Chapter Eleven
“What will NASA think?”
“We do have spacesuits,” responded sharianna, with a huge grin.
“Where?” asked Dad.
“We found a closet,” Joseph replied excitedly, as he bounded up the steps from the lower observation area, with Sharianna right behind him.
They led Mom and Dad back through the cargo area and opened the closet, revealing the suits hanging on the rack.
“How do you know they are spacesuits?” queried Dad.
“We tried them out,” blurted Sharianna.
“What do you mean you tried them out?” demanded Mom.
Joseph and Sharianna then proceeded to relate their adven-ture of the previous day, while conveniently leaving out the encounter with the twins, and of course, their practical joke on their friends.
“I don’t know if water is an appropriate test for them,” said Dad, as another thought occurred to him. “There is oxygen in water, how do we know the suits didn’t take the oxygen out of the water?”
Now it was Mom’s turn to be logical: “If this is a space ship then they must be spacesuits.”
“Maybe they are bio-suits,” argued Dad.
“They must be both,” concluded Joseph. “There is only one kind of suit here.”
Mom continued her argument: “And why would they have a bio-suit and not a spacesuit? I agree with Joseph. They must be dual function,” she insisted, with a tone of finality.
“I concur,” agreed Sharianna.
“I’d bet that little room in the ankle of the robot, by the bathroom, is an airlock,” proposed Joseph.
Dad began putting on one of the suits.
“So, what do you think you are doing?” questioned Mom.
“I’m going to test Joseph’s theory about the airlock, and your theory about the spacesuits.”
Mom grabbed one of the suits and also began putting it on.
“So, what do you think you are doing?” mimicked Dad.
“I’m going with you.”
“And what if you are wrong and I explode into space?”
“Then we’ll explode together,” she said with a smile.
“And Joseph and Sharianna can take the robot home by themselves?” he replied.
Sophia relented, “I’ll wait, I guess; but I’m sure it will be okay.”
Dad stepped into the ankle of the robot and closed the door behind him. As he pushed the button to open the outer door there was a momentary delay. His heart started to pound as he began to second-guess his decision. He heard a sound like the rushing of wind, and then, complete silence. Slowly, he felt as if the floor were tilting; he leaned and shuffled his feet in the opposite direction, until finally, he was standing straight up on the bathroom door. He took a deep breath and looked directly overhead at the three faces scrunched up against the window of the other door, which was now directly overhead—from his perspective. All of a sudden, the outer door opened up and he stood looking directly at the great obelisk with the landscape of the moon in the distance.
“That’s weird. Dad is standing on the bathroom door,” observed Sharianna.
“Of course,” Joseph replied. “The gravity in the airlock had to rotate in order to match the gravitational pull of the moon. Otherwise, when Dad stepped out, he would either have to twist like a cat in mid air, or he would probably fall on his head.”
“There is no air on the moon,” retorted Sharianna smartly.
“You know what I mean.”
Thomas gave his family the thumbs up and stepped out onto the top of the robot’s foot. The door closed behind him without making a noise. He walked out to the end of the foot in utter silence; even his feet didn’t make any sound as he walked. The low gravity wasn’t the only reason he felt light footed, he was filled with the euphoria of doing something incredible that he never dreamed he would ever do. I guess sound doesn’t travel when there is no atmosphere, he thought to himself, as he stood at the end of the foot, ready to slide down to the surface.
“Hey, Mom, I guess Dad will be the first one to walk on the moon.”
Thomas heard Joseph’s voice as if he were right next to him. He turned and looked at the door, but could see nothing except the uninterrupted surface of the robot. He walked back toward the leg and looked for the outline of the door but could see only the flawless surface.
“Can you guys hear me?” he asked.
“Sure can, Dad,” replied Sharianna.
“Didn’t we tell you, the suits have radio’s, or something,” explained Joseph.
Suddenly the door opened and out bounded Percy, who, with one great leap covered the distance and landed in Thomas’ arms. Percy looked as surprised as Dad.
“I guess he doesn’t know he can jump three times as far here on the moon,” laughed Joseph.
“Where did you find the dog suit?” questioned Dad.
“Joseph said that if the same size suit could fit both Dad and me, then maybe it could even shrink down to fit Percy,” explained Sharianna.
“I’ll bet it will take him a while to get used to the moon’s gravity,” chuckled Dad.
“He’ll just think he’s a super-dog,” said Sharianna.
“He is a super dog,” Joseph retorted.
Percy jumped down and ran, or rather lumbered, since each step he took pushed him off the surface a little too much, toward the end of the robot’s foot. He looked back and with a bark slid down to the moon’s surface.
“One small step for a dog, one giant leap for…” Dad rolled his eyes as he searched for the right word.
Mom finished the new quote: “…canine.”
Percy bounded all over like a new puppy, exhilarating in his newfound power of flight.
They paused on the end of the foot and looked up at the earth. Sharianna raised her camera and took a picture of it. Suddenly, she had a great thought. “Hey, smile everyone,” she said, as she knelt down on the robot’s foot to get a picture of Mom and Dad and Joseph with the earth and the obelisk in the background. She tucked her camera back into her fanny pack that she had strapped around her waist on the outside of her suit.
“After you, my dear,” offered Dad, as he motioned to Mom with an exaggerated swing of his arm and a bow. “The first woman to walk on the moon!”
Mom slid down to join Percy, followed by Sharianna and Joseph simultaneously.
Immediately upon touching the surface, Joseph took a giant leap and cleared over twelve feet of distance. “Yahoooo.”
Sharianna joined in the fun as she bounded after Mom.
Thomas looked around at the incredible moonscape, and then focused on the obelisk, thinking about all the mysteries they had encountered and the fantastic experiences of the past few days. Suddenly, the ancient pictographs and inscriptions on the rock outcropping in the desert flashed across the eye of his mind in perfect clarity. He felt the same strange feeling of familiarity that he and Joseph had felt when they first discovered them. The picture faded as fast as it had come, leaving him feeling slightly confused.
I’ll have to go back there when we get home, he thought to himself as he slid down to the surface to join his family.
Sophia had already made a beeline for the base of the obelisk with slow, giant steps, each step propelling her off the surface, followed by a slow descent.
As they became used to the low gravity they were able to walk without breaking the surface.
Sophia had already circumvented the base of the obelisk by the time Thomas reached it. As Sophia came around the corner she said: “It definitely wasn’t put here after the moon landings.”
“How do you know that?” asked Sharianna.
Mom saw Joseph and Percy heading in the direction of the moon landers. “Don’t go too far!” Mom called after Joseph.
“You don’t have to yell, Mom, I can hear you no matter how far away I get. Remember the suits?” he said, pointing to his invisible helmet.
“Yeah,
how do you know that?” asked Dad, bringing her back to her investigative deductions.
“The footprints.”
Dad motioned for her to continue her explanation.
“The footprints go all around it in an unbroken pattern. If it were placed here afterwards, then the prints would either be disturbed or at least overlapped. You can tell that the astronauts were examining it, like we are.
“What will NASA think when they come back and see our footprints?” asked Sharianna as she lifted her foot and looked at the imprint it left in the dust.
“That will be perplexing,” laughed Mom.
“I’m surprised that the spacesuits conform even to the bottom of our shoes,” marveled Dad.
Mom held up her hand. “It even fits my hands perfectly, and yet it doesn’t feel tight.” She pulled on one of her fingers and the suit stretched, but when she let it go, it returned immediately to its perfect fit.
Mom resumed her investigation of the obelisk, while Dad went to keep an eye on Percy and Joseph. Sharianna picked up a moon rock about the size of a softball and followed her mom.
Sophia tapped on the obelisk with her hand – it felt solid. Sharianna banged on it with the rock. She was surprised that it made no noise. “Why didn’t it make any noise?” she asked.
“Because there is no atmosphere,” came the unexpected reply from Joseph, who was out of sight behind the robot.
“I asked Mom,” retorted Sharianna.
“Noise has to have something to travel through, like air or water, or some other material,” explained Mom.
“The flag they planted is pretty faded, and it is lying on the ground, but it’s still there. I think it was knocked over by the blast when the lunar module took off from the surface.” Joseph looked around, “Where is the moon rover?”
“There it is!” exclaimed Dad, “over there, behind that lander.”
“Cool!” cried Joseph, as he went bounding across the moon-scape to investigate.
“The batteries must be dead,” observed Dad, as Joseph sat in the rover and tried the controls, without success.
“It would have been so fun to go speeding across the moon-scape,” bemoaned Joseph.
“I don’t think the rover was built for speed anyway,” con-soled Dad.
“I wish we had a dune buggy, or even the old truck,” Joseph said longingly. “Except that without oxygen, neither would run, would they?”
“Look.” Sharianna pointed to the large raised symbols on the surface of the obelisk.
The symbols seemed to use a geometric basis for their structure. Squares, parallelograms, triangles, ovals, circles, trapezoids and rectangles were used alone or in overlapping combinations.
Sharianna pointed to a round circle with a long slender obelisk extending from the top. “Do you think that one represents the moon? And that one, with the single large continent and the obelisk on the top, maybe it depicts their home world.”
“Maybe,” replied Mom. “Why don’t you take another picture of it and we can study it later?”
Sharianna snapped the picture. She gazed at the symbols on the obelisk; she felt strangely drawn to it. A mysterious urge to touch it began to consume her. Her hands seemed to move independently of her thoughts. She seemed to have a heightened awareness of the details on the symbols and yet she felt an inability to control her fingers as they ran slowly over the symbols from right to left. What in the world am I doing? She thought to herself, as her mind raced, while her hands seemed to move in slow motion.
As she reached the last symbol, her fingers traced the square spiral. Suddenly, as her fingers reached the center, all the symbols began to recede into the obelisk and disappear, as if they were melting away.
“Thomas!” called Sophia.
“You don’t have to yell…” began Joseph.
“Come quick!” interrupted Mom, “over here, by the obe-lisk!”
“What’s the matter?” questioned Thomas, as he and Joseph came bounding across the moonscape in huge leaps that covered nearly fifteen feet, but still seemed slow since it took so long to return to the ground.
The faster Percy tried to run, the more difficulty he had—his timing was off.
“I don’t know,” replied Mom. “Just come.”
“What’s going on?” demanded Dad, once again, when they arrived at the obelisk.
Mom pointed to where the symbols had been, as she related what happened.
Sharianna was still standing, staring blankly at the obelisk.
Dad put his hand on her shoulder. “Sharianna?” She did not respond. “Sharianna!” Sharianna turned very slowly and collapsed into his arms.