Salvador Mercer - Lunar Discovery

“ Blackjack , this is Houston, go ahead.”

“ Blackjack has reached waypoint one, ready to proceed,” she said, flipping her FLIR device on and swinging the joystick around to pan the picture on her display.

“Signal strength shows elevated levels, but within operating parameters for your rover. Advise you do not EVA, repeat do not EVA from this point forward. Do you copy, Blackjack? ”

“ Blackjack copies. Will stay on board the rover,” Julie said.

“ Blackjack , this is Houston, authorization to proceed granted. Be advised there may be company on the ground. Status unknown. You have two hours. Good luck,” the simple reply came back.

“There, you just went past it,” Craig said from his rear-facing seat as he monitored the FLIR on his own screen.

“Yeah, I see it now,” Julie said, panning a bit more and zooming in on the faint false colors of the display. They glowed a pale blue and green, nothing hot enough to show oranges or reds. “It looks quiet down there. What do you think they mean by status unknown? Do you think they mean what I’m thinking?”

“That’s their polite way of saying the Russians more than likely bit the big one down there. You good to go with that, Jules?”

Julie flipped her lights back on and watched as the FLIR colors faded. “Yeah, let’s do this.” She punched the accelerator lever forward, and the rover lurched forward, heading toward the alien device. There was no way to miss it. The signals were so clear and strong that DF or direction finding on it was child’s play. It was transmitting like a beacon in the dark, and the Apollo crew was riding the wave to its source.

Gordust Space Station

Low Moon Orbit

In the near future, Day 48

“There, I found them,” Nikolai said over the intercom system. “Grid 9B.”

Olga moved their own infrared camera to the west and zoomed out to make sure it would cover the entire surface area of grid 9B as Nikolai indicated. “Got it, target acquired.”

“Is that the Americans?” Yuri asked, monitoring their progress across the dark side of the moon.

“I’m pretty sure it is,” Olga said, watching intently. “They seem to really be moving. Thirty, forty kilometers an hour.”

“That’s typical for them. They like their vehicles fast,” Yuri said.

“And their women faster,” Nikolai added, laughing for the first time in over a day.

“You two are so predictable,” Olga said, a frown on her face, easily visible now that they had resealed the ship and took their helmets and gloves off. “They’ll be there within the hour. Do we contact them?”

“We’ve had no orders either way from Moscow, well, Vostochny. I doubt they’d approve, but we need to know. We’ll lose contact in ten more minutes and won’t reacquire till after they arrive, so it’s now or never.”

“Do it,” Olga said.

Yuri keyed his mike. “Nikolai, Viktor, are you both on board?”

“ Da , Yuri,” Nikolai said. “Those are our comrades down there. Make it happen.”

“Viktor?” Yuri asked.

“I’m with Nikolai on this,” the man said. “See what you can do.”

Yuri looked at Olga, who nodded and then flipped several switches working the radio frequency scanner. It took nearly ten seconds to bring up the correct frequency. “They’re transmitting in the clear?”

Olga nodded. “Yes, they are on this channel.”

Yuri sighed and looked at the communications console to his left. He hoped he was doing the right thing. “Russian ship Gordust to American lunar crew, do you copy?”

There was a pause for several seconds till Yuri repeated the call. “ Gordust to American lunar crew, do you copy?”

“ Apollo 21 is a copy for Gordust . This is Commander Julie Monroe. Go with your message.”

The tone of the American concerned Yuri, but what was he to expect? “This is Station Commander Yuri Temshenko, officially requesting aid for our surface crew, over.”

“What kind of aid, Commander Temshenko? We have limited resources down here.”

“Understood, Apollo . Any confirmation of our comrade’s status would be helpful. We have been out of contact for nearly a day. Can you assist?”

“Roger, Gordust , we’ll use this frequency for communications. What’s our window?”

“We have seven more minutes, and then we’ll be in range forty-eight minutes after that.”

“Roger, we are thirty minutes ETA to your crew, so we’ll catch you on the flip side.”

Flip side? Yuri mouthed the words to Olga who just shrugged. “Ah, roger, Apollo , thank you for the assistance. Gordust out.”

“I don’t think she forgave us for kicking her off our station,” Olga said.

“Well, whether she forgave or not, she sure as hell didn’t forget. Let’s hope she’s more forgiving when she reaches our comrades,” Yuri said.

“I hope so,” Olga replied.

Yuri looked at Olga. “I’ll guess we’ll know for sure in about an hour.” Olga nodded and watched as the American rover tore across the lunar landscape, closing in on target, on the device and more importantly, on their crewmembers.

NASA Space Center

Houston, Texas

In the near future, Day 48

Rock leaned back, looking at Marge closely. “You’re sure about this?”

“Well, not sure, but when we discovered the repetition of the four signal codes, it came across to me that no astro-map would be so limited in its scope, so it had to be something else.”

“Why not a mathematical formula?” Rock asked.

“We ran the alien code string by every formula we could find as well as partial ones, and nothing came up. That’s exactly what the NSA had been doing for weeks,” Marge said.

“So you plugged in the genetic code and it matched?” Rock asked.

“Not exactly,” Marge began. “The entire code was not a match, however, half the human DNA string does fit the signal at nearly ninety-nine percent. I think they’re trying to communicate with us biologically if not mathematically.”

“So then why kill us? I mean, it looks pretty much like their signals were fatal to the Russian crew. Why kill those with whom you’re trying to communicate with?”

Marge shrugged and leaned back in her chair. “Maybe they want something different from us than our attempts to retrieve their diamond-looking transmitter.”

Rock rubbed his chin and then his eyes; he had slept little the last twenty-four hours and would most likely repeat this for the next twenty-four. “I’ll run this by Mr. Smith and see what he and his team thinks. Do you have anything else?”

“Well, for now, no, but I’ll be working on it at my console. Just keep an eye on their systems, especially the computers. If anything fails, it will be those first, and that would pretty much doom them when that missile arrives.”

“Yeah, I’ll have to have a serious discussion with Mr. Smith about this one. They shouldn’t be in this type of situation—”

Rock was interrupted by Jack, who stuck his head in the door. “They’re almost to target.”

“On our way,” Rock said, gathering up his binder and giving Marge one last look. “See what you can do, Marge. We literally have only one hour.”

Chinese Nuclear Missile GX101A

Approaching the Moon

In the near future, Day 48

The Chinese missile received its input command, and for the second time in as many hours, its rocket motor ignited and boosted its velocity relative to the system’s planet and sole moon by twelve percent before shutting off and lighting up its radar system located in the nose cone. It acquired the alien signal and used it to home in on as a beacon sweeping with its radar, which was being used only to obtain a fix on the missile’s current location relative to the moon.