Ghost Moon Part 3: The Singing City

Junkers are heroes of the future, traveling across galaxies in search of space trash to snare. Granny the Captain, Edward the First Mate (an Artificial Intelligence), and young Alex live on The Amber Cow, a junk ship designed to deal with any garbage that comes its way.

One day, the Cow’s sensors pick up a Junk Moon not far ahead. In the past, resource-hungry worlds mined moons for the ores they needed. When they’d dug out everything of use, they would fill the empty sections with trash, turning it into a Junk Moon. Then they would drive the moon to the edge of a Dead Zone — blank areas of space with few planets or stars, where nobody went.

Alex is intrigued, but Edward has collected many frightening stories from the Omniweb. “Dead Zones are full of monsters! And Junk Moons are said to be haunted!”

In spite of Edward’s worries, they change course to explore the Junk Moon. When they get within visual range, they can see an impact crater where an asteroid hit, knocking the moon out of the Dead Zone — and straight into the gravitational field of a star! There is little time left before the moon and all of its treasures are destroyed.

Docking on the moon, Alex, Granny and Edward start to explore. They all feel as if they’re being watched. They hope to restart the moon’s thrusters to gain more time before the star burns it up, but the power converter crystals are gone. “If I had the parts, I could repair them, but without the crystals, there’s no chance,” said Granny.

As it gets closer to the star, the moon begins to shake apart. Hurrying towards the Great Cavern where the junk has been packed, they hear strange echoes and creaking. Suddenly, the floor in front of them cracks open, and Granny and Edward disappear. They have fallen into a lower tunnel, and Edward’s legs are broken. Alex must head back into the maze of tunnels to find a way to them.

 * * *

Alex felt as if she had been running forever, pounding down dead end tunnels, back to the ramp, down the next passageway, desperately trying to get to the level Granny and Edward had fallen to. At first, she’d called out constantly, hoping to hear them call back, tell her she was on the right track, but soon she had no breath to spare.

It was taking too long.

Then, at last, she heard the sound of Edward’s voice singing, echoing along the tunnel towards her. It was a song from his musical — he was using it to guide her to them, the electronic notes bouncing off the rock walls.

“I’m coming!” she cried. “I hear you!”

Pushing through the weariness in her legs, Alex rushed forward. But then, abruptly, Edward went silent.

Alex stopped so sharply she almost fell over.

“Granny? Edward?” she whispered — and, at the same instant, she heard an ominous creaking, groaning sound up ahead — a sound she’d heard before, when the floor collapsed.

Suddenly, she was no longer alone. There were figures rushing past her, so fast she couldn’t see them clearly. They made agitated, high-pitched fluting sounds as they raced down the tunnel at incredible speed, straight for the noise that swelled into a rumbling and a crashing. Before Alex could move a step, a cloud of dust billowed towards her, enveloping her in a horrible, gritty fog that made her eyes sting and her throat tighten.

Cave in. But as the awful words formed in her mind, the shapes returned, and they were dragging Edward and Granny with them.

Alex cried out in relief and then hesitated — what — who were these rescuers? They’d come out of nowhere and saved Edward and Granny, but how had they known they needed saving?

“Alex — thank goodness you’re all right!” Granny hugged her. Her voice was husky with dust.

“But what… who…” Alex whispered to her. “Are they ghosts?”

“Of course not,” said Granny.

“But they… they keep changing.”

They squinted at the figures, but they were hard to see clearly… Tall, with oddly shaped heads, humanoid but not humans, the figures gave off their own light that brightened and dimmed as the dust swirled around them. They were aliens unlike any Alex had ever met or read about before.

She knelt down beside Edward, who was lying on the ground, to ask him if he’d come across anything like them in his reading. But just then, there was another rumbling noise — she yelled, jumping up — and two of the aliens grabbed Edward between them. They raced off at a tremendous speed along the passageway, away from the noise, as Granny and Alex struggled to keep up with them.

The moon, weakened by all the tunneling, was shaking apart under the influence of the star. The danger was growing every moment they stayed in the tunnels.

“Where are you taking us?” panted Granny, and then she stumbled to a halt. “Oh my stars!”

“Wow,” gasped Alex.

They had reached the Great Cavern.

It was gigantic.

Instead of the mountains of discarded trash that Granny, Edward, and Alex had expected, ceiling-high and forgotten, they were looking at a vast open space that had been carved out of the junk. There were pathways and fountains and benches. In the walls that curved up to the distant ceiling, there were hundreds of openings. Ramps made out of compacted rubbish led from one to another, winding around the walls from floor to roof. The cavern was filled with light. The walls, the ceiling, and the floor pulsed and rippled with a radiance that came and went in time to the voices of the aliens.

“It’s a city inside of a cavern of junk inside of a moon!”

It was a city full of the aliens, shrilling and trilling like startled birds, more and more of them crowding around. They had huge eyes that glittered like stars, so that it felt to Alex as if she were surrounded by a galaxy. Instead of hair, the aliens had elaborate frills flickering and fluttering from the sides of their heads. Light, shadows, and complicated patterns rippled round their bodies, moving and changing in time to their voices. They sang to each other as they set Edward down. They seemed to be doing their best to sing to him, too. He was in a trance of delight, looking and listening.

“They’re Singers!” he murmured. “A whole moon of Singers! I think they were afraid of us before, but they decided to show themselves because I’m a singer, too.”

“I think you’re right,” said Granny.

Alex watched the Singers — at least she tried to. Every time one of them noticed her looking directly at them, they disappeared. Their skin would camouflage with whatever was behind them so perfectly that they seemed to simply vanish.

“No wonder we felt like we were being watched!” she whispered to Edward. “There could have been dozens of them there, all the time, only we just couldn’t see them.”

“They’re a bit like Earth chameleons,” said Edward. “I've read articles about them on the Omniweb. They were used as beasts of burden back on Earth in the great Age of Deserts, but their owners kept losing them because they turned the exact same shade as the sand. When they were loaded with boxes or brightly colored rugs, it looked as if the boxes and rugs were floating along in mid-air. Must have been quite a sight.”

“The star, Granny!” Alex whispered urgently. “How are we going to warn them about the star?”

“I don’t know, but whatever we do, we better do it quick,” said Granny.

She pulled a universal translator out of her pocket, turned it on, squared her shoulders, and began to talk. She told them about the star and the gravitational pull and the imminent disaster that awaited them and their home. The translator asked the Singers what language group they would like to hear the message in, offering dozens of options. When it stopped, there was a moment of complete silence. The Singers stared first at Granny, then at the translator, and then at each other. Hundreds of big eyes blinked in bewilderment.

“No luck.”

Edward tried singing the words, then Granny tried talking again — she waved her hands about more and more wildly — but they just weren't making any sense to the Singers. And with every second, the moon was getting closer to the star. Alex couldn’t tell if she was feeling hotter and hotter because of that, or if it was just the fear and frustration that were making her hands sweat.

“Tell them about the engines,” she said to Granny.

“What’s the point?” Granny answered, but she tried anyway. “Look, see, we’d hoped to get your engines going, buy some more time, maybe even blast your moon to safety, but unfortunately…”

Granny’s voice trailed off. When Alex turned to see why, she saw the crowd stepping respectfully back to form a small path, down which stalked two of the tallest Singers yet.

“Their leaders,” murmured Edward, and he bowed. Granny and Alex did the same. Then, as she straightened up, Alex gasped.

“It wasn’t the miners who took the crystals,” she whispered. “Look!”

Hanging like earrings from the leaders’ frills were the power converters missing from the thrusters.

“Beautiful!” murmured Edward.

But Granny didn’t care how they looked. “We need those!” she exclaimed and reached for a crystal. The leaders reared back, and the crowd shrilled in protest.

“Look, I’m not trying to steal them,” said Granny, holding up her hands. “But if you let me have them, I can try to repair your engines — oh, why don’t you understand?! Edward, how much time do we have left?" Alex had never heard her sound so desperate.

“One hour, 57 minutes, 9 seconds… 8 seconds… 7 seconds…”

Granny groaned. “How can we make them get the picture? How? How…”  And then a strange frozen expression came over her face.

“Granny?” said Edward.

“Are you all right?” said Alex.

Granny slapped her forehead so suddenly it made Alex and Edward jump back in alarm.

“Of course!” she cried. “That’s it!”

To be concluded….