Walking on the Moon was like wading through a desert of crushed fiery glass sunk in frozen oil.
With every stride Arthur Vance took across the floor of Mare Tranquillitatis, his heavy magnetic boots sank two inches into the fine, charcoal-gray regolith. There was no air to create wind pushback or scatter falling specks. Because of that, the dust kicked up by his heels didn’t billow in soft clouds. It rose in razor-sharp, curved arcs. It caught the blinding glare of the sun like showers of tiny black glass needles before dropping instantly back to the surface.
Arthur paused at the crest of a low dark rock ridge, raising his Monocle Taxonomy Loupe to scan the lonely expanse ahead.
The horizon was stark, sharp, and unnervingly close. On Earth, the horizon pulled back five miles into the sky haze. Here, on a sky body with one-quarter of Earth’s width and zero sky refraction, the edge of the world curved away barely two miles in front of him. That created the claustrophobic illusion of standing atop a huge, curved iron ball suspended over the deep pit.
Above that razor horizon, the blackness of deep space was total. It didn’t twinkle. The stars were cold, piercing points of fixed diamond light, framed by the blinding, breathtaking crescent of Earth. A vibrant swirling orb of sapphire oceans and white cloud vortices that felt painfully distant.
