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                                                                                 By Al Grove
 

   As Krista sat back to watch the “Hyper-wave” broadcast, from Earth, of the new Mini Series  “Luna” by C. F. Neall, Jr. She couldn’t help reflecting on her heritage. Her mother had been one of the first permanent settlers of Luna City and Chris herself had been born in Luna City General. In all of her eighteen years she had never been off the moon.

   It was hard to believe that it was less then a hundred years ago, that her great, great grandmother, for whom she had been named, had died in the infamous in-flight explosion of  “86”. That had been in the early days of space exploration. God! She thought “They had still been using Hydrogen-Oxygen Fuel.

   Oh, man had been to the moon but only to gather information. Now Luna City was one of the great metropolises of the solar system. Third only to Bombay and Beijing back on Earth.

   She Realized that it had been brave people like her great, great grandmother and the crew of “Challenger” that had made Luna City possible. Others too, had paid dearly. She recalled the Hasenkamp expedition that had been lost on Ganymede, one of the moons of Jupiter. She had gone to school that day with Michelle Hasenkamp. She would never forget the look of anguish on Michelle’s face when they had first heard of the loss of her father’s expedition. We live with danger out here in space, she thought. Then she realized, no not just in space, man has always lived with danger.

   She remembered seeing, on history tapes, how man had died exploring new lands back on Earth. They had sailed across vast oceans in small boats. (Vehicles that traveled over water, actually floated on it.) She couldn't imagine that much water.
   Man had even died exploring the lands they found. They had been killed by other men, wild animals and even the elements. She could picture men killing each other, it still happened, not very often but every once in awhile you would see a news flash on the Hyper-tube, where a man had killed another person. It happened most often on the prison colonies out in the asteroid belt, but two, or was it three years ago a man had killed another man right here in Luna City. Sure, It was later proven at his trial that he had a recessive gene and instead of the prison colonies he was altered genetically at L.C.G.'s school of advanced medicine, but that hadn't changed the fact that it had happened, but wild animals and weather!
   Luna City was completely under the surface of the moon and everything was controlled. Why even back on Earth they had weather control and the only wild animals were on environmental lands or in zoos.
   She thought, how exciting it must have been to be in a new land, with wild animals and uncontrolled weather. True, space exploration was exciting and after she got her degree from Luna City College of Space Engineering and Physics, she hoped to be accepted by Space Inc. She might even get a chance to work on Mars or maybe even Hasenkamp City on Ganymede, but wild animals, not in this solar system.
   Her mind wondered back to the accident. When your opening new frontiers, she thought, there will always be dangers, but thanks to brave people like the crew of "Challenger" and others to numerous to mention, they would be less.
   There had been benefits. Since man had moved into space, they had learned that they were one. Not from, China, India, America or even the Arab States but Earth. There hadn't been a war in over ninety years. There was just nobody left to fight.
   Her mind wondered to her namesake. She wondered what she had been like? She had been a teacher, "The teacher in space." Chris knew what a teacher was. Teacher: A person who teaches, i.e. imparts knowledge to another. How strange it must have been to learn from another, how archaic. It almost seemed romantic, but how long it must have taken. Why in just six hours of study at L. L. C. of Space she had learned all the important information about basic rocketry. A sleeping pill, if you needed one, and a subliminal suggestion tape. How can you learn anything if your awake? 
   Her Great, Great Grandmother had been a heroine. A whole country, No! all the people of the world had mourned her death and the death of her fellow explorers, but none more then her students. On History tapes, Chris had seen a world in mourning; Tears on the faces of children, shock and dismay on the faces of leaders and common men alike. She had seen tapes of the explosion and she knew that the astronauts never knew what happened but the human race would never forget. She felt pride.
   It would have been easy at that time to have given up the quest for space. (In fact there had been a fairly large religious movement saying, "God has caused the accident to keep man away from Heaven.") There was still a small cult of believers who say that man is damning himself by being in space and that all spacers were created by Satan himself, and that God would come soon to end the blaspheme. They hadn't quit, Chris thought, thank god! they hadn't quit.
   The hyper wave screen flickered to life. A view of Cape Canaveral, as it had been in the beginning, lit up the screen. The announcer stated "Luna City started here, in a small space port, in the state of Florida, in the United States of America, on Earth,"