Deep beneath the Lunar surface, in a vast, carefully sealed cavern, Moondwellers fashion a wilderness. Eyrnen, a Lunarian grandson of Dagny Beynac, guides Dagny and her Terran son, Lars Rydberg.
Descending in an elevator, they emerge on a balcony near the ceiling of the two-kilometer high cavern. Sunlike lamps shine gently for the local morning. Warm breeze bears forest odors. Walls tens of kilometers away are dim with distance. Clouds drift while birds and a winged man monitoring the forest fly in the blue air. There are trees, meadows, wildflowers and a waterfall from rock forming a lake and a winding stream.
Despite their confinement in artificial environments, this is what Lunarians are able to do with their knowledge and control of sufficient energy. Earlier, after the discovery of Proserpina, Dagny had wondered:
"Who, though, would want to dwell that far from the sun, in a cold close to absolute zero?" (26, p. 356)
But, of course, the Proserpinans, when they exist, do not live in the cold and dark!
On Proserpina:
the gravity is right for Lunarians;
abundant minerals are easily mined;
water, ammonia and organics are present on the planet and in nearby space.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And that was an impressive achievement of the Lunarians, an underground terraforming of the Moon!
And what Dagny Beynac meant, as regards Proserpina was that the sheer distance and isolation of the planetoid from the inner Solar System made it seem cold and dark.
Sean
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