The Caverns of Kronos

The Moon Trogs - Part 5

     The sun rose again and set again before they awoke. When Thomas finally opened his eyes he found Lirenna still asleep beside him, and as so many times before he was literally struck dumb by her grace and beauty, far surpassing that of any merely human woman. Her slow deterioration, the gradual loss of her vitality and joy of living that had accompanied her distress at being confined underground for so long had been so slow and insidious that he’d barely noticed it, but it had only taken one night under the stars for her to recover completely and she was now so radiant, so alive, that Thomas thought he was still dreaming.

     The others saw him staring dreamily at her and grinned at each other in amusement, until Diana gave them a sharp poke and scowled at them in rebuke.

     They were having a breakfast of trail rations when Ban-Chin returned. “Is this what you’ve been eating?” he asked in surprise, taking one of Jerry’s biscuits and examining it closely.

     “Yes,” replied Shaun. “Why?”

     “No wonder you nearly died of dehydration!” said the moon trog, shaking his head in wonder. “This stuff’ll kill you!”

     “We were told it contained everything necessary to sustain life,” protested Jerry.

     “Maybe, everything except water,” replied Ban-Chin. “The human renegades survive by eating ordinary food; the animals and plants they find in the tunnels and caverns. They contain all the water you need to survive. To live on this stuff, you’d need to carry gallons of water around with you everywhere you go.”

     There was a sudden loud smack that made them all jump, and they looked around in surprise. “What was that?” asked Matthew.

     “Micrometeorite impact,” replied the moon trog casually. He indicated one of the dome’s triangular panes of crystal and they saw a pit in its outer surface that hadn’t been there before. A pit about an inch wide and half an inch deep. “Dust from the comets,” he explained. “You get used to it. Impacts big enough to break all three layers are rare.”

     The Tharians suddenly felt rather uncomfortable and anxious to get underground again, even Lirenna. “Er, what happens when a pane breaks?” asked Thomas nervously.

     “We just replace it,” replied Ban-Chin. “It would take about ten hazads, that’s about ten day, night cycles, for all the air in a dome to escape through a broken pane, so there’s no hurry. We usually get a new pane in place within two or three hours. Every so often, though, there’s a more serious impact, sometimes big enough to destroy an entire dome and kill everyone in it. The most serious incident so far happened about fifty years ago. A fragment of a comet came down about five miles from here and half our domes were destroyed all at once. We went through a time of great famine after that, and it was many years before things got back to normal.”

     “The great disaster,” exclaimed Diana. “The great disaster that hit the city.”

     “Yes,” agreed the moon trog. “We heard that you humans suffered as well. Let’s hope that it's a long time before something like that happens again. We’re determined not to be caught out like that again, though. We were lucky the last time. If every dome containing livestock had been destroyed, then all our farm animals would have become extinct, or we might have lost every dome containing grasses and have to spend the rest of eternity without wheat, maize or corn. As it was, though, we lost some of every kind of dome, and some of every kind survived. Ever since then, though, we keep seeds of every plant in storage caverns deep in the centre of Kronos, and keep some of every kind of livestock as pets in our homes, so that if another great disaster hits we’ll be sure not to lose any more species. Also, we have enough food in storage to last us until we can rebuild enough domes to grow more. If, the Gods forbid, it does ever happen again, we’re determined to be able to shrug our shoulders and just rebuild and carry on. We’re not going to suffer another famine like the last time.”