"Yes, sir. But they don't want to stick around any longer than they have to. And honestly, I don't blame them."
"It had better be important," Captain Carter said after switching his radio back to the local channel. "I was hoping we could make our way around the whole circumference of the structure."
Looking at the way the older man was leaning on his cane, Lamont had his doubts that the full half-mile walk, in heavy gravity and along such uneven terrain, would have been feasible.
"If what you're looking for is a method of ingress," Phobos offered, "I suspect that you would be disappointed."
"Why's that?" Lamont asked.
"The method by which the tower absorbs liquid oxygen doesn't seem to require anything so crude as a vent or orifice," the Martian observed, his shadow-veiled eyes scanning the uneven ground at the structure's base. "At least, not at this level. It seems unlikely that the builders of such a sophisticated structure would leave it vulnerable to such a harsh environment."
"They had to build here for a reason," The newspaperman pointed out. "Perhaps the moon's environment was less harsh in the past. What if all this oxygen was originally part of an atmosphere?"
"That would make sense," Francis agreed, "but it doesn't fit what we know about the history of this system. We're at the outer edge of it. If anything, this moon would have been colder in the past. Is that right, Phobos?"
"That would be expected," Phobos answered, "if the Martian survey had a record of this satellite in this location."
Lamont looked up at the Martian incredulously. "Are you saying that it didn't?"
Just then, there was a flash of light reflected in the globe of his helmet and a rumbling sensation beneath his feet. He experienced a surge of adrenaline, bracing himself for another surge of magnetic force from the tower, before he realized that the vibration came from the landing jets of the asteroid pod behind him. When he turned around, Phobos and Francis were already making their way toward the opening rear hatch of the pod. He hurried to follow them.
"What's happening?" Carter was asking as he limped through the empty cargo bay and into the cockpit.
"The mining crew is packing up and will be ready to move everything into the pod when we return," Lazarus answered from the pilot's seat.
"Have they completed their work?" Carter asked.
"Yes, sir. But they don't want to stick around any longer than they have to. And honestly, I don't blame them."
The asteroid pod lifted off rapidly, the force of its jets pushing tendrils of liquid oxygen in every direction as they pushed against the heavy gravity of the moon. In moments, the black, craggy ground and ghostly blue mist was a blur beneath them.
"We unloaded the tanks and ran a hose into a good-sized pool of oxygen while the rest of the crew set to work collecting mineral samples," Lazarus explained in answer to the captain's repeated queries. "Everything was going fine until we made significant progress draining the pool. Turns out, it contained more than just oxygen."
"What did you find?" Carter asked.
"See for yourself," The pilot answered, pointing with one hand while he guided the nose of the pod downward, cutting a circle above a shadowy crater. Along the edges of the crater, the mining crew was busily gathering equipment together around the gleaming metal cylinders of the 10-foot long compressed oxygen tanks. At first, Lamont didn't see anything especially out of the ordinary, given the context, but then the spotlights of the pod flashed directly into the bowl of the crater.
"My god!" Francis exclaimed, rising from his bucket seat. "Are those…?"
"Yes, sir," Lazarus confirmed grimly. "And as far as I can tell, they look human."