“Sheng-lee!” she echoed, halfheartedly pumping her fist in the air. “Woo.”
Chén grinned at all of us, leaned forward, and stretched out his right hand, with his palm facing down. Whoadie smiled back and stacked her hand on top of his; then Milo, Debbie, and I each did the same thing. Then, in unison, we all shouted “Sheng-lee!” one more time.
A second later, we heard Captain Meadows’ voice on the intercom again, announcing that we were on final approach to Moon Base Alpha. This seemed to make us self-conscious, and we all quickly withdrew our hands.
The shuttle banked sharply, and the moon’s cratered surface suddenly filled the portside windows as we rocketed into orbit. I caught a brief glimpse of the Tycho impact crater as we zoomed over it on our way around to the far side, which was mostly in shadow. This hemisphere of the moon always faced away from Earth, so it was the first time any of us were seeing it with our own eyes. The surface was marred by a few small blackened regions, which looked like burn marks, but there were no ocean-sized dark patches or “seas” like those that marred the moon’s more familiar hemisphere. The landscape here on the far side of the moon was far more uniform in color and appearance, but that didn’t make it seem any more inviting.
As we sailed over the cratered and barren lunar surface, I was struck by a brief vision of Earth after the coming conflict. The battle had left our world ravaged and dead, as devoid of life and color as its own moon, its oceans and atmosphere burned away, its mighty cities replaced with impact craters, and the whole of its once-beautiful surface scorched black by the fire of war.
I shook my head and rubbed my eyes with the palms of my hands before looking back down at the lunar surface.
The sun was low in the sky, causing the more prominent craters to cast long shadows that stretched out across the pockmarked surface like crooked black fingers. Far below, an enormous bowl-shaped crater slid into view, and the sight sent a chill cascading down my spine. I recognized this place. I was looking down at the crater Daedalus, the secret location of Moon Base Alpha. I’d known this was our destination, but I still hadn’t been able to convince myself that it really existed until that moment, when I saw it with my own eyes.
The large crater, Daedalus, had a much smaller, steeper crater named Daedalus B immediately adjacent to it, and a third, even smaller crater adjacent to that, known as Daedalus C. The lips of all three craters touched, and when viewed from directly above, their outlines somewhat resembled the shape of a pocket watch, with Daedalus B standing in for the small round knob on top, and Daedalus C serving as the even smaller chain ring attached to it. These three craters immediately stood out from the thousands of others on the lunar surface because even at this distance, they all contained obvious evidence of human construction.
The walls of the big crater had been smoothed out and curved into a perfect bowl shape to create a dish antenna for an enormous radio telescope. Its design was similar to that of the Arecibo Observatory in the mountains of Puerto Rico, but several hundred times larger. The two smaller craters each had an armored sphere nestled inside, like a golf ball sitting atop a shot glass. They were made of armored metal plating that had been painted gray to match the lunar surface.
“Moon Base Alpha!” Chén shouted as he spotted it, too. Then he began to talk excitedly in Mandarin as he pointed out things down on the surface. The others craned their necks to see out the nearest window, and they each gasped at their first glimpse of our destination.
“There it is!” Whoadie said, bouncing in her seat. “It’s really there. It’s really real!”
Moon Base Alpha was a familiar sight to all of us, because we’d flown our Interceptors into and out of a simulated version of it hundreds of times while playing Armada. Our shuttle was even approaching along the same trajectory, giving me a strange sense of déjà vu.
As we made our final approach, the dome at top of the smaller sphere split apart into equal segments, like an orange, and retracted far enough to permit our shuttle entrance. As soon as we descended inside the dome, its armored segments slammed back together above us, sealing the hangar bay once again, which essentially functioned like a giant airlock. Its design had always reminded me of the docking bay of the fictional Clavius Base featured in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Now I found myself wondering if the EDA had borrowed elements from Stanley Kubrick’s design. After all, stranger things had obviously happened—and were still happening right now.