The Moon became a small, cold world, its evolution over a billion years after its birth, its youngest rocks more antique than Earth’s oldest.

And, far beneath the dusty plains, the remnant of the Impactor brooded, embedded in darkness.

On the Moon, Tom Barber was going through Rover read-outs for Houston. “Amp-hours 90, 92. Voltages 68, 68. Battery temperatures 101 and about 100; motor temps off scale, low. Bearing is 088, range 1.8, distance 2.5 klicks.”

Thank you…

Jays picked up a couple of sample bags from the stowage in back of the Rover, and took the geology hammer from Tom’s backpack, and his tongs from the Rover’s footpan. He pulled the gnomon out from its stowage sleeve behind his seat. In stowage, the gnomon’s three legs were folded against the central staff to make a slender sheaf. When he extracted it the legs sprang out into a spindly tripod.

Carrying his tools he loped away, towards the rille.

The regolith crunched under his feet, sinking maybe a half-inch, before he settled to a firmer footing. The dust sprayed around his feet, sinking quickly back to the surface. It was like walking on crisp, frozen snow, or maybe a cinder track.

He had to climb up a slight incline to reach the rille’s rim. He was out of breath in a few steps.

Still, he persisted.

He paused for a breath. He turned and looked back at the skeletal Rover. It looked like an ugly toy: squat and low, sitting there in a churned-up circle of dust. Its orange fenders and gold insulation were the brightest things on the surface of the Moon. A few yards beyond the Rover, Tom was working. He was gouging at the surface with a long-handled tool, taking a rake sample of the dust. His red commander’s armbands were bright.

Jays took a swig of water from the bag inside his suit. He felt his chin strap rasp against a week-old beard. He’d promised his daughter, Tracy, that he wouldn’t shave until he got home. After all, in the picture books, the explorers always came home with beards.

The Rover’s television camera was watching him, cold and judgemental. Time is ticking on, it seemed to say, billion-dollar seconds wasting while you stand there and goof off.

He turned and continued.

He reached a flat crest, and came suddenly on the rille.

He stopped. He raised the five-hundred-mil camera from its bracket on his chest, and took a horizontal pan, turning slowly, and then a vertical pan, all the time geologizing, describing what he saw.

The rille was up to eight miles wide, a half-mile deep, and all of a hundred miles long. Schröter’s Valley, the biggest rille known on the Moon. It was a river valley, but cut into the bottom of this dead lunar sea — not by water — by a lava flow, some time in the deep past.

He stepped forward again.