Have you guys ever read Jerry Oltion´s sci-fi short story "Abandon In Place" ?? If not, then you must !!

In many ways, the short story is a tribute to the Apollo project.

Among many other things, the story features a lunar south pole landing, at "the rim of the Aitken Basin, a 6-mile-deep crater right on the Moon's south pole".

A short quote (and believe me, it really IS a SHORT quote !!):

"It was too cold, and the Moon's gravity was too light, for it to pack
down into solid ice, so it remained fluffy, like extremely fine snow. When Rick
and Tessa walked out into it they sank clear to their thighs, even though they
only weighed about fifty pounds, and they would probably have sunk further if
they'd gone on. But they could feel the cold seeping into their legs already, so
they had to scoop up what samples they could in special thermos bottles designed
for the purpose and turn back. The sample equipment packed in the lander was
designed for a polar mission, but their spacesuits were made to keep them warm
in vacuum, not against ice that could conduct heat away.
So they walked around the crater rim, bounding along in the peculiar
kangaroo-hop gait that worked so well in light gravity, looking for anything
else that might prove interesting. That was just about everything as far as Rick
was concerned. He was on the Moon! Every aspect of it, from the rocky, cratered
ground underfoot to the sharp, rugged horizon, reminded him that he was walking
on another world. He looked out toward the Earth, about two-thirds of it visible
above the horizon, about two-thirds of that lit by the sun, and he felt a shiver
run down his spine at the sight. He had thought he would never see it like that
except in thirty-year-old pictures."

You can read the entire short story as a HUGE txt-file at:

http://m-yoda.yi.org:8003/books/Stor...in%20Place.txt



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Sea of Tranquility on 2002-06-21 14:52 ]</font>