The Caverns of Kronos

The Moon Trogs - Part 4

     The moon trog led the way through the tangle of stems, swinging his way easily and skilfully, as naturally as a man walking the streets of a Tharian city. The Tharians got into all kinds of difficulties, though. Floating off in all directions and tumbling helplessly through the air until they managed to grab hold of a stem, tendril or one of their friends. After some experimentation, though, they got the idea and managed to make some progress in the right direction, although awkwardly and clumsily, and the tunnel entrance was soon out of sight behind them. After a few minutes the foliage thinned ahead of them, the sunlight grew brighter and they were able to see the base of the dome itself.

     Tallium turned out to be the moon trog name for the silvery grey moon metal they’d puzzled over earlier. The metal framework was worryingly thin, with struts two inches by six in cross section holding huge, ten foot wide, triangular plates of transparent crystal. No, three plates, Thomas saw as he looked closer. Three layers of crystal. The two innermost about half an inch thick, the outermost a full inch thick, all three separated by a two inch gap from its neighbours but with round pegs of the same transparent crystal providing support every ten inches or so. The outermost pane was pitted and pockmarked on its outer surface by micrometeorite impacts, obscuring their vision a little, but they could still clearly see the stark, desolate surface of the tiny moon.

     Above them, the stars shone with impossible clarity and brilliance, moving slowly across the sky as Kronos moved in its orbit around Tharia, but the yellow sun was out of sight, on the other side of the dome. It was the surface that caught their attention, though. It was markedly different from what they'd seen through the windows of the observatory. There, the surface had been all jumbled rocks, with such a stark contrast between brilliantly sunlit rock and inky black shadows that it had hurt their eyes. Here, though, the surface was completely covered by a vast number of shiny dark domes, each about six inches across and packed almost shoulder to shoulder. It looked as though some giant reptile had made its nest out there and laid thousands of large, dark eggs.

     “What are they?” asked Jerry in wonder.

     “Cupolas,” said the moon trog. “Domes of glass, each one covering the entrance to a light tunnel. The cupola collects pretty much all the light that falls on it and directs it down through optical fibres. We collect all the light that falls on this side of Kronos. We depend on sunlight for everything. It lights those caverns and tunnels that are close to the surface, it…”

     “Wait a minute, wait a minute,” said Thomas, staring in disbelief. “You collect all the light that falls on this side of Kronos? All of it?”

     “The side of Kronos facing away from Tharia, yes.”

     “But Kronos is twenty five miles across! I know that's small compared to the other two moons, but it's still twenty five miles across!”

     “Yes,” agreed the moon trog with a smile.

     “That's, what…?” Thomas stared ahead into nothing as he did the mental arithmetic.

     “A little under a thousand square miles,” said Ban Chin.

     Thomas stared at him. “How many cupolas is that?”

     “I've got no idea. A few million I would think. I can ask if you like.”

     “More than a few million! A few thousand million perhaps! And all the optical fibre…”

     “We haven't just been doing this since the fall of Agglemon. We were doing it for centuries before that. The Empire knew what we were up to. They helped us.”