3
SOMETIME LATER, AFTER MORE STAIRS and another long elevator ride (this time open-air) leading ever downward, the scientists were led to a large canvas tent the size of a barracks. A short, plump woman with frizzled black hair and a maddening habit of touching her fingertips to her lips said each of their names in a loud, garish tone. Blake and Barbara shared an amused glance as they seated themselves in a couple white plastic folding chairs, their names spoken by the woman as if off a call-sheet, in the manner a teacher might list the name of each student prior to class. Blake had to make an effort not to raise his hand.
After the affirmation of identities, the scientist, who revealed herself to be none other than the world-famous archeologist Madeline Cooney—or “Mad C” as the vast scientific community had nicknamed her—had the lights dimmed. A large glowing square appeared on the wall behind her. A slideshow had begun.
Blake’s amusement withered as the brilliant shrew began lecturing about what exactly was happening and why there was a hidden city inside the moon.
By the time she arrived at the part about the giraffe, she had their undivided attention.
“It was thirteen years ago, almost to the day,” Mad C said, her voice scratchy and deep with a slight warble, as if she were teetering near a precipice. “It was a mistake. Three astronauts of the revived Apollo 23 program found her.”
“They were the first base inhabitants, is that right?” Barbara asked hesitantly, a bit out of her field. Mad C nodded enthusiastically.
“Yes. Part of the first hundred of Base One. These three were mineralogists, vacuuming literally tons of moon soil through a roving atmosphere chugger, made to extract mineral and the miniscule amounts of moisture from the dead soil here.”
The slide showed the chugger mounting a grey sandy crest, the background a black curtain. The slide flipped, and it showed a patch of soil, dotted with white.
“This is what they uncovered. Due west of the Grimaldi crater. On the dark side, that is.”
“The side we can’t see,” Blake said without humor.
Mad C nodded shakily, and a new slide appeared.
Barbara couldn’t help herself and rose from her chair. Mad C said nothing as Barbara approached the screen, her fingers reaching for the image. Mad C, her tic momentarily unchecked, was all but swallowing her own fingers with excitement.
“What the hell is it?” Blake said, feeling like the dumbest guy in the room. “Looks like, Jesus, it looks like an animal.”
Barbara turned, tears in her eyes. She looked at Mad C. “A giraffe.”
Mad C nodded. “That’s what we came up with as well.” Here she paused, looked down, shuffled her feet. She mumbled the next part under her breath, as if ashamed, or afraid. “At first.”
Norris piped up from the back of the tent. Blake’s eyes darted to his shadow. He’d nearly forgotten about the little man, made a point not to lose track of him again.
“It’s too big,” Norris said. “Slide!”
Behind the projector, someone clicked to the next slide, and they all turned to stare.
It was the giraffe bones, all laid out now on a tarp, orderly as could be. The puzzle assembled. Next to the giraffe were measuring sticks. A few of them. Barbara counted quicker than Blake.
“My god,” she said, more amazed than afraid. “It’s nearly thirty feet tall.”
“And the bones are too thick,” Mad C added. “Thick and strong. Fossilized, yes, but even extracted we could tell that the bones were denser, stronger. This animal would have been thirty feet high, nearly five feet wide, and strong as ten bulls.”
Blake looked at the bones, at the two women. He shook his head. “This makes no sense. You’re telling me there are giant giraffe roaming the moon? What the hell is this?”
Mad C raised a hand and the lights popped on in the tent, the slide image swallowed by the light. “The giraffe, we think, was an anomaly,” she said, then started to follow up her thought, but paused, re-thinking her approach. “It was too close to the surface. The rest were much, much deeper.”
Barbara looked at Blake, then sat down in a chair, a dazed look in her eyes. It was too much for her. Blake stepped behind her, put a hand on her shoulder, not fully knowing if he was supporting her, or himself. He looked to Norris, still smiling, then turned back to Mad C.
“The rest?”
4
THEY WALKED PAST HUNDREDS OF bustling, agitated excavators, each with their own flurrying purpose. The entire floor was littered with bones.
“This isn’t a dig site,” Blake said, looking around in wonder. “It’s a goddamned tomb.”
Mad C and Norris exchanged a quick look, as if something in Blake’s words struck a nerve. Barbara couldn’t keep her eyes from the ground, her biologist brain kicking into overdrive as she recognized species after species.
“It’s Noah’s Ark up here,” she said, smiling, her fascination at the discovery overriding whatever mystery it revealed. “That’s a bear… and a lion,” she said, pointing to raw assemblages of bone structures laid out on temporary platforms around the site. “My god is that…” she said, pointing to a far-off stage where the creature was being rebuilt vertically, supported by a thin framework of metal mesh.
“Tyrannosaurus Rex,” Mad C said over her shoulder, as if naming a type of flower Barbara had noticed on their walk through the park. “And that’s a Brontosaurus bone,” she said, pointing to a three-foot long gray wedge walking by in the gloved hands of a young woman, who smiled and nodded as they passed.
Mad C continued. “We’ve also found species similar to Triceratops, Velociraptors, a Baryonix… thousands more or rare pre-Cambrian fossils.”
Barbara gave Mad C a quizzical look. “You said similar?”
