PROVINCIA DE CRATERA MACRO: Extends south from near center of visible face of Moon, east of Província Central da Cratera. Densely pocked with impact craters, many of them large and including the largest on the Moon. In the north, some craters fractured from impact forming Ibrir Mar. Rough surfaces almost everywhere, except for some crater bottoms. There are more surfaces in the slopes, mostly 10* to 12*; some crater bottoms nearly level.427Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkOv2wTh4xX
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MOVEMENT AND LANDING: Landing is generally difficult due to rough, sloping surfaces, but less difficult in some level crater bottoms. Movement is possible almost everywhere, but route selection is needed. There is, fortunately, less difficulty in some crater bottoms.427Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡA6N94yJFF1
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CONSTRUCTION: Construction is generally moderately difficult due to slopes, and numerous large blocks in loose material. Excavation of lava is hard in some crater bottoms.427Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWUkMcddEt8
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TYCHO: Post-Mar crater; 54 miles in diameter, rim 7,9000 feet above surroundings; bottom 12,000 feet deep. Tycho has the most prominent ray system on the Moon, some rays extending out more than 500 miles.427Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqIrbIrXFgq
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(Extract from Manual de Viagens Interplentarias à Superfície Lunar, Office, Minister of Engineers, Viagens Interplanetarias, Brazilian National Geological Survey, Brasilia, 2072.)427Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYvQr4AdR7b
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The mobile lab now speeding across the crater plain at 50 miles per hour looked more like an outsized trailer mounted on ten flex-wheels than a true lunar rover. But it was very much more than this; it was a self-contained environment in which 20 men could live and work for several weeks. Indeed, it was virtually a landgoing spaceship--and in a pinch it could even fly. If it came to a crevasse or canyon which was too big to detour, and too steep to enter, it could hope across the obstacle on its four underjets.
As he peered out of the window, Marshall could see stretching ahead of him a well-defined trail, where dozens of vehicles had left a hard-packed band in the friable surface of the Moon. At regular intervals along the track were tall, slender rods, each carrying a flashing light. Nobody could possibly get lost on the 200-mile journey from Dumont Base to ATM-1, although it was still night and the sun would not rise for several hours.
The stars overhead were only a little brighter, or more numerous, than on a clear night from the high plateau of Chile or Bolivia. But there were two things in the coal-black sky that destroyed any illusion of Earth.
The first was Earth itself---a blazing beacon hanging above the northern horizon. The light pouring down from that giant half-globe was dozens of times more brilliant than the full moon, and it covered all this land with a cold, blue-green phosphorescence.
The second celestial specter was a faint, pearly cone of light slanting up the eastern sky. It became brighter and brighter toward the horizon, hinting of great fires just hidden below the Moon's edge. Here was a whitish glory that no man had ever seen from Earth, save during the few moments of a total eclipse. It was the corona, harbinger of the lunar dawn, giving notice that before long the sun would smite this sleeping land.
Ashe sat with Halvorsen and Michaels in the forward observation lounge, immediately beneath the driver's position, Marshall found his thoughts turning again and again to the three-million-year-wide gulf that had just opened up before him. Like all scientifically literate men, he was used to considering far longer periods of time---but they had concerned only the movements of stars and the slow cycles of the inanimate universe. Mind or intelligence had not been involved; those eons were empty of all that touched the heart.
Three million years! The infinitely crowded panorama of recorded history, with its empires and kings, its triumphs and tragedies, covered barely 1/1000 of this appalling period. Not only Man himself, but most of the animals now alive on Earth (those not made extinct by the Third World War, that is) did not even exist when this golden enigma was so carefully buried here, in the most brilliant and most spectacular of all the Moon's craters.
That it had been buried, and quite deliberately, Dr. Michaels was sure. "At first," he explained, "I rather hoped it might mark the site of some underground structure, but our latest excavations have eliminated that. It's sitting on a wide platform of the same gold material, with undisturbed rock beneath it. The ----people---who made it wanted to make sure it stayed put, barring major moonquakes. They were building for eternity."
There was triumph but sadness in Michaels' voice, and Marshall could share both emotions At last, one of man's oldest questions had been answered; here was the proof, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that he was not the only intelligence that the universe had brought forth. But with that knowledge, there came again an aching awareness of the immensity of time. Whatever had passed this way had missed mankind by 100,000 generations. Maybe, Marshall told himself, it was just as well. And yet---what we might have learned from people who could cross space, while our ancestors were still living in trees!
A few hundred yards ahead, a signpost was coming up over the Moon's strangely close horizon. At its base was a tent-shaped structure covered with shining silver foil, obviously for protection against the fierce heat of day. As the bus rolled by, Marshall was able to read in the brilliant Earthlight:427Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTmO7hZZ6Hm
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DEPÓSITO DE EMERGÊNCIA Nº 4
20 Kilos Lox
10 Kilos Water
20 Foodpaks Mk 4
1 Toolkit Class C
1 Suit Repair Outfit
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"Have you thought of that?" asked Marshall, pointing out of the window. "Suppose the thing's a supply cache, left behind by an expedition that failed to return?"
"It's a possibility," admitted Michaels. "That magnetic field certainly labeled its position, so that it could be found easily. But it's rather small---it couldn't hold much in the way of supplies."
"Why not?" interjected Halvorsen. "Who knows how big they were? Maybe they were only six inches tall, which would make the thing twenty or thirty stories high."
Michaels shook his head. "Out of the question," he protested. "You can't have very small, intelligent creatures; you need a minimum brain size."
Michaels and Halvorsen, Marshall had noticed, usually took opposing viewpoints, yet there seemed to be little personal hostility or friction between them. They seemed to respect each other, and simply agreed to disagree.
There was certainly little agreement anywhere about the nature of ATM-1---or the Tycho Pylon, as some preferred to call it, retaining part of the abbreviation. In the six hours since he'd landed on the Moon, Marshall had heard a dozen theories, but had committed himself to none of them. Shrine, survey marker, tomb, geophysical instrument---these were perhaps the favorite suggestions, and some of the protagonists grew very heated in their defense. A good many bets had already been placed, and a lot of money would change hands when the truth was at last known----if, indeed, it ever was.
Thus far, the hard gold material of the slab had resisted all the rather mild attempts that Michaels and his colleagues had made to obtain samples. They had no doubt that a laser beam would cut into it---for surely, nothing could resist that frightful concentration of power---but the decision to employ such violent measures would be left to Marshall. He had already decided that X rays, sonic probes, neutron beams, and all other nondestructive means of investigation would be brought into play before he called up the heavy artillery of the laser. It was the mark of a barbarian to destroy something one could not understand; but maybe men were barbarians, beside the beings who had made this thing.
And where could they have come from? The Moon itself? No, that was utterly impossible. If there had ever been native life on this barren world, it had been destroyed during the last crater-forming epoch, when most of the lunar surface was white hot.
Earth? Not likely, though maybe not completely out of the question. Any advanced terrestrial civilization---presumably a nonhuman one---back in the Pleistocene Era would have left many other traces of its existence. We would have known all about it, thought Marshall, long before we got to the Moon.
That left two alternatives---the planets and the stars. Yet all the evidence was against intelligent life elsewhere in the Solar System---or indeed life of any kind except on Earth and Mars. The inner planets were too hot, the outer ones too cold, unless one descended into their atmosphere to depths where the pressures amounted to hundreds of tons per square inch.
So maybe these visitors had come from the stars---yet that was even more incredible. As he looked up at the constellations strewn across the black lunar sky, Marshall remembered how often his fellow scientists had "proved" that interstellar travel was impossible. The journey from Earth to Moon was still fairly impressive; but the very nearest star was 100 million times more distant---Speculation was a time-waster; he must wait until there was more evidence.
"Please fasten your seatbelts and secure all loose objects," said the cabin speaker suddenly. "Forty degree slope approaching."
Two marking posts with winking lights had appeared on the horizon, and the bus was steering between them. Marshall had barely adjusted his straps when the vehicle slowly edged itself over the brink of a really terrifying incline, and began to descend a long, rubble-strewn slope as steep as the roof of a house. The slanting earthlight, coming from behind them, now gave very little illumination, and the bus's own floodlights had been switched on. Many years ago Marshall had stood on the lip of Vesuvius, staring into the crater; he could easily imagine that he was now driving down into it, and the sensation was a truly unpleasant one.
They were descending one of the inner terraces of Tycho, and it leveled out again some thousand feet below. As they crawled down the slope, Michaels pointed out across the great expanse of plain now spread out beneath them.
"There they are," he exclaimed. Marshall nodded; he had already noticed the cluster of red and green lights several miles ahead, and kept his eyes fixed upon it as the bus edged its way delicately down the slope. The big vehicle was obviously under perfect control, but he did not breathe easily until it was once again on an even keel.
Now he could see, glistening like silver bubbles in the earthlight, a group of pressure domes---the temporary shelters housing the workers on the site. Near these was a radio tower, a drilling rig, a group of parked vehicles, and a big pile of smashed rock, presumably the material that had been excavated to reveal the monolith. This tiny camp in the wilderness looked very lonely, very vulnerable to the forces of nature ranged quietly around it. There was no sign of life, and no visible hint as to why men had come here, so far from home.
"You can just see the crater," said Michaels. "Over there on the right---about 100 yards from that radio antenna."
So this is it, thought Marshall, as the bus rolled past the pressure domes, and came to the lip of the crater. His pulse quickened as he craned forward for a better look. The vehicle began to creep cautiously down a ramp of hard-packed rock, into the interior of the crater. And there, just as he seen it in the photographs, was AMT-1.
Marshall stared, blinked, shook his head, and started again. Even in the brilliant earthlight, it was tough to see the object clearly; his first impression was of a truncated square that might have been made of wood covered with gold foil.
The passengers were utterly silent as the bus descended into the crater. There was awe, and there as also incredulity---sheer disbelief that the dead Moon, of all worlds, could have sprung this fantastic surprise.
The bus halted within 20 feet of the pylon and broadside on so that all the passengers could examine it. Yet, beyond the geometrically perfect shape of the thing, there was little to see. Nowhere were there any marks, or any abatement of its ultimate goldness. For one moment Marshall wondered if it could indeed be some extraordinary natural formation, born of the fires and pressures attending the creation of the Moon. But that remote possibility, he knew, had already been examined and rejected.
At some signal, floodlights around the lip of the crater were switched on, and the bright earthlight was obliterated by a far more brilliant glare. In the lunar vacuum the beams were, of course, totally invisible; they formed overlapping ellipses of blinding white, centered on the pylon.
Pandora's box, thought Marshall, with a sudden sense of foreboding---waiting to be opened by inquisitive Man. And what will he find inside?
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