Steinfield allowed Hunt to digest this while he picked up the beaker with a pair of tongs and proceeded to fill the mugs. Having safely completed this operation, he began filling his pipe, still silent.

"Any more?" Hunt asked at last, reaching for his own cigarette case.

Steinfield nodded affirmatively. "Nearside exceptions. Most of the Nearside craters fit with the classic model: old. However, there are some scattered around that don't fit the pattern; cosmic-ray dating puts them at approximately the same age as those on Farside. The usual explanation is that some strays from the recent Farside bombardment overshot around to the Nearside . . ." He shrugged. "But there are peculiarities in some instances that don't really support that."

"Like?"

"Like some of the glasses and breccia formations show heating patterns that aren't consistent with recent impact . . . I'll show you what I mean later."

Hunt turned this new information over in his mind as he lit a cigarette and sipped his drink. It tasted like coffee, anyway.

"And that's the funny thing?"

"Yep, that's about the broad outline. No, wait a minute—last funny thing plus one. How come none of the meteorites in the shower hit Earth? Plenty of eroded remains of terrestrial meteorite craters have been identified and dated. All the computer simulations say that there should be a peak of abnormal activity at around this time, judging from how big the heap of crud that hit the Moon must have been. But there aren't any signs of one, even allowing for the effects of the atmosphere."

Hunt and Steinfield spent the rest of that day and all of the next sifting through figures and research reports that went back many years. Hunt did not sleep at all during the following night, but smoked a pack of cigarettes and consumed a gallon of coffee while he stared at the walls of his hotel room and twisted the new information into every contortion his mind could devise.

Fifty thousand years ago the Lunarians were on the Moon. Where they came from didn't really matter for the time being; that was another question. At about the same time an intense meteorite storm obliterated the Farside surface. Did the storm wipe out the Lunarians on the Moon? Possibly—but that wouldn't have had any effect on them back on whatever planet they had come from. If all the UNSA people on Luna were wiped out, it wouldn't make any lasting difference to Earth. So, what happened to the rest of the Lunarians? Why hadn't anybody seen them since? Had something else happened to them that was more widespread than whatever happened on the Moon? Could the something else have caused the meteorite storm? Could a second something else have both caused the first and extinguished the Lunarians in other places? Perhaps there was no connection? Unlikely.