0827 hours
Boom. Boom. Boom.
The ground beneath Wayne shook as with the strokes of a giant hammer, as regularly as clockwork.
The sun was nearing the western horizon. How could they not have noticed that before? The sound seemed to originate not merely beneath them, but off to what Wayne took to be the north. There were jagged mountains in that direction, and he thought that they would be easy to recognize, and that was as good a reason to choose an orientation as any.
They’d already lost the sphere… he could imagine that Xavier had just waited until they were busy bounding, and then distorted the visual field to “disappear” the sphere, a simple magician’s trick aided by their dizziness and disorientation.
Damn. It had happened in the BBC version, as well as the Harryhausen film. Take it as part of the script.
Now the ground itself seemed to be protesting their presence.
Angelique Chan raised her arm, poking it up from under the tangled flowers to Wayne’s left. “Head toward the sound,” she said, and they started to crawl.
Mickey whispered, “I haven’t been able to get down on all fours like this for donkey’s years. This lunar gravity is great for my back!”
Maud chuckled, and then went back to serious crawling.
Mickey was right, of course. Wayne barely felt any pressure on his palms or wrists at all. The slightest flexion of his wrist sent his hands and knees springing up off the ground, thumping back down so lightly it was a joke.
The plants were waxy to the touch. A closer inspection revealed that they had little or no scent, and rooted into some kind of web just beneath the dirt. Were they all part of one life-form, like the mycelial mass beneath a clutch of mushrooms?
Or were they perhaps just manufactured en masse and rolled out like an artificial lawn by the wizards of Dream Park?
He giggled to himself, and concentrated on what he was doing.
Boom… boom… boom…
The ground beneath them trembled. The gigantic circular plate beneath their feet first revolved, then began to slide away.
Gamers crawled backward away from the opening as fast as they could, as the lid retracted like the lens of a crocodile’s eye.
They could peer down into the depths, from which a deeper boom… boom… boom rang hollowly, like Mjollnir striking the anvil of heaven.
All right. Dammit, he should have read the original book. Were they supposed to go down? Was something coming up after them? In the movie the Moon was hollow, all caverns. Was it in the book? And if so, would Xavier confine himself to canon?
He crawled up to the edge and looked down. The tunnel dropped away shallowly, not sharply, a ramp leading up to the surface rather than a vertical mineshaft. The edge of the doorway was about three feet thick, with a series of dull glowing lights pulsing and moaning around the edge. Their low, bone-rattling intensity made his fillings ache.
“What is that sound?” Angelique asked. She was squinting, but seemed to be thinking hard. “Alarm? Alert?”
Before he could answer her, they both received an answer, in the form of a lowing groan behind them.
Something was coming. And whatever that something was, it wss groaning in sync with the sound coming from the rim of the flat circular door.
“It’s a homing call,” she said. “They’re telling the cows to come in.”
She raised herself up onto her elbows and called to the others. “Keep an alert! Something is coming. It’s big, and you don’t want to be seen, or stepped on. Look sharp!”
Boom. Boom. Boom.
The sound from below and the shaking ground behind them seemed to meld, and so suddenly that he felt adrenaline jolt up his spine, as the first sign of lunar animal life appeared.
It was enormous, like a segmented caterpillar half the length of a city block. Its flesh was white, and dappled, and with every laborious breath those sides rose and fell. Wayne could see no feet, and from the way it rose up and inched forward like the greatest worm that ever lived, it was more lizard than snake.
“Mooncow,” Maud said quietly. “That’s what it was called. A mooncow.”
All he knew was that he didn’t want to try to fight something this size. Its six eyes were relatively tiny, clustered around what he thought of as its nose. The caterpillar’s neck was fatter than the main section of its body. It opened its mouth and emitted a bleating noise that rolled over the crater rim and resounded from the clouds themselves.
Six, no seven man-sized creatures appeared around the mooncows. Their eyes were faceted, and their thin arms were covered with some kind of horny carapace, a substance that reflected the sharp light with a faint blue sheen.
One of the insectile creatures (Selenites? Was that the word?) looked in his direction, and Wayne ducked down. He felt something… a vague creeping sensation rippling up his back, at the same time that the earth itself seemed to tremble. The spit dried in Wayne’s mouth. Despite his best attempt to stay steady, a sour sensation that he recognized as fear began to boil in his stomach. He wiped his hands on his pants, and tried to slow his breathing.
Couldn’t let himself get spooked. Not so soon, anyway.
When he looked back up, the mooncows were halfway down the hole, humping along. At the right angles, their bodies were partially translucent. He thought he could see the contents of their stomachs, vast clots of vegetable matter churning their way through the beasts’ digestive systems.
Then finally the last of the mooncows was down the hole. The Selenites kept watch until the last minute, but he had the sense that they weren’t specifically looking for intruders, just keeping a mindful presence. Then they entered the hole, and a moment later the clanging sound began anew, and the lid slid shut.
Angelique held up her hand, palm flattened, and they rose from hiding.
Wayne jumped down onto the circular door with a thump. “Well,” he said slowly. “I suppose it would be too much to hope that they just left a door open for us.”
Asako Tabata’s pod speakers were normally indistinguishable from a human voice, but now they were amplified. “There may be a problem,” she said. “I note that the temperature is dropping.”
Wayne looked to the west, where the shadows were stretching toward them. To the east he saw something that made his skin creep: There where the sky was darkening, the clouds had blackened as well.
Even as he watched, the very first snowflake touched his upturned face.
“Oh, shit, ” Scotty Griffin said, and he looked not the slightest bit happy. “Nightfall. The air is freezing.”
“We’ve got minutes,” Angelique said. “We’ll freeze to death out here.”
Asako zipped her pod around the metal door’s circumference, stopping here and there to probe with little metal arms. Wayne got down on his hands and knees to inspect more closely. Arcane symbols, things that looked like dancing worms and burning leaves, were etched around the edge, but these might be just Moon-speak, and not necessarily gaming clues.
“How much time do we have?” Angelique whispered.
“Not much,” he said. The sky above them was scarred now, ripped by a silent storm. Pinpoint stars burned through the thinning air, bright enough to sear his eyes. What would happen as the night fell? First, the temperature would drop drastically. Then… the gases would start freezing. What would freeze first? Free oxygen? Nitrogen? CO 2? He didn’t know, but figured they’d be dead long before they knew.
It was snowing now, and the air was starting to feel like the middle of winter. He shivered, teeth clattering. The other gamers must be wishing they’d brought parkas. The plants around them were shriveling, browning and curling up. So… they were seasonal… if the Moon had twelve seasons a year. Or did every month have four seasons, which made a total of forty-eight seasons…
His mind was drifting. The cold was getting to him. Jesus! Was this Dream Park’s doing?
“I’ve got it!” Asako called out, and they ran to her side as her pod emitted an ear-shredding squeal, a higher-pitched version of…
“The mooncow sound,” Angelique said.
“Brilliant,” Wayne said, shivering.
The sound wavered then swooped low. The instant it hit the same tone that the mooncow had used, the door beneath them shivered and began to slide open. They had to scramble for safety, but the slab slid only a third of the way open, perhaps awaiting another mooncow call.
“Let’s get in there,” Angelique said.
And not a moment too soon. The sky above them was filled with snow, and blackening as they watched. Nothing would survive on the surface for more than another few minutes. The gamers jumped down into the darkness.