Moon Base One

 

 

Chapter 1

 

It had been one hundred and seventy five years since the people of earth had deserted their moon base. An era of time so great, that no human had so much as set foot, where the promised salvation of the human race would have taken place. My name is Jim Davidson, “JD” to my friends. In late 2240 the earth simply ran out of space for people to support its human population. Something had to be done and the world for the first time in human existence came together as one, with no wars to solve the greatest problem ever, the extinction of the human race by its on hand. The lack of land mass to support the living was causing food shortages on a scale so large that a million people a day were dying of starvation. Cannibalism was running rampant. No government could have planned for this. The final decision by the government was to migrate into the solar system and find a new planet to colonize. The moon was the first place of salvation but it was short lived. With no atmosphere and no real way to produce water for the numbers of people that would have to live there, it was impossible to colonize. But that was not the problem that concerned the authorities the most. A bone disease that attacks the internal structure of human bone marrow was the new cancer to people living off planet or staying in space for long periods of time. The skeletal support of the human body became brittle. A person living on the moon and in fact children born on the moon could never return to earth. Earth’s gravity being eighty three percent greater than the moon could cause extreme health problems. The simple fact was if we had to travel, it had to be to planets very close to the gravity of the earth. Other wise our biological structure would not be able to survive. The new deep space ships had revolving superstructures that could simulate earth’s gravity for up to ninety four percent of the population at any given time. It turned out not to be as hard to find those types of planets in the end. These ships had to have a velocity close to, if not at light speed for the generation curve caused by the distance that had to be traveled. That problem being what it was the Ion drive was supposed to be up to the task. The real problem was catching up to the transportation problem for all the people that already existed. A time table was developed that showed how many people needed to be gone from the earth within a certain time, in order to save enough atmospheres for the earth to rebuild itself. The number was astronomical. That plus the time it took to travel to these new found planets became the upper most problems to solve on earth. So sites were built to send prefab-material into earth orbit for the construction of the builder’s platforms. These platforms were for the construction of deep space travel ships. The material was lifted into place using old Atlas booster rockets. It took a hundred years to get the platforms up and running. But before the first part of the first platform had lifted off, people in long stay space suits were being colonized in drift cloud orbit. A wagon wheel type craft was positioned in orbit at an acceptable altitude and then people in special suits were attached to the spokes. One wheel could hold one half a million people for an indefinite period of time. This way when the platform started to take shape people could space walk to the living quarters from the cloud. Feeding the people in the clouds became the hardest thing to accomplish. Sometimes people went with out food for two to three days but the hub of the wheel was a water generator that used urine with an ample amount of good water to keep the people hydrated. Most of the clouds stayed in orbit for upwards of sixty years. As the platforms came on line, the clouds dissipated by supplying workers for the building of new platforms. The same was true of the huge space vehicles. As they came on line the people would occupy the living quarters in them until time of departure. And so it went. As each ship left a new structure was started and slowly the plan caught up with the population of earth. The speed of the deep space craft was developed on Ion impulse power. The finished ships would be released using a booster then the Ion engine would come on with a startling pulse like the old time camera flashbulbs. When your eyes recovered from the light, the ship would be gone. Later we would receive a radio message stating that the ship was in route and working according to course and plan. With out that message we wouldn’t know if the ship survived the engine startup procedures. The first ship that left earth orbit did so much to close to its platform, causing a shock wave that caused the platform to move to a different altitude much closer to earth than intended. It took a quick hand and many boosters to keep the platform from re-entering the atmosphere of earth and burring up. The lesson learned was to get the deep space craft into high earth orbit before starting the Ion engine.  With that the exodus started and was just now coming to an end.

 

That brings us full circle and begs the question of why I find myself in an old model two thousand one Rotan special space tug, headed for the uninhabited moon. It’s a straight forward question and the answer is just as straight forward. I’m a government forest ranger just back from a three day pass on platform five where I’d gotten a much needed rest with a couple of girls of the night and some good drugs. Six months in space leaves a guy or gal wanting companionship from the opposite sex assuming he or she was not gay. For me the easiest way to get a girl was to hire one. With the population as it was and the economy in the shape it was finding a lady of the night on a space platform was not hard.  Prostitution had change a lot in the years of birth control by law. Sex for the sake of sex had become less an issue of morals and more an issue of morale. Women couldn’t have children legally and if a woman got pregnant and was found out to be pregnant, she was put to death. Because of this women had choices about their livelihood. A woman could be married to one man and never have children or they could be married and a prostitute making money for her husband. It was considered a service to the society. The third choice was to never being married and earns your living as a prostitute. These were the real women of the night. I always used a prostitute because I wanted no strings attacked to any sexual pleasure I had. The first woman I was with on my first day of leave was a quickie. A quickie was sex for pleasure for pay. It didn’t take very long to complete because of the amount of time without sex. It was just to get rid of the jerks of working in outer space. Quickies were found just about anywhere. There was no pretence of solitude. It wasn’t uncommon to see people fulfilling a contract in an alley or doorway. Remember the population was out of control thus it was very hard to make any kind of living. In fact guys like me could go to a hooker bar where the women were in two sided cubicles. They leaned over a brass bar rail with their all together in plain view of the customers. It gave a whole new meaning to the word bar rail. If I wanted to do it with a woman I just gave the bar tender the money and went in. She got her cut from the bar tender and went on to the next guy. With the right lubrication some of those girls could do upwards of twenty five or thirty customers a day. A quickie cost a guy twenty five bucks. The bartender got ten percent of the action making these women some of the best paid people on the platform. Believe it or not it was a very safe way for a hooker to do her business. No man would abuse a hooker in public. Also the Bar tenders job was to make sure the women was not abused. That’s why he got a cut. After that I hired a woman as a companion. Whether we had sex or not was not important. If we did great, but what I wanted the most was companionship and beer. Hopefully she would cook for me and clean my cloths and maybe have a bath or shower with me.  That’s what I wanted. The woman part was easy to get but the beer part was another problem altogether. Alcoholic beverages had been band for some two hundred years. Drugs that were said to be safer for the human body took their place. That was the worst law ever passed by any government. First of all drugs are not safer. The fact that the government controls all drug distribution and the cost of said drugs was the only reason the law was past in the first place. The one continent that did not impose laws against alcoholic beverages was Australia. Thank God for the boys from down-under. Those guys could turn out beer at an incredible rate. No one could figure where they got their supply of hops and sugar. The water was the killer. The water was from the sea and removing the salt left a weird task. Still, they were the only suppliers for the entire planet. The bottle the beer came in had some kind of extinct bear on the label with the words The One and Only! The price of the beer was astronomical. One bottle let alone a six pack were two hundred dollars US pre-bottle. Being that the alcohol content in one bottle was enough to take you head off and get a great buzz, one bottle was more than enough for a party of two.  Sobering up was another altogether different problem.  In space you have no gravity to speak of, all though the centrifugal force that keeps you in orbit is caused by the planets gravity pulling you into it. This pull if used correctly can produce an artificial gravity on the platforms. The platforms face inward to earth allowing for the artificial gravity to be changed by increasing or decreasing the speed of the platform in orbit. The balance is delicate at best. When sharing a suit with a young woman things often happen because of gravity that go un-noticed by each other, yet make the time together rather wonderful. Have you ever caught your mate in a compromising position only to find it sexually beautiful? Say the girl was getting out of a shower and toweling off. You are standing there admiring her female form. When she stands up and sees you looking at her and she blushes. The feeling of want and desire and of belonging overcomes you. It’s like seeing a woman in a shear negligee with background lighting. The simple fact that she put it on for your gratification gives a guy a warm fuzzy feeling. Men know women don’t wear negligees and skimpy clothes for themselves. Most married women wear six layers of clothing, complaining about the cold and daring you to find her to have sex. It makes you question why you are you and what is next on your travel through life. Working girls are supposed to be in the know so to speak. I find it hard to believe that all women aren’t in the know. Meaning that they pre-plan everything they do with a man. Women can have that kind of effect on a man. So all I really needed after the sex was a woman that loved beer and was able to laugh with me and just be my friend for the remaining two days. That is just what I got. I must say this is a very dangerous way to earn a leaving because you never know what kind of man you will be dealing with. So now I was on my way to my new job.  The new job was to replant the earth with trees after enough people had left the planet. That meant that I would not be leaving earth. The reason I was going to the moon is to survey the foliage Domes that were constructed there to help with oxygen production in the moon colony. We were hoping to find some trees that could be relocated to the earth. These domes where one thousand hector in diameter. Light and water was provided by the system works or the sun. The domes were not super big but not small by any stretch of the imagination. With the introduction of nitrogen in the domes the outer seal of the system would sweat. This water although not enough to support the entire dome work could generate one hundred thousand gallons of water an earth week. The water was stored in huge storage tanks just outside of the dome that the system was hooked up to. The water had to go through a filter system before it could be used. About twenty percent went to the consumption by the people living on the moon. The rest went into a system to water the plants that added fertilizer and nutrients. At the height of the season water production was upwards of a quarter of a million gallons. Every dome in the system was capable of producing rain and it was used to irrigate the foliage. It was much easier than running pipes all over the place.     

 

The Rotan special is a very small space craft that uses a piggy back booster to get it into earth orbit.  It was a very economical transfer system and one of the safest ways of getting into space. It also had one of the best computer systems ever used on any space craft ever made. That gave me the opportunity to continue my favorite internet search of naked women. Finding the naked female form as beautiful instead of lustful or bad is something women will never understand. For that matter neither will I. It’s like a competition. The minute you show a woman your true feelings she starts looking at you looking at other women as if you would rather be with them. The fact is you are just comparing her to the others to see what it is that you like most about her. If you believe that I got some land on Mars to sale you. The one thing that had been maintained from the old days, if not made better, was the internet. Small computers now had holographic imagining that amazed the best computer teck. My collection of nude women of the twentieth century was considered the best in the galaxy. I had guys trying to steal it for years. These holographic movies left everything to the imagination. The hard part was getting the women out of my mind and concentrate on piloting this ship. The craft looked like an over sized “vibra”… I mean bullet. The interior is very small and until the new NASA flight suits came out these craft were very cramped. Originally these ships had room for four passengers and a pilot. Some guy back in twenty ten had a Rotan setup to supply guest with the ultimate mile high experience. He had the passengers seats removed and the walls padded. Then he charged an extreme amount of money to take couples up in orbit to have sex.  The outside of this craft was painted black with an emblem of a bunny on its side. I guess there’s no accounting for taste. It was a club called the sixty seven mile high club. Sixty seven miles being the point at which space begins, made this the real mile high club. I often wondered what it would be like to have sex in a weightless compartment in space. I can hear them now, ”Just think Jane at out next cocktail party we can tell everyone we are members of the sixty seven mile high club and we have a film to proof it.” This craft though had been reconfigured by taking out the passenger compartment and installing a rotating docking system for solid fuel rocket pods with remote navigation systems build in. The pods had a pulling power of over three hundred thousand tons in earth orbit. Being small yet highly maneuverable the Rotan could get in and out of spaces nothing else could. Because the ship was small, it could only carry five rockets. These rockets were used to tug satellites back into earth orbit. That is why the ship was called a tug. The work was good but after seeing the good these rockets did, the manufacturer of the satellites started installing them on the new equipment as a backup and the tuggers lost all their work. After that the Rotan’s were mothballed until the government bailed them out by buying out Rotan Inc. And that’s how I ended up in this old lady on my way to the moon.

 

I’m not a hater of space travel. I do have inner-ear problems that cause terrible nausea but the right pills and I’m fine. I have logged a couple thousand hours going back and forth to the platforms. Some of the rangers have ten’s of thousands of hours back and forth to the platforms. As a forest ranger I am tasked with checking the plants on the platforms. So it’s not like I don’t understand what I’m doing. I have never made the trip to the moon and was looking forward to it. At this particular moment I was half way to the landing point and was just coming under the gravitational pull of the moon. Another day of drifting and I would be at the Initial Point (IP) the start of the landing sequence for landing on the moon. The one thing you can say about these old Rotan’s is their navigation computers were the best ever put into a space craft. The on board computer that monitored me suggested I get some rest even if it meant taking a pill. I’d played all the computer games onboard and read as much as my brain could take plus checked out all the new nudes I could handle. So I figured that maybe I did need some rest from my vacation. I took the little green pill and fell fast asleep.

 

There is no such thing as a rough ride in space. Short of being hit by a passing meteorite the void you drift in is truly a void. The only real influence on a space craft in flight is gravity. On a flight to the moon you naturally have two of the best meteorite shields God has ever made; the moon and the earth. So when a space craft shakes there has to be something wrong. The shaking I was experiencing was light but enough to cause the flight alarm to go off. In sleep mode noise doesn’t enter the suit helmet. What got my attention was the emergency warning light flashing bright yellow. Coming awake from a drug induced sleep is not always easy to do, especially when you are dreaming of the beautiful blond with big knocker and blue eyes. As I gained consciousness my body adjusted to the feeling of a problem. I realized that nothing was moving on the instrument panel and the navigation computer showed that I was on course. Procedures, after a problem is discovered, are to run a check list to find the trouble. This I started by pulling out the dash 1 tech order and followed the instruction for malfunctions. The first step is to always check life support and then continue. After the check list showed nothing wrong I checked the in flight data entry computer. I found it tripped off line twenty minutes prior to completion of the check list. I reset the data entry computer and checked it for proper operation. It was working fine. But something had stopped it and as yet I didn’t know what it was. The Navigation computer showed me less than eight hours from the Initial Point (IP) to landing so I decided to stay up and maintain a watch. The shaking faded away and everything became smooth again. At the IP the computers on board the Rotan would lock onto the landing computer on moon base one and fly the Rotan to its landing and docking with the terminal. The system is automatic and unless interfered with by someone or thing, never failed to work. The last manual landing on the moon base was during the testing of the system when it first opened. The only other system still working on the base was a self-defense weapon system of liquid droplets guns. When fired a droplet of liquid plastic with an electric ion charge was expelled at high speed to contact the suspect intruder. This system had to be activated before firing by someone but once activated was completely independent of any interface with any source to control it. Now my head was becoming paranoid wondering if some plastic gum was on the outside hull of my ship and if so who fired it. Ion charges can trip data entry computers. What the hell was going on? To fire droplet cannons at a ship outside the IP was unheard of. Eight hours outside the IP was the longest long shot I’d ever heard of. The effect would be minimal at best. The flight of the droplet would deplete the ion charge to less than fifteen percent. There you have it; something hit my ship and tripped my data entry computer. I called up command to report the problem and got a response of silence. No one there knew of any habitants on the moon. That meant that the gun was acting on it’s on and could fire again at any time. The commander came back on and told me they had a report back eleven months ago stating that strange lights had been seen in moon base one’s landing area. The report was written off as sun glare because they didn’t last for more than a couple days and that they didn’t come at any given time. Now command was jumping thru hoops to figure out what was going on. In the mean time I was less that three hours from the IP for a landing zone that seemed to be hostile.

 

After a very short time of thinking about what to do and without leaving anything to command to decide, I started the pre-landing checklist for a manual approach at the number four terminal, which was half way around the moon near the dark side. I’d decided not to stay up in front of the droplet cannon for target practice and the best way to avoid them all together was to get the ship down fast. I input the necessary information for the navigation computer so it could help me as much as it could. The computer kicked in and fired damping rockets immediately, which gave the ship a point to compute from the IP for the new course. At the same time the Rotan configured itself for the new course by flipping over with the rear end in front for the landing sequence. Things were going well when out of no where another droplet was fired. These guns are very accurate and seldom miss. The droplet is made of liquid plastic which make them impossible to detect in flight and they make no noise either sound of radar noise. Sometimes you can pick them up on sonar but space ships do not normally install sonar due to weight. The navigation computer fired the damper rockets just as the glob went right in front of the solid rocket booster of my ship. If I had not made the decision to change landing areas when I did I would have been hit head on be the cannon droplet. As it was the ion stream hit a side panel of the ship tripping the data entry computer again. This time I left the data entry computer down. I was still in the game but needed to drop a lot of altitude before I would be safe from the guns. If I used the rocket booster I’d slow down and be a sitting duck and if I sped up I’d over shoot the landing area and then orbit the moon to give the droplet gun another shot at me. I decided this was not fun. Something had to be wrong with the gun or someone was firing the gun to stop intruders from landing on the moon. By now there should have been another shot. This made me think that the gun was under the control of a person otherwise the gun would have fired automatically.  Call it luck or whatever because just then the navigation computer turned control over to me for landing at post four. I took the ship down as fast as I dared and maintain a controlled low level flight path just one hundred feet above the nearest terrain. Following the contours of the moon was nerve racking. It meant that I would not see the landing area until the last possible second. It also meant no one could see me. Speeding across the moon my communication with ranger command became impossible. I popped out of rocky ridges to absolutely flat terrain. The landing area was right in front of me with little if any warning. I set the rocket booster to eight seconds and hit the fire button. The booster ignited slowing the ship to minimal speed and losing two feet downward for every one forward. The ship was coming in for a smooth landing. The navigation computer had done its job right on the money. As the skids met the surface of the moon the ship slowed way to fast for my liking. The ship would come to a stop a quarter of a mile from the terminal. That’s a long walk for anyone in thin environment suits like I had on. The Rotan had done its job and I was one to complain. What a welcome to the moon this was. As the ships systems shut down and I ran the checklist for landing I noticed things became very quiet. I could not contact ranger command. I needed to check the outside of the ship for damage but first I needed to get the ship interior  compartments un-pressurized so I could get outside  and get the ship cleaned of what ever was on the hull. A quarter mile walk to find a tug and try to get the station open wasn’t something I was looking forward too. But it had to be done and just as I was getting the door procedure finished two lights came from the post four hangars and were getting bigger with each second. Someone was coming.

 

The lights on the vehicle coming to the ship were very bright. They reflected off the porthole window of the ship. Seeing the occupant in the tug was impossible. As the tug got closer I felt more and more like a sitting duck. It was taking the small vehicle what seemed like forever to get to me. I completed the shutdown procedures and configured my suit for off board life support. Once I was disconnected from the ship the compartment door was ready to open. I then exited the craft and stood waiting for the tug to finally arrive. As the tug came up on the ship it turned side ways on and moved to the front of the Rotan to hook up for towing. I assisted and latched a tow bar to the front skid. When I gave the tug the thumbs up sign to start the tow I noticed that the person driving the tug was in an old NASA suit. I tried to plug into the commutation panel on the side of the tug but it was a mess of wires. So I climbed onto the back of the tug for the ride to the hanger. It took what seemed like forever again, to get in the hanger. The ships skids left small plumbs of moon dust behind it as we were towed. With no wind and very little gravity the plumbs would last for sometime before settling back to the surface. Finally the doors to the hanger closed behind us and the interior lights came on with color everywhere. The pilot of the tug got out and walked to the far side of the hanger and went through an array of procedures that could only be a pressurizing sequence. Watching a monitor the pilot gave me the thumbs up signal and removed her helmet. Her helmet, yes the pilot was a woman; a very attractive woman at that. Before I could remove my helmet she plugged into my suit commutation network and spoke very softly so as not to excite me. “Sir, please listen before you remove your helmet. These facilities have been maintained at minimal levels for close on to one hundred and fifty years. The air quality is low at best. The air has a stench and can make you sick at your stomach. You may want to keep your suit survival respirator on.” Instead of listing to this beautiful woman tell me what might happen if I removed my helmet, I took my helmet off. I was immediately hit with the smell of dead spoiled meat. I caught my breath and almost vomited. The young lady was kind enough not to laugh and I decided to listen to her from then on. We walked out of the hanger and entered a hallway that was big enough for two old time city buses to run in side by side. It was in fact a prefab tunnel from the hanger to other destinations on the number four landing terminal and city. Not wanting to leave my ship until I inspected the hull for damage I started back toward the hanger but the young lady told me not to worry, that the hanger had auto mechanical work facilities that would scrub the hull and see to the care of the ship. So like a good little boy I follow the pretty lady where ever she was going. We ended up walking just a few yards into a room to get out of suit configuration. The old NASA suit she had on was cumbersome at best and she wanted me to help her get out of it. Now this was a task I’d never refuse to do. The old suit came off in parts and with the removal of each part more of the female body could be seen. She wore long johns under the suit but it left little to the imagination and this woman had all the right parts in all the right places. In the end the suit was hung in its place and she stood in her body suit looking at me with an amused look on her face. She had a pixie haircut with auburn colored hair and green eyes. She said, “I wish we had the new NASA suit like yours. It would be so much easier getting in and out of.” I introduces myself, “Hi, I’m Jim Davidson but everyone calls me JD. I’m here to survey the foliage Domes.” She said, “Aw that explains the space craft you are in”. “Yes”, I said, “but not the reason I was fired on during the approach to the IP”. This didn’t seem to register on her face. She said, “I need to try and take a shower. The water being like it is makes our hygiene a bit hard to maintain”. With this statement she started disrobing to get into the shower. I turned my back and she laughed for the first time. She said’ “You need not be embarrassed here, we are very informal”. As she spoke I turned to face her. She had no cloths on. From head to toe her body was supple. Her shoulder were broad ample to conform to her breast. She was not over large breasted but her n*****s were dark pink and large. Either she was aroused sexually or the n*****s stood like that all the time. She had no navel. Her waist was very small with a strong muscular stomach. She stood there letting me take her in. I was getting aroused myself. Her pubic hair was the same as her Pixie hair. And as they say in the movies she had legs that went all the way up. She turned to go into the shower only to show me a perfect buttock. With that I left the shower area and walked back out to the hallway. I found my hands damp and sweat on my forehead. As I approach the hanger, a force field had been activated across the entry point. I identified myself to the computer entry control and was refused entry. The fact that I was here was one thing but now it looked like the powers to be didn’t want me to leave. The young lady came out of the locker room dressed in a purple jump suit and smelling of lavender. It’s amazing what a man sees first, smells second, and thinks third when first seeing a beautiful woman. She approached me and asked what I was doing, so I told her I wanted to return to the ship to retrieve a new NASA suit for her. This seemed to catch her a bit off guard. “Oh’ she said “I’ll unlock the door for you”. She explained that the landing dock controls were set to the dock manager voice control for safety purpose. I got the suit out of the ship and gave it to her and again she seemed to be taken aback. When I opened the outside storage compartment of the Rotan to retrieve the suit I saw the swing arm of the washing system hard at work scrubbing the outside hull of the ship. We then proceeded to a community room. Once there she asked me to be patient and make myself at home. She told me someone in charge would be coming to speak to me shortly.

 

I got a drink from the bar and regretted it from the first sip. Electrolyte drinks have never done much for me and this one was really bad. One side of the room was extra thick glass for observation of the moon surface. It was a waste land of neon sun light. Not a soul in sight. I began to wonder how long I was to wait for who ever it was that was coming. I decided to look for someone when a short stocky man entered the room. He had a side arm and a bemused face. To this point no one had introduced themselves or at least given a name. I said hello to him and put out my right hand to introduce myself. He did not take my hand. He just wanted to know why I was here. I showed him my identification and explained my mission to him. He didn’t take the information very well. This time I confronted him, “What is your name sir and what are you doing on this disused lunar base”? He did not turn to face me just looked out the window as if trying to decide what he would say and then talking to the window said, “This territory was abandon a hundred years ago and we have claimed it as our home”. I said “You’re homesteading the moon? Have you registered with any government?” He said “That’s not the point, we are here and we are not leaving.” “Sir”, I said, “The number of rangers that will soon be here is hard to imagine.” He looked at me and shook his head and said. “It doesn’t matter the number, we will kill them all.” Again I tried to tell him a few Droplet cannon and two people could not hope to stop them. He just smiled at me and said that I was confined to this community room until he decided what to do with me. I asked him, “Sir, is my life in danger.” He looked at me and said, “If you try to leave this room then yes your life is forfeit.” He then said, “I’ll send my daughter to visit you to pass the time.” I said, “The young woman is your daughter?” He just shook his head and left the room. I still had no name or any information about the extent of the population or anything. He justly called my bluff about the Rangers and now I was imprisoned in a play room for the ghost of the moon. All NASA suits have an ELB (Emergency Locater Beacon) build in. I switched mine on and tried my ships radio. The radio was design to transmit to the ship from any location and redirect the signal to Command. I did not get a response from command. Either it was being blocked or it was not working in the first place. Only time would tell.

 

I found the food in the room and I must say that the room had everything that I could wish for. I was adjusting to the stench and taste and I was comfortable. Waiting was all I could do.   Just as I was getting comfortable and settling down in walked my young lady. She was dressed in a shear silk top of a pearl color and white slacks. Her green eyes were bright and her smile was inviting. She noticed me looking at her breast threw the shear blows and her smile seem to settle into a smirk. She had perky n*****s on up turned breast. The 1/6th gravity the moon provided had its advantages. She went to the bar and started pouring herself a drink. She asked me if there was a drink that I prefer. I told her I was a scotch drinker of the single malt type. She poured a second drink and came over to where I was sitting. Sitting down in the chair next to mine she handed me the drink. I took a sip and it was a really good age scotch. I told her it was good. She smiled and sat back in the chair as if relaxing. “So,” I said, “Is this, the integration part of the tour or did you put something in my drink to get me to spill my guts.” She laughed and looked at me as if to say not really. “Then why are you keeping me around. It seems that killing me would be the correct thing to do.” She looked at me and said, “We can kill you at anytime but right now I have other things to learn from you.” I said, “Aw! Like what?” She just smiled and sat back more. I said, “You know you haven’t a chance to hold this base. First of all it is a very big base and second the earth will not allow you to keep its property.” She took on a sad face and said, “My father and I have many contingency plans to stop even the biggest armies.”  I took another sip of the scotch and became dizzy. I tried to stand but found it impossible to do. I looked at her and there were three of her smiling at me and then nothing.

 

I woke up very slowly as if coming out of sleep on my ship. The fact is I was on my ship in orbit around the earth. I was not geo-sink which meant I had a destination. This is not good because someone had a use for either me or my ship and it could not be a good one. Looking at my controls I found a course preset to one of the platforms that had a solar ship almost complete. That meant that upwards of twenty million people were on board ready to leave the earth. It also meant that the ion drive was being activated and in it most harmful configuration. Any type of explosion near the ion reactor would destroy the entire ship and platform. My transceiver came on and the face of the young lady filled the screen. She smiled at me and said, “We are sorry that you are the one to deliver our message to earth.” I looked down at the radio setting on the emergency channel sending a pre-recorded message to the earth. I said, “Why.” She said, “Because you landed where you should not have.” This was getting out of hand and I needed to do something or I was going to be the explosion that killed twenty million people. I switch of the transmitter and started looking at the situation. At my present speed I would intercept the platform in four minutes. Not good. I still had three tow rockets on the rotary launch system but the problem was that they were not latched to my hull. That meant a space walk that would take thirty minutes at best. If I fired all three rockets without arming them chances are they would burn up on re-entry into earth’s atmosphere. It was a great idea but there was not enough time. I flipped the radio to command frequency and got the controller. I directed him to shoot my space ship out of orbit now. Do not wait do it or the solar-ship would be destroyed. I then ejected out of the pilot capsule with my suit oxygen and a bottle of compressed air. I was one hundred yards from the Rotan when the ship exploded. My emergency locator was on already because I had switched it on in the community room on the moon. One and a half hours later I was safe on the platform explaining what had happened. The medical staff was going over me with a fine tooth comb. What I did was not something that is recommended to do in space. They were making sure I wasn’t injured. I felt really good. The commander was impressed. The information I gave them had been transmitted to earth and a decision had been made to re-take the moon. In the mean time the doctor came in to discuss my health. He wanted to know who I’d had sex with while on the moon. I told him no one. He looked at me and told me and the commander what he feared. The physical report showed that my reproductive track had been tampered with and sperm had been with drawn. I felt like I’d just been raped. I asked what the day and time was. The commander told me that I’d been on the moon for four days. That scotch must have been really good stuff. What a shame not to have given the sperm the old fashioned way.

 

Having lost all since of time and day I was shocked to be told of a procedure for farming male sperm for the impregnation of fertile women. It was one of the ways the World Government had tried to control the population but it did not work. According to the doctor one male could impregnate some four hundred women a month with out ever coming in contact with a single woman. What’s the fun in that? There was a leading scientist by the name of Doctor Young that was still heading up both cross breading of humans and the cloning of humans thru tissue extraction. No one seemed to know where this Doctor had disappeared to. I think I found him and he has done his worst on me. Now the problem was to decide what we were to do about the Doctor and continue our work. As rangers we are combat ready to take the fight to others but we were not certain about the Doctor and his weapons. If in fact he had more people on the base or was planning a retreat action we just didn’t know. I feel he must have more people with the base being that big. Also something the young lady said when getting out of her space suit about wishing we had the new NASA suits. It led me to believe there were more people on the base. All of this was in the debrief report. Also now without a ship, I became a foot soldier in the rangers and thus go where I’m sent. In this case I was hoping to get back to the moon and follow up on just what the Doctor did to me.

 

The Commander received a transmission from the World Government telling him to round up all available rangers and use what ever transportation he could muster for a landing on the dark side near base four. The number came to five hundred troops and we decided on five separate ships in case the base had advance weapons. I muster in as a marksman with a sniper rifle. The rifle is a Mark three Browning thirty ought six recoilless auto loads. It has the newest version of the old star light scope with ten to one hundred powers. It fires a honed steel jacketed casein round that could penetrate any know armor at any seeable range on the moon. The scope has a damper shield system to guard against bright light glare. The heads up display is in my helmet and accurate to within one tenth of a millimeter. Where I look with my heads up display the weapon will track. It is mounted on a motorized tripod that can move up, down, and side to side in a three hundred sixty degree radius. The weapon is very light on the moon. Here it weighs upwards of thirty pounds not including ammo. I was to be stationed on the out lying area of landing port four. I was to intercept incoming support for the Doctor.

 

The room was shear metal plate. No doors could be seen but there was light coming from somewhere. I lay naked on my back. The floor was very cold and the cold seemed to draw my body’s energy as I could not move. Looking up the ceiling was smooth with no seam where the wall met the ceiling. I don’t remember what happened or how I got here. Try as I might my memory is gone. A strange tiredness is holding me in place. I’m telling myself to get up but my body is not moving. As if from out of a mist a young woman appeared to be walking towards me. She is vaguely familiar with a short pixie hair cut of auburn hair and green eyes. She had nothing on. Of course I could be dreaming she had nothing on but she smelled of lavender and had the most beautiful smile. She’s carrying a plastic see thru tray with instruments that included a syringe of blue liquid. As she approached me the floor raised up to her waist level like a medical operating table. She did have a plastic see through rain coat on. She looked at me with as though I was something unreal. She set the tray down on a podium. I tried to move my head to see what was on the tray but my head would not move. What she had in store for me I did not know and even if I did I couldn’t do anything about it. Her mouth moved as if she was talking but I heard nothing.  She gave me a shot from the syringe at the base of my penis. Then she gave me another shot that was at the top of my genital area.  I remember trying to scrim but I couldn’t hear myself. The needle prick stung and I started sweating all over my body. I remember my heart beating faster and faster. The woman attached a device over my genital area and waited for what was next to come. It turned out that I was the next thing to come. My ejaculate was contained in the little cup devise and then she removed the cup and clean me off.  I was spent and very tired. My heart was still running along at a very high speed. The platform returned to the floor and the woman walk away with the tray. I then passed out into darkness without a dream. I don’t know how many times this lurid show took place but when it ended I remember a man say I wouldn’t be of much use to them until the genital area swelling went down. I fell into a stupor, I could get my thoughts straighten out.  The drugs I was on must be blocking any pain I had because the woman kept coming in and shooting something in me or maybe it was and “IV” she was using I don’t know. I felt lifeless and just want to expire. No more shots, no more what ever it was that they were doing. I’d read stories about alien abduction before. I wondered if this is what it was like. Then I set my mind to thinking about one thing in an attempt to stop from going crazy. My collection of naked women was all I could remember and imagine.

 

The fleet of five ships left the builders platform in separate direction. I was on the number four ship with one hundred soldiers counting me. The ship would go to the far side of the moon and land on the dark side as close to base four as it could. From there we each had orders to complete separate from the main group. Everything went according to plan. It was an easy (maybe to easy) trek to my station and I had my gun up and running in a minimal time. Once in place the waiting started. Standing orders was radio silence unless fired on. Seven hours into the action the hanger doors started to open. I reported the situation to command and they came to readiness. It took the doors what seem like hours to complete the opening procedures. I sighted in on the interior of the hanger and saw nothing. There was nothing in the hanger area. This perplexed the powers to be. Obviously it was a trap. Enter at you own risk was flashing in the back of my mind. What next? The hanger lights went dark and I could see movement in the hanger. When the lights came back on mounted in the center front of the hanger was a large gun setup on the same tripod that I used with my gun. It was not a Browning. This weapon was a Winchester mini gun. The capability of this gun is unbelievable. I saw one in a weapons museum on earth. The power was enormous firing Six Thousand rounds a minute. How in the world was I to contend with this. My best shot would be for the ammo feeder belt. Stopping the ammo would be my only chance and I needed to take the first shot. Dialing in the shot and setting the Browning on auto fire all I needed was the release to fire from command. I called command for permission and got a return call that they were under full attack by a very large army and that I should make my on decisions from now own out. I released the Browning to fire just as the Winchester spun up. The shot was a good one hitting the right side ammo belt shearing the belt in two. I dialed up the left side belt just as two soldiers ran to repair the belt. I fired on the left side and sheared the front half of the belt which meant I needed to fire again on the left side. This I did shearing the rest of the belt. Picking up the soldiers I put the Browning in auto seek mode for anything moving in the hanger. The Browning started locking in on targets and firing at the same time. In my heads up display I saw soldiers falling and turning blue on my info-red read out. They kept coming no matter how many rounds went into the hanger. The one hundred men with me had split up into two groups and started advancing to the hanger. The added fire power over whelm the soldiers in the hanger. The mini gun never got a chance to fire. Within an hour the hanger was secured and the troops were beginning to advance into the city.

 

My head was hurting now even with out moving. I was still lying on the floor naked. No one had come in to see me in a long period of time. This was not like what had been going on. The pain in my genitals was getting worse as I hadn’t had a shot for pain in some time. The fact that my eyes were open meant that I must be awake. The same old ceiling looked back at me as I lay there not able to move. The floor had warmed up and I was clearer in the head than before. Slowly I let my head roll to the side. It was the first time I’d moved on my on from when I lost my memory. I spoke out loud and heard my voice for the first time in a long while.  Something was changing in the room as if I was coming back from the dead. With each minute that passed I could move more and more. Finally I rolled over on my stomach. The effort was total and took all the energy I had to get there. I don’t know how long I lay there before I got to my knees but the pain of unused muscles kept me from doing to much at one time. After what seemed to be hours I finally got to my feet. I had needles and pins from my feet to my knees. I needed to get to the wall for support. As I neared the wall I put my hand out to support myself and fell thru what looked like a wall. On the out side of the room I found a containment generator that was producing a see thru containment field. Where had ever one gone? I now could see that the containment area was inside a large storage room. Looking around and getting better by the minute I found a set of overalls and put them on. I also found a steel bar to use as a weapon. It was time to leave. I needed to get back to somewhere. My memory was still a wash.

 

As we moved into the city the platoon leader kept in touch with me to ask for help or take wounded out. The Browning has a target seeker built into its system that can tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys. It was standing steal at the moment with no target to destroy. I took the break to clear the weapon and load a new magazine with 30 rounds in the clip. Once that was complete I realigned the scope and scanned the area for hostiles. No hostiles were found and I stood the weapon down. Command call just after the fourteen hour mark and requested our situation. I explained, “That the platoon leader and some eighty troops were in the city and holding their own against a mass much bigger than originally thought. Landing bay four is secure.” “I’m sending the second brigade over to back up four, we are held up at the moment with a large force of around five thousand enemy troops. We have killed at least a thousand and they still come. Where did all these troops come from?” I said, “If we are dealing with that many we are going to need help sooner or later. I suggest you request a full company of marines, Sir.” The commander said “Already done with ETA of fifteen hours from the platform three and another company from earth ASAP, ETA twenty seven hours from now. We have to hold out or leave. He said,” Can you hold?” I thought about it then said, “No, we can not hold, But we can fight a holding with draw and get what is left of our guy out.” Just then an explosion hit twenty yards to my left. The Browning was in stand down. I switched it on and it started firing immediately in the direction of the upper right side of the hanger. The first shot hit dead center of an ammo box. It went thru and killed a man standing behind it loading a mortar. The box exploded taking out the mortar and the three soldiers manning it. A second group of soldiers were trying to clear the hanger doors in an effort to close them. If they got them closed then our troops would be cut off from support.  The Browning locked down on the hanger again and started firing. I just hoped second brigade would get here soon.

 

The hallway was large. In the back of my mind I had recollection of a large hallway. Continuing down the left side of the hallway I came to an intersection. Loud noises were coming from the tunnel straight across from where I’d stopped. To the left and right all I saw were long empty tunnels going to who knows where. I headed toward the noises straight across only to stop and return to the hiding place on the left side of the tunnel. A low noise was coming from the left hand tunnel as if something were coming. It was a truck loaded with soldiers in full space suits. As they disembarked the truck, I thought I was dreaming, because each soldiers face was my face. The suits were numbered but the guys in the suits were me. Twenty soldiers got of the truck and ran up the center tunnel. I stood there trying to understand what I’d just seen. They were in space suits so I decided to go back the way I’d come. The one thing I didn’t need was to walk into a space lock with out a suit. Going back into the lab I’d just came from I looked through the storage area and came across a new NASA suit with helmet and respirator. How did I know that? My mind was still a mess but I seem to be getting parts of my memory back. I got into the suit and turned the life support controls on. The suit came to life. The air coming from the respirator smelled cleaner and the suit started heating up. I put my helmet on and went back to the center tunnel.

 

More troops came into the hanger as my Browning spent it’s last round. I reloaded the weapon and switch it on. It returned to its work. The hanger doors started to close as the bodies of the soldiers were cleared. The Browning was doing its work and dropping new bodies to replace the ones already cleared. Still the doors were slowly closing. I adjusted my target selection to the upper edge of the door. The doors were closing from the sides to the center. If I could derail the leading edge of the door it would stop the doors from closing. The Browning now relocated just in front of the door started firing at the rail that contained the closing mechanism. On the forth shot the soldiers started firing at me to stop my plan. From three quarters of a mile out, I was safely out of their range. At least I thought out of range. I’d forgotten that on the moon with no atmosphere the projectile will travel until it hits something. Luckily the Browning had finished its work on the door and I retargeted the hanger. When the door got to the point where the Browning had hit the door, the door just stopped. The opposite door stopped as well. That meant the doors where in sink and could be open very easily. I relocated the Browning to auto target the ramp area and hanger. When switched on the weapon started selecting targets all over the ramp first. I hadn’t realized how many enemy soldiers had come out of the hanger trying to stop the Browning. My comm-link came on and the second brigade commander reported five minutes out with one hundred troops. I reported ramp clear unknown number of soldiers in the hanger. As I looked up the hanger exploded throwing both doors to the ground.

 

The troop that went up the tunnel left the truck empty of guards and a load of explosives on the back. Knowing how to use explosives I set up a timer and got into the driver seat. I figured that something was up and the guys in the old NASA suits were the bad guys. With that in the forefront of my mind I started the truck up the tunnel as fast as I could. As I came around a corner I saw to large doors partly open. I put the truck on cruse control and jumper out of the truck just as it got to the doors. My memory came to me all at once. These were the doors to the hanger that my ship was parked in. When the explosives went up I knew the ship was destroyed. Both doors were blown outward and the vacuum of space came in clearing out the bodies of the dead soldiers.

 

My body recoil from the blast. Seeing the hanger doors fall I shut the Browning off and radio all clear to the commander of the second brigade. The troop carrier came out of the west as a white spot. It got bigger as it approached the landing ramp. The troop carrier was configured for a high speed approach. Side doors were up and the load ramps were partially lowered. The ship stopped just short of the hanger doors that were now on the ground. In less than a minute one hundred troops were in the hanger and proceeding down the city tunnels to support the forth brigade. My job was now over. As I was shutting down the Browning a patrol of five Rangers approach to arrested me. I was escorted to a control ship and locked in the brig.

 

The tunnel was full of smoke and I was lying on my back next to the tunnel wall. The explosion has rock the entire area and I was thrown some hundred feet from the place I had been standing. I was having trouble getting up but for the  for a second I saw the woman in the New NASA suit run past me headed toward the city. I don’t know how long I lay there but a soldier came up and asked me if I were hurt. I told him who I was and that the Doctor in charge of this place had cloned me. The soldier put out an alert to command and anyone with my face including me was arrested. I still couldn’t get up so the soldier had me carried out on a stretcher. I was once again put to sleep incase I had injuries.

 

Some time had past. I was waking up again and hoped to hell I never slept again. The doctor came to the side of the bed and asked me how I felt. I told him I was stiff and hungry and that my dick hurt like hell. He smiled down at me and told me he would get me some food and an orderly to help me up. He said I hadn’t been hurt but that I had been used as a sperm downer for the Doctor’s sperm bank. I looked at the doc with a bemused looked. I asked the doc if any of the clones had been found. He laughed and told me that not only had they found a few but the Doctor had almost ten thousand blanks in different stages of growth. I felt sick. I said, “Did we retake the moon?” The doc said the fighting was over last week but the Doctor and his staff got away. I asked how long I had been asleep. He told me the method the Doctor use to farm my sperm caused a chemical reaction with my body that came close to sterilizing me. The process to correct it was very painful and for that reason they kept me asleep. He did say I’d be fine after a little rest and no sex for six months to a year. I decided right then and there I would find that Doctor and his girlfriend and kill them both.

 

The doc left and food was brought to me. I ate the dinner which was not very good. After that an orderly came in to help me get out of bed and start walking. The commander was my only visitor that night and he had bad news about the clones. It was thought that a large amount of clones did escape and the ones that didn’t were very good likeness of me. That meant that either I get some kind of facial change or I would be hunted just like the clones for the rest of my life. The commander told me the doc would talk to me about it later when my strength started coming back. He also told me the foliage Domes check out good for transplants. He wanted to send me back to the domes to start setting up for the first deliveries of equipment. What he had in mind was to get my face fixed up and then send me there to recover while I worked. Sounded good to me, so that’s what we did. I asked what was being done with the captured clones and he said they were being terminated.

 

Four weeks later I was shipped to the moon with my new face in bandages to recover and start my new work. The moon is a funny place when deserted. You never get the feeling that you are alone. I was stationed in terminal two landing zone. It was the largest of the five sites. It was also the closest to the domes. Bringing a dome back on line is not easy. It was designed so one person could do the work. Still a couple of helpers would have helped reduce the time needed by half. The doc came to the moon to remove the bandages and check my hearing and eye sight. Everything was fine. He stayed for a couple of week and helped me get the number two dome up and running. That meant that I would have clean air and a water source. The doc and I were becoming friends and we tried to work, as much as possible, together. At the end of the two week stay I was given a clone to work with me. It seems that this one for what ever the reason carried out mission support during the attack on landing zone four. No one understood what his real orders were from the clone doctor. He had been a model prisoner and he look like I should be looking right now. He had my old face. He proved to be a great worker and his memory gave him access to my training. We thought alike.  

 

As the first trees started leaving, we replanted the area with what we thought were southern pine trees. The domes would work now at full capacity. All five domes produced more than enough electricity and water for two men. We camped in the dome because it seemed cleaner with better air and water. As the weeks turned into months our progress was becoming very clear. Our first stand of pine trees was four foot tall and growing at a wonderful rate. We also had taken back part of the city by cleaning the air and water conduit system. The air in city started to become cleaner as well.  Seventy Eight parcels were livable conditions and now it was at Twenty one parcels. In another month the air and water would be livable again. We had removed the old air scrubbers and replace the water filters to the city. Knowing this the commander sent a brigade to support the work. That meant that I was no longer in charge and was given a months leave.

 

I decided to stay on the moon and do some exploring of my own. My clone was named after me. I asked him if he’d like to explore with me and he said he would. So the next morning we started out by going back to the scene of the crime, landing area four. JD showed me where his Browning was stationed and explained how the gun was used. It had not accrued to me that he had been that much a part of the rescue. After that we crossed the landing area and entered the hanger or what was left of it. The doors had been cleared away form the entrance of the hanger. They lay a hundred yards away. We had no trouble entering the number four city. JD said, “Something isn’t right.” I stared at him in wonder. Cloned or not soldiers have a since about things that most common people do not. I asked, “What do you mean?” JD said, “I don’t know but something isn’t right.” I had my old Glock 45 side arm with me. It was loaded with steel jacketed rounds, with a heavy grain load. This gave me very good stopping power for short distance. One of the things a Ranger has to have is wide visual perception and good hearing. It goes part and parcel with the job. The deeper we got into the first tunnel the more my hearing was playing tricks on me. There was a humming sound that we decided was the forced air-conditioning airflow coming thru the ducks after the filter change. Still it seemed louder than the system at the number two landing area. We slowed our progress into the city making sure as we went to check each building. Before we both realized what it we were moving thru the town as soldiers do when clearing a section of the enemy encampment.  We came on an open square. There was a water fountain with many steel benches circling it. This is where we setup camp. The city is designed much different than foliage domes in that the cities dome is very low to the rooftops of the buildings making it much easier to pressurize and maintain. No building was more than two stories high in the entire city. Because the low dome was clear it gave the appearance of open to the sky. Like the moons surface the city was, white, black or gray. No color existed in the streets of the city. As we settled in for some rest JD ask me what had happened to me during the fight. I explained my ordeal and change of face afterward and he went very quite. I did not interrupt his silence. Sometime later he thanked me for being his father and apologized for causing me so much pain. I told him there was no need for the apology that like me he had been used. He asked how so? I explained that the Doctor had sent him to blow up a platform with twenty million plus humans on board. Again he asked why he didn’t do it. I told him I didn’t know why. Something in you told you not to act that way or maybe something you got from me. Either way you did the right thing and carried out the lunar mission as well.

 

For the next four days we explored the city always returning to the camp. The eerier feeling never went away. On the fifth day as we were coming out of a subway train station I heard a very loud clang. It came from behind us back the way we had come. JD rushed back to me from just up the ramp and drew a Browning nine millimeter side arm. “What is it with you and Browning?” I asked. He didn’t reply just settled to listen. He said, “That noise was man made.” I had to agree but to go in search of the maker was not wise. It could very well be a trap. JD asked me if my comm-unit was working. I tried it and the commander came on line immediately. I reported that there seemed to be someone in city four other than myself and JD. The commander told us to hold while he got a fix on our location. He then came back on and told us to return to the area that we had set up as base camp. He was sending a patrol. This we did, in haste, with no stopping to site see. Soldiers seem to live in a place of fear while in the field. JD was in that place right now and it would keep his attention sharp. Me I wasn’t a soldier; I was scared shitless. Upon arriving at the camp we could see that someone had been thru our things. The food and water were gone. This confirmed that we were dealing with humans. I looked at JD and asked, “Whose idea was this to go exploring all over the place anyway.” JD looked at me and said, “Yours”. I looked at him and said, “Don’t talk back to your father”. JD smiled for the first time since I‘d known him. He said, “I wouldn’t let anything hurt you Dad.” “Smart A*s”, I said.

 

Three hours passed before the platoon arrived. We told them where we heard the noise and that our food and water have been taken. With that the platoon sergeant settled his men for a well deserved rest. They had forced march to us from base three some fifteen miles away. Even on the moon that was a long trek and some of the way was over a ridge line. The sergeant had a very good map of the city and we set up a plan to find who ever it was that was here. The platoon was made up of twenty men not counting us. The sergeant split the group up into three groups. Two, seven men groups and one, eight man group including me and JD. Each group had an area to explore and was told to keep in radio contact at all times. JD took the lead and we got to the rail station in ten minutes. We gave our location to the other two groups and our intention. Then we started down the ramp to the subway rail tracks. At the station platform JD showed the sergeant our tracks and further up the platform another set of tracks. These were tracks made from the old NASA space suit. At the end of the platform the tracks went over the side into the train tunnel. These tunnels were not lit with any type of light. In fact they were very dark. As a group we entered the tunnel trying to follow the tracks. About a quarter of a mile down the tunnel we started to see the light from the next platform station. One of the soldiers found a maintenance access door partially open. The sergeant sent two soldiers into the maintenance door to see what they could find and the rest of us went on to the station. Just as we were climbing the stairs to the platform the maintenance door exploded off its hinges with fire and smoke filling the tunnel. We hurried back to the spot and found the two marines dead and their weapons missing. This was a setup for who ever tried to go this way. I climbed the stairs and jumped into the room. JD followed behind me and the rest follow from behind. Inside the work area there were two directions to go. Not knowing which one the two dead marines went made things a little complicated. I told the sergeant to take two guys and go left and I’d take two guys and go right. JD started to move to the right when I stopped him. I told him, “I want you to follow me.” He didn’t question my reason; he just fell in line like I asked. About three steps into the narrow hall I found the problem that the two marines ran into. It was a barrier trap that most hunters use to snare game. The trap would not set off an explosive but rather arm one. The soldiers knowing what they had done panicked and ran back the way they had come tripping another electronic beam that set off the explosive in a different location thus preserving the integrity of the trap. The trap was thirty inches in depth with upward of twenty beams reading from left to right or up and down. This was a hard trap to get around. There had to be a frequency to turn these beams off. Normally it had one frequency for all the beams. That made it easier to set and reset. The really hard ones had a frequency for each beam. I honestly didn’t know what to do. JD backed out of the hall with the soldier in tow. A few minutes later the wall on the other side of the trap blew away. My ears were ringing for days. JD climbed into the opening found the switch to turn the system off. The switch had a frequency display so before JD switched it off he wrote down the usable frequency. Then we proceeded through the trap and down a flight of stairs, a very long fight of stairs. I ask the soldier to contact the sergeant and let him know what was going on. The sergeant said he was coming up on what he thought were people talking. We decided to continue on down the stairs. The stair came out onto a steel grate platform. The room was hundreds square meters across accept the top and bottom went on for ever. Suspended from the walls and ceiling and the floor were rack upon rack of clone bodies in an unfinished state of growth. This was a clone factory for human life. We stood there looking and wondering how this got here. JD pointed to the left where another much bigger platform hung. There standing in the mist of people was the Doctor and the young woman in the NASA suit I gave her. They had not noticed us a yet. Just then the sergeant and two soldiers came out from behind a partial support beam. Their weapons were raised and they were careful to keep their backs to the wall. I immediately reported to the commander with direction to the platform. The other two seven man groups were on their way and one hundred men would be there in the hour.  The Doctor turned to face the Rangers and put his hands up. The three standing with him turned and did the same thing. The sergeant told them to get down on the ground and then walked forward to restrain them. As he moved forward, he walked through a laser beam that triggered a defensive weapon that shocked the three Rangers. The woman got to the sergeant first and disarmed him. She raised the sergeant’s weapon to point blank range as if to kill the sergeant. I raised my Glock and fired one shot. It struck the woman square in the back. She went down like a sack of potatoes. The remaining people froze in place and I switched to command radio which I knew they could hear. I said, “Doctor Young, unless you want others killed you will remain where you are and that goes for all your friends standing with you. The Doctor said, “You’ve killed my daughter”. In return I said, “That is correct and I will kill you if you move”. By that time my support arrived and entered the storage area. They took the four men away. The body of the woman was removed in a black plastic bag. The sergeant and two troops were fine after a short rest and walked away from the scene with out injury. As for me and JD, we went back to the number five platform and rested, playing the slots and running the women until the end of our vacation.

 

After the vacation, JD and I returned to the foliage domes on the moon and continue the work of replanting after the removal of the mature trees. JD was cleared with the law and because he had my mind was given a position in the rangers. We had found the other clone processing plants and the Government sent teams to dismantle what was left of them and the Doctors labs. The strange thing was that we never got rid of the feeling that we were being watch in the domes. This time we setup camps in the each of the domes and mapped the complete dome areas. After the first encounter with the Doctor and his daughter the moon base had been cleaned up by the Ranger’s and the air and water system was working well enough to support fifteen hundred of us. The last of the transports to the stars were getting ready to leave when the last of our orders came in. We were to complete our work and destroy the platforms. The idea was to leave a ranger contingent on the moon to facilitate any additional work needed on the earth but as much as possible stay on the moon and leave the earth to repair itself. As the last of the Great Starships left their platforms, a transmission was received from the Government agent. It read, “Due to the events leading up to the launch of the Government Ship which is the last to leave Earth, we feel it is important that the destruction of the platforms should not be left in the hands of the Rangers. At zero one hundred hours the platforms will auto destruct by command of the Government. Everyone looked at their watches that were set to moon time and it was just coming up on zero one hundred. All heads turned to face the platforms that could be seen in earth orbit. Number five started exploding on the inside and fell out of earth orbit rapidly. As it entered Earths atmosphere it began to burn up. Each platform followed in turn. In the end the parts that did reach the surface kicked up a huge dust cloud that floated on the wind, making it impossible to see the surface. They didn’t trust us to do the work they had asked us to do. That cloud would remain there for forty seven years. As we began to see the surface again I was far too old to return to Earth. JD as it turned out ended up being the only Ranger to return due to his age. The reports he brought back were astounding. He talked of new forest in their early stages of development with clean air and real rain. He also told us of a very small colony of women living in the mid-west of what was Oregon in the United States. This was unbelievable. Where could they have come from? Were they left behind or what? A lot of questions that we had no answer for. JD told us the story the women had told him. They said they woke up at the location they are now living. They were in some kind of casing that flipped open to let them out. At first they found it very hard to move around and they seemed to have aches in their bones all the time. There was a large building with stores of food and a recording to tell them what to do with the food. No men were in the area until JD arrived. They had been living there for forty five years. Some of the women had died, either of sickness or injury. Most were in their early fifties. JD said what they wanted was male companionship. I told JD that we had been to long away from Earth for any of us to return. JD understood but insisted that the women could be brought to the moon. I hadn’t thought of that so I told him to ask the women if that is what they wanted to do and get back to us. With fifteen Hundred men having been with out female companionship I knew what the men would say.

 

Four months later the first of the women became pregnant. Now we had to look at what could be done for the children when they started coming. None of use was young. JD asked to not live on the moon anymore and in fact had setup house with a young lady on Earth. Of course we agreed to this as long as he flew the shuttle back and forth to the moon. A lot of the Rangers decided to return to Earth despite the risk. After a year they seemed to adjust well to the gravity. After the first child was born it was like opening the flood gates. At last count there were over a hundred children of varying ages. All were doing well. My life was now coming to an end and looking back at what we had gone thru I wondered what the outcome would have been if I hadn’t shot the girl.

 

JD brought his son to meet me. He was the closest thing to a Grandson I had. We became good friends. I showed him the foliage domes and explained the history of the battle for the moon. I told him about the part his father played. He was so proud of him. As he and his father left to go back to Earth I knew I would not see them again. The moon plays some funny tricks on a person at times. I was now one hundred and four years old Earth time. That’s a long life in anyone’s book and it had been an adventure. I lived in a small room in the number four city. I could see the number four landing area and on a fine Monday on the moon a ship landed. It was the shuttle and I was happy for the landing because it meant I’d see JD. He returned a little after one Earth time and a woman came with him. The woman looked just like the woman I’d shot. She was really beautiful, with stunning green eyes. JD introduced her as his wife. Her name was Susan. She said she just had to meet the man that saved human life on Earth. I looked at her with a puzzled face and ask what she could possible mean. She sat down and explained her comment. It turned out that the Doctor had escaped the moon and took as many clones as possible to Earth. He’d set up a camp for them and located a solar array to power the clone caseins set to open upon completion of the growing state. He was pushed very hard to get the female load from the one clone plant that had not been discovered yet. He managed three hundred caseins. All but thirty seven survived. If you had not pushed the Doctor as you did he may have never returned to the moon for the male caseins? Of course you found him before he could return and that was that. We never found out what happened to him. When JD found us we didn’t know what to think or do. It looks like we are going to be fine. I looked at her and then at JD. I said, “I’m not sure what happened to the Doctor either. I know that he was not left here on the moon.” She looked at me with her green eyes so bright and said, “Thank you.” “Not at all”, I said. With that we spent the day together and the lunch was out of this world.

 

On the 4 of August 2305 Earth time we buried my father, Jim Davidson. We retrieved his body form moon base number one, landing area four. He was one hundred five when he passed. His last words to me were, “What a man does with his life is measured in what he leaves behind.” Jim Davidson left a new world with people to populate it and to try to not be so demanding on the planet that it may die. We will never be able to thank him.