David Golemon - Legacy

“Unless, like us, they were just dumbass sons-a-bitches,” Will countered.

Kwan smiled, continuing down the ramp, following what was left of the three Moon expeditions.

“There again, you may have a point.”

As the three fell into line, the helmet lights bounced off of posters, possibly of rules and regulations, in the now familiar alien script. As Sarah looked, the posters began to look like U.S. Army bulletins on the do’s and don’ts of surviving in a hostile environment. There were depictions of space-suited men placing a finger to their helmets in a shushing gesture, possibly meaning loose lips sink ships. There were what looked like propaganda scenes on some of them, with flags, and even one that resembled the old World War I Uncle Sam pointing at the reader of the poster, as if saying, “I want you!”

“I’m getting the feeling these people just blew themselves straight to hell,” Will said as he tried to look more closely at one of the propaganda posters.

“Look at this one,” Sarah said.

Kwan and Will looked at what she was studying as the vibration from above them increased.

On a large and half-torn poster, their helmet lights revealed one very large moon, with what looked like transport ships leaving its surface. Below that was a picture of the mineral.

“Look familiar?” Sarah said, tapping the mineral.

“Looks like they may have been mining it,” Kwan said. “Is that our Moon?”

Sarah reached out and pushed the ripped corner back into place. As she did, all of their eyes widened. They saw a much smaller moon in the background of the first. Beside it was the Earth or at least it looked like the Earth. The continents weren’t in the right places.

“What the hell is this?” Mendenhall asked.

“My God, they were mining the mineral,” Sarah said, “but not from this moon. There was another moon that’s no longer there.” She reached out and slid up the other corner of the poster. That was when they saw it-another world in the far distance. This one had deep green oceans and red-colored continents.

“What planet is that?” Kwan asked.

“I don’t know,” Sarah said. “But our hope of finding a source of the mineral on the Moon just went right out the window.”

“All the more reason to leave this place as soon as we are able to escape our enemies-which are growing closer as we speak,” Kwan said. He turned and started down the ramp once more.

Sarah looked at Will and shook her head and then stepped into line with the general.

Mendenhall wanted to curse as he slapped at the reproduced depiction of the mined moon Ophillias.

“I don’t like this moon very much,” he said. Then she looked at the second, much larger moon. “Or that one either.”

The men ahead had halted. Sarah looked at the altimeter readout on her right sleeve. The small computer screen told her they had traveled a distance of close to a half a mile in a downward attitude. She was starting to think they would find nothing but a basement.

“General, would you and Lieutenant McIntire come up here, please?”

Sarah thought she recognized the voice of Sergeant Stanley Sampson, one of her Green Berets, as she and Kwan, followed by Mendenhall, stepped up to the first man in line. It was Sampson, and he just pointed into a room that held a number of tables along with what looked like a cafeteria serving line.

“Chow’s on,” the sergeant said, and stepped aside to allow Kwan, Sarah, and Mendenhall to go through first.

“I don’t think we want to eat here, Sergeant,” Sarah said as her light picked up a pair of bodies in the far corner of the room. There were two large cups sitting in front of a mummified man and woman. They were holding hands across the table and their missing eyes seemed to be locked on each other.

“They must have come down here to die,” Sarah said, unable to remove her eyes from the long lost couple.

“Die of what?” Mendenhall said. The couple was having the opposite effect on him as on Sarah.

General Kwan stepped forward and reached for something. Sarah flinched, hoping he wasn’t going to disturb the couple. The woman had red hair and the man black. Their hands may have been locked together for millions upon millions of years, and Sarah felt they had no right to disturb their remains. Instead, Kwan turned and tossed a small object to Sarah, who had plenty of time to catch it in the nonatmosphere. She looked at the bottle and then handed it off to Will. It was empty, but all three of their imaginations could figure out that the couple had long ago taken a way out that was more to their own choosing. Sarah wondered how they could have become so desperate.

“Sir, we found something down here,” a Frenchman said as he scrambled into the doorway.

As Sarah turned, Will handed her the small bottle and fixed his eyes in the same direction as hers. The unspoken communication was such that they both knew they didn’t want to go out that way, or any other way that involved dying on the Moon. Sarah placed a gloved hand on Will’s shoulder and then moved away back to the long ramp outside. She followed the rest of the men and that was when she saw that they had come to the end of the wide ramp. There was a double set of doors and she followed the men through them. As she stood there, Sarah couldn’t believe her eyes. Lined up as though at an Army motor pool were vehicles-eight of them, ranging from small dune-buggy-type cars to three large transports with rounded bubbled cabs. All the vehicles had oversized tires; two of them were tracked. Several also had large cranes and derricks attached. They were facing toward what she thought was a dead end, but when she examined it closer she saw that it was actually a fifty-foot-wide roll-up door, sealed against the harsh external environment.

“Look at this,” one of the ESA men said, tapping a large glass or plastic container. Inside the vessel they saw about a hundred gallons of frozen water. There was thick piping running from the tank into a large pump, and then through the metal flooring into the lunar surface. The ancient lunar explorers had discovered the very thing NASA was looking for in Shackleton Crater-water. There must be an underground supply of ice. Somehow the visitors had found a way to melt it and pump it to the surface.

“Now this is what I call a neighborhood garage-cars, water, and tools. Now all we need are two-week-old hot dogs, overpriced gas, and a Big Gulp machine.” Will smiled and walked over to the first dune-buggy-type vehicle and looked in its interior at the unfamiliar gears and levers.

Sarah stepped up behind Will and tapped him on the shoulder as she looked at the strange shifters and dials.

“Well, I hope you can drive a stick and drink your Big Gulp at the same time, Mr. Wizard.”

General Kwan turned away from examining the interior of one of the heavier tracked vehicles as some of the men chuckled, a very strange sound considering their predicament.

“Excuse me, but what is this Big Gulp you speak of?”

Tram was actually zigzagging his way upward to the spot where Collins had fallen a few steps ahead of Everett. Down below, the giant robots were starting to root out the soldiers faster by the minute. They were tearing into solid rock and ancient lava to get at their hiding places. The noise of the attack along with the wiring and whine of the transformers and turbines echoed loudly in the large gallery. The screams and gunshots from their men were even louder.

Tram made it to the spot where Jack had been hit and gone down. As both men ducked and took cover, they were stunned to see that Jack wasn’t there. Everett looked around the area and placed his hand on a darkened spot near the rock wall. He lifted his hand and saw that it was blood.