Day Twenty-one to Twenty-two ∞ Late Thursday night to early Friday (PST)

LORA EXITED as Danny stepped into the large opening and surveyed the space, awed. The cave looked a lot bigger than from the elevation within Mickmi's ship, twice as long as it was wide. Deep inside, Tillman lit his way along its length. Muzzy stood in the center, inspecting the ceiling and Jagg approached the sidewall. On Danny's heads-up display, Eckstein's icon closed in from behind.

"Damn." Jagg slid his gloved hand on the surface. "Smooth as a babe's ass. Hardly even any dust."

Danny turned to the rock face inside the opening, and his collar ring automatically switched on its lights and illuminated the space before him.

Damn indeed. He ran his gaze up the gray wall. If he didn't know better, he would have sworn a large crew had just finished it with polishing machines.

"Gentlemen," Lora returned to the entrance, "please follow me."

Outside, they found Paulux parked nearby. Lora directed them to gather around one side and hold onto the third 'wheel' of antimatter containers. Their spacesuit servomotors activated as the brackets released from the hull, and they brought the frame gently to the ground.

Artemae bounced toward them with amplified skipping steps as they circled Paulux to the last wheel. Danny glanced around but Mickmi was nowhere in sight. Just as he was going to mentally check on her, her ship retracted its landing fins and rotated to face them.

"You can take this one directly into the cavern. Artemae, please take over." Lora lifted off the ground and entered Paulux.

"Ay-ay, captain!" Artemae tilted her head as she inspected the wheel, then put her arms akimbo. "Okay. Take it off and my Queen will assist in carrying it with the paragravitic field."

They removed the last wheel. As they tilted it into horizontal position and moved away from the ship, Mickmi's voice came through the ship's comms, "Activating PGF... now."

The PGF assist took over the weight.

"Let's do this off-ground," Eckstein said. "At two meters. After three... two... one..."

Together they rose and floated with the wheel across the terrain. Danny found himself going backward toward the cave. Artemae remained near the ground, monitoring their clearance, calling out occasional instructions. When the shadow of the cave mouth fell across them, their spacesuit lights turned on, one by one, as each entered the cave. They guided the frame to the floor furthest inside the cave, leaving walking space all around it.

Mickmi's ship reversed from the opening as they returned to get the next frame of containers. Danny took the nearest side, his gaze on Paulux as he waited for the others to position themselves. Lora had piloted it to near the 240º line on his HUD, in front of the steeper slope of the crater rim.

"Ready?"

Danny snapped his gaze to Eckstein who was watching him from the opposite side of the frame.

"Three... two... one..."

"Activating PGF," Mickmi said.

Danny tightened his grip on the frame as it rose a couple of feet off the ground as if the containers were filling with helium.

Within thirty minutes, they'd placed the last set of containers at the front, nearest to the cave entrance but still a safe distance inside. When they returned outside, Deymos had parked on its fins again. The side hull opened and Mickmi stepped out.

"Gentlemen, the next phase will keep both vessels busy for many hours. I suggest you take the opportunity now to come inside and refresh yourselves."

∞

With his stomach happily digesting something Danny's girlfriend called a "food drink", Jagg jumped out of her ship alongside Danny and Muzzy and started walking.

"That was more hungry work than I expected," he commented. "And we haven't done much yet."

"We're still getting used to working in these suits, I think," Danny responded. "Before, we were working in freefall. No gravity. Here, we've got some gravity, even though it's just one-sixth of what we're used to. Imagine working in them at home."

"Yeah..."

"Be thankful," Muzzy took off into the air, "you won't have to test your suit's ability to keep a load of your smelly number two quite yet!" He flew ahead.

Jagg heard several chuckles over the comms as he grinned. That wasn't something he intended to test out.

He halted in his tracks as they came up to suitless Artemae. She stood midway to the steeper slope with her hands lifted like a director. A dense dark cloud swirled before her, above the junk she'd salvaged from the factory. He glanced at Danny who'd approached her, then focused on the icon marked <<Daniel>> on his heads-up display. It changed to orange and the words <<Private mode>> popped up.

He grunted. So that was how to change the channel. "That chick, robot, whatever," he said to Danny, "I mean... Look at her. How she do that?"

Up ahead, some of the dismantled machinery parts reoriented themselves just off the ground, breaking apart and rearranging their shapes and configurations as Artemae circled the pile. Muzzy hovered a distance away, taking his photographic record.

Danny chuckled and picked it up a mechanical 'arm'. "Think of all of it as a cloud of robots."

The arm was smaller than the ones that had thrown them the canisters inside the factory, but taller than Danny when straightened out. Then the cloud of nanos captured Jagg's attention as it gathered, manipulated, broke apart, and melded specific pieces.

Artemae paused beside Danny.

"You need help with that?" he asked.

"Do I need a mechanic? Nope. I've got it covered." She picked up a flat metal box.

Jagg walked around to the other side, his eye on a VW Bug-sized mound of junk where several pieces had already become one. Another hill was taking shape next to it.

"How come you speak nothing like Mickmi?" Danny asked. "I mean, you came from her... Spent all of your...'previous' life with her, right? So how come you speak so—"

"Like normal people?" Artemae looked up from her inspection, the rest of her body obscured by the cloud from Jagg's vantage point. "It's fun! Besides, I'm not bound to her royal commitment, nor to any part of her training, you know. My choice. I've been paying close attention ever since we arrived in your world. Picked up a lot from your friends at the auto shop. I like Debbie." She tossed the box into the animated cloud and continued walking. "And the Spectactular... Thank you for taking us there. That was a coool treasure trove of data—language included."

"Oh!" Danny sounded surprised. "You're welcome. I think Debbie would like you too."

Jagg grunted and shook his head. Treasure trove of data? He didn't think he'd ever understand that non-human chick. He was about to walk again when the mound shook its 'shoulders', stood up on its six legs, and strode outside of the pile. Its forelegs were broader than the rest, with wide, scoop-like feet, and two tentacle arms sported fat pincers and other appendages, reminding him of a giant crab. It looked like a second one would soon come alive too.

The crab halted several feet away from the activity and sank down to a rest. Danny walked over to it and ran his gloved hand over the smooth shell, sturdy limbs, and reinforced joints. He got on his hands and knees to see the underside. As far as Jagg could tell by the diagrams his HUD produced, there were no exposed wires or tubing. Not even on the underside. And under its rear shell was an access point to some sort of emergency control panel.

Jagg grunted again. That's a perfect spot... stick your hand right up its ass.

He could see no seat or steering. Mickmi had briefed the men on their roles for the next phase during their break, but this crab machine didn't look like it was meant to be driven.

"We can't ride that," he commented. "There's no driver's cabin, nothing to steer with..."

"I don't think this is what she meant." Danny straightened himself. "It's not a heavy-duty excavator. Artemae, how long for the excavators?"

"Another hour, tops. They're already more than halfway there."

"Look over here," Muzzy said.

Jagg had to lift off the ground to see where his HUD indicated the man was located over 100 meters away. He flew over the activity surrounding the machine parts with Danny on his heels. Straight ahead, only the tail end of Lora's ship could be seen as it had already burrowed itself two lengths and a half into the rock. The illuminated space around it was similar to what Mickmi had pressed out with Deymos' shield.

They landed deeper into the shadow area and walked up to Muzzy. Here where the rim slope dipped into a small valley before rising again, the air was alive with darkness.

Jagg whistled as his and Danny's lights turned on. The entire space before them shimmered with movement, the nanites from the factory breakdown forming an enormous cloud, bigger and denser than what Artemae was working with, stretching from the sides of the valley to its core in their task of feeding the construction of a stationary hulk of solid black as tall as a tractor-trailer.

"That's what she meant," Danny said as the pale green 3D outline displayed on Jagg's HUD. Then an orange repeat of the shape overlapped it, slightly offset.

"Two of 'em," Jagg said.

More movement indicators far right in his HUD drew his attention. The rest of the men had exited Deymos and approached Artemae where the second machine stood up.

"That's a versatile configuration," Eckstein's voice sounded through the comms. "Robots shaped like crabs."

"How do you control them?" Atlas asked.

"Oh, they're autonomous," Artemae responded. "They're already programmed with artificial intelligence, so they'll act on whatever they see needs to be done within our project parameters. And I can communicate whatever other tasks we need them to do."

Mickmi's ship lifted into the air and flew past them towards the slope. Jagg turned to watch as it paused in front of the rim slope beside the hole Lora had made. Then Deymos angled itself to point its nose downward and pressed into the rock with the HUD-visible bubble extending the width of the opening to twice its size.

Mickmi was working it faster this time. Within ten minutes Deymos had caught up with Lora's ship and they continued side by side at a steep angle with their shields merged between them as one, deeper and deeper down into the moon.

The other men joined Jagg and Danny on the edge of the opening, staring at the receding glow of the ships. Eckstein walked into the tunnel that was much bigger inside, shining his lights at the story-and-a-half high ceiling sloping down before him.

"You do realize," Tillman said, weighing the small pickaxe in his hand, "if something goes wrong and they can't come back with the ships, we'll be stuck up here. Nobody's going to get us—with these suits, if we don't run out of air first, we'll just die a long slow death of starvation."

He swung the pickaxe at a lump of rock outside the cavity, dislodging a piece. Moondust flew, some of it lodging itself on Jagg's one-piece visor helmet.

"That's not going to happen," Danny said, his voice adamant.

"And you can be hundred-and-ten percent sure of that... how?" Atlas asked.

Danny stuttered before responding, "I just know."

Dying up here didn't scare Jagg. He wasn't afraid of death—he'd seen too much of it in his youth. But it did concern him that it would leave his crew, his family, clueless as to what had happened to him and Lora...

"If that were to happen," Danny sounded more confident now, "they'd have these nanobots make an extra ship to shuttle us back."

"Yup. Backups are easy, though it would slow our work here." Artemae landed next to the valley and entered the nanocloud.

The men scattered, taking the opportunity to look around, but Danny walked further into the cavern and stopped, looking down. Jagg decided to join him, stepping carefully on the smooth rock. He whistled.

Over the edge, the ground angled to a near-vertical descent. Deep down, the tail ends of the ships appeared like two gray spots inside their glow. 

"So how far you think they're going?"

When Danny didn't reply, Jagg studied the face inside the helmet. The guy seemed really focused as he stared into the shaft, before taking a deep breath and nodding.

"Hey, Danny," Jagg said, "she talks inside your head too?"

"Yeah." Danny threw him a glance. "We do that a lot."

Jagg lifted a brow. "So you know telepathy too."

"No... She just hears me sometimes."

"I thought they don't use that skill to spy on people's thoughts."

"She doesn't." Danny met his gaze. "It's just that we already happened to be connected. Somehow."

"Uh-huh. That's unnatural. I don't want to hear voices in my head. That's what people get sent to the looney-bin for."

"But it can be useful. Especially in emergencies. You get used to it."

Maybe he would. Jagg wasn't convinced. The very idea triggered alarm bells in his mind.

"Gentlemen, your turn," Artemae said before Jagg could reply.

They trudged back outside, joining the others to see the machines with their own eyes.

Jagg had expected a circular face covered with some sort of grinding apparatus. But this enormous mouth, wider than it was high, sported a hollow channel inside its rim. Below that, a multitude of open snouts encircled empty space.

Not empty... The top half glinted like there was a broad glass shield deep inside, over a long, broad transport belt. On either side behind the snouts, two pairs of appendages hung ready to shovel anything trying to escape the transport 'tongue' leading into the gullet.

Artemae appeared around the side and ran her hand along the channel. "The bore track will shoot continuous beams of plasma to melt the edges of the tunnel, and these laser cutters will fragment the cut-out rock. You must monitor where you're going through there," she added, pointing at the center. "If you see anything artificially made, structures, or fossils, or a skeleton—"

"Up here?" Jagg blurted before he remembered these guys had hinted several times the moon was occupied. If that were really the truth, then truth had to be stranger than fiction.

"Alright, they'd probably be mummified. In their suits." Artemae grinned. "I was just checking if you were paying attention. But... we don't know if there are any ancient remains or artifacts where we'll be working. Certainly, there are several that time has encapsuled across your Moon. We want to respect that, move them if possible, not destroy them. So anything that's not natural rock, halt the operation immediately and report to me, okay?" She looked around at the men who nodded. "Okay. So who's driving?"

"I am," Danny replied before Jagg could say anything. "And Jagg."

"Okay. So the rest of you will monitor the plasma drones. They're semi-automonous, programmed to expand the ceiling within the boundaries of our plan, and they'll detect and notify of anomalous material that could pose problems. Things like fissures or cracks, or veins of uncommon elements. And artifacts. But you're the decision-makers, so if you see something, or an emergency, there's the override option for you to pilot them yourselves. Hopefully that won't be necessary—this should be a very long, boring job..."

"It's going to get so hot..." Danny muttered as she gestured with her fingers next to her shoulder.

A movement from above the excavator caught Jagg's attention, a swarm of fist-sized half-domes descending between them. Jagg squinted at the two pausing in mid-air before him. They appeared to be of semi-translucent metal with hints of shapes inside. He reached out with his gloved hand but before he could touch one of them, they flew over his head and landed on top of his helmet with a tap. Glancing around, he found the others also had a pair of these things attached to their helmets like ear bumps.

"These bugs will be your extra eyes," Artemae continued as they looked at each other, "in addition to the scanners and the feeds. Now that they're linked to your suits, you can direct them as needed and monitor the plasma drones from different angles."

"How many?" Atlas asked.

"The drones?" Artemae's hand gestured indecisively. "Up to a dozen or so. They'll work in tandem so—"

"Each?" Muzzy interjected.

"Oh no, a dozen altogether."

Atlas nodded. "Two or three each, then, in addition to these bug-eyes."

Tillman stepped back to look around the side of the excavator. "And... where are they?"

"Oh, they'll be ready by the time you're ready to start. You have to get down there first." Artemae put her hands akimbo and looked around at them all. "Any more questions?"

"Yeah," Jagg said, "you said something about material posing problems... What material, and what problems?"

"Well, I can't tell you exactly. I don't have an inventory of all the elements the rock down there might consist of, nor in what kinds of concentrations—only what's here on the surface... All sorts of minerals. A lot of them up here are oxides. But down there, the composition may be different. There may be deposits too. Some might even be flammable... but I expect it all to be stable material, nothing with explosive tendencies...

"It's going to get super hot though, so I'll be using every other resource to get the vapor atmosphere moving and cooling it down. That's why you'll take breaks when I say so. Until we have enough space to keep it from getting too hot."

That didn't sound comforting. "Sounds like we're gonna get baked," Jagg commented, glancing at Danny.

"You all should be safe as long as you stay inside these machines. They're PGF insulated. The bugs and drones too. If something needs to be temporarily contained or isolated, the drones can do it with PGF..." 

Artemae nodded and looked expectantly around at each of the men. "Right." Then she gestured at the excavator, "This is Eewan," and led the way around the side of the hulking machine.

About the height of a trailer truck but only half the length, it rested on three sets of belted wheels, each set attached to a stocky leg, long like a spider's but folded up against its side.

As they waited for her to open the excavator door, Jagg followed Muzzy as he hopped away from the group to take photos from a distance. Something jutted from the roof of the machine, and Jagg lifted off the ground for a better viewing angle.

Another set of belted wheels. That meant the machine had nine legs, not six as he'd expected.

"Hey, Danny! Check out what's on top."

Artemae turned around in the doorway as Danny lifted off the ground.

"Yes, those bracer legs will control your descent to the cavern floor with the support of the rear auto-winch and cable. Which three of you are taking this one?"

Atlas climbed in after her, and Danny entered last, after Eckstein. Jagg turned to the second machine parked behind Eewan. An identical excavator.

Eewan? She must have meant E1, Excavator 1. Then this one would be E2. Simple and to the point.

It only took a few minutes for Artemae to return outside. Six 'bugs' flew out before Atlas closed the door and E1 came to life, lifting its body to clear the uneven terrain. It walked like an insect to face the cave mouth, then the wheel belts interlocked, forming caterpillar tracks.

"Gentlemen, this is Eeto."

— ∞ —

© 2021 by kemorgan65