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explosion. Unadorned flash of white light. Soldier awakening in his tattered uniform on a dusty plain covered with pale yellow moss under a dark lavender sky in which hung the lost blue Earth. Moon Man .
    Ling Erhshan lying on the fire escape, looking up at the yellow circle of the Moon over Shanghai, imagining himself to be soldier Dorian Haldane, beloved of the beautiful Goth slave-woman Valetta, blown away to another dimension, rather than merely to the timeless eternity of death. Imagining himself lost on the Moon of the Greek-speaking Kalksis oppressors, descended from Ptolemaic colonists stranded after a nuclear war between Rome and Carthage. A Moon inhabited by Chinese-speaking red Indians, by Gothic slaves and Roman guerrillas determined to win free of Greek dominion...
    I would lie there in the stinking darkness. Lie there and imagine myself captaining some creaky pentekonter, imagine myself the pirate scourge of the Five Seas I could see, so shadowy, in the yellow world overhead...
    The radio speaker set in the main instrument panel suddenly blatted static, then, “ Ming Tian , do you read?” Chen Li’s voice.
    Da Chai leaned close to the audio pickup, and said, “We read you poorly, Control.”
    Chen Li said, “We’re having some trouble with your telemetry channel.”
    Equipment failure. A cold hand on Ling Erhshan’s heart. Because nothing had really been ready on time, or fully tested.
    “What sort of trouble?”
    “Interruptions. A second of no signal, then a second of signal. Very regular. Inexplicable.”
    Inexplicable . Ling said, “What’s in the interrupted signal? Static?”
    “Hello, Professor. No. More like a carrier-wave hum. Nothing our equipment could produce, I don’t think...”
    Ling stared at the worried look on Chang’s face for a moment. “Maybe. If one of those old transistors is...”
    The radio speaker, completely free of static, said, “This is Major-General Morris K. Athelstan, speaking for the Department of Defense, United States of America. All spacecraft now flying in Cislunar Space are warned that the Earth’s natural satellite Luna has been claimed as national territory by the United States. Unauthorized landings on United States territory anywhere in the solar system will be treated as a military invasion and dealt with accordingly. This warning will be repeated in one hour, broadcast to all communication systems throughout the world and Cislunar Space. Major-General Morris K. Athelstan, speaking for the Department of Defense, United States of America, signing off.”
    The speaker said, “opy you, Ming T . Do yead?”
    Da Chai turned away from the speaker, mouth hanging open. No words.
     The speaker said, “Come in, Ming Tian . Do you read? Over.” Static fading, fading, becoming no more than a background hiss, the familiar music of the spheres.
    Ling leaned forward toward the pickup, and said, “We hear you, Chen. Um. Did you... um. Did you pick up the transmission from, um, General...” hard to pronounce, even when you spoke English well, “Athelstan?”
    Open microphone from the ground, people shouting in the background, jangly Chinese excitement, then Chen Li: “Yes.”
    Chang Wushi said, “What do you suppose it meant?”
    Quite possibly, just what it said, but...
    No American presence in space for the better part of a century, and...
    A piece of that message suddenly jumping back out of memory “... unauthorized landings on United States territory anywhere in the solar system...”
    Anywhere in the solar system ?
    Da Chai said, “A decision will have to be made on how we proceed.”
    Chang Wushi: “Or if we proceed.”
    Ling Erhshan gestured out the window with a wan smile at the bright yellow Moon looming huge before them. “We proceed in that direction. Captain  Newton won’t be letting us turn back just yet.”
    Da Chai looked over at the beamer’s control console, and said, “Well. We are, at any rate, well