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"In that case they wouldn't have been in proximity to the rock long
enough to produce the effects observed." He opened another jar
marked "Disodium Hydrogen Phosphate." "Sugar?"
"Second funny thing," Steinfield continued. "Heat balance. We know
how much mass came down, and from the way it fell, we can figure
its kinetic energy. We also know from statistical sampling how much
energy needed to be dissipated to account for the melting and
structural deformations; also, we know how much energy gets
produced by underground radioactivity and where. Problem: The
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equations don't balance; you'd need more energy to make what
happened happen than there was available. So, where did the extra
come from? The computer models of this are very complex and there
could be errors in them, but that's the way it looks right now."
Steinfield allowed Hunt to digest this while he picked up the
beaker with a pair of tongs and proceeded to ifil the mugs. Having
safely completed this operation, he began filling his pipe, stifi
silent.
"Any more?" Hunt asked at last, reaching for his own cigarette
case.
Steinfield nodded affirmatively. "Nearside exceptions. Most of the
Nearside craters fit with the classic model: old. However, there
are some scattered around that don't fit the pattern; cosmic-ray
dating puts them at approximately the same age as those on Farside.
The usual explanation is that some strays from the recent Farside
bombardment overshot around to the Nearside. . ." He shrugged. "But
there are peculiarities in some instances that don't really support
that."
"Like?"
"Like some of the glasses and breccia formations show heating
patterns that aren't consistent with recent impact . . . I'll show
you what I mean later."
Hunt turned this new information over in his mind as he lit a
cigarette and sipped his drink. It tasted like coffee, anyway.
"And that's the last funny thing?"
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"Yep, that's about the broad outline. No, wait a minute-last funny
thing plus one. How come none of the meteorites in the shower hit
Earth? Plenty of eroded remains of terrestrial meteorite craters
have been identified and dated. All the computer simulations say
that there should be a peak of abnormal activity at around this
time, judging from how big the heap of crud that hit the Moon must
have been. But there aren't any signs of one, even allowing for the
effects of the atmosphere."
Hunt and Steinfield spent the rest of that day and all of the next
sifting through figures and research reports that went back many
years. Hunt did not sleep at all during the following night, but
smoked a pack of cigarettes and consumed a gallon of coffee while
he stared at the walls of his hotel room and twisted the new
information into every contortion his mind could devise.
Fifty thousand years ago the Lunarians were on the Moon. Where they
came from didn't really matter for the time being; that was another
question. At about the same time an intense meteorite storm
obliterated the Farside surface. Did the storm wipe out the
Lunarians on the Moon? Possibly-but that wouldn't have had any
effect on them back on whatever planet they had come from. If all
the UNSA people on Luna were wiped out, it wouldn't make any
lasting difference to Earth. So, what happened to the rest of the
Lunarians? Why hadn't anybody seen them since? Had something else
happened to them that was more widespread than whatever happened on
the Moon? Could the something else have caused the meteorite storm?
Could a second something else have both caused the first and
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extinguished the Lunarians in other places? Perhaps there was no
connection? Unlikely.
Then there were the inconsistencies that Steinfield had talked
about. . . . An absurd idea came from nowhere, which Hunt rejected
impatiently. But as the night wore on, it kept coming back again
with growing insistence. Over breakfast he decided that he had to
know the story that lay below those billions of tons of rubble.
There had to be some way of extracting enough information to
reconstruct the characteristics of the surface just before the
bombardment commenced. He put the question to Steinfield later on
that morning, back in the lab.
Steinfield shook his head firmly. 'We tried for over a year to make
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