A sickly yellow blob of light meandered through the blackness, getting larger until it suddenly resolved into a living example of the creature depicted on the canvas.
"This is a dream!" Lamont assured himself, backing away from the woman. What was her name? Where had he seen her before?
"Obviously," agreed the woman. She gestured toward the canvas in front of her. "I'm nearly finished," she said. "What do you think?"
Lamont returned his eyes to the canvas. It was no longer an abstract shape. The dark circle in the center had changed into the mottled, bloated shape of an undersea creature. The thing was all mouth, with multiple rows of gnarled, needle-like teeth. Giant black eyes goggled behind the mouth, leaving barely any room on the spherical body for the small, spiny fins. From the head of the creature projected a thin appendage capped in a glowing beacon. This beacon provided the only light source in the painting, splashing a lurid green over the grotesque creature as it emerged from a sea of murk.
"What the hell is that?" Lamont asked. "Liza would never paint something like that."
"I paint what I see," said the woman. She looked up from the canvas to the scene beyond.
It was no longer the English countryside. Instead, they were several feet away from a glass wall, beyond which was an abyss of blackness. Drifting through the inky void were points and smears of multicolored lights that danced in strange patterns, disappearing here, reappearing there. A sickly yellow blob of light meandered through the blackness, getting larger until it suddenly resolved into a living example of the creature depicted on the canvas. Its giant mouth gaped hungrily, its long teeth glistening in the macabre glow of the beacon. Mesmerized by the corpselike creature, Lamont was dimly aware that the glass did not appear to be impeding its progress toward him. It was emitting a strange sound from its beacon; an insistent electronic buzz. It was now mere inches away from his face, the gaping maw drawing closer, closer!
Lamont found himself being pulled out of sleep like a body being dredged from the bottom of a lake. The buzz sounded in his ears, and then repeated a few seconds later. It was his door chime.
He groped around for the light that was built into the shelf over his bunk. Switching it on, he could see in the yellow glow that his skin was covered in a film of sweat. Looking out from his bunk, he could see the screen that separated his bunk from the small front area of his cabin. His discarded vacuum suit lay in a shriveled pile on the carpet, and his expedition jacket was in a heap just beyond that, at the foot of the door from which the buzz was emanating. Reaching under his bunk, Lamont opened a drawer and pulled out a pair of pants, stumbling as he tried to simultaneously pull them on and make his way to the door. His fumbling fingers had just managed to fasten their button when the door inched open of its own accord.
"Mr. Townsend?" A male voice asked tentatively from the crack of light that began flooding the room, illuminating his desk.
In a moment of brief, irrational panic, Lamont took it to be the voice of Rex O'Neil. Was he still dreaming after all? "What do you want?" He demanded.
The door opened further to reveal the lanky, tousle-headed form of Lazarus, Rex's replacement at the pilot console.
"Sorry to disturb you," The young man said, in a tone that was both apologetic and slightly affronted. "I was told that you would like to join the next mining expedition to the moon. Well, we're leaving in an hour."