When the diamond-toothed drill of the Titan Mole punched through the final dark rock shelf, it didn’t break into open air. It broke into an ocean of liquid fire suspended in total silence.
One hundred and thirty-five miles beneath the frozen surface of Mare Serenitatis, the lunar mantle was an underground deep pit of blazing bright fury. Vast rivers of molten silver-steel-dark rock, heated to more than twelve hundred degrees by ancient radioactive decay and corrupted void-star-fire rifts, flowed along glowing black canyons. In the hard empty pocket of the underground deep gap, the lava didn’t bubble or splash. It rolled like heavy, blazing bright liquid silver, casting brilliant vermilion and orange glare against the cavernous ceiling two miles above.
The crawler’s heat padding screamed under the sudden heat spike.
Along the outer hull, aerogel blankets absorbed thousands of watts of radiant heat energy, venting high-pressure coolant vapor through backup exhaust ports. Inside the operations bay, the surrounding heat surged from twenty-two degrees to thirty-five degrees in less than sixty seconds.
Arthur Vance latched the collar ring of his high-pressure EVA suit, checking the seals on his test monocle. His suit was padded with crushed Xuanwu scute powder and woven silver-steel mesh, designed to withstand both the total cold of deep space and the blistering heat of world-size mantles.
