Hollow Moon (10 page)

“Why would anyone travel into a radiation area?” asked
Bellona.

Endymion had forgotten his sister was watching. The main
display offered no further information, so he used the touch-screen menu to
bring up the navigation database and entered the beacon reference number. The
result just left him more confused than ever.

“
Dandridge Cole
,”
he read. “Funny name for an asteroid.”

“An asteroid?” asked Bellona.

“The
Dandridge Cole
?”
exclaimed the man at the next desk.

“Have you heard of it?” asked Endymion, bemused by the
man’s sudden excitement.

“It’s almost the stuff of legend!” the man said. His eyes
shone with excitement. “The
Dandridge Cole
is the original colony ship that brought settlers from Earth to Ascension more
than a century ago. It was thought to have been abandoned and left to drift
away, but it turns out it remained in orbit around Barnard’s Star. The weird
thing is I’d never given the story a second thought until today,” he said,
dropping his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “You see, when Administrator
Verdandi turned up earlier, it was to announce that we’re expecting visitors
from the
Dandridge Cole
!”

“Visitors?” Bellona sounded wary. “Who?”

“Aliens,” replied Endymion flatly.

“There’s no such thing as aliens,” Bellona retorted.

“What else can live on an asteroid?”

“They don’t live on the asteroid, they live inside it,”
the man told her.

“Inside?” Endymion was intrigued.

“The
Dandridge Cole
and
its sister ship the
Robert Goddard
were
asteroids that had been hollowed out and fitted with life support and huge
fusion engines,” the man explained. “They could reach speeds approaching a
fifth of that of light, but even then they were expected to take more than
fifty Terran years to get to Barnard’s Star. During the journey, the crew and
colonists would live out their lives inside the asteroid, waiting until they or
their descendants reached their new home.”

“Fifty years!” exclaimed Bellona.

The man smiled. “Twenty years into their voyage, the
Chinese perfected the extra-dimensional drive and suddenly we had spacecraft
that could do the same trip in days. By the time the people of the
Dandridge
Cole
arrived at Ascension, they were
greeted by Commonwealth engineers hard at work building Newbrum. Many of those
from the colony ship hated their new home so much they caught the first flight
back to Earth.”

“Why didn’t someone send a ship to meet them halfway?”
asked Bellona.

“You can’t jump into interstellar space,” Endymion told
her. “An ED drive needs the gravity well of the target star to work properly.
But what happened to the other ship?” he asked the man. “The Robert
whatitsname.”

“No one knows. Have you never seen
Waiting for Goddard
?”

Endymion and Bellona shook their heads.

“The
Robert Goddard
disappeared in very mysterious circumstances,” he told them. “To be honest, the
play doesn’t explain a thing and is a lot of nonsense if you ask me. The
Administrator will tell you it is a biographical, philosophical,
psychoanalytical and religious masterpiece, but it is her mother who is
currently starring in the revival at the Newbrum Palladium so I assume she’s
biased.”

“If the
Dandridge Cole
was abandoned, who are the visitors?” asked Endymion. He still could
not imagine what interest the crew of the
Nellie Chapman
had in a lonely asteroid, even one as odd as a
century-old colony ship.

“The stories tell of people who refused to leave the
colony ship and live there still,” the man said. There was a note of awe in his
voice as if he had already decided the tale was true. “On the other hand,
you’ve just proved that it’s still on the charts so anyone with a bit of
initiative could have found it and taken up residence if they wanted to.”

“What’s going on?” asked Philyra, appearing next to
Bellona, having been told to move from her perch by a spaceport worker
returning from her lunch break. “I heard someone say a ship was coming in.”

“Aliens,” said Endymion. He glanced at Bellona and
winked.

Bellona nodded. “Horribly mutated by radiation into
flesh-eating zombies.”

“Yuck,” muttered Philyra. She glanced at the screen in
front of Endymion and laughed. “
Dandridge Cole
! I never really believed that story of colony ships.”

“What?” exclaimed Endymion. Her casual acknowledgement of
what he saw as a great mystery was a little disconcerting. “You don’t know what
you’re talking about!”

“
Weird Universe
reviewed
Waiting for Goddard
a
few weeks ago,” she countered, referring to the off-beat entertainment news
show. “The cast said it was based on a true story but I thought they were
making it all up. A hollow moon indeed!”

“Administrator!” called one of the workers. “We have
radio contact.”

Verdandi walked to a window overlooking the runway and
stared into the distance. Apart from the odd wispy cloud, the dusky purple sky
was empty.

“Put it on loudspeaker, please,” she instructed.
“Endymion!”

Endymion jumped. “Yes, Administrator?”

“Take your friends and leave,” she said, still facing the
window. “I don’t want you here when our visitors arrive.”

Endymion’s face fell. The loudspeaker in the centre of
the room crackled into life.

“This is Captain Quirinus of freighter
Platypus
calling Newbrum spaceport control. Can you hear me,
spaceport control? Over.”

“
Platypus
?”
remarked Philyra. “What an odd name.”

“Still here, Endymion?” Verdandi said impatiently.

Endymion reluctantly stood up to leave, then a thought
struck him. “Is this about what was found at the Eden Ravines?” he asked slyly.
“I may know something about that.”

Verdandi faced Endymion squarely and gave him a cold
stare.

“You never cease to amaze me,” she snapped. “Stay there
and be quiet!”

Endymion grinned and went to stand by the window. The
operator seated near where Verdandi herself stood reached to his console and flicked
a switch.

“This is Newbrum control calling, err…
Platypus
. Are you receiving me? Over.”

“Receiving you loud and clear,” replied the pilot. “We’re
on our final approach, heading due west on a controlled glide.”

“Warning,” a synthesized female voice calmly interrupted,
speaking from the
Platypus
. “Forward
starboard undercarriage malfunction.”

“Ignore her,” said Quirinus. “Are we clear to land?
Over.”

The operator looked up at Verdandi, who nodded.

“You are clear to land,
Platypus
,” he confirmed. “Are you having problems? Over.”

“We should be okay,” called Quirinus. The pilot was
struggling to make himself heard above the swelling background static. “We’re
coming in a lot faster than I would have liked. We’re leaking coolant from the
brakes; the ailerons are also a little stiff from possible dust contamination.
The AI also thinks we have a problem with the landing gear but I’m sure we’ll
cope!” There followed a muffled conversation in the background. “Ravana said I
should mention that we’ve run out of chocolate biscuits. Over.”

The operator nodded, not that Quirinus could see him.
“Runway one is clear. That’s the big one,” he added hastily, just to avoid any
confusion. “Over.”

“Here they come,” said Verdandi, looking out of the
window.

A small dot had appeared high above the eastern horizon,
one growing larger by the second as the incoming spacecraft screamed through
the air at a rate only obtainable by dropping out of space onto a planet
inconveniently rotating the wrong way. Within moments the purple and white dot
had expanded enough for the watchers to see its short wings. As Verdandi,
Endymion and the others stared out across the Tatrill Sea, they suddenly heard
a loud crashing rumble as the speeding projectile dropped through the
thickening atmosphere and overtook its own sound waves.

“What was that?” asked Philyra, startled. “Thunder?”

“Sonic boom,” replied the man at the next desk.

Endymion kept his gaze upon the incoming spacecraft,
which was coming in low and fast. The freighter had four wings, one pair above
another, seemingly made of a strange flexible material and quite unlike the
rigid swing-wings of other mixed-mode spacecraft he had seen. As he looked
closer, he was startled to see that only three of the four undercarriage
assemblies had lowered into the correct position, for one of the front sets of
wheels had decided not to join its companions. The operator too had seen the
same thing and flicked the switch on his console once again.

“Scramble the fire engines,” he ordered. “All units to
runway one.”

“Do you think they’ll make it?” asked Endymion, suddenly
worried. This was one job he did not want to be sweeping off the runway.

“Newbrum spaceport to
Platypus
,” the operator called. “We have visual on possible
landing gear malfunction. Please advise. Over.”

“I was hoping the computer was over-reacting again,”
crackled the response. “Never mind. We’re running light so hopefully it’ll
hold. Over.”

“I wish I could be that confident,” murmured Verdandi.

The
Platypus
was
now no more than five kilometres away, then three, then one; skimming ever
lower above the surface of the sea. It appeared the pilot was trying to put the
wheels down as soon as possible so not to waste a single centimetre of the long
landing strip. Nose high, the cylindrical hull of the freighter swept over the
marker beacons at the start of the runway, clipping one of them with a tail fin
to send it spinning away. Moments later, an almighty screech of rubber ripped
through the thin air and the rear wheels met the ground.

“He’s doing well,” the operator murmured.

The
Platypus
tore
at breakneck speed down the uneven runway, the freighter’s wings shaking
violently. Endymion found himself holding his breath as he watched the front
end of the spacecraft slowly descend onto the last remaining set of wheels. The
freighter tilted a little to starboard as the weight settled upon its
precarious support, but the undercarriage seemed to be holding. Endymion
released a sigh of relief.

“What a landing!” he murmured.

The
Platypus
sped
past the spaceport dome, the spacecraft’s main thrusters now in full reverse
mode in an attempt to bring it to a halt. Verdandi moved to the next window to
continue to watch its progress and Endymion followed suit. With smoke billowing
from the undercarriage brakes, the freighter was slowing down but rapidly
running out of runway. It finally came to a shuddering halt mere metres from
the end, then promptly disappeared beneath the plumes of white vapour pouring
from its wheels. The
Platypus
had
landed.

“
Platypus
to
Newbrum control, we are down safe,” crackled the speaker. “Over.”

“Captain Quirinus, that is both the best and the worst
landing I have ever seen!” replied the operator. “Welcome to Newbrum. Over.”

Endymion watched two fire rescue vehicles rush out onto
the runway towards where the spacecraft had come to rest. Incredibly, the
freighter was now moving again, turning around on its three good sets of wheels
in a determined attempt to make it to the spaceport hangar under its own power.
The smoke cleared and as the spacecraft approached the dome Endymion recognised
it as a heavily-modified Mars-class interplanetary carrier in unusual purple
and white livery. Having four wings instead of two was strange enough, but the craft
also had a curious flat projection jutting forward from the curved bow of the
cylindrical hull. As he watched, the wings began to retract into the hull,
revealing a smaller than usual cargo door at the side.

“Strange-looking spacecraft,” Bellona remarked.

Endymion had to agree. “The name isn’t so silly after
all,” he mused. “The flat bit at the front does make it look a bit like a
duck-billed platypus.”

Upon learning that Miss Clymene was still at the
spaceport, pestering off-duty flight crews in an attempt to find someone
willing to accept a charter to Daode, Verdandi asked her to take charge of
Endymion, Bellona and Philyra while she went to the arrivals lounge to meet the
crew of the
Platypus
. When Endymion once
again hinted they were in some way involved following their trip to the Eden
Ravines, Verdandi reluctantly invited Miss Clymene and her students to
accompany her. Endymion, Bellona and Philyra went with some trepidation, for
their earlier jokes about aliens had settled uneasily upon their minds and
imaginations were running wild as to what the visitors from the legendary
colony ship would look like. As they walked, Bellona attempted to bring Miss
Clymene up to date, but her teacher still had other things on her mind.

“Aliens, eh?” she mused. “Do you think they take
charters?”

Ravana walked across the deserted arrivals lounge and
paused by a window to gaze upon the neighbouring steel and glass dome of
Newbrum city. Everywhere she looked inside the city’s protective shell she
could see distant specks that were people: at the windows and balconies of the
tower blocks, on the bustling walkways, in the vehicles plying the streets; all
busy living their lives just like their ancestors on Earth had done for
thousands of years. The main dome of Newbrum was no more than a kilometre wide
and a fifth as much high and thus nowhere as big as the hollow moon, yet to
Ravana it literally seethed with humanity. She found it hard to comprehend that
so many people could live in such a small space.