Making contact once again, Mark spoke.
“Someone has also been raiding the engine room. Most of the fuel rods are gone.”
“What would someone need with fuel rods from our ship?”
“Perhaps someone else has a ship on the Moon, they might be using them,” Mark suggested. “Although the rods could be used for other energy sources as well, such as powering lights and life support and anything else requiring electricity.”
“Hopefully it won’t turn out that we needed those fuel rods,” Max said. “Let’s get back to Richard with the valve.”
Mark turned off the lights as they left the wreckage. Outside was dark, but their eyes soon adjusted to the dimness of the Moon surface at night. Bounding across the surface, they headed back for the underground complex. Several moving objects in the distance away from their path caught Mark’s eye. He caught up with Max and motioned him to stop, pointing toward the moving specks in the distance.
“What do you think those are?” Max asked and they contacted with each other’s helmets.
“I don’t know. I am going to have a closer look,” Mark said, as he quickly broke contact and started off toward the moving dark things in the distance. Max had no time to suggest that doing so could be a bad idea, so he chased after Mark, whose pace had slowed as he crept up stealthily on whatever was moving in the distance.
As Mark neared the things, he noticed that they were creatures of some kind. They had apparently not noticed him, or did not care that he was there since they continued on at their current pace towards some destination. Mark soon saw that the creatures looked an awful lot like the roaches Wallace raised and trained. In fact, Mark was almost willing to bet that among the group he noticed Hector. However since the roaches looked rather similar, he could not be certain.
Mark had paused at this point, and was watching the roaches travel. He noticed that they left tracks which looked like tiny pits. He also noticed that the roaches seemed to be carrying something in their jaws, although he could not tell exactly what it was.
Max had caught up with Mark, and made contact.
“Roaches!” he declared as he noticed the dark bugs crawling across the surface of the Moon, in the hostile vacuum of space.
“They’re carrying something,” Mark stated the obvious. “But the million dollar question is where are they going?”
“Should we follow?” Max asked.
“Yes. I think that these roaches are more capable than Wallace gives them credit for. I also want to know what they are up to.”
They slowly followed the roaches as the creatures swiftly traversed the terrain. The roaches arrived at what appeared to be a tunnel, and had disappeared inside. Mark motioned to Max to follow them into the tunnel. From where they stood at the entrance, they could not see any movement from within, just a long dark passage way that ended abruptly where a dark smooth object blocked their path.