showing 10:21 a.m. UTC. Fortunately, the signal delay to Earth from here was minimal.

“Zeke? Please recalculate the Earth's rise over the Moon.”

Zeke was the station computer. Who had given it that name?

“My pleasure, Sebastiano. You'll find the updated information on your watch.”

Sebastiano took a deep breath and checked the information.

“10:49 a.m. standard time—rise of the Earth over the Moon,” could now be read on the tiny calendar. So it had been a mistake after all! How could something like that happen to a computer? Maybe there had been a small course correction after the last calculation. Shouldn't he have sensed that? He couldn't remember feeling any impulse, but then, he had been asleep. His friend Isa would have noticed. He was a very light sleeper. But he was with his family on Earth.

Sebastiano missed him. His vacation would continue for another week. He flipped back and forth through the calendar. Then he noticed:

“10:49 a.m. standard time—rise of the Earth over the Moon.” That was noted for March 14. But today was the thirteenth!

“Zeke, you got the day wrong. Please recalculate the Earth's rise over the moon for today.”

“My pleasure, Sebastiano. Are you aware that this is a past event? A retrospective calculation seems less effective to me than a determination of the real time.”

Sebastiano sighed. “I'm well aware of that.”

“As you wish. I've adjusted the calendar entry.”

“Thanks, Zeke.” Sebastiano raised his hand with the watch, flipped back another day in the calendar, and read:

“10:17 a.m. standard time—the rise of the Earth over the Moon.”

* * *

“Doug! You have to wake up.”

“Leave me alone.”

Sebastiano shook his old friend's shoulder until he turned around in his sleeping bag attached to the ceiling.

“Doug, it's important.”

“Oh, man...” Doug blew night breath in his face. Sebastiano had to turn away.

“Your loss.” Doug laughed. With a zip, his sleeping bag opened.

“You have to come to headquarters.”

“Why don't you let me take a shower first? Or is it that urgent?”

“It's urgent, believe me, my friend.”

Doug sniffed the air. “It's warm and humid. Life support is working. I don't hear any alarms. What's the rush?”

“Man, the Earth is gone!”

Doug laughed again. “Now stop this nonsense. I'm going to take a shower first. I'll be with you in ten minutes, and then we'll look for your missing Earth, ha-ha!”

Doug pulled past him and floated out of the cabin. The door of the bathroom hissed shut. Shortly thereafter, Sebastiano heard the pumps spraying out and sucking in water. He breathed a sigh of relief. The Earth gone…that really was silly. But it was 10:34 a.m. standard time, and it still hadn’t risen behind the moon.

* * *

“Have you found your glasses yet?” Doug asked as soon as he floated into the control center.

Sebastiano grimaced and swiped over the display to show the images from the external camera.

“What is it, then? Your pocketknife? Your pillbox? Your favorite wooden spoon?”

Okay, so he misplaced things from time to time, but now Doug was exaggerating.

“Hey, don't be mad, Sebastiano. But put yourself in my shoes, being woken up in the middle of a deep sleep by such a crazy claim.”

Sebastiano sighed. “It's crazy. But it's not a claim.” He turned the screen so that Doug could see the moon. “The Earth should have risen here at 10:17. But there's nothing.”

“Zeke, when will the Earth rise for us next?”

“10:49 a.m. standard time,” the computer replied immediately.

“Well, there you go...”

“Zeke, what time was it at today?” Sebastiano interrupted him.

“10:17 a.m. standard time.”

Doug frowned. “That can't be right. What date are we talking about?”

“March 13th,” the computer said.

“What year?”

“2082.”

“You see, Doug!” Sebastiano put his hands in his pockets to stop himself from nervously tapping on the screen.

“Zeke, have there been any course changes?” Doug asked.

“No.”

“Not even passive ones? Did we drift through the moon dust and slow down in the process?”

That would be a nice explanation. Sebastiano didn't want to be right himself. However, the moment when the Earth should have appeared, but instead the Moon remained dark... His fingers trembled when he thought about it. It was worse than it had been after the accident.

A blue curve appeared on the screen. A second curve in yellow overlaid it. Both merged into green.

“The course is exactly as planned,” the computer said.

Doug scratched his temple. “Is this a game you're playing with us, Zeke?”

“I don't know what you mean, Doug. I'm just answering your questions.”

Doug shook his head. “I don't trust you. I've been tricked often enough.”

“Zeke isn't even an AI,” said Sebastiano. “The program has always worked reliably.”

“Still. I have to see it with my own eyes before I believe it.”

“Doug, you can see for yourself in the dome.”

“That's not a glass roof, it’s a big screen, right? And who controls that?”

Sebastiano knew how the station operated. It had worked reliably for years. There was no reason to mistrust it. But he also understood Doug. The Earth simply had no reason to disappear.

“That's right,” he said, nodding. “If you want to see it with your own eyes, you have to go outside, Doug.”

“Then I'll go outside. I'll do an EVA.”

“Now? Hang on, I'll get everything ready.” Sebastiano had stood in for the guide often enough.

“I just need my suit. Will you help me put it on?”

“But what about pre-breathing? You should prepare thoroughly.”

“Sebastiano, if what you say is true, not doing pre-breathing is the least of our worries.”

He couldn't contradict Doug on that. “All right, let's get into the airlock.”

* * *

Ten minutes later, Sebastiano was hovering in front of the inner door of the lock. He had linked Doug's helmet radio to the control panel so that they could talk to each other. The panel glowed red. Life support had pumped the air out of the lock. A hissing sound announced that Doug must have just opened the outer bulkhead. It would be so nice if he could tell him that it was all just a trick of the station software. He would rather deal with a crazy program than with an impossibility.

Someone was coming towards him through the corridor. It was a passenger, Barbara Meyers, he remembered. Her hair floated around her head in the zero gravity.

“Good morning, Mr. Guarini,” she greeted him. “What's going on here?”

“Just a little field work. It's best if you go to the restaurant. I'll be with you in a little while.”

“Should I be worried? You look pale.”

Sebastiano shook his head. “Everything's fine. It's just routine.”

“That's what they said when they put the stents in me. And then they told me I had a narrow escape from a heart attack.”

“An escape won’t be necessary, Ms. Meyers. Unfortunately, I need to concentrate a little. So, if you don’t mind...”

“Yes, yes, I understand. The old bag talks too much. I'm gone.”

The 70-year-old floated past him. He smelled her perfume for a moment, then the smell of sweat and oil from the life support system covered it again.

“Are you alone?” Doug asked from the control panel.

Sebastiano turned around. Meyers had disappeared around the bend in the corridor.

“Yes, why?”

He sensed the answer. Sweat ran down his forehead.

“I don't want to cause a panic,” Doug explained. “There are only two of us and nine passengers. We can't keep them all under control if they start going crazy.”

“There are tasers on board.”

“Oh, I didn't know that. But still. We can't fight off all of them at once if they want to do something.”

“So I'm right.” Sebastiano's voice trembled as he spoke softly.

“Yes, it seems so. There is only the Moon left. The Earth is missing, even if that's completely impossible.”

“The fact that it happened proves that it isn’t impossible.”

“No, my friend. You haven’t thought through the consequences. The moon should be moving away from us, fast. Our course doesn’t match. Imagine you are sitting on a chain carousel and suddenly the chain breaks. You would fly off in a high arc. That's what would happen to us and to the Moon if the Earth ceased to exist. But the chain hasn't broken. Although nothing should be holding us anymore, the station is on its calculated course. You showed me that yourself.”

Sebastiano nodded. He was no physicist, but it made sense. The station would have woken them all with an alarm if it had detected such a course deviation.

“The Earth is there, and at the same time it isn't there,” he said.

“That's exactly it. You'll forgive me if I call a situation like this impossible?”

“Yes, yes.” Sebastiano didn't care what they called their situation. Words didn't change anything. If the Earth had disappeared, they were doomed. The fact that they were still hanging on to the ropes that anchored them in space was irrelevant. They needed the Earth to get food and water.

Although...the Moon was still there. Perhaps the situation wasn't completely bleak. Sebastiano heard another hiss. Doug must have floated back into the airlock. A moment later, he knocked on the bulkhead from the inside.

“It's still red, Doug. Just a moment.”

Sebastiano watched the pressure gauge. At 0.8 bar, he bypassed the bulkhead controls. Although he was holding on, the pressure equalization pulled his legs into the opening. Doug pushed through and floated out. He had already taken off his helmet.

“Be careful,” he whispered. “We have to prevent the passengers from noticing anything.”

Sebastiano nodded. It was bad enough they had to search for the Earth. It would be better if the passengers weren't in the way.

“I could tell Zeke to display generated images on all of the outer windows.”

“You can do that?” Doug slapped him on the back. “See, that's why I wanted to go outside...”

“Yes, that's possible. But what about radio communication? People will wonder why they can't reach their families.”

“Are we sure that’s the case?”

Sebastiano frowned. “Come on, the Earth is gone. And I assume all of its inhabitants with it.”

Doug shook his head back and forth. “I'm not sure. Its mass is still there, or we would be gone. Maybe it's just concealed from our viewpoint?”

“The Earth...an entire planet...has concealed itself?”

Doug sniffed. “Of course, this isn't earthly technology. But they’ve been fighting over some kind of strange stele that aliens must have installed. What if they've had enough of the bickering and want to show off their power?”

“Well, I'm just a cook. But wouldn't these aliens have to have faster-than-light speed to know what's going on here? Otherwise, they won't realize it for several years at least.”

Sebastiano closed the bulkhead of the airlock, locked it via the control panel and secured it with the admin password. Should a passenger become suspicious, the route that Doug had taken would be blocked. Nevertheless, they would have to be careful. People could get creative when they really wanted something.

“Yes, a lot to think about,” said Doug. “I hope we can find someone who can help us with this. But for now, let's just claim that our main antenna was damaged by an impact. Wasn't there a passenger with you a moment ago?”

“Yes, I told her that your EVA was a routine check.”

“Good, then you should officially announce that, unfortunately, no calls to the outside world will be possible for the foreseeable future. And, of course, we're also shutting down access to the Terran Internet.”

* * *

They met the passengers in the dome. The tables were folded up and propped against the wall. Instead, they had set up nine chairs in a semicircle. Seven of their guests were already there when Sebastiano floated into the room. He placed himself in the middle of the semicircle. He didn't need Doug for this occasion. He looked up at the ceiling, where the Earth could be seen in all its glory.

Sebastiano took a deep breath. Couldn’t Doug have just lied to him, too? Then he could still look forward to the new mission in Earth's orbit. He could be planning the first menus. Now he had absolutely no desire to calculate it. But that was his own fault. Why did he have to know everything so precisely?

The last two guests floated in. They were the only ones to strap themselves into a chair. Actually, there was a strict seatbelt policy on board. It was always possible that the station would suddenly have to evade an object. In recent years, Earth's low orbit had become so full of debris that it was not always possible to announce evasive maneuvers minutes in advance. The guests should understand that an antenna could have been damaged.

“I'm glad you could all make it,” Sebastiano began. “I thank you on behalf of the operator as well.”

“What is it now?” Barbara Meyers asked. “Does it have something to do with the EVA earlier?”

“Yes, Ms. Meyers. You made an excellent observation. I told you it was a routine check. It was at the time.”

“And now it's worse? How bad?” asked Roberto Rodriguez from the first row. The Mexican engineer was the one most likely to be able to see through their deception. They couldn't isolate Zeke from the guests. By asking clever questions, they could probably get the program to contradict itself. This wasn't an AI that could be taught to lie.

“It's not that bad. A piece of debris damaged our antenna. That's why we're currently unable to contact the outside world.”

“We're flying blind and deaf through space?” Rodriguez asked. “That falls under my definition of bad.”

“Well, we know that the transfer spaceship will dock at the station in seven days, which will take you back to Earth. Zeke, why don't you show our course?”

The green line that Sebastiano had already seen appeared on the dome. It had a strangely calming effect. At least something was still working. On the seventh day, the line approached a curve that described the path of the transfer spaceship. Sebastiano was skeptical about whether this would actually happen. It should be leaving in three days—from an Earth that no longer existed. Though Zeke had just filled the dome with a beautiful blue and white planet again.

“Thanks, Zeke. The ship may even reach us a little earlier. Mission Control will notice that we're being so quiet. But because of the difficult conditions around the Moon, it's unlikely that we'll get a visit sooner than planned.”

“But shouldn't Mission Control be worried about us?” Meyers asked. “Anything could have happened here.”

“Well, surely they can visually confirm that our station is in perfect condition. It has no leaks and is on the intended course. So they will assume that the communication system is damaged. Zeke, what do you say?”

It was always good to have a seemingly neutral witness.

“I can confirm that. A failure of the communication infrastructure is by far the most likely cause of the station's silence, provided that no further damage is apparent.”

“Thanks, Zeke.”

“Well, the ship's control system is of course not independent, but programmed by you,” Rodriguez noted.

“Zeke?”

“I have come to this conclusion through independent reasoning.”

Reasoning. Doug had given the program that name because it sounded so smart. Of course that was intentional.

“Thanks, Zeke.”

“So, you're not planning to do anything to improve our situation until the transfer spaceship arrives?” Rodriguez asked.

Sebastiano had clearly heard the reproach. The other passengers turned to the engineer. Some nodded.

“Unfortunately, we don't have a replacement part for the damaged antenna,” Sebastiano explained. “But I do have some good news. I wasn't able to reach the operator, but I've decided to make premium drinks available for free with the all-inclusive flat rate with immediate effect, of course only while stocks last.”

“But you can't do that,” said Michel Fleuri, a single traveler who was the only guest that booked the premium flat rate. Sebastiano understood that he felt this was unfair.

“They can very well do that,” said Wilhelm Körner, a German passenger, with his harsh accent. “In fact, I insist.”

“The operator will refund the overpayment, Monsieur Fleuri,” Sebastiano said in French.

“But that's not fair,” said Körner. Sebastiano hadn't realized he also understood French.

“Why is that?”

“Monsieur Fleuri has had premium drinks from the start of the trip and is now paying no more than the rest of us.”

“Jeez, Körner, leave it alone,” said Jacinda Hartnell, an American woman who was traveling with her mother.

“Everyone please relax. We have sufficient supplies, and the tour operator will generously compensate you.”

“Are you sure, Mr. Guarini?” Meyers asked. “I mean, you couldn't have cleared that yet. Are you just telling us this to calm us down?”

Sebastiano smiled. “Of course I want to reassure you, Ms. Meyers. You've got me there. But Ms. Hartnell, you're a lawyer, aren't you?”

“Family law. Divorces and such,” she explained.

“Nevertheless, you can tell Ms. Meyers that I am speaking as a representative of the company, and if they don’t keep my promises, you will then have the best conditions...”

“I will sue your company into the ground if you try to trick us. That should be clear.”

* * *

“Did you hear Hartnell?” Sebastiano asked.

“We don't want to trick anyone here,” said Doug. “But we have to.”

It was strange. By deceiving the passengers, the incredible event had been transformed into a kind of game, a game that would end in seven days if no transfer spaceship arrived. Sebastiano pushed that thought aside. A week was plenty of time to find Earth again. At least if they had any idea where to start the search.

He floated to the entrance of the control center and locked it with his code. They hadn't explicitly explained it in order to avoid questions, but the control center with the main computer was now off limits to the guests.

“Do you have a plan?” Sebastiano asked.

Doug nodded. “I do. I suggest we use our antenna to get in touch with other places. We're definitely not alone.”

“Did you listen in? Radio traffic should be overflowing. Or are they so preoccupied with themselves on the Moon that they haven't even noticed the loss of Earth yet?”

“Well, you’d have to be looking, I think. Do you check every day to see if the Earth is still there?”

That was true. If he hadn't been waiting for the Earth to rise... Sebastiano counted the missions he was currently aware of in his head. There weren't that many spacecraft in transit between the Earth and the Moon. But since the twentieth century, a shroud of manned and unmanned spacecraft had formed around the Earth. Most of them observed the Earth itself in one way or another, so they would surely sound the alarm if it were not there anymore.

“Zeke? Please go through the public frequencies,” Sebastiano said. “Every weather satellite should be sending error messages home by now.”

“It doesn't look that way,” said Zeke. “There's only occasional radio traffic, mostly encrypted.”

“What about the weather satellites? Can you check them with the telescope?”

“I can't find any weather satellites. Only geostationary orbits are still populated,” the ship's control system explained.

Everything including the Earth’s low orbit seemed to be lost. The GPS satellites in high geostationary orbits didn't seem to care if anyone on the surface was still receiving their signals.

“They're thorough, though,” said Doug.

Sebastiano nodded. “We’re lucky to still be in transfer orbit and far from the Earth.”

“Whether you can call it luck remains to be seen. Without Earth, it’ll be damn difficult. Our supplies won't last forever, either.”

Sebastiano turned and looked at his old friend. Doug was holding up bravely, but he could tell from the deep furrow on his brow that his friend had been shaken to the core and was fighting to avoid a breakdown. Maria was waiting for him on Earth, on their shared farm. It was strange—but only now, when he thought of Doug's wife, did he think of his friend Isa, who was supposed to return with the transfer spaceship.

“Hey, Doug!”

“Yes?

“We'll make it. We'll get our Earth back.”

“Yeah.” Doug sniffed. Sebastiano noticed his eyes watering. He couldn't remember ever seeing his friend cry. He couldn’t bear it. The two embraced.

* * *

“May I interrupt for a moment?” Zeke asked after a while.

Sebastiano broke away from the embrace and turned away. He gulped. “What is it, Zeke?”

“I have Jean-Pierre Jeunet from the Lunar Gateway with an emergency call.”

“Then answer him!” Sebastiano called out and pushed himself off the ceiling to get to the main computer.

“I already did. I'm legally obligated to respond to emergency calls immediately. But this Jean-Pierre wants to speak to a human being.”

It was a bit silly, since Zeke could hear him from anywhere, but Sebastiano still pulled up the microphone on the computer.

“This is the Blue Space Station on our way to Earth. Sebastiano Guarini. How can I help?”

“Jean-Pierre Jeunet here. I'm on the Lunar Gateway for the ESA. Hey, are you serious, by the way?”

They didn't know each other, but Sebastiano didn't mind the direct way he spoke. He just didn't understand the question.

“Pardon me?”

“Please tell me you're serious.”

“What?”

“Well, that you’re on your way to Earth. Can you see it? I thought I was...”

“Going crazy? Sorry, that was just a stupid phrase. Yesterday we were still on our way to Earth. Now it's...”

He didn't say it out loud, as if that would make it less real.

“So, it really is...”

Sebastiano heard the soft French accent. “You're all alone on the Gateway? Isn't that unusual?”

“Yes, it's because of the confusion surrounding the alien stele on the Moon. I don't know how much of it you've seen.”

“Seen enough. We almost got caught by a disturbance emanating from the artifact.”

“You see, the person who prevented that was probably my colleague Ron. He worked his way to the stele with our Chinese colleague and closed the leak.”

They had noticed that the danger had suddenly disappeared, but not who they had to thank for it.

“That's a great achievement. Please give your colleague our warmest regards. And now he's not coming back to the Gateway?”

“He disappeared, along with our Chinese colleague Jinjin.”

Like the Earth. Sebastiano swallowed.

“Like the Earth,” said Jean-Pierre. “I can read your mind.”

“Do you think the one has something to do with the other?” Sebastiano asked.

“That doesn't make a fold.”

“Excuse me? I don't know that expression.

“Ça ne fait pas un pli, how do you say that?”

“I see. Does a bear shit in the woods? Is that what you mean?”

“Ha-ha, I hadn't heard that one, but yes, it's quite certain. And it makes perfect sense to me. We destroy their stele, so they take away our Earth. Who has the longer stick now?”

Sebastiano shook his head. “Think about the speed of light. No matter where the alien builders of the stele live, they couldn't have realized that we destroyed it yet.”

“What if they are in the solar system?”

“That would be possible, of course, but that makes even less sense. Why build the stele? They could have just introduced themselves.”

Sebastiano felt some relief. They had a task, and he could contribute to it.

“Why do you think the Earth is gone?” Doug asked.

“It must have something to do with the function of the stele. We damaged it so that it can no longer fulfill its task. So it stopped doing whatever it did, and as a result, the Earth disappeared. Although it's not really gone. Its mass is still there, or we wouldn’t be sitting here talking to each other.”

“Yes, that was my thought too,” said Jean-Pierre. “I'm just wondering what we can do about it. During our last contact, Mission Control wanted to send me to asteroid 2004 GU9. There could be another stele there, and Ron and Jinjin might also be there.”

“That's very good,” said Doug. “You should definitely check it out. I'm Doug, by the way. Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise, Doug. But to do that, I would have to travel far from Earth. I won't reach 2004 GU9 until I'm at one of the Lagrange points, 150 million kilometers from Earth. So I'll be completely out of the picture when it comes to saving Earth. But if I turn around, Ron and Jinjin could die on 2004 GU9. They don't have endless supplies of breathable air.”

Sebastiano understood the Frenchman very well. Of course he wanted to save his friends. But since the fate of the whole Earth was at stake, he rightly wondered if his priorities were set correctly.

“If there really is a stele on that asteroid, it could be the key to saving Earth. You are probably the one who can get there the fastest. So I guess that is your mission.”

“Thanks, Sebastiano. I hope you manage to get the Earth back. It would also be a good idea to talk to the people at the ESA base on the Moon. Unless I'm mistaken, they're the only ones still in contact down there. I couldn't raise anyone else. I'll send you the frequencies.”

“Thanks for the tip, Jean-Pierre. And have a safe trip.”

Lunar Gateway, March 13, 2082

Jean-Pierre could remember exactly the moment the Earth disappeared. He had just been staring at it through a porthole—longingly, because he felt he had been talked into this mission. He had been sent to replace a US colleague on the Lunar Gateway who had broken his leg. Just a few months ago, a generous salary and all the ingredients to be able to cook properly had been promised to him, that was the deal. He needed the money. Both of his parents were in nursing homes, and if he couldn't be there, he at least wanted to guarantee them the best possible care. But would it really be a few more months?

When the Earth suddenly disappeared, he had rubbed his eyes at first. But that didn't help. So, he turned the Gateway around its axis, several times. There was nothing out there except for the Moon, and space with its millions of stars. Maybe he was floating in front of the wrong porthole? He knew that was an unreasonable assumption, but he still checked all the portholes of the Gateway.

After that, he considered making an emergency call for the first time, but dismissed the thought. What if he was wrong? One stupid mistake and Mission Control would have a good laugh at his expense. He would forever be the astronaut who thought the Earth could disappear in the blink of an eye.

He needed to do an EVA. The portholes of the station were real windows made of special glass, but he had to see for himself that there wasn't just an obstacle blocking the view. He refused to think about what kind of obstacle would be that big. He could worry about that later. Jean-Pierre climbed into his spacesuit, did the pre-breathing properly and then stepped out of the airlock.

The stars seemed to look down at him mockingly. He imagined shouting at them not to be so cocky. The Moon hung between them as if in a net. It looked as if the stars were holding it in place. Only then did he dare to look down. He didn't find anything, as he had expected, just more stars. Their net continued around him. And although space was so vast, the net suddenly seemed to restrict him. JP had to force himself to breathe at a steady pace.

He memorized the constellations he could see, although at this moment they should actually be hidden by the Earth. Below him, Europe should have been visible right now. But the Centaur and the Scorpion had replaced it. And weren't those the Magellanic Clouds?

Back in the airlock, Jean-Pierre wondered why he couldn't cry. Perhaps it was the magnitude of the loss. His mind could only hold so many thoughts, and there were many more crowding in on him at the same time. A single person couldn't cope with it. That was when he decided to send out a distress call.

* * *

He had actually expected the people from the Moon to respond to the emergency call. But for them, the Gateway was probably over the horizon. When first Zeke and then Sebastiano and Doug had responded, he had been relieved.

But that feeling quickly left him. Now it was he who had to deliver the bad news to the astronauts on the Moon. In three minutes, the Gateway would rise over the Moon's horizon as seen from the European MIGI station. Since the base was on the far side of the Moon relative to Earth, Antonia and Ernie couldn't yet know what he himself was not able to grasp.

Maybe it would be better to leave them in the dark, as Sebastiano and Doug were doing with their passengers. But the ESA astronauts and their Russian guests were not tourists. They had been trained for unexpected events for a long time, including disasters.

But was a leak in the station comparable to what he was about to tell them? Should he spare his colleagues suffering or inflict it on them? At some point, they would wonder so much about the lack of contact with Earth that they would drive a rover to the side facing the Earth. Then they, too, would know what had happened. JP shook his head. He gave them a week at most before the pressure became so great that they would reach this conclusion.

So he would take a week of their lives, albeit a tense but reasonably happy one. And what would he give them? The truth. What was that worth? They would wish they hadn’t spoken to him. Just as JP wished he hadn’t looked through the porthole.

It was almost time. Why had he let himself be persuaded to have this conversation at all? Sebastiano said he knew the four down there better. But that wasn’t true. He had only been down there for a short time, fighting them over the stele, first against each other, then with each other. That was all there was. Couldn't Sebastiano...?

“MIGI to Lunar Gateway. Antonia here. JP, do you read us?”

“Loud and clear.”

“Thank God. Then it's not our hardware. Apparently, two relay satellites have malfunctioned. We can't get through to Mission Control.”

JP grimaced. Fortunately, Antonia couldn't see him. The Italian sounded so relieved. She didn't know yet.

“We wouldn't have bothered you otherwise, JP,” Ernie added.

“You're not bothering me,” said Jean-Pierre.

“Bored, are we?” Ernie asked. “We heard you have a rendezvous with an asteroid.”

“No, I'm not bored right now. Rather... I have something to tell you...”

“Excuse me for interrupting you,” said Antonia.

“He was about to...” said Ernie.

“Shh, Ernie. I'm talking. Okay?”

“Uh-huh.”

“So, Jean-Pierre, I just wanted to ask you to connect us to the ESA mission control in Darmstadt for a moment. Then we can find out what's wrong with the relays and won't need to bother you anymore. You're bound to be out of range at some point anyway, right? The plans for the asteroid rendezvous are still on track, aren't they?”

Jean-Pierre took a deep breath. “Yes, I'm on my way to 2004 GU9. Maybe I'll find Ron and Jinjin there.”

“That would be great. We'll keep our fingers crossed for you. But now to the connection with mission control...”

Antonia was direct. She was a good astronaut. That made it all the more difficult for him to say what he had to tell her and her colleagues.

“There's a problem,” he tried.

“Did it hit your transmission hardware too?” Ernie asked. “It was the dust, wasn't it?”

JP gulped. If he agreed, the four of them would be spared the painful truth for about another week. He could grant them that, even if they would probably never speak to him again.

No. That was wrong. They had a right to know the truth.

“It's not the hardware. The Earth is...gone.”

“What do you mean, gone?” asked Antonia. “Is there a solar storm disrupting communications? Some large-scale weather phenomenon?”

“A world war?” Ernie asked.

“No, the Earth just isn't there anymore. It's invisible. I'm sorry.”

“But that's impossible,” said Ernie. “We should notice it on the moon if we were suddenly flung out into the solar system.”

“No, not immediately,” Antonia objected. “The movements wouldn’t change. The moon continues to move in a straight line and rotates in the process. The sun rises and sets as we’re accustomed to. But the times would gradually change. When did it happen?”

“09:26 Standard Time,” JP shot back. That was the time when he’d been staring at the Earth through the porthole. When he wiped his eyes, his gaze had fallen briefly on the clock.

“That was during our conversation with Lehmann,” said Antonia. “I had a strange feeling right away.”

“Hang on, colleagues.” The voice from the background of the MIGI station had a distinct accent. Was that one of the Russians?

“Yes, Mikhail?” Antonia asked.

“I did a quick check. The sky is exactly as it should be if Luna is in Earth orbit. The Earth can't have been lost.”

“You're right, Sokolov. I didn't express myself correctly. The Earth is still there. It's just no longer visible.”

“Then could something be shielding the Earth, some kind of camouflage?” asked Antonia.

“It would have to be a perfect invisibility cloak. All radio signals have also disappeared. We're not receiving anything at all anymore. Also, there seems to be no air traffic from orbit. The only evidence left of the Earth is its mass.”

“This is the most exciting problem I've ever worked on in my life,” said Sokolov.

Well, that was one perspective. JP admired the physicist for it. He himself could only think of his parents and friends, whom he might never meet again.

“I think we should start by processing the information we have,” said Antonia.

“May I ask a favor?” Sokolov asked.

“Sure, if I can help...”

“JP, the Gateway surely has all kinds of measuring instruments. Could you point them all to where the Earth should be and send us the data? We need to find out what's causing this strange event. Then maybe we can reverse it.”

JP gulped. Reverse it? That sounded so...utopian. Someone had magically made an entire planet disappear and Sokolov imagined he could do something about it? JP would like to have that kind of self-confidence. Being a physicist must be great!

“Of course, Mikhail. You'll get everything you need. Shall we talk again after the next orbit?”

“Good idea. Maybe I'll have a concept worked out by then.”

Antonia didn't say anything more. Ernie had also become quiet.

“See you then,” Sokolov said in her place. “MIGI out.”

JP felt his face. It felt swollen, and he could smell his own bad breath. He still felt numb inside.

Pico del Teide, March 13, 2082

Zetschewitz! Maribel angrily slammed her office door behind her. Her old boss had claimed the change on 2004 GU9 as his discovery! When she asked him about it, he just pointed to the media, saying they had misunderstood him. After all, it was not his job to correct all the fake news that was spread every day.

She slipped one foot out of the high-heeled sandals she had worn for the meeting. Suddenly, the floor gave way under her other foot. Her heel stuck and she fell forward, barely managing to catch herself with her arms and roll to the side. Damn. The day was continuing as it began. And it was barely 9:30!

She crawled over to the spot she had fallen from. Her office was just renovated two months ago! But the floor seemed to be a public hazard. Where she stepped, she could see a centimeter-deep hole with the exact outline of the heel. Maribel pushed her finger into it. The hole seemed to be fresh, because no dust had gathered in it yet. She moved her finger gently, and the cavity widened.

She’d have to call the caretaker. Maribel got up. As she did so, she supported herself with her hands at her sides. A shiver ran down her spine. It felt as if her fingers were digging into the floor. Indeed, her hands left imprints. What was going on? She went over to the desk. Behind her, a trail of footprints deepened with each step.

That was impossible. She had seen the renovation plans and approved them herself. The flooring was laminate. The institute had only paid for service class 31, which was intended for rooms with low traffic, but yesterday the material had not been this soft. Had someone put a psychotropic drug in her coffee at the meeting? She pushed her chair aside. The four casters left deep grooves in the floor. But strangely, the chair didn't feel any heavier. As a child, she’d sometimes pushed her doll's stroller across the dirt. The softer the ground became, the harder she had to push.

That was not the case here. Maribel sat down. She sank into the cushions twice as deeply as usual. Her arms left clear indentations on the armrests. She pushed off and rolled around the room on the chair. The casters made deep tracks in the floor. This was not happening! This was completely impossible! Either she was under the influence of drugs, or she was suffering a mental episode. Either way, she needed help. Strangely enough, she was still able to think sensibly.

Maribel sniffed the air. The office smelled of vanilla. It came from the flowers someone brought in the day before yesterday. The colors of the Van Gogh print on the wall were unchanged.

“Hello, is anyone there?”

Even her voice sounded normal, if slightly frightened. Whether it was drugs or a breakdown, it seemed to affect only some of her senses. She rolled back to the desk and avoided looking at the trail she left behind. The armchair was not quite as high as usual. Maribel had to straighten up to reach the telephone. As she briefly leaned on the desktop to do so, the piece of furniture lowered a little.

Please, not the desk too! She picked up the phone and dialed. She started with her assistant's number. No, she wouldn't be able to help. It would be best to call the medical emergency service right away. Each time she pressed a key, the button got stuck in the phone. Busy! Evidently she wasn’t the only one having problems. Maybe it was a chemical weapons attack. And what about up here on the volcano? Maybe someone had sabotaged the ventilation...

Maribel breathed in and out faster. Calm down. You mustn't hyperventilate. There was enough oxygen in the air. She wouldn’t suffocate. 112, the general emergency number. That wouldn't be busy. Maribel pressed one, but nothing happened. The button was still stuck from the last time she pressed it. Damn. She fumbled the cell phone out of her pocket. She grabbed it a little too hard, and the casing tore open. The cell phone now had indentations on the left and right where she grabbed it. But the screen was still lit up. She tapped the phone icon very gently. Then she typed 112 on the screen just as gently.

“Emergency call center. You're speaking with Diana Vásquez. How can I help you?”

Screams could be heard in the background. What was happening?

“This is Maribel Pedreira from the Institute of Astrophysics on Teide. I don't feel well. Not well at all.”

More screaming in the background. Something was happening at the emergency call center.

“Stay calm, Maribel. We'll send you help. What’s happened and where exactly are you?”

“Come quickly, please. I'm in my office at OGS-2 on level minus nine.”

“IAC, OGS-2, minus nine. Damn. Damn pen.”

“The point goes through the pad, right?” A loud rumble in the background.

“Yes. I'm having a really bad day. But stay calm.”

“What's going on with you, Diana?”

The woman sighed. “I don't know. Someone has to keep a cool head here.”

“You're doing a great job.” Now she was taking on the role of the emergency hotline. “If you press on the desk, it gives way, right?”

“Yeah, it's scary.”

“I'm scared too.”

“You're right, Ms. ... Pedreira. I'll send someone to you. Can you tell me what the problem is? Then the paramedics can better...”

Rumbling, a scream. “Stop it, Miguel!” the woman on the hotline suddenly shouted.

“Everything's fine,” Maribel said. “You'd better help yourself. You can't help me.”

It wasn’t drugs. Nobody was attacking her. She was in perfect health. Her senses were working. It was the universe that was changing. That wasn’t as impossible as she had believed. This was what the transition from a pseudo-stable state to a stable state must feel like. A phase transition. If the basic constants changed in the process, matter no longer functioned as before. The fundamental forces were changing their relationship. It had been discussed in her student days—as a distant, theoretical possibility. But this was exactly how it must feel.

This was reality. No one could stop it. If they were lucky, the new state would be close enough to the old one that life still functioned. It wouldn't be a problem if their footsteps always left such holes in the laminate in the future. People could adapt. They could construct firmer floors and harder materials. But they couldn't learn to breathe atomic oxygen. If the atomic state of the element oxygen became energetically more favorable than the molecular state, the air on Earth would turn into toxic gas. Maribel's heart was beating fast. She had to get out of here.

Whatever happened, she wanted to see her family again.

* * *

Maribel rushed outside. She had made it! Nine stories felt like twenty, because she had sunk into each step. She wiped the sweat from her brow with the sleeve of her blouse. Fortunately, the ground might feel like a soggy quagmire, but it didn't slow her down. It was as if she was walking in deep, powdery snow. It was very dry snow that didn't stick to her feet. She’d left her high-heeled sandals in the office, but her silk stockings were as clean as they were this morning.

She walked across the square. At least she wasn’t alone here. She hurried to her car. It would probably sink into the road. A glider would have been more practical now. But given the lessened forces to be overcome, she should be able to make it down to sea level. She imagined overtaking tourists again and again who couldn't cope with left-hand traffic in Spain. As if it were unusual to drive on the left side of the road. Wasn't the steering wheel on the right a constant reminder?

Maribel took a deep breath. Her family was waiting for her down by the sea. Chen was smart enough to come home. She had tried to reach him while she was on the stairs, but the network was overloaded. That hadn’t happened in a long time.

There was her car. She took the key out of her pocket, but wasn’t careful enough when she did so, and bent it. Damn. Hopefully it would still work. It was an electronic key. She carefully pressed the button, but the car didn't respond as usual by flashing its headlights.

“Maribel, wait!"

It was Pedro, her doctoral student. He was doing research on variable stars.

“What is it? I have to get to my family.”

“Just a moment.”

She shrugged. Her car wouldn't start anyway. Maybe Pedro could drive her.

“Did you come here by car?” she asked, because there was also a bus service.

“Yes, but...”

“No buts.”

“Wait, Maribel. Please."

She waited, shifting from one leg to the other. Each time she sank deeper, but she couldn't stop. Pedro had to drive her!

Finally, he was there and held out his hand. She tried to take it, but their hands seemed to merge. Only then did Maribel feel the connection. Pedro helped her out of the deep hole she had sunk into.

“What do you want?!” She didn't mean to snap at him.

Pedro grimaced. “You won't make it there.”

“I have to make it. My family!”

“Mine is waiting too, Maribel. But it's too late. It started just before half past nine. Do you remember? That's only twenty-five minutes ago. And now you're sinking half a meter deep.”

“So what? You can still move forward. It's as if the molecular bonds...”

“Exactly. What will come next? Physics are moving further and further away from what we can tolerate."

He was right. But she didn't really want to hear that. She wanted to be with her family!

“What are you planning?” The question slipped out. That must be the researcher in her, for a moment pushing her motherly instincts aside. She covered her mouth, and her hand sank into her face. Pedro turned away. It probably looked terrible. She managed to remove her hand from her face.

“I want to document it. We still have the connection to Qudice 4 in geostationary Earth orbit. We can use that to measure the natural constants.”

“And what good will that do?”

“Someone has to record it. Even if it's only the values. But this is a one-time process. Maybe it will help to reverse it in the future.”

“Reverse.” Maribel sniffed. “That's impossible.”

“You can't know that. We also thought this phase transition was extremely unlikely.”

That was true. It had always been discussed as a possible cause for the end of the universe, but not as a real scenario.

“What do you need me for?”

“For authorization, Maribel. We need to adjust the quantum channel to Qudice 4, modify it and adjust it. And we don’t have much time left. Maybe an hour."

In an hour she could be on her own doorstep. If everything went well on the way downhill. Right now, her car wouldn’t even start.

Maribel sighed. She wouldn't die with her family. Maybe that was for the best. Chen always stayed so calm. She never managed to.

"All right, let's check the satellite.”

* * *

The door to the laboratory responsible for communicating with Qudice 4 was wide open. It was located in a bungalow-like building that had been considered “provisional” when it was constructed. Maribel was glad about that. They might have felt cooped up in the concrete OGS-2 building.

Back then, when the first Qudice satellite was launched, the ESA project had provided secure keys for quantum communication in orbit. To accomplish this, all the satellites were parked in geostationary orbit.

The IAC oversaw Qudice 1 at the time because they already had experience with quantum communication over long distances. But that had happened under their predecessors. Somehow the project was still running. Maribel herself only knew how it worked in principle.

“Are you familiar with Qudice?” she asked.

“Only what I learned at university.”

Great. For some reason, she had thought Pedro already worked with the system.

“We'll manage it. But I wouldn't stand a chance on my own.”

Of course, as an outsider, he needed her more than ever. She had access to everything.

“I thought back and forth about how we could document the change,” explained Pedro. “That was the only thing I could think of.”

Maribel forced herself to smile. Pedro meant well. And it was an important task, even if no one ever found out they had taken it upon themselves.

Pedro reached for a keyboard, but she held him back. Her hand disappeared into his arm. She briefly felt the ulna and the radius. He reacted. A shiver ran down her spine as she withdrew her hand.

“We must be careful. Best to work via voice control.”

Pedro nodded. “You're right.”

“Computer, log in admin. Maribel Pedreira.”

The computer recognized her voice. “Maribel Pedreira logged in.”

“And now?” she asked.

“Computer, establish connection to Qudice 4. Control mode,” said Pedro.

“Insufficient rights.”

“Computer, connect to Qudice 4. Control mode,” Maribel tried.

“Connection established.”

“Ask for the status.”

“Computer, what’s the status of Qudice 4?”

“Qudice 4 semi-operational. Key supply low. Key generation failed.”

If the satellites couldn't generate new keys, the supply would usually run out quickly. They’d once had this issue in a board meeting. It meant that there was currently very little communication in Earth's orbit. Almost none. The Earth was silent. Another shiver ran down her spine.

“Why has the key generation failed?” she asked.

“That's a good question,” said Pedro. “The qubits in the satellites need very precisely defined conditions to remain stable. Otherwise, they collapse. The incident seems to have changed those conditions.”

“Then we need to find out the new conditions under which the qubits would be stable.”

“Exactly. That's the data we need. You describe the situation in such a way that a physicist can understand it.”

“Good, then let's do that. And then we'll leave.”

The change seemed to have halted. Maybe she would make it to her family after all.

“I'm sorry, Maribel, but a single data set won't help. We need the temporal change.”

She sighed. She should have guessed that.

“All right, then. How long do we have to stay?”

“Until the end. Whatever that means.”

“Agreed. What do I have to do?”

“Can you see the values on the screen?” Pedro brought his finger closer to the display without touching it. “We need to change them one by one until we generate stable qubits again.”

“I see.”

“Good, it's your turn. The computer won't listen to me.”

* * *

After about half an hour, the screen had become so transparent that Maribel could see the circuit boards, making it nearly impossible to read the numbers.

“Computer, switch to audio feedback.”

All its systems were set up to be usable by visually impaired people. This was now a great advantage. The computer described what she would be seeing on the screen. How long would that continue to work? At some point, the semiconductors would lose their special properties. Then, at the latest, the computer would switch itself off.

Until then, Maribel kept working. At one point she tried to sit down on a chair, but she sank through the seat and gently came to rest on the floor. She sank almost to her hips, but then the Earth offered resistance. It seemed to be resisting the change. But perhaps that was deceptive, and the rock beneath them was simply holding out longer because it had greater natural hardness. It was now 10:46 a.m., the computer told them when asked. The Earth had been dissolving for over an hour.

Maribel would have liked to talk to Chen and the children again. The radio networks were no longer overloaded—they were completely silent. Pedro, who only had to give her tips from time to time, was also unable to receive messages via other media. But it didn't look like there was anything that could be done about the inevitable. They documented diligently, but that would only help some successor civilization in a subsequent universe.

“You know what strikes me?” asked Pedro.

“Don't keep me in suspense. Tell me!”

“These changes we've entered so far...”

“Yes?”

“They create identical qubits.”

“But isn't that the goal of our experiment?”

“No, we want stable qubits. We keep tweaking the variables until they are stable.”

“But not identical?”

“No, they shouldn't be identical. They correspond one hundred percent to those that were previously generated there.”

“Then why did we have to make corrections?”

“Because we define the variables on Earth. Our inputs have changed because everything is different here. Up there, 35,000 kilometers higher, the conditions are the same as before.”

She wanted to smack her forehead but barely managed to stop her impulse. Who knew what would happen when her hand stirred the sensitive brain matter? If the conditions in geostationary orbit had not changed, the process was obviously limited to a certain extent. It only affected the Earth, not the Moon, Mars or the solar system. But might it still be a natural process? Would a change in the vacuum state stop in low Earth orbit? That would be impossible. Well, there were a few physicists who considered the existence of areas of the universe with other vacuum energy levels to be possible. But that was not the prevailing opinion. And even these colleagues would probably declare a confinement to a sphere around the Earth to be improbable. Too bad they could no longer discuss it.

“Then humanity will survive,” said Maribel.

Pedro rocked his head back and forth. “I've read a study that assumes a minimum number of one hundred and twenty people. We don't currently have more than twenty at a sufficient distance, do we?”

“Yes, that should be about right. Those twenty are our hope for the survival of humankind. I've heard that Sokolov is on the Moon right now. He should be able to do something with our data.”

“The Nobel Prize candidate?”

She nodded.

“Then come on. Let's get the latest data. The more we give him, the better.”

“Wait a minute. How is he supposed to know what's stored in Qudice 4?” asked Maribel.

“That's a good question. The satellite will be one of the last functional ones.”

“You underestimate the number of satellites in geostationary orbits. It would be a great coincidence if he came across this one of all satellites.”

“Then we must help chance along. But how?”

Pedro tilted his head. A vertical crease appeared on his forehead. It was a good thing she’d hired the doctoral student. His Master's grades hadn't been that brilliant, but he had proposed an interesting research approach and demonstrated imagination. That was helping them now. What about her own imagination? Geostationary satellites orbited the Earth in such a way that they kept pace exactly with its rotation. This meant that they always remained fixed above a certain location. To do this, however, they had to be able to compensate for orbital disturbances. Could that technology be used to generate a clearly visible signal?

“I think I have an idea,” said Maribel. “Satellites have a control system that keeps them in position.”

“Yes.”

“We could program that from Qudice 4 so that the satellite does a little dance. Something that's not random.”

“How about Morse code?”

* * *

“I'm finissht,” said Pedro.

Maribel frowned. Not at the program code on the screen that he dictated, but at his speech problems. He hadn't been able to pronounce the “D” for a few minutes now. She had similar problems with all the sounds she had to use her tongue for.

“Shend it off.” They no longer had time to check the program code thoroughly. Biological tissue was more sensitive than hardware. But at some point, the computer's voice interface would also fail.

“It’sh shent,” said Pedro.

She could see from his face how hard he was trying to speak clearly and how frustrated he was by the result. They were still doing well. What if the muscle fibers in their bodies failed? If the lungs opened or the ventricles of the heart became intertwined?

“That'sh all we can do ... nothing more,” she said.

Maribel would have liked to put her hand on her young colleague's shoulder or give him a hug, but that wouldn't be a good idea.

“Course correction accepted,” reported the computer. “Starting data transfer. Estimated transmission time: two hours, twenty-four minutes, sixteen seconds.”

Two hours. That would be enough time for the trip down. Maribel tried to approach the door, but she sank deeper than before. She shook her head. One of her dark hairs followed the movement, causing it to hit and pierce her left eye. She saw a brown streak. She started to close her eyes, but who knew if she would ever be able to open them again? She didn't want to die in darkness.

“Sshhould I ...?” Pedro tried.

“Sho.” No, she wanted to say. Pedro seemed to smile. He understood her anyway. There was nothing they could do but watch as the computer transmitted humanity’s final data. They both knew that if physical interactions changed too much, all the storage systems that humans invented would fail. The smaller the structures were, the faster it would happen.

In the end, perhaps only books would remain, and at some point, only inscriptions on the mighty buildings of antiquity and modernity. But there would be no mention of Maribel and Pedro there, nor of their families. The images Maribel had in her head of her loved ones were already fading.

Unknown Place, March 13, 2082

Ron sighed. “There's good news and bad news,” he began.

“The good news first,” said Jinjin.

Liwei smiled. He would have saved the good news for last.

“I would have saved the good news for last,” said Ron.

Liwei liked the American. He had also voluntarily moved far enough from the stele to observe the change in the sky. They needed to know where they were. Time passed so much faster out there, though, that it must have taken a significant chunk out of Ron's precious breathing reserves. Nevertheless, that was not an issue for him at all. Why couldn't they have worked together sooner?

“No, I need something to lean on now,” Jinjin said.

“Okay. So, I know where we are. We're quite far away from Earth, about 150 million kilometers, but since we're approximately at the height of the Earth's orbit, it's easy to manage energetically. We just need a little patience.”

“And a spaceship,” said Jinjin.

Ron nodded.

“And this celestial body?” asked Liwei.

“There aren't that many options. At first I thought it was a Trojan, but the section of the orbit I measured is more like a quasi-satellite. My guess is 2004 GU9. Earth only has a few companions of that kind.”

“Do you realize how far that is? The distance is a good eight light minutes of signal propagation time,” said Jinjin. “And that's supposed to be good news?”

“It is good news,” Ron emphasized. “If we're close enough to the stele, we can wait almost forever. And this area here is monitored from Earth. They’ll have to notice if there's suddenly a black stele flying around. On the moon, it hardly contributed anything to the mass of the celestial body. Here, it has probably doubled its mass.”

“Or more,” said Liwei. “Ron is right. That's a good, reassuring realization.”

“Then I'd rather not hear the bad news,” said Jinjin as she sat down at the foot of the stele without touching it.

“She doesn't mean that,” said Liwei. Jinjin kicked at him, but he knew she was far too curious not to want to know.

Ron scrunched his eyebrows together so much that it was visible even through the helmet visor.

“Out with it,” Liwei said.

“The Earth...” He broke off. Something sparkled in his eyes.

“What about Earth?” asked Jinjin.

Ron cleared his throat. He seemed to be really struggling, so much so that Liwei suddenly got a lump in his throat.

“The Earth is gone.” Ron spat out the sentence like a rotten piece of fruit.

“What?” Jinjin jumped up. She almost sailed away in the low gravity, but Ron grabbed her by the leg.

It was a rhetorical question. The content of Ron's sentence was clear. They knew what it meant, too. After their reunion yesterday, he had told them both what he learned from the Source.

The area of the universe for which the stele is responsible would have to be torn out of reality.

And now the Earth had disappeared. He didn't need to repeat the Source's sentence. Jinjin and Ron also knew what he had learned about the possibility of a backup: The holographic sphere cannot record the current state of the universe and all previous states at the same time.

“But there's an exciting aspect,” said Ron, setting Jinjin back down on the surface.

“Is there still hope?” asked Jinjin.

“I'm not sure. But none of the other planetary orbits have changed. That means the mass of the Earth is still in place. We just can't see it anymore.”

I think there are protective mechanisms, the Source had said. But who or what was it referring to? Was it just about protecting the system of the star in question? The complete loss of an Earth-sized mass would plunge the solar system into chaos. Or were there actually protective measures for the specific object? The stele on this asteroid could be part of such an alternative plan.

Liwei imagined parents looking after their offspring who have just smashed a mirror. First they would clean up the broken pieces so that the child wouldn't get hurt. Then they would buy a new mirror and put it out of the child's reach. Did humanity have the role of the child in this situation? Or was he humanizing the beings who had placed the steles in the universe too much?

“We have to fly there and see,” said Jinjin.

Ron pointed to their surroundings. “That's all we've got. We're not flying anywhere with this.”

“Then we need to make others aware of us.”

“Don't you think the others have better things to do than fly out here to us?”

Jinjin smacked Ron in the chest. He didn't retaliate, even though he was right. This asteroid was following the orbit dictated by the masses distributed throughout the solar system. It moved around the Earth over the course of a year, but never really came close to it. And given the enormous mass of the celestial body, they had no chance of changing its course.

“We have to rely on the intelligence of other people,” said Liwei. “There must still be people on the moon and across the solar system who have the opportunity to look closely at what's left of the Earth.”

“And we just sit around like this?” asked Jinjin. “You can't be serious.”

Liwei turned around. The stele loomed behind him into the dark night. He pointed at it. “We have a unique opportunity here. This stele connects us to the holosphere, and thus also to the protective mechanisms mentioned by the Source.”

“You want to travel around in space with the stele again?” asked Jinjin. “That didn't do you any good. And who knows if you'll find anyone who knows the way back to the solar system?”

Liwei shook his head. “I need to go straight to the holosphere. That's where the original projection is.”

“I'm just a geologist,” said Jinjin. “But I've read a bit about the idea of the holographic universe. That's why I'm afraid you're getting caught up in something. There's no difference between the original and the projection. They both form reality together.”

Liwei narrowed his eyes, but he didn't say anything. He suspected what Jinjin was getting at—that there would be no point in his attempt. But he had to try.

Jinjin took his hand and shone her helmet spotlight on it so that an outline could be seen on the gray-black floor.

“The world is not just a shadow play,” she said while moving Liwei's fingers in her gloves. “Unlike in everyday life, there’s a double connection between projection and source. When I change the shadow,” she pushed dust onto the outline, “your finger changes too.” Jinjin bent his finger. “So, you won't find an original in the holographic sphere that you could bring back.”

Liwei nodded. “I understand the principle. Still, I have to try anything that might bring Earth back. Anything. Even if it seems hopeless.”

Jinjin sighed. “I was afraid you would say that. But I can't allow you to put yourself in such danger again. You don't know what it's like. I saw you standing motionless in front of the stele. I knew that this body was just an empty shell, even though it looked as if you had never left it.”

“I have to do this,” Liwei said. “It's about the Earth. Don't you understand that?”

“Yes, I do.” Suddenly Jinjin turned to the side and shoved him with her foot, so hard that he crashed into Ron. Rolling over, they spun away until the asteroid caught their bodies again. Jinjin seemed to freeze, and as if in slow motion, she touched the almost invisible material of the stele.

“No!” shouted Liwei. He wanted to rush in her direction, but Ron held him back. What did he think he was doing?

“I have to go after her!” shouted Liwei.

“No, you don't. It's enough if one of us puts ourselves in danger like that. You'd better wish her good luck. We have another task here.”

“But she doesn’t know...” ... doesn't know her way around over there, he wanted to say.

“Liwei, did you know the properties of the stele when you touched it? You found your way back to us anyway. Trust it! And remember the shadow play. If we manage to change the shadow, we can use it to influence reality.”

Place 1, Time 1

It was different. It was just as cruel, but different. Last time, she was burned and pulverized at the same moment. This time, two forces were tugging at her with roughly equal strength. One pulled her forward, the other held her back. The forces grew and with them the pain she felt. She was about to tear apart. Surely her muscles and tendons, her nerves, blood vessels, her skin and her hair couldn't bear it.

But she didn't come apart. The forces were strong enough to force her cells into a new arrangement. She didn’t tear; instead, her cells arranged themselves in a row. The tip of her left index finger was at the very front. The little toe of her right foot hung at the back. All the other cells were arranged in between, whether from the stomach, lungs or brain. Then the pain decreased and disappeared, leaving her without explanation.

Where was she? Jinjin could see forwards and backwards, but not to the side and certainly not up or down. A light shone in front of her. She moved towards it. She didn't need her legs for this. She sensed the potential. Moving forwards was exhausting, but she didn't intend to go back. No, going back was not an option.

The light disappeared. Shortly afterwards, Jinjin bumped into an obstacle. She tried to push through it, but she wasn’t strong enough. She knocked on it, hoping to establish communication. All the obstacle had to do was get out of her way. It wasn't there before, when she could still see the light. But she got no reaction at all.

Maybe by force. She hadn't let herself be almost torn apart to give up at the first obstacle. She pushed and pushed. The obstacle didn't react. She contracted, reduced her expansion, more, a little more. Her last cells were almost touching her first, as if she was crawling completely into herself. Suddenly the obstacle was behind her.

But she didn't turn around. The light was there again. She had to reach it before the next obstacle blocked her path. At that moment, something touched her from behind. She wasn’t alone. Something was trying to overtake her. She moved faster, but her strength was not infinite. But when she was overtaken, she could no longer see the light. She wriggled increasingly and desperately. Then she felt a shadow above her, around her, inside her, and the faster object was in front of her.

Nevertheless, Jinjin didn’t give up. She didn't need light at all. The potential reliably showed her the direction, and she only had the choice between forwards and backwards anyway. Back was not an option. The object that had overtaken her dissolved. She rushed over its components. It felt like the steel wheels of an old train rolling over a pair of gummy bears. It was strong and heavy and powerful.

She reached the light. It had no recognizable shape, but it bristled with power. Jinjin felt drawn to it. It was completely formless itself. The only thing she had was a length that could change, and when she tried to do so, she suddenly felt heavier, or perhaps more compact. It was difficult to put into words, because there were categories here that she didn't know.

The light was there. She leaped towards it and dissolved into it. Her last thought was of the Earth and all the ten billion people who lived there. It was a heavy thought that almost fell out of her hands, but the light took it from her and carefully placed it on a shelf specially designed for such thoughts.

Mare Orientale, March 14, 2082

They were sitting in the control center. Bree had made herself comfortable on Antonia's lap, allowing herself to be stroked. Antonia was happy about this. Feeling soft fur under her fingers took her mind off their uncomfortable predicament. She concentrated fully on it.

“We must be able to do something,” said Popov.

“I'm not really getting anywhere,” said Sokolov. “To test my theory with simulations, I need more data.”

“From the former stele?” Ernie unbuckled his seatbelt with a loud click. “Popov and I could go there and take more measurements.”

“Yes, that could help. But I'd also need data from Earth. It's all connected.”

Sokolov was right. There was no reason to do nothing. Antonia put Bree down, who obeyed without resistance. They didn't have a large telescope at MIGI to monitor the Earth and its surroundings. But the facility consisted of powerful lasers and even better detectors for laser pulses. It should be possible to build a kind of LIDAR with that, like the automotive sector used. Such a system could measure the transit time of reflected laser pulses and obtain a very detailed image. However, there was one major obstacle: the Moon itself, because they were on the opposite side from Earth. This meant that they couldn’t observe the Earth. But they would be able to observe the effect it had on its surroundings—near-Earth asteroids and satellites in higher orbits, which regularly rose above the lunar horizon for them.

But what would Ernie say? They had been working for so long to set up the interferometer as a gravitational wave detector.

“I have an idea,” she said. “We could convert the MIGI into a kind of LIDAR for the inner solar system.”

“I was about to suggest something like that,” said Ernie. “Popov and I could do the necessary conversions on the way to the remains of the stele.”

“A LIDAR for the solar system—that’s an excellent idea.” Sokolov detached himself from his seat and jumped over to the main computer. “I'll think about what exactly you should measure with it so that I can enter the values into my model.”

* * *

“Now!” Ernie called.

Antonia used Ernie's helmet camera to check that he was far enough away from the lasers. Then she moved the platform on which Ernie had placed her. She was used to aligning the reflectors. Now she was helping to aim the lasers. Antonia tapped the Lunar Gateway symbol on the screen.

“Alignment in progress”

The software calculated from the coordinates which way the lasers had to move.

“Something's happening here,” said Ernie.

Very good. Now all that was missing was confirmation.

“Aligned,”

the program reported.

An invisible laser beam pierced the vacuum, struck the Gateway and was reflected back to the Moon. The reflected light was measured there. The time it took for the beam to travel gave a fairly accurate reading of the distance. Antonia wrote the value down. It was roughly in the expected range, but not exactly at the expected value.

“It worked,” she reported. “However, the accuracy is a little lower than expected.”

“That can't be,” said Ernie.

Men! “But it is. It's a fact!”

“But the detectors are better than the result. Something's wrong. Have you checked the evaluation software?”

“Multiple times, Ernie. Multiple times! But wait a minute. I've got an idea.”

“Oh, have you found your mistake?”

No, she hadn't. But there might be a systemic problem. They assumed that the course of the Lunar Gateway was fixed and predetermined. That the station's position calculated from it would be the value against which they needed to compare their measurements. But what if that was a mistake? Antonia assumed the measured position to be correct and calculated backwards. This resulted in a modified orbit for the Gateway, and from that it could be calculated that the Earth had lost about three percent of its mass.

She took a deep breath. So far, they had naively assumed that the Earth’s mass would remain constant, even though the Earth was gone. But it was not that simple.

“And?” Ernie asked at just the right moment.

“Eureka!” Antonia called. “It looks like the Earth is slowly bleeding to death. It has lost three per cent of its mass since yesterday.”

“That can't be,” said Ernie.

“Ernie, the Earth is gone. That can't be right either, can it? Maybe the builders of the stele wanted to make it a little easier for us to get used to the loss. Or it's not that easy, even for an advanced civilization, to make an entire planet disappear in seconds.”

Antonia swallowed. Now that she had explained the phenomenon to Ernie, she realized what it meant. There would indeed be nothing left of Earth. Three percent per day—that gave them a month at most before it was too late. They should probably prepare themselves for a turbulent future—without the Earth's mass, the Moon couldn't simply continue its current motion.

“Mikhail!” she called through the control center.

“What's going on?” The answer came from one of the adjoining rooms.

“We need you here.”

A moment later, the physicist stuck his head through the doorway. “What is it?”

“You could start calculating what will happen to the moon if the Earth really no longer exists.”

“Interesting question. Is that what our new LIDAR says?”

She nodded. “Do you have any initial estimates?”

“Well, the sun would of course still attract the moon. Its orbit would be quite chaotic at first, but due to its low mass, it would eventually stabilize much further in.”

“It would heat up.”

"You can be sure of that. But don't worry—that will take thousands of years. By then, the remnants of humanity here will be extinct anyway.”

“Did you hear that, Ernie?” she asked into the radio microphone.

“Yes. It would have been better if we hadn't converted our beautiful gravitational wave detector.”

“I disagree!” Sokolov shouted. “I'm very excited about getting the first data to feed my theories.”

* * *

It took Antonia less than an hour to scan the first twenty geostationary satellites visible from her location. She immediately forwarded the data to Sokolov and continued her work.

“Something's wrong here,” the physicist texted to her shortly afterwards. “What happened?”

The message was attached to data from one of the satellites. She brought up the values on the screen and visualized them. Sokolov was right. Their device must have failed here. It looked like the satellite was being flung back and forth as if in a storm. Since no other probe showed this error, it must be a fault in the measuring instrument.

It would be best if she simply measured it again. Perhaps the laser had hit the wrong place on the satellite's outer skin, causing multiple reflections. That would explain the clear bouncing. Indeed, the probe behaved as expected in the next run.

But another satellite was moving through space out of sequence. Antonia, who was now checking each measurement series before sending it, discovered this on her own. This destination was also picked up by her homemade laser scanner.

This time, however, the strange behavior did not change. She checked the measurement run. The same result again. Once more. The satellite was hopping merrily through its orbit. They weren’t big jumps.

“When will I get new data?” Sokolov asked.

Antonia rolled her eyes. Instead of new data, she sent the strange jumps to him.

“What's the point of this?” Sokolov asked in return.

She didn't answer. Instead, she kept measuring the strange satellite. The physicist seemed to think he was the center of the universe.

“Ah, this is exciting,” he finally wrote.

Or was it? She sent him the latest data. A brief time later, Sokolov pushed his way into the control center.

“That's Morse code, did you know?” he asked.

Antonia shrugged. “Who would do something like that, and why and how?”

“When you don't know what else to do…” said Sokolov. “Apparently whoever had access to the satellite's behavior control system made it do this dance.”

“And what does that person want to tell us?”

Sokolov put a note in front of her. “Data—Earth—important. Data—Earth—important.”

“Is that what the satellite is repeating?” she asked.

“It seems so. We should try looking at the data. It could be important. For the Earth.”

Antonia grinned. “Or from the Earth. Maybe they're trying to contact us.”

Sokolov nodded. “Why don't you give them a call, ha-ha. But don't forget to send me the fresh data.”

* * *

The LIDAR continued to process other satellites in automatic mode while Antonia tried to reach the one that was behaving strangely. The probe was apparently transmitting on ESA frequencies. However, it only responded to calls with its ID, QDC4. The code meant nothing to her, so she asked everyone she could reach. While Ernie and Popov couldn't help her, Sokolov at least had a clue.

“QDC suggests to me the ESA's Qudice project. It deals with quantum-safe communication in orbit.”

“Were you involved in that?”

“No. I was just asked if I could help crack the satellites. Our intelligence service apparently didn’t like not being able to eavesdrop on them.”

“And could you?”

“No chance. Quantum-entangled connections can't be cracked. Any attempt at influence is noticed by both the sender and the receiver.”

Hm. If the satellite held secrets, it would be bad if they couldn't get to them.

Antonia tried it first anonymously via the radio, then as commander of the MIGI base. After all, she also belonged to the ESA. But the satellite wouldn't let her in. Damn. She tried emergency codes and all kinds of unorthodox tricks for admin access, without success.

At least she managed to get the satellite to restart. During the boot-up, she clung to a pole. Hopefully Qudice 4 hadn't forgotten the important data! It immediately started its dance again. But there was still no open access.

She called on Sokolov, but he couldn't help either. The Qudice satellites had truly fulfilled their task of ensuring secure communication. Why would someone use this type of satellite as a secret mailbox? Ernie suggested she should log in as an admin and reset the password.

“Login: Admin”

“Password: Reset.”

That was the trick. When the keyword “reset” was entered, the satellite reset the user's password.

“Please enter the last six digits of the serial number to confirm. The serial number can be found at the roots of the solar cell supports.”

Damn. She leaned back. Nobody here had a telescope that could read numbers on a satellite. The oh-so-important data on Qudice 4 would remain unused, unless she could find someone to fly there in person.

At first she thought of JP on the Gateway. But he was long since headed for a Lagrange point. But there was that tourist station! It had been briefly in danger of colliding with the effects of the destroyed stele. What was it called again? Orbital station plus color. Green? No, orbital station Blue!

Antonia took a deep breath. The station’s frequency was stored in the main computer. She established a connection.

“Orbital Station Blue, Doug here.”

That was quick. “This is Antonia Marucci from the MIGI. I hope I'm not disturbing you.”

Doug laughed out loud. “At the moment, we're grateful for any distraction that allows us to forget the Sword of Damocles for a moment. What can I do for you?”

“I actually do have a request.” Antonia described her measurements and the unsuccessful attempt to contact Qudice 4. “Well, now we have a possible solution to our problem, but no one can get to it.”

Doug didn't answer. She gave him time. She had just explained to him that the Earth was disappearing a little more every day, so he knew it was important.

“Wait, I have to get Sebastiano. He's officially the captain.”

Antonia maintained the connection. A door squeaked, and she heard a murmured conversation. Why were they talking so quietly?

“Antonia, mi ricevi?” She couldn't help grinning when the man greeted her in her mother tongue.

“Very well,” she replied in the same language. “It's good to talk to a fellow countryman.”

“So, as for your request,” Sebastiano switched back to English, “we should be able to manage that. I'm just worried about our guests. If we have to adjust the orbit to such an extreme degree, they will definitely notice the maneuver. After all, they are interested in space travel. We’ll need a good explanation.”

“It's about saving the world. Isn't that reason enough?”

“They know nothing about the Earth's disappearance. Doug and I were afraid that it could lead to panic on board. There are only two of us here. If the passengers decided to get rid of us, they could quickly get the upper hand. So we invented a communication malfunction.”

Oops. That was a surprising decision.

“They have eyes, don't they?”

“That's true, but the station has electronic windows only. We control what can be seen there.”

“An island of the blissful,” said Antonia. She should be outraged that the two were keeping their guests in the dark, but in fact, she envied the tourists. They were still looking forward to seeing their loved ones again soon. Antonia cleared her throat. She knew that humanity was finished. Hopefully the people down there had a difficult death.

“I do feel a bit guilty,” said Sebastiano. “Wouldn't you want to know?”

“If I had the choice—absolutely not. It's not like a terminal illness. Then I would have the chance to do all the things I've missed out on so far. But here? This is the absolute end.”

“I see it differently,” said Doug. “It's only over when it's over and we admit it to ourselves. I experienced the black hole of 2072…”

“Are you the Doug, who back then...?”

“Yes, exactly. But admittedly, today the situation is a bit more dramatic than it was back then. I would never have thought that possible either.”

Without Doug and his crew, the world would have been lost back then, Antonia remembered. Wasn't Sebastiano there too? She hadn't read much about him. But if the two of them were among the few people who had survived so far, that was at least karma and maybe a reason for hope.

“Maybe we still have a chance if you could give us access to Qudice 4,” she said. “To do that, we need the satellite's serial number, which can be found at the roots of the solar cell support beams.”

“Yes, we can fly over there and take a look. We'll do our best,” said Sebastiano. “I promise. But couldn't we retrieve the data directly while we're there?”

“That would of course also be an option. And what will you tell your guests?”

“That we need to avoid an obstacle. We will limit the adjustment of the orbit to the night hours when most passengers are asleep. Then the guests won't be surprised by the engines firing for a long time.”

“Technically, that's not a problem? You won't run out of fuel?”

“No, don't worry,” said Sebastiano. “At our previous location, we had to maneuver a lot more than we do here. So we have quite a bit left.”

“Thank you. There is no other hope at the moment.”

“Understood. We'll let you know when we're ready to disembark.”

“Thank you very much. MIGI over and out.”

Orbital Station Blue, March 14, 2082

As Sebastiano left the control center, he almost hit Barbara Meyers with the door. The elderly lady blushed.

“I won't apologize,” she said.

“Dear Ms. Meyers,” he tried, turning on the charm, “it honors us that you are so interested in us.”

"I heard voices. Yours, Doug's, and a third one, a woman's.”

“We sometimes talk to an AI persona that the main computer has generated, called Zeke.”

“Mr. Guarini, I may be old, but I'm not stupid. That voice didn't belong to an AI. Unfortunately, I didn’t catch the name. It sounded like 'kitty' or something like that, but who is still called that nowadays? But she was speaking over the radio. 'Over and out,' that's what she said at the end.”

“It's just a figure of speech.”

“Please don't insult me by taking me for a ride, if you'll pardon the term. It's better to say that you can't tell me something.”

“You're right, Ms. Meyers. I can't talk to you about Miezi.”

Meyers narrowed her eyes. “Careful, Mr. Guarini. You still don't seem to know who you're dealing with.”

Sebastiano knew very well. He had a personal file on every guest. Meyers had been married to a tech entrepreneur for years, and at some point had him pay out a quarter of his capital. Since then, she had preferred to travel through space in private spaceships. So she was a regular customer. If he annoyed her enough that she would no longer book with Blue, his boss would replace him. However, he had an advantage over her: Sebastiano knew that his boss would never fire anyone again.

Sebastiano bowed to her, which was not easy in zero gravity. “You're right, Ms. Meyers. The voice belongs to a friend at a government station nearby, which we were able to reach with the short-range antenna. We just wanted to make sure that the transfer ship was on schedule.”

“And is it?”

He nodded. “At the moment, everything looks good. We just need to adjust our orbit a little. That will happen tomorrow. Perhaps you could pass that on to your fellow travelers?”

"If I can help you, I'd be happy to.”

* * *

“I don't know what's going on, but something isn’t right here.”

Roberto Rodriguez unbuckled himself from the chair in front of the dining table and flipped his tablet in the direction of Sebastiano, who caught it and took it into the galley. When he returned, other guests were standing next to Rodriguez, conversing animatedly.

“What seems to be the problem?” asked Sebastiano.

“Equal rights for all,” said Rodriguez.

“Yes, exactly!” shouted a young woman with long, artificial eyelashes and colorful fingernails.

“What do you mean?”

“We heard that radio calls were made here,” said Rodriguez. “And I can't even send my sick mother greetings for her birthday.”

That must have been Meyers. She probably hadn't meant to stir up the group; she was just telling them about it.

“We ended up within range of another station without planning to,” explained Sebastiano. “But we left it behind long ago.”

“You could have let us know,” said the young woman.

“Right. We could have used the other ship as a relay,” said Rodriguez.

Sebastiano nodded. “I'm sorry. We're only human. An encounter like that usually only lasts a few minutes, and we weren't sure how we could have involved you.”

“Why didn't you just ask?” The young woman pointed at him with the blue nail on her middle finger.

“I'll offer to let you record messages to your loved ones. We will then send those in a package during the next encounter.”

“There you go,” said the young woman.

* * *

“The guests are getting nervous,” said Sebastiano.

“I can understand that,” said Doug. “You know yourself how different it is at home, and that's where they want to be.”

“Um, but I'm at home here.”

Doug opened his eyes wide and put a hand on his knee. Sebastiano didn't feel it.

“Sorry, that was insensitive. Of course I know that. I meant that in the sense of a normal, everyday life. You're always connected to plenty of information channels. And now they've all gone down at once, more for the guests than for us. We have the Moon and the Gateway...”

Sebastiano shrugged. He hadn’t always felt that way. When the Blue Orbital Station was still parked at the Lagrange point, all he cared about was the kitchen and the guests. What happened elsewhere was none of his business. That would have changed a lot with the new location in Earth's low orbit. Maybe he should be glad it would never come to that.

“What do you think of the ESA people's plans, anyway?” he asked.

Antonia was nice, and he would have liked to talk to her longer about home, but it seemed to him that they were grasping at straws.

“It's hard to say. Of course we have to help. But could this satellite contain something that will rewrite the whole story? What happened to Earth probably can't be undone with a few data. We have to get to the people responsible for this."

Sebastiano sighed. “And how do we find out who that is?”

* * *

He was just dozing off when he felt the first impulse from the thrusters. The space station would now change its circular orbit around the Earth to an elliptical one, with its farthest point from Earth at an altitude of 35,768 kilometers. They hadn’t announced the maneuver. If something in one of the cabins was floating, it would fall during the thruster impulse. Sebastiano heard no complaints, though. Probably everyone slept through the brief change.

In just over five hours, they would reach the farthest point from Earth in the new orbit. The following maneuver would be a bit more complicated because, first, it had to increase the closest point to Earth and, second, change the orbital plane so that it circled over the equator. In the last step, they would set out to find Qudice 4, which was orbiting in this particular orbit together with hundreds of other geostationary satellites.

Sebastiano tried to go back to sleep, but the life support was humming so intensely today that it penetrated his earplugs. Doug wanted to pester somebody. He understood the motivation, although he himself wanted the opposite: he wanted to get as far away as possible. At the old location of his restaurant, there were hardly any people and therefore no problems. He should never have let himself be persuaded to move the station into direct orbit around the Earth.

Lunar Gateway, March 14, 2082

There was a call from the Moon.

“I have a small request,” said Antonia.

She sounded straightforward, as always, as if nothing had happened. How quickly that happened! But strictly speaking, he only knew his colleagues from the Moon under emergency conditions. Maybe Antonia would be quite different when there were no problems to solve.

“What can I do for you?”

“We've constructed a detector, a kind of LIDAR for space. But the Moon is blocking our view.”

“Unfortunately, I can't help you remove the Moon.”

Antonia laughed, and in the background the dog barked. “But you're far enough away now to help us move it out of the way.”

“How?”

“Our detector measures the travel time of laser light. If there were a mirror on your Gateway, we could use that to bypass the moon.”

JP imagined colorful laser beams winding around the moon. It would certainly be very decorative. A laser show to mark his departure.

“Ah, you want me to install an outside mirror. That should be doable. Are there any requirements?”

“No, the laser power is not huge. A smooth metal plate would just about do it.”

“Size and location?”

“Fifty by fifty centimeters and preferably at the rear, so facing the Earth?”

“Deal. I'm on my way.”

* * *

Of course, the preparation for a trip into space took a little longer. JP dismantled the mirror in the restroom. The glass-coated plate with metal backing measured about sixty by one hundred and twenty centimeters, which should be big enough for Antonia. In its place remained an ugly, black hole, behind which hoses and pipes were hidden.

He sealed it with foil. In the future, he wouldn't be able to see himself while washing. But that didn't matter—nobody else would see him on board in the coming weeks either. He picked up the screws and nuts he had removed during the dismantling. At some point, he would be so far away from the Moon that he would be out of range of Antonia's LIDAR.

Antonia got back to him while he was training on the bike.

“I'm sorry, but I need at least another hour,” he explained.

“That's not why I'm getting back to you. I have to tell you something.”

This time her voice sounded different. Deeper, more concerned. JP swallowed.

“What is it? Is it about Earth?”

“Exactly. We've noticed that it's slowly decreasing in mass.”

“Is that even possible? What about energy conservation?”

“Yes, we're wondering that too. You have all the Gateway instruments pointed at Earth, don't you?”

JP nodded. They had talked about that. However, he never retrieved any data. “Yes, the readings should be in the memory. I'll give you access to it.”

“Thank you. I hope... I honestly don't know what I hope. I don't want to promise you anything.”

He swallowed a lump in his throat. Antonia seemed deeply shaken. It must be the new realization.

“Forgive the naive question, but what's so bad about Earth losing mass?”

“That's not a naive question, Jean-Pierre. It’s probably that I still believed that the Earth was still present and was just hidden from us. Like as soon as we pulled back the curtain, everything would be as it was before. But if our planet is losing mass, it will never be the same again.”

“I see.” He was lucky, then. JP had never assumed that the Earth could suddenly reappear. That wasn’t how the universe worked. “And on a practical note, what does that mean for my course?”

Antonia made a sound that might have been a deeply sad laugh if there was such a thing. “You'll have to adjust it, but since the sun is the most dominant influence, it shouldn't play too big a role. But the movement of your target will also change.”

JP briefly closed his eyes. As Earth's mass dwindled, the Lagrange points would move closer to it. Perhaps he could benefit from that? 2004 GU9 was merely a quasi-satellite of Earth, not really under its gravitational sovereignty, so its loss of mass was unlikely to affect the asteroid. The main computer would surely be able to calculate the details for him.

“Thank you,” he said. “I'll talk to you in an hour.”

“More like two,” said Antonia. “You'll be over the horizon for us before then. But you're welcome to go ahead and install the mirror.”

* * *

JP wiped sweat from his brow, and tightened the nut as best he could. At the last minute, he’d had another idea: a joint that would allow remote-controlled alignment of the mirror. He dismantled it from a correction nozzle stored in the cargo hold. If he needed it for something else later, he could always retrieve it.

He had put on his helmet and closed it. Then he took the bulky mirror and floated with it into the lock. The air extraction took two minutes. A green lamp had lit up on the outer bulkhead.

It felt strange to be opening the hatch all alone. Normally, Ron would be there with him in the control center, working through one checklist after another. Instead, JP had to rely on the experience he gained during training. He hooked up the safety line, stepped outside, swung around the edge once, took stock of the situation, and pulled up the mirror.

He paused for a moment on the outer shell. A few signal lamps revealed the structure of the Gateway, which could not deny its descent from the former International Space Station. JP was standing on a cylinder that extended into infinity. He immediately searched for the Earth. It should have been visible from here at 3 o'clock, he’d checked that in the main computer. But there was nothing—not even a shadow obscuring the stars of the Milky Way. How did they do that? How could a planet-sized mass float in space and at the same time reveal the view of what lay beyond it?

He shook his head. Maybe Antonia could figure it out. To help her do that, he had to walk along the cylinder to the end. He intended to attach the mirror there, just before the main engine. That was where the shape of the Gateway obscured the view to the rear the least. JP bent down and shortened his safety line to get a better grip. Plates for mounting extensions were distributed at regular intervals on the outer skin of the station. He only needed to attach the joint to one of these plates with three screws. The spacesuit was not particularly helpful, since it was hard to hold the screws in his gloved fingers. One flew away, but he had enough replacements with him.

* * *

Ten minutes later, the job was done. JP also took the opportunity to inspect the main engine. Dust was baked onto the wide edges of the nozzle. Was this leftover dust from the intense storm on the Moon? He tapped the build-up with a hammer from his tool kit, collected some of it and put it in a bag. He could examine it if he got bored.

Then he turned off all the lights in his helmet. It might be silly, but he felt as if he could feel the Earth beneath him. All he had to do was merge with the darkness, and then...nothing happened. The stars stared at him stubbornly, almost spitefully. The Earth remained hidden. It was time to end the excursion.

From below, he approached the mirror he’d just installed. He looked in it and saw—nothing. A shiver ran down his spine. JP had lost his reflection! But then he remembered what he did at the edge of the main engine. To reflect, the mirror needed light. He reactivated the helmet lighting and recognized his badly shaven face. The eyes were deep-set, and the cheeks were sunken. The man in the mirror was someone completely different.

* * *

“The mirror is installed,” said JP.

“Thank you so much,” said Antonia. “If we meet again on the Moon, I'll buy you a drink.”

“If…”

Antonia didn't answer. They both knew how unlikely such a future was right now.

“Oh yes, there's a bonus, too,” said JP. “The mirror can be adjusted using a motorized joint. I'll send you the necessary codes for the remote control.”

“That's great! That will help us a lot. I've calculated that we can use the mirror for at least another ten days, until you're out of range.”

Ten days. After that, he would float alone through space for weeks, moving further and further away from the places where people still survived.

“And thank you very much for the data you collected. The telescope images were particularly revealing.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Wait, I'll send you a recording where I've superimposed all the telescope images since Earth disappeared.”

JP approved the connection request, and a graphic appeared on the main computer screen. At first, he only recognized the stars of the Milky Way. But then a circular structure became clear. It looked as if someone had placed an overflowing bottle of milk in the center of a dark surface.

“What is that?” he asked.

“It looks like the imprint of a cup of cappuccino, doesn't it?”

“I was thinking of a milk bottle.”

“All right. I can't tell you what it is. Of course I amplified the values. But there is something wrapped around the Earth. The diameter is larger than at the equator.”

“Something?”

Antonia sighed. “I really have no idea. Sokolov doesn't know anything either. But he promised to integrate everything into his theory.”

“What use is a theory to us?” JP asked. “We have to wipe away the imprint.”

Antonia laughed. “Lemon and baking soda, huh? Oh, and one more thing: your data shows that the Earth is not emitting excessive radiation.”

“Why should it?”

“Energy conservation. If it loses mass, it should radiate it as energy—for example, by heating up. That's not the case.”

“Are the aliens violating the laws of the cosmos? We should lock them up for that.”

“It's not that certain yet. The energy release could be in a range that the Lunar Gateway doesn't monitor, such as gamma or X-ray radiation.”

* * *

JP hovered over the strange imprint that Antonia had extracted from the images. What the hell was that? Was it some kind of an exotic machine squeezing the Earth? He had made the computer copy the exact shape of the Earth into the milky ring. It fit perfectly.

Now he was conducting an experiment. He was repeating Antonia's attempt, with one difference: he was summing the telescope images over two-hour periods. The result was a less distinct imprint than with the overall view.

But it was enough to determine the diameter. Shortly after ten o'clock standard time, it was still the exact diameter of the earth. After that, however, it shrank in a clearly measurable way. It really looked as if someone had put a ring around the earth and was slowly tightening it. JP had to swallow and open the second button on his shirt to dispel the sudden feeling of tightness around his throat.

He shook his head. What he saw here made no sense. The Earth was a sphere, not a circle. This milky structure was at best a cross-section, a projection, of something spatial, if even that. Might it not be something like the Earth's radiation belt, a symptom of its shrinking, not the cause?

JP scratched his head. Why was he only using the data that the telescope recorded after the Earth disappeared? Because Antonia asked him for that data. But his ESA colleague might be acting shortsightedly. JP took the complete data memory, which went back a week. Here, too, he divided the automatically generated photos into two-hour piles and integrated them over that period in each case.

Then he displayed the resulting image on the screen. The milky ring already existed before time X, and it was even visible in the one-week-old images.

But not on the very first day. JP checked the metadata. The first images were from March 7. They showed no ring. But by March 9, it was fully developed. What happened in the meantime? He leafed through the system calendar. On March 8, the Gateway registered a radiation outbreak on the Moon. That was the day the black stele was blown up.

JP checked the images taken that day. At first, the ring was still missing. Then suddenly it looked as if two arms were reaching from the Moon towards the Earth. They met on the opposite side, and finally they detached from the starting point and formed a ring.

He absolutely had to show this to Antonia. JP tried to reach her by radio, but apparently the MIGI station was currently in the shadow of the moon. He traced the milky ring with his fingers. In reality, it must be a three-dimensional structure, a spherical shell. It extended far into space, almost half the distance between the Earth and the Moon.

Within this structure, the Orbital Station Blue was also orbiting.

Pico del Teide, March 14, 2082

It had snowed on the camera's image. At least it looked like it. The automatic image recognition had sent a signal that would have alerted the road clearance service under different circumstances. But the connection to them had broken down. The security camera wasn’t concerned about this. It merely logged the failure. Its limited intelligence was not capable of drawing any further conclusions.

Otherwise, it would have had to call emergency services as well. The buildings in its line of sight were lower than usual. If there were people in them, they must have been crushed. What the camera thought was snow, were natural formations. Corners and edges could no longer exist at this point. Everything was blending together, rounded off and with similar energy levels.

It was a miracle that the camera's sensors were still working. This was because they were mounted in a particularly well-protected location and were enclosed in a metal capsule designed to survive even a volcanic eruption. The people here had always thought that volcanic activity posed the greatest possible danger. How wrong they were!

Something had triggered the motion detector. There, on the left, the entrance gate had just collapsed. The camera tried to focus on the spot as programmed. That was a mistake. At the command of the software, the motorized joint retracted into itself. The resulting linear impulse extended to the lens. The glass in front of the camera's eye changed its structure and lost its transparency. The silicon chip only perceived silhouettes. The world became blurred. The camera on Pico del Teide was not its last witness. But at least here it could now truly assume any state, because it no longer needed to fear external observers.

2004 GU9, March 14, 2082

It had been a mistake to let Jinjin go alone. Liwei was convinced of that. But it would be even more foolish to follow her now. The stele didn't work that way. The chances of him appearing in the same place as his colleague were minimal. They should have touched and crossed over together. But Jinjin didn't want that.

Liwei understood her. He felt responsible for her. If he hadn't been so curious and had left the strange structure in the ground, none of this would have happened. He was to blame for everything.

But Jinjin felt the same way. She brought the nuke to the stele. Not entirely voluntarily, but she could have refused. If nothing had happened to the stele, she could have just waited for him there.

He sighed. The inside of his helmet was steaming up. Liwei had never liked waiting, but Jinjin was forcing him to do so, along with the circumstances. While they sat here right next to the stele, days were passing outside. Liwei looked at his watch. Ron had set off a minute ago. He saw his shadow floating over the asteroid. He couldn't see the limbs. They moved so fast that they were a blur to him.

The shadow paused for a moment. Now Ron was looking at the sky. He would be able to tell what time it was from the current positions of the planets and stars and synchronize his watch accordingly. Now Ron was turning around. His shadow was approaching. It raced as if something was chasing him. Liwei's heart pounded faster, but then Ron slowed down. He could finally see his limbs moving, and as Ron covered the last few meters, he seemed to be walking at a comfortable pace.

They fell into each other's arms, he and the American, even though they last saw each other just a minute ago.

“I'm totally exhausted,” said Ron. “And I have to pee.”

Liwei didn't want to know that detail. They had no opportunity to relieve themselves out here. Everything had to be absorbed and recycled by the suit.

“Show me your watch,” said Liwei.

Ron held out his arm and Liwei loaded the data from Ron's watch. It had recorded how fast and how far he had walked. That created a profile of the route out, from which they could calculate the time difference. Accuracy was important here. While one minute had passed for Liwei, Ron had aged six hours. They had to know this, or they might oversleep the end of the solar system here so close to the stele. If help arrived a few weeks from now, only a few hours would have passed for them.

“Is that enough now?” Ron asked.

“Yes, I think so. We now have a nice time profile. You marked the way properly?”

“As agreed.”

On the way out, they would find intermediate stations where time passed at a defined rate. Who knew what that might be important for? Liwei would rather be prepared for all circumstances.

“Come, sit down,” he said, pointing to a marked place. They had to be careful when choosing it—half a meter further in, and time would speed up by a third.

“Thank you. And now?”

“Wait. There's nothing more we can do.”

Ron jumped up. “Man, I can't do this. I can't just sit here like this.”

“If you move away from the stele, you'll run out of air.”

“Yeah, shit,” Ron said. He sat down again and kicked at the ground, sending dust flying.

Place 2, Time 2

What sort of shit dream was that?

Jinjin was stretching on a bed. She was wearing her pajamas, which immediately seemed strange to her. Hadn't she touched the strange stele yesterday? But then she couldn't be in the control center of the hypertelescope now. Or could she? Had she somehow turned back time? Maybe the First Ones Liwei talked about had decided to reset the whole system. That would be great! This time they would definitely not blow up the stele.

She got up. The floor was at the same level as the bed, which was strange. She felt as if she was standing upright, but when she touched first her head and then her shoulders, she did not notice any difference in height. That was impossible. She would have to carry her head at the same level as her shoulders.

Jinjin lay back down on the bed. Everything had been normal there. As it should be, her head extended above her shoulders. She could still feel her breasts and stomach, but they were the same height as the bed or the floor. She had always been slim, but not that slim. What the hell was this?

She took a deep breath. It was better than her dream, in which there was only one direction. She got up again. Her work uniform was hanging in the closet. She took off her pajamas, feeling as if she were being watched from above, and slipped into the uniform as quickly as she could. She left her room in it. In the hallway outside, she had to turn left to reach the control center, and indeed, after a few long steps, she was standing in front of the bulkhead.

It opened. The control center was empty—except for Bree, Antonia’s dog from the MIGI. Bree barked at her. She seemed to be guarding the center. Jinjin tried to avoid her, but Bree intercepted her like a good defender in soccer. Jinjin tried to step over the little dog, but that was a movement she couldn’t accomplish. She bent down to pick Bree up and set her out of the way, but that didn't work either. Whether she bent down or not, her arms and head were always at the same height as the dog, at the same height as the entire headquarters.

Strange. Someone was obviously playing a trick on her. She went to the main computer. It confirmed that she was the only human in Central. Antonia would never have left her Bree behind. Whoever constructed this strange prison for her probably didn't consider that.

She took an EVA suit from the shelf. It was unusually easy to put on. The top and bottom parts slid into place as if by magic. Jinjin sat down on the floor to test it out. She could feel the wall behind her but couldn't touch it. The floor was warm. She rose again. The control panel for the airlock consisted of buttons that protruded outward. They could be easily operated with the feet, but also with the head. It didn't matter.

Jinjin entered the lock and let the air pump out. Now she could open the outer bulkhead.

The Moon was flat. Nevertheless, there were some routes she couldn't take. Crater walls formed insurmountable obstacles. She took a rover out of the garage and glided across the Moon with it. Her destination was the stele. It was much closer in this dream—it couldn't be anything else—than in memory. Jinjin only had to find a path around a few craters and she recognized the dark square, which emitted a strange, bright light. It glowed like a severed blood vessel. The light seeped out into the surrounding area instead of pouring out in height and depth.

She stopped the rover and got out. The stele attracted her so intensely, she almost flew the last few meters. She felt sorry for the light. It collected in a pool at the base of the stele and slowly seeped into the dust. She bent over it. Her reflection divided the liquid as if she was reaching into it with her hands. She blew into it, but instead of bubbles, circles formed that burst into semicircles.

Enough of that. She touched the stele at the bottom, at the top, and in the middle. The touch seemed to extend into infinity, and at the same time, it didn't happen at all. At least, not until the fire reached her and pulverized her into cells. Jinjin was grateful for that.

Dewar Crater, March 15, 2082

Ernie swept the spotlight around the room. There was dust in the corners.

“It looks cozy,” said Popov, over the helmet radio.

This was probably something like the cafeteria. That device over there looked like a rice cooker. Ernie's daughter swore by those.

“You won't find anything here,” said Popov. “Look on the left, along the wall, that could be a door.”

Ernie turned slightly to the left. There was a door frame between two cupboards. However, the opening was locked. Ernie opened the cupboard on the right. Inside were various white bags with Chinese characters on them. Supplies. If they ran out of food at the MIGI base, they could get replacements here.

There was no handle, knob or button on the door. “How do I get this open?” he asked.

“Look up.”

He raised his head. A glass eye sparkled in the upper door frame. Probably a motion detector that would have opened the door when the base still had power. Someone must have turned it off and opened the lock. It certainly wasn't Jinjin and Liwei, the former inhabitants. Who would do such a thing? Just getting the omnipresent dust back outside would be a monumental task.

“You'll have force it, then,” Popov said.

Ernie shoved at the door, but it had no hinges, so it must be a sliding door. He pushed it sideways, but nothing moved.

“I said I'd do it."

Ernie shook his head. “Strength isn't everything.”

He scuffed away most of the dust that had collected on the floor with his boots. Then he took a crowbar out of his tool bag, wedged himself into the door frame and pried the door open. Hopefully there was no atmosphere behind it. But that didn't matter now. No astronaut would be coming back here for a long time.

The door moved. A few remnants of air blew through, but definitely not at normal pressure. He pushed the opening wide enough to slip through. “There we go.”

The room behind it might be the control center. There were two armchairs that could be converted into beds. On a table stood a colorful porcelain container. Ernie removed the lid, which was loose. Underneath, he found objects wrapped in colored paper. Probably sweets, because a large brown insect was lying among them.

A cockroach. It was dead. He touched it. Its antennae were still pliable, so it hadn't been dead long enough to freeze solid and dry out completely. The air couldn't have been gone for long. Maybe the wisps that just drifted out the door had been enough for it. Then he would be its murderer.

He closed the jar again. Maybe they would fight over the carbohydrates one day. If the Earth did not reappear, they would starve on the Moon. No one had ever tried to grow food there. It was easier and cheaper to supply people from Earth. They hadn't discussed it yet, but presumably they didn't even have seeds to grow.

Ernie searched the cupboards at the back of the control center. These were mainly used to store spare parts. They might need those too, later.

“Do you think you can turn on the computer?” asked Popov. “Maybe it can give us clues about the measuring instruments.”

Ernie shrugged his shoulders and jumped over to the computer in one big leap. The on/off switch was clearly visible. It was even labeled 'Power' in English. However, only Chinese characters appeared on the screen. They seemed to be asking for a login, which they didn't have.

“It doesn't look good,” said Ernie.

“Why don't you try the language interface?” suggested Popov.

Ernie tapped his helmet. “Can you see it yourself?”

“Oh, crap. Can you move the camera closer to the screen? Maybe I can get it translated.”

Ernie leaned forward far enough for the helmet camera to capture the entire display.

“Oh, crap, no connection,” said Popov.

“Didn't you say that you learned Chinese during your training?”

“That was a long time ago, and we never had to learn the characters.”

“What now?”

“We'll just have to find the devices without a table of contents.”

Ernie grimaced. What they were looking for was very specialized. They needed sensors that would allow them to probe the remains of the stele in very different ways. Neutron, gamma, X-ray scanners and so on. They had never needed anything like that at the MIGI. But the hypertelescope, whose construction Jinjin and Liwei had supervised, was still under construction. So, there must be measuring instruments here that could be used to monitor the soil.

“I bet the stuff is out in the storage units,” said Popov.

* * *

Ernie trudged over the dusty ground. Popov greeted him by turning the rover's headlights on and off. He waved to his Russian colleague, who turned the vehicle to shine the light on the storage units.

Ernie didn't want any surprises. According to Jinjin, the robots that got them into all this came from the units. There was a whole battery of these metal boxes. A few clues from the base computer would have been handy so they wouldn't have to search them all.

How would a robot react when it encountered an astronaut who obviously didn't belong here? Hopefully not too quickly. Popov had parked the rover near enough that Ernie could reach it with one big leap. If he could make it out of the unit.

“I'm starting now,” said Ernie.

“I'll keep an eye on you.”

“Thanks.” It felt good to know that, even though Popov wouldn't be able to help him directly.

Ernie reached the first unit. Its door was open. He shone his light inside, then jumped back when he saw someone coming towards him. “Ha-ha!” he shouted, even though he didn't feel like laughing. That was his reflection. He should have known. The hypertelescope would eventually consist of millions of mirrors, currently waiting in the warehouse for their turn to shine.

“Are you okay?” Popov asked.

“I just got a fright from my reflection.”

Ernie stepped into the unit. There was a narrow passage between the mirrors. The units were probably all set up similarly. Further back, he came across an empty metal crate. It bore a warning label for ionizing radiation. The nuclear explosive must have been stored in it.

“Do you see that?” he asked.

No answer. Damn. Did they attack the rover? Ernie jumped outside.

“Ohoho!” Popov shouted into his earphones.

Nobody had attacked the rover. He probably had no reception inside the metal storage unit.

“Take a look at this,” said Ernie, showing a picture of the crate.

“Govno, that's how the Chinese got us into all this trouble.”

Ernie nodded. But looking into the past was no use. He turned around and tried the next unit. This time he was lucky. He came across several boxes labeled with Cyrillic characters. And he even had reception, so Popov could translate for him.

“The third device from the left is a neutron scanner.”

Excellent. He took the crate off the shelf. “And the rest?”

“Signal amplifiers. Radio systems. Distributors. Everything for communication.”

Good to know, but they didn't need those right now. Ernie carried the crate with the neutron scanner outside.

“Let's hope they have more of what we need.”

* * *

But his luck didn't hold. Ernie found countless mirrors. In addition, there were rolls of electrical and optical cable, and various tools that appeared to be intended as replacements for the excavators. However, he noticed that he was not the first to systematically search the storage units. All the doors were open, and there were tracks between them that he had not left.

All the doors were open—except for the one on container number seventeen. Ernie stopped in front of it.

“Come on, what if our measuring instruments are hiding in there?” Popov asked.

“Easy for you to say.”

"Hey, we can swap if you want.”

Ernie sighed. “Forget it.” There was no lock, so the contents of the container couldn't be that dangerous. Presumably Jinjin or Liwei just wanted to keep the dust out , because the measuring instruments inside were sensitive.

The self-deception worked. Ernie pushed the lever to the side and pulled the door open. When his spotlight illuminated the interior, he jumped back several meters. There were people in there! Ernie shook his head. Nonsense. He’d been frightened by a first impression. What he saw were robots. But who the hell had defaced them like that? The robots were all connected to each other. The arm of one ended in the hip joint of the other. That leg functioned as an arm on the next robot. Someone had connected the machines together to make them look like one large creature with numerous heads. Of course they were just robots, but Ernie still couldn't look for long. It seemed cruel.

He left the unit. “Did you see that?”

“I wouldn't have believed she could do that,” Popov replied.

“You mean Jinjin did that...?” Ernie opened his eyes wide. That wasn’t the Jinjin he thought he knew.

“It's clever,” Popov explained. “How else could she render the robots harmless? After what they did to her...”

“It would have been enough to remove the arms and legs. This inhuman construction was unnecessary.”

“Imagine you had been treated that way…”

Ernie nodded. He had never been in Jinjin's situation and had not been betrayed like that. That was true. Maybe he would have tried to get revenge, too. No. He didn't believe in revenge. But people were different, and it wasn’t his place to judge Jinjin.

He walked over to the next unit. “Um, you don't want to skip seventeen now, do you?” Popov stopped him.

Ernie took a deep breath. His colleague was right. Most of the units contained nothing but mirrors. If robots were stored in this one, then perhaps measuring devices were too. He squeezed past the strange sculpture. He couldn't take his eyes off it. It frightened him deeply, but he couldn't look away.

At the back of the unit, there was a shelf where he found an American-made gamma scanner. Excellent. He would be able to handle that too. He took the box in front of him and squeezed past the linked robots.

“I've got something,” he said, looking out through the open door.

“What?” Popov asked over the radio.

“Gamma.”

Suddenly, something grabbed his boot. He toppled forward. The box slipped out of his hands and fell silently to the ground. Hopefully the sensitive instrument would survive. His second thought was for himself. What had made him fall? Lying on the ground, he turned around. A gripper had closed around his lower leg. Perhaps it was a coincidence, because he was within reach, a reflex like a baby's.

But no. The head lying on the floor right next to him opened its eyes. Other limbs jerked; arms twitched. Three or four other heads opened their mouths. Lights lit up on the robot torsos. Ernie kicked the gripper, and it came loose. He quickly pulled his leg away, but at the same moment a shackle closed around his arm. Ernie fought back, kicking the robot in the stomach, which rebounded. The struggle continued. The whole interconnected tangle started to move. He had to get out of here. His arm was free again. He pulled himself forward. Only one meter to the door.

One and a half. Something pulled him back. Shit! Some kind of tube was wrapped around his neck, where the helmet connected to the suit. The material was contracting. He was going to suffocate. Ernie kicked, and connected almost every time. The noose loosened, but then tightened again. Damn it. He should never have entered the unit. Now his other leg was trapped too. They were finishing him off! A gripper grabbed his thigh. Ernie fell backwards. The metal had cut deep. He wouldn't be able to...

Then he saw a bright light coming from above him. A narrow shadow passed through it, striking at the limbs that held him. The first gripper released. That must be Popov! He was holding a pole and whacking the robots with it. Ernie managed to break free and turn around. He crawled out on the floor and lay there exhausted. Shortly thereafter, the unit door closed. Popov helped him up and handed him the box with the gamma scanner.

"Good work, Ernie.”

“Thanks, Popov.”

“It's the least I could do. I didn't feel good about you going past those robots."

Ernie looked back. Jinjin had closed the door for a reason. His pity for the ball of metal had vanished. He would like to take Popov's crowbar and deal out a few more blows. But that would be revenge, and he didn't believe in that.

* * *

“It's over there,” said Popov.

“What is?”

“Well, the place where the stele was.”

Ernie rubbed his eyes and stared at the screen. There was nothing to be seen except for a double crater. But Popov was right. That was how Antonia had described the place he was looking for.

Suddenly the rover shuddered. Popov steered it up a steep slope. For a moment they seemed to be floating, before the wheels hit hard ground. Shortly after, the engine howled, and they came to a halt so abruptly that Ernie was pulled into the seatbelts.

“What was that?” he asked. The front of the vehicle was slanting down a little. Hopefully it wasn’t stuck in a hole.

“I crossed the intermediate ridge with a swing. Behind it, there was probably a small dust hill waiting for us.”

The screen changed to a schematic view showing the rover from the side. It was tilted slightly forward, as if it had run into an obstacle while drunk. But it wasn’t a cave. That was very reassuring. Ernie typed a few commands. The direction to their destination appeared on the screen.

“Are you going to walk?” Popov asked.

“It's only ninety meters. I can just about make it on foot. You can start by getting our vehicle out of the mess you got it into.”

Popov opened his mouth but said nothing. Ernie was not formally his superior, so he had no authority over him. But it went without saying that the one who got them into this situation had to take care of getting them out of it. The fact that Popov saved his life a few hours ago was irrelevant.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Ernie and Popov were standing in the airlock, sweating. The Russian had a shovel strapped to his back. Ernie was carrying the neutron scanner they had found at the Chinese base. The gamma scanner and another ESA measuring device were attached to the outside of the rover.

“Antonia? We're ready to go.”

They had deliberately chosen a moment when a relay satellite was available to maintain contact with the ESA base.

“Very good. Do you see the hole?” Antonia asked.

Ernie swept the beam of the spotlight across the crater floor. The terrain formation reminded him of a bowl that had been finely dusted on the inside. No structures could be seen.

“It's not a hole,” said Ernie. “So, are we in the right place?”

“Yes, the double crater is unmistakable, and your Geiger counters should have started ticking too.”

“Geiger counters?” Popov laughed. “That's a toy. Who needs something like that?”

Ernie checked the suit's settings. He usually turned off the radiation detector too. The constant ticking made him nervous. What did he get out of it anyway? The counter didn't protect him from radiation. But at the moment there was no clicking sound. Were they wrong after all? He increased the volume of the signal generator. Oops, what he thought was noise was actually coming from the counter.

“Yes, we're in the right place,” he said. “A nuclear bomb must have exploded here.”

Now he did feel a bit strange. It would be good if Popov could get the rover back on its feet.

“Sorry, guys, but we don't have forever. The relay will soon go behind the horizon.”

“I'm ready,” said Ernie.

“First, we have to find the hole again. It was closed last time, too. Presumably dust is seeping in from the side. As long as it happens very slowly, it won't be repulsed. It's like pouring milk into your coffee very slowly.”

“Milk in your coffee? That's gross,” said Popov.

Antonia laughed. You could say what you wanted about Popov, but his comments always managed to lighten the mood. And he had saved Ernie's life. They hadn't told Antonia about that episode yet.

“How did you find the hole?” Ernie asked.

“Throw something in that direction. The hole is at the deepest point of the crater. But keep your distance.”

Ernie looked around. The crater was full of dust. He couldn't find a single rock. But the neutron scanner was still in its box. He took it out of the packaging, an almost cube-shaped cardboard box. Then he set the device down near the rover. He took a screwdriver out of his tool bag and made a hole in one side of the cube, then two in the second, and so on until the last side had six holes.

“Wait a minute, what are you doing?” asked Antonia, with whom he was sharing his helmet camera.

“Oh, nothing.” He picked up the cube, took a swing, and let it roll downhill into the crater. The cube bounced from corner to corner, but suddenly it shot upward. Ernie watched it, but it had disappeared into the darkness above him.

He shone his flashlight into the crater. A hole about the size of his head had opened up at the deepest point.

“That's it,” said Antonia. “Set up the equipment around it, turn it on, and keep the hole busy by throwing stuff into it.”

“How long?” Ernie thought of the whirring of the Geiger counter. He really didn't feel like getting acute radiation sickness.

“We'll retrieve the data the next time the relay satellite passes over,” Antonia explained. “If that works, you can come home.”

Something struck him in the back. Ernie cried out and tipped forward. He slipped. There was nothing in the dust for him to hold on to. Ernie slid toward the hole. It seemed to watch him curiously, as if it was looking forward to catapulting him into the sky in a moment. Another 1.5 meters. One meter. Something tugged at his right foot, pulling him up.

“I can’t turn my back even for a second,” said Popov.

Ernie took a deep breath. He lay on his back and looked up at the stars. Gratitude shot through him. Humans were strange creatures. The only thing he had gained was a few extra days of torment. But he would rather be tormented than dead.

He turned on his side. Next to him lay the cardboard cube. A round channel about the size of his head had been drilled through the middle. He filmed the cube from all directions. Antonia might be interested in this. The forces in the center of the beam must be too great for the cardboard to withstand. Nothing had happened to the stone Antonia threw, but it was made of harder material.

Ernie straightened up again. Popov handed him a carabiner, which he clipped onto his suit.

“The line is attached to the rover,” Popov said. He stepped up next to Ernie and picked up the cardboard cube. “You should still be careful. From where I'm standing, even the rover won't be able to hold you if you get caught by the hole.”

Orbital Station Blue, March 15, 2082

Sebastiano approached with the wine. He held the cap on tightly so that none of it would be lost.

“That's an excellent idea,” said Barbara Meyers and pointed to the table in front of which she was strapped. Meyers only drank California white wine. He still had six bottles left. That was enough for about eight days—if no one else drank it, which he needed to prevent.

“Dear Ms. Meyers, your favorite wine.” He placed the sealed container on the magnetic holder and heard a soft click.

“Great idea.” Meyers pointed to the space next to the wine glass. What was going on there? The magnetic holder for the plate seemed to have sunk slightly into the table. Sebastiano ran his finger over it. It was maybe two millimeters lower.

“Is that what you mean?”

Meyers nodded. “The plate automatically slides into the right place. You don't know anything about it?”

Sebastiano shook his head. “Doug must have arranged it.” He moved to the next table. Again there was a dent in the magnetic board intended for the plate. Was Doug really responsible? His old friend would have consulted him first. He didn't let on. Meyers must not realize that they were obviously losing control.

* * *

After lunch, he cleaned the kitchen and dining room. To do this, he also removed the chairs and tables from their moorings. He glided into the kitchen to get the cleaning supplies. On his return trip, close to the ceiling, he saw it: there was a pattern on the floor, left by the legs of tables and chairs.

Sebastiano pushed himself away from the ceiling and glided to the floor, where he felt for the indentations. Their dimensions corresponded exactly to the feet of the furniture that stood in each place. The chairs had dug deeper into the floor than the tables. Their weight couldn't have anything to do with it. No matter how heavy the person sitting on them was, the weight force was always zero on the station.

Except for last night. He remembered the three engine impulses, acceleration twice and deceleration once. None of the guests had complained. But the forces generated could have created the patterns. He looked at the ceiling. It was completely smooth. He pushed himself off, keeping his finger extended, and pushed it against the plastic shielding. His fingertip sank a centimeter into the material.

That shouldn't be. Of course, the corridors and rooms of the orbital station were deliberately furnished with soft materials, so nobody would get hurt. But this was definitely too soft. He pressed his finger a little deeper until he encountered a much harder surface. It offered enough resistance that the force he exerted was no longer sufficient to make a hole. That was very reassuring—the station's metal shell didn't appear to be affected by the problem.

* * *

“Look!” Sebastiano wedged his knees under the desk for better leverage, then pressed his finger on the top. It was made of soft plastic, similar to the restaurant tables. His fingertip dug deep into it. His knees also reshaped the underside of the desk.

Doug laughed. “Impressive! How long did you have to train for that? In the old days, people with your abilities performed in the circus.”

“I didn’t, actually.” Sebastiano took Doug's thumb and pressed it lightly on the surface of the desk until another impression was created.

“Oops,” said Doug. “That’s not normal.”

“No.”

"It probably doesn't just affect this desk?”

“All surfaces made of soft plastic.”

Doug frowned. “That reminds me of something. Some kind of plague that affects plastic parts. If we had a network connection, we could look it up.”

“Plague? That stuff isn't alive, is it?”

“Figuratively speaking. It was caused by some additive that broke the bonds between the molecules.”

“A material defect.”

“Yes.”

Sebastiano shook his head back and forth. The station had never been thoroughly renovated. Why should the material fatigue so much now?

“Strange timing,” he said.

“You know, correlation is not causation.”

Of course he knew that.

“Maybe we're being exposed to some kind of radiation that wasn't there before,” said Doug. “We'll reach our geostationary orbit soon.”

“I don't know what kind of radiation that would be. And Blue never had a problem like this, even out at the Lagrange point.”

“Well, if we only had such problems...”

Sebastiano was prepared for this argument. One of the spare spacesuits was hanging from the ceiling. He pulled it towards him and grasped the large hand of the suit. It felt a bit like the hand of a stuffed bear. He turned it palm upwards and pressed his finger into it. Deeper and deeper.

“Okay, I'm convinced,” said Doug, grabbing Sebastiano's hand. “We should be damn careful during the upcoming EVA.”

“And we have to find out what's causing it.”

“That's right. I'll ask Antonia if she has any ideas. You have enough to do keeping the guests happy.”

Sebastiano sighed. Lately that had become exhausting. The tourists were probably just as stressed as they were, only they didn't know why.

* * *

“It's just plastic, but when Sebastiano stuck his finger through the glove of the EVA suit, I felt different somehow.” Doug remembered that feeling well. It had been so...wrong. The material shouldn't behave like that. It was developed to withstand the elements for many years: radiation, cold, heat, vacuum, and of course Sebastiano's fingernails.

“I understand you perfectly,” said Antonia. “Physically, it makes no sense. But I'll send you a picture that JP generated in the Gateway.”

The computer made a pling. Doug released the transmission. The smell of fish soup wafted out of the kitchen. His mouth started watering as he waited for the full picture. Of all the survivors of the disaster, they had it the best here—at least there was something tasty to eat. On the Moon, they only had freeze-dried food and definitely no champagne.

The recording stabilized. A second ping confirmed this. Doug recognized a planet that could be Earth. There was a milky ring around it.

“What kind of ring is that?” he asked.

"We don't know for sure. But it seems to extend almost halfway to the Moon.”

That meant they were in the middle of this area. Could this be the reason why the durability of soft plastic had decreased so much? The relationship between the two phenomena seemed very far-fetched to him.

“You don't know what JP photographed?” he asked.

“Well, actually, he measured the dimming of the stars behind this structure. So the thing isn't really gray. You wouldn't be able to see it from the porthole.”

“We don't have portholes anyway.”

“It must be a material that only interacts weakly with light,” said Antonia.

“Some kind of dark matter?”

“No, if the Earth were wrapped in dark matter, we wouldn't be able to detect it with our technology.”

Doug laughed. Antonia seemed to have forgotten what kind of research facility she was in on the Moon. “That's right, you'd need a gravitational detector for that,” he said. “Dark matter only interacts gravitationally. It's a shame that there isn't one on the Moon.”

Antonia joined in with a loud laugh. “I guess I can't see the forest for the trees again. But right now, we don't actually have a functioning gravitational wave detector. We've converted the MIGI into a kind of LIDAR.”

“How much longer?”

“I couldn’t tell you. We're evaluating the initial data. As soon as we have results, I'll know what to do.”

Doug sighed. This wasn’t helping him at all. When the guests noticed the phenomenon, they would not only be amazed but also start getting stupid ideas. They needed to take a close look at all the soft plastic used on the station. And what if the process intensified?

“That ring there,” Doug said. “Has it gotten bigger lately?”

“No, it's actually shrunk a bit.”

“Oh, that's a relief. How likely do you think it is that the problem will spread? It would be very unfortunate if you could poke holes in the hull with your finger. Our guests could easily come up with that idea.”

“I'd need more data to say anything. It would be best if you observed carefully to see if other materials are also becoming softer.”

“Thanks, Antonia. I'm not really happy about any of this right now.”

“I understand that, Doug. Once you've managed to read the data from Qudice 4, you can retreat further away from Earth.”

Antonia was saying something. If the guests knew what problems they were facing, they would probably demand to leave this orbit immediately. And they would probably be right to do so—with their action, they were putting more people in danger than were thought to be living in the entire solar system. And why? So Sokolov could develop his theory about the stele and the disappearance of the Earth.

Mare Orientale, March 15, 2082

The Earth looked like a shiny ball. Antonia rotated it by swiping across the screen. At the equator, it had an inconspicuous bulge. At the poles, it was slightly flattened. Nevertheless, it was beautiful.

But it was only a simulation. This was what the Earth should ideally look like in the LIDAR images that the modified MIGI detector would hopefully deliver soon. Antonia tapped on the screen. It was all happening too slowly for her. Every day, three percent of the Earth's mass was lost. Was it irretrievable? She shrugged. How should she know?

They were not making as much progress as she would have liked. Sokolov avoided any attempt at conversation. He was probably embarrassed that he hadn't yet found the solution to the world's riddle. Or had he simply taken on too much? What if all the phenomena and events were not as closely related as he imagined?

At least Ernie and Popov had made it to the Dewar Crater. The strange hole they had found definitely had something to do with the stele. Antonia imagined it as a kind of wound that the destruction of the stele had left in its reality. From the outside, you couldn't tell from looking at a person’s skin that blood and lymph vessels, as well as bones, muscles and nerve fibers, ran beneath it. But if you amputated a limb, blood suddenly spurted from the open vessels until everything was healed or atrophied.

Would the Moon slowly heal too? She shouldn't extend the parallels to the human body too far. After all, they were dealing with a phenomenon that some highly developed civilization had come up with. Actually, it was pretty presumptuous of Sokolov to think he could figure it out.

The computer announced, “The initial laser measurements have been evaluated!”

Antonia opened the folder. The program she wrote had calculated an approximate shape of the Earth from the transit times of the reflected pulses, approximating inaccessible parts of the Earth and creating a three-dimensional graphic. This was now slowly building up on the screen.

What she noticed immediately was the plush cover. The Earth looked like a ball of white fur. This was certainly due to its gaseous envelope. The laser light was reflected at different depths. But the simulation looked quite different, almost perfectly smooth. She retrieved it from memory and overlaid it on the actual measurement data. Then she enlarged the scale.

This made the problem clear: the atmosphere was actually a fairly thin layer, covering the solid core like the fragile skin of an apple. That didn’t explain the plush fur. It looked as if the Earth was slowly disintegrating, from the outside in. If you put a bar of soap in clear water without touching it, it would dissolve in a similar way over time.

She looked at the time course. So far, she had only a small amount of data, but the trend was clear: the Earth was shrinking. Maybe she wouldn't have to worry about Orbital Station Blue anytime soon. Or she should worry twice as much, since it was all happening much faster than she had hoped.

But where was the missing mass going? There was no increase in energy radiation. This was a mystery that she hoped would be solved. If it couldn't be radiated, it must still be there. Somehow, she hoped that at some point the curtain behind which the Earth had disappeared would rise again, and then everything would be as it was before.

She zoomed in further on the time progression of the measurements. Now a sine curve seemed to emerge. That was interesting. It looked as if the Earth was vibrating, becoming lighter and then heavier again. What function described the change in its mass? Antonia jumped from measurement to measurement to determine the parameters of the sine function. Sokolov might be able to do something with that. There weren't that many natural processes that followed a sinusoidal function. All right, Sokolov would disagree with that. But knowing more was always better than knowing less.

Unfortunately, the parameters jumped around as she got closer to the curve. It was a bit like in quantum physics—the closer you looked, the less accurate the measurement became. But they weren’t in the realm of quantum physics here. The proportions weren’t right for that. What else could cause parameters to jump? A non-continuous function approximated by a sinusoidal function. A value that changed from one to zero without any transition was very difficult to imitate with a sinusoidal function.

That was her mistake—she’d initially imagined a continuous function. That was to be expected in a natural process. Antonia replaced the sinusoid with a discrete function that regularly jumped from zero to one hundred percent mass and back. It didn't match the measured values, since the resulting mass corresponded to half the Earth's mass. But they were observing more like 97 percent of the Earth's mass. That, in turn, suggested a function that was at zero for three out of a hundred seconds and at one hundred percent the rest of the time.

“There—there—there ... repeated ninety times—there—there—there—gone—gone—gone—there...”

“What are you talking about?” Sokolov asked.

Antonia was startled. She hadn't realized she was thinking out loud.

“Oh, are you taking a break?” she asked.

“I was hoping Popov and Ernie...”

“No, they just finished setting up. Patience. But I have something the LIDAR data brought to my attention.”

Only now did she realize what she had found. It was actually the explanation for why the Earth was disappearing, with no residual radiation.

“Yes?” Sokolov asked.

She showed him the furry and shiny orbs side by side.

“Is the simulation on the right?” he asked.

Antonia nodded.

“It looks like there are extreme differences in density,” said Sokolov. “The Earth is disintegrating like a…”

“… bar of soap in water.”

“Exactly.”

“Ha, that's what I thought too. But now look at this.”

A glass-like Earth appeared on the screen, missing numerous segments. This made it look like a broken Christmas tree ornament. It flickered briefly, then it was back again.

“The missing segments are due to missing measurements,” she explained.

“And the flickering?”

He had noticed it. Very good, she had his attention. With a few commands, she brought up a list of measurements on the screen.

“These are from the moments when the image flickered.”

Sokolov went through the rows. The most important information was in the last column—it was the percentage of reflected laser pulses. It was consistently below five percent. The remaining reflections came from the thin layers of atmosphere surrounding the Earth.

“Now I understand,” said Sokolov. “Sometimes it's there, sometimes it's not.”

“The Earth is there about 97 percent of the time. If we take cumulative measures, the result is a three percent reduction in mass.”

“So, it's not continuously disappearing,” said Sokolov. “That was our big mistake. We're just not able as humans to perceive those short periods of time in which it happens.”

“It's like those spatial-looking light tricks they do with fast-moving objects.”

“The stroboscopic effect.”

Exactly, that was the foreign word she was looking for. Antonia nodded.

“That gives me an exciting idea,” said Sokolov. “What if our entire four-dimensional universe only exists through this trick?”

“But we would have observed that long ago. The universe is continuous in time. The Earth is not at the moment. But the universe as a whole is.”

“Hold on, Antonia! There is a lower limit to our measurements—the Planck time. What if our stroboscopic effect occurs faster than the Planck time? Then we wouldn't be able to measure it, but that doesn't mean it's not there. It would be a very simple way to change all the parameters of the universe, the fundamental interactions and everything else.”

It was an overwhelming idea. Turn up the speed of the strobe wheel a little, and the energy level of the entire universe increases. While physics tried to explain such an increase through the obscure concept of dark energy, there would be a hidden variable in the form of the speed of the stroboscope that controlled everything. Whoever had control of the stroboscope could control the entire universe like a god. Might an advanced civilization be capable of that?

Antonia sighed. The idea was damn fascinating. The disadvantage was that no one would ever be able to verify it. That meant it could not qualify as a serious theory. For every scientific theory, there had to be a way to refute it.

“The question is to what extent this helps us with our current problem,” said Antonia.

“Well, if we look at the process at the stroboscopic level: Why does it pause exactly three times every 97 cycles? And how can we stop it from happening?”

She nodded. It sounded understandable, but incredibly far removed from the current abilities of the remaining human race. It was as if they were trying to stop a flood with handkerchiefs. There was also a small practical problem. “How come we’re not seeing Earth at all, even though it's present 97 percent of the time?”

“Good question, Antonia. Maybe it has something to do with how we see—via light quanta that excite the cells in our eyes. We can still use other sensors—like your laser flashes or our sense of balance—to ‘see’ the Earth. I need to think about this thoroughly.”

Sokolov nodded at her and left the control center. He hadn't said anything about what he’d been working on all this time. Apparently, everything was falling on her again.

At least she would be the first to have hope. Even if the Earth only existed for one out of every hundred seconds, according to the stroboscopic theory, it would still be fully part of this reality. So nothing was lost yet.

And what about Schrödinger’s cat that was both alive and dead at the same time? The decision was only made when you looked. Maybe they should just take a look. The only problem was that they had to catch the right moment—one when the Earth was there. The more time passed, the more often it would disappear and the more difficult it would be to catch the right moment.

She should speak to Sebastiano at the orbital station as soon as possible. Time was running out for them all.

Lunar Gateway, March 15, 2082

JP scratched his head. “A stroboscope?”

“You know those fast-spinning gadgets that create a three-dimensional effect, almost like a hologram?”

What Antonia was describing seemed a bit far-fetched to him. He reached for the arm of a chair. It had a soft, furry surface. It was smooth except for a line right down the middle that felt like a weld. How could a stroboscope create a structure like that? It was all real and physically present. Or it wasn't. He didn't even want to consider phenomena like smells, tastes or music.

“You're not convinced,” Antonia noted.

“You could say that. But I also don't believe in the idea that the universe could be a holographic projection.”

“Hm, a hologram.” Antonia pronounced the term without any particular emphasis, but he still thought he heard a certain interest.

“Well, actually, I wanted to ask you if you see any way to contact Jinjin and Ron. In case they really did end up on 2004 GU9.”

“You want to know if the trip is worth it.”

“I know it sounds selfish, but... If Earth really is losing mass every day, the inner solar system will change drastically. And I'm afraid I won't be able to find my way back to you then.”

The computer had reinforced these fears. JP had it calculate what his chances were of getting from the Lagrange point to the Moon if the Moon was no longer in Earth orbit. The software couldn't offer him a definite solution. Everything depended on minor details. If this parameter changed by a single micrometer, the journey would suddenly take five times longer. That was typical of a chaotic system. If he was unlucky, he would get stuck out here, and JP really didn't want to die alone in space.

“I can have it calculated for you,” said Antonia. “There's bound to be a viable course.”

“I've already tried that. Unfortunately, development is becoming more chaotic by the day.”

“I understand. If I could, I'd go in your place.”

JP relaxed. He wouldn't have believed it from anyone else, but he trusted Antonia.

“You're convinced they're there? That's enough for me.”

“I'm convinced, but not one hundred percent sure. There's no guarantee, to be honest.”

He had been afraid of that. But it was fair of her to admit the doubt.

“I have an idea,” said Antonia. “There are a number of very powerful space telescopes at the other Lagrange points. Maybe you can use one of them to look at your destination.”

“That's a great idea. Can you recommend one in particular?”

“I would try the Giordano Bruno Telescope. It’s operated by the ESA. I have the manual for it here and could lend you my access.”

“You have access?” That would make things a lot easier. The expensive space telescopes were, of course, protected against misuse.

“Yes, it's for faster data transfer. We want our MIGI to make its observations as close to real time as possible with the other observatories. That's the only way we'll get a true multi-messenger picture.”

Antonia really came to life as she explained it to him. She would probably much rather be doing her work than brooding over saving the Earth.

* * *

“Twenty-seven jobs completed.

Storage capacity is down seven percent. Please retrieve data.

Awaiting new orders.”

With Antonia's data, logging into the Bruno Telescope was no problem. The software even seemed to be happy to hear from him. JP sighed. The people who managed the telescope probe from Earth were no longer available.

He leafed through the task list. The Bruno Telescope specialized in the near infrared. It had replaced the good old Webb a few years ago. Its capabilities, widely reported at the time, exceeded those of its predecessor by several orders of magnitude. JP lacked the background knowledge to assess the significance of the images.

What did it mean, for example, that so few other objects could be seen in the vicinity of this quasar from the early days of the universe, as he could tell from the high z-shift? And was the planetary embryo, clearly visible orbiting in this dust disk, already known? Did the spectrum of this exoplanet show signs of life or was it just ordinary cloud formation?

All these assignments had been thought up by people who no longer existed. People who wanted to write their master's thesis about it or report on it at a conference. Perhaps one of these recordings even offered material for a revolution in a particular field of research. It would no longer happen, because the specialists responsible for it had disappeared along with the Earth.

JP swallowed a lump in his throat. It felt like he was secretly reading private diaries. He closed the folder with the planetary spectra. This was obviously the last order that dealt with a target outside the solar system. After that, it was all about the Moon. That must have been frustrating for the astronomers dealing with other topics. Surely someone high-up had taken control of the telescope.

He went through the recordings. They were all relatively new. He couldn’t find the black stele. Those images had probably been transmitted to Earth long ago. JP compared the time stamp. Oh, the recordings must have been made in the middle of the dust storm. But the Bruno telescope had seemingly managed to see through the dust.

JP sorted the images by wavelength. In some images, he could see a blurred spot of light approaching the remains of the stele. That must have been the rover with Antonia. The stele itself outshone everything. It had apparently still been emitting a lot of energy. In other wavelengths, dust clouds overlaid the image. They must have absorbed heat through secondary effects such as friction. The images beautifully showed the structures of the fields that first lifted the Moon dust into the air. They all emanated from the remains of the stele.

What date was that? JP calculated in his head. Antonia had been driving around down there on the twelfth. Jinjin and Ron disappeared on the same day. Shouldn't he be able to identify them on the recordings too? They’d gone very close to the remains of the stele. They had to venture near to close the strange source that remained after the destruction of the stele. But there, at the center of the action, the energy output of the remains outshone everything else.

He tried again with different wavelengths. The astronomers who controlled the Bruno telescope provided for every eventuality and had maximized the instrument's capabilities. But in the eye of the storm, the images were always overexposed. Wait a minute. Shouldn't the dust have settled by that point? The telescope could also be used in the optical range. Not quite as well, but well enough to get a glimpse in visible light. JP switched to the appropriate mode.

There they were! Jinjin and Ron—it was hard to tell which was which—looked like tiny bugs crawling across the moon. They were moving towards the center of the crater. The telescope had taken a number of individual images that could be combined to create a flip book. The two astronauts lingered there for a while. They were presumably conferring. And then suddenly they were gone.

JP leaned back. He still couldn't believe it. It was one thing to hear about it, quite another to experience it live. He closed his eyes. It couldn't have been an easy decision. Closing the source had worked. Antonia might have been able to save them shortly after. But it was always easier to say “afterwards”. There must have been arguments, signs, feelings that led them to their decision.

If it was a decision at all. The images didn't show it—Ron and Jinjin might just as well have been vaporized. But he was not finished with his research. The Bruno Telescope should also be able to look at 2004 GU9, his target.

* * *

“Not found.”

“Not found.”

“Not found.”

Handling a space telescope apparently needed its own master's degree. JP had failed to enter the target. Bruno couldn't do anything with the name of the asteroid. The coordinates of his target, which he had taken from the flight controls, didn't help either. And then there were the lengthy waits resulting from the signal propagation time. He had to grudgingly wait after every command, only to realize that it could not be executed. It was enough to make him tear his hair out!

Fortunately, the MIGI station was within radio range.

“Antonia, I need your help.” He told her the problem.

“You need the asteroid number,” she explained. “That should be 164207.”

“What, it's that simple?”

“I think so.”

“Good, otherwise I'll call you right back.”

JP typed in the number of the object.

“Found”

He took a deep breath. He wouldn't have to call her back.

“Please specify instruments and wavelengths.”

He pinched his brows together. JP was not an astronomer. What did the machine want from him? At least he didn't have to hurry with the answer.

“All.”

He typed in and waited.

“All instruments and wavelengths selected. Add job to stack?”

“Yes.”

Once again, he had to wait.

“Order accepted. Current occupancy: zero orders.”

“Start processing order one.”

“Start positioning.”

His stomach growled. He was hungry. JP ended the connection. To celebrate, it was time to cook something really good.

* * *

When he logged back in three hours later with a full stomach, he found a new folder filed under 164207. It contained thousands of recordings. Maybe he shouldn't have chosen “all” after all. JP sighed. But he had plenty of time.

Nevertheless, he cursed his ignorance several more times. The pictures he looked at earlier had probably been edited. Now he had a single image for each wavelength. It was like looking at the world through a filter that only let through a single blue hue. So, basically everything was black and white, or rather, gray.

Over time, however, he got used to this presentation. The essential facts might even be easier to see this way. The asteroid was roughly egg-shaped. It rotated around an axis that ran diagonally through its body. The egg didn't simply roll, it rolled back and forth through space. The resulting forces seemed to have caused small chunks and dust to detach from the asteroid and orbit it loosely.

The complete rotation took a good hour. But JP needed much longer to follow it on the images, which had been taken at so many different wavelengths. He felt a bit like a grandma who insisted on showing off photos of her grandchildren from every month of their lives. But he couldn't skip shots either, or he might miss something important.

Like the appearance of the stele, for example, which slowly moved into the picture over the course of several shots. It was clearly recognizable and about ten pixels high. If it was the same size as on the Moon, then one pixel corresponded to about three meters. That meant he wouldn't be able to identify Ron and Jinjin. Crap. He had hoped for more from the Bruno telescope. Astronomers from Earth had already reported that there was a stele on 2004 GU9.

It was probably their last big discovery. They would certainly have written proposals to observe the object more closely with the help of the Bruno telescope. What would they have done differently? Perhaps the problem lay in his instructions. With such a small target, he had to get the detectors to collect light longer. The movement of the object in orbit could perhaps be compensated for, but not its rotation. That would limit the collection time.

He slapped his forehead. Antonia had sent him the telescope manual. He would surely be able to use it to influence the observation time. He delved into the manual.

* * *

That looked much better. On the new images, he recognized the structure of the asteroid. It appeared to be made up of several large chunks glued together with ice and dust. At first, the stele was not recognizable.

Since he was dealing with images taken over several minutes, it did not rotate slowly into the image as before but jumped into it. JP could even see that its cross-section was not round but square. The resolution was phenomenal. And he actually discovered a bright—i.e., warm—spot directly at its base that was set off from the stele itself. Could it be a person? He was looking at it from above, which made identification difficult. But what else would be giving off heat on the icy asteroid? So, there you are, Jinjin. Or is it you, Ron? How have you been and why are you alone?

JP looked at the metadata of the recording. Something was bothering him. That was when he noticed it. The surface was less detailed here, especially near the stele. There was obviously less light coming from it, even though the area was not in shadow. But there was the stele. Its mass influenced the course of time and slowed it down. The amount of light captured by the telescope corresponded to seconds rather than minutes. It would therefore have to be exposed for much longer, but the rotation of the asteroid prevented this.

At least he had found one of the two objects he was looking for. Perhaps they were sitting close together, forming the bright spot. And if not? What if one of them was moving? JP scrolled back to the individual images from the first attempt. He increased the contrast considerably and scrolled through quickly. There was a tiny speck that changed position from shot to shot. Could it be a person? The speed matched. The speck moved slower than walking speed across the surface.

JP nodded. This was the best possible view the telescope could give him. But it seemed pretty clear to him that he had seen Jinjin and Ron. More than a pipe dream, anyway. He put the data into a file and sent it to the MIGI station. Then he grabbed a glass of vodka from Ron's supplies.

“Cheers, old friend!”

2004 GU9, March 15, 2082

Ron was finally back.

“Well, how's the weather out there?” asked Liwei.

“Sunny with no chance of rain.”

Ron sat down next to him again. Liwei cautiously checked the level of his oxygen tank. He used up about ten percent on each of these short trips. This couldn't go on.

“You're right,” said Ron. “It's unreasonable. But I have the damn feeling that we're not noticing something here.”

Liwei shook his head. “We're not missing anything.” He pointed to the sky, where the sun was passing quickly enough to make him dizzy.

“It's already the fifteenth of March,” said Ron. “And we only woke up here a few hours ago.”

For Liwei, who hadn't moved away from the stele, it had only been minutes. But that was their life insurance! With the help of the small computer in his suit, he estimated the possible trajectories of a spaceship coming to pick them up from Earth orbit. It would take at least one hundred and sixty days, with a delta-v of just over one kilometer per second. Even a delta-v of over 2 km/s would only reduce the flight time to 137 days. It was too damn far. A quasi-satellite like 2004 GU9 was not a Moon that could be reached in a day or two.

If Ron continued to step outside every ten minutes to see what hadn't changed, he would suffocate in half that time, and Liwei would be alone. He didn't know which would be worse—having to watch Ron suffocate or having to go on living alone. Well, he would share his oxygen with Ron, of course. Wouldn’t he? Even if that meant they both died before rescue arrived?

“I'm sorry, but I can't sit around and wait,” Ron said.

“If you stay with me, you might only have to wait a day. For us, anyway.”

Ron shrugged his shoulders. “Still. I feel like I'm trapped. And don't worry, I don't want any oxygen from you. I'll refuse any donation if my tank empties without...”

Liwei would wait and see that for himself. Talking about your own death was easier than dying. But it was also easier than letting people die whose time could be extended. Perhaps they should consider entrusting themselves to the stele like Jinjin.

But if he had done that on the Moon with an empty breathing tank, he wouldn't have come back alive either. Liwei rummaged through his tool bag until he found the lighter. It was a gift from his daughter. She had bought it when she was about fourteen years old because of the NASA logo on it.

You do know that you can't light a lighter in space? he had asked her when she handed him the present.

Her mouth had flattened into a line. She must have been looking forward to his reaction. And he had simply doubted the usefulness of the gift. His assurances that he was happy with it anyway hadn't brought back her smile.

Since then, he had carried the lighter with him wherever he went, especially on EVAs. Too bad he would never be able to tell his daughter that he had used it to light a fire on an alien planet. She no longer existed. It didn't really matter if they lived a few more days. Let Ron waste his oxygen. He fought back tears.

Ron reached for his hand and opened the fist holding the gift.

“You have a lighter in your EVA suit?”

“Yeah, strange habit, isn't it? Helped me on my tour of the various planets, though. It's a present from my daughter.”

“That's sweet. And you've been carrying it with you ever since?”

“Yes.”

“That's good. Really good. Because I was thinking about why anyone would come here at all.”

“Because of the stele, I think.”

“The Earth has disappeared. Do you really think anyone still cares about the stele? There are probably just over twenty people in the entire universe. They have their own survival to deal with.”

Sure they did. But they wouldn't give up on Earth altogether. The stele could be a key.

“The stele might help them with that.”

“Maybe. Anyway, it hasn't done any good so far. It just gets worse and worse.”

Ron was right. His journey hadn't really brought them a solution either. If the Source was right, they did know why the Earth had disappeared, but that wouldn't bring it back.

“What's your point?” asked Liwei.

“I think if they know that Jinjin and I are here, it's a better motivation to come and get us.”

“That's certainly true. But how are you going to...communicate that? The range of a helmet radio is nowhere near enough, and even our hypertelescope certainly wouldn't have picked up individual people on a distant asteroid.”

Ron pointed to the lighter. “The best instruments our astronomers have work in infrared. Heat radiation. And what generates heat? Good old chemical oxidation. Combustion! All we need is fuel and oxygen. The fuel is in the lighter's tank, the oxygen is on our backs.”

That was an interesting thought. An instrument like the Giordano Bruno telescope should be able to record such heat generation. It might even be able to measure the heat given off by their bodies. But an artificial flame would certainly improve the chances.

If someone was watching them through such an infrared telescope. Unfortunately, they wouldn't be able to keep the flame lit forever. First they would run out of fuel, then the oxygen in the tanks.

“Of course you realize, Ron, that this will further reduce our breathing air supplies.”

The American nodded. “Maybe I can bring myself to leave our place at the stele only once a week. How long would I have to sit around for?”

“A little longer than an hour.”

“I can manage that. But let's give it a try first. The sooner we give the signal, the sooner someone can be on their way.”

Ron pointed outside, away from the stele, but Liwei shook his head. The fact that the stele slowed down time so much could be an advantage.

“Let's try it in here,” he said. “Then the signal will be visible from the Moon for much longer.”

Ron smacked his helmet. “Of course!”

Liwei picked up the lighter. He saw the disappointed fourteen-year-old in front of him again. He would give anything to be able to take back the words he had said then.

“Can you help me remove the hose from the tank?”

Ron stood behind him. With the air supply in the suit, he could manage for about twenty minutes. That would give a heat signal that should be visible from the moon for almost three hours.

“Okay, I'm ready,” said Liwei.

A warning popped up on the helmet display.

“Oxygen supply critical.”

He still had air. Liwei forced himself not to breathe faster than necessary. Ron pressed the cable into his hand. He held it so that it flowed around the nozzle of the lighter from below. Then he pressed the ignition element. A blue flame shot out of the lighter. He held it high and as close as possible to the stele. That way he could get a few more minutes out of it. It must look like they were paying homage to the god of fire. The flame danced over the black material of the stele, which began to shine.

You can't light a lighter in a vacuum, my ass. What he had told his daughter was nonsense. If only he could tell her about it someday! Liwei observed the flame and the stele at the same time. What at first looked like reflections were now spherical. They were drops of a strange liquid that must first become huge in the low gravity before it trickled down the stele. It could be carbon dioxide, which precipitated like dew in the freezing cold. The fact that it looked black was due to the shadows around it. But perhaps it was also the stele weeping.

Place 3, Time 3

When Jinjin awakened, she was falling. The sensation was so intense that she let out a scream of fright. But the fall didn't stop. She closed her mouth, and her scream moved away from her and transformed into a kind of vapor trail that lingered behind her.

Stay calm. You're stuck in a pillar. None of this is real.

That was easier said than done. What if it was reality? Jinjin almost felt like her heart was going to jump out of her chest. Slow down. The fall had been going on far too long to be a drop from a building. She was simply moving in some unknown way through a strange environment.

Jinjin turned around. She was not alone in this strange room, whose walls were decorated with glowing spirals. Could they be galaxies? She could also see elliptical shapes, ones with bars in the middle, and irregular spots. In addition, there were a few particularly bright objects that looked like single stars, but on closer inspection consisted of billions of individual objects.

Was she flying towards one of these objects? She scrutinized them to detect any parallax but found nothing. The distances seemed much too great. If anything, she was moving away. She took a deep breath. Her initial shock had dissipated. It had become part of the vapor trail she was leaving behind.

Wait a moment. She felt around her helmet. Damn. There was a hole in the right edge of the neck guard, with air leaking out. The vapor trail was real. It must have happened during the transition. The heat she felt might not have been imagined. The universe she found herself in had a very real component in which air froze when it escaped from the helmet.

The condensation trail dried up when she pressed her finger to the hole. That was good news. Please, more of that, she thought. At the same moment, she saw a campfire. It was diagonally below her. That was where she wanted to go. The movement of her body adjusted to this desire. She landed gently next to the fire.

* * *

Where was she? Jinjin dropped to her knees and felt the ground. There was no noticeable structure, at least none that she could feel through her thick gloves. She crawled a little closer to the fire, while grass sprouted under her knees. A soft lawn appeared out of nowhere.

Jinjin looked around. The fire illuminated a flat plain. She could see maybe fifty meters in all directions. Beyond that, the world seemed to end. The sky above her was black. Sparks rose from the fire and mixed with the light of twinkling stars.

There must be air here, an atmosphere. Otherwise, the fire couldn't burn and the stars wouldn't twinkle. She checked the pressure on her arm computer. Exactly one bar, the same as on Earth. The oxygen level was also correct. If this was a trick, she would know immediately, so she loosened the fastening of her helmet and took it off.

The air smelled neutral. She took a deep breath.

“Not good?” a deep, melodious alto voice asked in her native language.

Jinjin jerked around. A creature had stepped out of the darkness towards the fire. It was wearing a cloak that hid most of its face, and seemed to be moving on two legs. There was something hidden under the cloak, and Jinjin wasn't sure if she wanted to know what. But the creature paid no attention to that. It unrolled a single arm that sprouted from the middle of the upper body and divided into four forearms. At their ends, she recognized three-part hands with pointed claws.

Two of them grasped her fingers. Jinjin froze. But the creature’s touch was gentle, almost affectionate. The twelve claws caressed her fingers, forming something reminiscent of a handshake.

“Is this good?” the creature asked.

Whether intentional or not, the veil in front of its face lifted a bit, revealing a compound eye whose individual eyes focused on her. A shiver ran down her spine.

Jinjin cleared her throat. “Yes, it's good.”

The handshake ended. Two of the four arms pointed to the space in front of the fire. There were suddenly two cushions there, with a chessboard between them. However, it had far more than eight by eight squares.

“Please sit down. I tried to be mindful of your tolerance level, but I didn't want to be too easy on you. Please tell me if something is too much for you.”

Jinjin accepted the invitation. The pillow might look plushy, but it was as hard as a rock. She didn't complain.

“Thank you. Where are we?” she asked.

The being made a sound reminiscent of a volcano rumbling. “You certainly start with a difficult question.”

“Sorry.”

“No, that is quite all right. We are on a lump of matter somewhere in the universe.”

“So, this is real?” Jinjin unlocked the fastener that attached one of her gloves to the suit, removed the glove and reached towards the fire. It was hot and crackled. The fuel seemed to be glowing coals.

“We are not in your imagination,” the being replied. “Does that answer your question?”

“Yes. Then it's a...planet?”

“No. It is exactly what you see. An island in space. That is all there is.”

“But a fire...and the atmosphere...that can't be...”

The volcanic rumble sounded again. It was probably something similar to laughter. “But it can. I have defined the laws of nature in such a way that they allow for this constellation. However, you shouldn't stray too far from the fire. There, the conditions are no longer optimal for you.”

The being had defined the laws of nature... Jinjin looked at it. Its compound eye seemed to be looking at the night sky, the fire, and her at the same time. Now it sat down on the second cushion. To do so, it moved its lower body so that it covered the cushion. Jinjin was wrong; it had no legs.

“And who are you?” she asked.

“I am many. We gave up our individuality a long time ago.”

A collective being, then. Probably an entire civilization.

“And what am I seeing?”

“A form tailored to you. It is exotic enough for you to clearly recognize us as different, but still within the limits of your visual habits and your ability to perceive.”

“You look like what I can bear.”

“You could say that, too.”

The creature turned to the fire. Its four hands played with the fuel. Jinjin reached for it as well but flinched back. The heat was real.

“Do you want to touch it?” the being asked. One of its hands reached for a glowing coal, pulled it out of the fire and handed it to her.

Jinjin clasped her hands together.

“It is not dangerous.”

She sighed. “Okay.”

Jinjin didn't want to mess up the first contact again and extended both hands. The being put the glowing stone into them. Jinjin gritted her teeth. But there was only pleasant warmth. She smiled. The creature was influencing the laws of nature while they sat together by the fire. Would humans ever be able to do that? Better that they couldn’t. They would never be able to agree on common laws.

She tossed the stone back into the fire, which flared up briefly.

“Why am I here?” she asked.

The volcanic rumble sounded. “You are asking me?”

Hm. The creature was right. She’d touched the artifact of her own accord.

“I touched a black stele.”

“That may be. Still, that would not necessarily bring you here.”

“You didn't guide me?”

“No. I only learned of your arrival here a few minutes ago, in your time. How was your journey?”

She thought of the terrible feeling of having only two directions to choose from. A shiver ran down her spine.

“At first it was just back and forth. Then I wasn't able to step over a dog. It was a nightmare.”

“Oh.”

“Oh?”

Was that all the being had to say? It seemed frozen. Perhaps the collective needed to coordinate first. Jinjin watched it. It sat perfectly still. Not a muscle moved, not a fiber of its cloak. She reached for the fabric and recoiled. The material was freezing cold, as if cooled with liquid nitrogen. Of course. What sat next to her was not a biological being. It was far beyond that.

The fire flickered. Suddenly, Jinjin couldn't breathe. She reached for her helmet, but she couldn't put it on because her hand was frozen. The being moved. With a sweeping motion of its arm, it threw its cloak into the fire. The air was back. Jinjin took a deep breath and pulled the helmet towards her.

“Sorry,” the being said. “I was a bit distracted. That slightly changed the energy level of our little meeting place here.”

She started to put on her helmet, but one of the four forearms was holding onto it.

“You do not need it. Trust me. It will not happen again.”

Jinjin took a deep breath. Now that the cloak was burning in the fire, she could see the creature's upper body. It consisted of nothing but individual strands resembling plant fibers. It was as if several grass-like plants had combined to form a body.

She put the helmet down. “Why did you give up your individuality?” she asked.

“We had no choice. You do not survive the destruction of a universe by clinging to your individuality.”

“You're not from this universe?”

The volcano rumbled again. “Of course we are part of this reality. But we were born elsewhere.”

“Your skin...those strands...they remind me of organisms from my home world called plants.”

Suddenly, Jinjin got a headache. It was so strong that she pressed her hands against her temples and closed her eyes.

“Oh, sorry,” the being said. “You really are strong individuals. I just wanted to take a quick look at your consciousness to see what these ‘plants’ are.”

“And did you find what you were looking for?”

“Yes, you eat them, burn them, feed them to your livestock...”

“Ah, yes.”

“We were not persecuted like that on our world. We call ourselves Herbae, if you ever come across that name.”

“Do you wish for those times back?”

“Sometimes,” the being replied. “But every universe has its charms. Yours is pleasantly simple in design.”

“By the First Ones?”

The being turned to her. Its compound eye focused on her face. It was strange because she instinctively tried to make eye contact. But with which of the many individual eyes?

“How do you know them?”

She shrugged. “A being named Source told my colleague about the First Ones.”

The being relaxed noticeably. “I see. We've been looking for them for a long time.” It reached for the oversized chessboard lying between them and held it out to her. “They constructed this.” Tiny steles could be seen on the squares.

“What is it?”

“Well, this construction is what differentiates between nothing and everything in this universe.”

“This chessboard?”

“Yes. Your scientists may have already noticed that shortly after the creation of this universe, matter and antimatter should have mutually annihilated each other.”

Jinjin nodded. That puzzle had plagued physicists for a long time.

“Unfortunately, this universe is designed in such a way, in terms of its basic physical values, that it is bound to suffer this fate.”

“But we exist.”

“Correct.” The herbae waved the chessboard. “Therefore. These legendary First Ones apparently emerged in the early phase of this universe, when the density of matter was still enormous. Or they come from an earlier universe, like us, in that they imprinted the starting conditions on it. No matter. In any case, they used their time and built a multidimensional network of projectors in the expanding universe, which distributes conventional matter in the universe from the holosphere. Excuse me if I explain this to you in a somewhat casual way. You would not understand the equations behind it.”

“The stelae are the projectors.” Jinjin shrugged. Liwei had already explained that to them. “Our problem is that we have damaged one of them.”

“You what?” The being's four forearms interlocked.

“We damaged a stele. And now our home world has disappeared.”

“Oh dear. We've never heard of such a case.”

Great. She had considered the strange creature to be a kind of savior in her hour of need.

“I thought you revealed yourself to me in order to help us.”

The being raised its hands defensively. “Visitors arrive here from time to time. When a civilization first discovers a stele, they usually send a representative here. But a damaged stele—we don't remember such a case, at least.”

Jinjin shook her head. “I don't care if you can remember. Can you help us?”

The being froze again. Had she offended it? Jinjin reached for her helmet, but this time, the breathable atmosphere remained. The collective consciousness was presumably deliberating. What might that feel like? What was a single opinion worth in that case, and what happened if the minority was right? Jinjin shifted on the pillow and realized that it had been as soft as a real pillow for a while now. She groped around herself. She couldn't really believe the herbae being when it said that everything here was real. But when she pinched her knee, she felt the pain. The fire now smelled like burning wood, and the glowing stones had turned into logs. Had the being taken these details from her consciousness earlier?

“We can try to help you.”

The being had been absent for so long that Jinjin was startled by his words.

“Do you know what contributed to this decision?”

Jinjin shook her head. Basically, she didn't care either way. “Pity for our fate?” she tried.

The volcano rumbled. “You're responsible for that now.”

She couldn't contradict the herbae on that. “Then what?”

“In the universe in which we originated, we met beings who were quite similar to you. They called themselves Kepler and Zhenyi.”

“That's funny. Zhenyi was a famous astronomer from my people, and Kepler was also an astronomer. But both have been dead for hundreds of years.”

“The Zhenyi and Kepler we knew have been dead for at least 13.8 billion years of your time. So you couldn't have met them. But they helped us a lot by saving our planet from destruction.”

Was the creature making this up to test her somehow? Or did coincidences like that really exist? Maybe it had taken the names from her consciousness. But why? Jinjin brushed these thoughts aside. The main thing was that humanity got help.

“How can you help us?” she asked.

The herbae waved the chessboard. The tiny stelae on it wobbled back and forth but didn't leave the squares to which they are assigned.

“This...map contains the locations of all the stelae.”

“This board here?”

“Yes. You only see a three-dimensional section of it because you can't grasp the eleven dimensions in which the structure was created by the First Ones.”

“I see.” Actually, she didn't understand, but she didn't want to admit it so as not to lose face. The main thing was that she got help.

The being touched the map with all four forearms at the same time. It swept over it at an impressive speed. The boxes seemed to move. When they reached the edge, they dissolved along with the tiny columns. New fields appeared on the opposite side. The creature was presumably looking for the column responsible for the projection of the Earth. But shouldn't that take forever? There were hundreds of millions of stars and just as many planets in the Milky Way alone—or more.

“How long do you think it will take?” she asked. “The fact is, my friends on 2004 GU9 only have a limited supply of air left.”

“Time is not an issue,” the being explained. “We can move in any time-like dimension until we take on a form in your four-dimensional space-time again.”

Jinjin rocked her head back and forth. The herbae were at a level of civilization that humanity would not reach for millions of years.

“Couldn't we just turn back time to the moment before the stele was destroyed?”

“No. We are only free here. In your space-time, causality still applies. We need to look at what is wrong with the new stele. Normally, there is a smooth transition when one of the stelae fails.”

The creature continued to touch the chessboard. It looked like it was playing a musical instrument. After a while, it turned the board around and swiped in the other direction. Then it turned the chessboard again. No, it had mirrored the board on the central diagonal. That was not possible with a physical object. At least not with an object from her reality.

Finally, it placed the board between them. The squares had grown significantly. Now it really looked like a chessboard. The individual squares were even colored differently, but in more than two tones.

“The colors signal the different functions,” explained the herbae. “And look, here's the problem.”

With three fingers of one arm, it pointed to the center of the chessboard. There, two squares of the same color bordered each other. The stelae, which were placed on each square like chess pawns, had positioned themselves at opposite edges, as if they were repelling each other.

“Two of the same color, that's not allowed, is it?” Jinjin asked.

The being tried to push the two steles closer together, but to no avail. “Yes, the damaged stele might be the problem. It still occupies its field, even if it can no longer completely recreate your home planet. This means that the replacement stele on the asteroid cannot take effect.”

“So, we have to get rid of the remains of the stele as well.”

“That could solve the problem.”

“Could?”

The being had put its arm around its neck. It was so long that it looked like a real scarf. “We did not build the system. So, there are no guarantees.”

Jinjin scratched her head. There was enough nuclear fuel in the base for one reactor—or one bomb. But not for two. How were they supposed to get rid of the remains of the stele?

“We used a fission bomb to destroy the first stele. But there probably isn't another one on the Moon.”

The herbae unwrapped the scarf from its neck again. Then it stoked the fire with its four forearms. “I am sorry, but we cannot help you there either. Maybe the energy required is not as high as the first time.”

Maybe. Jinjin bit her lower lip. It was not an optimal solution. But was she entitled to one? After all, they now knew a possible way to fix the problem.

“Thank you, Herbae,” she said.

“Do not thank us until it has worked.”

The being made the fire flare up again.

“And how do I get back now?” Jinjin asked.

“Just do it. Go back.”

She closed her eyes and imagined Liwei and Ron waiting for her in front of the stele at 2004 GU9. Then she opened her eyes again. She was sitting in front of the fire. Alone.

“Hey, where are you? It's not working.”

She got no answer. The herbae creature was gone. Had it lied to her or even tricked her? What then should she think of its other advice?

Slow down, Jinjin. Focus on your orders, Li Guofeng would have advised her. She was imagining what it was like at the stele. That was not what the creature advised her to do.

Just do it.

She got up, put on her helmet, closed it, and thought of a door in the void. She opened the door, crossed the threshold—and immediately staggered into the reality of 2004 GU9, where Ron caught her.

Dewar Crater, March 16, 2082

The surface of the Moon opened up. A hole barely the size of his head expanded into a cavity at least fifty meters across. Even in retrospect, Ernie got the creeps when he realized how thin the lunar soil was they’d been driving the rover around on, without suspecting the danger below them.

The cave below the surface had certainly not been created by flowing magma. It must be a result of the explosion triggered at the stele. When Ernie zoomed out, the cave looked like a pimple on the moon's bald skin. Like an inflamed hair follicle, this hole was not empty, but filled with an unknown substance. It must be this substance that accelerated any object placed over the small opening in the crater.

Ernie took a deep breath. There was no danger at the moment. They had moved the rover about five kilometers away from the crater, at the bottom of which lurked the cavity. Here the residual radiation from the explosion was tolerable. Popov was snoring in the back of the rover. Ernie had intended to lie down too, but the noise was keeping him awake. Maybe he could sleep later while Popov was driving him back. They just had to wait for Antonia to give the all-clear once she had all the data she needed.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, the relay satellite appeared over the horizon. Popov was still asleep, but Ernie couldn't take that into consideration.

“Ernie to MIGI, come in.”

“Antonia here.” He heard barking. “Quiet, Bree.” The dog obeyed him.

Ernie was happy to hear his colleague's voice. He couldn't really have a good conversation with Popov. Their interests were too different.

“It's good to hear you,” he said.

“Likewise. Sokolov is getting on my nerves a bit.”

“I can understand that.” He didn't want to mention Popov's name in case he heard, which was unavoidable in the rover.

“There's good news,” Antonia said.

That was what Ernie wanted to hear. “We can come back?”

“Yes, we now have enough data on the remains of the stele. In retrospect... I don't know if I should tell you this...”

Ernie laughed. “Do you mean how thin the ground is near the hole? I've already reconstructed that from the neutron scanner data myself.”

Antonia swallowed. “Sorry. Imagining what would have happened if the ground had caved in…”

“What would have happened?”

“I think you would now be traveling at high speed into space. The stuff filling this cavity has very strange properties. So strange that we don't even know what it is.”

“What's strange about it?”

“Well, at first glance it looks like the hole is completely empty. But there is a density of matter in it greater than that of the surface of the moon. And then…you have to see this.”

The computer reported a transmission, which it confirmed. An image of the hole and the cavity below it appeared on the screen. A hatched mass slowly emerged.

“What am I seeing?” Ernie asked.

“That's the substance I'm talking about. It has a high density and is quite viscous. Although it is under a great deal of pressure, causing the explosive repulsion of normal matter, it is only emerging from the opening very slowly. It will take several hundred years for the pressure to equalize.”

“Substance?”

“I don't know what else to call it. It interacts with normal matter, so it can't be dark matter as we define it. Rather, it's something like the skin of a neutron star that has somehow been stabilized. It's like a clear soup thickened with starch.”

“I’d be able to see soup.”

“That's right. This soup has an albedo of zero. It absorbs all the photons it can get.”

Under normal circumstances, this would be an absolute sensation. Researchers from all over the world would study it. The substance would have the potential to advance physics considerably. But without the Earth, it was all for nothing.

“Do you think knowledge of it will help us in any way?”

“I'm sorry, Ernie, but it doesn't look like it. It's like the scrap metal left over from a traffic accident. It teaches us something about how the car was constructed, but it doesn't help undo the accident.”

He didn't like the comparison, but he couldn't think of a better one.

“Sokolov is supposedly on to something,” said Antonia. “He's been promising that for a while now, but with the data from Qudice 4, it could really happen. If anyone can find a solution, it's our physics genius.”

Ernie sighed. He didn't feel comfortable depending on Sokolov. The man certainly didn’t focus enough on teamwork.

“All right, then. I’ll wake Popov up and we'll head back. But please, as soon as your clever Sokolov has some results, you'll get back to us, yes?”

“I promise.”

“And before you make any decisions. Even if it's urgent and we can't be reached.”

“I'll see what I can do.”

* * *

“A soup that swallows all photons?” Popov asked. “Shouldn't it be totally black?”

“No. The fact that you can see a surface means that photons from that surface are hitting your photoreceptors. However, if no photons are emitted, nothing can hit your eye, and you see...nothing.”

“Hm. Sounds interesting. Stuff like that must be really fascinating.”

Ernie nodded. He had been thinking about that earlier. Under other circumstances, this material would be extremely exciting for terrestrial technology. You could build solar panels with the highest possible efficiency, or radar-absorbing shields for the military.

“Well, in that case, why don't we get a sample?” Popov grinned, but he seemed to be absolutely serious about it.

“Come here.” Ernie showed him the image of the cavity on the computer display. “It's a miracle we didn't cause a cave-in.”

Now that he said it himself, the sentence seemed contradictory to him. Antonia also claimed that the substance was under pressure and had an enormous density. But then the danger would not be that the cavity would collapse, but that the stuff would erupt from it like from a volcano, or a ripe pimple.

“But we didn't break through,” said Popov, the old pragmatist. “If we sneak up on foot this time, we should be pretty safe.”

Pretty safe. Popov was apparently one of those old-school cosmonauts for whom eighty percent certainty was enough, and who were bored by a mere five percent risk. They simply knew too little about the substance.

“Antonia thinks that contact with ordinary matter leads to the repulsion reactions we have experienced.”

“But what is this?” Popov pointed to a flat, hatched lake at the bottom of the crater.

“That's the substance. It's slowly creeping out of the hole.”

“Without a repulsion reaction, or did you notice something there?”

Popov was right. It must be possible to avoid the repulsion. It was probably the speed of change. Dust that had settled very slowly had not been thrown off. Action equals reaction, Newton's principle. Ernie nodded.

“Well observed, colleague. It should actually be possible to collect some of it.”

Popov crawled through the rover. Was he looking for his spacesuit? No, he came back with a cylindrical cardboard box that previously contained potato chips.

“What do you want with that?” Ernie asked, although he already suspected the answer.

“For the soup,” Popov replied.

“How do we prevent it from moving around too much?”

“We fill it to the brim. Then put the lid on, so the stuff can't slosh around.” Popov showed him a plastic lid. “Should be tight enough. You said the stuff is very chewy.”

Ernie looked at the cardboard box. Filling it with a previously unknown substance and then transporting it to the base in the rover, what could possibly go wrong?

He shook his head. “Antonia would never allow that.”

Popov opened his eyes wide. “Is she your boss?”

Ernie shook his head. “If we have different opinions, we usually agree on a compromise. But this is far too dangerous for her.”

“Don't ask her. Then you don't have to take her opinion into account.”

Ernie tried to establish a connection to the MIGI base, but the computer reported that no relay was available at the moment.

“You see, that's a sign,” Popov said.

Ernie took a deep breath. He really couldn't ask right now. And instead of waiting for the connection to be reestablished, they could go collect a little of the substance. Who knew what it might be good for?

“Let's go, then. We have to fill your can before the connection is reestablished.”

* * *

While Ernie was in the rover doing pre-breathing, Popov steered the vehicle closer to the crater. The plan was to avoid the immediate vicinity of the cavity in case it was in danger of collapsing or erupting. However, they had to collect the substance near the hole where they installed the neutron scanner yesterday.

The rover stopped.

“Are we there already?” Ernie asked.

“Have you lost your nerve?” Popov shook the cardboard box. “If necessary, I'll do it alone.”

“No, but what about your training?”

“I'm resistant to decompression sickness,” Popov explained.

Ernie grimaced. He had heard that kind of thing before. But if Popov didn't care about his health, that was his business. “Let's go, before Antonia calls again and asks where we are.”

* * *

The rover stopped in the neighboring crater. Ernie walked around the vehicle, opened the toolbox and took out the sampling arm. This was an extendable rod with a three-fingered hand at the end that could be remotely controlled from the other end. He extended the tool completely, which gave it a reach of about three meters.

He walked over with it to Popov, who had already climbed the low crater rim, and tapped him on the shoulder with the metal hand. Popov jerked around and laughed.

“Give me the can,” said Ernie.

Popov held it up. Ernie aimed and let the three artificial fingers grasp the can.

“Looks good,” said Popov. “No dents in sight.”

Popov took the lid out of the tool bag of his space suit and waved it. “Come on, let's collect some of this stuff.” He climbed over the ridge of the crater and trotted down a few meters on the other side. Then he stopped and shone his helmet lamp into the valley.

“Nothing to see. Are you sure the stuff is here?”

Ernie looked up at the sky. The sun had not yet risen. The whole valley basin was in shadow.

“Wait, Popov.”

But Popov didn't wait. He just kept descending. Ernie bent down, picked up a stone and threw it so that it hit the ground a few meters in front of Popov. The stone flew in an elongated parabola. At the moment it should have rolled in the dust, it shot up at enormous speed.

Popov halted. “Whew!” He turned the spotlight back and forth. “But there's nothing there.”

“Think about it. Yesterday we set up the neutron scanner here. Do you see it anywhere?”

The spotlight moved across the terrain. No scanner was visible.

“It's gone,” said Popov.

“But it's still sending data,” said Ernie.

“Govno. For the military, that ooze would be worth a mint.”

“Or for energy generation,” said Ernie.

“Whatever. We have to bring some back with us.”

Ernie grimaced. Popov didn't seem to realize that the demand for such a substance on Earth was currently zero. But he didn't contradict him.

“We'll do it as discussed,” said Ernie.

“All right.” Popov squatted down and picked up some moon dust. Then he hurled it in the direction of the valley. The dust initially spread out into a thin curtain until a force smashed a breach into it.

Where the force had its root, the liquid would be. Ernie lowered the pole with the can very slowly. The closer he got to the invisible substance, the slower he moved. After a while, it got exhausting. He hadn't even reached the layer yet. But then, all of a sudden, the lower part of the can disappeared. He held it still.

“Aren't you going to go deeper?” Popov asked.

“No.” Ernie had a suspicion, and it was confirmed. Although he was holding the can in the same place, it was slowly blurring.

“The tide is rising,” commented Popov, taking two steps back.

“No, the substance is superfluid. It rises up the can by itself.”

“Then how will we know it's full?”

A good question. He couldn't check an invisible can. Unless... Slowly, very slowly, Ernie moved the rod with the can deeper into the reservoir until it was completely submerged. Nevertheless, he should wait a little. The substance would be viscous, Antonia had said. It would take time to fill the can. And it had to be filled to the brim so that the substance couldn't slosh around.

The only problem was that the substance was also creeping up the gripper arm during this process. It still had two meters to go, but it crept quickly and made the metal disappear centimeter by centimeter. What would happen to his hands when the substance reached them? Ernie would rather not test that. But he mustn't panic and drop the can, or pull it out of the reservoir too quickly.

“I think it's full now,” said Popov, shining a flashlight into the void.

What made him think that? But he could be right. If he wasn't, it was Popov's bad luck, anyway. Ernie very carefully turned the rod so that it pointed in his direction.

Popov held up the lid. “Govno, how am I supposed to get the lid on if I can't see it?”

“Slowly. Very gently. Imagine there's a spiderweb and you have to touch it so that the spider doesn't notice.”

Popov slowly moved his hand towards where he suspected the bar to be. There! Ernie felt a slight counter-pressure. That must be Popov's hand moving down the invisible bar.

“I got it,” Popov whispered. His other hand, the right one that was holding the lid, approached. It carefully placed the lid on the nothing and pressed it down. Suddenly Ernie noticed that Popov's left hand had disappeared, up to the wrist.

“Don't be alarmed,” said Ernie. “But your hand...”

“I know. But I can still move it, and I can feel it. The neutron scanner is still there, too, remember. Don't worry.”

Ernie took a deep breath. He was not worried about Popov's hand disappearing. It was just invisible. But if he suddenly clenched it into a fist or hit something with it, the substance might react. In the worst case, it could rip his hand off.

“I don't want to...” Ernie tried.

“Then don't.”

Okay, that was a clear order. He turned around with the sample arm and walked slowly to the rover. The liquid released more and more of the metal arm as he did so. It was almost as if it evaporated when it was no longer near its source. It was probably a fairly similar process—the exosphere above the surface of the substance must have become enriched with portions of the liquid. But the further you moved away, the lower the concentration became. It was like carrying a glass of water from a lake into a desert. After a while it evaporated.

“Be careful with your hand,” he said.

“It's completely visible again,” Popov replied.

They reached the rover. The chip box was now fully visible again too.

“What do we do with it?” Ernie asked.

“In the tool compartment?” Popov suggested. “If it does explode, we have a good chance of survival.”

Ernie shook his head. They couldn't cushion it well enough in the toolbox. And on the Moon, no one could drive without jolting. “I'll take the can with me.”

“Whatever you say.”

“I think a person can hold it more safely and gently.”

“You don't have to get defensive, Ernie. If you think you can do it better, I trust you.”

Popov was probably not just saying that, because if Ernie dropped the can in the rover, they would probably both die. Popov opened the bulkhead and gestured him in. Ernie accepted, while Popov took care of the lock and then helped him out of his spacesuit. All so that Ernie didn't have to let go of the can. A few minutes later, Popov was at the controls. He had just started the engine when the computer came on. Antonia wanted to talk to them.

“How far along are you?” she asked.

Popov didn't answer. “We left almost an hour ago,” Ernie lied.

“So, no problems?”

“No, none.”

“Very good. I was getting worried. The substance seems to have risen far enough to reach your last position. If you were still there, you would have to be extremely careful. This substance has enormous energy density. It's pure dynamite."

Ernie's hand, in which he was holding the can, was heating up.

“Well, like Ernie said, we left there a long time ago. Don't worry about it.” Popov grinned like a little boy who has tricked his teacher.

“Understood. I wish you a safe trip.”

“Did Sokolov finally deliver?” Ernie asked, staring at the chip box. How did he ever get the idea of bringing this substance on board?

“Not yet. But he's supposedly close.”

“He says that every time.”

“But this time he's calculating simulations he can use to show us his findings. I'll get back to you. Drive carefully.”

The connection broke.

“Just drive carefully,” said Ernie, imagining the wheels of the rover grinding through the substance.

* * *

Popov whistled a song while steering the rover across the lunar surface with economical movements. They were lucky that the crater was covered with a thick layer of dust, due to its proximity to the destroyed stele. It was like driving through fresh snow.

Popov was apparently deliberately choosing a route away from the tracks they had left on the way here. That was clever. The thick tires barely penetrated the dust layer. They turned, but thanks to the low gravity, the entire vehicle tended to slide over the ground, so only minimal forces were likely to arise.

The fact that they hadn't yet flown up into the sky was the best proof of this. Ernie held the can of substance in his arms like a baby. But if an accident did happen, that wouldn't help. He imagined the substance tearing through their two bodies and coating the inner walls of the rover. Ernie swallowed. Well, maybe it would rip the vehicle apart completely.

“Careful, my friend,” Popov said.

There was nothing to be afraid of on the camera image, but Ernie had seen what Popov meant on the radar screen. They were approaching the ridge of the second crater. Beyond that, they should be safe from the substance. But when the vehicle crossed the crater rim, it wouldn't be so easy.

Ernie got ready. He tightened his seatbelt, braced himself with his feet against the floor and pressed the can against his chest so that it was protected all around. Popov counted down from ten.

“Three, two, one.”

The rover leaped forward. It hovered in the air for a moment, and then the front end tipped down. Ernie compensated for the movement so that the can didn't get jostled. But soon the front wheels would hit the ground, which was surely covered with less dust here. He couldn't compensate for the change in momentum. But he could make it smoother. He followed the descent in the camera image and started compensating just before they hit the ground, pushing down slowly and only ending the movement when Popov started whistling a new song in relief.

“Whew,” said Ernie, wiping sweat from his brow. At that moment, the right front wheel hit a rock. The right half of the vehicle shot up. The can took advantage of the fact that Ernie was wiping his brow. It escaped him, flying in a high arc through the rover. Ernie couldn't go after it. He had to unbuckle his seatbelt first. Popov was faster. He must have had his seatbelt off the whole time. He shot out of his seat and dove for the can, elegantly positioning his body between it and the wall, and caught the chip container nimbly like a goalkeeper catching a penalty kick.

“Here you go…” he started to say, just as Ernie saw another obstacle on the radar screen and shouted. Popov was too far away, but at least his belt was undone, so he jumped into the driver’s seat, took the wheel and steered the rover around the rock at the last second.

“Good reactions,” Popov praised and returned to his seat. Ernie nodded. He had to keep his eye on the screen until Popov took over again. Suddenly Popov tossed the can toward him.

“Are you...?” Ernie, deeply frightened, threw his arms up and caught the dangerous container with both hands.

Popov laughed. “Good reactions, as I said.” He took over the wheel again, while Ernie, breathing heavily, retreated to his seat.

The computer came on. The call was from MIGI.

“Antonia here.” Her voice sounded strange. Ernie heard her swallow. “Sorry. I’m in the middle of cooking.”

“We probably won't make it in time for dinner,” said Ernie.

“No problem. Sokolov wants to tell us something.”

“I'm looking forward to it.”

Orbital Station Blue, March 16, 2082

Sebastiano tightened the strap of the tool bag.

“You ready?” Doug asked.

“Yeah, almost.” He would have to open the satellite to get in. “Okay, I'm ready to go.”

“All right. Let me take a quick look.”

Sebastiano gave Doug the go-ahead. Green lights flashed on his helmet as Doug worked his way through an electronic checklist. His friend would have liked to do this EVA too, but Sebastiano had rolled a six on the dice.

“Looks good,” Doug commented. “Everything's in the green.”

“Then I'll open the outer hatch.” The lamp next to it also lit up green. Sebastiano pressed the button. The panel turned orange. That was an error message. Sebastiano sighed. Had Doug missed something? He pressed buttons until the error text appeared on the screen.

“Safety not engaged,” the system complained.

“Your safety is not engaged,” said Doug.

Sebastiano was getting hot. He grabbed his belt, found the leash and pulled it tight.

“It's latched!” he called. He didn't make mistakes like that. Very reassuring. Suddenly something struck him on the back. He staggered away. Sebastiano saw an outline. Was there someone else in the lock? The panel was now glowing green. All the fuses seemed to be latched. Who snuck into the lock?

“Doug, seal the door, now!”

But it was too late. A massive body was rolling through the black crack created by the opening door.

“Forget it, Doug. We're too late.”

Damn. Who was that? The bulkhead stopped moving for a moment, then opened further. Sebastiano jumped through the gap and let himself be carried outside until the safety device caught him.

The other person didn't dare to emerge that far. He was floating on the outer hull of the station and seemed to be taking in the view. Sebastiano pulled himself over to him on the line and looked into the helmet.

It was Rodriguez, despite the mirrored glass. He tapped him on the shoulder. Rodriguez moved his mouth, but Sebastiano heard nothing. He showed the man the frequency they used for EVAs on his wristwatch. Shortly thereafter, he heard the heavy breathing of the Mexican.

“What are you doing out here?” Sebastiano asked.

"Seeing for myself what's going on.”

“We already explained that. We're getting replacement parts from that satellite over there, so you can talk to your families again.”

“We don't believe you. Something is very wrong here.”

“So you stole an EVA suit and hid in the airlock?”

“It wasn't that hard. They only lock the outer bulkhead.”

Damn. The tourists liked to use the lock as an additional space for sports. They hadn't wanted to forbid them from doing that. The mood was bad enough already. This was what they got! But so far nothing had happened. Rodriguez couldn't even have noticed what the real problem was.

“Mr. Rodriguez, you've had your fun, so please go back into the lock now. Otherwise I can't carry out my assignment.”

Rodriguez shook his head. “I'm not leaving until I know what's wrong here.”

“There's nothing wrong. But really, this isn't how it's done. You're violating all the guidelines. Did you even go through a pre-breathing phase? This could kill you! But if you cooperate now, we'll at least refrain from taking further measures.”

“Measures? Oh, I'm so afraid of that.” Rodriguez got up and began crawling slowly over the outer skin of the station. “I'll go make sure everything's okay now, on behalf of my fellow travelers. After that, I'll re-enter the lock. You can watch me, or just ignore me and do your job. Your choice. I won't sue you for it, don't worry.”

“I can't leave you alone under any circumstances.”

“Then accompany me, Mr. Guarini. I really appreciate your work here! Please don't take this the wrong way. We suspect that your employer is forcing you to withhold something important from us.”

“And what would that be? That's nonsense. You can see for yourself that the station is in good shape. Do you see any damage? Look, there's no reason to worry. You're just preventing me from solving the antenna problem.”

Rodriguez continued to crawl unperturbed. Let him say what he wants, he must be thinking. And how right he was. A lot of things were wrong. But maybe they would get lucky, and the man wouldn't notice. Who would have expected the Earth to disappear? Sebastiano followed him. Maybe he should talk to Rodriguez. That would distract him.

“Please always fasten the new one first,” he tried. “Yes, you're doing well. Is this your first EVA?”

“Yes.”

The Mexican was really doing a good job. EVAs were only practiced in a water tank, which was not the same. The inflexible gloves alone could be a problem. Of course, you could tell that Rodriguez was afraid, just from the fact that he was crawling on all fours. He also always kept his safety lines too short, so he had to reposition them often.

“A little to the left now,” said Sebastiano. “Otherwise we'll get too close to the thruster.”

“But that's what I want.”

“You think we have a thruster malfunction? Look.”

Sebastiano got up and pulled Rodriguez up as well so that he could see the thruster nozzles. The ceramic material glistened whitish in the light of the helmet lamp.

“They look moldy,” said Rodriguez.

“Seriously?”

“No, of course not, just visually. I believe you that they work. Please lower me down again.”

He let the man sink back down to his knees. Rodriguez grabbed the nearest rung and clung to it. Sebastiano called up his biodata. The man was extremely agitated. His pulse was at a hundred and forty.

“You have to calm down,” he said, “or you'll pass out on me.”

“I'm trying. It's just very unusual out here. With every step, you risk falling into nothingness.”

“As long as you use the safety device, nothing can happen.”

Rodriguez nodded. Sebastiano knelt next to him and pressed him against the station with his hand. Feeling the contact helped to prevent panic during an EVA.

He gave him three minutes, then asked, “Shall we continue slowly?”

Rodriguez nodded. “How much further is it?”

“We're on the side opposite the lock.”

Sebastiano could see on his monitor how Rodriguez's breathing was accelerating. He held him by the shoulder, even squeezed it a little to distract him. It worked. Side by side, they crawled around the station. Rodriguez's gaze was fixed on his own hands. This way, he was guaranteed not to notice that the Earth was not where it should be.

They reached the airlock without further incident. Sebastiano helped Rodriguez inside.

“Left leg first, then the right.”

“But there's nothing there. I'll fall.”

“You fall all the time. It's microgravity.”

“That's not helpful.” Rodriguez made a sound that was part laugh, part sigh.

“You know the airlock. You'll be fine if you just slide in.”

Sebastiano tried to loosen the man's fingers, which were gripping the bulkhead frame. It was hard, like little vices.

“You have to let go. It'll just be a moment, then…”

“I can't.”

“Okay, we'll wait a moment.” Sebastiano gently stroked over Rodriguez's gloves. Very gently. He saw the muscles relax. “See? There you go. Now try to push off very gently.”

“I...” Rodriguez made the mistake of turning around. Immediately his pulse rose again. Yes, the open hatch looked like an infinitely deep hole. Sebastiano never had a particularly good feeling about jumping into it either.

“Why does everything have to be so dark out here?” Rodriguez asked.

“Well, we're on the dark side.” Sebastiano looked at his face in the helmet. It was white and covered in sweat.

“But what about Earth? Shouldn't it be below us?”

Damn. He noticed after all. “No, it's on the other side. You could have seen it if you hadn't been looking at your hands the whole time.”

“I wasn't. Don't give me that nonsense, Mr. Guarini. On the other side was the sun, but not the Earth, and it's not here either.”

The man's body tensed up. What was he planning? Suddenly he pulled himself forward by the bulkhead frame and shot himself out into space until the safety line stopped him. His pulse was racing. For a moment, Sebastiano hoped he would have a heart attack, then was ashamed of the wish. Without a word, he pulled Rodriguez back in on the line until they were hanging next to each other on the bulkhead.

Neither of them said anything. What should he tell Rodriguez? The Earth was gone. No one knew why.

“What do we really want here at this satellite?” the Mexican asked.

“Information. Supposedly data is stored here that could help us get out of this situation.”

“Who's 'us'?”

“A few people on the Moon, an astronaut on the Lunar Gateway, us here.”

“That's all that's left of humanity? And you call this a 'situation'? This is a fucking disaster.”

“There is hope. A new stele has appeared, and then there is also this data…”

“You call that hope? Tell me the truth! Earth has disappeared. Why didn't you tell us? Are we all doomed now? We are doomed, I can see it on your face!”

Sebastiano sighed. It was really a bit too small a hope to cling to. But it was enough for him. It helped him to move on.

“Look, we wanted to spare you that. Do you feel better now that you know?”

“Better? Ha-ha. No. Of course not.”

“You don't have to tell your friends.”

Rodriguez wouldn't go for it, but he could at least try.

“I can't bring myself to do that. It'll come out in a few days anyway. The transport with the spare parts for the antenna will never arrive, will it?”

“No. But maybe the Earth will be back by then. Think about yourself. Does knowing the truth help you?”

“Help? I'm totally distraught. I still can't believe it. It's awful, absolutely awful!”

“And so you want to plunge your friends into despair, too?”

“That's not the point. They should have the chance to have their own reaction to what's going on here.”

Sebastiano gave up. How often had he wished he didn't know about the catastrophe? But it was difficult to decide for others.

“You have to do what you think is right. But I would ask that you at least don't interfere with our attempts to save Earth, however hopeless they may seem to you.”

Rodriguez looked up at him. He had tears in his eyes. “Agreed.”

“Good. Now let go of the frame of the bulkhead and wait in the lock until I have retrieved the data from the satellite. Doug, can you hear me?”

“I'm listening,” Doug replied.

“You got all that?”

Doug cleared his throat. “Yes. You did everything right.”

“Thanks. I'm on my way to Qudice 4 now.”

* * *

The satellite that was his target couldn't be seen. However, Sebastiano had a blue cross on his helmet display to show him the direction. But first he needed his vehicle, which was parked outside. He checked on Rodriguez to make sure he was okay. Then he climbed along the hull towards the bow. It had been a long time since he was out and about in the flying chair. Way back when, when it was still new, he’d taken a trip in it. But space was not that exciting so far from Earth.

The screws that secured the garage were still easy to turn. Nothing rusted out here. He flipped open the lid. He could see the underside of the vehicle. In the middle was the main nozzle, which provided propulsion. The much smaller correction nozzles were distributed around it in a star shape. He checked the fuel level in the tank, which was at one hundred percent. Then he detached the hose that filled the tanks with gas. It wiggled its head like a worm and retreated into the innards of the spaceship.

Sebastiano grabbed the bottom part and pulled. The vehicle was L-shaped. He turned it around so that it floated next to him like a seat. After unfolding two armrests from the sides, he fastened his seatbelt. His legs dangled. He thought that was a design flaw back then, but nobody asked him. The engineers justified it by saying that the engines only ejected cold gas. It was a pure impulse drive; nothing down there could harm his legs.

He reached for the joysticks at the ends of the armrests. These controlled the vehicle in space. Anyone who had ever played a computer game knew how it worked. Sebastiano had played a lot of games during his first years on the station.

The thruster responded well. The tether tightened. He tilted forward. The blue cross moved around on the helmet display. He used the correction jets to center it.

“Ready for takeoff,” he said.

“Have fun.”

Sebastiano released the tether and took off.

* * *

The most impressive thing about Qudice 4 was the antennas. When the sun was in the right position, the satellite sparkled like a diamond from a distance. It was a small miracle. Sebastiano glided through the void towards a precious stone that probably no one had seen the way he had, and that no one would ever see again. Here in the geostationary orbit there were no other stations with people in them.

Perhaps Qudice 4 owed its overwhelming beauty to the fact that the Earth had disappeared. In the past, every artificial object paled in comparison to the blue-green sphere, both literally and figuratively. Now the satellite seemed like a fairytale promise, the castle of a prince, which he was finally approaching.

With distance, the fascination also faded. The glittering surfaces revealed their true nature—multiple perforated antennas constructed of metal, not precious stones. They were arranged so that they were out of sight of each other as much as possible. The Qudice satellites provided everything flying in Earth orbit with quantum keys. So they had to be able to communicate with as many satellites as possible at the same time, which explained the large field of antennas surrounding them.

Up close, they looked a bit like insect wings. The engineers had given them shapes that seemed partly biological. Sebastiano imagined Qudice 4 setting up its antennas and flitting away. He smiled. It was good that he won the trip. It had been a long time since he had been able to admire such complex beauty.

“According to my data, you should be right about there now,” said Doug.

“Yes, that's right. I'm looking for the access point.”

Since the satellite bristled with antennas like a hedgehog, its surface was not easy to reach. Sebastiano needed three circuits to find the clue the manual had given them. At one point, two antennas stood directly opposite each other like bulls squaring up for a fight. It should be possible to use the space between them to maneuver very close to the actual satellite.

However, he would have to get out of the chair to do that. Sebastiano hovered very close and turned the flying chair, but still couldn't fit through the opening.

“Doug? It looks like I'll have to continue on foot.”

“Are you sure? If an antenna is in the way, you can just remove or bend it. Nobody needs the satellite anymore.”

Sebastiano remembered the sparkling crystal. No, he couldn't bring himself to damage it. Qudice 4 was one of the few beautiful things that humanity would leave behind. Maybe someday aliens would visit this part of the universe, admire the construction, and wonder who built it here of all places, and where its creators disappeared to.

“No, I'll get out,” said Sebastiano. “It's less complicated.”

“Whatever you say.”

An antenna came into range. Sebastiano grabbed it and pulled himself and the flying chair closer. Then he unhooked himself and attached the line of his flying machine to one of the antennas. He felt a bit like a cowboy hitching his horse in front of the saloon before he encountered his nemesis. He climbed down the antenna until he felt the angular body of the satellite under his feet. Directions were, of course, relative here. His internal coordinate system considered Qudice 4 to be the center of the world. In fact, the absence of the Earth made movement easier, since he didn't constantly feel like he was hanging upside down from the sky. With the Earth below him, it was not easy to force the brain to rethink.

The access to the satellite's electronics was located near the altitude control system. He discovered its nozzles exactly at the moment when they started firing again. The satellite threw him off like a bucking horse. Take it easy, Sebastiano. The altitude control worked autonomously. It probably registered the increase of inertial mass and adjusted the orbit accordingly.

Another jolt. This time he was flying in a different direction. Was that still normal?

“Doug? This thing is wriggling under me.”

"Oh, didn't I tell you? It was that movement that gave Antonia the idea that Qudice 4 might contain some kind of data. Someone programmed a signal into it.”

He couldn't remember Doug mentioning that. But the bursts were weak enough that it shouldn't prevent him from connecting to the memory. He pulled himself back on the line. Now that he knew what was in store for him, he’d just hold on a little tighter.

He slowly crawled towards the access point. It was hiding behind a maintenance hatch. To open it, he only had to push a lever to the side. Behind it were several sockets. Sebastiano pulled the data cable out of the sleeve of his EVA suit. It fit into the left socket. He connected to it. A tinkling sound indicated that the suit's software had found a new device. He now had the choice between an interactive connection, where he could give commands, and a pure data backup. Antonia needed the data. He started the transfer.

That was easy. He should complete his task in five minutes. From the station, they would then transmit the data to the moon.

“Doug? Mission accomplished.”

No answer. The connection was established, though. So it was not the station or him.

“Doug? What's going on?"

Nothing. Did this have something to do with Rodriguez? Hopefully not. Or had the change that made Earth disappear now reached the station too? But it was orbiting at the same altitude as Qudice 4. That couldn't be.

He had to get back quickly. Sebastiano watched intently as the data from the satellite's memory was transferred to his suit. Hopefully it was worth it. But they wouldn't know that until he had transmitted it all to the moon.

“Transfer complete.”

Very good. He pulled out the plug and closed the maintenance access. He then made his way through the forest of antennas. He ended up at the two antennas, facing each other like bulls. This was where he had attached the flying chair. But it was no longer there. Sebastiano was getting hot. The line—he’d put it loosely around the antenna, as if his flying chair were a horse. He hadn't known yet that Qudice 4 was constantly shaking. The line must have come loose in the process.

“Doug? I've got a problem."

Doug didn't answer. Damn, damn, damn. He would have to fix it himself. Slowly. The aircraft couldn't be far away. He just had to find it. With the small differential impulse it had received, it must be orbiting above or below the path along which the satellite moved. Sebastiano climbed back to the maintenance access. He reconnected the cable. This time he selected interactive mode. Now he could determine the satellite's fate. But all he wanted was a little angular momentum. He actually managed to address a single one of the control nozzles. It fired and set the satellite into slow rotation.

Sebastiano turned on his helmet light and looked up. The stars passed by in time with the satellite's rotation. And a white object. The flying chair! Sebastiano adjusted the satellite's position so that it always turned the same side towards the flying device. He unplugged the data cable and climbed up an antenna. The flying chair was still about ten meters away. The safety line curled around its stern.

All right. It was ten meters through nothing. Ten meters in microgravity. Nothing would interfere with his flight. If he aimed properly, he would definitely hit his target. If he missed, he would be a satellite of the Earth forever. In the past, this prospect would have frightened him more. The only thing that bothered him was the fact that he would suffocate. Death by suffocation was said to be very, very unpleasant.

“Doug? Are you back?”

Somehow, he hoped that his old friend was only taking a short bathroom break and would soon reassure him. But Doug didn't come online. He was on his own. Sebastiano took a deep breath. The aircraft slowly turned on an axis that ran through the left backrest. Maybe it was twelve or fifteen meters away. The distance was difficult to estimate without any reference. The satellite bucked again. Oh no. Sebastiano held on to the antenna. It settled down again. The distance to the flight chair had not changed.

“Doug? Please say something.”

No answer. He had better jump before Qudice 4 moved again. Sebastiano bent his knees and carefully pushed with his legs. He was flying! His body moved slowly through space. But now that he had let go, there was nothing that could stop him. Even if he wanted to.

Except for the antenna coming towards him from the right. The satellite must have started its engine again. Sebastiano couldn't avoid it. The antenna was aimed at him. He had a choice: grab hold of it, or risk being hit and never reach his flying device again? He decided on a third way. The antenna would only barely catch him. If he could get the right side of his body out of the way, it wouldn't hit him at all. He twisted. Hurray! The metal flew past him. As if nothing had happened, he continued towards the flying chair and finally caught it.

He had done it! He had never liked wearing a seatbelt. Sebastiano leaned back and closed his eyes. His heart only slowly returned to normal.

“Doug, I'm on the flight back now.”

Still no answer. But in a moment he would be able to see for himself how his friend was doing.

* * *

The blue cross in the helmet display guided him reliably back to the Orbital Station Blue. It was one of the few stations without a ring. Sebastiano had never wished for gravity. This now had the advantage that the approach was relatively easy. He only had to steer towards the open lock.

However, the bulkhead was no longer open. Rodriguez. He must have found a way inside.

“Doug? Can you open the lock for me, please?”

Doug didn't respond. Had the guests overpowered him? Sebastiano flew closer.

“Guys, let me in, please.”

No answer. They couldn't just leave him out here to suffocate. He flew closer and looked for the areas on the hull where sounds could penetrate particularly well. First, he headed for the ceiling above the canteen. He knocked several times forcefully against the metal with a pair of pliers. Then he repeated the experiment on the roof of the control center.

“Is that you, Guarini?” Barbara Meyers finally answered.

“Yes, who else? Put Doug on, please.”

“I'm sorry, but he's in custody in his cabin.”

“What's going on? Release him immediately!”

“I can't do that until he gives us the station's admin codes.”

“Doug isn't authorized to do that. I'm the official commander. He's under my orders, just like you. Please check your contracts.”

Meyers laughed hysterically. “Those contracts are no longer valid. Without Earth, I mean. From now on, we'll run this station as we see fit. You can cooperate, or you can die.”

“You want to kill me? You, Ms. Meyers? How do you want to do it? With a gunshot between the eyes?”

“You underestimate us, Mr. Guarini. You'll just suffocate out there.”

Sebastiano switched to the suit software. From there he could address the ship's computer Zeke. Zeke, in turn, would open the lock bulkhead for him. He gave the appropriate command.

“Impossible,” Zeke reported. “Error 322.”

He searched for the error code. “Object occupied,” the number meant. The rebels had probably simply placed one of their own in the lock. Then the door to the outside couldn't open, because the human in the lock would suffocate. Clever. There was no other way in. Meyers was right. He would die if he didn't cooperate. She didn't need to shoot him; he would simply run out of air. What if he bypassed the lock control with an admin code?

“Before you get any stupid ideas, there's not just anyone waiting in the lock, but your friend Doug.”

Sebastiano let out a sharp breath. These bastards were blackmailing him with Doug! But then he really had no other option but to play along. The data he brought back from the satellite is far too valuable.

“All right,” he said. “You win. But on one condition: You transfer the data I send you to the ESA MIGI station. I'll give you the admin codes only when I have confirmation of that.”

* * *

“What's going on over there?” Antonia asked. Meyers forwarded her through to him.

“A rebellion. The guests are now in charge. Well, as soon as we've finished this conversation.”

“Oh dear. Is there anything we can do to help?”

“Please keep us up to date with your research. I think that if the Earth really is back, this madness will come to an end.”

Antonia sighed. “I can't promise anything. But we are very excited to find out what's in this data package.”

“We'll keep our fingers crossed for you.”

“Oh yes, we heard from JP that two people have actually appeared on 2004 GU9. They are even actively sending signals.”

At least that was something. But if there were only two of them, they were probably Jinjin and Ron, who had been lost on the Moon. How would that help them?

“Congratulations,” he said. “And please tell Sokolov that we could really use his damn theory right now.”

“Hey, so far Sokolov hasn't come up with anything except for more and more data requests. I've already told you everything we know about Earth.”

“Thanks, Antonia. It must be annoying for a genius like you when someone else has clever ideas.”

“That's for sure.”

“That's enough now, Mr. Guarini,” Meyers interrupted. At that moment, Sebastiano had an idea. He kept the connection to Antonia open so that she could listen in.

“You want my admin codes?” he asked.

“Yes, as we agreed. Once we've checked them, we'll get Doug out of the airlock so you can attach the flight chair.”

“All right.” Hopefully Antonia was paying attention. The codes could also be used for remote administration. If she played her cards right, she could use them to take control of Blue.

He passed on the codes. Meyers repeated them. “Just so I understand you correctly.”

“That sounds correct,” he said.

“Then thank you very much for your cooperation.”

There was a crackle on the line. That was probably Antonia signing off. But Meyers didn't notice that. She didn't have much experience with communication in space.

“Can I come in now?” he asked.

“Just a moment. We have to check the codes. There, that looks good. Rodrigo, will you take Doug to his cabin, please? We need the airlock back.”

“Roberto. I'm Roberto Rodriguez.”

Sebastiano smiled. Meyers seemed to be the leader of the little rebellion, and Rodriguez was obviously her man for the rough stuff.

“Yes, Roberto, I mean you.”

* * *

“Can you at least put us in the same cabin?” Sebastiano asked as they floated down the hallway.

“No, we decided otherwise,” Rodriguez said.

“We? Or rather your mastermind Barbara?”

“We decide such matters together.”

Sebastiano looked around. They were now far enough away from the control center for their conversation to be drowned out by the life support. Rodriguez was physically superior to him, even though Sebastiano was more familiar with zero gravity. No, he needed a nonviolent approach.

“Together? And who makes the suggestions?”

Rodriguez shook his head. “I know what you're trying to do. You want to stir up dissension. But it won't work. You don't have to worry. We mean you no harm. It's just about taking back control of our lives.”

“By handing it over to Meyers.”

Rodriguez laughed, but it sounded artificial. He would have probably liked to be in Barbara's shoes, but he couldn't win the support of the others.

“Well, here we are.” They stopped in front of Sebastiano's room. He was pleasantly surprised. At least he had all his keepsakes and books here. Rodriguez opened the door for him by standing in front of the panel and entering a code in such a way that Sebastiano couldn't see it.

“What about the toilet and washing?”

“We'll come and get you for that. Just press the call button.”

“If you give me the code, you'll save yourself a lot of effort. You know I have special medical needs, right? You can back up the computer separately.”

“No, it's more secure this way. You know your way around the station better than we do.”

“Suit yourself.”

“By the way, we would be delighted if you would continue to cook for us.”

This time it was Sebastiano's turn to laugh heartily. They locked him up, but he was supposed to cook anyway? No way.

“I thought you would refuse. But if you get bored, just let us know. Otherwise you'll have to eat what one of us cooks.”

“Well, I've been allowed to eat food I've prepared all my life. I'll survive the one week we have left without it. Too bad for you that you now have to subsist on canned food.”

Rodriguez shrugged. “I hear that some of us are quite good with a wooden spoon. You'll see. Now get in there.”

* * *

Sebastiano sat down on his bed. He was not unhappy about today. They had managed to save the data and send it to the physicists at MIGI. The fact that there was a role reversal afterwards was bearable. After all, it took a lot of responsibility off his shoulders. He hadn't felt this relaxed for a long time. Considering that they didn't have long to live, it was almost a paradise. And there was even a bit of variety.

On the minus side, there was the lack of contact with his friend Doug. Tomorrow he’d have to find a way to communicate with him. He stripped down to his underpants, lay down on the bed, strapped himself in to feel the mattress and looked up at the ceiling. Should he watch a movie? He felt like watching a horror movie. A couple of people alone on a space station being chased by a monster. That would be fitting.

The monster already seemed to be on the move. How else could something be scratching on the wall next to his bed? Or was it a mouse? He had long suspected that such an animal might have made it onto the station. Blue was regularly supplied with fresh food. The deliveries would certainly be exciting targets for pests.

Suddenly the wall next to him tore open. Sebastiano pulled up the blanket as a cool breeze emerged. The next moment he recognized fingers wrapped around the plastic cover, bending it backwards.

“Doug, is that you?”

“Who else would it be?”

Of course it was his old friend. Their rooms were in different corridors, but back-to-back.

“How did you manage that?” asked Sebastiano.

The hole in the wall got bigger. A second hand passed a piece of plastic through it. “You can work this stuff with your fingers. I think a certain Sebastiano Guarini gave me the idea yesterday. Our lovely guests don't seem to have noticed yet.”

“Then we'll leave it at its current size until we have to climb through it,” Sebastiano suggested. He hadn't even thought about how fragile the material had become.

“We could break into the control center via the ceiling while the others are asleep.”

“I suggest we wait a day or so to see what the rebels are up to. Maybe they'll behave sensibly. I'd prefer it if we didn't have to use violence.”

“I agree, but...” A rolled-up metal strip with two holes in it appeared in the gap in the wall. “Guess what tool I used to do that,” said Doug.

“Your finger?”

Doug sighed. “That's right. I'm afraid we don't have much time left in Earth orbit. Otherwise, the station will fall apart if you drop a knife while cooking. If our guests don't agree, we'll have to put enough distance between us and Earth some other way.”

“Knives don't fall in zero gravity.”

“All right, then, if you throw a pan at me.”

Mare Orientale, March 16, 2082

Sokolov was grinning. Was it because Antonia had cooked steaks for them all today? But it was only the same sticky mass, which she had given a roasted flavor with the burner. It tasted better than without the roasted flavor, but it was still not very appetizing.

“What have you got...?” Antonia started.

“This data is worth its weight in gold,” said Sokolov. “It has taken me so, so, so much further.”

She had never seen the physics genius so enthusiastic. “What...?”

Sokolov couldn't wait for her to finish her question. “Imagine I was able to bring quantum physics and the theory of relativity together. That's the Holy Grail of physics. The Nobel Prize will...” He broke off. There was no longer a Nobel Prize committee to select him for it. “Never mind. It's still the Holy Grail. If humanity survives, it will take us a century forward.”

A century. Sokolov wasn’t aiming any lower. Had there ever been a theory that achieved that? It took over fifty years from the development of quantum physics to its industrial application. It was a similar period for the theory of relativity.

“What does the data show?” asked Ernie, whom they had connected from the rover. Popov was probably asleep in the back of the vehicle; at least, he wasn't taking part in the discussion.

But Ernie had asked a good question. Antonia would have been even more interested in whether Sokolov's theory could help save the Earth. But first they had to congratulate him properly. Vanity was an important driving force. Antonia took a bit of the fried food from her plate and offered it to Bree, who refused indignantly.

“Quantum phenomena on a large scale,” said Sokolov. “Until now, quantum physics was always thought to describe the micro-world, and relativity was therefore correct for big things. But that's no longer the case down there. Macroscopic states are entangled with each other over great distances without collapsing. We have never been able to recreate that in the laboratory. This proves that there is no maximum for quantum physics, no automatic collapse of the wave function at a certain particle size.”

“And that helps us?” asked Ernie.

“It helps me. I was able to choose the right way to merge with gravity. I just had to choose the path so that it matched the real values. Now it describes how we get from the small to the large and back again and is quantized throughout.”

“So, you've found the world formula,” said Antonia. Bree barked. The dog was bored. They hadn't played yet today. Which was more important, the world formula or Bree? Antonia knew what her dog would say.

“I can't call it a world formula. It's a numerical solution based on the data from Qudice 4. I can't yet say what equation is actually behind it.”

“So, we can't work out how to return the Earth to its original state?”

“Calculate, no. To solve the equation for all the constraints, I'd have to find them first.”

“Can't the computer do that?” asked Antonia. “Find the equation that best approximates the following value curve!”

Sokolov shook his head. “There are too many possibilities. We don't know the structure. The theory of relativity consists of a system of partial differential equations. You can specify certain constraints and obtain solutions, for example for a rotating black hole with a charge. But I haven't got that far yet.”

“Too bad,” said Ernie. “Then I guess it was all for nothing.”

“Does anyone else want some of the bean puree?” asked Antonia, although only Sokolov was in the base.

No one answered. Sokolov leaned back, took Bree's ball from the shelf and threw it. The dog jumped after it, yelping. The ball bounced off the ceiling and Bree was there to catch it. Bree knew the rules. She retrieved the ball so that Sokolov could throw it again. He seemed to have suddenly discovered a love of animals, because he kept throwing it over and over again.

“Okay, tenth and final time,” he said.

Bree barked. Sokolov threw the ball so that it landed on Antonia's lap. Bree knew she wasn't allowed to jump on her just like that, so she halted at her feet, panted, wagged her tail and looked at them.

“Come on, Bree,” said Antonia. The dog got her trophy, but had no more success with Sokolov.

“So, what are you hiding from us?” asked Ernie.

Sokolov grabbed a bar from the silver foil and popped it into his mouth. Then he grinned even wider than before. “Nine times out of ten, Bree caught the ball. That's pretty good, isn't it?”

“Hey, that last time was unfair,” Antonia said. “You knew she wouldn't jump on my lap without being asked.”

“Maybe so. I'm concerned about the quota. Is ninety percent acceptable?”

“That depends,” Ernie said over the radio.

“Sure. It's about saving the Earth. We don't need my theory for that. The data alone is enough. Because they show that the Earth as a whole is currently a system that can be viewed using quantum physics.”

“And that means?” asked Antonia.

“You are... Never mind. The loss of mass, as you've shown with your LIDAR measurements, is due to the fact that the Earth is behaving in a quantum-physical way. Sometimes it's there, sometimes it's gone. Until now, we thought this was somehow due to a lack of energy or too much energy. But it is quite simply a property of every quantum system. You can't determine the exact location and momentum at the same time.”

“I know that, of course,” said Antonia. “I also happen to be a physicist.”

“But you're not thinking big enough. When does this quantum state change completely?”

“When the wave function collapses.”

“And when does that happen?”

“When an observer makes a measurement.”

“Bingo!” shouted Sokolov.

Antonia grimaced. It reminded her of the stroboscope theory they had thought of yesterday. Could that really be all they needed? They'd been observing the Earth at all wavelengths since the first day of this catastrophe. Why hadn't the wave function collapsed long ago? Because they were watching from outside. It was like Schrödinger's cat. As long as the box was closed, it was both dead and alive at the same time. So you had to smuggle an observer into the system.

“We have to send someone down there,” she said.

“What? How do you figure that?” asked Ernie.

“Antonia's right. It must be done,” said Sokolov. “If we want Earth back, someone has to go and see.”

“Wait a minute,” said Antonia. “We don't know what value the wave function collapses to. If we're unlucky, the Earth will disappear completely.”

“That's true,” said Sokolov. “But didn't we just agree that ninety percent is a viable chance? It's actually ninety-one, if we hurry. Or eighty-eight tomorrow.”

Hm. Better an end with horror than a horror without end? The chances of a living Earth decreased by about three percentage points per day. The longer they waited for another, safer solution that might never come, the riskier it would be to open the box.

“There's a bit of a practical problem,” said Ernie. “We have the capsule, but once it's within the Earth's gravitational potential, it won't come back under its own power. And we don't know what it will look like down there, even in the best-case scenario. Whoever looks with the capsule will probably die.”

Sokolov was nodding. “That's why I have a better idea. The Blue orbital station has the necessary reserves to get out of a very low orbit. If we send it, it won't be a suicide mission.”

“That doesn't mean it won't be dangerous,” said Antonia.

“If the Earth disappears, we all die. Some risk should be acceptable for that.”

“Well. Then we'll just have to explain it to our colleagues on Blue,” said Ernie. “I'm not available for that.”

2004 GU9, March 16, 2082

At first, he thought the Chinese woman was a ghost. But then she crashed headfirst into a boulder. Ghosts didn't bump their heads. They made elegant hooks. Ron rushed toward the falling woman, caught her by the tank and managed to get them both upright.

“Jinjin, you're back!”

“Oh, thanks, Ron. Yeah, it looks like it.”

“Did you...?” Ron pointed to the sky. Earth hadn't shown its face again yet. So Jinjin didn't seem to have been successful. Nevertheless, he asked.

“I met a creature that called itself an ‘herbae’.”

“Wait, you have to tell Liwei about it too.” Ron pulled her closer to the stele. He still had to watch his tank level. Liwei and Jinjin hugged and exchanged a few words in Chinese, which he didn't understand.

“Sorry,” Liwei said in English. “We didn't mean to exclude you.”

“The creature spoke Chinese to me,” said Jinjin. “And it knew our famous astronomer Wang Zhenyi.”

“Because of the Wang Zhenyi Space Telescope?” asked Ron.

“No, she supposedly helped the herbae's people, together with a certain Kepler."

Ron grimaced. Jinjin seemed to be in a fever dream. As if some medieval astronomer could have helped an alien race! It was a shame, but it seemed Jinjin hadn't achieved anything.

“Maybe in an alternative timeline,” said Liwei.

Her colleague wanted to help her save face.

Ron had no hope of salvation anyway.

“No, in an earlier universe,” explained Jinjin.

No one answered. Jinjin must have sensed their skepticism, because she waved it off. “It doesn't really matter. I know now how we can get the Earth back. We have to get rid of the remains of the stele on the moon.”

Liwei turned her towards himself. “What did you say?”

“The remains on the moon are preventing this stele here from doing its work. We have to destroy it completely.”

“By force again?” asked Liwei.

“Yes, it looks like it.”

“I don't have a good feeling about that. It wasn't a good idea the first time.”

“If it's necessary, we'll do it,” said Ron. “It's for Earth, after all.”

“The problem is that we don't have a second explosive device of that type available,” explained Jinjin.

“Is that right?” asked Ron.

Liwei nodded. “I didn't even know about the first bomb.”

“But then couldn't it be that you two aren’t aware of a second one either?”

Jinjin sighed. “It's possible, of course. But I searched the warehouse myself back then—there was no more nuclear fuel. If it exists, it must be hidden somewhere secret.”

“And since we can't make any more inquiries on Earth, we really have no chance of finding such a hiding place,” said Liwei.

“Then we'll just have to come up with something else,” said Jinjin.

“Or our friends on the Moon will. Because we can't get anywhere from here anyway,” said Ron. “The question is how we can make contact from this far away. Our helmet radios are hardly going to be enough.”

Lunar Gateway, March 16, 2082

The universe was empty. Jean-Pierre pushed himself away from the porthole and slid into the control center. He needed some exercise. The Gateway was about twenty meters long from one end to the other. He would have to fly back and forth to cover a few kilometers. It would be more efficient to strap himself into the training device, which allowed him to target all muscle groups.

But he couldn't physically last longer than two hours on it. And what could he do to distract himself? There was simply nothing for him to do except look after himself. He couldn't watch movies or read digital books all day either.

The most boring thing of all was looking out of the porthole—since the Earth had disappeared. The Moon got further away every day, and offered nothing but desolate deserts, craters and mountains. And the stars looked more like wallpaper that wouldn't change for years. Why should he look at them? All he saw were photons that had left a thermonuclear power plant many light years ago.

Jean-Pierre sighed. Self-gratification sometimes helped against self-pity, but he'd had enough of that too. He had reached the point where he tried talking to the computer. Unfortunately, NASA couldn’t afford real AI. Since the Gateway was only supposed to make its rounds around the Moon, there was no need to buy an AI license for it.

His colleagues on the moon only got in touch very sporadically. Antonia had congratulated him on discovering Ron and Jinjin on the asteroid, but she wasn't really interested. He understood her lack of interest in him. The Gateway was moving further and further away, while on the moon they still hoped that they could somehow save the Earth. He couldn't help with that, so why should the others engage in long conversations with him?

JP pushed himself away from the computer and turned around. There was one good thing about these hour-long tours through the Gateway—he inspected every single screw, valve and seal along the way. In this way, he prevented a leak from forming unnoticed. JP smiled. Somehow it didn't make sense to him. He probably felt similar to a tiger pacing up and down in front of the bars in his cage at the zoo.

As a child, he had once gone with his father to a zoo. At first, he had thought that the animal was looking at him with a sad expression, but then he realized that it was simply looking through him. The tiger hadn't even noticed him. He had probably been nothing more to the tiger than one of the stars out there, that he viewed through the porthole without really seeing them.

The psychologist at mission control would probably have warned him of the danger of depression at this point. Loneliness and boredom were contributing factors. But it wasn't as if he had no purpose. If he abandoned this week-long journey, Ron and Jinjin would suffocate on the asteroid at some point. But the station could just as well travel without him, remotely controlled for example. His presence had no deeper meaning.

He needed a task.

* * *

“164207”

He pressed the enter key and waited until the signal had reached the telescope.

“Found. Specify wavelengths.”

JP thought about the gigabyte-sized folder that the Bruno telescope created last time. Too much data only made analysis more difficult. He wasn't interested in the asteroid, just the people on it. At what wavelength did people shine the brightest? Their 37-degree body temperature was not visible to the outside world. The average skin temperature was closer to 32 degrees.

But what if the person was wearing a spacesuit? JP pondered what they had learned in training. The main task of a spacesuit was to maintain the temperature inside it. Interior heat sources were a bigger problem than the cold of space, because heat could only be released via radiation. A suit should therefore have a reasonable heat signature, which was likely to be above the average skin temperature.

“10 micrometers”

JP entered. The Bruno telescope could detect light between 0.2 and 45 micrometers in wavelength. His choice was therefore well within its parameters, which should result in good detection performance. He took a deep breath and waited.

“Accepted.”

That was all the control software said. Now it was probably working in the background and filling the memory with images of the object in the ten-micrometer band. There was probably no live mode because of the signal propagation time. But perhaps there was another way. JP wrote a small script, a sequence of commands to be executed in the telescope's memory. The documentation that Antonia sent him provided helpful tips. The mini program should simply transmit each new image by radio. Since no repositioning was necessary between images and the wavelength remained constant, a lifelike video should result when the images were shown on the screen one after the other, like a flip book.

He sent the program.

“Error in line 14”

the telescope reported back after the unavoidable waiting time.

JP corrected the command in line 14 and sent the program on its way again. This time the response took longer, which he interpreted as a good sign. The Bruno telescope was presumably aligning itself with object 164207, calibrating itself and starting to take images.

“Incoming data. Accept?”

the Gateway's main computer asked a little later. He confirmed, and an image appeared on the display. It showed three bright spots, nothing more. The next photo showed the same spots, but in a slightly different place. They had moved, since the asteroid was rotating.

JP scratched his temple. The image showed what the telescope saw at the given wavelength. But he was missing the background, which consisted of a rotating asteroid. He scrolled through the images from the last session where he spotted his two colleagues. If he removed the parts above five micrometers, he would see the asteroid itself. He compiled a complete cycle and used it to create a movie over which he superimposed the new images, which were now reaching him in rapid succession.

Now all he had to do was play with the playback speed of the movie and he could compensate for the movement of the astronauts. Now he saw three bright dots moving primarily with the rotation of the asteroid. The image of the celestial body itself was pre-recorded. But the spots were current. And they moved not only with the rotation, but also across it. In other words, it was not the asteroid that moved them, but they themselves.

JP pulled himself closer to the screen. Yesterday he could only distinguish two spots. Today there were three. But the telescope couldn't identify individual people. It only told him that heat had collected in a certain place. If Ron or Jinjin sat down somewhere for a while, that place would heat up due to their radiation. And when they left the place, it remained visible as a spot for a while—without moving. So the crucial question was: were all three spots really moving? And not due to the rotation of the asteroid, but on their own?

He marked the three spots on the screen. They were relatively close together. JP estimated the distance to be a few meters. The stele wasn’t included in the picture because it emitted in a different frequency range, but it must be very close by. He concentrated on the lower spot. One step at a time. The spot trembled, which was due to the accuracy of the measurement. Suddenly it dissolved into two spots. One part wandered a few meters away. That should be a person. The other remained in place and slowly faded. That was the person's previous location, which had warmed up due to their radiation.

Check: one person discovered.

Now it was the next spot's turn. He chose the one furthest away from the other two. It was just disappearing behind the horizon, so JP had to wait half an hour for it to reappear. Nevertheless, he stayed focused because he didn't want to miss the moment.

There it was again! The rotation of the asteroid brought the spot back into the –picture—but in a different place. It must have moved! JP couldn't follow its path over the asteroid, but the result was clear.

Check. Person number two. Ron and Jinjin, most likely.

There, the lower spot was moving again. That must be Ron. The American never stayed in one place for long. They were similar in that respect.

But what about the third spot? He was probably closest to the stele, so time passed the slowest for him. Was that why he moved so rarely? Of course, it could be some kind of camp. If Jinjin and Ron had placed something there, such as the second oxygen tank, and returned to it regularly, heat could be retained. How likely was that? JP wanted to be sure before he got excited.

He patiently observed the spot. Since the other two spots were approaching the third spot but not merging with it, he was almost certain it must also be human. The only possible answer would be Liwei, who must have made his way back through the stele. Why wasn't he moving? Was he perhaps injured? But then his friends would take more care of him.

“What's the matter with you, Liwei?” he asked.

“I'm sorry, I don't know of any such resource,” replied the computer.

At last, the time had come. The blur moved! All three people now seemed to be close together. Perhaps they were talking to each other? JP envied them. But now he finally had something to pass on to the MIGI on the Moon. He would be so glad to hear Antonia's voice.

* * *

“This is the Gateway; I have important information.”

“Greetings, JP. What's going on?”

It was Sokolov, whom he hardly knew and who had no business being at MIGI.

“Greetings to you too. Where's Antonia?”

“She's asleep. I'm holding down the fort. She probably wants to prepare for her task.”

“Task?”

“We have to persuade Orbital Station Blue to descend into low Earth orbit.”

“Why is that? It sounds pretty dangerous."

“I've calculated that this is our last and only chance to save the Earth. We just have to observe if it's still there. Then the wave function collapses.”

The reasoning seemed familiar from his physics course. But when Sokolov said “we”, he meant the people on the Orbital Station.

“Shouldn't you explain that to them, then?” asked JP.

Sokolov laughed. “They don't even know me. I wouldn't stand a chance. And it's about something that mustn't fail. Antonia realized that too. But what did you want to tell us?”

Antonia realized that too. So she hadn't immediately agreed to deliver this message. He really didn't envy her. But what if he did?

“I've provisionally identified Liwei, Jinjin and Ron on the asteroid. It would be better to wait and see if Liwei has brought anything back from his involuntary journey that can help us save Earth before you send off a suicide mission like this.”

“No, my friend. What could it be? We're losing three percentage points of probability of success every day. We can't wait any longer.”

“But it could be that the sacrifice is all for nothing.”

“Nothing is ever in vain. And if other paths open up, we can always take them.”

“But then it will be too late for the people in the orbital station.”

“Sometimes you have to make sacrifices. The survival of humanity should be worth it.”

Did Antonia think the same? JP hoped not. The crew of the orbital station also had a right to live. And weren't there also guests, tourists?

“I think we should find out what Liwei has to tell us first,” said JP. “Is Ernie there?”

“No, he and Popov took the rover to the remains of the stele.”

“I see. Then please pass on to Antonia that I have proof of Liwei's return.”

“Sure thing. Good luck, JP.”

He didn't believe a word Sokolov said. JP was sure the physicist would conceal his call. For that reason, he also wrote a message to Antonia, attaching his evidence.

Orbital Station Blue, March 17, 2082

What was that? There was a noise. Sebastiano opened his eyes. His cabin was bathed in a bluish light from LED lamps on the floor. Knock-knock. It was coming from the door. It could only be the insurgents. He glanced at the clock. It was just after midnight standard time. What was this? Was the bathroom malfunctioning, or was he supposed to cook something? They had locked him in here, so they would have to handle it themselves. He felt for his earplugs, put them in his ears and turned to the other side.

Sebastiano awoke when he felt a touch. He shot up. His head struck something hard.

“Ouch,” said a female voice. He recognized Meyers’ perfume.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. “How dare you? Get out of here!”

“I'm sorry, but we need you at headquarters.”

Sebastiano shook his head. “Absolutely not. Not until you give us back admin access.”

“It's about saving the Earth. There's a guy named Sokolov on the line. From the moon.”

Sokolov? That meant nothing to him. From the name, he would place him at the Russian moon base.

“Then you save the world with this Sokolov, come on! I’ll have nothing more to do with it.”

“Doug is already at headquarters. He says he needs you.”

“Doug, really?” he asked, deliberately loud so that his friend could hear him through the thin wall.

Sebastiano listened. There was no sound. So this was probably not a trick.

“Yes, really,” said Meyers.

Sebastiano sighed. “All right, then. But under protest, and I won't lift a finger until my rights are restored.”

* * *

“Oh, did they drag you here too?” Doug greeted him with a handshake. All the tourists were in the control center, so they were absolutely outnumbered. I'm sure that was intentional.

“Meyers said you needed me?”

“I'm always happy to see you, but I didn't say anything like that.”

So Meyers had lied to him. She and Rodriguez seemed to be leading the rebellion. Rodriguez was on the radio. Meyers floated over to him.

“Señor Sokolov, could you repeat what you expect from us?” Rodriguez asked.

“Wait a minute,” said Sebastiano. “Who is this Sokolov anyway?”

“Allegedly one of the most important physicists on Earth,” explained Doug.

“That's no mean feat. I'm probably the second most important.”

“No, seriously. He's been mentioned as a Nobel Prize candidate.”

Sebastiano nodded. He trusted Doug. “Okay, what's the latest in physics, Mr. Sokolov?”

“Do I have to explain everything again? Guys, what kind of bunch are you?”

Sokolov might be a genius, but he was also one cocky guy. Why was he on the line in the first place? Antonia, who they spoke to the other day, had seemed much nicer to him, and not just because she was Italian.

“What's wrong with Antonia?” he asked.

“She's asleep,” replied Sokolov. “She has to sleep sometime.”

Sebastiano yawned. He would have liked to sleep through the night too. He noticed that he’d been able to fall asleep for the first time in a long time. Having no more responsibilities had its advantages. He should be consistent and go back to bed. What could he say about Sokolov's ideas? After all, he was a chef, not a physicist.

“So, what now?” asked Sokolov. “All over again or can we get to the core?”

“It's okay,” said Sebastiano. “Doug will explain it to me later. So, what's the core?”

Sokolov exhaled his breath loudly. “Simple: you need to take the Blue into low Earth orbit.”

“How low?” asked Doug.

“Very low. To the edge of the atmosphere. Maybe even lower.”

“And why?” asked Sebastiano.

“I've already explained that. As an observer. You see if Schrödinger's cat is still alive.”

Schrödinger's cat, that was something he knew about. “I'll explain it to you in a minute,” said Doug.

“I just want to know if it makes sense to you,” said Sebastiano.

Doug nodded. “Yes, it does. But I don't know yet if it's a good idea.”

“Guys, I explained it to you—it’s the only way to get Earth back. We have to go and see.”

“We have to check,” Sebastiano said. “You're safe on the Moon, friend.”

Sokolov sighed. “You really can't blame me for that.”

“No, but of course it's easier to demand something from others that you definitely don't have to do yourself,” said Doug.

“What does Antonia think?” asked Sebastiano. He would prefer her to be taking part in the conversation too.

“I told you, she's asleep. Should I wake her up?”

“I just want to know what she thinks.”

“She feels the same way I do.”

Hm. Sokolov could say anything, of course. Sebastiano sighed. “We'll have to think about it,” said Doug, turning once around the room.

Everyone nodded as if he was the captain.

“Think about it. But not too long. Every day you wait costs us all three percentage points of survival probability.”

“If we check and don't succeed, what will happen to us?” asked Meyers.

“Then you'll probably die.”

“And you, Sokolov?”

“I'll live a little longer. At least as long as our supplies last.”

“That means we pay the price.”

“If that's what you want to call it, Ms....”

Meyers furrowed her brows. “Well, if you ask me, we've heard enough.”

Rodriguez pressed the button that ended the connection. This suddenly brought everyone else to life. The tourists babbled in confusion until Rodriguez loudly demanded: “Quiet!”

“Did you all understand what Sokolov was suggesting?” he asked.

“Yes, we should sacrifice ourselves so that people on the moon can live,” said Meyers.

“Slow down,” said Doug. “First of all, the risk of us dying is fifteen percent at most. Secondly, it's about the Earth! Our home. What's the point of our existence without it? Without the Earth, we'll only live as long as our supplies last.”

“Everyone has to decide that for themselves,” said Meyers.

“Since we're all on board this station together, it can't be the decision of just one person,” said Doug.

“Would it be possible for us to fly to the Moon first?” asked Rodriguez. “Everyone who doesn't want to take the risk could get off there, and the rest could stay on board.”

Sebastiano had to laugh out loud. The man seemed to be imagining the space station as a bus that could change destinations at a moment's notice. Of course they could go into a transfer orbit, but that would cost a lot of fuel, which they wouldn't have later.

“So not?” asked Rodriguez.

“At the moment we have enough fuel to move from a lower Earth orbit back into a higher orbit if we can't save the Earth. That would no longer be possible after a trip to the Moon,” explained Sebastiano.

“We also lose two days,” added Doug, “and therefore six percentage points of survival probability. And all because some of us want to vegetate on the Moon for a few more years? That's not paradise! At the MIGI base, they're already eating standard porridge. The bases there are also designed for six or twelve months without contact with Earth, not years. All you'll face there is slow starvation.”

“Oh, it can't be that bad,” said Meyers. “I saw a movie where a single man survives for months on Mars.”

"The Moon isn't Mars. It has no atmosphere whatsoever and the temperatures fluctuate extremely. Compared to the Moon, Mars is an oasis!”

Meyers shrugged her shoulders. “Still better than dying immediately.”

Rodriguez touched Meyers gently on the upper arm. Had the two of them become involved? The look in their eyes seems tender. “I don't think Sokolov's arguments are so wrong,” he said. "Let’s go down. If we're lucky, we'll be almost home again. If we're unlucky, we'll just come back up. Right?”

Meyers narrowed her eyes. “I don't know if I ever want to go home again.”

“But I do!” exclaimed Peterson, an elderly engineer who was here with his adult son.

Sebastiano himself was unsure. Didn't they owe humanity this sacrifice? But what had humanity done for him? Everything he had achieved after his accident back then, he had done on his own. On Earth, people would have looked at him and thought he was weak. Here, none of the tourists had even noticed that his abdomen was paralyzed.

But there was another problem that the others didn't know about. The station was slowly disintegrating, and that process was guaranteed to accelerate when they left geostationary orbit. In the end, it wouldn't matter if they had enough fuel left in their tanks. Orbital Station Blue would fall apart at the slightest touch. The air density in the upper atmosphere was probably enough to do that.

Should they tell them? Sebastiano sought his friend's gaze. Doug winked at him. Sebastiano touched the ceiling of the control center and scratched a groove in the metal with his fingernail. Doug shook his head slightly. He was probably right. If they told anyone about this observation, no one would want to take the risk. They had to at least keep the option open—even if Sebastiano himself had no desire to sacrifice himself for the Earth. Doug probably saw it differently; after all, he had family and friends on Earth.

“I suggest we take a vote,” said Meyers.

* * *

Sebastiano had an inkling of what the outcome would be. He withdrew to the sector in which a large screen simulated the dome. The Earth shone there, gloriously blue and white and green and silvery. It was the simulation that he himself had created for the tourists. They hadn't turned it off, even though they saw through the deception. He floated over to a panel and tried to log in to the main computer using his login. Maybe he could use the distraction to regain control of the station.

“Not authorized,” replied Zeke, the computer. At the same time, he heard an alarm signal from the control center. The insurgents weren't stupid. Not only had they blocked his access, they had also set up a warning. Nobody seemed to care, but that didn't help him right now.

Suddenly someone tapped him on the shoulder. Sebastiano twitched and turned around.

“There you are,” Doug said. “They've voted overwhelmingly in favor of the option where we first drop everyone who wants to in orbit around Luna. Peterson wants to detach a module from the station.”

“That's the stupidest solution I’ve heard yet. Just getting the module sealed will cost us an extra two days.”

“That's the best Rodriguez could manage. He's on our side.”

On our side. Doug seemed to assume that Sebastiano wanted to save the Earth at all costs. Right this second, he would choose to stay in lunar orbit with the tourists. He had already saved Earth once. Why was it his turn again? No, let others take care of it this time. But he preferred to keep these thoughts to himself. It wasn't up to him to decide what happened next anyway.

“Rodriguez was the only one who wanted to implement Sokolov's idea?” he asked.

“Yes. Meyers seems to be angry with him now. Maybe we can take advantage of that somehow.”

Sebastiano shrugged his shoulders. At the moment, they didn't really have any chance of overpowering the insurgents. The main computer wouldn't allow login under their old accounts. At least not local ones. He hadn’t been able to check how it behaved when one tried to log in from the outside. That was another setting Meyers and her friends might not have found yet.

* * *

“Ah, there you are,” said Rodriguez. “We thought you'd escaped through the airlock.”

“Haha,” said Doug.

“I'm sorry, but the majority of the passengers chose not to participate in this risky maneuver.”

“So I've heard,” said Doug.

“You were the only one who opted out?” asked Sebastiano.

Rodriguez nodded. “I have family and friends down there.”

“So do the others,” Doug added.

“Well, that doesn't seem to be as important to them as their own lives,” said Rodriguez. “But come on now, someone has to pass the decision on to Sokolov.”

Doug put his hands on his hips. “Why don't the cowards do it themselves?”

Rodriguez nodded. “That’s what I thought. But I can't make them do it. And someone has to tell him. Maybe he'll find another way.”

“Just give us back admin access,” Doug said. “We'll sort out the rest. Sometimes you have to force people to be empathetic.”

“Sorry. We decided this democratically. Come on.”

* * *

“You want what?” yelled Sokolov.

“Into lunar orbit,” Rodriguez explained. Doug had made the connection, then handed him the mic. “We'll leave a module of the station there and then carry out the experiment.”

“That'll cost us at least six percentage points,” Sokolov said.

“Twelve,” Doug corrected. “We first have to seal the module so that it can orbit the moon on its own for a while.”

“Have your people thought this through? How many cubic meters does a module have? They'll have to spend several days in it—if not the rest of their lives! We can't really bring the thing to the surface without any propulsion.”

“Yes, they know the risks,” said Rodriguez.

“Govno. Twelve percentage points for nothing. It's unbelievable.”

“We have to respect the will of the majority.”

“Will of the majority, don't make me laugh. Wimps! Have you asked the eight billion people on Earth what they think?”

Sebastiano bit his lower lip. Basically, Sokolov was right. But the physicist was safe on the moon. Would he argue the same way if he was here on the station with them?

“Is Antonia there yet?” he asked. On the one hand, he would like to hear her opinion. On the other hand, she was his hope as far as control of the station was concerned. If she could gain access from outside...

"No, she's still asleep.”

Sebastiano looked at his watch. It was just before two o'clock standard time. That sounded plausible. Antonia needed her sleep. Sokolov was taking over the watch while Ernie and Popov were out. Sebastiano yawned.

“Good, I just wanted you to know,” Rodriguez said. “Orbital Station Blue over and out.”

Sebastiano looked at Doug. Two against one. They might be able to overpower Rodriguez. Doug shook his head imperceptibly.

“I'll take you back to your cabins now,” the insurgent said.

“Later,” Doug said, and Sebastiano immediately understood what he meant.

“No, now,” said Rodriguez. “You can still enjoy the view here tomorrow.”

Sebastiano grinned.

Mare Orientale, March 17, 2082

When Antonia got up, there was light throughout the base. That meant two things. Firstly—Ernie was still not back. If he saw a light burning somewhere, he would turn it off. Two—Sokolov must have pulled an all-nighter. When she went to bed last night, he actually promised her he would go to bed too.

She found him in the canteen, sleeping on the floor with his head on a cushion from one of the chairs. Antonia woke him up by switching on the coffee machine, which then loudly squeezed out an espresso.

She picked up the cup and lifted the lid. The liquid didn't smell too bad. It contained caffeine and was hot. Antonia took a sip, then another.

“What...?” asked Sokolov.

“Good morning, Mr. Colleague.”

Sokolov clutched his head. As he stood up, a glass bottle rolled out from under him.

“What was that for?” asked Antonia.

“I couldn't help myself. Can you imagine, they don't want to save the Earth!"

“Who are ‘they’?”

“The idiotic space tourists who have taken control of Blue. They want to take refuge in Luna's orbit first.”

Antonia could feel anger creeping up her throat. They had agreed that they would have all conversations together. That was the only reason she’d been persuaded to go to bed at all.

“You talked to them, Sokolov? We agreed...”

“I couldn't wait any longer. You have to understand that, Antonia. Every day counts.”

“You blew it, Sokolov. You're an amazing genius, but diplomacy doesn't seem to be your strong point. Popov is better at it!”

“Nothing against Popov, he's a genius in his own way.”

“Yes, I'm sure that’s true of him. Not so much with you.”

“But how could someone refuse to save the Earth?”

“Listen to the man! Would you fly that mission?”

“Me? I'm far too valuable for the survival of humanity. Well, I'd better not say that, you're right. But the question doesn't even arise! How am I supposed to get to the orbital station?”

Antonia sighed. They had actually intended to wait until today because she didn't feel comfortable about the decision. Perhaps there was another way after all? Sokolov must have sensed her resistance and therefore brought the conversation forward.

“Well, it looks like you'll have to think up something else now.”

She found it hard to be happy about Sokolov's defeat because so much depended on it. Every day she waited would cost her chances of survival. Should she talk to the Blue Station crew again? If Doug and Sebastiano were still in control, her chances might be better. Might there be a way to regain access for the two of them?

“Was there anything else while I was asleep?”

Sokolov shook his head. “Just this tedious discussion.”

“Good. I need to take a look at something,” she said, bounding into the control room.

* * *

That pig. After talking to Sokolov, JP had sent her a message describing how he found Liwei. The man who took a journey through the stele was apparently back! She examined the footage. JP had done a really good job, even though he had no previous astronomical training. It was clear to see that there really were three people walking around. Of course, the spots weren't labeled with names.

Why hadn't Sokolov said anything about it? Was he afraid his theory might turn out to be wrong? It couldn't be that. But perhaps it was the test that the physicist was hoping for. If the orbital station was successful, it would not only save the Earth but also confirm his theory. Sokolov would be a hero. If it didn't work, he would have lost nothing.

Antonia saved JP's message in her private area. She wouldn't tell Sokolov about it. This gave her the chance to dispel any suspicion that she was playing her own game. She was just about to log out when the main computer reported an approach. Antonia activated the radio channel. It could only be Ernie!

* * *

The panel on the bulkhead of the airlock turned green. She heard a hiss, then the heavy metal door opened. Popov stepped out. She recognized him by his stature. Ernie, who was walking behind him, looked small and thin in comparison. However, he was taking strangely small steps. His arms were crossed in front of his stomach, as if he was cradling a child.

What was wrong with him? Bree recognized Ernie and ran towards him, wagging her tail, but Popov stood in her way.

“Just a teeny tiny moment, Bree darling,” said Ernie.

“Bree, heel,” commanded Antonia.

Ernie paid her no mind. He was looking at the object in his arms the whole time. It was red and looked like a can—of potato chips? But Ernie was acting as if the container was incredibly valuable. Or no, sensitive. That was why he was taking such small steps. Otherwise, he would be in constant danger of taking off while walking and bumping into something.

“What is that?” asked Antonia.

“Hello, Antonia,” said Ernie. “I'm glad to see you again, too.”

“Yeah, me too, of course, but you're kind of scaring me.”

“There's no need to be scared,” said Popov. “Everything will be fine.”

Popov standing up for Ernie frightened her even more. She jumped towards Ernie and landed right in front of him. He flinched. It really was a potato chip container.

“Are you making a joke?” she asked. “I'm sorry, but I don't get it.”

“Um, promise me you won't get upset,” said Ernie.

Antonia laughed. “Okay, it's a joke. You'd never say something like that if it wasn't a joke, because you know very well that I get upset when there's a reason to be, no matter what I promised before.”

“It's not a joke.” Ernie spread his arms a little. Popov unhooked his helmet and took it off. Ernie's face was red and drenched with sweat. Surely the can couldn't be that heavy? It must be a particularly elaborate joke. Antonia would love to snatch the potato chip container out of his hand and shove it up his backside.

“Then what?” she asked.

“You remember the substance near the stele...”

“Yes, the highly explosive stuff that blew away everything it came into contact with.”

“Not everything. A certain difference in velocity was a prerequisite.”

“A small one, yes.”

Why was he talking about the substance now? They were far enough away from it. The amount in the cavity couldn't be large enough for the stuff to flow all the way here. Or did he... She squinted and focused her gaze on the can. No, that was impossible.

“We found out that the substance is superfluid,” Ernie explained.

Antonia exhaled with relief. If that was all it was...

"And it conceals anything underneath it.”

“It must be worth its weight in gold to the military,” added Popov.

“Or for the solar industry. It really does pick up every photon.”

Antonia nodded. “That may be true, but...”

“Well, that's why we brought a sample of it.” Ernie proudly held the can out to her. “But don't jerk it around.”

Antonia leaped backwards. Bree looked after her in amazement. “Come to me now, Bree,” she ordered, and the dog followed.

“Maybe you should open it,” Popov suggested.

“Not that you can see anything anyway,” said Ernie.

“Sure, open it up. If the stuff is really superfluid, it'll crawl out and spread through the base. Great idea,” said Antonia.

“I...” Ernie looked indecisively at Popov, then at Antonia.

“You've brought a highly explosive substance into the base,” said Antonia. “Have you lost your mind?"

“Well, you can't really call it explosive. It just creates a repulsion. Nothing explodes.”

“Ernie, I've seen the pictures of the experiments. I know the potential of the substance. Please take it back outside and store it at least a hundred meters away from the base.”

“Okay, if you say so.”

“Yes, I say so. I almost think we should check the rover's oxygen supply. Apparently you both had a bit too little O2 in your blood.”

“Sure, I'll have a look at the rover when I get a chance. But for now, I'd like a shower.”

“Ernie, that stuff is not going to stay in my base a second longer than necessary. If you won't do it, I'll carry it out myself.”

“I can handle it,” Popov said.

Antonia's gaze darted back and forth between Ernie and Popov. The two of them seemed to have got on well on the trip. She understood, of course, that Ernie wanted to take a shower after so long in the rover. The smell emanating from him and Popov wasn't entirely pleasant either. “I don't mind,” said Antonia. “But take it far enough away, will you?”

Popov stood at attention and saluted. “It'll be an honor.”

2004 GU9, March 17, 2082

Twenty-one percent. Ron caught a glimpse of the Chinese space traveler's tank. Of course, a single number didn't matter. His tank was at 43 percent, Jinjin's at 56. If they ran low, they would share their air supplies. And as long as they spent the time in the immediate vicinity of the stele, they should be able to wait almost forever for help.

But then they would have to stop doing this. Liwei had the idea of turning the entire asteroid into an oversized antenna. To do that, they’d used all the ferroelectric material they could find in their tool bags to make a kind of net, which Liwei and Jinjin were currently laying over an area near the stele.

Just then, Jinjin returned. She showed him the divers' okay sign and sat down next to Ron. Liwei had stayed by the antenna as agreed. They could have laid a cable here, but they thought about what the time dilation would do to the signal and decided to transmit from outside instead.

It was strange. Everything was strange here. The terribly close horizon confined Ron. Although infinite space stretched out all around him, he never had a feeling of vastness here, as he knew it from the Texas prairie. His homeland may have been dry and sometimes hot, sometimes cold, but he could survive there for quite a while without assistance.

Suddenly Liwei appeared on a boulder. His movements were strangely hectic. Had he discovered something? Had someone answered him? But Ron quickly realized that he had been tricked by time. With every step closer Liwei took, he became slower, more deliberate.

“I listened for a while and then called for help,” said Liwei.

Ron didn't ask. Liwei would have mentioned it of his own accord if someone had replied. So they were still out here all alone.

“I left the radio module on the antenna as agreed,” Liwei explained. “We need to charge the battery every six hours.”

“I'll take over the next charging process,” said Ron.

“We need something that can be seen from a greater distance,” said Jinjin.

They had already talked about this. A powerful radar telescope would be able to pick up their signals, but there were none of those left on Earth. Ron gulped. The vastness of Texas no longer existed either. He would never again race his Corvette along dead-straight roads, far away from any cop who could measure his speed.

“Infrared,” said Liwei.

“We already did that,” said Ron. They didn't even know if their little performance got through. “And think of the oxygen consumption.”

“We can use all but a three percent reserve,” said Liwei.

“Then we'll be tied to the stele for the rest of our lives.”

“Until someone comes for us,” said Jinjin. “But we can't wait that long to pass on the solution to the problem.”

Ron sighed. Jinjin was right. It wasn't...comfortable, sitting here with a minimal amount of oxygen. But their friends on the Moon had a chance to solve the problem with their knowledge.

Maybe.

If they managed to get rid of the remains of the stele. A second nuclear bomb wasn't available. Jinjin was pretty sure of that. Maybe they could crash the Lunar Gateway onto the remains of the stele. But then who would pick them up out here? Ron had pinned his hopes on JP.

He shook his head. That was selfish. When the Earth returned, there would be plenty of ways to rescue them from this place.

“All right,” he said. “We could try Morse code. What message do we want to transmit?”

Lunar Gateway, March 17, 2082

JP swallowed the last bite of the crêpe he had cooked for breakfast. It wasn't easy in zero gravity. He had assisted the process by pressing a pot into the pan so that the batter and the pan came into contact with the stove. He hadn't been able to use fresh eggs for the batter, but the canned substitute worked surprisingly well. Together with the slightly bitter orange marmalade, the crêpe had a pleasantly fresh taste.

Ron had brought the marmalade with him. The times when he regularly cooked for him in lunar orbit seemed like ages ago. Were they actually friends? JP didn't know. They have never talked about it. Sometimes the American really got on his nerves. But he liked his pragmatic manner, and of course the praise he always gave him for his cooking.

Yes, he missed him. Ron would certainly have described the crêpe just now as wonderful and fabulous and great and called JP his Michelin chef. Eating alone was a rather sad experience. JP swallowed and drank some coffee substitute. The bitter flavor dissipated the remnants of sweetness, but some of the orange lingered.

He glanced at the stove. He could do the dishes later. The dirty dishes weren’t going anywhere. He moved to the nearest porthole, where he could see the Moon. The sun was shining on three quarters of it. Why hadn't he heard anything from there? Sokolov's mind was surely on his theory. But Antonia hadn't replied to yesterday's message either.

JP sighed. Again. He had noticed that for the first time yesterday: he was making so many noises. Probably so he wouldn't feel so alone. It was anything but quiet in the Gateway, but life support didn't make any typical human noises. Ron would start teaching the main computer to sigh and mumble at this point.

How was Ron? JP logged into the computer and connected to the Bruno space telescope. Bruno, a lovely name.

“Bruno,” he said with a French accent.

“I'm sorry, but I didn't understand you,” said the computer.

JP sniffled. Come on, Bruno, show me what object 164207 looks like. He entered the target.

“Data transmission started.”

A bar on the screen indicated that the Bruno telescope was transmitting previous images to the Gateway. It seemed happy to get rid of the data. But why was it continuing to observe the asteroid in the first place? JP went through the log files. Ah, it simply hadn’t terminated its last mission. Since no new orders had come from Earth, the telescope had probably just carried on working.

That was fine with him. JP reviewed the images he had received. At first he was disappointed that Bruno had recorded everything in the wavelength range he had restricted, so he couldn't get a proper picture of the asteroid itself. But then he noticed that the three red spots were performing a strange dance: They moved together in the same direction, stopped and then returned to their starting point to repeat the movement.

What was that? Were they bored? Did they simply need to move? But then shouldn't he be seeing a chaotic pattern? Perhaps the surface of the asteroid was structured in such a way that they could only move in a certain direction. JP pulled up the older images of 2004 GU9. No, there were no real obstacles. With such low gravity, one should be able to choose any path across the celestial body.

So it was intentional. They moved together to make their heat emission more noticeable. That seemed to work very well. Too well. He compared the brightness with that of each individual. When they moved together, they were at least ten times brighter than individually. That was only possible with an additional heat source. Apparently they had used the remains of their oxygen to burn something. It must be really important, because they wouldn't be able to replenish their supplies until he reached the asteroid with the Gateway in a few weeks.

What were Ron, Liwei and Jinjin trying to tell him? He superimposed several images. What differed in each case was how far away they were from the starting point. Sometimes they were only a few meters away, sometimes around twenty meters. Short, short, long. It sounded like the beat of music. Or Morse code. Morse code! That must be it. JP brought up all the recordings chronologically on the screen and noted dots for “short” and dashes for “long”.

A text appeared on the screen, the meaning of which he did not yet understand. After about an hour, the characters repeated themselves. The three of them obviously wanted to convey a very specific message. But what did it mean? Unfortunately, JP couldn't remember exactly how Morse code worked. He sent the sentence to the computer.

“Can you translate this into plain text for me?”

“Of course. Just a moment.”

The computer fell silent. JP twiddled his thumbs. Surely it couldn't be that difficult? He waited five minutes, ten. At the twelfth minute, he aborted the process.

“What's wrong, computer?” he asked.

“I'm still establishing a connection. Unfortunately, the Morse database is not part of my programming.”

Crap. The computer didn't seem to be able to realize the non-existence of Earth. But what programmer would include something like that in their code?

“Abort connection establishment.”

The four people on the Moon were his last hope. Surely one of them should be able to translate the code? He sent the data to Antonia and Ernie.

JP took a deep breath. The Bruno telescope was still sending fresh images. Ron, Jinjin and Liwei were obviously tireless. Right now they were moving far away from their location, stopping briefly and moving back again.

I'm sorry you’re counting on my dumb self.

JP floated into the kitchen. It was time to do the dishes. The smell of orange marmalade still lingered in the air.

Orbital Station Blue, March 18, 2082

There was a scrape against the wall. Sebastiano had been waiting for it. The tourists slept most deeply between one and three o'clock standard time. The on-board computer had regularly fed him such statistics without being asked, probably because the station operator believed he could use them to increase profits.

The operator no longer existed. But Doug's fingers were real, reaching through the hole between their cabins.

“It's time,” Doug whispered. His fingers tore the wall open further.

“My room or yours?” asked Sebastiano.

“Come over to my room. I've already done a bit of preparatory work.”

Sebastiano nodded. He threaded his lower body into the hole and pulled himself through. Chaos reigned in Doug's cabin. He had torn up both the ceiling and the floor. There was no way they were going to be able to hide this from the insurgents. Doug was ready to put all his eggs in one basket and take back the reins today.

“What's our goal, anyway?” asked Sebastiano. “Just to make sure we're pulling in the same direction.”

“Gain control, complete the mission,” replied Doug.

“What mission?”

“The only one that makes sense—the one Sokolov suggested, and as soon as possible.”

Sebastiano swallowed. He wasn't thrilled, but ultimately, he agreed to take the risk. But were they allowed to risk the lives of the passengers against their will?

Doug put an arm around his shoulders. “I know what you're thinking, my friend. You're a good person. But these are special times. We can't throw away nine or twelve percentage points of Earth's chance of survival because a few people here are unreasonable.”

“I don't know. Doesn't that make us criminals?”

“Sebastiano, wake up. There's only one chance left to save the Earth. All of humanity! And we're here waffling because of a few selfish cowards?"

“But isn't that...I don't know...” How should he phrase it so that Doug understood him? This offsetting didn't work for him. The cowards also had a right to live.

“I understand you, Sebastiano. You don't want to sacrifice these few people here for the many on Earth.”

“Not against their will.”

“But what would the billions on Earth say? It would certainly be their will that you save them. Don't they have a right to that too?”

Sebastiano sighed. It was true. He should actually ask the people on Earth too. But that was impossible. He only had these tourists here, his passengers, for whom he had taken responsibility.

“I feel like the captain of a ship,” he explained. “Don't I have to do everything I can to save my passengers?”

“But if we save the Earth, you'll save them too.”

Oh, boy. If! Sebastiano shook his head. He could postpone the decision. They didn't even have control yet. The main computer wouldn't give up the admin password voluntarily.

“What did you have in mind?” Sebastiano asked, pointing first to the ceiling and then to the floor.

Doug smiled. He obviously assumed that Sebastiano had made his decision. He might even be right. “I've investigated where we can make the best progress,” said Doug. “There's more space on the floor, but there are also more pipes there that we mustn't damage. So, we'd better go across the ceiling, even though it's quite narrow there.”

Sebastiano pointed at the door. “Thought of that too? We're unlikely to meet anyone in the corridor at this time of night.”

Doug nodded. “We can't risk anyone catching us.”

* * *

“Make sure you don't kick the outer layer," whispered Doug.

The station's hull was made of a twenty-centimeter-thick composite material that could withstand minor impacts. It shouldn't actually disintegrate so quickly. But Doug had a good point. Every dent they made in it would quicken the disintegration. Especially if they were in the lower layers of the atmosphere, where it would heat up.

Sebastiano pulled himself forward, lying on his back. He was wearing gloves because the structure was freezing cold in places. Moist breath escaping from his mouth condensed immediately. It smelled of machine oil. The entire layer here was about fifty centimeters high, which presented them with problems time and time again. For example, it was impossible to turn around in these conditions. That was why Doug was crawling on his stomach and he on his back, so that they were able to move in all directions.

“Stop,” said Doug.

Sebastiano let go of the bar he was about to pull himself forward on. “What's up?”

“I’ve got a bundle of wires here, probably electricity. It's pretty thick. We can't get past it.”

Sebastiano recalled the layout of the station. His beloved kitchen should be underneath them.

“That must be the auxiliary power for the stoves.”

“The bundle comes from outside. It's not the antenna connection, is it?”

“Don't worry, Doug. The stove has its own chemical generator to save the batteries. It's outside on the hull.”

“Ah, good. I'll cut us through, then.”

Sebastiano gulped. He wouldn't be able to cook on that stove anymore. “Do it.”

Doug grunted and groaned. Cables seemed to be less affected by the general disintegration. In the end, the whole station would probably only be held together by cables and pipes.

“I'm through,” said Doug.

They continued crawling. If this was the kitchen, the control center wasn’t much further. In fact, Doug stopped him again after a few meters.

“I think we're there,” Doug whispered. “Hold on.”

Sebastiano couldn't help him because he still couldn't turn around. It shouldn't be difficult to get in, though, since the main computer was cooled via the ceiling. Doug just had to be careful not to damage anything important.

“That's it,” said Doug.

That was quick.

“I left the cooling to the left and just ripped open the ceiling.”

Another possibility. Something touched Sebastiano on the head.

“You can come,” said Doug. “This way.”

He now had to put his head through the opening Doug had created. That was no problem in zero gravity. For a moment it felt strange to be upside down in front of the computer, but a tiny impulse was enough to correct that.

Doug pulled out the keyboard, but Sebastiano shook his head. “They've installed an alarm for when we log in from inside.”

“Now what?” Doug looked at him with furrowed eyebrows.

“We convince Antonia from MIGI to log in with our details. Then she can remove the lock.”

“Agreed. You take care of Antonia; I'll lock down the control center in the meantime so no one interferes with us.”

* * *

The radio could be used independently of the main computer so that it wouldn't fail in the event of an IT problem. No connection was established at first. Sebastiano looked at his watch and estimated the time. Apparently, there was no relay satellite in range to relay the connection to the far side of the moon.

The side away from the Earth. Sebastiano sighed and looked at Doug. He was blocking access to the control center in a very creative way, by ripping cables out of the walls and clamping them tightly over the doors. It wouldn't be long before the rebels also realized that the walls no longer deserved their name.

“MIGI here. Hello, Sebastiano!”

Finally. He rubbed his hands together. The signal transit time had only increased minimally so far.

“Antonia, good to hear you. We need your help.”

He explained to her what Doug was up to. What they were up to.

Antonia sighed. “You really want to risk it? I can't guarantee that Sokolov is right. Sometimes he's very full of himself. He had that conversation with you without my permission.”

“He told us that you were asleep.”

“That was true, but I had insisted on being present for any conversation with you.”

Doug floated over. “Does that change anything? Do you have a better plan?”

“No, Doug, we don't. Not at the moment anyway.”

“What does that mean?”

“Jean-Pierre reported to us from the Gateway that he found Jinjin, Liwei and Ron on 2004 GU9.”

“Liwei is back?” asked Sebastiano.

“Yes, and now of course we're hoping that he's brought something back from his trip that could help us.”

“When will the Gateway be in radio range?” asked Doug.

“In a couple of weeks.”

“By that time it will be too late, and Earth will be gone for good.”

Antonia didn't answer. But there was a knock on the door to the control center.

“Barbara, are you in there?” It was Rodriguez.

Sebastiano put his finger over his mouth. Doug grimaced.

“I'm afraid that's what it looks like,” Antonia said over the radio.

Crap. Rodriguez knocked again. “What's going on?” he asked loudly. “Open the door now!”

“I'll take care of him,” Doug said, floating to the door.

“Antonia, I need you to log in now and give us back control,” Sebastiano said. He dictated his login details to her.

“I'll try.”

Sebastiano waited in front of the computer, whose screen was now lit up. His login appeared like magic. Rodriguez banged on the door. The computer seemed to be thinking about what to make of this data. Suddenly an alarm sounded.

Crap. The rioters had also thought of external logins. The alarm sounded so shrill that it would doubtless bring the entire mob in on them in short order. Rodriguez was hammering like crazy. Suddenly the door opened. Doug was hovering on the ceiling above it with some kind of long tool in his hand. Rodriguez charged through the doorway and flew right into the blow Doug aimed at him. Ouch. That looked painful. His temple was bleeding. Rodriguez’s limp body slammed against the opposite wall.

“Take care of him,” Doug said. “I'll get the door.”

Sebastiano floated over to Rodriguez, who wasn't moving. He checked his pulse. The man was alive. Good.

“Tie him up, quick, before he comes to!” shouted Doug.

“But how?”

“Pull all the cables out of the computer.”

“What?”

“It's useless anyway.”

Sebastiano took a deep breath, ripped the cover off the back of the main computer and quickly started harvesting cables. Two for the hands, two for the feet. The alarm cut off. He had probably hit the power supply. Sebastiano flew back to Rodriguez, who was still unconscious. First his hands, then his feet. He proceeded to tie up the insurgent and was just tying the last knot when Rodriguez regained consciousness.

“What are you doing?” asked Rodriguez, looking closely at the back of the computer. “Are you guys insane?”

Doug joined them. “Surely there's a manual control?”

Sebastiano suddenly had to laugh. Doug had him destroy the computer without even knowing whether he could control the station manually. Well, at least that was the case.

“What's so funny about that?” asked Rodriguez. “Is there one?”

“Yes, that's no problem,” Sebastiano reassured him. “Someone would simply have to work out exactly when we need to start which engine for how long to reach a certain orbit.”

“I don't think that will be necessary,” explained Doug. “We just need to go further down. We can do that simply by decelerating out of our orbit until the periapsis is low enough to test Sokolov's theory.”

“You really want to go through with this,” said Rodriguez.

“Yes. Immediately,” Doug replied. “Sebastiano, can you show me where to activate the manual controls?”

* * *

It was a good idea to take Rodriguez out of the game. Meyers had been banging on the door the whole time, but she didn't seem to have the strength or the destructive ability to get through to them. Someone unfamiliar with space technology would probably think the station was extremely fragile. It was indeed fragile in some respects—for example in terms of the minimal protection offered by the outer shell against impact.

On the other hand, the cylinders that made up the modules were self-supporting. They could easily tear out any partition wall, unlike a house on Earth. What was more, Meyers and her friends didn't realize that life support was primarily located in the floor. Doug's cables reliably held the door in place. It didn't even seem to occur to Meyers to punch through the wall. This meant that the insurgents had neglected to inspect their cabins, which actually contained instructions on how to get into the control center against all odds.

Sebastiano fastened his seatbelt. They had fastened Rodriguez to a beam in the floor. He wouldn't be very comfortable during the upcoming braking maneuver, but there were only two seats in the control center.

“Fasten your seatbelts!” Doug shouted loudly.

“You wouldn't dare,” replied Meyers.

Sebastiano sighed. That was thoughtless. He hoped Meyers would at least fall softly.

Doug adjusted his seat once more. Then he pushed the left lever of the manual control forward briefly. Sebastiano immediately felt the force in his stomach. From somewhere behind came a clunk. The world changed its orientation. One of the side walls turned into the floor. The space station was turning.

A nudge from Doug in the other direction and the station came to rest, but only briefly. Doug pushed the right-hand lever forwards. Sebastiano was pushed into his chair. It was about half Earth’s gravity, but for him it felt as if Rodriguez had sat on his chest.

Rodriguez seemed to be having his own problems. He made some strange noises, then opened his mouth and threw up. A sour smell wafted through the control center. Sebastiano undid his seatbelt. Someone had to help the man before he choked on the vomit. He managed to get out of the seat, but hit the floor hard and unpleasantly. He had completely forgotten that he could only use his upper body to maneuver under gravity. He crawled over to Rodriguez anyway, and managed to turn him on his side and hand him his water bottle.

“Thank you,” said Rodriguez and drank greedily from the water bottle.

Then the braking phase was over. Sebastiano felt the world receding. A slight push off and he was gliding through the control center. He somersaulted with delight.

“I'm afraid we're only halfway through Delta-v,” said Doug. “You'd best buckle up again.”

Mare Orientale, March 18, 2082

Her shoulder itched. Antonia pulled the blanket up to her neck, but now she was sweating. Sleep! She needed a good night's sleep. But the more she tried, the further sleep receded.

You can’t go looking for sleep. It must find you, her father always said. One of the billions of people who no longer existed. Antonia sighed. She didn't have a good feeling about Sokolov's plan, but it was the only one they had. What if the experiment resulted in the very thing they were trying to prevent? Instead of stabilizing the wave function, their physics genius wanted to collapse it.

What if that wasn't the way the stelae worked? Might Sokolov be seeing a quantum phenomenon where none existed? What they had measured could be due to other causes, but Antonia had no idea what those could be. Sokolov didn't seem to be seeking that at all.

We are eliminating one possibility after another, he would say. That wouldn't be unreasonable under other circumstances. If the first solution didn't work, you would try the second. In their case, however, that was not an option. Once the wave function collapsed, not even a god could reverse it. They would have to be able to turn back time, but if that was possible, they would have simply prevented the discovery of the stele.

Antonia flinched. There was a noise. Her door squeaked. If that was Sokolov, why wasn't he knocking? Something was panting in her ear.

“Bree, what are you doing here?”

The dog had been desperate to get out of her room last night. Antonia wasn't surprised. Sometimes Bree needed space too. But she didn't usually come back in the middle of the night.

Bree began to bark.

“Shhhh. The others are asleep.”

The dog whined softly. Her footsteps moved away, then returned. Antonia sat up. What was wrong with her? Bree whined again and moved away. Antonia got up and switched on the light. Bree waited, wagging her tail, in front of the door, which was ajar.

“All right, what's going on?”

Antonia opened the door fully and stepped through. Bree ran ahead of her. The floor was cold. She should have put on slippers. But if she turned around now, Bree would probably bark again and wake the others. They were just outside Ernie's cabin.

But that wasn't Bree's destination. She led Antonia to the control center. A light was flashing on the computer, indicating the inbox. Antonia turned on the screen. It was a message from the Lunar Gateway.

“Is that why you came for me, Bree?”

The dog wagged her tail excitedly. Antonia sat down and pulled her legs up. At home on Earth, she had never been able to sit cross-legged, but she liked it under the Moon's gravity.

She could warm her feet with her own backside. She was always happy that her bottom was big enough for it and that she didn't have to sit on hard bones.

Antonia opened the message and skimmed through it. Jean-Pierre explained to her how he had observed 2004 GU9 via the Bruno telescope—and the strange dance performed by its inhabitants. A small video was attached to the message. JP was right. That was not normal behavior. The three of them were trying to communicate something. JP had come to the same conclusion. He had converted the distances into Morse code and attached the result to the message.

It looked impressive. The short and long characters formed a seemingly endless stream. Shouldn't there be spaces between the letters and words? JP didn't seem to have paid attention to that. But he also wrote that he wasn’t familiar with Morse code. The only downside was that she didn't know it any better. Antonia knew that all these combinations corresponded to letters and numbers, but she could only identify S, O and E. And she had memorized the number five because it simply consisted of five short pulses. With such rudimentary knowledge, it wouldn't be possible to translate the message.

* * *

Antonia listened into the night. There was only the sound of life support. Bree had lain down beside her feet. When Antonia got up, she jumped up too. She snuck to Ernie's cabin as quietly as possible. Why didn't she want to let Sokolov in on this? Surely the genius would remember Morse code. But somehow, she didn't trust him. No, that was wrong. It wasn't mistrust, but rather the knowledge that he wanted to push through his plan, whatever the cost. He had set his mind on testing his theory, meaning the Blue Space Station had to carry it out.

She was lucky. Ernie didn't lock his cabin. She pushed the door open. Bree scurried past her, jumped onto the bed and climbed up to Ernie's face, which she licked.

“Out!” Ernie shouted. “What are you doing, you crazy rat?”

“Shh,” whispered Antonia and put her finger over her mouth.

Ernie was startled and bumped his head on the ceiling. “Crap! What are you doing here? Did I...?” He glanced at the clock next to his bed. “It's the middle of the night!”

“Quiet,” said Antonia. “Do you know Morse code?”

Ernie scrunched his eyebrows together. “You woke me up just to ask me that?”

“Do you know it?”

He nodded. “Yes, I think I do. Dash-dash dash-dash-dash dot-dash-dot dot-dot-dot-dot. But...”

“Very good. JP has sent a message in Morse; we have to translate it.”

“JP from the Gateway? Why doesn't he just call?”

“The message came from 2004 GU9. So probably from Liwei. Maybe he...”

Ernie darted past her to the door. “Why didn’t you say that? It could be important!”

* * *

When he arrived at the main computer, Ernie scratched his temple.

“There are no spaces,” he explained. "There are three dots between letters and seven dots between words." Ernie went over the characters with his finger, shaking his head.

“What else?”

“We don't know where the text starts, either. Normally you have a KA without a pause at the beginning, i.e. dash-dot-dash-dot-dash, and an AR at the end, i.e. dot-dash-dot-dash-dot. I am seeing those combinations, but when I interpret them as KA, they're followed by garbage.”

Antonia bit her lower lip. “Does that mean we can't do anything with the text?”

“Not as it is. But I could write a little program that tests the various possible interpretations. It would insert pauses in all the possible places and then check whether a meaningful text emerges.”

“How long will that take? I think Blue was already in transfer orbit."

“To write the program? Ten minutes. It's just a few loops.”

“And the analysis?”

Ernie rubbed his chin. “I'm afraid it's quite complex. You have word limits on the one hand and letter limits on the other.”

“What if you just test for letters? The human mind is pretty good at recognizing words from a string of letters.”

“That would be a good idea in itself, but pretty much any combination of dot and dash results in a letter. I'll only find out whether it makes sense when several letters form a word.”

Antonia sighed. “I see. Then please hurry up with the program. I'll try to free up the main computer from as many tasks as possible. Then it will calculate faster.”

* * *

Ernie actually managed to complete the program in just nine minutes.

“The computer helped me a bit,” he admitted and started it up.

The first word appeared on the screen.

UWC

“That was quick,” said Antonia.

“Yes, but I don't like it,” said Ernie, interrupting the program. “What kind of word is that?”

Antonia shrugged her shoulders. “An abbreviation? Maybe they wanted to keep the message as short as possible.”

Ernie pulled up the original message on the screen. “Look.” He tapped on a line.

. . - . - - - . - .

“Dot dot dash dot dash dash dash dot dash dot,” he read out. “That could be UWC.”

He cleared a few pauses.

..- .-- -.-.

“That's UWC.”

He typed again.

..-. --- .-.

“Now we have FOR. Not an acronym. Which do you think is more likely?”

Ernie wiped away the original text and switched to his program. “I’ll now block it from using abbreviations as word possibilities.” He took a deep breath and restarted the program.

FOR THE

“Ah, that looks better,” said Antonia.

FOR THE EARTH TO RETURN

The words appeared on the screen with astonishing speed. It had been worth it to halt all the other processes. At the moment, the main computer wasn't even paying attention to the air quality.

FOR THE EARTH TO RETURN YOU MUST

“Hey, that would be great!” exclaimed Antonia. Ernie bobbed his head back and forth. That was typical—he’d rather not get too excited too soon. She knew him.

FOR THE EARTH TO RETURN YOU MUST DESTROY

“There's a ... pause in the conversation,” said Antonia.

“Yes, the message is probably going out here,” said Ernie.

“What's going on here?” Sokolov came at them like an eagle defending its nest, arms outstretched. Shit, he must have figured out something was up.

“We're decrypting a message from Liwei,” said Ernie, spreading out in front of the computer. “Nothing to get excited about.”

FOR THE EARTH TO RETURN YOU MUST DESTROY THE REMAINS OF THE STELE

“Someone turned off my simulation,” Sokolov complained. “It was so close to the end!”

“I thought you had already simulated that Orbital Station Blue will save the Earth?” After all, that was precisely the reason why Sokolov had sent the crew into low orbit.

“Antonia, you know yourself that simulations can show very different results. Only the statistics will tell us what the most likely outcome is.”

FOR THE EARTH TO RETURN YOU MUST DESTROY THE REMAINS OF THE STELE ON THE MOON

“Ernie's little program immediately showed us what Liwei wants to tell us from 2004 GU9," explained Antonia.

“I demand that my simulation be reactivated immediately. You're putting the orbital station in danger!”

“You mean, we’re putting your theory in danger?” asked Antonia.

FOR THE EARTH TO RETURN YOU MUST DESTROY THE REMAINS OF THE STELE ON THE MOON THEN THE STELE

“What is this Liwei babbling about?” said Sokolov. “They tried to destroy the stele once before. The result was only semi-optimal.”

“Because the attempt wasn't completely successful,” said Antonia. But the instructions she had so looked forward to weren’t giving her a lot of hope either. How were they supposed to destroy the stele? They didn't even have a space station to crash into it. And they didn't have any more nuclear bombs in their arsenal either.

FOR THE EARTH TO RETURN YOU MUST DESTROY THE REMAINS OF THE STELE ON THE MOON THEN THE STELE ON 2004

“The message is clear,” said Ernie. “Liwei was probably with the builders of the stele. I mean, what else could he have been doing for so long? And he wouldn't be asking us to do this if he wasn't completely sure that Earth could be saved this way, would he?”

Yes, that was the question. Did Liwei know that they hadn’t been able to completely destroy the stele? Did he perhaps wrongly suspect that large explosive devices might also be stored at the ESA or in the Russian base?

“You wouldn't happen to have a back-up nuclear bomb in Lunnui Gorodok?” asked Antonia.

Sokolov shook his head. “Are you turning my simulation back on now?”

“No, the program isn't ready yet,” said Ernie.

FOR THE EARTH TO RETURN YOU MUST DESTROY THE REMAINS OF THE STELE ON THE MOON THEN THE STELE ON 2004 ERROR

“Error,” said Sokolov. “You've got a great program there.”

Ernie didn't answer. Antonia watched him go through the original. Then he typed something on the screen.

--.. .---- -.

“Z1N,” he said, shaking his head. “That doesn't make any sense.”

“All those dashes at the end, that's a 9,” said Sokolov, pressing his lips together. He was probably annoyed that he couldn't keep to himself.

“Right, thanks, that's GU9,” explained Ernie. “The program reported an error because it couldn't make sense of it. So we have ...” He inserted GU9 manually at the end of the message.

FOR THE EARTH TO RETURN YOU MUST DESTROY THE REMAINS OF THE STELE ON THE MOON THEN THE STELE ON 2004 GU9

Then he started the program again.

“I'd like to know how Liwei is so certain of this,” said Sokolov. “Shouldn’t you check his sources first?”

“We won't be able to talk to him for several weeks,” said Antonia.

“I think that's a risk.”

Yes, for the little experiment for which Sokolov was using the Blue Space Station and the whole Earth. Antonia massaged her temples. But the program made it interesting.

FOR THE EARTH TO RETURN YOU MUST DESTROY THE REMAINS OF THE STELE ON THE MOON THEN THE STELE ON 2004 GU9 WILL TAKE OVER

“That's really enough now,” said Sokolov. “You can see it's happening again.”

“We can't see anything yet,” replied Ernie.

FOR THE EARTH TO RETURN YOU MUST DESTROY THE REMAINS OF THE STELE ON THE MOON THEN THE STELE ON 2004 GU9 WILL TAKE OVER THE TASK

“Now!”

“Wait a minute!”

Sokolov was probably right, but they had to make sure. Antonia put her hand on Ernie's shoulder to thank him for being so steadfast.

FOR THE EARTH TO RETURN YOU MUST DESTROY THE REMAINS OF THE STELE ON THE MOON THEN THE STELE ON 2004 GU9 WILL TAKE OVER THE TASK

FOR THE EARTH TO RETURN YOU

“Okay,” said Ernie and pressed a key combination. “Thanks for your patience. Now we just need to figure out how to implement these instructions.”

“Have fun with that,” Sokolov said, pushing Ernie aside to sit down in front of the computer himself. “In the meantime, I'm going to save the Earth.”

“We have to call Blue back,” said Antonia. “If we have another way, the Schrödinger experiment is too dangerous.”

“That's out of the question,” replied Sokolov. “As long as you have nothing to blow up the remains of the stele with, your idea is pure theory.”

“Ah, are we talking about blowing something up?” asked Popov. Where had he come from? They didn't need another Russian right now.

“Get lost,” said Sokolov with unusual aggressiveness.

“I love blowing things up,” said Popov. “And this would be a perfect opportunity to try out the contents of our potato chip can!”

“Stop that,” said Sokolov. “Let the experts on Earth test the stuff.”

“And what's in it for me? No, I want to be part of the test.”

“No problem. I'll take the rover with you to Dewar Crater,” said Ernie.

“Jeez, Popov, don't you realize what you're doing?”

Popov shook his head. “It's right here on the screen, Misha.” He pushed Sokolov aside and read aloud. “For the earth to return, you must destroy the remains of the stele on the Moon, then the stele on 2004 GU9 will take over the task. That's a clear mission. What's incomprehensible about that?”

Sokolov folded his arms over his head.

“Thank you, Popov,” said Antonia.

* * *

While Ernie and Popov were preparing for the EVA, Antonia was sitting at the radio. She had to reach Orbital Station Blue and dissuade the crew from the dangerous mission of flying into low Earth orbit.

But the first attempt failed.

The second, too.

She checked the position of the relay satellites. One of them was available. Was it defective, by any chance? Another one would come into range in twenty minutes. She sat back. Then it should work.

But her call didn't seem to be reaching the orbital station via the other satellite either. Was it already too late? What if the antenna had been damaged in the denser atmosphere? And the Earth had not returned. Sokolov would explain that the station was not yet flying low enough. But maybe it had already reached its target orbit and was now sharing the fate of the Earth. That would be tragic!

Antonia tried again.

“MIGI to Orbital Station Blue, please respond.”

No response.

“MIGI to orbital station Blue, please respond.”

She shook her head. Sokolov's idea had probably failed. Or it had been successful, but the collapse of the wave function had removed the Earth from the universe for good.

She could check that. Antonia activated the MIGI lasers to scan the Earth. Nothing. No result. She clutched her chest.

“What's wrong with you?” asked Ernie, who was just coming out of the gym, sweating in his thermal underwear.

“Nothing,” she said. Antonia didn't want to dash his hopes. Maybe the explosion still had a purpose after all.

Wait. She hadn't considered the position of the Lunar Gateway. It was now much further away than when she first measured it. They needed it to reflect the lasers back to Earth. Antonia retrieved the exact course from the computer memory and used it to adjust the alignment of the lasers. Then she repeated the measurement.

This time the Earth was present—on average. Her heartbeat slowed again.

Good. The relay satellite was there. The Earth still existed. Then Blue was still orbiting around it. Enough time had passed in the meantime, in case it had originally been hidden from view by the Earth.

"MIGI to Orbital Station Blue, please respond.”

No answer. Antonia double-checked the hardware. The antenna was responsive. She encoded her call as she should. She tried the Lunar Gateway. JP answered immediately.

“Antonia! Did you get my message?”

“It was very good of you to send it to us.” Antonia read the instructions.

“Is it that simple?” asked JP. “But do you have something that...? Oh. I'm afraid I know why you're contacting me.”

“It's just a test,” said Antonia. “My call to Blue isn't going through.”

“Oh, I thought you wanted to crash the Gateway into the broken column.”

JP sounded relieved. Then again, he probably wouldn't have hesitated to comply with the request.

“It would take too long, and it won't be necessary. We still have some explosives.”

“That's great. But the fact that you can't reach Blue... Should I try? I should still be within range.”

"Yes, that's what I wanted to ask you, JP. Tell them that...”

Suddenly the connection was lost. Antonia slapped her knees. Calm down. JP was clever. He knew what he should tell Sebastiano and Doug. Antonia stood up and floated over to the main computer where Sokolov was working.

“What are the chances that I can access the radio subsystem in the log files?” she asked.

Sokolov shook his head. “Slim. I don't leave any traces.”

“Is that a confession?”

Sokolov typed a few commands. Then he looked around.

“Between us and off the record—yes, I have to prevent my experiment from being sabotaged. It is likely to be the most important experiment in the history of research.”

“And people should die for that?”

“They won't. It will work.” Sokolov turned to her and glared at her with steely blue eyes. “I know what I'm doing. A little trust would be appropriate.”

“Trust!” Antonia laughed. “But...” No, she wouldn't tell him that JP was going to contact the orbital station. Certainly not. He had to succeed.

“But?” Sokolov asked.

“Popov and Ernie will solve the problem. They're already on their way.”

Sokolov shook his head back and forth. “That was a good plan. But I'm afraid the rover will throw a spanner in the works. They'll only be able to reach the stele on foot. And by then it will be too late.”

“What do you mean?”

Sokolov remained silent. Antonia's gaze grew fixed. She had to force herself not to punch Sokolov in the face. Bree sensed her tension and growled at her feet. But she wouldn't do Sokolov that favor.

Trust, that was what it was about. She had to trust Popov, Ernie and JP. They would solve their respective problems. Her job was to take care of Sokolov so that he would never get in their way again.

Just like now. Sokolov had logged into the radio interface on the main computer.

"MIGI to orbital station Blue, come in.”

“Blue here. Sebastiano. What is it now?"

Sokolov got through immediately. He must have installed some kind of program that denied all others access. Antonia pushed herself off and jumped over to the radio. Sokolov watched her go. He seemed to waver between the desire to follow her and to end the conversation immediately.

He decided on Sebastiano.

“You've just had contact with the Lunar Gateway?” he asked.

“That is correct. We are initiating the necessary procedures. The passengers are...”

“Wait, Sebastiano. What JP said...”

Antonia finally found the radio's power cable. She yanked it out with a jerk. Bree started to play with the shiny metal end, so that Antonia had to pull the dog away. Sokolov jumped up and came towards her. Bree growled like she had never growled before. If Antonia had let her, she would have torn Sokolov's face apart. Antonia calmed her. But the growl worked—Sokolov stopped out of her reach and raised his hands defensively.

“Antonia, this is getting silly.”

“Excuse me? We are at an ESA station. You are a guest here, Sokolov. Behave like one! Manipulating the radio system is really low.”

“Just a little tip—the ESA no longer exists,” Sokolov replied. “Right now, it's just the two of us here.”

Bree snarled.

“And that little mutt over there.” Sokolov pointed at Bree. She snapped at his finger, but missed it because Antonia was holding her back.

“You overestimate yourself, Sokolov. I'm not afraid of you.”

Sokolov laughed disparagingly. “Then why are you sweating so much? Your pupils are dilated.”

“Anger can also cause dilated pupils. I'm warning you.”

Sokolov shrugged. “I'll reconnect the radio to the power supply. And you will be reasonable and let me do my work because you want Earth to return to its place just as much as I do. I'm your only chance of doing that.”

With these words, Sokolov squeezed past her. Antonia had ten, fifteen seconds to make up her mind. Trust. Sokolov underestimated not only her, but also Popov and Ernie. The two of them would reach the stele before it was too late, even if they had to walk. Sokolov was not her only chance. Antonia let go of Bree, who leaped out of her arms, landed on Sokolov's neck and bit down hard. Antonia grabbed the chair next to her and pulled it out of its moorings.

“Fucking mutt!” Sokolov yelled. He turned around and grabbed the back of his neck to pull Bree away, but in doing so, he dropped his guard, allowing Antonia to slam the chair into his ribs at full force. Sokolov grunted and fell on his side. Just before he hit the ground, Bree came loose and returned to Antonia, elegantly as a boomerang.

“Well done,” Antonia praised her. “Come on, we'll lock him in the airlock and then we'll repair the radio.”

Trust. She still couldn't reach Ernie and Popov. The two were on their own. But they would carry out their mission.

Orbital Station Blue, March 18, 2082

Six hundred kilometers below them should be the Earth. Sebastiano checked the radar, but there was nothing—not even clouds. And yet the outer shell of the station was already slowly heating up. He checked their orbit. They had reached the closest point to Earth. If Doug applied the brakes now, they would reduce the furthest point from Earth to six hundred kilometers. Or less. Sokolov demanded one hundred and fifty kilometers. Only then would clear evidence to prove his theory be provided. Or disprove it.

One hundred and fifty was madness. The Blue wasn't designed to land on Earth, and the station wouldn't survive for long in such a low orbit either. But okay—if they could save the Earth with it, it would be acceptable. Doug still seemed convinced by Sokolov's plan. He obviously wanted it badly to succeed. His beloved Maria was on Earth. Sebastiano could understand. That was why he had helped him regain control.

But they probably wouldn't be able to hold out for long. Doug had to initiate the final firing phase soon.

“Fasten your seatbelts!” Doug called over the loudspeaker.

The radio came on. “Lunar Gateway to Blue, please respond.”

Sebastiano accepted the call. What did the Gateway want from them? Wasn't he heading towards the asteroid?

“Hello JP, what's up? We're in the final phase here.”

“You have to stop it immediately,” said JP.

“Doug, did you hear that? Abort mission.”

“What's going on?” asked Doug. “You have one minute.”

Sebastiano passed the question on to JP.

“We have news from Liwei. There is a better solution.”

JP read out a long sentence that somehow sounded...constructed.

“And this is real?” Sebastiano asked.

“Yes, Antonia from MIGI has confirmed it. They will eliminate the remains of the stele. Your intervention is no longer necessary.”

“The minute is up,” Doug said, pressing his advantage.

“Wait a bit longer, please,” Sebastiano pleaded.

“Not only is it not necessary, it could also be harmful. The attempt could cause the Earth to disappear for good.”

Sokolov hadn't explained the plan to them that way. But could he trust JP? At that moment, the second channel activated. It was MIGI. Sokolov.

“MIGI to Orbital Station Blue, come in.”

“Blue here. Sebastiano. What is it now?”

He was suspicious, but he wanted Sokolov to confirm it.

“You just had contact with the Lunar Gateway?” the physicist asked.

“That's right. We're initiating everything necessary right now. The passengers are…”

Actually, the passengers didn't know about their new plans yet. But they would certainly appreciate moving away from Earth again.

“Wait, Sebastiano. What JP said...”

The connection broke. Damn. He would have liked to hear what Sokolov had to say.

“JP, that was Sokolov.”

“He's probably trying to convince you otherwise. He's also somehow prevented Antonia from reaching you directly. But you have to believe me. I saw Ron, Jinjin, and Liwei myself, in infrared. First there were two of them, then three, and then they sent this message in Morse code. I'm sure we can and must solve the problem on the moon. Sokolov is only interested in confirming his theories.”

“Did you hear that, Doug?” Sebastiano asked.

“Yes.”

“What do you think?”

“I hate being manipulated.”

“I'm not the one manipulating you,” said JP. “I saw the three of them with my own eyes. I can send you the pictures! If you know Morse code, you can even read it yourself. One of them must have communicated with the builders of the stele, or they wouldn't have gone to so much trouble to warn us.”

Doug sighed. “Okay. I'm turning the station around.”

That was very good. If Doug accelerated instead of braking, they would reach a higher orbit again. They had to get out of the Earth's vicinity, or the station would continue to disintegrate.

“That's the right decision,” said JP.

“Hopefully.” Doug pushed a lever forward, and the power of the engine pushed Sebastiano into the cushions.

Dewar Crater, March 18, 2082

The rover wasn't moving. Ernie hit the controls. “Your boss is definitely behind this!”

Popov shook his head. “Misha is not my boss. He's just a famous physicist, so people show him respect.”

“But I just refueled the rover.”

“I know, Ernie. I watched you. When you went back inside, I drained most of the methanol and tampered with the display.”

Ernie jumped up and walked towards Popov with his hands raised. “So it was you!”

Popov kept his hands down. He could hit him now. He probably wouldn't even defend himself.

“You have to understand, Ernie. Nobody denies Mischa anything. He's very...persuasive. He convinced me that you wanted to get your hands on the remains of the stele. I was quite surprised when suddenly the two of us were getting into the rover.”

“Shit, and now we're sitting out here in the middle of nowhere. We can't even make it back.”

Popov carefully held up the chip box. “Maybe we can use this magic potion?”

“To end our lives? I'm not that desperate yet.”

Yes, Ernie was desperate. But this was about saving the world. He couldn't afford to get discouraged.

“Do you know the drive concept where you move forward using controlled explosions?”

“The combustion engine? Pretty antiquated and inefficient.”

“It was also used for rockets, as nuclear propulsion with atomic bombs.”

Ernie nodded. “Yes, I've heard of that. It never caught on. You want to imitate that with our can of chips?”

“Yes, something like that. We just need to make it to the Chinese base. We can refuel there.”

“But we need the substance to blow up the stele.”

“Maybe we can get some more,” said Popov.

He didn't like that idea. What if the lake had long since drained again? Then they would reach the stele with great difficulty, only to be left stupidly standing there. They might as well give up right now.

No, they couldn't.

“Wait a minute. There must be another way to create recoil.” Ernie tapped on the controls and displayed all the supplies. The methanol that was converted into electricity in the fuel cells was all used up. They still had water and air to breathe.

“We could feed the rover's batteries from our spacesuit batteries,” said Popov.

That was an excellent idea, better than his idea of using breathing air as a compressed gas drive. As soon as they had methanol in the tanks again, from the Chinese base for example, they could recharge the suits.

“It's about fifty kilometers,” said Popov. “That will cost us around ten kilowatt hours.”

“And what do the EVA suits deliver?”

“Wait.” Popov crawled to the back of the shuttle and returned with his suit. “Six kilowatt hours,” he read out.

That was a lot of energy. That was probably why the Russian suits were so heavy. Ernie shook his head. “Mine's got less, guaranteed.”

Popov climbed back in the back and shined his lamp around. “That's right, yours only has four kilowatt hours. But together we're strong. Together we're enough.”

Ernie tapped the controls. Hopefully Popov was right.

* * *

They reached the Chinese station after an hour and a half. Ernie drove cautiously, to prevent the substance in the can from exploding, reducing the energy consumption to such an extent that there was still a kilowatt hour left in Popov's suit.

“You'll have to walk,” said Ernie.

“No problem. Here, catch!” Popov threw him the can.

Had he lost his mind? But he didn't have time to scold him. He had to concentrate on catching the can. Against all expectations, it didn't explode. Ernie looked at the can. Hopefully the substance hadn't leaked out. He remembered how it had worked its way up the pole.

“Good thinking,” Popov said and laughed.

Ernie wiped his forehead with his free hand. “Hurry up. It's still a long way to the stele.”

“Aye-aye, captain.” Popov disappeared into the airlock without pre-breathing. Ernie was used to that by now. But this time it was very practical that they didn't have to wait another twenty minutes. Without the energy from the spacesuit battery, the light would go out in here quite quickly.

In fact, the lights were already switching off while Popov was still waiting in the lock. Nevertheless, Ernie didn't feel alone, because there were still plenty of colored eyes watching him constantly.

“I'm starting my search now,” Popov said over the radio.

They stopped right next to the storage units. Popov had gone over the recordings from Ernie's helmet camera beforehand. Ernie had been here before. They found cylindrical containers in the images that could be methanol tanks. They were labeled with Chinese characters, but Popov hoped to be able to identify the chemical formula for methanol in the small print. They couldn't ask anyone right now.

Ernie carefully set the container down. As he did so, he saw on the screen what Popov was capturing with his helmet camera.

“Unit 7. Here is our first candidate.”

Popov lifted a container. A hazard symbol could be seen on the side. Popov scanned the container and finally held a label up to the camera. ‘Acetone’ it said. Without a word, he put the container down again.

“Unit 14.”

The camera image flickered as Popov searched for a way into the storage unit. The container he found behind some mirrors for the hypertelescope was even labeled “Methanol” in Latin letters.

“Hey, our first one,” said Ernie.

"Five liters won't get us very far.”

“It's enough to take us to the remains of the stele. When we've saved the Earth, someone will come and pick us up.”

Popov didn't comment on that. Ernie understood. There were just too many “ifs”.

“Unit 16.” Here Popov came across another barrel of solvent.

“Unit 19.”

Ditto.

“Unit 23.” It was the last storage unit in which they had identified liquids in Ernie's pictures. Their last hope. Ernie didn't even want to think about it. Popov tore open a box at the very end of the unit. “Ha, number two!”

“How much?"

Popov turned the container over and over. “Five liters,” he finally said.

“Shit, that's not nearly enough.”

“You're right, Ernie. But I have an idea.”

“What's that?”

“Just wait and see.”

Ernie didn't like surprises, but he played along. Popov turned around. He walked past units 20, 19 and 18 and stopped in front of 17. They hadn't noticed a container in there.

“You won't find anything there,” Ernie said.

“Yes, I will.” Popov opened the door. The beam of light fell on human limbs. Ernie flinched. It was a good thing he put down the chip box. Then he remembered. This was the container where Jinjin disabled the robots. What was Popov doing here?

The spotlight moved closer to the unnaturally connected figures. Suddenly Popov was holding tools in his hands. He bent over the heap and began to disassemble it, puffing.

“What are you doing?”

“What does it look like?”

“You're releasing the robots. They're killers, you know?”

“Robots are machines. The ones who program them are killers.”

That was true, but Ernie was in no mood for an academic discussion. The fact was that Popov was disconnecting the dangerous machines from each other.

“This is not a good idea,” he said.

“Ernie, these are autonomous machines that can go for days without plugging in. They probably have an RTG as a power source.”

“Yeah, so they can follow us for days.”

“Power source, isn't anything flashing on yours?”

Popov wanted to tap into their power. That was ingenious, of course. But it was also extremely dangerous.

“Phew. You want to bring them on board.”

“No, I'll attach them to the outside of the rover and connect the radioisotope generators to the solar cells. Two should be enough.”

“You want to strap two robots to our back?”

“To the rover, yes.”

“And if they resist?”

“I won't turn them on. The only good robot is one that's turned off.”

“You're...” Well, what was Popov? Brilliant? Probably, but also...daring.

“I'm done here.” Popov held up two robot bodies without legs or arms. But the heads were still on. “So do you agree?” he asked. “If you don't want to, we won't. But then we won't get to the stele.”

Ernie grumbled. “I don't really have a choice, do I?”

Popov shook his head, which Ernie registered as a wobble of the light beam from the helmet headlamp. Wasn't there something in that corner?

“Popov? Look at nine o'clock.”

The spotlight turned to the left and fell on a headless robot body, which was pulling itself along the floor with one hand. Damn. Popov went closer and gave it a powerful kick. The robot flew into the back wall of the unit. It remained there for a moment, then started crawling again. It seemed to be moving at random, like a robot vacuum cleaner—until it encountered another robot with two legs and a head. The hand moved to the hip and began to unscrew the first leg. It worked! The robot pulled the leg towards it and mounted it on its own body.

“Um, Popov? I don't think we should watch this movie to the end. If that thing finds itself a head...”

“Yes.” Popov turned around. In the spotlight, another robot was crawling towards him. Its left leg was connected to its right arm, but the left arm was working. Popov kicked it aside.

“I'm afraid we've started something,” he said.

“We, ha-ha.”

“Well, I'd better come to you.”

“The two you are bringing with us don't have any limbs?”

“No, just the bodies with the RTG.”

“Good. Please hurry.”

* * *

Ten minutes later, Popov was sitting next to him again. The rover's engine roared to life. The power from the two RTGs supplied it better than the fuel cell could.

“Can you take the chips can, please?”

Popov reached for it and cradled it on his forearm like a baby. “Drive!”

Was there panic in his voice? But now Ernie could see it too. The front camera showed a two-legged robot charging toward the rover. It didn't appear to have arms, so another specimen must have activated it. Seemingly these things also worked together! Ernie accelerated the rover and rammed the machine head-on. The robot flew twenty meters and crashed to the ground. Ernie turned and raced away from the robots as fast as possible.

“Oh, man,” said Popov.

“You said it.” They got along well.

“I don't think we're one of their priorities,” said Ernie. “There's no central control for them as long as the Earth remains gone.”

“Usually, robots then fall back on their backup program,” said Popov. “Self-protection and protection of friendly forces.”

“Then they should be no danger to us.”

“Yes, unless they happen to have included the stele in their backup programming.”

* * *

“The relay is now accessible,” said Popov.

They’d had no contact with the base during their little problem. Ernie was curious to see how Sokolov would react when he found out that his plan hadn't worked. Popov seemed quite calm, even though he had obviously acted against his colleague's wishes. Ernie observed him sidelong. Every now and then he rocked the can of potato chips gently, as if it really were a baby.

“Rover to base, come in, please,” he tried over the radio.

No answer.

“Antonia, can you hear me? Ernie here.”

He received no acknowledgement.

Popov scrolled through the log files. “The antenna is working, and the relay confirms the transmission.”

Then it was either intentional or something had happened. Ernie swallowed a lump in his throat.

Popov put a hand on his shoulder. “I'm sure it's just a technical error. We'll do the job with the stele, and then we'll take a look.”

Ernie nodded. The map on the screen showed that they were nearing the double crater. Ernie stopped the rover on the slope of a crater so that the headlights were shining into it.

“Do you see anything?” he asked.

“No, it's just a normal crater. There, the boulders on the ground look quite normal.”

Popov was right. The huge rocks scattered around the crater as if thrown there by a giant were clearly visible. So the substance hadn't spread into the neighboring craters.

Ernie started the rover again. They slowly rolled down the crater wall. He activated the rear camera to check whether they were leaving a dust trail. That was when he saw them. A group of misshapen robots was following them. He stopped the rover and the machines stopped too.

He pointed at the screen. “They followed us.”

“Wasn't hard,” said Popov, who seemed quite calm.

“You expected this?”

“Robots and their priorities.”

“You could have warned me.”

“That wasn't necessary. They don't care about us. They want the stele. So they followed us.”

“How did they know we were heading for the stele?”

“Where can you go here? We came from the MIGI base, so it's logical what our destination must be.”

Robots and their priorities. What Popov said made sense. But was it a danger to them?

“If you're wondering if they're dangerous to us,” Popov continued, “the answer is a resounding yes. I'm guessing they're still following their programming to destroy the stele. That's what we want too.”

“Then we have the same goals.”

“Yes, only they don't care if they die in the process. Or if we do.”

Ernie gulped. Unfortunately, Popov was right about that too. He didn't actually want to die here.

“We have an advantage,” he said. “They don't know about the substance.”

“I'm not sure we can do anything with that advantage yet,” Popov said. “Or do you think the robots will just charge in and ignite the substance for us?”

That was a good question. So far, the machines had been acting exceptionally clever within their capabilities. And they didn't know for sure whether they really wanted to destroy the stele or just take possession of it.

Ernie shrugged his shoulders and accelerated. From the next crater rim, they could see the basin in which the stele was located. The rover responded smoothly and powerfully. The two RTGs were working wonders. They should definitely keep them.

At this moment, Ernie had an idea. “We need some kind of trigger that we can control remotely.”

He brought the rover to a halt. The radioisotope generators were still in the robot bodies. They could do without one. The second would provide them with enough energy for the return journey. If the rover still existed.

“Wait a minute.” He slipped into his EVA suit. This time he also skipped pre-breathing. It would go wrong anyway. Ernie left the rover and fetched the sampling arm. Then he attached it to one of the robot bodies. Bingo! The Chinese adhered to international standards. He managed to attach the arm to the body in such a way that he could control it from a distance. Then he detached the entire body from the rover and pulled it a few meters away.

“Ernie? You have company,” Popov announced.

Ernie turned around and was startled. Three robots appeared from the shadows. They moved very slowly. Their target was the body with the sampling arm. Ernie moved out of their way and climbed back into the rover.

“Now they're adding two additional legs,” reported Popov, while Ernie was still in the airlock. Sweating, he rushed in and strapped himself into the pilot's chair. He didn't like being so close to robots. While Ernie steered the rover up the crater slope, Popov kept an eye on the robots via the rear camera. The arm that Ernie had attached was hanging down uselessly. The sight pained him, since two other robots were now each using one of their arms as legs. The machines were social beings; at least, that was what their programming suggested. As such, Ernie didn't really want to see them perish in a huge explosion.

* * *

The rover stopped on the crest of the crater. The spotlight fell on the surface of a lake. The substance seemed to have risen considerably further and flooded both partial craters. An island now floated in the darkness where, on their last visit, there had been a kind of partition wall. It almost looked as if the rock was floating, since the substance reflected no light at all.

Ernie retrieved older photographs from the computer memory and placed them over the image. This allowed them to see that the substance must be about eighty meters deep. The remains of the stele were completely submerged in it. Strangely, the neutron scanner they had set up was still sending images of the cave under the crater. It hadn't changed.

“And now?” he asked.

Popov hung suspended in front of the left porthole. Now he slid a little to the side. “They're not waiting for us.”

Ernie joined him. The robots were indeed slowly climbing down the slope. They had spotlights switched on in their heads, making the scene look even more eerie. When they reached the surface of the substance, they stopped. Two of them gesticulated with their arms. A third bent its upper body forward until its head disappeared into the substance. The liquid ran up its body, and its upper body seemed to dissolve as well.

With careful steps, the robot backed away from the substance. Another one entered very slowly and stopped. The substance crept up its body, causing it to gradually disappear.

Then it was gone.

A colleague followed it, then a second, until they had all disappeared into the substance. Only the specimen with Ernie's remote-controlled arm waited. What was it up to? Maybe it didn't trust the arm. Ernie bit his lower lip. Then the robot stepped forward and followed its friends.

For a while, they couldn't see a thing. Even radar couldn't penetrate the robots’ camouflage. The substance really would be worth its weight in gold on Earth. If the Earth ever returned. But then the neutron scanner suddenly responded. It functioned with the help of a neutron source. The substance didn't seem to be able to swallow these elementary particles. As a result, the robots now appeared as fluctuating shadows.

The scanner only had low resolution, but what it saw was clear: the robots were moving towards the remains of the stele. They were proceeding with extreme caution. Apparently they had realized how dangerous the substance could be. But they didn't realize that they were carrying the means to destroy it.

“How far away can we get without losing the connection to the arm?” asked Popov.

Ernie shrugged. He would prefer to be a few hundred kilometers away from the explosion.

“To be on the safe side, we should have a direct line of sight,” said Ernie.

“I was afraid of that.” Popov said nothing more.

It was almost time. The group of robots was approaching the chamber below the surface. If they fell in, he would lose the connection. Ernie took the remote control for the sampling arm out of the tool bag and reached in with his hand. If he moved it now, the arm attached to the robot should move in parallel.

“Can you take over the rover?” he asked. “We might have to escape quickly.”

“I'm ready,” said Popov.

Ernie's gaze fell on the can of chips containing the substance they had collected on their last visit here. The whole crater was still filled with it, and the robots were in the middle of it.

Popov noticed it too and tucked it under his arm. “You can start.”

Ernie gulped. These might be his last moments. But there was no time to say goodbye.

He moved his hand back and forth, slowly at first, then faster and faster. The sampling arm must be flapping wildly now. The robots would be surprised, if they were capable of it. They might get scared and try to stop the arm. But so far Ernie hadn't felt any resistance. He lashed out as fast and as hard as he could to force the substance to react. He had to succeed before the robots could tear off the wild arm.

Suddenly a deep grumble went through the rover. It must have worked! Popov backed up and sped off towards the valley. “Buckle up, Ernie.”

Ernie threw the remote control into the corner, jumped into his seat and fastened his seatbelt. A crater wall loomed in front of them. Popov switched to the rear camera. A huge cloud of dust followed them. The radar revealed that it consisted of millions of lumps of rock. Ernie closed his eyes. The cloud was about to shred them. Then he became weightless. The rover jumped over the cliff, hit the ground, flipped over—and drove in the opposite direction, towards the cloud.

“Are you crazy, Popov?”

Popov didn't answer. He was busy dodging falling rocks. A pitch-black area lay ahead of them—the shadow of the wall, where they would be safe from the cloud. Popov braked at the last second and turned the rover around. Then he threw up his arms. “Made it!”

Ernie just managed to catch the can of potato chips containing the substance Popov must not have been thinking about. It smelled of underarm sweat, but was undamaged. Ernie listened to it. This was the same substance that had just caused a powerful explosion.

But Ernie couldn't yet be happy that they had survived. Hopefully the explosion didn't just tear up the whole crater, but also the damned remains of the stele.

Orbital Station Blue, March 18, 2082

The passengers had noticed. In the wall that separated the control center from their area, first bumps appeared, then widening holes in several places.

Doug waved them off. There were only two of them, and they couldn't fend off the overwhelming force. “The main thing is that they let me raise the orbit.”

Just then the wall tore open. It was Peterson, the engineer, who was traveling with his son. “You're under arrest!” he shouted. “Get out of that chair now.”

Sebastiano threw himself at him.

“Give me three minutes,” said Doug.

The ship braked. No, it accelerated. Sebastiano slammed straight into Peterson's torso, who crashed to the ground. Three minutes. Sebastiano had the force of inertia on his side. He kept Peterson on the ground. Suddenly a boot flew towards his head. It was made of shiny leather and had high heels. He guessed it was Meyers. Sebastiano barely managed to turn his head away. The kick landed on the back of his neck instead of his face. Knowing where the boot was, he reached for it blindly. “Ahh!” Meyers screamed. Sebastiano pulled hard on her foot and sent her stumbling backwards. But then came the next body. The passengers seemed to want to take all their frustrations out on him. He turned to the side, caught an arm and threw himself against the person’s lower body. Whew. They would overpower him soon.

“Doug?”

“Yeah, it’s good. Thanks!”

The acceleration stopped. “I'll give you...” someone shouted, but flew past Sebastiano.

“Earth!” shouted a man. It must be Peterson Junior.

“Nonsense, it's a trick,” replied Meyers.

“It's so beautiful.”

Had Doug turned on the projection again? Sebastiano took advantage of the confusion to fly to the main computer. There he switched to the telescope.

“It really is Earth!” he shouted. Antonia and the others on the Moon must have done it! This was so wonderful. “Doug, come here!" His old friend grimaced. He must still think he was bluffing. But as Doug hovered over the screen, he changed in a way that Sebastiano had never seen him before: He wept like a small boy. Sebastiano couldn't contain himself either. Shortly afterwards, the entire control center was a sea of tears.

Lunar Gateway, March 18, 2082

Pling. Pling. Pling. Pling. Pling. JP pressed the cancel button. What did the computer want from him now? He checked the individual modules. There, the telescope had discovered something. An explosion on the Moon! Had Antonia managed to remove the remains of the stele? He got on the radio.

“Gateway to MIGI, please report.”

No answer.

“Gateway to MIGI, please respond.”

There was silence on the line, although a direct connection should be possible. It couldn't be the relay. Did the explosion damage the base? JP pulled up the images from the telescope on the screen. No, the damage was more localized. A cloud of dust had spread around the hypertelescope's location. How had they managed that? Had they found a nuclear device after all?

JP gulped. Did that mean...? He turned the telescope away from the Moon. The image crossed the void. It was strange. He still knew exactly where to aim. Something attracted him magnetically. A planet. He didn't dare finish the thought. Not until... There it was. Blue and white and green and so wonderful. JP burst into tears. He would have liked to hug someone right now.

The radio. He tried Antonia again, who still didn't answer. Please, it couldn't be that she hadn't survived to see Earth again.

“Gateway to Orbital Station Blue, please respond.”

“JP, it's you, wonderful,” Sebastiano answered. “Have you...?”

“Yes, I...”

They both sobbed at the same time. “It's so...”, JP got out.

“Indescribable,” said Sebastiano.

The computer complained with new alerts. It was mission control. JP couldn't believe it.

“Mission control to Lunar Gateway. We must apologize for the pause in transmission. We had a total sensor failure.”

“I see.” JP didn't want to be the one to break the news to them. They probably wouldn't believe him anyway.

“Why did you leave your position in lunar orbit?”

“There was a collision at 2004 GU9, and I had to respond. It was an emergency.”

“Understood. We'll take a look at it. Carry on for now. We need to get our databases up to date first. Mission control over.”

That was quick. Sebastiano sniffled. They didn't even realize what condition he was in, and that Ron wasn't there. A complete failure of all sensors for days must have been quite a shock.

“JP, are you still there?”

“Yes, I am. Mission control has reported in. Sensor failure.”

“Same here. That's strange. You know, we were thinking…maybe we should leave it at that. This new stele on the asteroid…if anyone finds out about it, everything will just repeat itself.”

Sebastiano was right. Barely ten people knew what had really happened. It should be possible to keep it secret. They really didn't need another situation like this. These steles were obviously extremely dangerous if they were handled incorrectly.

“I agree,” he said. “Let's keep it to ourselves. There was simply a collision on 2004 GU9. I'll pick up my colleagues from there.”

“You've got your work cut out for you,” said Sebastiano.

“Oh, a few months in space, that's not so bad. The main thing is that there's somewhere I can return to.”

Mare Orientale, March 18, 2082

She shouldn't have just ripped the cable out like that. The two bare ends must have somehow come together, and the short circuit damaged the electronics. Antonia felt like she was a student again, when she last had to solder electronic circuits. She had never liked it, but she hadn't found it difficult, either. The rules for capacitance and resistance were simple. One didn't forget something like that.

She took the necessary spare parts from Sokolov's spacesuit. That's what he got. He could breathe in it, but he could no longer communicate. Antonia couldn't have repaired the radio any other way. Bree watched her curiously. The dog had probably never seen Antonia with a soldering iron in her hand.

“There, it looks pretty good now,” she said.

Antonia placed the hot soldering iron on the ceramic plate. Then she turned the screwdriver to fine-tune it. She wouldn't be able to get it factory-fresh, but it would be enough if she could get back in touch with the field team.

Suddenly the soldering iron rolled to the side. Bree barked. A moonquake? They weren't uncommon, but usually not strong enough to be consciously noticed. Was that Ernie and Popov with their can of chips? That would be extraordinary. Hopefully it had worked! She would have loved to run to the computer to check. But Earth, even if it existed, would be below the horizon right now.

First she had to concentrate. She connected the input interface, which consisted of a microphone and a voice converter. Pretty old technology, but it worked reliably and survived the short circuit. She selected the rover's frequency.

“MIGI base to away team, please report.”

“Antonia, great, we were starting to worry!”

She had never heard Ernie sound so enthusiastic. “I had problems with the radio. How are things with you?”

Antonia knew exactly what she wanted to hear, but she didn't dare say it. Her fingers were trembling. She slid them under her thighs.

“I think it worked,” said Ernie. “All the substance that was still in the crater ignited.”

“I felt it all the way from here.”

“But you haven't seen...?”

“No. It's past the horizon.” Antonia sighed. The same applied to the rover's position.

* * *

“Gateway to MIGI, come in please.”

JP! She had been trying to reach him for ten minutes. The Gateway was in the best possible position to verify the existence of Earth.

“Antonia here. Please tell me, Jean-Pierre, is...is it back?”

“Yes!”

Antonia slumped down. She had hoped for so long. Even if she had no longer believed it, hope had kept her going. Bree jumped onto her lap, climbed up and licked the tears from her face, which she only now noticed.

“Thank you, JP. That's...” She had no words.

“Hey, thank you! You fixed it. You really have to tell me how you did it.”

Antonia sobbed. “Ernie and Popov. They're still on their way. I have to let them know.”

“Yes, you do that. I'll talk to you later. The people at Orbital Station Blue have already been informed. And even mission control has been in touch.”

“That's wonderful! Talk to you soon, then.”

* * *

“I still can't believe it,” said Antonia. She had set up a conference call with the rover, the Gateway and the orbital station. JP had suggested that they come up with a believable story that didn't involve the stele on 2004 GU9.

“I can't believe I had to wait tied up in the airlock,” Sokolov said.

“I hear you didn't exactly act like a proper guest,” Popov said.

“Hey, you've got my back, comrade.”

“Um, I'm the commander of the Lunnui Gorodok. You're just a visiting scientist.”

“Maybe we can focus on the really important issue,” said Antonia. “Surely none of us want another race for the new stele. For that, we need a consistent story that everyone sticks to.”

“You can count me out,” said Sokolov. “This action cost me a revolutionary theory.”

“Man, comrade, we put our lives on the line and successfully saved the Earth,” contradicted Popov.

“It would have worked my way too,” said Sokolov. “You can say whatever you want. I'll stick to the truth.”

That was so typical of Sokolov. The genius was offended and no longer wanted to play with anyone. Antonia would have loved to lock him in the airlock and then accidentally evacuate it.

“I have an offer,” said Ernie.

“You can forget it,” Sokolov interjected.

“I've still got a potato chip can full of that substance,” Ernie tried. “It's superfluid, absorbs all radiation, has a huge energy density...every government on Earth should be very interested in it.”

“Oh yeah?” asked Sokolov, sounding much more conciliatory.

“Of course, I would normally take the can home with me,” said Ernie. “After all, I filled it myself.”

Sokolov sighed. He probably guessed that he was about to receive an offer he couldn't refuse.

“But we could also share the contents. If we tell the same story. Otherwise—just imagine what would happen if it came out that his homeland didn't get any of the substance because a certain Mikhail Sokolov prevented it.”

“You’d be dead, Misha,” said Popov. “Maybe not physically, but you know what I mean...”

“Somehow I get the damn feeling you're against me, Popov.”

“You're wrong. I just don't want another damn race, knowing the consequences. This time we were very lucky.”

Antonia watched the physics genius. Sokolov squirmed and stretched. One could practically see his oversized ego battling with itself. It was lucky Ernie had saved the canful of substance.

“All right, then. But we get half the contents.”

Antonia had expected something like this. Sokolov needed at least a partial success to save his ego.

“Agreed,” said Ernie.

Antonia took a deep breath. She couldn’t ask Jinjin, Liwei and Ron if they agreed. But she couldn't imagine the three of them wanting to repeat history.

“So, let me summarize,” she began. “Like Blue and the Gateway, we had a sensor failure lasting several days, which we attribute to the stele on the moon. After it was wiped out for unknown reasons, the sensors came back on.”

“Well summarized,” said Sebastiano. “On Blue, the sensor failure caused a panic, which will explain the damage.”

“And your guests are playing along?” asked JP.

“We've explained to them what the legal consequences of their little revolt would be if they were convicted under US law,” said Doug. “Ms. Hartnell, a lawyer, has confirmed that.”

“Very good,” said Antonia. “Then we just have to convince Ron, Jinjin and Liwei.”

“I'll take care of that,” said JP. “I've already lied to mission control.”

“Don't forget to erase all records of this conversation,” Sokolov said. “I don't want the KGB confronting me about it any time soon.”

Pico del Teide, March 19, 2082

Maribel turned around. The door had closed behind her. Good. The fog was so thick that she didn't hear the sound. She didn't need to lock the door. Chen was working from home today. After all traffic collapsed yesterday because of the mysterious fog, schools wouldn't reopen normally until tomorrow.

She got into the car. Something was different than usual. Maribel looked out. Once again, she had a parking ticket stuck under her windshield wiper. Typical—the whole world was falling apart, but parking tickets were still being handed out. She got out and picked up the ticket. Only now did she realize—she was sitting on the wrong side. The steering wheel was on the left! How could that be?

Maribel checked the license plate. Yes, it was her car. It had recognized her and opened the door for her. But the fact that she was sitting on the left meant that she’d have to drive on the right. That seemed deeply unnatural to her. People had always driven on the left in the Canary Islands, even if some holidaymakers from the UK had difficulties with it. After all, they were not a British colony.

However, the car was also parked in the direction of travel. She was the last person to drive it, so she must have parked it that way. Maribel gulped. Maybe it was stress. Sometimes, when she repeated a word too often, it suddenly seemed wrong and meaningless. This effect was called semantic satiation. Could that also happen with road traffic? Why not? If her thoughts stimulated the same verbal pattern in her brain over and over again, the stimulation lost its intensity. The word became meaningless.

Good. Now she had distracted herself enough. Driving on the right should seem normal to her again. Maribel tossed the ticket onto the passenger seat, fastened her seatbelt and started to drive off. Her hand involuntarily moved to the right.

She needed a vacation. Maribel leaned back. “Car? Please drive me to the observatory on Mount Teide.”

“I'd love to. Your destination might be closed right now.”

“I know. Take me there anyway.”

The car emitted a reassuring sound to show that it had taken control. Then it flashed and parked in an exemplary manner. Suddenly, an older pick-up approached from the front on her side of the road. The driver kept flashing his lights. The car braked and stopped. The other driver swerved around her, honking his horn.

“Sorry,” said the car.

“Could it be that you're driving on the wrong side of the road?”

“No, Maribel. The driver just now must have confused you. I've dutifully reported him for endangering traffic.”

Maribel took a deep breath. It was a strange day, and she felt as if she didn't know the world. She turned around. Where the light was shining, on the second floor, Chen was playing with the children. It was clearly her world. Maybe she wasn't quite the right Maribel today.

Orbital Station Blue, April 10, 2082

A tear had crept into the corner of his eye. Sebastiano wiped it away.

“Are you sure?” Doug asked. “Maria would be really happy to see you again.”

“I’m sure. This is where I belong,” Sebastiano replied.

He looked around. All the damage had been repaired. The supplies had been replenished. He could cook to his heart's content again.

“Promise me you'll visit us at least once,” said Doug.

Sebastiano nodded, although he wasn't sure he would keep his promise. At least it wasn’t far to Doug's little farm in the USA. All he had to do was call a shuttle. All right, with the long drive from the nearest spaceport, maybe half a day's journey.

But one day too many under Earth’s gravity. When a guest asked him, he explained that he was allergic to it. Virtually nobody up here noticed that he couldn't actively use his legs. Hopefully, the operator's hope that more guests would now come here to eat would be confirmed. Here in Earth orbit, they could also receive day visitors. Anyone who booked with Virgin or Blue Origin could book lunch with Michelin-star-chef Sebastiano Guarini at a discount.

“All right,” said Doug. “I don't want to keep Maria waiting any longer.”

They hugged each other. Another tear crept into the corner of his eye. “You're always invited to dinner at my place.”

Doug shook his head. “Maria won't set foot in a spacecraft again.”

Sebastiano nodded. He could understand that. Space could be unforgiving. But the fact that the Earth was spinning beneath them again made the constant threat bearable.

“So long, my friend,” he said. The bulkhead of the airlock closed.

Mare Orientale, April 30, 2082

Antonia had to stifle a smile. Bree was clever; when Antonia smiled while scolding her, the dog didn't take her seriously. But she wouldn't let Ernie work in peace, even if it looked funny when she bounced around the control center like a rubber ball.

“Bree, come here.”

The dog obeyed and came flying in a long bound.

“Let her be,” said Ernie.

“But she can't. She should be considerate of you.”

Ernie was doing the final calibration of the MIGI. The next gravity event had been announced for the day after tomorrow. There was a possibility of detecting a stellar-sized black hole in close proximity to Earth.

The radio sounded an alert. One of the institutes involved probably wanted to update the coordinates or the observation time. It was very difficult to look into the future, even if it had long since been completed, as in their case. After all, the signals were reaching them from areas of the universe many light years away, meaning that the events from which they originated had long since passed.

But not this time. The black hole in question had swallowed the neutron star while Antonia was still in school. In cosmic terms, it was in the immediate vicinity. At some point, humanity might even be able to fly there. Antonia wouldn't live to see it, but her successors would.

The radio, right! She moved into the next room so as not to disturb Ernie's concentration. It was a certain Maribel Pedreira from Earth. Antonia pondered for a moment. The name sounded familiar. Wasn't she the one who found the stele on 2004 GU9 back then?

“Ms. Marucci? Maribel Pedreira from the IAC here.”

“I'm Antonia.”

“Maribel. A pleasure. Are you all right? You've been dealing with the recent events on the Moon.”

“Yes, I've since recovered from the excitement.”

“I'm glad for you. I wanted to ask you something unusual. It's about 2004 GU9, the Earth's quasi-satellite.”

“Yes?”

“I have a feeling that its behavior doesn't quite match the measurements I took on it.”

Pedreira was smart. Could she just brush it off? “Hm.”

“Well, the latest data on that came across your desk, Antonia. Which is all the more surprising given that you don't specialize in asteroids.”

“Yes, those were rather accidental discoveries after the collision. The Lunar Gateway is still on its way.”

“So, it has nothing to do with the events on the Moon.”

“Maribel. I want to ask you something unusual.” Antonia switched off the recording of the conversation in the background.

“Yes?”

“An alien artifact brought humanity close to a world war.”

“You're alluding to the events on the Moon.”

“Correct. Should something like that happen again? Would that be desirable? Is humanity today prepared to investigate such an object peacefully together?”

No answer. The researcher was obviously thinking.

“I think I know what you mean. And based on my experience, I would probably have made the same decision as you.”

“Thank you, Maribel.”

“Can I ask you something else? But don't laugh.”

“Go ahead.”

“Have you ever been to the Canary Islands?”

“Yes, twice, on Fuerteventura.”

“Do you drive on the left or right there?”

What was the point of that question? Antonia scrunched up her brows.

“It's not a trick question,” said Maribel. “I just want to know what you remember.”

“Well, the left, of course.”

Maribel laughed.

“Was that the wrong answer?”

“No, on the contrary. But the next time you vacation here, please make sure you drive on the right-hand side. And let's have a coffee together!”

2004 GU9, May 12, 2082

It was not easy to encounter an asteroid in such a way that you wouldn't be crushed. A 250-meter-diameter boulder had no weight in zero gravity, but it had plenty of inert mass. However, it was so small that it did not generate a real gravitational sink into which a spaceship could steer to enter an orbit. Especially if the spacecraft was actually a gateway station that was not built for such a maneuver.

Mission control had therefore developed a special maneuver in which the Gateway and the asteroid would rendezvous at a short distance and at a relative speed of no more than twenty kilometers per hour. Over the last three days, JP had precisely measured the asteroid and transmitted all the values to Earth. The maneuver would be carried out by the Gateway’s control computer.

He strapped himself in. “Gateway to the ground, here we go.”

The Gateway was currently flying tail-first. JP followed the maneuver on the screen. The engine switched on. A gentle force gripped it and immediately released it again. The Gateway dove under the asteroid.

“Twenty seconds to go.”

The same clock was displayed on the screen as on the suits of the three astronauts. However, the stele distorted time for Ron, Jinjin and Liwei. The suits needed to correct this, but the delay depended on the exact distance to the stele.

Now they were running. JP followed the three bright spots, which were moving faster and faster. They were running up a slope. On the Moon it would be insurmountable. Here it served as a kind of springboard. Liwei, Jinjin and Ron were even with each other. JP's hands tightened around the back of the chair. He checked the safety net. It was in good condition. However, the braking maneuver had caused it to fold a little, at least on the right-hand side.

Where Liwei was jumping. Like his two colleagues, he was putting all his strength into this jump, which would take him into the darkness of space. If JP didn't... He pulled the manual controls towards him. The main engine could only brake, because it pointed against the direction of flight. But he still had the corrective thrusters. He activated the left one, then the right one, and then the left one again. It looked as if the Gateway was wagging its tail. The impulses were transmitted to the net, which was approaching the three space travelers. It looked good! JP had them on radar. Five, three, two meters to go.

“Grab it!” he shouted.

“I've got it,” Ron reported.

“Landed,” said Jinjin.

Where was Liwei? JP grabbed the control jets. The gateway moved its tail back and forth. Carefully. He mustn't shake off the other two.

“Oops, you've got me now,” said Liwei.

JP leaned back and grinned broadly. It had worked. It would take them many more weeks to reach Earth, but he was no longer alone. He unbuckled his seatbelt and floated back to the airlock, where his three fellow travelers would soon join him.

* * *

“How does it look?” asked JP.

Liwei scrolled through the film footage one image at a time. JP should have removed all traces of the stele. Liwei seemed satisfied. The artificially inserted crashed spaceship seemed real enough. They also had apparently enlarged the asteroid so that the stele was no longer recognizable by its mass.

“I like that. I think it will convince them,” said Liwei.

JP took a deep breath. It hadn't been easy to convince everyone of this deal. But in the end, even Sokolov had agreed. Now they just had to manage not to leave any obvious traces here on 2004 GU9 either. It would be best if the asteroid never received another visit.

Around the campfire

Dear Readers,

Once again, our protagonists faced a difficult task, but they managed to overcome it nonetheless. I like to imagine them telling their children and grandchildren about it later. “Remember when...Grandma had to save her boss on the moon?” Jinjin, now a grandmother, might ask a sweet little girl on her lap, who is more interested in the ruffles on the sleeves of her blouse. The most dangerous experiences fade after a while. We tend to remember only the good parts. The fact that Jinjin almost suffocated in the process is no longer as relevant as the fact that her colleague and good friend Liwei survived the adventure unscathed.

As long as I am in the process of writing a novel, I feel much like the heroes who are about to die. Not as dramatic, of course, but I know just as little as they do whether they will survive the current danger, and how. Later, though, I can read the story with a smile. I realized this, among other things, with The Luna Monolith, when I returned to the world of The Hole with Maribel. She also thinks quite differently today about the drama back then.

But now we have all survived the Black Monolith trilogy together and are sitting around the campfire telling stories. What will happen to Earth? Some of that is already set out in other Morris novels. As with almost all of them (except Mars Nation), every action influences the further development of the universe as a whole. You will meet some of the protagonists again in future novels. And when human explorers reach other stars at some point, they will certainly look for black stelae. In the meantime, they know their function and no longer entertain the notion of destroying them.

In my opinion, this is a drawback of the “Dark Forest” theory—it is so skeptical about the intelligence of other civilizations. Besides, the probability that we will encounter intelligence that is about as advanced as ours is very low. Just consider the short period of time that we have possessed rocket technology. It's not even a hundred years, which is a realistic time frame for traveling to the nearest stars. Most likely, aliens would be far superior to us—or we to them. In the first case, we should be smart enough not to attack them. In the second case, our ethics should prevent us from doing so. You don't beat on the weak, you protect them.

My personal opinion: I believe that we as a species have generally come onstage very late. The conditions for life to arise have existed for much longer than we have been on Earth. The fact that we are not aware of other civilizations is either because they are not interested (which is just as well for us) or because they do not take us seriously due to our primitiveness.

Maybe this question will be answered in my lifetime or yours. I hope so, for the sake of humanity. A cosmic perspective would definitely do us good and show that what we consider insurmountable problems are probably just temporary little difficulties. I would also be interested to hear your opinion on this. Do you think extraterrestrial life is fundamentally dangerous (as the Dark Forest theory suggests) or rather an opportunity needed for the cosmic development of humanity? Please write to me at brandon@hard-sf.com.

Otherwise, all I can do is poke a little at the embers of the campfire. The sparks rising into the night sky glow like shooting stars.

Speaking of stars, you could rate my book on Amazon. Well now, how did I manage the change of subject? :-)

Alternatively, just click here: hard-sf.com/links/4543008

Apart from that, I'll see you again around June when my book The Atacama Incident is published. Do you remember my report about the telescope viewings in the Chilean Atacama Desert? The book is based on this research. It will tell—in one volume—a first contact story like nothing you have ever read. Well, at least, like nothing I have ever told.

Until then, best regards

Yours, Brandon Q. Morris

P.S.: Please always drive on the right on the Canary Islands grinning face (why do Maribel and Antonia remember it wrong? Feel free to write to me with your ideas!)

P.P.S.: You will receive the following short essay “Trojans, Greeks and Pseudo-Moons” as an illustrated PDF, as always, if you order it at hard-sf.com/monolith3.

P.P.P.S.: The new, official name of 2004 GU9 is now Cardea, after the roman goddess of the hinge.

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Also by Brandon Q. Morris

The Portal

Tyler’s wealth bought him adventures…

…but this time he was in over his head.

Could the legendary underworld be found?

After years of hard work, Tyler built his IT Security company into a massive success. He trusted his people and now it was time to enjoy the fruits of that labor. Everything was perfect until an unexpected discovery. Should they go through the Maya portal?

Adriana’s small diving instruction shop is popular enough with the tourists for her to scrape out a living, but it’s not the life she expected. When she got the call, it seemed impossible. Wasn’t Xibalbá a myth?

In a fantastic world of danger and possibility, two people want to discover the truth, but for entirely different reasons.

Have they opened Pandora’s box?

You’ll love this Portal Science Fiction thriller because the story pulls you in and leaves you guessing about what might happen next.

Get it now.

Portal Science Fiction – an underwater star gate.

hard-sf.com/links/4104350

The Disturbance

25 years of effort…

…and the first images are a disaster.

Was the entire experiment a failure?

For astronomer Christine, the results didn’t make sense. Everything worked and they should be able to see the beginning of time, but a veil blocks the past. There must be a solution. What could be causing the obstruction?

The data point to the discovery of a black hole.

And it might be moving…

…directly toward earth.

As the stakes grow and with every step forward, more questions that never seemed possible in the world of physics present themselves, Christine has to make a life or death choice.

What will stop the Disturbance?

You’ll love this hard science brain twister, because the suspense and other odd happenings, are brilliantly crafted by physicist/author Brandon Q. Morris.

hard-sf.com/links/2414404

Mobius

Tomorrow is yesterday.

It is 2056. Mathematics professor Elisabeth Gabai is fascinated by multi-dimensional forms that have no equivalent in reality. Then, her boss sends her to the site of an artifact that might have come straight from her theories—or from the technology of an advanced civilization.

Twenty-eight years earlier, physicist Max Webber is hell-bent on improving Einstein’s theories of relativity. His latest concept seems flawless, except it predicts the end of humanity. The extinction of Earth can only be prevented if Max can locate a multi-dimensional object. He’s in a hurry; tomorrow will inevitably be too late.

But how is he supposed to accomplish this goal when physics tells us the artifact he seeks cannot possibly exist?

hard-sf.com/links/2526669

The Beacon

Peter Kraemer, a physics teacher with a passion for astronomy, makes a discovery that he himself can hardly believe: Stars disappear from one day to the next, with nothing left of them. The researchers he contacts provide reassuring and logical explanations for every single case. But when Peter determines that the mysterious process is approaching our home system, he becomes more and more anxious. He alone perceives the looming catastrophe. When he believes he has found a way to avert the impending disaster, he choses to pull out all the stops, even if it costs his job, his marriage, his friends, and his life.

hard-sf.com/links/1731041

Helium 3: Fight for the Future

The star system is perfect. The arrivals have undertaken a long and dangerous journey—an expedition of no return—seeking helium-3, essential for the survival of their species. The discovery of this extraordinary solar system with its four gas giants offers a unique opportunity to harvest the rare isotope.

Then comes a disturbing discovery: They are not alone! Another fleet is here, and just as dependent on helium-3. And the two species are so fundamentally different that communication and compromise appear hopeless. All that remains is a fight to the death—and for the future…

hard-sf.com/links/1691018

The Triton Disaster

Nick Abrahams holds the official world record for the number of space launches, but he’s bored stiff with his job hosting space tours. Only when his wife leaves him does he try to change his life.

He accepts a tempting offer from a Russian billionaire. In exchange for making a simple repair on Neptune’s moon Triton, he will return to Earth a multi-millionaire, enabling him to achieve his ‘impossible dream’ of buying his own California vineyard.

The fact that Nick must travel alone during the four-year roundtrip doesn’t bother him at all, as he doesn’t particularly like people anyway. Once en route he learns his new boss left out some critical details in his job description—details that could cost him his life, and humankind its existence…

hard-sf.com/links/1086200

The Dark Spring

When a space probe returns from the dead, you better not expect good news.

In 2014, the ESA spacecraft Rosetta lands a small probe named Philae on 67P, a Jupiter-family comet. The lander goes radio silent two years later. Suddenly, in 2026, scientists receive new transmissions from the comet. Motivated by findings that are initially sensational but soon turn frightening, NASA dispatches a crewed spacecraft to the comet. But as the ship approaches the mysterious celestial body, the connection to the astronauts soon breaks. Now it seems nothing can be done anymore to stop the looming dark danger that threatens Earth...

hard-sf.com/links/1358224

The Death of the Universe

For many billions of years, humans spread throughout the entire Milky Way. They are able to live all their dreams, but to their great disappointment, no other intelligent species has ever been encountered. Now, humanity itself is on the brink of extinction.

They have only one hope: The ‘Rescue Project’ was designed to feed the black hole in the center of the galaxy until it becomes a quasar, delivering much-needed energy to humankind during its last breaths. But then something happens that no one ever expected—and humanity is forced to look at itself and its existence in an entirely new way.

hard-sf.com/links/835415

The Enceladus Mission (Ice Moon 1)

In the year 2031, a robot probe detects traces of biological activity on Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons. This sensational discovery shows that there is indeed evidence of extraterrestrial life. Fifteen years later, a hurriedly built spacecraft sets out on the long journey to the ringed planet and its moon.

The international crew is not just facing a difficult twenty-seven months: if the spacecraft manages to make it to Enceladus without incident it must use a drillship to penetrate the kilometer-thick sheet of ice that entombs the moon. If life does indeed exist on Enceladus, it could only be at the bottom of the salty, ice covered ocean, which formed billions of years ago.

However, shortly after takeoff disaster strikes the mission, and the chances of the crew making it to Enceladus, let alone back home, look grim.

hard-sf.com/links/526999

Ice Moon – The Boxset

All four bestselling books of the Ice Moon series are now offered as a set, available only in e-book format.

The Enceladus Mission: Is there really life on Saturn's moon Enceladus? ILSE, the International Life Search Expedition, makes its way to the icy world where an underground ocean is suspected to be home to primitive life forms.

The Titan Probe: An old robotic NASA probe mysteriously awakens on the methane moon of Titan. The ILSE crew tries to solve the riddle—and discovers a dangerous secret.

The Io Encounter: Finally bound for Earth, ILSE makes it as far as Jupiter when the crew receives a startling message. The volcanic moon Io may harbor a looming threat that could wipe out Earth as we know it.

Return to Enceladus: The crew gets an offer to go back to Enceladus. Their mission—to recover the body of Dr. Marchenko, left for dead on the original expedition. Not everyone is working toward the same goal.

hard-sf.com/links/780838

Proxima Rising

Late in the 21st century, Earth receives what looks like an urgent plea for help from planet Proxima Centauri b in the closest star system to the Sun. Astrophysicists suspect a massive solar flare is about to destroy this heretofore-unknown civilization. Earth’s space programs are unequipped to help, but an unscrupulous Russian billionaire launches a secret and highly-specialized spaceship to Proxima b, over four light-years away. The unusual crew faces a Herculean task—should they survive the journey. No one knows what to expect from this alien planet.

hard-sf.com/links/610690

The Hole

A mysterious object threatens to destroy our solar system. The survival of humankind is at risk, but nobody takes the warning of young astrophysicist Maribel Pedreira seriously. At the same time, an exiled crew of outcasts mines for rare minerals on a lone asteroid.

When other scientists finally acknowledge Pedreira’s alarming discovery, it becomes clear that these outcasts are the only ones who may be able to save our world, knowing that The Hole hurtles inexorably toward the sun.

hard-sf.com/links/527017

Mars Nation 1

NASA finally made it. The very first human has just set foot on the surface of our neighbor planet. This is the start of a long research expedition that sent four scientists into space.

But the four astronauts of the NASA crew are not the only ones with this destination. The privately financed ‘Mars for Everyone’ initiative has also targeted the Red Planet. Twenty men and women have been selected to live there and establish the first extraterrestrial settlement.

Challenges arise even before they reach Mars orbit. The MfE spaceship Santa Maria is damaged along the way. Only the four NASA astronauts can intervene and try to save their lives.

No one anticipates the impending catastrophe that threatens their very existence—not to speak of the daily hurdles that an extended stay on an alien planet sets before them. On Mars, a struggle begins for limited resources, human cooperation, and just plain survival.

hard-sf.com/links/762824

Impact: Titan

How to avoid killing Earth if you don't even know who sent the killer

250 years ago, humanity nearly destroyed itself in the Great War. Shortly before, a spaceship full of researchers and astronauts had found a new home on Saturn's moon, Titan, and survived by having their descendants genetically adapted to the hostile environment.

The Titanians, as they call themselves, are proud of their cooperative and peaceful society, while unbeknownst to them, humanity is slowly recovering back on Earth. When a 20-mile-wide chunk of rock escapes the asteroid belt and appears to be on a collision course with Earth, the Titanians fear it must look as if they launched the deadly bombardment. Can they prevent the impact and thus avoid an otherwise inevitable war with the Earthlings?

hard-sf.com/links/1433312

Trojans, Greeks and Pseudo-moons

2004 GU9, on which a significant part of the action of The Black Stele 3 takes place, is a so-called quasi-satellite of the Earth. Its full designation is (164207) 2004 GU9. The number in parentheses is a sequential number that every asteroid is given when its orbit is confirmed. The rest of the name contains—in code—the year of discovery and an alphanumeric code that indicates the half-month of discovery and the order within that half-month.

If you’re reading this book in 2025, that may have changed. The International Astronomical Union conducted a public naming campaign for this quasi-satellite from June to September 2024. The selected name has been be announced in January 2025. 2004 GU9 has a real name. It is now called Cardea, after the roman goddess of the hinge.

Why name it at all? Very few dwarf planets have “real” names. But 2004 GU9 has a special feature—it appears to move like a moon around the Earth. At least, that's the impression you might get if you look at it from Earth. However, if you look at it from the Sun, you will see that the asteroid follows its own orbit around the Sun. But it crosses the Earth's orbit over and over. Sometimes it is 1.14 times as far from the sun as our home planet, sometimes only 0.86 times. This makes it a potentially dangerous celestial body. You can imagine it like a motorcyclist who repeatedly passes a car and then falls back behind it again. However, simulations show that despite the risky driving style, a collision is not very likely. Around the year 2600, 2004 GU9 will go its own way completely. Our descendants will wave goodbye to the pseudo-moon.

Quasi-satellites like 2004 GU9 are not uncommon. They are recruited from the huge number of asteroids that swarm through the solar system. These remnants from the birth of our system can be found in almost every conceivable orbit. This little biography is dedicated to the specialists among them—in addition to the quasi-satellites, the Trojans and the Greeks (and that doesn't mean the current or former inhabitants of Greek city-states).

What are asteroids?

Where do asteroids come from? What kind of rock are they made of? How were they formed, and are they dangerous? We need to clarify these things first.

The term itself comes from ancient Greek and means “star-like”. Through a telescope, asteroids (unlike planets) look like dots—just like stars. In fact, they are objects of all possible shapes and sizes that have two things in common:

They move in an orbit around the sun.

They are not round (more precisely: they are not in hydrostatic equilibrium).

Objects that move around a planet rather than the Sun are called moons, regardless of their shape. Therefore, it really depends on whether an object actually moves around the Earth (like Luna, our moon) or only appears to do so (like 2004 GU9).

Round objects that move around the sun are either dwarf planets (Pluto, Ceres...) or planets (Earth, Mars...). If they are not round, they may still be comets. If their circumference is less than one meter, they are called meteoroids (not meteorites, which would be the remains of meteoroids that reach the Earth's surface).

There are probably several million asteroids orbiting the Solar System. We have data on around 1.4 million of them, and 740,000 have been given a number as a designation. Only one of them is visible to the naked eye from Earth: Vesta. Despite their large numbers, asteroids contribute very little to the mass of the Solar System; all together, they probably weigh little more than one thousandth of the Earth. The Earth's moon weighs more than ten times as much.

Where do they come from?

For a long time, it was assumed that the asteroids were the remains of a destroyed planet that used to orbit the sun in the area between Mars and Jupiter, now called the “asteroid belt”. This planet apparently no longer existed. It even had a name, “Phaethon”. However, as we know today, the total mass of asteroids orbiting there is quite small. The mass of all the objects in the asteroid belt is estimated at 2.3 trillion tons. That is only about three percent of the mass of the Moon.

Although the size distribution generally follows a power law, there are “outliers” at around 5 kilometers and 100 kilometers where more asteroids are found than would be expected from such a curve. Most asteroids with a diameter of more than 120 kilometers are primordial (i.e. they originated in the epoch of the formation of the solar system), while most smaller asteroids were formed when other primordial asteroids were destroyed. The original population of the main belt was probably two hundred times larger than it is today, which would amount to about seven Earth moons.

Where did they all go? Quite simply, they were swallowed up by the larger planets during collisions. Large craters on Mars and Mercury still bear witness to this epoch today.

The fact that so much attention was paid to the area between Mars and Jupiter in the 19th century in the search for Phaethon had the advantage that the first asteroids were discovered there fairly quickly. Ceres, Pallas, Juno and Vesta were found one after another and initially thought to be planets. When it was discovered in 1846, Neptune was therefore not considered the eighth planet, but the thirteenth. However, so many bodies were soon added that a new category was created, of minor planets or asteroids.

Today it is assumed that the asteroids represent, so to speak, intermediate stages in planet formation: bodies that were still developing into planets. Only in the asteroid belt did Jupiter's strong gravitational influence prevent the formation of a planet. Later, the asteroids collided with each other and with other planets. Fragments formed and collided again, creating a whole range of differently structured asteroids. Only the largest among them developed a differentiated structure by melting, allowing their components to be distributed between a core and a mantle. When one of the large asteroids collided with another, fragments with a particularly high metal content formed its core, while fragments with a high proportion of silicates formed its mantle.

For many years, asteroids were thought to be compact, monolithic bodies. However, surprisingly low densities have since been measured in some cases, and huge impact craters have been found. Many asteroids could therefore be a kind of flying cosmic debris heap, with loose components held together only by their own gravity. Such a body is relatively insensitive to collisions. Monolithic objects, on the other hand, would be torn apart by shock waves in the event of a major impact. The low rotational speeds of large asteroids are a further indication of this. A loosely bound object would be torn apart by centrifugal forces if it rotated quickly around its own axis.

Where can they be found?

The asteroid belt is generally considered to be the home of asteroids. In fact, it is home to nine out of ten of them. But these objects also flit around all over the solar system. Only within Mercury's orbit, relatively close to the sun (closer than a third of the distance between Earth and the sun), no asteroid has been found so far. It is assumed that the so-called vulcanoids are located there. If they exist (as indicated by meteorite impacts on Mercury), they would have to be smaller than 50 kilometers in diameter, or they would show up in photos. They are not easy to detect because they are so close to the sun. Large telescopes searching for them are in danger of being destroyed by the bright sunlight. The asteroids that come closest to the Sun are (1566) Icarus (up to 0.19 AU) and (3200) Phaethon (up to 0.14 AU). Both orbit the Sun in highly elliptical orbits.

The most relevant to our daily lives are undoubtedly the so-called Near-Earth Asteroids (NEA). These are mostly celestial bodies that do not move much further away from the sun than Mars. There are four types of NEAs. The Amor type crosses the Martian orbit in the direction of the Earth, but without reaching it. These include (433) Eros, which approaches the Earth's orbit to within 0.15 AU, and (1221) Amor, which was discovered in 1932 and gave the group its name. Amor asteroids do not cross Earth's orbit and therefore cannot impact Earth – just like apohele-type asteroids, which orbit completely around the Sun within Earth's orbit.

Then there are the so-called Earth-crossers, such as 2004 GU9: asteroids whose orbit crosses Earth's orbit, which could lead to a collision at some point. They are either of the Apollo type (their orbit is further from the sun than that of Earth) or the Aten type (their orbit is closer to the sun than that of Earth). At present, none of the known objects appear to pose a real danger. Nevertheless, they are being intensively studied. Statistically, an object with a diameter of less than four meters hits the Earth once a year, and an object with a diameter of seven meters hits the Earth every five years, burning up in the atmosphere. Every 2,000 to 3,000 years, there is a hit that has similar consequences to the Tunguska event of 1908. About twice in a million years, we have to be prepared for the impact of an asteroid up to one kilometer in diameter. Even larger objects with five-kilometer diameters hit us every 20 million years. Currently, there are no such asteroids on a collision course with Earth, but that could change—from time to time, objects from the asteroid belt end up on different orbits due to disturbances caused by Jupiter.

The asteroid belt thus forms a reservoir for all the asteroids that roam the inner and outer solar system. It is located at about 2 to 3.4 astronomical units (AU, the distance between the Earth and the Sun) from the Sun. However, the area is not evenly filled with objects. On the contrary, the strong interaction with Jupiter causes some orbits to be unstable whenever the orbital periods are in an integral ratio to Jupiter (“resonance”). This results in gaps, which are called “Kirkwood gaps” after the US astronomer Daniel Kirkwood, who first noticed them in 1866. These include, among others, the 4:1 resonance at 2.06 AU, the inner boundary of the main belt, then the Hestia gap (3:1), a resonance zone at 5:2, and the Hecuba gap with a 2:1 resonance, where the main belt ends at 3.4. The majority of asteroids orbit between the 4:1 and 2:1 resonances.

Generally speaking, the distances between asteroids are very large, even in the main belt. Hitting an asteroid with a spaceship is not easy; random collisions are virtually impossible. Over millions of years, however, collisions between asteroids have repeatedly occurred. As a result, groups with similar orbits have formed, which are referred to as families. Over time, these can become very numerous. For example, up to 5 percent of all objects in the main belt belong to the Flora or Eunomia family, which consist of several thousand asteroids.

Excursion to the Trojans and the Greeks

But enough about everyday asteroids. We want to take a look at the specialists among them. Let's start with the so-called Trojans.

In the orbit of every planet, there are five points at which the gravitational forces of the sun and the planet cancel each other out. These are the so-called Lagrange points. When the forces of the sun and planet cancel each other out, this creates the remarkable circumstance that a light body can orbit fairly stably there. Numerous asteroids have found their way to these locations. The first such companions were found around Jupiter; they orbit 60 degrees ahead of the planet (“Greeks”, at the L4 point) or behind it (“Trojans”, at the L5 point).

Later, such asteroids were also found around other planets and the term was extended accordingly. More than 6,000 Jupiter Trojans are already known. Their number is likely to be comparable to the number of asteroids in the main belt, but since they are at a greater distance, not as many have been discovered yet.

Jupiter: Trojans and Greeks

Jupiter is thought to have captured many Trojans early in the history of the Solar System, or a little later, during the migration of the giant planets.

Estimates of the total number of Jupiter Trojans are based on detailed surveys of limited areas of the sky. It is thought that the L4 swarm (“Greeks”) contains between 160,000 and 240,000 asteroids larger than two kilometers across, and about 600,000 larger than one kilometer across. If the L5 swarm (“Trojans”) contains a comparable number of objects, there would be a total of more than a million Jupiter Trojans with a size of one kilometer or more. However, recent studies suggest that the above numbers may overestimate the number of Jupiter Trojans by a multiple. According to the new estimates, the total number of Jupiter Trojans with a diameter of more than two kilometers is just under 10,000.

Two main theories have emerged to explain the formation and evolution of the Jupiter Trojans. The first is that the Jupiter Trojans formed in the same part of the solar system as Jupiter and entered orbit around the planet during its formation. During the final phase of Jupiter's formation, there was an uncontrolled increase in mass due to the accumulation of large amounts of hydrogen and helium from the protoplanetary disk; during this growth, which lasted only about 10,000 years, Jupiter's mass increased by a factor of ten. The small fragments with approximately the same orbit as Jupiter were then captured by the planet's increased gravity. This mechanism was very efficient; about half of all remaining bodies were captured. There are two facts that argue against this theory—but one that speaks for it: simulations show that such an origin would also prevent the formation of Trojans in Saturn's orbit. And this is precisely what observations confirm, because to date no Trojans have been found in the vicinity of Saturn. In a variant of this theory, Jupiter captures Trojans during its initial growth and then migrates as it continues to grow.

The second theory assumes that the Jupiter Trojans were captured during the migration of the giant planets described in the Nice model. According to this, the orbits of the giant planets became unstable 500 to 600 million years after the formation of the solar system, so that Uranus and Neptune were scattered outwards into the original Kuiper belt, disturbing it and hurling millions of objects inwards. Jupiter and Saturn also lost their original Trojans in the process. But later, after Jupiter had found a new, more inward-pointing orbit, the giant planet captured a new group of Trojans from the supply of objects hurled inwards. Saturn, on the other hand, was further out, and unable to do so.

What does the future hold for Jupiter's Trojans? In the long term, they will behave rather chaotically. Collisions between them will repeatedly eject Trojans. Simulations show that the orbits of as many as 17 percent of Jupiter's Trojans will be unstable over the age of the solar system. So, by the “end of the universe,” some of them will have left the battlefield.

Neptune: the Amazons

Saturn may have the most moons of any planet in the solar system, but it has no Trojans. One explanation for this is provided by theories about the movement of the giant planets within the solar system. Saturn, like Jupiter, lost its Trojans, but was unable to recover them. The situation is different for Neptune. There are currently thirty-one known Neptune Trojans, twenty-seven of which travel near the L4 Lagrange point and four near Neptune's L5 region. Why the difference? The L5 region of Neptune's orbit is currently very difficult to observe because it lies along the line of sight to the center of the Milky Way, an area of the sky crowded with stars.

The orbits of Neptune's Trojans are extremely stable because the nearest planets are very far away. Neptune may have retained up to 50 percent of its original Trojan population from the time of the Solar System's formation.

In 2015, the International Astronomical Union adopted a naming scheme for Neptune Trojans to be named after Amazons, with no distinction between L4 and L5 objects, unlike Jupiter. This is fitting, given that the Amazons were an all-female tribe of warriors who fought on the side of the Trojans against the Greeks in the Trojan War. The first celestial bodies named after this scheme were, in 2019, the Neptune Trojans 385571 Otrera (named after Otrera, the first Amazon queen in Greek mythology) and 385695 Clete (named after Clete, an Amazon and servant of the Amazon queen Penthesilea, who led the Amazons in the Trojan War).

Assuming an albedo of 0.05, there are probably about 400 Amazons with a radius of over 40 kilometers in Neptune's L4 point. Compared to Jupiter, Neptune's companions are significantly larger. There may be relatively few smaller Amazons.

Trojans of other planets

Uranus, like Saturn, appears to have only a few Trojans. Perhaps the seventh planet is shielded from the outside by Neptune, and on the inside, Jupiter grabs everything it can get. So far, astronomers have found two Trojans. (687170) 2011 QF99 was the first body to be classified as such in 2013, while (636872) 2014 YX49 became the second in 2017.

Our neighboring planet Mars has several Trojans. At present, this group includes seventeen asteroids that have been confirmed by long-term numerical simulations to be stable, but only nine of them are accepted by the Minor Planet Center. The largest, Eureka, at 1.8 kilometers in diameter, is located at the L5 point. The origin of the Mars Trojans is not exactly known. One theory is that they are original objects that were left over when Mars was formed and were captured in the Lagrange points of the Solar System when it was formed. However, spectral studies of the Mars Trojans suggest that this is not the case.

Another explanation assumes that asteroids migrated chaotically into the Lagrange points of Mars later in the formation of the solar system. However, this is also questionable in view of the short dynamic lifetime of these objects. The spectra of Eureka and two other Mars Trojans indicate an olivine-rich composition. Since olivine-rich objects are rare in the asteroid belt, it is suspected that some of the Mars Trojans are captured debris from a large, orbit-changing impact on Mars when it encountered a planetary embryo. For some of the objects, motherhood can probably be traced back to Eureka. Most of the smaller members of the L5 group are likely to be fragments of Eureka.

The only known Trojan of Venus is 2013 ND15. It orbits the Lagrange point L4 of Venus and is thought to measure a maximum of one hundred meters across.

But not only planets can have Trojans. Since the Lagrange points L4 and L5 exist in every system of two bodies, moons are also possible candidates. However, the Earth's moon has none. On the other hand, Trojans have been discovered in the orbits of two moons of Saturn, which itself has no Trojans. Saturn's moon Tethys is accompanied in its orbit by the two smaller moons Telesto (L4) and Calypso (L5). Dione, in turn, shares its orbit with the two smaller moons Helene (L4) and Polydeuces (L5). The Earth's moon, on the other hand, has two faint dust clouds, the Kordylewskian clouds at L4 and L5, which were confirmed in 2018.

Curiously, Trojans can also have moons. In 2001, the moon of a Trojan, (617) Patroclus, was discovered around Jupiter. It is now called Menoetius. Since then, three more Trojan moons have been identified: (17365) 1978 VF11, (29314) Eurydamas, and (624) Hektor.

Trojans of the Earth

Most of the celestial bodies orbiting the Earth at the Lagrange points are artificial. The L1 point, for example, offers an especially good view of the sun. That is why ESA and NASA's SOHO solar telescope, and its successor Aditya-L1 from India, are stationed there. The L2 point has the advantage of being behind the Earth. This is the best place to shield against the radiation from the Earth, Moon and Sun, which is important for large space telescopes such as Gaia, Webb or Euclid.

The L3 point of the Earth-Sun system lies exactly behind the Sun from the Earth's point of view. An object located there would not be observable from Earth in any way. That is why early science fiction authors liked to imagine an “opposite Earth” there. Physically, this is nonsense, since the mass of another planet would have measurable effects. But to hide from us humans, L3 would be a good position for an alien spacecraft. However, the various space probes to other planets would have discovered something long ago if there were something there.

But now back to L4 and L5: So far, only two Earth Trojans have been discovered. (706765) 2010 TK7 is an asteroid with a diameter of 300 meters that was found in 2010 using the WISE satellite. (614689) 2020 XL5 was detected by the Pan-STARRS survey in December 2020. It has a diameter of 1.2 kilometers. Dust clouds were found near L4 and L5 in the 1950s.

ESA's planned solar observatory Vigil is scheduled to stop at L5 in 2031 to observe the sun and collect information about space weather. It is so far the only spacecraft to be stationed permanently at L4 or L5. However, some probes, such as the Japanese Hayabusa, have already passed these points and searched there for further Trojans.

It would be exciting if there were more Trojans there, because their orbits mean that they could be reached with less energy expenditure than the Moon, even though they are hundreds of times further away. I am talking about asteroid mining, which would be much more efficient there than on Luna. On Earth, for example, heavy elements such as iridium are difficult to find because most of them sank into the core shortly after the planet was formed. A small asteroid, on the other hand, could be a rich source of such elements, even if its overall composition resembles that of the Earth. This is because asteroids, due to their small size, lose heat much faster than a planet after they are formed, so no differentiation between core and shell occurs. The interesting elements should therefore still be found near the surface, and even if not, the core would not be far away, given the asteroid's 300-meter diameter.

L4 is also of historical interest: the protoplanet Theia could have formed there, causing the moon to form because of a subsequent collision with Earth. That is, if the collision theory is correct.

Quasi-Satellites

Several other small objects have been found in orbits reminiscent of the Earth's around the Sun. However, these objects do not orbit at the Lagrange points. They have simply chosen their orbit around the Sun in such a way that they appear to be moons of Earth. In fact, they are called quasi-satellites. Unlike true satellites, quasi-satellite orbits lie outside the planet's Hill sphere (the area in which the planet's gravity dominates over all other influences from outside) and are unstable. Over time, they tend to evolve their orbits into other types of resonant motions that do not keep them close to the planet, and then potentially return to a quasi-satellite orbit. Quasi-satellites can move rather far away from their planet. 2014 OL339, for example, one of Earth's quasi-satellites, is sometimes further away from it than the Sun.

In 2023, Earth had seven quasi-satellites. Among them are 2004 GU9, which you know from the book and which I have already described above, and 469219 Kamoʻoalewa. The latter is the closest and most stable known quasi-satellite. Its name, Kamoʻoalewa, is a Hawaiian word for an oscillating celestial object. The object's Earth-like orbit and moon-like silicate composition may be due to it being ejected from the Moon during an impact. When it is at its closest distance to Earth, Kamoʻoalewa is about twelve times farther from Earth than the Moon. A study in 2024 showed that the most likely origin is the 22-kilometer-wide Giordano Bruno crater. Kamoʻoalewa will accompany us for about another three hundred years. At some point in the next hundred million years, it will most likely collide with Earth, which, at an estimated forty to one hundred meters in diameter, will certainly be spectacular. The China National Space Administration (CNSA) is planning a robotic mission to collect samples from Kamoʻoalewa and bring them back. This mission, Tianwen-2, is scheduled to launch in 2025.

The first quasi-satellite discovered was Zoozve. The asteroid was not identified as a quasi-satellite of Venus until 2004, two years after the object was actually discovered, by Seppo Mikkola, Ramon Brasser, Paul A. Wiegert and Kimmo Innanen. From the perspective of a hypothetical observer in a frame of reference rotating with Venus, it appears to orbit the planet in a Venusian year. However, it does not orbit Venus, but the Sun, like any other asteroid. Zoozve seems to have been orbiting Venus for 7,000 years. However, in about 500 years it will be ejected from this orbit.

It is interesting how it got its name. After its discovery, the asteroid was named 2002VE 68. An artist who was designing a poster of the solar system misread his own notes and made it ZOOZVE. The name was then officially proposed and accepted in early 2024.

Tip: You can obtain the illustrated PDF of the essay “Trojans, Greeks and Pseudo-Moons” as always, by ordering it at hard-sf.com/monolith3..

Excerpt: Tachyon – The Weapon

Gliese 163 c

A light gray swirl made its way towards a yellow stripe, which peeked through a dark blue plain. It looked harmless, but only because Mark Decker was looking at it from an altitude of over 200 miles. The swirl was a full-blown tropical storm that had chosen the new research base as its target. Damn it! Why did the weather have to conspire against them now of all times?  

An alarm sounded behind him, its melodic ringing not entirely serious despite the danger. He pushed himself away from the station’s porthole and floated to where the instruments were mounted on a shelf halfway to the cockpit. He skillfully turned his body, kicking against the shelf and holding on, searching for the source of the signal. There was none to be found, because a whole choir was calling for help. Without exception, every instrument connected to the space station via radio warned of the impending danger. The pressure had fallen to unprecedented lows, the air contained too much moisture and too much sulfur dioxide — the temperature had risen above 120 degrees and the wind had stopped. 

That frightened him. The research station was right in the eye of the storm. If it developed as feared, the work of the last few weeks would be for nothing. Above all, Tailin and Roger, who had set up and calibrated the instruments earlier, were in danger. They should have ascended into orbit in the Hopper hours ago.

He floated over to the radio. 

“Roger, this is Albatross-1. The storm really doesn’t look good.” 

“I can tell by the air pressure, Mark.” 

“Then why aren’t you in the Hopper?” 

The Hopper was a methane-powered shuttle that they used to travel between the surface and the space station. 

Roger sighed, “It’s not up to me.” 

He had already expected that. Tailin never could tear herself away from an issue. Some instrument was still not working at full capacity, and she couldn’t simply leave it at that. 

“Tailin, can you hear me? This is your husband speaking.” 

“I don’t want to hear it,” she replied. 

At least she was talking to him. That was a good sign. Sometimes she was so focused on her work that she didn’t communicate with anyone. 

“This is the commander of the Albatross-1, Mark Decker. Board the Hopper immediately. That’s an order.” 

“Yes, sir, commander sir. I just need to attach this last conductor loop.” 

He imagined her fiddling with an open computer to correctly read a measuring device. The new base they had set up was supposed to function autonomously, like all the others they had distributed around the planet. 

“Can we move a little faster? The storm is right on top of you.” 

“It’s coming along as fast as it can. There are a lot of prickly cherry bushes in the way.” 

What? There were obviously no plants growing in the station! 

“What the hell are you doing, Tailin?” 

“I’m moving the conductor loop. I explained that to you. Have you even been listening to me?” 

Conductor loop, now he remembered. They had been talking about a new project that Tailin wanted to use to measure the magnetic field of Gliese 163 more precisely. To do this, she needed wire loops laid out around the autonomous stations. But they hadn’t even made a decision about the project yet. 

“Are you talking about the measuring loops for the magnetic field?” he asked. 

“Yes, exactly. The neutralizers didn’t clear the area around the station very well.” 

She wasn’t kneeling on the floor of the station but crawling around somewhere out in the jungle. And all the while a full-blown storm was approaching. At least under these circumstances the cerants weren’t active; they were small, annoying, predatory insects that pounced on warm-blooded creatures. If the air pressure fell below a certain level, they retreated underground. Clever little parasites. Mark scratched his elbow where Roger had cut one of the beastly insects out of him a few days ago. If it wasn’t treated, they would multiply under the skin until there was nothing left. 

He floated back to the porthole, but left the radio’s microphone activated so that Tailin could hear him. The gray swirl was now almost black.

“Tailin, you have to get out of there. The storm is about to hit you. We haven’t even finalized that project yet!” 

“You said I could start it if I had time to spare,” replied Tailin. “The moment seemed favorable because I don’t have to watch out for cerants due to the low pressure. Well… I didn’t expect the prickly cherries to shed their fruit already, but you can remove the thorns for me later.” 

“If you don’t go to Roger in the Hopper soon, you won’t be around for anyone to pull thorns out of.” 

“I’m going to finish this. You’ve always said yourself that you have to finish what you start.” 

“Tailin, that was about the beer from the synthesizer. It would have gone stale if you’d left it.” 

“It’s still a true saying.” 

“Not when there’s a huge storm on your doorstep!” 

“If you wouldn’t keep distracting me, I’d be done by now, Mark.” 

“You’re going in the Hopper now. That’s an order!” 

Tailin made no response. What was he supposed to do? She was going to kill them both – herself and Roger. He couldn’t let that happen. He was the commander of this mission. If only Claire and Karima had returned! Tailin might listen to them. But they were on their way with the TransVec to Planet d. He wasn’t expecting them back for another two weeks or so. 

“Roger, can you hear me?” he asked. 

“Loud and... well, there’s a bit of static.” 

“Tailin’s ignoring my orders.” 

“Oh boy, she’s too stubborn. Hold on, I’ll go out and fetch her.” 

“No, Roger, on the contrary. I hereby give you permission to take off with the Hopper. You might still make it.” 

“You want me to leave your wife alone out there in the jungle? Are you sure that’s what you want?” 

“No, of course not. But as commander, I’m responsible for all of you. Just because she happens to be my wife, I can’t let her put you in danger along with her!” 

“That’s very honorable, Mark. But I won’t abandon a colleague, even if she’s doing something stupid.” 

Mark was relieved but didn’t want to admit it. Of course he wanted nothing more than for Roger to get Tailin to safety. He was frustrated that his wife was forcing him to make such decisions. This was going to result in a serious conversation, and a warning. 

“Mark? I’m going out now to look for her.” 

“Thanks, Roger.” 

Mark tried again on Tailin’s private frequency. She didn’t answer, nor did she answer on the public one. He heard several loud crashes over Roger’s channel. It was thundering down there. Hopefully Tailin had taken shelter in the station. The computing core was there in a hut about the size of a camping bus, and thankfully it had emergency supplies. 

“Roger, are you there?” 

No answer. He must have left the area where the Hopper served as a radio relay. The spaceship was always parked a little ways from the station so as not to attract the attention of the local wildlife. The instruments were secured even against the giant multifeet, but all it would take was for a largemaw to do its business on a transmitter dish to misalign them. 

“Roger, please get in touch if you can hear me.” 

There was static, then the repeated crackling of electrical discharges. Major storms and thunderstorms were the order of the day on Gliese 163c. The planet orbited close to the inner boundary of the habitable zone around its star, which pumped its considerable atmosphere full of energy. Roger, who had a soft spot for ancient history, had suggested the name Adad, after the Mesopotamian storm god. Mark cracked his knuckles. They had passed the suggestion on to the Ministry of Science on Neomars, but a reply wasn’t expected for another few years. By that time they would probably be on their way back.

“Roger, Tailin, I’m waiting for a response.”

The gray swirl produced blue and white patterns in rapid succession. It was lightning, as Mark could hear from the crackling on the radio channel. Adad never made it easy for them. The electricity in the atmosphere had killed a number of devices with modern electronics. That was why they were now using analog technology, and every research station on the surface had a Faraday cage to keep it safe.

Should he get the second Hopper ready? It was intended for emergencies only, but this certainly looked like it might be one. The question was whether he would help Tailin and Roger at all by putting himself in danger. If the storm hadn’t moved on, he couldn’t land safely.

Mark switched off the microphone.

“Come on, Roger, some sign of life would be nice,” he grumbled to himself and sighed. “You too, Tailin.”

He pushed himself away from the porthole and momentum carried him to the airlock. He could at least prepare the emergency Hopper. He opened the transparent flap inside the airlock that hid the emergency door release, clinging to a strut with his feet and turning the latch 90 degrees. He repeated this with a second flap at knee height. Now he was able to pull open the emergency exit.

“Emergency exit open,” the station reported as programmed.

The second Hopper had exactly five seats, so that the entire crew of the station could get to safety. However, these were no ordinary seats. Rather, Mark saw five circularly distributed oval compartments in front of him, padded all around the inside. He had to get in legs first. Each passenger traveled separately from the others and had their own life support system and controls. If the Hopper was struck by an object on one side, the other passengers would still survive and be able to get to safety.

The light switched on in one of the compartments. The station knew, of course, that there was only one person on board. Mark hesitated. The storm was still raging. It was too early to launch. He left the airlock again.

“Emergency exit open,” the space station complained.

Mark floated to the porthole. The storm was no longer directly over the base, but the lightning had not yet subsided. He activated the microphone.

“Tailin, Roger, this is Mark. Please come in! Tell me you’re all right!”

Mark wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. Please say something! Hopefully, it was just the static from the storm masking radio traffic. He tapped the microphone again. The speaker responded with hissing and crackling. Damn. Mark hit the inside wall of the station so hard the heel of his hand hurt.

“Emergency exit open.”

“Yes, I know,” he said.

The station didn’t answer. The control system was only programmed to annoy him with its announcement.

“Station, create log entry,” he ordered.

A symbol confirmed that the station was listening to him.

“This is the commander of the exobiology research station orbiting Gliese 163c, Mark Decker. Two crew members are in danger on the surface of the planet. I am using the emergency Hopper to go assist them. Log entry complete.”

Another symbol confirmed that the station had recorded everything. At least it wasn’t giving him any clever advice.

“Emergency exit open.”

Except the obvious. Mark huffed in an attempt to ease the pressure building up inside him. He had to do something. He felt helpless up here. He floated back to the airlock. There, he edged his way into the still-lit compartment, legs first. What he was doing was selfish - if Claire and Karima came back, they would have no way of reaching the surface. No more research. They would have to take the TransVec to the nearest inhabited star, Gliese 167. If Mark failed, they would lose the main Hopper as well as the emergency Hopper. How likely was that? Not likely, if he waited until the storm had passed. But that was not an option.

“Emergency exit open.”

Damn it, don’t rush me. Mark took his bearings in the cramped compartment. Above him, at about head height, was a screen, so close that he had to squint his eyes to see anything. The prolonged period of weightlessness had impaired his eyesight. However, the display was deliberately kept simple. All he had to do was tap on the large life ring symbol to initiate the launch. Then the emergency Hopper would head for the next optimum landing site on the surface.

But that was not Mark’s goal. He tapped on the cogwheel icon, which took him to system configuration. There he switched to manual destination entry. He had the coordinates of the new base in his head. They had needed them often enough during construction. He quickly typed them in.

“Emergency exit open.”

The station was persistent. Mark switched to the flight menu. There was no provision for manual control of the emergency Hopper. But he could select a few parameters for the flight path, such as whether the Hopper should avoid dangerous areas. Mark chose the shortest route. The storm was still raging over the research base last he saw.

“Emergency exit open.”

Mark took a deep breath. Once he pressed the launch button, the emergency launch could no longer be halted. The Hopper would not glide gently away from the orbiting station, but would be slowed by means of powerful thrust, to get out of range of a possible explosion as quickly as possible. The designers had anticipated everything.

“Emergency exit open.”

Okay, okay. Had he thought of everything? The emergency Hopper had food and water on board. Each of the five compartments could turn into a tiny clinic that would treat most injuries. He had his mobile radio in his pocket. The air pressure was above normal. He would need a breathing mask, maybe an acid-proof cloak against the precipitation.

Hm... Mark tapped the cogwheel again. There had to be an inventory list somewhere. There. It was in alphabetical order. There were five breathing masks on board, but the cloaks weren’t labeled as acid-proof. The designers hadn’t anticipated that humans might be planning to land on a planet where it rained sulfuric acid.

“Emergency exit open.”

Fine, then. There would be something down below. If he layered the five available capes, he would certainly be safe for an hour. The acid-proof version was likely stored in the research base.

Something vibrated in his pocket. His radio! He fumbled for it with his right hand, but the compartment was too narrow. Mark pulled himself out and up until he was floating in the airlock again.

“Emergency exit open.”

Bite me. He hadn’t even realized he’d turned on the radio. Maybe it had happened when he got into the emergency Hopper. But who was trying to reach him on his personal frequency? He pressed the listen button.

“Mayday, mayday, this is...” Static. “... Research base ...” Static. “... cut off. Need help.”

It was Tailin’s voice! She had made it into the base.

“Tailin? Mark here. I can hear you! I’m so glad! But what about Roger? I can’t reach him. Are you safe?”

“Mark, oh my God ...” Hiss. “... Hoped to reach Roger... not here. I thought... at the Hopper.”

The connection was terrible, but it was a miracle he could hear Tailin at all. The storm must have affected Adad’s ionosphere too, letting the radio waves through.

“Roger went to find you,” he said. “He left the Hopper. Where are you?”

“...In the station. The storm... slowing down. Has... destroyed... not seen.”

“It’s hard to understand you, Tailin. I’m taking the emergency Hopper and coming down. I’ll be there in thirty minutes. Don’t leave the base. I’ll program the coordinates.”

“... here. Understood. Please let Roger know that...”

Hadn’t she understood? Roger had gone looking for her, and he hadn’t made it back to her.

“I’ll see you in half an hour.”

Mark put the radio in the breast pocket of his uniform, then climbed back into the compartment. The destination was still programmed correctly, so he switched to the main menu and tapped the life ring.

* * *

A fist pinned him down - he was finding it difficult to breathe. Mark used all his strength to lift his chest. The emergency Hopper shot away with such speed that the inertia spread over Mark’s entire body. The Hopper rotated slowly around its longitudinal axis, presumably so that all compartments were equally loaded. The screen showed what the external camera saw; the capsule was approaching the cloud cover.

Mark had just become accustomed to the load when the Hopper turned. Now Mark was flying feet first. A strong vibration in the back signaled that they were entering the atmosphere, the camera image spinning faster. The Hopper continued to rotate so that its hull warmed up evenly. Mark closed his eyes, but he could feel the rotation in his stomach. Was this still normal? He tapped the screen. The rescue device kept to the programmed descent curve, which resembled a parabola. The only difference was that the launch was not from the ground, but from orbit.

When Mark switched back to the camera image, it was dark. But that wasn’t because of the camera. They were obviously in a dense layer of cloud, which parted to reveal the ocean passing by below. Mark imagined he could make out ridges of spray on the waves, but that was impossible. The Hopper stabilized. The camera was now looking steadily downward as he passed a group of islands, slowly drifting towards the continent. The ocean basin, which was thought to be a huge impact crater, was up to 125 miles deep in places. The islands floated on its surface. They had not yet managed to land on one.

The flight was coming to an end, Mark noted. It was getting uncomfortable again. The storm was tugging at the capsule, which was slowing down and offering less resistance. Mark couldn’t intervene, but the controls would bring him down safely. It had been tested under all circumstances. The emergency Hopper had an engine twice as powerful as its standard counterpart.

The capsule tilted. Suddenly it was vertical again. It startled Mark, but the Hopper was merely preparing to land. Swaying, it lowered itself to the ground. The camera showed the blue-green top of the vegetation layer. It was dazzling. Tiny silicon crystals in the leaves of the brine trees reflected unused energy from the sun. Their crowns formed a dense canopy that allowed almost no view of the surface, but at the same time protected them from the acid rain. In order to set up the research base, it had been necessary to burn a large hole in the canopy.

The hole came into view. It was steaming. In the layer below the canopy, energy was mainly generated thermally. There was always tropical humidity here. Even the air was alive, as the planet’s explorers had experienced first-hand. Since then, no one ever traveled below the canopy without a mask.

The Hopper swayed as it sank to the ground on a jet of fire from the engine. The storm tried to sweep it away at the last second, and only eased shortly before landing. Mark instinctively clenched his fists. The engine roared once more, then fell silent. The Hopper hovered as if it had not yet realized that the engine was no longer supporting it; then Adad pulled him into its arms with all its might as they touched down. A jolt hit Mark in the hip.

He immediately yanked the radio out of his breast pocket. Tailin had to be nearby.

“Mark here. I’ve landed. Are you okay?”

No answer. Where was she now? He had asked her to wait at the base! Mark tapped the screen, which now showed an exit symbol. It was crossed out in red. “Equip breathing mask,” it said below. He opened a compartment at stomach level, which was printed with a picture of a mask, and took it out. It seemed too big at first, but then the fabric contracted until it perfectly enveloped his face. He attached the accompanying bottle to his belt. The red cross above the exit symbol disappeared, and he tapped it.

Suddenly, the entire wall in front of him also disappeared. It folded aside with considerable momentum, presumably operated by a strong spring. Mark swayed and almost fell forward, but managed to grasp the edge of what was now effectively a door with his right hand. Beneath him, a ladder dropped from the Hopper. The air was hot and humid, and the areas of his skin not covered by fabric were burning. Yet he was still standing under the shelter of the vehicle. About half a yard in front of him, acidic water rained down from the sky in strings. It was as dark as dusk. He took a deep breath of air. It smelled unpleasant, even though he was wearing his breathing mask. The exhaust fumes from the engine had probably burned away some vegetation. The mask filtered biological components and toxins from the air and added another five percent oxygen. Clearly, it didn’t consider the smell of burning to be toxic.

Mark tapped his wristwatch until he reached the map display. Something was flashing to the left of his location. That must be the research base. He unfolded the additional display to see more. Everything looked very simple on the map; it was fifty yards away at most. The Hopper that Roger and Tailin had come in was about 300 yards away on the other side.

“Tailin, Roger, can you hear me?”

No answer again. Damn! Had one of Adad’s megafauna attacked the base? Mark peered out cautiously. The circular puddles up ahead could be traces of a multifeet that had been filled with rain. He’d have to watch out for holes.

Mark searched the compartments in the wall that had folded away from him. Two cloaks – that should be enough to reach the base. The rain seemed to be coming straight down, as it should. Mark started to step onto the top rung of the ladder, but noticed that a safety harness had automatically fastened around his stomach. He undid it, then pulled the cloak over his head and climbed down the ten steps of the ladder.

He was no longer accustomed to walking on the soft ground, so he was briefly startled as he stepped off the ladder. He checked the direction on his watch and set off.

The rain proved to be his first oversight. It was only falling straight down next to the Hopper. As soon as Mark stepped out of the vessel’s slipstream, the droplets became a plaything of the wind, which slipped into the artificial bald spot in the vegetation like a huge tongue into a large gap between teeth.

Adad had greater gravity than Earth. As a result, the raindrops were smaller - and the storm had a particularly easy time with them. Mark was glad his face was protected by the mask. He felt sorry for his hands, which had to hold onto the cloak that the wind would otherwise carry away. Droplets pattered on his skin, etching away his hair and digging tiny holes. He would have to self-treat at the base.

But he had to reach the base first, and that was where his second oversight came in: a hedge of prickly cherries stood between him and the blinking dot. Mark was almost certain he hadn’t seen it on his last visit down here. It must have sprung up in the past two weeks. Tailin had already ranted on the radio about the aggressive undergrowth. Prickly cherries tasted like a cross between raspberries and cherries. They caused diarrhea in humans, but that hadn’t mattered to them - they rarely got fresh food otherwise. Above all, their branches had thorns, which they shot at anything that came near them. He could have used a flamethrower to create a passage for himself, but that was in the base.

Mark gave the hedge a wide berth. It led down to the beach and turned right where the black sand began. There seemed to be no way through - until Mark discovered a hole. Someone had dug out enough sand to create an apparently stable tunnel. From the direction the tailings had been thrown, he deduced that the trench started inside. He thought of Tailin. If the tunnel was her work and she was now on this side of the hedge, she must have seen the emergency Hopper coming! Then why hadn’t she run towards him?

He knelt in the soft sand, which was no different from sand on Earth - a welcome exception here. It was strange. They travelled many light years to explore something as exotic as possible, were more than granted their wish, and then wanted nothing more than to recognize a piece of Earth.

Mark got down on all fours and crawled into the hole. He was sheltered from the rain for a moment. At the deepest point of the tunnel, the ground changed. Pale roots emerged from the walls. A worm, perhaps as long as his arm, came crawling towards Mark, but then suddenly curled up and played dead. It must have felt some kind of vibration. Otherwise, the cave was surprisingly free of critters. Perhaps the worm had eaten them all. But it had still seemed hungry until it lapsed into pseudo rigor mortis.

On the other end of the tunnel, the rain continued. Here, just behind the hedge, it fell straight down. Something sharp poked Mark’s back. He had probably come too close to the prickly cherries. Standing up, he took a few steps away and checked his position. He needed to head north. According to his map, it was still about fifty yards to the base. The stupid hedge had forced him to take a wide detour.

Just then, he spotted the structure emerging from behind some half-height bushes - or what was left of them. He tried the radio once more, but again received no reply. Perhaps the two were lying exhausted inside the base, sleeping. He hoped so, even if he couldn’t believe it. Another scenario was more likely: Tailin had received a call for help from Roger, followed him and perished from the same danger as her colleague.

The base was not locked. The door was closed, but Mark was able to open it easily. It was dark inside and he had to duck his head to avoid bumping into anything. When he stood up again, the light switched on. The room was empty. There was very little space, about one and a half by three yards, so he saw it immediately.

At the edge, someone had made a bed out of blankets. A bed. A human being. The blankets had been neatly arranged. Probably Tailin, although Roger was also a very tidy person. Mark checked the supplies. There was enough of everything, even the acid-proof cloaks. The medipack was torn. He took out two rolls of bandages, sprayed liquid plaster on his wounds and wrapped a few layers of cloth around them. The liquid plaster worked wonders, completely soothing the pain. His skin only got a little warm.

There was a computer terminal at one end of the room, which he promptly activated. The radio monitor was running, but only showed a vertical line. Mark spoke into his radio as a test. The base’s antenna must be faulty, because the straight line remained. That was why Tailin had called him on her handheld radio. But why wasn’t she answering now? He searched the room thoroughly and came across two dead batteries. Great. Was that the explanation? And what about Roger?

He would have to look for both of them. Mark took one of the acid-proof capes, put a second one in his trouser pocket and left the base again.

Outside it had become brighter, although the sun was already close to the horizon. The storm had passed, and the rain was slowly subsiding. All the more reason for him to hurry; after the storm, and especially at night, life on Adad would return to its usual activity. He fumbled for the taser he always carried in his left uniform pocket. It wouldn’t help against multifeet, but they could be avoided. More treacherous were the sucker leaves, which could imitate almost perfectly the pretty blossom of an orchid.

It didn’t matter. He would not return without Tailin. Mark walked around the base, searching for traces, but the rain had left nothing. At least the acid had one advantage: all the vegetation around the base had melted into a brown mass covering the ground. To the south and east, he had a good view as far as the hedge, which was apparently immune to the acid. At least that was a new insight. From the west, the brine forest cast long shadows, and to the north it stood like a wall.

Mark opted for the west. That was where the original Hopper had landed, and Roger had left from there to search for Tailin. Maybe he could kill two birds with one stone. However, crossing the brine forest did not prove easy. The silicon-reinforced crowns had let hardly any of the acid rain through. It now accumulated up to a hundred yards above him and helped the trees utilize silicon from the earth. It dripped through from time to time, but the new cloak protected Mark. The cloak had pockets on the inside for his hands and several strings to fasten it around his body. Mark thought it probably made him look like a walking trash bag.

His progress was slow because the vegetation was so dense. The plants used every part of the ecosystem. Stalactite roots protruded from the forest canopy and stalagmite seedlings stretched towards them from the ground. They resembled the limestone formations in Terran caves, because they grew towards each other. Where they met, tangles of branches and twigs formed, in which sliders liked to nest - a species that could move up and down vines at lightning speed and could also fly limited distances. It was amusing to watch them flutter through the air with all eight legs until they caught hold of a branch.

“Tailin, Roger, please respond!”

He no longer had much hope that Tailin would answer him after seeing the empty batteries in the base. But what was going on with Roger? He was an experienced explorer and had always done better than Mark himself during training in the jungles of Terra Nova.

No one answered. Mark checked his progress. Strange flowers kept appearing in the bushes to the left and right. He immediately thought of sucker leaves, although the flowers’ shape was unfamiliar. Or perhaps because of that. The sucker leaves had obviously developed a strategy of constantly changing their appearance so that their victims would not start avoiding them. They usually ate ring slugs.

These critters had shiny, golden, snail-like shells and liked to suck nectar from flowers by wrapping themselves around the calyxes. This made it look as if the flowers were wearing beautifully decorated rings. If the ring slugs were attacked, they withdrew into their shells. But the sucker leaves had a solution for this - negative pressure, which drew the soft flesh of the ring slugs out of their pretty casing. Roger had a whole collection of ring slug shells, which he said he would give to his daughter if he ever had one. He probably collected them for himself, but didn’t want to admit it.

“Roger, are you around here somewhere?”

Only at the last second did Mark spot something flying towards him. It was coming straight towards his face. He quickly dropped to the ground. Too late, he thought. But as he lay in the dirt and felt his face, he didn’t find the dreaded sucker leaf that would have relentlessly sucked the flesh from his bones. Realizing he was unharmed, he quickly stood up. A yard in front of him, a slider bent over a sucker leaf, grasping its victim with six of its legs. With the remaining two, it dismembered it and stuffed the pieces into its mouth. Insane. No one had ever seen a slider feeding before.

A clearing appeared amid the heavy foliage as Mark came to the beach. He was safe on the fine sand. He felt like running, but at the same time he was afraid to enter the Hopper. It must be empty; otherwise Tailin or Roger would have answered him by now.

Eventually he reached the spaceship. It looked to be in good condition from the outside. It was upright, as it should be on the ground. What was wrong with the antenna? It was so dark by now that Mark could just make it out, but he couldn’t examine it. The exit at the back was closed, but the ladder was lowered. Mark climbed up and opened the hatch at the top. The airlock was empty. He waited for the pressure to equalize - the pressure in the rocket was slightly lower than outside - and exited the airlock.

He smelled it immediately. Tailin was here - or had been here. The airlock opened into the workshop. Climbing to the next floor, he saw the kitchen was also empty. Tailin’s scent intensified. He climbed the ladder, opened the hatch to the control center - and there he found her.

Tailin was sitting in the command chair, which she had folded back. Her eyes were closed, but she was breathing. He pulled himself through the opening in the floor. At that moment, she startled.

“Roger?” she asked, “Ah, it’s you.”

She sounded almost disappointed.

“Yes, it’s me. I’m so glad I found you.”

“Me too, Mark.” Tailin suddenly burst into tears. “Something awful has happened. Roger’s gone!”

“Hold on, we’ll sort it out together. Roger’s probably fine. We just have to find him.”

Tailin stood up and they hugged each other tightly.

“Why haven’t you been in contact?” he asked her.

She pointed to her radio, which was lying on the back of the armchair, its screen gray.

“That’s what I thought,” Mark said. “But what about the Hopper’s radio?”

“I tried, but I guess the antenna couldn’t hold up to the storm.”

“Damn.”

“Is your radio still working?” asked Tailin.

“Mine? Yes, great. Why?”

“Too bad. I was hoping it was just broken. Then there would be some hope for Roger.”

“What do you mean?”

“Roger doesn’t do stupid things like running out of batteries. He always has a solution, even if it’s building a crank to recharge it. If your radio were broken, I could imagine that his was still working, and he’d be fine.”

Tailin was definitely overthinking, but that was what she did.

“I’m sure he’s fine, Tailin,” he said.

Mark wasn’t actually all that sure, but saying so made him feel better.

“But not for long,” Tailin disagreed. She had a talent for imagining the darkest version of reality. “The sun is about to set. You know the chances of survival at night. He must be out there all alone.”

“We’ll look for him together. First, we need to arm ourselves properly, then we’ll head out. Together we can search the area systematically. You’ll see, we’ll find him.”

“Honestly, you’re scaring me, Mark. If we need heavy weapons and have to search every square inch for Roger, he can’t be doing well at all.”

Instead of answering, he climbed two floors down to the workshop, where the weapons locker was located, and opened it. One of the long-barreled weapons was missing. At least Roger was armed. Reassuring - and worrying at the same time. Two laser carbines remained, and two automatic weapons. The lasers fired quietly and with little recoil – perfect for defending a ship or a base with its own power source. But they would be no good for searching for Roger, because the heavy battery pack they required would keep getting caught in the undergrowth. Mark had already dealt with this unpleasant experience.

He took one of the automatic weapons out of the cupboard, along with four magazines. Four times thirty rounds, enough to knock a multifeet off its eighteen thick legs. Some of the local wildlife that ranged beyond the brine forests had developed heavy armor because of the acid rain. Unfortunately, this included the multifeet, which were vaguely reminiscent of earthly elephants.

Tailin stood behind him and breathed down his neck. His hair stood on end. It was a completely inappropriate moment, but even after three years, she was still incredibly attractive to him.

“Do you want a gun?” he asked.

Tailin didn’t like guns. She didn’t like it when he killed and dissected animals either, but that was his job.

“Give me whatever you have,” she replied.

That was unexpected. He pressed the second automatic weapon into her hand. The barrel was a little oily, so he wiped his hand on his trousers and earned a reproachful look. As if a little oil matters right now! Mark took four more magazines from a side compartment and handed them to Tailin. She inserted one into the gun and checked the safety. Before the voyage to Gliese 163, they had been trained on all available weapons.

“Are we ready?” he asked.

“I’m ready.”

“Do you have an acid-proof cloak, just in case?”

Tailin nodded and pointed to the bulging pocket of her uniform jacket. The camouflage patterned military uniforms had proven surprisingly practical for surface operations. They provided good protection from the aggressive flora when you weren’t trying to crawl through a hedge of prickly cherry. There was no helping the constant sweating, though.

As they entered the airlock, Mark checked his radio. There was no activity on the usual bands. Tailin also switched on her radio. She had obviously loaded it with fresh batteries.

“We stay together at all costs,” Mark said. “No splitting up, okay?”

He put on his breathing mask.

“No splitting up,” Tailin confirmed.

Then she slipped her mask over her face. Mark opened the outer door and was greeted by a beautiful sunset. The dark blue at the zenith gradually faded into orange and red tones towards the horizon, where a ruby sun gleamed.

“It almost looks like Earth today,” he said.

Normally, the daytime sky was purple and the sunset brownish.

“That’s because of the heavy acid rain,” Tailin explained, her voice muffled by the mask. “It must have washed out the sulfur dioxide. It has a center of absorption in the green range, so it distorts the visual impression. It’s not quite the Earth’s sky either – the blue is less saturated.”

Tailin was serious as usual. Mark made no further comment as he climbed down the ladder. The sky was probably not as blue because there was less oxygen in the atmosphere. In half an hour it would be pitch black. They were in the tropics, so twilight didn’t last very long.

The ground around the Hopper was still wet, and the acid-eaten vegetation had collapsed even more. Mark could no longer distinguish stems from leaves.

“I found a small tunnel leading under a hedge of prickly cherry,” he stated.

“I dug that,” replied Tailin.

“Good, then we should look north,” he said. “I came from the south, to the west is the sea, and to the east the prickly cherries are blocking the way.”

“And if Roger came through my tunnel?”

“Then I would have run into him. The emergency Hopper is parked on the other side of the hedge.”

“But why would he run into the brine forest to the north?” asked Tailin. “There’s nothing there.”

“Because of the acid rain? The trees provide pretty good protection. He must have suspected you were there - Roger had no way of knowing whether you had a protective cloak. I don’t have any other explanation.”

“Agreed. Off to the north.”

* * *

The shadows of the brine trees merged with the night. It was getting so dark that Mark had to switch on his flashlight. Its beam was unpleasantly blinding and at the same time made them an attractive target for the local life. But without the light, they would inevitably step into one of the traps set by the flora and fauna.

They walked one behind the other, Tailin securing their rear. As soon as he could no longer hear her breathing, he halted. They called for Roger again and again. It was so dark that he could be lying three yards from the path without them noticing him. Their calls, on the other hand, certainly didn’t go unnoticed in this forest, nor did the cracking of the branches when they broke through the undergrowth.

Suddenly there was a hard smack on his shoulder that made him jump.

“Some animal made itself at home on you,” Tailin explained.

He stopped and felt his shoulder. His fingers encountered sticky remains, along with something silky and soft. A zeppelin! Made of an incredibly light material reminiscent of silk, they filled their bodies with air and floated by using chemical reactions to heat the air. They obtained the necessary sulfuric acid while still in the larval stage in the crowns of the brine trees. After pupating, they performed their mating dance far above in the canopy, then drifted gently to the ground to lay their eggs. After hatching, the larvae climbed back up the trees.

It was only two months ago that Mark had finally been able to verify this lifecycle. He dropped the thin shell and wiped a few splashes from his neck. It was a good thing that Tailin had killed the zeppelin. It liked to lay its eggs in the skin of animals of the same temperature, which would spread the larvae throughout the forest. Mark would hate to become a host.

“That was a zeppelin,” he said.

“Ah, I didn’t know they were in season again.”

That was true. Zeppelin season normally ended before hurricane season, since gentle hovering was not an option in strong winds. This zeppelin must have been a late developer.

A slight hissing sound came from the jungle, causing Mark to halt. Another hiss, and a third. They all sounded slightly different. So, three of them, at least.

“Did you hear that?” he asked quietly, drawing his gun and releasing the safety.

“Uh-huh.”

From behind, he heard the click of Tailin’s safety lever. They positioned themselves back-to-back without exchanging a word. The hissing spoke a clear language: a pack of lion’s-teeth was on the hunt. They had given the species that name because they looked like very large dandelions when at rest. During the day, they extended their jagged, blue-green leaves into the air, usually at the edge of brine forests, and soaked up energy from the sunlight. At night, they habitually supplemented their diet with animal life. The hissing sound was produced by rubbing their leaves together.

Mark had developed a theory about this: At the edges of the brine forests, the acid rain must have washed all the minerals out of the soil, so that plants growing there had at some point learned to use their roots as legs. In general, the flora on Adad was unusually mobile, which indicated a high level of geological activity. This was probably also due to the planet’s proximity to its star, the enormous gravity of which must be rolling through its surface.

Another hissing sound, but this time it came from the other side. Now there were two possibilities: The lion’s-teeth had decided against attacking and had passed them by, likely in favor of an easier victim. Lion’s-teeth also liked to feast on carrion. But they might also have encircled them. That would fit in with their hunting strategy. The next hissing should come from the original direction. Individuals probably used the sounds to signal to each other that they had reached their position.

Mark listened intently. There it was. It was clearly coming from the same direction as last time. The lion’s-teeth had passed them; perhaps two opponents were too many for them. Life on Adad was not only unusually mobile, but also defensive.

“They’re gone,” he said. “Lucky for us.”

“We have to go after them,” Tailin said.

“Are you insane? We’re lucky they spared us.”

“Because they sensed an easier meal.”

“Yes, so what? All the better for us.”

“Mark, we’re looking for someone, remember? What if Roger is about to be their preferred meal?”

Mark thought about it. Then why hadn’t Roger reported back? They didn’t yet know whether the lion’s-teeth could follow tracks. If so, they might indeed be after Roger. Tailin was right. They had to play it safe, even if it meant putting themselves in danger and perhaps only saving the life of a flammingo in the end. It might even reward them by living up to its name in fright and bursting into flames. That was how the animal – a two-legged creature about the size of a fox – normally released its seeds. It could also use the behavior to defend itself against attackers. Mark had even observed a single specimen separating itself from its group and sacrificing itself to a pack of pursuers.

They made their way through the bushes to the left. Unfortunately, the undergrowth was even denser here. Mark kept getting smacked in the face. Most of the blows landed on his mask, but one caught him on the neck, causing him to feel around. A branch of thorns had left several spikes, still twisting to penetrate his skin. His research had revealed that only specimens of the soft thorny-branch grew in the vicinity of the new base. Human skin was too tough for its thorns, so Mark wasn’t worried. Well, not much. Hopefully they hadn’t passed into the territory of the hard thorny-branches by now.

The hissing came closer, then moved away again.

“We’re on the right track,” Tailin said.

She was in front of him. He hadn’t even noticed her taking the lead. Tailin seemed to be in more of a hurry by the minute, but the hissing noises were still getting further away.

“I think they think we’re chasing them,” Mark said.

He stopped because he was completely out of breath, but Tailin paid no attention to him and rushed on ahead.

“Tailin, wait! No solo runs, you promised.”

She stopped abruptly. Her flashlight showed that she had turned around and was waving angrily at him.

“You’re too slow!”

A hiss, so far away that Mark couldn’t even tell which direction it was coming from.

“They’re gone,” he said. “They must have been scared of us.”

“Maybe word got around about the massacre you committed on them,” Tailin teased.

Massacre, sure. He had caught one in a steel trap so that he could examine it. Somehow it had summoned its pack, which in turn had attacked the base. Mark had quickly put an end to that with the laser carbine. A direct connection to its power source meant that the weapon could fire at full power and at any speed. Out here in the dark, they would have had a harder time defending themselves.

Luckily the bastards didn’t know that. Their intelligence was limited and seemed to derive mainly from the group. The dissection hadn’t revealed anything that he could interpret as a nerve center. There wasn’t even a large node where all the signal pathways met. The network was completely chaotic, but very efficient. The organism he had studied had solved the complex “traveling salesman problem” without ever having heard of graph theory. Evolution was a master of its trade.

“If that’s really true, I wonder how they recognized me,” Mark said.

“By smell,” said Tailin. “Don’t be mad, but with the amount of sweat we can’t help putting out down here, we’re guaranteed to leave a real pheromone trail.”

He hadn’t found an olfactory center, but Tailin was probably right. Plants, on Adad just as on Earth, were dependent on substances that occurred in human sweat, among other things. Being able to detect differences in the concentration of these compounds would give them an evolutionary advantage.

“If only we had that good a nose,” said Mark. “We would have found Roger by now.”

They started marching north again. Roger couldn’t have gone very far on foot. The search area was still huge, but limited.

“Can’t we use one of the drones?” asked Tailin.

“Maybe tomorrow. In the dark, they’d have no chance of avoiding the weavers’ nets.”

The crowns of the brine trees were so dense that drones had to fly underneath them to spot anything on the ground. Below, however, the nets were lurking for a worthwhile catch. They looked like giant spider webs. Their threads were slightly thicker than the web threads of terrestrial spiders, adapted to the higher gravity. But there were no spiders in them! Mark had calculated from the thickness of the threads and the size of the webs that the weavers must be about four by eight inches. They had searched everywhere for them, not looking only for eight-legged creatures, of course, but considering every possible body shape.

They had no success. He had then lurked for weeks until he saw something caught in a web, expecting that then the spider would have to come out! But he was wrong. The web simply wrapped itself around the prey and began to digest it. The web itself was the organism. After the victim was digested, the net dissolved. It consisted of very thin threadworms that retreated into the earth, where they presumably sired their offspring. However, Mark had not yet been able to verify this.

Of course, the weavers’ nets could not digest a drone. But getting them out of the sticky material was difficult enough, as Mark knew from experience. At some point, the threadworms died if their prey was not edible, but it took a week for that to happen.

“Look!” Tailin exclaimed under her breath.

Her spotlight swept over a clearing. It must be twenty yards wide. Mark shone his light upwards. They were still under the crowns of the brine trees. He stepped into the clearing, noticing it had not been created naturally. Something had trampled down all the vegetation here.

“It could only have been multifeet,” he said.

Mark instinctively ducked as a face suddenly stared out at him. It was a flower of the gawp bush, which got its name from its resemblance to a human face. But not just any face - a shrunken head. The shape didn’t seem to have a specific function. The openings that suggested a mouth and nose were used by water-bearers to collect nectar by sticking their long legs into them. There was also a pseudo gawp bush that exploited this behavior to prey on water-bearers. The water-bearers in turn used this to reproduce, because the “legs” were actually sexual organs containing their eggs. These developed into larvae inside the pseudo gawp bush.

Mark picked up the flower and held it out to Tailin.

“They even flattened these,” he said.

Gawp bushes had extremely elastic branches that extended upwards despite the high gravity. You had to press them down with a minimum of 1600 pounds to crush them. Mark had investigated this because the toughness of the material might have industrial applications. His employers would be pleased by any findings that promised economic benefits.

“Oh no!” Tailin exclaimed.

Mark shone his flashlight on the brine tree trunk she stood next to as she felt over its bark. Glittering streaks coming from finger-thick holes revealed what must have happened here. It was the tree’s siliceous resin, which flowed from its wounds and sealed them at the same time. Tailin ran to the next tree.

“Here too!” she shouted, “and here!”

“Roger must have used the gun to fight off the multifeet,” said Mark.

“But why? They’re herbivores,” said Tailin.

She was right. That couldn’t be the whole story. Pointing the flashlight at the ground, he studied the clearing. He spotted some shredded leaves with saw teeth. They must be from a lion’s-teeth. Another one. He searched further and found a second specimen. Roger hadn’t been fighting the multifeet, but a group of lion’s-teeth. Perhaps he had injured one of the multifeet and turned them all against him. They were very social creatures that determinedly defended their own kind.

They both inspected the clearing. It was Tailin who found the missing weapon. It was still in working order, but the magazine was gone. Mark tracked down three empty magazines among the plant debris scattered around the clearing. Roger hadn’t made it easy for his attackers. But what had happened to him? They certainly didn’t find his body, not even the skeleton that the lion’s-teeth would have left behind if they emerged victorious.

Roger must have put the lion’s-teeth to flight. Or the multifeet had scared them off. Where was their friend?

“Maybe he rode off on a multifeet,” said Mark.

“Typical – Roger’s disappeared and you’re joking,” said Tailin. “He’ll be somewhere in the surrounding woods. Possibly badly injured.”

“If he’s lying motionless in the undergrowth, we won’t spot him in the dark. We’ll have to call off the search for today.”

He could set a drone on Roger’s scent. The sensors on the new models were very sensitive. Only recently he had tracked a group of skeleton foxes that way.

“You’ll have to go back without me,” Tailin said firmly. “He set out because of me. I have to find him.”

She had a guilty conscience. Mark could understand that. He should have forbidden Roger to follow his wife, but instead, he had been grateful to him. This was what he got for it now.

“It will be more efficient to sleep first and then search with the drone. One of us will keel over at some point.”

“Probably you,” said Tailin. “You’re not as fit as you used to be.”

“I’ve been sitting in the Albatross for two weeks straight because you wanted to find yourself,” he said. “So, have you found anything?”

That came out more bitter than intended. He could barely make out her face in the darkness. The fact that she couldn’t find the right answer spoke for itself. But wasn’t it true? She had shipped him off into space because a certain routine had crept in after three years of dating. As if it were any different for other couples! But we’re not other couples, she would have replied.

“Okay, you’re right. We’re not quite ourselves right now,” said Tailin. “We should go back to the Hopper.”

“I suggest the base,” said Mark. “That’s where our drones are stored. I could program one for Roger’s scent. Do we have any samples from him?”

“There should be something in the laundry box. It wasn’t easy to do laundry at the base.”

August 3, 2802, Earth's moon

The earth wore a ring. Yini blinked, since she could only see it when she squinted. The lights of the ring came from countless sources. They were the windows in the residential towers of the Ring City, the illuminated cabins of the elevators that traveled between the various neighborhoods, the glowing engines of rockets arriving in the Ring from Earth or the solar system, or the play of colors on billboards advertising a better life in Inner Earth or travel to the North American Wildlife Refuge.

Perhaps her parents were looking out of such a window at that very moment. The Sky Ring was visible from the Moon as the Earth rose only once every few years, when the Ring, Moon and Earth happened to be at exactly the right angle. On a Ring Day like this, relatives living apart traditionally waved to each other, though they were all aware that they were still about 240,000 miles apart.

Kang tapped her. “Had enough?” he asked.

Sometimes he seemed like a little child to her. But she wasn’t his mother, she was his twin sister.

“No, I haven’t. I’ve only just started,” Yini replied.

She took her rucksack off her shoulders and set it down on the pavement, which was as hard as concrete here. She had chosen a cul-de-sac where there were hardly any vehicles on the road, apart from the refuse collection vehicles that used it to access Bigtrash – the largest garbage dump in the solar system, supposedly visible to the naked eye from the surface of Earth during a full moon.

Today was a public holiday, so she didn’t expect any disruptions. Yini unzipped her backpack and the front section folded down. She took a tripod out of the right-side pocket and set it up.

“Can you set it up horizontally, please?” she asked.

“If I have to,” said Kang.

“Please. May I remind you that this trip was your present for my birthday?”

“I’m doing it.”

Kang bent down and fiddled with the clamps on the tripod legs. Meanwhile, Yini took the telescope out of her rucksack. It was the cheapest Newton you could get on the moon. It had 76 millimeters of objective aperture with a focal length of 70 millimeters, which gave a decent light yield, at least for the price.

“May I?” she asked.

“You may.”

She placed the telescope on the tripod so that Kang could tighten the fastening screw. Then she pressed the power button. The telescope moved once in a circle, as far as it could go, then from the horizon to the zenith. If she wanted to use it to observe stars, she used a tracker app installed in her spacesuit. But the Earth was much easier to find than any star.

Yini stood next to the eyepiece and pointed the telescope at her home planet, which wasn’t her home at all.

“How are you going to see through it?” asked Kang, pointing to her helmet.

Yini triumphantly took an eyepiece adapter out of her trouser pocket - basically a small digital camera that could be screwed directly onto the eyepiece. Using the keypad on her forearm, she configured the suit to display the transmitted images on the inside of her helmet. This meant she didn’t even have to bend down to look through the eyepiece.

The image was impressive. She first sighted a huge expanse of blue water. When she turned the telescope slightly to the left, a land mass came into view, which she recognized as Europe. It was mostly brown, with green areas only visible on the southern and northern edges. The telescope turned the image upside down. North was down and south was up. Europe was slowly growing again from bottom to top. She continued to pan north. There, the first ice-covered areas! Since the last inhabitants had officially left the planet, it had slowly cooled down again. That didn’t mean that no one lived there anymore. Her parents had...

“Can I have a go?” asked Kang.

“Want me to set it for you?” she offered.

“I’ll do it.”

He tapped his wrist as if he were tickling himself. Yini approved the connection request to the telescope. The telescope swiveled upwards. Then it moved slowly to the right, passed through to the bottom and raised its head again. It stopped at the highest point and moved backwards. Suddenly, music came out of her headphones and the telescope started moving to it. It was... dancing.

“Jeez, Kang!” shouted Yini.

Her brother really was full of nonsense. She cut the connection, and the telescope was still again.

“Hey, weren’t you listening?” asked Kang.

“Listening? You’ve got nothing but nonsense in your head.”

“That was ‘Happy birthday to you’, didn’t you recognize it? The telescope wanted to congratulate you. I wanted to wish you a happy birthday!”

Oh. Her cheeks grew warm. She turned to Kang and hugged him. Their transparent helmets bumped against each other.

“Sorry,” she said, “I’m sorry. That was a very original idea. Happy birthday to you, too.”

“Zahir gave me the idea,” said her brother.

“It was definitely a surprise,” replied Yini. “Want to take a look at space together?”

She released the connection to the telescope. First she pointed it at the Sky Ring. The huge structure looked much more impressive when magnified. It had housed almost all of humanity for a while now.

“Are Mother and Father watching us right now?” asked Kang.

Yini looked at her watch. “Not likely. They’re still at work. On the Ring, Ring Day is not a holiday.”

“Weird,” said Kang.

He was right about that. The lunar colony must have introduced the holiday on its own.

“What about Mars?” asked Kang.

“We’d have to be able to see through the moon for that.”

“And Neomars?”

“Saturn is currently being outshone by the Earth, so we have no chance.”

“Then I want to head back now,” said Kang.

Yini nodded and yawned. She increased the oxygen content in the air she breathed, which usually woke her up again. She took off the eyepiece adapter, loosened the locking screws and removed the telescope from the tripod to put it back in her backpack. Kang took care of the tripod without her having to say anything. Apparently, he had grown up a bit at some point.

“Ulita here,” a voice suddenly sounded in her helmet. “I hate to disturb you on your day off.”

She knew if her boss started off like that, something unpleasant would follow.

“What is it?” asked Yini.

“I’ve received a transmission to be given to our best eavesdropper. And I thought of you.”

Ulita usually thought of herself first, so it must be a strenuous task. It would certainly keep Yini busy for a week, not to mention the research program on Kepler...

“Someone else will take over the research program while you’re occupied,” said Ulita. “I’ll expect you in half an hour.”

The connection dropped. Ulita hadn’t even waited for her confirmation.

“Did you hear that?” asked Yini.

“It’s your own fault,” said Kang. “Why are you so good? Why don’t you be like me?”

“I only enjoy things I’m good at.”

“Except for singing.”

“What? I hit the notes pretty well, according to the choirmaster!”

Yini hoisted her rucksack onto her shoulders. They had about twenty minutes of walking ahead of them. They had walked until the station disappeared below the horizon - and that was only about a mile on the moon.

“Are we going swimming today?” asked Kang.

Yini tried to exercise every day to compensate for the low lunar gravity.

“I don’t know yet. If the new job allows it, I’d love to.”

On the horizon, a crab with a hundred eyes crawled towards them. At least, that was how the Great Archive looked, with its huge, impact-resistant roof - the crab’s shell - which extended down to the ground in several places - the feet. This area of the Moon was so uniform that Yini never knew exactly whether she was heading towards the horizon, or the horizon was heading towards her.

Kang and Yini moved ahead in the typical fashion for the moon. Their bodies leaning far forward, they pushed themselves firmly off the ground with their feet and leapt forward in long strides. It wasn’t particularly strenuous, but it took a lot of concentration.

“We should have taken a vehicle,” said Kang.

“That might have kicked up dust,” replied Yini.

A short time later, Kang’s wish was granted. A vehicle came towards them, a simple electric buggy that drove autonomously. It stopped right in front of them.

“That must be from your boss,” said Kang.

“Probably.” Yini climbed onto the narrow but comfortable seat.

Her brother made no move to take the second seat.

“I’ll stay outside for a while,” he said.

“Suit yourself.”

At the same moment, the buggy drove off as if it had been listening to them. Yini briefly considered that there might be a consciousness hiding inside, but if so, the buggy would have been marked accordingly. Because of the different rights that people and things had, a conscious machine had to be clearly recognizable.

This one was ordinary. It drove cross-country, so Yini had to hold on tight. When the shadow of the giant crab finally engulfed her and the buggy, she was glad to reach her destination.

May 5, 2799, Gliese 411

A bridge of fire spanned the void between the sun and its first planet. A jet-black stamp was imprinted on the heat-tanned skin of the celestial body. It was the shadow of its only moon, which moved as if in slow motion across a planet larger than Earth. The edges of the stamp glowed blue. Simultaneous sunrises and sunsets colored them, revealing that the thin atmosphere consisted mainly of carbon dioxide.

So this is Gliese 411. Monte had never been here before, even though the system was only eight light years away from Earth. He slowed the Curious down until the ship reached a stable orbit around the red dwarf, and searched the system at all wavelengths. There was nothing here. The only terrestrial planet orbited far too close to its central star to be colonized at an affordable cost, and the gas giants further out didn’t offer any economically viable resources. Not even tourists were interested in the system - it was too boring. That was exactly why he had never been here.

But was it necessary to forgo at least setting up an automatic research station? The extra eyes and ears would have made his current task much easier… Somewhere in this system there must be a wreck floating like a needle in a haystack, but there were no witnesses who could have observed the arrival and subsequent destruction of the ship. Was there indeed a needle floating in this haystack? Monte speeded up the system clock. After waking up, he always found it difficult to focus his thoughts. A more rapid pulse was exhausting in the long run, but it helped at least as much as two cups of coffee when he was in his Biobag.

Slowly, slowly. Time didn’t really matter. It took three years for the wreck’s distress signal to be picked up by a transport ship. Gliese 411 was far from any major routes. However, the transporter was not just any ship, but the flagship of Neomars, and for that reason alone it was equipped with an energy-hungry tachyon transmitter. Since the signal had an Earth identification, the captain had forwarded it to Earth via T-Field according to protocol.

Why had Admiral Gaudlitz entrusted him, of all people, with the investigation? He was not part of the navy’s secret service, and usually searched for runaway teenagers or expensively insured wrecks. That was the next question. Monte had been pondering it ever since the head of the Earth Fleet refused to answer it in a very strange way: “You’ll see, Monte, I’m sure you’ll see.”

Great. The first thing he wanted to do was get thoroughly drunk. Intoxication was the best way to start an investigation like this. He had tested that often enough. But to do that he would have to get his Biobag out of the stasis cell. Without his biological body, intoxication was pointless. The simulations that today’s youth were so keen on didn’t work for him, or at least that was what he believed. Only the original could convey how alcohol burned in the throat.

But it was too early for that as long as he had not found the wreck. The Biobag was sensitive enough that he could only accelerate at a maximum of 10 g in it. The central star of Gliese 411 was a red dwarf, and the system was therefore comparatively tiny. But three astronomical units to the outermost gas giant was still 280 million miles. Monte didn’t feel like spending the next few months in this barren system.

Oh well. The Curious had apparently calculated that he was most likely to find the wreck in the orbit of the rocky planet. There could only be one reason for that: The wrecked ship must have had a passenger on board who at least attempted to reach safety on the planet. Monte would see whether they succeeded as soon as he tracked down the wreck. It was time to get to work.

Or a rush first? He checked the status of the Biobag. His body was lying naked in the stasis cell, eyes closed, arms and legs extended like Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man. There were cables in every orifice. He felt a little sorry for his Biobag. The thawing process had not yet begun. The Curious probably assumed he wouldn’t need it. Or wanted to prevent him from getting drunk. The on-board AI had developed a certain protective instinct in recent years, which he hadn’t yet been able to get rid of.

It knew him pretty well. Monte was annoyed by its paternalism, but it wasn’t bad enough to make him think about a reset.

“You actually have,” it informed him silently.

“I have not,” he contradicted it.

“Yes, you did, just now.”

“I developed the idea that I hadn’t thought about it.”

“But you did think about it.”

“You know what? Screw you. You’d better look for that stupid wreck. Gaudlitz is expecting my report as soon as possible.”

That was true, but it wasn’t the whole truth. He wanted to get out of here. The admiral had promised him he could retire after this mission. Not even three hundred years old! Since humanity had stopped reproducing, there were hardly any retirees. If a Biobag no longer worked, it was simply replaced. Monte would be the first pensioner of the 29th century.

* * *

Monte accelerated the ship away from the planet. Despite its biblical age of eleven billion years, the planet still had a magnetic field that could interfere with the ship’s sensors, and Monte needed every extra percentage of sensitivity. After almost ten years, the sought-after ship was guaranteed to be no warmer than its surroundings. Especially in the asteroid belt that lay between the first gas giant and the rocky planet, it would be perfectly camouflaged - one of millions of fragments that had been tumbling through space for ages.

He still didn’t quite understand why the Curious hadn’t woken him up when they crossed the belt. It was not particularly dense, but if danger existed anywhere in this system, it was there. Danger, of course, was relative. No current spaceship AI would allow a collision under these circumstances. Monte had investigated over a hundred wrecks, mostly on behalf of insurance companies, sometimes at the request of the fleet. The cause had always been either human error or deliberate action.

“I have something,” the Curious reported.

That was quick. Wonderful! After the Admiral’s mysterious orders, he had imagined it would be much more difficult.

“Where?” he asked.

The artificial intelligence slid a spatial representation of a section of the asteroid belt in front of his mind’s eye. He had to force himself to accept the image. After a long sleep, such overrides of consciousness always took some getting used to. But he trusted the Curious’s AI. It had never let him down and, above all, had never stolen from him, which sometimes happened.

Monte concentrated on the center of the image. There was nothing there.

“What should I be seeing?” he asked.

“Nothing,” replied the AI.

“Ah, I can’t see anything.”

“Very good.”

“Can you please explain that to me? I’m just a limited human consciousness.”

“Thank you for the implicit compliment,” said the AI. “I calculated this point in the void from the orbital changes of some asteroids in the belt.”

“How do you know their orbits have changed? You’ve never been here before.”

“These asteroids are moving in unstable orbits that will lead them to collide with the gas giant fairly soon. The force that put them into these orbits must have acted on them relatively recently.”

“Like when our wreck flew into the system?”

“Correct, Claudio.”

The AI always used his first name. He had asked it several times to call him by his nickname – Monte, short for Pedramonte – but it refused.

“But it’s not there anymore,” said Monte.

“No, there’s nothing there. Almost nothing, anyway,” said the AI.

“Now, don’t be so mysterious.”

“The mass that caused the disturbance is still there. When we get closer, we will probably find WZ mass. The ship must have ejected it from its tank.”

WZ mass had about the density of a white dwarf. When compressed in this way, fuel could be transported much more efficiently.

“But why? Why would they want to get rid of fuel? Did they have a leak?”

“Distraction. I suspect it was to create a false trail.”

“Ah, then they were being followed.”

“That’s what it looks like, Claudio.”

“That means we’re right back where we started.”

“No, we have learned something about the situation of the ship we are looking for. You are the human here. What do you deduce from this?”

Monte pretended to think. He hated it when the AI talked to him like a small child. Maybe he should consider a reset after all.

“Set a course for the rocky planet,” he ordered.

“Setting course for Gliese 411 b,” replied the AI.

This system really was the furthest corner of humanity’s backyard. Apparently, the planet didn’t even have a proper name. And for this, Monte had been tossed more than two decades into the future. How he hated it! Having to reintegrate into everyday life after such a long time was no fun. His acquaintances would have forgotten him, his favorite pubs would have closed. The admiral would have to pay for that.

“Will you wake me up when we’re in orbit, please?” he asked.

* * *

Earth Moon, Great Archive

Chronoscribe Tsai Yini monitors the tachyon communication system, which transmits data faster than the speed of light. When classified results from an astrobiologist’s research are leaked to her, she cannot believe what she reads. The report reveals that intelligent life forms exist on a tropical planet in the Gliese system.

Their civilization is still in its infancy but revolves around an artifact of unknown origin that seems to influence their body chemistry. But there’s more: the astrobiologist who uncovered this artifact has undergone a baffling evolution of his own, and he’s now en route to Earth!

Yini suspects he carries a danger far greater than anyone could imagine. To stop him, she must make unimaginable decisions that could determine not only her fate but the future of the universe.

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Copyright © 2025 by Brandon Q. Morris

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Translator: Megan Bigelow

Editor: Margaret Dean (Profile)

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