Space Voyage #1

[ronthepon]

I sprinted towards TheBigDog's chamber. The door was shut tight, wih no chance of me getting through. I knocked, then banged, then hollered. There was no doubt that I could not be heard through the thick soundproofing.

Just then, the door opened. With a worried and stressed face, the captain walked out. As usual, his imposing frame gave me an inferior feeling.

"Captain... BigDog sir!" I mouthed with medium loudness.

He was slightly startled to see me there.

"Oh, hey Ron" He said, eyeing me with hints of authority.

"I need to have a very important word with you, sir."

He looked at me with a very serious eye. This was not about more spilt radioactive beer.

"Make it short, I'm busy" He said.

"This concerns a very serious threat the ship is facing, sir. I need your time and... help." I said quickly.

He allowed me into his chamber.

Motioning me to sit, "Begin" he said.

I began by giving my background as briefly as possible.

"Oho. So thats why you were so very highly recommended for the post" He chuckled. "Carry on"

I continued to describe my assignment.

"...they are probably going to resort to blackmailing, and threatening." I was saying, "We are not sure of their true objectives or motives."

Now I saw in his eyes that he was holding something back. He knew something he did not want me to know. Was he the perp? No, I instantly decided. He had set too much store by the ship. He would never do this. But that meant that I was being suspected by him.

"Do you have any useful information for me?" I asked abruptly, hoping to have him blurt.

He was taken aback, but only slightly.

"Not much. But..." he trailed off, proceeding to show me the bullet in his hand. "This is most of what I know."

Most? What else did he know? Was he aware of my destroying the crawler? TheFaithfulStone has come to me earlier, asking me about bugger 34. Since then, I knew I was in trouble. He would locate it eventually and it would implicate me. So at that time I handed it to him, saying that I found it clogging Pyrotex's air vent.
Although TheFaithfulStone did not look at me suspiciously then, I could tell that he had made a good lot of others suspicious. The captain, sitting in front of me was also wary.

I shifted in my seat, and looked him in the eye.

"Do you think that I am the one?" I asked, directly and as bluntly as politeness permitted. "Do you suspect me?"

He did not answer at first. Finally he said "I suspect nobody. You do the suspecting here."

The mild hostility in his tone depressed me.

"Sir. You can not afford to suspect me now." I said, trying my best to win over him. "Because I already could have blown apart the ship on countless occasions before now."

He softened a bit. He breifly glanced at his computer console. The logo I had designed was visible brightly.

"You have my support for now." He muttered finally, "I will tell you what you will need to hear."

I was irritated. Here was a man who could not be swayed.

I stood up.

"Thanks for hearing me out." I said, realising with a falling feeling that my objective of coming here was not accomplished.

He asked me to summon the rich guy to his chamber. I wanted to hear what they had to discuss.

The bug I had planted would do the job for me.

[TheBigDog]

Damn spooks! I liked this kid. Had taken a special interest in him. I was well aware of his role on the ship - something he didn't know. And here, only 4 days into the mission he was already blowing his cover! I took a deep breath and relaxed. The rich guy would be here shortly, and I had to deal with the fact that my room had just been bugged. I couldn't know for sure, but that was the nature of the beast that had just left my personal quarters. He was still a good kid.

I went into my bedroom and quickly changed clothes. Then I washed my ands and arms all the way to the top. I exited by opening my door by command. I waited just 30 seconds for the rich guy to appear in the hallway.

We began a stroll through the ship. There were some sections that were always safer to talk. The background noise would drown out even the best external listening devices. When we got to the chicken coops I began.

"RG (everyone called him RG from my lead and he was clueless about what it stood for), remember that favor you had inquired about?" This had my guests immidiate attention. Back on earth he had proposed to me being able to take a second trip to the moon, without any press or cameras, so that he could enjoy it of his own accord, in private. I had denied that request. There had been some tough talk about it, but in the end he got what he paid for and it was done. I could tell immidiatly that I had his undivided attention.

"Of course I remember. Why do you ask?"

"Because I am going to give you a compromise." I picked a handful of feed pellets from a bucket and scattered them at our feet. The noise from the scratching and pecking hens filled the area.

"I am going to give you a chance to remote control a lander and rover. You can use them for exploration of your own interest. But I need something from you first." He was hooked. I could tell by the look on his face that he was hooked.

"What is it, BD?"

"It will cost a billion dollars. And it has to be in the next 60 minutes. We have a limited window to make this happen."

He was taken back by this a bit. Did I ask for too much? I held my eye contact like a cat.

After a deep breath he replied, "Do I have choiice of the landing area?"

"No, you need to work in the vicinity of the base construction. We have techs down there who can assist if anything happened to your rover without having to fly to a remote location."

He thought for another second, then exteneded his hand and said "Lets do it!"

I threw the remaining feed from my hand and gave him a firm shake and an smile. People loved to buy space stuff!

"OK, this is a private deal. This is between you and me and me and my crew. The only person you should be dealing with is me, and Pyro. Lets go to Command."

A few minutes later we had entered command. Pyro was at his accustomed position at the rail. He glanced over at us for a moment as he saw us approach.

"Pyro. I am going to take command for a while. I have something I want you to do with our friend here." I put my arm over his shoulder, leaned in and whispered into his ear the details of what I had promised Leaning away from him again, I continued, "Got it?"

Pyro's look was blank as he was processing what I had just said. He nodded and gave me the robotic "Wilco, BD."

"You are relieved," I said with a smile and gave him a friendly thump on the shoulder.

"BD has the Con," voiced Pyro for the official record.

"I have the Con," I repeated.

As Pyro was leaving, I shouted to him. "Get yourself some sleep afterword. I will leave instructions that you are not disturbed." And he and the rich guy were gone.

I looked down at my hand. In it was Pyro's RFID tag. I had palmed it off of him when I was whispering. He had to know it because I poked him with it. I had set everything up for him. He would be personally equipping a rover and lander for the rich guy. All he had to do was get into the cargo bay of the lander or the rover in his suit and ride it down to the surface. My assumption was that Pyro wanted to get to the surface. And that given this opportunity, he would take it. I had just one last thing to do. I dialed to RonThePon's communicator.

"This is RTP" cam across to me a second later.

"RTP, I need you in command."

A voice from behind me said, "Here I am." This kid was a spook.

"RTP, take this and pin it to Pyro's pillow in his quarters." I handed him the RFID tag.

"But, sir..."

"Don't give me any shit kid. Make it happen. And one other thing. I have a bit of an infestation problem in my room. I am goinng to exterminate later. If I find any still there I am going to find the queen and put her out the airlock. You might want to check that ahead of me. Got it?" He almost flinched. Damn, this kid was good.

"Wilco, BD"

Now, I had to wait.

Bill (t+4)

[KickAssClown]

it was like having cable, but better. As I sat there in my quarters, eating popcorn, I watched the mechinations of crew on the screen. I noted RG and BD in the Ag module... hmmm... the chicken coops eh? can't make out what their saying... oh well. A little while later I noted that BD was on command deck, and shortly after that RG and Pyro left command and headed to the landers.

Something odd was going on here. I patched into the Rover through a nice little backdoor, a hole in the security that I was sure no-one would notice a mouse sneaking through.

IP: 192.168.0.XXX
Mask: 255.255.255.0
run rover.sim -Trick(127.0.0.1)
Establishing connection...
Complete...
Resolving Host...
The trick played merrily XD, welcome home Rover_1...
setting Permissions...
patch complete.

I love my little friend. I thought merrily. Need to make me one of these for the Landers

I would wait, silently watching with the Rover cameras, monitoring the private Com Chatter, hopefully they wouldn't resort to helmet touching.

I changed to Clown_The_Second, while I waited for the Lander to hit the moon, and continued my morning soaps, that were the crew, now that was odd, I swore I saw someone in Engineering... that area is restricted for safety reasons and I had checked the logs, Gahd wasn't due in their till at least 1:00pm today.

Backing up the recording I zoomed in on the face as it darted, moving quickly, maximum of coverage, this guy(?) was being a sneak, it showed in their movements, stance and even somewhat in their expression. It wasn't someone I knew that was for sure... Not enough to identify them. Damn.

well, better send this on. Somemore Address manipulations, along with removing indentifying tags and then it will end up in Jay-qu's mail box. he might be interested.

[ronthepon]

He was not going to let me in his little surprise. It irritated me, and made me pitiful. I also knew that I could not mess with him and remain spring fresh.

"...I have a bit of an infestation problem in my room. I am goinng to exterminate later. If I find any still there I am going to find the queen and put her out the airlock. You might want to check that ahead of me. Got it?"

Brr... he was creepy. He had asked me to pin Pyrotex's RFID tag to his pillow. Why? And how the hell did he know about the bug?

I entered the captain's room first. I carefully removed the bug from his console. Should I have done it? No, I decided. I had to know what happened aboard the ship. I could not allow myself to be bogged down so easily.

I turned to the camera in his room, pointed squarely at me. Naturally, TheBigDog was not going to take chances with me. I bent down and scrubbed a little patch on the floor, trying to be as regular as possible.

Then, I walked out of the room, and proceeded to Pyrotex's room. There was no second search needed there. I would bug it stealthily.

[ronthepon]

I was trying my best to get into the mainframe of the ship. For some reason, the firewall seemed more impregnable than ever.

Error(0005): You dont have sufficient access privileges

My patience was eroding fast, and I was practically banging on the keyboard.

Error(0005): You dont have sufficient access priviliges

I was trying all the tricks I knew, using all the assiting programs I could find. Even the lowest level of programming I could reach was too high level for my intentions.

Exactly why the firewall had been updated so late, I did not know. Probably they had not expected any hackers.

Suddenly the thought hit me. Either they had detected me earlier, or there was some other hacker onboard!

Both the options were too bad for me.

Just then, it happened. My computer froze, all programs started to close, one by one. The cursor was being manipulated, and it was not by the hardware I was using.

STOP YOUR ATTEMPTS, HACKER, SAVE YOUR MACHINE BEFORE I DEVOUR IT!

It instantly dawned on me.
Virus!
At that time, pulling the minicomp's plug was all I could do.

[ronthepon]

I sat at my table for an hour, pondering what had just happened. It could have been a virus, or anything else. But one thing was for sure. Someone had broken into my minicomp while I was connected to the ship's network.

Was it some computer technician working under 'legal' orders under the big bosses? Or was it him?

Whoever it was, he enjoyed playing with me for the time. He carefully blocked all the probes I sent, carefully stopped me from getting near to the core of the system. He enjoyed mocking me all the time. He enjoyed his feeling or superiority over my hacking attempts.

No, I decided. It could not be TheBigDog behind this. He was far too honourable, and far too direct to be so torturous. It could also be others, but who? TheFaithfulStone?

This was bad. This was really bad. He knew about me. But I had no idea. I was at risk. I was in danger. I needed to work fast.

click! click! click! bang. bang.

I glanced left. There, in the vent was one of those buggers. It was trying to get to see me properly with its camera. I walked towards it with determination. I was going to pick it up, and see who was behind getting it there. I would find him, and I would get him in serious trouble.

[TheBigDog]

My wait had ended. I believed now that I had the answers, and it was time to take control as the commander of the Prophesy.

"Con, pan back on the main view. I want to see all of our equipment in view from the perspective of earth."

It took a few moments, but the main view swung around like I was flying through space until the moon filled the center of the view. Around here were the familiar lines tracking the orbits of the Prophesy, the ComSats, the GeoSats, and the various landers on the moon.

"Con, how long have you been on duty?" I asked this of the redshirt who was manning the right control panel. He was the only one on duty at the moment.

"I've been on duty since the beginning, BD," was his reply.

"And we are clean in here?" I asked in a tone that hoped to be normal, but was a bit on the quiet side.

"Absolutly, BD. Janus will be here in moment too."

As soon as he said that Janus came walking into command and stood beside me at the console.

"What have you got, Janus?"

"Well, it has taken some doing, but I think we have isolated the start of this madness." He poked at the command console. The view changed. The picture that had filled the middle of the huge screen now moved to fill the top right corner. The rest of the screen was now the monitor of Janus's virtual terminal.

"As you know I got the request from Pyro a couple of days ago to check the overlord system for snoopers and such. It was strange that he said it the way that he did. Still has me worried quite frankly."

"I hear you Janus, but let me worry about Pyro. We would not be here if it were not for him."

"True, true... Just make a note of my concern, BD." That was as serious a warning as you normally get from Janus. But things with Pyro would be resolved soon enough.

"So lets get to the heart of the matter. Do we have a sabateur on board?" I move my gave from one to the other, locking eyes with both of them.

"Absolutly not, BD."

"Correct, BD. We are clean," echoed Janus.

"Good. Then what happened." It was time to get my answers...

Janus began.

"While we don't have any badguys onboard, several of them were used as pawns by various forces on earth who want the Prophesy for their own purposes. We have not untangled the entire network yet, but the closest they got to a person on the inside is the quarantine facility. That is where they smuggled the gun, the bullets, and a variety of snooping devices onto the Prophesy. By using various forms of motivation on some members of the crew they created a series of events that lead to the .... I don't know how to say it, but the compromise of Pyrotex. We have identified six crew members who are patsies in the plot. Pyro, RonThePon, TheFaithfulStone, Arkain101, Kayra.... and you BD."

That figured. I had reacted poorly to this at the beginning. And I had found those bullets in my luggage. Janus was continuing.

"Everyone's involvement seems to be indirect, with the exception of RonThePon. I am still not convinced that he is not dirty in this," concluded Janus. That hung in the air for a moment. I liked RTP, and had taken him as part of the crew against the advice of some of my trusted center circle. Would I regret that decision? Right now it was hanging in the balance.

"So what was the aim of all this?"

Now the answer came from the Con. "Just like we have suspected all along. The Prophesy could be the greatest weapon anyone could possess. From orbit she could knock out all of the other satellites with relative ease. Her anticollision lasers are a violation of the treaty banning spaced based weapons. Plus she is a huge nuclear stockpile that could be brought down on the head of anyone. There are any number of nations who would give their first born to have her for their own purposes. The USA wants her because they don't want anyone else to have her. Other countries want her because it would give them a leg up on the US is space. And a tactical advantage over the US and her military's dependence on satellite technology. And then there are terrorists, although it is doubtful that they have the coordination and resources needed to get through the layers of security we have wrapped around ourselves." Sometimes doubtful meant no chance. Other times doubtful meant certainty. What did it mean this time?

"And you are confident we have not been infiltrated onboard?"

"We have been compromised in three places. The mole at the quarantine center, RonThePon, and unfortunatly Pyrotex. The mole will lead us to more information. We have the security agencies of three countries working the case for us." This came from Janus. He was obviously upset by all of this.

"So, do we have any reason to scrub our mission then?"

"No, BD. That may have been the whole purpose of this. I think that the whole point of this was to cause enough worry so that we would stop or delay the mission," replied the man at the Con.

That triggered a thought. Who would profit the most from failure of the Prophesy? The only answer that came to mind was a scary one. The news. We had been big news all over the world. But we had controlled our press coverage with unprecedented paranoia. On a few occations reporters had gotten past our outer controlled information and caused huge uproars with their outlandish claims about spending, safety, corruption and time schedules. Not wanting to waste time with such distractions we had a dedicated PR group who had done wonderous work in keeping the dream ontrack ahead of those who wanted to cash in free money on any failure we may have encounered. It was unfortunate that good news did not sell like bad news. Could all of this be in an effort to change our story? From someone without our sense of pioneering and adventure who wanted to claim short term fame and fortune at the expense of our greater mission? As inconceivable as that seemed, I could not get the notion out of my head.

"We are going to move forward with the mission. The sooner we get away from Earth the sooner we can all get focused again on the mission. And I have taken some more action to further focus our crew if we need to."

"You mean the billion you stole from RG?" smiled the man at the con.

"Stealing is a strong word. He got what he wanted for his money. And I got what I need too." All three of us shared a smile at this. We had discussed this before and I had insured everyone that I would take care of it. Everyone on this ship was a volunteer. We compensated them, but not nearly what they may have been paid on the outside. They were all being paid by the dream. And because of our press lockout they had been given little opportunity for profiteering through fame. The money raised by every means during the past ten years had been stricktly accounted for and spent in a most thrifty fashion. Much of the services we required had been donated or exchanged for sponsorship. We had always remained ahead of the game moneywise, but the cash we had was accounted for far into the future. This billion was off the books. It was now my discretionary fund. And it was more leverage for me to use as required should the future require it.

"I have one question, BD..." interupted Janus. "Why did you play along and let Pyro sneek off to the moon like that?"

"Two reason's Janus. First, I was really shaken by the way Pyro had given me the message, and it probably led to some bad judgement initially." Always good to admit your shortcomings at the proper time. "But it ended up benefiting us. It gave us the opportunity to let the threat play out and isolate the source."

"That is how we discovered that the source was not onboard the ship," added the man at the Con.

I nodded. "And it gave me an opportunity to test the loyalty of our young spook friend."

"How did the test go?" asked Janus with a raised eyebrow.

"My friend," I said placing a hand on his shoulder, "you get to be the final judge of his loyalty." Janus looked a bit spooked at that.

"Lets get back to our duties gentlemen. I will prepare an announcment for the crew. And lets get Pyro back onto the ship ASAP."

"Wilco, BD" came from the con. Janus thumped me on the shoulder with a smile and a frown and went back out the way he had entered.

I dialed RTP on his phone and told him to meet me at Command. When he arrived I swithed to remote and took him with me on the short walk to ten forward. He was stiff, nervous in my presence. I knew he was shouldering a great deal of responsibility, and I knew his personality was one that demanded success. I was counting on that. We sat down on a bench at thee edge of the lawn. There were fruit trees in bloom and bees buzzing from blossom to blossom. Through the windows in the ceiling we could see alternately the earth and the moon and the heavens as the Prophesy did her steady 3 rpm to maintain our constant gravity.

"Ron, you are a member of this crew because I want you to be. I have been following your education for several years, and reached out personally to your superiors to give youo the opportunity to be a member of this crew."

"Look up there, Ron. We are in space. We are about to embark on the journey of a lifetime. Hell, a journey that would be the envy of every journey of man that has preceeded it. This ship is mankinds vessel for exploration of the last great unknown. It is the testbed for man's conquest of space that will lead to our exploration of the rest of our galaxy."

"I have you onboard because of your potential as a scientist, and to be my eyes and ears in places where I cannot see and hear. This is goinng to be a long journey. There are going to be highs and lows in moral. There is going to be excitement and there is going to be boredom. And in the end I need the ability to insure that we all remain on task and acheive the great goals for ourselves and for mankind that have been set. And so you are hear for those two reasons."

"Over the past few days there was an effort to cause unrest onboard our ship by elements who are trying to profit from us appearing to fail. Unfortuanlty both of us ended up being used as pawns in their game to make that happen. The information that was being fed to you was not from your superiors, but from another source manipulating you to try and elicit a scandal among the crew. To were far more capable at your devious game than they would have guessed, and to some extent that prevented their plot from becoming public. I am telling you now. There is no threat on this ship. We have been used. And we need to get back to our primary mission."

RonThePon was still staring up at space though the window. I could tell that he had been listening to me. And the tear running down his face was an indication that he hurt from finding out the truth of the past days.

I placed a hand on his shoulder to bring his attention to my face. When he turned I saw that is was more than the single tear swelling from the red eyes of the young man sitting there.

"You ready to get back to work, RTP?"

Relief seemed to come over his face and I could see him forcing away the tears by shear force of internal will, trying to regain the dignity of dry eyes.

"Yes, sir," he replied in a choked voice.

"Good, then go off duty and get some sleep. You report to Janus in 10 hours. You are going to be on the orbital command center with him during the Prophesy's loop around the earth."

RTP had not been scheduled for any extra vehicular missions. And this was indeed a huge promotion in duty for the young man. It would also give Janus an opportunity to evaluate him from several days of working in close company. And I wanted RTP to have Janus as a scientific mentor.

I rose and stretched, looking up at the spectacular sight outside the window.

"Now get to sleep. You have some busy times ahead of you."

And I walked by myself back to the Con.

Over the next four hours Pyrotex returned to the Prophesy. He arrived the same way he had left, in the cargo bay of a lander. He had gotten a personal encrypted message from me that broke much of the previous days events to him. He went directly to his quarters upon return. I knew that he had something he was wrestling with. Something that he may or may not want to share with me. That would come in good time. For now I would give him some distance and let him rest. I was sure that he had gotten very little sleep over the past few weeks. Rest was the prescription he needed right now.

I was still on duty 8 hours later when the orbital command module was launched. Onboard were Janus, Kayra, RonThePon and KickAssClown, as the pilot of the attached Wrangler. They would maintain control of all the lunar operations while the Prophesy returned to earth and back.

At the Con was the same redshirt who had been in the discussion with myself and Janus. He had been a member of the IT team before becoming a con operator. The fact that we had settled all of this actually had come with his aid. I had told RonThePon that he was my eyes and ears. This was true, but I maintained many sets of confidential eyes and ears. And this particular set had access to the overlord system. This was a layer of security in the computer systems that tracked everything. And I mean everything that happened in ships systems. It was the most sophisticated persistant observer you could imagine. He had been the designer of the system, but felt much more comfortable out of the spotlight of being command staff. So he had elected to take the Con position so he could be at the heart of things, but also be a "blue collar" member of the crew. That suited both our needs perfectly. He had drilled into the data in overlord to find the chain of communicaitons that had lead to the revelation of facts. He had listened to crew in the rec quarters and the canteen to know what rumors were floating about. And he was as sharp an analyst as anyone I had ever know, making him all the more effective as a con operator.

"I am ready to take the Con, BD."

I had not seen Pyro comingn up to the post. He looked like a new man. His cold was behind him. His stress was behind him. I realized that it had been a very long time since I had seen him without stress on his face. It was almost startling, but was exactly what I needed to see. I would take him at his word, that he was ready to take the con, and that the Prophesy could not be in finer hands.

"Pyro has the Con" I echoed for the record.

"Aye, Pyro has the Con." replied CraigD from his right hand com seat. The ship was in good hands indeed.

As they prepared to leave lunar orbit I went to my quarters for my own much needed sleep.

Bill (t+6)

[KickAssClown]

As I slept in my quarters, having taken something for motion sickness a little panel opened in the corner of the Linux system's LAN monitor, it sat there blinking away.

I would be out cold, the last week had been far to long and there had been some kind of stirrup amongst the crew, I still didn't have clue who that face was that I saw in Engineering.

Which said alot to my subconscience. I had a terrible way with names, but I recognized faces intuitively, even if people didn't remember me I remembered them, and I had met the entire crew at the party, not that anyone noticed me in the corner. Sometimes I cursed my social anxiety, othertimes I found solace in it.

Tomorrow, I would be trying to get a LAN party together, maybe challenge some people to Total Annihilation, good Real Time Strategy really, to bad the sequal would be heavily delayed at the least.

I tried to stop thinking, as it made my head spin when I had my eyes closed like that, not something to worry about now. Rest was needed before our Loop.

[ronthepon]

It was certainly too much. Trying to fix my minicomp for the last few hours, I had entirely lost hope aboard the ship. It was the mainframe that hacked into my system. I knew that I had been found by the crew to be abnormally involved. TFS accepted his involvement behind the bugger in my room, and clearly told me why. I abandoned all hope when TheBigDog called me. What persuaded me to go was the unexpected lack of force in his voice when he called for me.

But then, I realised that the situation was very much different from what I had thought. He implied that he had found the prep behind this, and had taken care of it all himself. I broke down then. It may have been the severe lack of rest coupled with the shock at the realisation that I had been foolishly used by god knows whom, and the fact that I was still kept in the dark about who it was.

Nevrtheless, I resolved to work better from now on. I handed my minicomp to some guys who claimed they could fix it(and I was not takinga risk because it was totally gone), watched a movie on the DVD player I brought aboard the ship(aah, someone else had bothered to use it by now), and had a good sleep. It was all cleared up by the time I awoke. I understood that my earlier educational years of life that would be used on the ship from now on. Atleast I hoped so.

[Pyrotex]

they would expect me to take one of the shuttles to the surface. Ha!
I made sure that systems would think I was onboard, then dodged to the satellite utility bay in cargo tube 3. There would be nobody there since most satellites and their propulsion units are attached automatically from Central Sat Control in module 8-three.

I found a rugged surface suit, and climbed in. I went through the interior airlock and manually dragged over a Moon landing module for small cargo or sample collection devices. I strapped a Kangaroller to the top, and then myself. The automated program I fed into the controller did the rest.

Nobody would suspect. Robot sample missions go on several times a day. The robot arms pull me and my tiny craft to the hanger door and toss me outside the Prophecy. I drift for about five minutes before the reaction control system cuts in.

Goddam! This is scarier than I thought! This buggy is no bigger than a VW bug. There's no walls, no controls, and the when the tiny engine cuts in, the gee forces are high. Maybe 4 or 5 G. Shit!! A full minute of blasting, and it cuts off. Freefall. My orbit will now intersect the Moon's surface about 4 miles from JayQu and the ever growing Lunar Base he is building.

Forty minutes later, and the Moon is coming up fast! And sliding under me at several thousand miles per hour! I hear a pop-pop-pop and the craft spins around so fast it makes me dizzy. Ka-waaaammmmm, the 5G engine cuts in and brakes my fall. This hurts! Now I'm descending vertically. Woof! That landing could have been softer. Engine off. Silence. Moon rocks all around.

You remember the Segue personal people mover? Two wheels, a gyro and a vertical handle bar? Well. wecome to the general purpose Kangaroller. Same thing, only articulated with pogo-stick like shock absorbers and a gas attitude control system. More smarts than your average colleg freshman. I turn it on. I click through the modes, Novice, Experienced, Expert, Knievel. I jump on, twist the hand controllers and am slammed ahead at high speed over the Lunar surface, kicking a rooster tail of dust. I must be hitting speeds as high as 60 mph. I ramp-jumped up the side of a small crater and ballistically sailed completely over it. bigger than a football field.

I arrive at the base and pull JayQu aside. I tell him who two of the bad guys are. The clue was my .357. It was a Smith and Wessen, with no bullets. We have two brothers on board from the Maldive Islands, Smess and Withen. The MI Activists, their motto is Battle Without Bullets. Global warming has flooded the Maldive Islands, since they were only 4 feet above mean sea level. They want the industrial nations to give them 10 square miles in our biggest cities to replace the islands they believe we destroyed. Okay, we did destroy their islands. No doubt, they wanted to use our ship to threaten the UN into meeting their demands.

Smess and Withen are currently staffed at the Lunar Base. JayQu will take care of them.

I ride at high speed back to my tiny lander, again shooting a ramp jump over the same crater. What a friggin thrill!!! And back to the Prophecy. Hopefully, nobody will even know I was gone.

Damn, my back and legs are sore!! I'm getting too old for this!!