He stood up and began to pace the room. “I read every paper, examined every account of the moon’s influence. I attacked the problem from every angle: psychological, physiological, evolutionary. And though I could demonstrate that the full moon had, historically, an unusual influence, I could not discover the reason. Until I stumbled upon the Apollo moon landings.”
This was so unexpected that Logan frowned. “I’m sorry?”
Feverbridge chuckled at Logan’s discomfiture. “That’s right. You know, of course, that when Apollo Eleven returned from the moon, it brought back many pounds of moon rocks, carefully packed in a metal box and sealed in such a way as to maintain the moon’s low-pressure conditions. But when the astronauts landed back on earth, the seals on the box were gone. Ruined.” He returned to the lab table, leaned in close to Logan. “And that’s not all. Six times, Apollo missions returned with moon rocks in sealed containers. And six times, no matter what they tried, those seals on the containers were destroyed by the time they got back to earth.” He paused. “Care to speculate why?”
Logan shook his head. “I can’t even begin to speculate.”
Feverbridge laughed again. “Dust.”
“Excuse me?”
“Dust! Moon dust. You see, there’s no wind on the moon. There’s no water, there’s no erosion — it’s not like earth, where rocks and pebbles become smooth and rounded through abrasion. On the moon, dust is fine, but incredibly sharp, like a knife. It’s essentially tiny, powdered glass. And it doesn’t just cover the surface — it also floats like clouds, fifty miles or more above the surface, in the moon’s exosphere. It rises up in streams — nobody knows exactly why, but some speculate that it’s the ‘fountain model’: radiation from the sun knocking electrons from the atoms in the lunar dust, giving it a positive charge and causing it to rise on the solar wind. In 2013, NASA even sent a satellite — the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer, or LADEE — to study this ‘dust atmosphere.’ It was intentionally crashed into the dark side of the moon six months later. As far as I know, the data is still being analyzed.”
He pushed himself away from the table, began pacing again. “Ask yourself: what is moonlight? It’s merely the sun’s visible radiation, reflecting off the moon—but being filtered through this strange cloud of moon dust. When I analyzed it further, I discovered that, under the proper conditions, this dust changes the quality of the light: in distribution of wavelength and polarization — circular polarization, in fact. Those conditions include such violent activity as solar flares and the like. But I began to speculate further: Was it possible this unusual quality of light, when viewed by diurnal creatures on earth, could affect the brain sufficiently to cause changes in behavior? And could the full moon alone be enough to achieve that?”
Feverbridge walked to a large table set against the far wall, then motioned Logan toward him. “That was the beginnings of a working hypothesis: that the effect of this special, polarized moonlight, entering the brain, could cause an unusual response: fear, excitability, aggression. But, like any good scientist, I had to test this hypothesis. And that meant re-creating, not only moonlight, but moonlight filtered through the equivalent of moon dust, all within a laboratory environment. And that proved to be a very difficult and time-consuming process — at the time, hampered by my own mood of bitterness and defeat.”
He paused a moment, looking carefully at Logan to see what impression his words were having. “But then, in secret, I moved to this lab. And work began in earnest, with new hope and enthusiasm. I started with moonlight itself. As you may know, all visible light has what’s known as a color temperature, expressed in kelvins. Color temperatures over five thousand kelvins are known as ‘cool’ colors. The sun, which is similar to a standard black-body radiator, emits light that penetrates our atmosphere at close to six thousand kelvins. The moon, a ‘warmer’ color, has a light temperature of around four thousand. The flame of a candle, for comparison, is closer to eighteen hundred kelvins.”
He wheeled over the tall metal dolly holding the barrel-shaped lamp Logan had noticed when he’d first entered the building. “This luminaire is what’s technically known as an HMI Fresnel light. The unique texturing of the Fresnel lens allows for an even light that ‘softens,’ or darkens, at the edges: much like our own perception of moonlight. HMI, or hydrargyrum medium-arc iodide — how’s that for a mouthful! — produces light by means of an arc lamp instead of an incandescent bulb. They are extremely high-quality light sources — and extremely expensive. This one is particularly nice.” He patted the light, which was half the size of an oil drum. It swung gently on its mount. “Goes for a cool twenty thousand dollars. It has an eighteen-K bulb that can throw a twelve-foot spot of fifteen hundred foot-candles almost seventy feet. Of course, I haven’t used it at full strength — not for my current studies, at least. But suffice it to say rigorous analysis made it clear that this particular luminaire, at the proper setting, most closely approximates the way moonlight strikes the earth.”
He walked over to a nearby shelf, pulled out a large plastic container, and placed it on the worktable. “Once I had achieved the proper temperature for moonlight, I had to simulate the effect of how the sun’s photons would react when they pass through the moon’s ‘dust atmosphere,’ bounce off the surface, and pass through the dust a second time on their way to the earth. This meant, first, researching the specific chemical nature of moon dust — which has been well documented by NASA — and then applying the precise filters to re-create it.”
Swinging back the barn doors on the Fresnel, he opened the plastic container, removed a thin circular plate of pale glass, and fitted it to the front of the lens. He did this a second time, and then a third time, adding additional filters. Then he turned back to Logan. “This re-creates moonlight, as filtered through the dust atmosphere of the moon, as it would have been seen all over the earth five hundred years ago.”
“Why five hundred years?” Logan asked.
“Because our atmosphere, Dr. Logan, has — over the last few centuries — become saturated with the burn-off of fossil fuels, greenhouse gases, what have you.”
“In other words, the effect you hypothesize would have been much stronger in the past than it is today.”
“Exactly: hence the many more eyewitness accounts of strange or unexplained behavior in early documents concerning the full moon. Now, please observe. I’m going to reproduce the effect of that same full moon.” Walking over to the far wall, he picked up one of the animal cages, brought it over, and placed it on the table. “Northern short-tailed shrews,” he explained. Then, reaching under the worktable, he pulled out a pair of heavy rubber gloves and put them on. “They’re venomous,” he went on, “but perfect mammals for our study.” He opened the cage, reached inside, and pulled out first one, then another, of the guinea-pig-sized creatures, covered with soft gray fur. They sat on the table, sleepy and docile, evidently newly awakened.
“Now, watch carefully,” Feverbridge said as he pulled the light stand back from the table and stood directly behind it.
“Don’t look at the light,” Laura Feverbridge warned, speaking for the first time since her father had begun his explanation. “Just the shrews.”