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Part III
17
Debrisphere
Debrisphere, zone theta,
April 9 2047
Robert had positioned his reentry pod between four relatively large pieces of debris in what Pete had told him once, was the least dangerous section of the debrisphere. The ISS cluster, a debris cluster made up for a large part of bits and pieces of what once was an old international space station, was located on his brother’s regular route.
Pete, Robert's brother, was a debrisphere miner. The task of debrisphere miners was to clean up low-orbit space debris, harvesting material that could be recycled to Base, (the fluid used by replication printers), ejecting useless debris towards designated moon dumping sites.
The part political, part corporate dream was that in about half a century the debrisphere could be sufficiently thinned, and intercontinental tensions could have sufficiently been settled, so that a HEOPS deflection shield would become possible and communication satellites could once again be used.
Pete had been an amazing help with the realization of his research project, or what started out as a research project, anyway. He had given Robert a lift to the outer limits of the debrisphere at the start of his trip to the moon. Then Pete had helped him on his way a bit further, by ejecting his replica moon lander in the direction of the moon together with a dump load of useless scraps of space junk.
As a result, his trip to the moon so far should have gone unnoticed. Parts of the moon had long been used as dumping ground for non-reusable space debris. Nobody and nothing would consider looking for an extra piece of space debris being jettisoned towards the moon.
It was the return trip that was the tricky part. With what Robert knew now about what happened on the moon in 1969, and that this information had been hidden from the public for all these decades, hidden even throughout the Quantum Slicing campaigns during the war. Robert understood that the dangers he may find on Earth might be worse than the perils he had faced on the moon.
His return to Earth needed to be just as stealthy as his trip to the moon. He had taken his chances for biggest part of the return trip. He had to. It had been a truly slow return trip though, as to remain as inconspicuous as possible. Robert had calculated a return path that would make his pod look like what Pete referred to as a wanderer.
Some of the HEOPSs had grown dense over the years. Dense enough to occasionally send a larger part of space debris off into a more elliptical orbit instead of just punching holes through it or tearing it to pieces and contributing to the low-orbit cascade effect.
These wanderers had relatively low kinetic energy though, especially at the outer ranges of their elliptical orbit. So for Robert's path from moon orbit to the debrisphere to look like a wanderer, Robert had to use a trajectory that took him an order of a magnitude more time than it would normally have taken.
Why go through all this trouble? With what Robert had discovered, he had grown convinced that someone might be keeping close watch on things related to the moon, so he better not take chances. Robert had managed to get back to a low-orbit trajectory, but now the hard part was ahead. He could not remain under the radar if he used his capsule for re-entry.
While the war had long ended, the current stability was still an uneasy one. Each one of the newly formed city and conurbation nations was routinely monitoring any object entering Earth's atmosphere.
If there were still conspirators left, as Robert suspected, a direct entry was sure to put them on his track. Robert was counting on Pete and his crew now to spot his pod and pick him up before cascading debris would hit him. Or worse, before a stray HEOPS sub-swarm would rip him and his pod apart, turning Robert into a permanent part of the debrisphere.
While Robert was relatively safe from cascading debris, shielded by multiple parts of large stable-orbit ISS-cluster debris, and while no HEOPS was projected to hit this part of the debrisphere any time soon, the debrisphere remained a dangerous place to hide out.
There might be days or even weeks to kill before his brother would come this way. But then Robert would rather take his chances in the debrisphere than expose his moon mission to whatever was left of the conspirator organization that would no doubt existed even today.
He had no way of knowing to what lengths they would go to protect this coverup.
A low power short-range radio transmission should grab Pete’s attention and get him his lift home. Robert had some time to think now. The mechanical monster that he had discovered gave him so much to wonder about. The technology was way beyond 2047 Earth technology. The monster was absolutely massive in size.
In spite of its size and destructive strength, it had an agility and speed that seemed physically impossible for a machine this size. None of the sensors had had the ability to register this beast. Not Radar, it had no IR signature, not even a camera would register it when it had artificial lighting directed on it. And then there was its odd shape. This giant monster was shaped like a giant wolf. The first hint of its shape had come from Robert's rendering of the dust patterns. Only after Robert had used his orbiter had the monster become visible to the cameras and to the naked eyes.
Robert had remotely controlled his orbiter to act like a directed mirror that reflected sunlight towards the moon. In doing so, a monstrous pitch black wolf-like monster had become visible. Its behavior was not unlike that of a rabid dog.
While logically, from its strength and speed, nothing should be able to stop this beast, a thin colorful cord, less than a centimetre in diameter, somehow acted as an unbreakable leash to this monstrous wild mechanical dog.
Who could have created this monster? What was this cord that was stronger than any material could possibly be?
Both technologies had to be extraterrestrial. This monster must have been tied up in this moon crater for many decades. Possibly even centuries. What was its power source? Why did NASA fake a safe return for these astronauts? Why did they cover up the tragic death of these brave astronauts?
More disturbing were the other questions that Robert had been reluctant to ask: Who were the people that replaced the astronauts that died on the moon? How did they pull off a cover-up of this magnitude, and ‘why’ did they cover it up in the first place?
Robert was sure of one thing. The people who had covered up this tragedy would stop at nothing to protect their secret. Robert’s curiosity wanted to get to the very bottom of this.
He knew though that he had to tread lightly. He would have to work alone and in total secrecy on this if he wanted to get anywhere close to the truth.
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