Twenty-two hours into the cis-lunar burn, the Vanguard Scalpel entered the moon’s gravity shadow. He plunged the cutter into total darkness.
Outside the triple-layered quartz viewing ports, the stars vanished behind the huge, jagged curve of the lunar disc. The heat along the ship’s unheated hull plates dropped to minus one hundred and eighty degrees within four minutes. Inside the high-pressure cabin, water drops along the viewport frames froze into delicate, crystal-clear ferns that clicked softly as the metal tightened.
Arthur stood in the watching small roof-dome, adjusting the night-vision filters on his Monocle Taxonomy Loupe.
Beside his boots, Vesper was not resting. The mangled alley lynx was pacing the narrow gangway with a slow, hungry rhythm that had no sound whatsoever. Her claws were unsheathed, their semi-clear, diamond-like edges catching the faint green glow of the instrument panels.
Arthur tapped his magnifying glass, scanning the lynx’s musculoskeletal tension:
“Fascinating,” Arthur murmured, reviewing the body tracking data. “On Earth, sky pushback creates tiny rough churning against your coat, requiring extra muscular force to stabilize your spatial folds. In a hard empty pocket, that fluid drag drops to total zero. The spatial fabric here is fully undisturbed by heat rising heat currents.”
