"So why didn't they?" asked the woman as she paced across the observation deck. "It's ridiculous," replied the man on the couch, his voice edged with impatience. "Not ridiculous at all. They had one-- two hundred million years to do it. Why not?" "No opposable thumbs comes to mind," he said dismissively. He kept his bespectacled eyes on her long legs, trying to force his mind into something of a parallel track to hers. But it was difficult, especially after a sleepless night. Kirk Teige never liked space travel, or boats, or even cars for an extended period. This two day trip would be his undoing, he supposed. He shifted his weight on the couch, trying not to sit on the air sickness bag in his back pocket. "Now you're being ridiculous. They had--" she furrowed her brow, "one hundred and sixty million years to evolve thumbs. Instead, they developed frills and horns and spikes. Doesn't matter, though. I still say they should have had time to do it." "Look, Dr. Faux." "Please, call me Clarisse." Teige leaned toward her. "Clarisse. People have bigger brains, and look at us. It took us a hundred thousand years to get there." She was studying his ashen face. "Yes, and by the looks of it, you probably wish we never learned. Are you all right?" The hint of a French accent warmed his churning stomach. "Actually, I never do well on travel." "Unless it's down?" The doctor pointed toward the deck. Teige smiled. "Caves never bothered me. It's just the getting to them that does." "Yes, well, I think you should go to bed, professor. The caves of the Moon await you, and we'll be there in the morning. Perhaps at breakfast you will have an insight for me, no?" "Perhaps," Teige said, as he float-walked through the hatch.

Teige bobbed down the corridor to his quarters. The ship's constant thrust gave only slight gravity, and it wasn't enough for the poor professor's intestinal fortitude. He wondered how others did it. Clarisse Faux seemed to enjoy the low gravity. Watching her reminded him of watching his wife scuba diving in the Caribbean, especially when she turned her head and that long chestnut hair floated around her chiseled face. Clarisse could have been a model, he thought. But she was married already, to her study of old things. It was obvious how excited she was about documenting the Apollo 17 site. Her archaeological expertise would be put to good use on the last of the initial landing sites. Like the other five landing areas, Taurus-Littrow was destined to be an historical landmark, controlled by the United Nation's Cultural Office. Teige, for one, was glad they were going to preserve those fragile footprints. Footprints on the Moon could last a billion years, unless tourists walked all over them. Teige, on the other hand, had to admit that he, too, was still married. Still married to his wife, despite the fact that she had died a decade ago. Leukemia was not a good way to go, but then, was there a good way? He looked out the portal at the blinding moonlight. A scant 80,000 miles away, Luna's peaks and craters glistened close enough to touch. The gunpowder plains spread like eternal beaches with no waves to caress them. His first cave destination was on the eastern horizon, but his first stop was directly below. Alphonsus Base spread a glistening web across the dark crater floor, remarkably sharp even at this distance. He only hoped the city in the sky had a good pharmacy with better antacids.

"I see color in that face this morning!" Clarisse said cheerfully, handing Teige a cup of coffee. "Last night was better, thank you." The professor gazed into his mug, watching the swirling cream. "You know," he said, "there are caves that have white liquid that looks just like this--'mother's milk', we call it." "I wonder if you'll find any on those lunar caves," Clarisse mused, knowing the answer but wanting the conversation. "Nope. No water. Just ice. And not enough pressure for liquids like that. Still, it will be interesting. I do know one thing we won't be finding." "What's that?" "Dinosaurs." "You see? And so I ask again." "Why didn't the dinosaurs ever make it to the Moon?" Teige stated Clarisse's question. "And now that I'm feeling better, I'll tell you. I have no idea!" One of the pilots had wandered in and was in the process of trying on several puzzled expressions. Clarisse glanced at Teige. They shared a momentary amusement, just the two of them. It was as if she were speaking to him in a language he had not heard for ten years, a vocabulary that no ear could perceive. But the heart could, and his was beating like a turbo thruster. "Please, Captain, sit! What our distinguished spelunking friend is talking about is the fact that there were beings who ruled our planet for 165 million years. They ate and left footprints and tooth marks and feather and scale impressions, but what else did they have to show for their long stay?" "Bones!" the pilot called over a mouthful of bagel. "Bones, yes," Clarisse said. "No beer cans or tools or tires. Just bones. Doesn't that strike you as a bit unlikely?" Kirk Teige wagged a donut at her. "They also left us some nice coprolites. Mustn't forget the dino dung. Perhaps nothing drove them to move beyond browsing cycads." "Or eating each other," added the pilot. "They were the biggest," Teige said, showing his bicep in mock athletic style. "They owned the place. Why change?" Clarisse shook her head. "And it was left to those hairy little mammals to get to the Moon? No. I'm no paleontologist, but it makes no sense to me. We humans fashioned wheels and rolled across our self-made empire in wagons and trains. We with our big brains and opposable thumbs, we snatched the fires from Prometheus and put them in the belly of our rockets. But those dinosaurs ruled the planet for a very long time, and some of them had big brains. Look at the Velociraptor." "Raptors were brilliant hunters," Teige shot back. "That doesn't make them rocket scientists." "Apparently not. But I wonder why." Teige smiled and plopped his coffee cup on the table. The brown liquid hovered in the air for a few seconds before settling down. "Maybe you're right. First cave I crawl into, I'll look for dinosaur artifacts." As the professor swilled down the rest of his coffee, he couldn't help but notice a gleam in the doctor's eye. It was a nice eye, and it came with another one to match, both glacial blue under that frame of rich brown hair. Teige was feeling self-conscious. He hadn't felt this way about a woman since the death of his wife. Ten years is a long time. And for the first time in that bleak decade, here was someone who he could enjoy. Someone with a sense of humor like his. Someone with a challenging intellect. Someone with, yes, very long and slender legs. He shook his head and challenged her to another game of chess on the ship's entertainment terminal.

Landfall came six hours later. The ship settled softly onto the tarmac at Alphonsus Base. As it did, a sense of panic ripped through Kirk Teige. It was not the ship's arrival, but the doctor's departure. He rushed to her cabin. She was just picking up her satchel. "Kirk! Come to see me off?" "There are zillions of people milling around out there. I was afraid I--" He stopped himself. What was he going to say? I was afraid I would never see you again? Ridiculous. I was afraid I might miss you? It was true. I was afraid of being alone for the rest of my life? She seemed to read his mind. Slowly, gently, she put her hand around the back of his neck and nudged his face toward hers. Their lips met for one glorious, erotic, exhilarating moment. "You know," she whispered, "sunrise at the Apollo Seventeen site isn't for another couple of days. I'll be right here, twiddling my opposable thumbs." The professor weighed his options. His career was hanging in the balance. If he missed his flight, there would be no more for two weeks. His grant put serious limitations on his time line. Anything missed was as good as gone. But would he regret what he missed with Clarisse for the rest of his life? Whether out of timidity or practicality, his pragmatic side won out. He shook his head. "My first cave is to the east. Mare Crisium. It will be night there in a couple weeks, so I leave in four hours. Barely time to find my hotel." "Too bad you can't fly." "I'm hitching a ride with a survey team. They have a few other stops. Besides, I'm saving my flying money for when I go farside next month." "I have your network info," she said. There was a hint of tease in her voice. "I'll get in touch as soon as my work is done at Taurus-Littrow. Maybe we can have a drink in this place before I go back to Earth." "Yes, but I'll be here two months longer than you. I've got that trip farside, and it is far." She put her finger against his mouth. "Shhh. We will see each other again. Soon. It's in the stars!" An odd expression for a scientist to make, but Clarisse was full of surprises. That was one of the many reasons he seemed to be falling in love with her.

Up until now, the caves of the Moon had been--without exception--ancient lava tubes, leftovers from when the molten lunar seas drained into maria plains. But on the edge of Mare Crisium, where the Earth floated eternally just above the western horizon, stood a cliff face with a magnificent cave. It was like nothing Kirk had ever seen, and certainly no lava tube. The vaulted ceiling was more cathedral than cavern, and his helmut light glittered back at him from a thousand jewelled facets in the wall. He took holocorder and other readings before wandering inside. His two assistants followed. There were formations similar to stalactites and stalagmites, usually formed by the long term action of water. "The theorists will have a field day with this," he said. "How can you get a stalactite in a place where you can't have liquid water? Fun stuff." And there were curtains of minerals sparkling in the light of their helmets. Teige found that he was enjoying himself, and for a few days, he scarcely thought of Clarisse. Except at night. Or at meal time. Or when somebody said something funny.

It was a long trip back to Alphonsus Base. There was too much time to dwell on things distant. By the time Teige made it back, Clarisse was long gone, off to do her archaeologist thing at Taurus-Littrow. One thing set apart the established settlements from the outposts, and that thing was green. Any major lunar base worth its O2 had at least one large area with living plants and trees. Some of the larger ones like Alphonsus even had gardens. Outside, the Moon was silver and gray, utterly barren. Majestic, yes. But barren. Life springing from the soil made a lunar stay more than an endurance test. It could actually be enjoyable. He tried to do some work, but every time he looked into his monitor, he saw the reflection of a lonely man who had lost something precious. He poked his reflection's nose. "You miss her. Admit it! After all these years of staying free and unencumbered, you're stuck on someone. And by the time you finish here, she'll have been gone for two weeks." There was one hope: perhaps she had emailed him. Then he could easily track her down. But his box was full of junk emails and professional correspondence, none of which was he in any mood to answer. He went to the interplanetary network, reminding himself that the term interplanetary was a bit overblown for just the Earth/Moon system. Maybe when Mars grew a bit... His first couple of network searches were unsuccessful, but on the third try he found Dr. Clarisse Faux. Not her professional address, but her personal one. All those college years of computer hacking still paid off. Teige dug deeper, breaking into her email files. He didn't know why he was doing it. Something drove him. Perhaps it was, as his late wife always said, "testosterone intelligence blockers." Whatever it was, he felt as though he were in touch with her, just a little, by seeing who the people were that she cared about. Her address book was a who's who of famous scientists, and a few famous poets and writers and artists. He was surprised. And he was ashamed. I must really be crazy, he thought. This is invasion of privacy. Breaking and entering. Not to mention tacky. He was about to log off when a name caught his eye. Bernie Milhouse. Post-grad-chum Bernie Milhouse? Paleontologist extraordinaire Bernie Milhouse? Could it be? Teige searched the net for Bernie's info. It wasn't hard to track him down, and he had him on the comlink in minutes. There was a three second delay for voice, but one got used to it. They spent a few expensive minutes telling each other how grand life was. Bernie said he was sorry to hear about the death of Teige's wife (it had been a long time!), and Teige congratulated Bernie on his Nature paper describing his discovery of a new type of Mastodon. Bernie talked about the weather, and Teige talked about the lack of it. Finally, when the time seemed just right, Teige popped his question. "Say, you haven't heard from a friend of mine, Clarisse Faux?" "Sure. Just a month ago. Doing some project on the Moon, I guess. But she was really interested in my work." "She was, was she?" Teige's voice betrayed skepticism. "Hey, my stuff's not that boring!" "No, no, of course not! My mind was somewhere else. So what did you talk about?" "Mostly dating." "She is quite attractive, I suppose." "Not that kind of dating. Dating rocks. Radiometric dating. She knows all about carbon 14 dating; uses it in her work. That and tree rings and pottery styles. But C-fourteen's no good for the sort of things I deal with." Teige's "hmph" crossed the three second void while Bernie's soliloquy continued. "Then the conversation got a little strange, if you don't mind my saying so. She asked how age could be 'simulated'. Isn't that weird? I thought it was an odd term to use. Why simulate age, unless you are falsifying a site? But the kind of sites she works on are brand spanking new compared to mine. Who can know?" "You said it, Bernie. Who can know?" But Teige had a hunch he did.

It all became evident the next week. Cave number seven, on the central peak of Alphonsus crater, was easily accessible to the base, so Teige had saved it for his layover between Crisium and the farside trip to Tsiolkovsky. The cave was so close, and the survey anticipated to be so simple, that he had not requested his technicians to come along. His only companion would be the rover pilot, and she wasn't about to leave the cockpit unless she got overtime. Somehow, his work had been less distracting since he and Clarisse had been corresponding electronically. There had been no time for phone calls, and the limited lunar vidnet was booked up anyway. The best news was that Clarisse was staying on for another lunar day. She would be leaving for Earth at the same time Teige would, and that meant a good week together at Alphonsus before they left. Just knowing that she would be around gave him new focus on his work. And despite his reservations, the electronic medium had energized their relationship. They had so much in common, and so much to share. But it would have to wait for just a little longer. The cave entrance looked like a dozen other lunar lava tubes he had inspected. At first, Teige didn't see them. But then his helmet light drifted across something on the wall, a subtle cast shadow. He looked again. There was something. It was vaguely geometric, and it had company. Across the wall, spanning a good thirty paces, spread the etched remains of symbols, some with faint color. They were soft, subtle, apparently worn away by the sheer force of time. And they were distinctive, unlike any other petroglyphs he had ever seen. He brushed his hand across one. It's edge crumbled. A chill breeze drifted up his spine and into the hairs on the back of his neck. It wasn't the environmental controls that were going crazy, it was him. The glyphs were completely alien. But several gave the wall a context. One symbol was a circle with lines. The lines resembled paleo maps of a split Pangaea, two ancient Jurassic supercontinents inhabited by apatosaurs and tree ferns. Twenty feet further down, there were representations of another familiar form: the unique three-toed tracks of carnivorous dinosaurs. There were, of course, no artifacts. That would have been too difficult. But Teige was sure that if the dyes within the wall glyphs had been dated, they would date to 100 million years ago, or thereabouts. It was all wicked clever. And to what end? Perhaps it was done just to see if it could be. Perhaps it was a finely crafted joke to be shared between two lovers. Surely it was not designed to fool the multitudes? He decided to tell no one. "It's a gift to me from Clarisse." As he left, he took a sample of the dye. Just for laughs. Teige was grinning all afternoon. By the time he got back to his quarters his cheeks hurt. He left Clarisse a cryptic, smiley-face email--nothing else--and packed for the trip to Tsiolkovsky Crater.

Clarisse got the news in the early morning. Professor Kirk Teige's ship was missing on the far side. It had disappeared en route to the caves in the wall of Tsiolkovsky Crater. How he had wanted to go there, she thought. How excited he was to see the far side of the Moon, and to walk across a part of the lunar surface never seen by human explorers. It was all too much. Her heart pounded and her eyes stung. For a highly organized type A person like her, she was feeling terribly helpless. Was anything being done? Surely they would search, and they would search soon. If she hurried... She ran to the hub and found the transportation hangers. After a few poorly phrased questions and some fist pounding, she found the people she needed to. They were preparing a search & rescue craft. "Who's in charge here?" she demanded of a short, rotund man with a cue ball head and bushy eyebrows. "That would be me. If you'll calm down I might be able to help you?" "I want to be there," she told him. "I've studied maps of the area for quite some time" she lied, "and I know Teige." There was plenty of room in the search & rescue vehicle for her, the pilots, the medical team and a hundred potential victims. The missing craft had three. They took her. The little man was glad to see her go. They were still a hundred miles out when they heard the faint voice of Kirk Teige. "To say that was a lousy landing would be an insult to crash dummies." The pilot clicked his mike off and turned to Clarisse. "Keep him talking. It's important. I figure he has less than half an hour of air left. Depending on how active he's been over the last few hours, he may be suffering from hypoxia." Clarisse spoke slowly into her comlink. "Kirk, I want you to keep talking to us. The pilot says we have your ship's distress beacon on scope and we'll be there in ten minutes. Just concentrate. Talk to me." "Clarisse?" "Yes?" "I want to make love with you." "Me too, but this is an open link. Let's talk about something else. Where are you?" "Near the ship. I'm sitting in the sand against a big rock. In the shade. Not that it makes a difference in this suit. Just force of habit, I guess. I think I was thrown from the craft on impact, but I can move just fine. In fact, I went for a little walk." "How are the others?" the pilot asked. "Dead. It's terrible." Clarisse took a long breath. "I'm sorry," she whispered. She doubted that Teige heard. "Ask him about numbness," said the pilot. "Ask him if he's dizzy." "How do you feel?" she urged. Teige's voice was weak. "I . . . found something." "Yes, I know, dear. It was stupid of me." "No, Clarisse, listen. That was wonderful, in the Alphonsus cave. Our little secret. No, I found something here." There was a silent pause as Clarisse processed the full weight of what he was saying. "What do you mean? No one has been there--you're the first." "No, not me. Not us." The pilot said, "He may be hallucinating. He doesn't have much air left. Keep him chatting." "Keep talking, Kirk. Almost there." "Clarisse, it's important. Don't you see? Ever since our Neanderthal cousins started thinking beyond their next meal, they were driven--we've all been driven--to explore. To see what's over the next. . ." "Hill? Talk to me, professor." "Hill, yes." His breathing was labored, but Clarisse knew they were nearly to him now. "And it only makes sense. When you think of a greater good, a more noble cause, a higher reason, where do you look?" Clarisse looked around at the blinking lights, the screens with miles ticking away, the lunar mountains passing by below. And she saw a thousand stars staring down at her, the glorious stars. "Up." "Up!" he said triumphantly. "Yes, up. To the Moon, and someday the stars. And you were right about footprints. They last a billion years out here. If there are no. . ." "Tourists," she finished for him. The pilot shook his head. "He's in a bad way." "No," Clarisse smiled, "I believe he is thinking quite clearly." Teige's voice was clear now. "I see you, glimmering up in the sky, coming for me." "Yes," Clarisse yelled, "I see you too!" "I should tell you something else before you get here." "Yes, my love?" "These footprints out here. They have three toes."