
Colonel Benjamin Rice leads a covert Army unit tasked with building the first permanent, armed outpost on the Moon. Officially called Project Hush, the mission is wrapped in extra layers of dream‑detailing and hypnoanalysis to keep every detail hidden. After a flawless landing in Mare Nubium, the crew hurriedly erects a prefabricated dome and unloads massive crates of equipment. Their schedule is razor‑tight, as an unseen arms race presses them to move faster than any rival nation.
While securing the dome, Lieutenant‑Colonel Thomas Hawthorne flies a solo sortie to map the surroundings. He reports a larger, oddly colored dome rising from the Riphaen Mountains—a sign that something else may already be on the lunar surface. The team must weigh the risk of investigating this mystery against strict orders and a looming deadline that could tilt the balance of power. Suspicion and curiosity clash on the silent plain.
Language
en
Duration
~14 minutes (13K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Credits
Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
Release date
2010-06-02
Rights
Public domain in the USA.

1920–2010
Best known for sharp, funny science fiction that poked at politics, technology, and human behavior, this classic satirist turned big ideas into stories that still feel lively and sly. He wrote relatively little compared with some of his peers, but his short fiction left a lasting mark on the genre.
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