When the Girl from Eridanus heard of this plan, she came to the conclusion that humanity was truly insane. “Now I understand. If you had technology to match the Devourers, you might be even more savage than they are,” she exclaimed.
Fangs, on the other hand, was full of praise. “Ha, ha! What a wonderful idea you worms managed to dream up. I love it. I love your vulgarity. Vulgarity is the highest form of beauty!” he commended humanity.
“Absurd; how can vulgarity be beautiful?” the Girl from Eridanus retorted.
“The vulgar is naturally beautiful and nothing is more vulgar than the universe! Stars burn manically in the pitch-black cold abyss of space; is that not vulgar? Do you understand that the universe is masculine? Feminine civilizations, like yours, are fragile, fine and delicate; a sickly abnormality in a tiny corner of the universe. And that is that!” Fangs replied.
A hundred years had passed and Fangs’ huge frame still brimmed with vitality. The Girl from Eridanus was still vivid and bright, but the Marshal felt the weight of years. He was 130, an old man.
At the time, the Devourer had just passed the orbit of Pluto. It was awakening after its long journey of 60,000 years from Epsilon Eridani. In the dark of space its huge ring lit up with brilliant lights and its immense society began its works, preparing to plunder the solar system.
After the Devourer had plundered the peripheral planets, it flung itself onto a precipitous trajectory toward Earth.
CHAPTER 7
Humanity’s First and Last Space War
The acceleration of the Moon away from Earth had begun.
The Moon was hanging in the sky of Earth’s day side when the first bombs were detonated. The flash of every explosion briefly lit up the Moon in the blue sky, giving it the appearance of a giant silver eye frantically blinking in the heavens. When night fell on Earth, the one-sided flashes of the Moon still shone the light of human handiwork to the surface 25,000 miles below. A pale silver trail following the Moon’s back side was now visible. It was composed of the rocks blasted into space from the Moon’s surface. Cameras installed on the propulsion side of the Moon showed strata of rock being blasted into space like billowing floodwaters. The waves of rock quickly faded smaller in the distance, becoming thin strands trailing the Moon. Turning toward the Earth’s other side, the Moon circumscribed an accelerating orbit.
Humanity’s attention, however, was now squarely focused on the great and terrible ring that had appeared in the sky: The Devourer’s approach loomed over the Earth. The enormous tides its gravity evoked had already destroyed Earth’s coastal cities.
The Devourer’s aft engines flashed in a circle of blue light as it engaged in final orbital adjustments as it approached. It eventually perfectly matched the Earth’s orbit around the Sun, while at the same time aligned its axis of rotation with Earth’s. Having completed these adjustments, it ever so slowly began to move toward the Earth, ready to surround the planet with its huge ring body.
The Moon’s acceleration continued for two months. In this time a bomb had exploded within its surface every two or three seconds, resulting in an almost incomprehensible total of 2.5 million nuclear explosions. As it entered into its second orbit around the Earth, the Moon’s acceleration had forced its once circular orbit into a distinctly elliptical shape. As the Moon moved to the far end of this ellipse, Fangs and the Marshal arrived on its forward-facing side, away from the exploding bombs. The Marshal had expressly invited the alien emissary for this occasion.
As they stood on the lunar plain surrounded by craters, they felt the tremors from the other side shake deep beneath their feet. It almost seemed as if they could sense the powerful heartbeat of Earth’s satellite. In the pitch-black sky beyond, the Devourer’s giant ring dazzled with its brilliant light, its huge shape consuming half the sky.
“Excellent, Marshal-worm, most excellent indeed!” Fangs applauded, his voice full of sincere praise. “But,” he continued, “you should hurry. You only have one more orbit to accelerate. The Devourer Empire is not accustomed to waiting for others. And I have another question: The cities you built below the surface a decade ago are still empty. When will their inhabitants arrive? How can your spaceships transport one-hundred thousand here from Earth in only one month?”
“We will bring no one here,” the marshal calmly replied. “We will be the last humans to stand on the Moon.”
Hearing this, Fangs twisted his body in surprise. The Marshal had said ‘We’, meaning the 5,000 officers and soldiers of Earth’s space force. They formed a perfect phalanx on the crater-covered lunar plain. At the front of the phalanx a soldier brandished a blue flag.
“Look, this is our planet’s banner. We declare war upon the Devourer Empire!” the Marshal announced defiantly.
Fangs stood dumbfounded, more confused than surprised. Immediately his body began to reel as he was thrown onto his back as the Moon’s gravity suddenly surged. Fangs was knocked prone to lunar ground, stunned beyond any thought of movement. All around him lunar dust kicked up by his massive fall slowly began to drift to the ground.
But the dust was quickly thrown up again, stirred by massive shock waves reverberating from the other side of the Moon. These shocks soon left the entire plain covered in a layer of white dust.
Fangs realized the frequency of nuclear explosions on the other side of the Moon had abruptly increased several times over. Judging by the sharp increase of gravity, he could infer that the Moon’s acceleration must have increased several times as well. Rolling over, he retrieved a large hand-held computer from a pocket in the front of his spacesuit. On it he brought up the Moon’s current orbital trajectory. Immediately he realized that this tremendous increase of acceleration would take the Moon out of orbit. The Moon would break free of Earth’s gravity and shoot off into space. A flashing red line of dots showed its predicted course.
It was on collision course with the Devourer.
Discarding his computer without a second thought, Fangs slowly raised himself to his feet. Straining his neck against the explosive increase in gravity, he peered through the billowing clouds of lunar dust. Standing in front of him was Earth’s army, still upright, stalwart like standing stones.
“A century of conspiracy and deceit,” Fangs mumbled under his breath.
The Marshal just nodded in agreement. “You now realize that it is too late,” he pointed out gravely.
Fangs spoke after a long sigh. “I should have realized that the humans of Earth were a completely different breed from the Eridanians. Life on their world had evolved symbiotically, free of natural selection and of the struggle for survival. They did not even know what war was.” He halted, digesting what had happened. “We let that guide our assessment of Earth’s people. But you, you have ceaselessly butchered one another from the day that you climbed down from the trees. How should you be easily conquered? I…,” Again he paused. “It was an unforgivable dereliction of duty!”
When the Marshal spoke, his steady, level tone explained further what Fangs was realizing. “The Eridanians brought us vast quantities of vital information. The information included the limits of the Devourer’s ability to accelerate. It is this information that formed the basis of our battle plan. As we detonate the bombs that change the Moon’s trajectory, its maneuvering acceleration will come to exceed the Devourer’s acceleration limit three-fold. In other words,” he said, “it will be thrice as agile as the Devourer. There is no way that you can avoid the coming collision.”