MOON
TOWN
Remembered Earth Universe
Volume 12
Lunar Series
Book 4
D.W. PATTERSON
Copyright © 2025 D.W. Patterson
All rights reserved.
First D Printing – January, 2025
Future Chron Publishing
Cover – Copyright © 2025 D.W. Patterson
Cover Image – Illustration 75022245 | Star © Pavel Chagochkin | Dreamstime.com
No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission, except in the case of brief quotations for the purpose of review. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are products of the author's imagination and should not be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events and people, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Hard Science Fiction – Old School
Human Generated Content
Website: https://dwpatterson.com
Email: d.w.patterson.writer@gmail.com
For Rozella
“We are off! And do we know it, not just because the world is yelling "Lift-off" in our ears, but because the seats of our pants tell us so! Trust your instruments, not your body, the modern pilot is always told, but this beast is best felt. Shake, rattle and roll!”
― Michael Collins
To The Reader
In this story (and most of my stories), if I use a date, I know I am using the antiquated dating system, A.D. I blame this on the book Daybreak – 2250 A.D. by Andre Norton, which I read some time in elementary school (and of which I recently bought an old paperback copy). So, I was imprinted early with that dating system and think it sounds cooler than C.E. No social, political or any other kind of statement is meant.
Science and technology are important to me and I enjoy developing them as I develop a series. However, a problem arises if I have to reintroduce the science and technology in each story as the series progresses. For a reader that has been reading all along the reintroduction must be tedious and somewhat boring. For a reader entering later in the series (and I do like for the stories to stand alone) the lack of explanation could be off putting. So, as a compromise I have included the previous science and technology explanations in a Glossary at the end of this story, it also contains other facts about the series. Probably not a perfect solution, but the only one I could come up with at this time.
Chapter 1
2042 A.D.
The Lunans were still arriving in ships of fire, that is, people were flocking to the Moon to live and work in greater and greater numbers fifteen years after they had first returned.
To accommodate, the companies providing housing on the Moon were still building. Tima in Mare Frigoris, the first commercial settlement, was expanding but slowly. It had built up somewhat haphazardly and now as it approached a population of two hundred people it was getting more difficult to add livable space.
But that wasn't true of Fontenelle, also in Mare Frigoris. Founded by the New Lunar Corporation just south of the ice-bearing crater of the same name, it had been designed to expand. Down a central corridor with residential and commercial spaces off to each side, it was only necessary to add an airlock to an already prepared location to add another apartment or shop or business.
The corridor was shaped like a half section of hose. To this “frame,” built up with Mooncrete, a building material made from an alkali binder and Moon regolith by 3D printers, was overlayed several more feet of regolith for radiation protection. Underneath the floor of the corridor was an access area for pipes, electrical, and other utilities. Each residence or business had an entrance airlock off the main corridor with an “out-vac” airlock to the Moon's surface at the other end, to be used mostly for emergencies. Typically, the airlock to the main corridor served more as a door unless there was an atmosphere breach on either side.
The town had grown to four hundred people and half as many robots, most of them involved in one of New Lunar's industries; building, prospecting, mining, or tourism. There was also a small but growing cottage industry in providing crafts for other residents and those of Tima, one-hundred fifty-two miles away.
Now, two years after its founding Fontenelle was to expand. Another main corridor was being added perpendicular to the first. At the intersection would be a rotunda like area with the largest open floor area and highest indoor ceiling on the Moon. Room for six hundred more residents would eventually be available. New Lunar believed that with the expertise they had gained with the first corridor, the new corridor could be open and occupied within six months.
The only problem with the company's plans was that the general manager for construction had rotated back to Earth at the end of his contract and he wasn't interested in returning. To ensure that the schedule would be met New Lunar had hired away a construction foreman from Lunar Limited, the company building the Tima settlement.
