Chapter 3: The Throes of a New World

Chapter 3:
The Throes of a New World

 

THE MOON HAD ABSORBED massive amounts of matter from the Earth and had swelled immensely. The gargantuan satellite had also absorbed heat from the tiny blue planet, which had resulted in violent meltdowns within its core. Magma burst all over the surface of the moon as its crust fissured, producing crevices large enough to be seen from the Earth.

The stolen material wasn’t just boiling over but causing impossible alchemical changes across the moon—changes that were only visible on the X-ray spectrum. Less subtle, although more violent, metamorphoses were occurring on the dark side.

Another eruption, one so large it seemed like it might split the moon in two, rocked the surface, and twelve hundred kilometers of crust exploded into the air. Most of it crumbled and crashed back down, but a huge chunk of basalt bedrock, four hundred kilometers in diameter, rode the force of the eruption and took to the sky.

The moon’s orbit had changed significantly since its rapid expansion and advancement toward Earth. Now, the seismic activity further distorted it. The chunk of bedrock was flung aside just as it was about to break the Roche limit. As the rock’s descent accelerated from this gravitational slingshot, observers on Earth finally noticed that violent explosions were shooting chunks of the moon’s crust into the sky.

Volcanic gases from the dark side of the moon began flowing over to the near side. The volcanic activity had already been noted by government institutions and amateur astronomers, but none of them could have predicted what happened next.

The hunk of bedrock hurtled toward the Earth, propelled by the gravitational slingshot. If the moon had still been distant, the massive rock would have eventually fallen back to its surface. But the Earth and moon were now only 150,000 kilometers apart. As such, the rock was now on a collision course.