"So then what happened? Come on girl, we need all the details you can give. Did he hold your hand at least?" Alex asked excitedly as she and Clover gathered in front Sam, staring at her with wide eyes and smiles. Sam was still a bit huffy about being forced to share details of her not-so-romantic night with Arnold, but they refused to let the topic die and she didn't have any place to run.
"Well, he might have touched my hand at some point. I don't really remember, I kind of forgot after fighting for my life five minutes later." Sam smirked. She turned to Clover as the blonde opened her mouth. "For the sixth time Clover, no, we did not kiss, now get over it."
"I still can't believe you fell for Arnold." Alex tittered girlishly. "It seems so surreal to go from David to Arnold."
"Tell me about it. I know you're not exactly me Sammie, but you don't have to set your sights THAT low." Clover quipped. Sam grumbled under her breath and looked up at the control panel, relieved to find that the proximity alert was sounding.
"No more time for this girls, we're almost there." Sam climbed up from the floor and took the pilot's seat, listening as her friends took the other seats in the small shuttle cockpit. The dark gray surface of the moon loomed large ahead of them, spinning through space so peacefully it was hard to imagine that it could pose a threat to anything.
"Any idea where or how to begin searching?" Clover asked, sitting in the co-pilot's seat beside Sam.
"Radar isn't working, so we're just gonna have to comb as much as we can manually." Sam took the ship off of autopilot and clutched the flight stick tightly as they entered the moon's atmosphere, which wasn't all that much of a shift from space. She pulled them up and leveled them out while Clover reached out and typed a command into the console, activating a pair of spotlights in front of the ship.
The ship hovered close by the ground, flying along quickly with the spotlights moving back and forth slowly in front of them. "Keep your eyes out for anything suspicious girls." Sam said.
"Like what?" Alex asked.
"Uh..." Sam stuttered for a moment. "I don't know, anything that doesn't look like dull gray rock."
"Got it." Alex replied. Sam shook her head and turned back to watch where they were going, swerving just in time to avoid a spike in the ground in front of them. They flew across the surface of the moon rapidly, their ship occasionally dipping down to skip harmlessly across the surface, kicking up a small cloud of particles.
"Why do so many people dream of coming here? It's so boring." Clover quipped.
"Hey, some people find peace soothing. Maybe you could try it next time you spend five hours waiting for a date to show up." Sam said seriously.
"Eh, how often does that happen? Most guys jump at the chance to go out with me." Clover shrugged. So the search continued, combing the surface of the Moon with great speed, but still not quite enough to search it all in the time they had left. A small gasp floated up to the pilot's seats from Alex in the back. "What's going on Alex? See something?"
"Look up girls..." Alex said breathlessly. Sam and Clover leaned forward to look up through the windshield.
"Whoa..." they breathed in unison when they saw the Earth hovering seemingly right above them. It almost seemed to be glowing through the darkness, a brilliant blue orb spotted with patches of brown. The blue seemed to swirl about itself with constant movement, and patches of white moved slowly across its surface, mingling with the blue in a blend that looked almost like a living thing. And the orb was looming large, engulfing the darkness around it in a brilliant coalescence of light.
"So beautiful..." Alex said softly. Sam couldn't help but agree, but this beautiful sight carried a deadly portent.
"We're running out of time." Sam turned back to the moon. "Don't get distracted girls, we have to find whatever's causing the moon to move and reverse it." Clover and Alex nodded in silent agreement and turned back to searching. Soon however Clover looked down in surprise when the console in front of her began beeping. "What's that?"
"We're picking up a... a transmission." Clover blinked in surprise.
"That has to be one strong signal to punch through the signal blackout." Sam said. "Can you decipher it?"
"I'll patch it into the speakers." Clover's fingers tapped at the console in front of her rapidly. Soon a sound began to come through the speakers. At first it was nothing but static, but in a moment a woman's voice could be heard coming through loud enough to distinguish.
"Stars rain down on the burning light sky..." A voice sang loudly... and rather badly... with the sound of water running in the background.
"It sounds like Sam in the shower." Alex winced.
"Yeah." Clover plugged her ears. "What kind of whack job would be taking a shower on the moon anyway?"
"The kind who's insane enough to try to cause the end of the world perhaps?" Sam pointed out. "Can you pinpoint the origin of the signal Clover?"
"No problem." Clover turned back to her panel. "It's coming from five miles to the... uh... left of us." Clover said. Sam turned their ship around and they darted in the right direction. Soon they came up on a moderately sized dome set into the moon rocks, buried slightly inside the moon's surface. Through one of the incredibly thick windows Sam saw normal lights, decorations, even a small stereo against one wall. The only thing separating it from any house in Beverly Hills was that the door stuck out a few feet, where there was undoubtedly an airlock.
"Well, this looks pretty cozy for a moon-house." Alex quipped.
"I guess if someone's smart enough to hurl the moon at us, they might be smart enough to move a pocket of atmosphere to the moon." Sam said. "Though I don't know why they'd want to live on something that's going to be destroyed any time now."
"Let's go ask." Clover suggested. Sam and Alex nodded, so they all stood up and pressed their collars, activating the thick glass helmets that surrounded their head, making their WOOHP uniforms completely airtight.
"Remember girls, there's no sound in space and we might not be able to use our suits' communicators, so hand signals." Sam reminded them.
"Right." Clover and Alex nodded. The three girls piled into the ship's small airlock, waited for the pressure to change, then bounced their way out onto the surface of the moon. Sam led the way toward the small house, hopping along like she'd seen in movies. She came to a stop in front of the door, moving slowly so as not to send herself flying off in a random direction. Her partners landed beside her.
Clover ran her hand along the door curiously, but looked over at Sam and shrugged when she couldn't find anything. Sam noticed Alex poking at a small electronic pad beside the door, trying random numbers and getting repeated 'incorrect' messages until she wound up and threatened to hit the thing. Sam jumped over and grabbed her, half to protect the pad, half to keep her from floating away from the momentum of her vigorous movement.
Sam knocked on her helmet and gave her a droll glare, at which Alex blushed and grinned sheepishly. Sam let her go and turned to the pad to examine it for the moment, then reached into one of her pockets and slowly withdrew a pair of innocuous looking sunglasses. She was sure Alex was making some kind of smart-ass remark as she raised them to the pad.
The Cyberjacker Sunglasses went immediately to work, a light flooding into the panel while the four digits in the display began to fluctuate quickly. One by one they fell into place, then the panel flashed green and the thick airlock door began to slide open. Sam jumped her way inside, waited for her friends to follow, then pressed the panel to begin pressurization.
Soon the girls fell more firmly to the ground as artificial gravity was implemented, and shortly after that the inner door opened into a homey room with all the furnishings one could want. There was even a refrigerator in the kitchen beyond a door along with cooking implements. It was as comfortable a home as one could ask for.
The girls lowered their helmets. "How much do you think the rent is on a place like this?" Alex quipped.
"Gotta be more than we'll make in our entire WOOHP careers." Clover replied.
"Ssshhhh!" Sam shushed quickly, listening. She could hear the running water from the back, coupled with the singing they'd heard before. Sam gestured for her partners to follow her towards the back slowly, careful not to make any noises. They slid through the hallway and Sam pushed a door open slowly, peeking inside. She could see the silhouette of a woman outlined in the fogged-over glass, washing her hair and singing badly to herself.
"Does that voice sound familiar to anyone else?" Alex whispered.
"Come on, we'll surround her while her guard is down." Sam slipped into the room slowly, reaching into her pocket for her Stuntan Lotion, holding it tightly in one hand while she slid up to the side of the door. Clover and Alex pulled out their own weapons, moving up to the other side while Sam reached for the handle on the shower door.
She quickly yanked the door open and stepped in front of it, pointing her weapon at the showering woman behind the glass. "Freeze and put your hands over your head!" Sam demanded quickly. The woman looked over at her in shock, freezing in mid-rinse with an astonished look on her face. They just stared at her, until Alex gasped.
"I recognize you! You're Lady Luna!" Alex shouted.
"Do you girls MIND?" Lady Luna suddenly lowered her arms to cover her chest, her face turning red.
"Step out of the shower, you psychopath." Sam demanded. "You're going to help us, now."
"You storm into my home, interrupt my shower and begin ordering me about? You must've been born under Mars..." She growled. "Can I at least have a towel?" Sam nodded at Clover, who grabbed a towel off the nearby sink and tossed it to her. Lady Luna wrapped the towel around herself and stepped out of the shower, still furious and red-faced.
"Okay now spill, how did you do it? And how do we stop it?" Sam demanded.
"I don't know what you're talking about, I've done nothing illegal..." She lowered her voice. "Except breaking out of prison..." She coughed and raised her voice again. "But I haven't hurt anyone since the last time we met. I only want to live a peaceful life now!"
"Don't play dumb. How did you create that gravity field between Earth and the moon?" She asked.
Lady Luna shrugged irritably "I used the antigravity research from a former colleague of mine to create a gravity bridge so I could get up and down from here."
"So you admit you created the gravity field. So you ARE the one who's trying to drop the moon on us." Sam smirked. Lady Luna blinked in surprise, staring at her. "You... you did know about that... didn't you?" Sam asked softly. Lady Luna slowly shook her head.
"Why in the cosmos would I want to destroy the moon while I'm living on it?" Lady Luna demanded.
"Because you're insane?" Alex suggested helpfully. Lady Luna turned to walk to the window, wiping the moisture off the window and looking up toward the Earth. She gasped in surprise when she saw the bright blue sphere looming so close.
"This isn't right, the strip wasn't nearly powerful enough to do this." Lady Luna turned back to the spies, holding up her towel with one hand. "This... this is wrong. My charts never said anything about this... I must have overlooked something." She quickly rushed out of the bathroom into the back of the house, leaving the three spies staring after her, dumbfounded.
"Uh... what now?" Alex asked confusedly. "Do we arrest her or...?"
"Maybe we can get her to help us. It doesn't look like she wants to die any more than we do." Clover suggested. "And she's been up here a while, maybe she's noticed someone doing something strange."
"I'll go talk to her, you two look for clues. Even if she's not responsible for this, she said she got the technology from someone else. Maybe there's some records or something about who it is." Sam said.
"Will do Sammy." Clover and Alex said in unison. Sam nodded and turned to follow Lady Luna into the back. She found her sitting in front of a telescope, staring out at the stars that surrounded the Earth just outside the large window. She hadn't bothered changing out of her towel. Her breath was slow, almost radiating awe as she stared through the telescope.
"Lady Luna, we need-" Sam was interrupted.
"Ssshhhh..." Luna said softly. "It's amazing..." Her voice was shaking with excitement. "The cosmos is crying... all the tales of the stars are tales of sadness and sorrow... they are in mourning..." Her voice dropped to a soft whisper. "All of the celestial bodies I know, all of them are crying out in sadness... it's so beautiful... and yet... so sad."
"Imagine that." Sam coughed. "Look, we really need your cooperation in shutting down the gravity field, and getting the moon back where it belongs." Luna looked over at her from the telescope.
"Of course..." she stood up slowly. "But... if we shut down my gravity field generator, I won't be able to get back to Earth. I'd starve."
"Look, if you help us, I'll not only tell WOOHP to let you off for your crimes, I'll tell them to start DELIVERING everything you need to you." Sam said quickly. "Now come on, we don't have a whole lot of time left." Lady Luna stared at her steadily, as if studying her for something Sam couldn't name. Finally she nodded and straightened up, clasping her hands in front of her.
"Okay, let's do it. But first I must get dressed, if you'll excuse me." Lady Luna said.
"Of course, we'll be waiting in the living room." Sam nodded and turned to head back into the small living room, where Alex and Clover were sitting at a small laptop computer on a nearby desk. "You girls find anything?"
"We found the formula she used as a basis for her gravity beam." Clover moved aside to let Sam approach the computer. "Look familiar?" Sam blinked and examined the formula.
"It's Major Snell's antigravity formula..." Sam blinked in surprise. "So if anyone would be capable of modifying Lady Luna's beam, it'd be him. Or Jerry I guess, since WOOHP has it deciphered too." She stood up straight. "But we haven't heard about Snell busting out of jail."
"We didn't hear about Lady Luna's escape either." Clover pointed out. "And let's not forget she's still a suspect. We can't just take her word on it that she's completely innocent here."
"Agreed. But our best option right now is to go with her to shut down the beam, and try to get a transmission back to Jerry to tell him to check in on Major Snell." Sam turned to Clover authoritatively. "Go send a Light Flash transmission back. It'll take a while for it to reach him, but it's the best we can do."
"On it." Clover turned to head toward the airlock while Sam turned to Alex.
"Alex, run the computer system through your X-Powder and examine it. Somehow Lady Luna accidentally leaked a radio transmission through the interference, I want to know exactly how it happened. I'll try to distract Lady Luna while you're downloading." Sam said.
"On it." Alex turned back to the laptop, which was hooked up to the rest of the building's life support and communications systems, and hooked her X-Powder to it. Sam turned to head into the back toward the bedroom she'd spotted earlier, pushing the door open just in time to see Lady Luna finish zipping up the front of her blue space suit.
Lady Luna looked back at her in surprise. "Don't you girls ever knock?" She smirked.
"Oh... sorry." Sam smiled sheepishly. "Actually, we have a few minutes, and I was wondering if you could help me."
"Help you? With what?" Lady Luna asked.
"Well... you know, I've always wondered what my future holds... I was hoping you could tell me." Sam said. Lady Luna stared at her for a moment, then her eyes began to shine like jewels as she clasped her hands in front of her.
"Of course my little moonbeam! I would be delighted to share the knowledge of the cosmos!" Lady Luna grabbed her hand excitedly and pulled her back to her bed, reaching under it to pull out several large rolls of paper. She unwrapped them and spread them out on the bed, revealing large star charts, lists, and various other things Sam couldn't name.
"When were you born?" Lady Luna asked.
"Oh, uh... September 12th." Sam replied, remembering she had a part to play in this too. Lady Luna looked happy to have her field appreciated; so at least this was an effective distraction while her partners investigated her more thoroughly.
"Ah... sign of Virgo mark of the Virgin, no reflection on you I'm sure." Lady Luna smirked. Sam was about to protest, but she continued. "Second house of Venus, very tricky thing to read. Venuses tend to be rather practical and logical, love is a very tricky thing for them to find." She looked through her charts. "But the stars are in your favor sunshine, Venus is aligning with the sigil of Mercury, love cannot be far off."
Sam was still fuming over the virgin crack, but the last thing caught her attention. "Excuse me? Love cannot be far off? What do you mean?"
"Just what I said, Venus and Mercury are aligning to allow intermingling, love between them cannot be far off when two governing stars come so close together." Lady Luna sighed. "In fact, you may have already taken the first steps, the stars began to align at the beginning of the week." She said. Sam blinked in surprise. She'd begun her semi-relationship with Arnold just two days ago...
"Is that so..." Sam mused. Then she shook her head when she heard the bedroom door creak open. Alex poked her head in.
"Are we going or not Sammy?" Alex asked.
"Yeah, we should really get going. Thanks for your help Lady Luna." Sam stood up.
"My pleasure nova star." Lady Luna stood up, obviously in far better spirits now than she'd been before. "Now let's go save the Earth, the most precious star of all." She turned to stomp out of the room, grabbing Alex's wrist and yanking her along toward the living with. Alex yelped in surprise, struggling to keep up so she wouldn't be dragged along the floor. Sam followed quickly. "Do we have a way to get there quickly?"
"Our shuttle is right out front. Come on." Sam taped the collar of her suit, activating the bubble helmet. Alex did the same.
"Well what are we waiting for then?" Lady Luna slid her helmet on and fastened it down tightly. "Let's get going already." Sam nodded and they all climbed into the airlock, waiting for it to depressurize before heading out and bouncing toward the shuttle. They went through the airlock and made their way inside, where Clover was leaning against the fridge with a cold Pepsi in one hand.
"I was wondering when you were coming." Clover smirked.
"We'll talk about it later." Sam warned as she deactivated her bubble helmet. Lady Luna slid her helmet off and walked up toward the controls, her eyes wide and sparkling.
"Jupiter hold me, the equipment on this ship is light years beyond anything I ever worked with in the space program." She said in awe.
"Being law enforcement has its perks." Alex grinned.
"Can you give me the coordinates of your gravity-field generator?" Sam asked as she slid into the pilot's seat. Lady Luna slid into the seat beside her, still admiring the bevy of controls that lay before her.
"Of course, I'll input them myself." Lady Luna cracked her knuckles and went to work on the ship's controls. Alex and Clover watched from the back nervously, praying that she didn't find anything capable of blowing up the ship. But she didn't, and soon they were on their way across the surface of the moon. There were too many unknown factors to believe they were close to putting an end to the crisis, but they were making progress at least.
TO BE CONTINUED
