Jen yawned as she stood in the back garden in the dark, while her father tinkered with his telescope. Astronomy was Dad’s obsession. Most clear nights, he was out here staring into his little, fat telescope, ignoring his family, but, now and then, guilt made him try to drag Jen outside in a feeble effort to interest her in his hobby.

When the weather didn’t save her, she dissuaded him with a range of excuses. She was tired. She had homework or housework to do. She had a cold. She had a headache. She just didn’t feel like it this particular night, but maybe next time… With any luck, it would be overcast. He never seemed too bothered when she declined. Sometimes, he looked relieved. But, on a rare occasion, looking back into those eyes aglow with boyish enthusiasm, she just couldn’t bring herself to refuse.

Of course, being out here with Dad was like being away from him in the house—only colder and with less to do. She stood watching his head disappear behind his back as he bent down and stared into the eyepiece, mumbling to himself, scribbling down figures in his notebook. Jen shivered. She learned her lesson the last time she admitted her boredom.

“I’ll tell you what. I’ll call it out and you jot it down,” he’d said, thrusting a notebook and pen at her. She’d tried her best, but he was so damn picky.

“No, no, no. The other column.”

“Orion doesn’t have a y, honey.”

“Is that a three or a five?”

“Do try to be neat.”

“Wrong column!”

“That’s not how you spell Betelgeuse.”

It had ended with her screaming as she fled into the house. Her cheeks warmed with embarrassment. At least some part of her was warm.

“Come look at this,” Dad said. He stood away from the telescope and pointed at the sky. “It’s that star there.”

Which one was it? It didn’t matter. “Oh, right.” Jen sighed quietly as she looked into the eyepiece. It looked like a star, only slightly bigger. It wasn’t even a binary.

“Lovely,” she said, stepping away.

Dad looked troubled. He obviously saw through her fake smile.

“How about we look at the Moon for a while,” he said. “You always like the moon.”

“Great!” Now, the Moon was interesting. It wasn’t just some blurry spot of light. It was another world, with craters and mountains and valleys and basalt seas. Another world on Earth’s doorstep.

Dad swung the telescope toward the moon, fiddled with the adjustment knobs, peered into the eyepiece, fiddled with the knobs again. He put both thumbs up. “We’re ready.”
“Dan, Jenny, come quick!” Mum roared from the back door.

Just when things were getting interesting.

“What’s wrong?” Dad yelled, his head swivelling toward the house.

“You wouldn’t believe me. On the television. Come quick. Both of you now. Please.”

Dad shook his head. “We had better go in.” He stomped toward the house.

Jen sighed and followed.

“Quick! Quick!” Mum cried hysterically.

Dad broke into a run. Jen jogged after him.

“What’s happened?” Dad panted as he bent over and leaned one arm against the frame of the back door.

“Into the living room! Quick!” Mum cried, disappearing into the hall. Dad followed her. Jen hesitated. This was completely out of character for Mum, and a bit frightening.

“Jen!” Dad called. “Where are you?”

She hurried down the hall and into the sitting room. Her parents were standing in front of the television. Dad had a perplexed frown.

“Are you sure that this isn’t some sort of film or an ad maybe?” he asked.

“It’s on the news channels,” Mum said. “I’ve checked them all.”

Jen pushed between them. Was that a man or woman on the screen? He (if he was male) had blue eyes, black skin, Asian eye-folds and frizzy red hair. Dad kept flicking the channels, but only the banners and tickers and logos changed. The odd-looking person was on every channel.

Who was he? What did this all mean?

Dad gave up on changing channels. Black words scrolled across a yellow background on the bottom of the screen. ALIEN SIGNAL FROM MOON. FIRST IMAGE OF NON-TERRESTRIAL LIFE FORM. NO INDICATION OF PURPOSE AS YET. Above it, in blazing white letters on a red strip, was the word EXCLUSIVE.

“There are indications that what we are seeing is not a static picture,” the newscaster squeaked excitedly. “However, the alien has yet to speak.”

The alien’s lips moved. “Hello, people of Earth.” The voice sounded human and friendly, even jovial, though it could have been male or female. “We are the Gyonmir Communion.” His faced lurched into a hideously stretched smile. “We don’t actually look like this. This construct was chosen to put you at ease. We are a Type II civilization on your Kardashev scale. As such, we feel it is our duty to help less developed worlds.”

“Wow,” Dad said. “They’re going to help us expand beyond this solar system. Who knows what technologies they might give us?”

The alien’s smile disappeared. “Earth is a beautiful world and yet so sick. It is riddled with a peculiar cancer—you. You are consuming your planet’s resources at an astounding rate, apparently oblivious to their ultimate finiteness. If your species does not expand beyond its home planet, you are ultimately doomed. And yet to allow such expansion might would turn a localised disease into a contagion.”

Dad clamped his hands to the sides of his face. “They’re going to kill us all.”

An electric shiver passed through Jen.

“Dan!” snapped Mum, flicking her head in Jen’s direction.

Dad glanced guiltily at Jen. “Oh, right. Sorry. Don’t mind me. Everything will be fine. I promise. I’m just…I can’t believe this is happening.”

Mum’s arm slipped around her. “Don’t mind your father. He’s always talking nonsense.” Jen attempted a smile. It did not feel particularly convincing.

The alien was still talking. “We put our best minds on the problem. No other sentient race displays your fecklessness. The flaw in your nature had to be down to some evolutionary quirk, but for a hundred years we have struggled to find it. And then, one day, we realised the answer had been staring us in the face all the time—the Moon.”
The alien honked in some poor attempt at laughter. “That’s right—the Moon. No other life-sustaining planet has such a monstrously large satellite. The moon stabilises your planet’s tilt to an extraordinary degree. It keeps your climate relatively constant.”

He leaned in to the camera. “Other races evolved in more changeable environments. To survive, they had to learn to plan ahead with volatile seasons and prolonged extreme weather events. You, on the other hand, had relatively docile climates. You had only to plan for the expected in a given year. When the expected didn’t happen, many of you died and a few civilisations collapsed, but it was not enough for you to learn your lesson. Other sentient races had to be ready for the unexpected at any time to build a civilization in the first place. Evolution was too easy on you, and it shows.”

He shook his head sadly. “So many things about the Moon’s motion encourage mechanistic thinking. Even its size and position means that it fits almost perfectly over the sun during a full eclipse.”

His smile stretched wider. “So we have decided on a drastic solution. We are taking away your moon. Its departure will likely collapse your current global civilization, but at some time in the distant future, either your descendants or another sentient species will again reach for the stars, cured of your insanity, your lunacy, if you will.” He honked again. “Goodbye and good luck.”

The picture went blank except for the banners and channel logo. After a long pause, the news reader appeared. He looked so pale as he filled the silence with random fragments of sentences.

Dad seized Jen’s hand. He started pulling her and Mum toward the door.
“Come outside with me. Now.”

What horrors might they see? “I don’t want to go!” Jen tried to tug her hand free, but Dad’s grip was too strong.

“Don’t be frightened, Jen. Your father knows what he is doing.” Mum’s soothing tone was reassuring, but the questioning glance she directed at him was not.

Jen shook her head, using her free hand to pull her other one free. “I’m not going out there.”

“But Jen…honey, this might be your last chance to see the Moon,” Dad pleaded. He stretched out an open hand. “Every moment we delay here, the Moon may be slipping away. Don’t worry. You’ll be with us. Trust us.”

Reluctantly, she laid her hand on his palm. His fingers gently closed around it and both hands slipped into a loose clasp.

“Good girl. No need to be afraid,” he said as he led them out of the room and down the hall.

“Do you really think that they can just take the Moon like that?” Mum asked as they passed through the kitchen.

They had left the back door open in their hurry. Flies and moths covered the ceiling. How would moths steer without the Moon?

“We’ll soon know,” Dad said. They plunged into the night.

The Moon was still in the sky, full and round and reassuring. Perhaps, the transmission was some sort of prank after all. The Moon was huge. The idea of an alien force being powerful enough to just take it away was ludicrous. And yet Jen was afraid to take her eyes off it in case it disappeared.

“I keep expecting some giant hand to reach out of the sky and grab it,” Dad said.

Mum mumbled something.

“Sorry,” Dad said. “Everything will be fine.”

The Moon was getting smaller. Or was Jen imagining it?

Mum gasped. “Oh, my Lord. The Moon is shrinking.”

Dad hugged Jen to him. “Don’t worry. We’ll be fine.”

But Jen couldn’t speak. She couldn’t look away from the retreating moon.

The telescope! She ran to it and peered in the eyepiece. The surface of the Moon looked as it always had. No telltale glimmers gave away the aliens’ activity. But the Moon was definitely getting smaller.

Big hands pressed lightly on her shoulders. “What do you see?” Dad asked.

Her mumbled reply meant nothing to her. She was too busy to speak. She had to sear every pock and pimple on that surface into her memory before it slipped away. It was so beautiful. To think they would lose it forever. Dad would miss it the most. He had spent so many nights staring at it.

She moved away from the telescope. “Dad, you look.”

Dad refused with a wave.

“You might spot something, some clue I wouldn’t notice.”

Taking a deep breath, he bent over the eyepiece. “Hmm.” It was merely an absent-minded murmur.

Jen glanced back and forth between the dwindling satellite and her father. She had done the right thing, the kind thing, the daughterly thing. That nagging pang of regret was best ignored.

Dad shook his head as he straightened his back. “I can’t see anything unusual. Except that it’s getting smaller. Helen, do you want a look?”

“I’m fine,” Mum said. “Let Jen look.”

“Yes. Jenny, you can look now. I’ve had my whole life to look at it.” His voice thickened to a rasp.

Jen peered into the eyepiece. Even through the telescope, the moon was small. The detail on its surface melted into a blur and it became a small white disc.

“Can you still see anything?” Dad asked.

“Can you still see anything?” Dad asked.

“Just about,” Jen said. The Moon was a tiny point of white now, no different from a star.

It dimmed. “You take a look.” She stepped out of her father’s way.

He looked in the eyepiece, then shook his head. “It’s gone. The Moon is gone.”

© Noel Coughlan