Moonfall

PACIFIC NEWS NETWORK BULLETIN. 3:56 P.M.

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"This is Tashi Yomiuri coming to you live from lunar orbit. I'm in one of the space planes, the SSTO Rome, and we're taking our last passengers on board now before we start back for Earth. The comet is about eight million miles away, coming toward us at almost a million miles an hour.

"We've been orbiting the Moon three times a day at a height of about three thousand kilometers. Which means we see the comet rise and set every eight hours. We've been able to watch it grow.

"The mood on the spacecraft is somber. People are frightened, and they'll be very glad to be on their way."

Excerpt of Commentary by Melinda Bright.

"People speculate about how far the comet has come, how old it is, why it's traveling so fast. We've heard astronomers suggest that it might have been blown out of a supernova, and that if it was, the supernova must have happened millions, or perhaps billions, of years ago.

"If that's true, this thing has had the Moon's number for a long time. I remember as a little girl sitting in our backyard in Kentucky, watching the Moon from my swing, and thinking how long it had been in the sky, and how it would be there forever. Now we know that's not so. The comet's been on its way possibly since the first humans climbed down out of the trees, and this day was marked on some cosmic calendar with all the inevitability of a quadratic equation. We've been congratulating ourselves that the comet's going to hit the Moon and not the Earth. And I agree that's reason to feel fortunate.

"But it isn't reason to feel glad. The Moon is an old friend, far older than the species. It's an integral part of who we are, and the way we live. It softens us. We associate it with our most tender feelings. We have made it a goddess, and we have written songs and poems about it. We have pledged our love to each other in its silver light. Maybe only when we see it no more, when this visiting monstrosity has put out its light for all generations to come, will we understand what we have lost." • • • SSTO Rome Flight Deck. 4:04 P.M.

John Verrano eased onto his new heading, watched the clock run down to zero, and felt the engines kick in. The force they generated pressed him back into his seat as the spacecraft rose out of orbit.