the aries-ib has become the standard space-station-to-lunar surface vehicle. it was powered by low-thrust plasma jets which would continue the mild acceler- ation for fifteen minutes. then the ship would break the bonds of gravity and be a free and indepen- dent planet, circling the sun in an orbit of its own.
the laws of earthly aesthetics did not apply here, this world had been shaped and molded by other than terrestrial forces, operating over aeons of time unknown to the young, verdant earth, with its fleeting ice-ages, its swiftly rising and falling seas, its mountain ranges dissolving like mists before the dawn. here was age inconceivable - but not death, for the moon had never lived until now.
the base at clavius was the first american lunar settlement that could, in an emergency, be entirely self-supporting.
water and all the necessities of life for its eleven hundred men, women and children were produced from the lunar rocks, after they had been crushed, heated and chemically processed.
one of the attractions of life on the moon was undoubtedly the low gravity which produced a sense of general well-being.
the personnel of the base and their children were the forerunners of new nations, new cultures that would ultimately spread out across the solar system. they no longer thought of earth as home. the time was fast approaching when earth, like all mothers, must say farewell to her children.
a hundred million miles beyond mars, in the cold lonliness where no man had yet travelled, deep-space-monitor-79 drifts slowly among the tangled orbits of the asteroids.
radiation detectors noted and analyzed incoming cosmic rays from the galaxy and points beyond; neutron and x-ray telescopes kept watch on strange stars that no human eye would eever see; magnetometers observed the gusts and hurricanes of the solar winds, as the sun breathed million mile-an-hour blasts of plasma into the faces of its circling children.
all these things and many others were patiently noted by deep- space-monitor-79, and recorded in its crystalline memory.
but now it had noted something strange - the faint yet unmistakable distrubance rippling across the solar system, and quite unlike any natural phenomena it had ever observed in the past.
it was also observed by orbiter m-15, circling mars twice a day; and high inclination probe- 21, climbing slowly above the planet of the ecliptic; and even artificial comet-5, heading out into the cold wastes beyond pluto, along an orbit whose far point it would not reach for a thousand years.
all noticed the peculiar burst of energy that leaped from the face of the moon and moved across the solar system, throwing off a spray of radiation like the wake of a racing speedboat.
bowman and poole settled down to the peaeful monotony of the voyage, and the next three months passed without incident.
for a few thousand years, they shared their universe with their machine children; then, realizing that it was folly to linger when their task was done, they passed into history without regret.