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into the outer regions of the Solar System and became Pluto. Its
moon, although somewhat shaken, was left intact. During the
gravitational upheaval that occurred when its parent planet broke
up, the sateffite's orbital momentum around the Sun was reduced and
it began to fall inward.
"We can't tell how long the orphaned moon plunged steadily nearer
the Sun. Maybe the trip lasted months, maybe years. Next comes one
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of those million-to-one chances that sometimes happen in nature.
The trajectory followed by the moon brought it close to Earth,
which had been pursuing its own solitary path around the Sun ever
since the beginning of time!" Hunt paused for a few seeonds. "Yes,
I repeat, solitary path! You see, if we are to accept what I
believe to be the only satisfactory explanation open to us, we must
accept also its consequence: that until this point in time, some
fifty thousand years ago, planet Earth had no moon! The two bodies
drew close enough for their gravitational fields to interact to the
point of mutual capture; the new, common orbit turned out to be
stable, and Earth adopted a foundling it has kept right up to this
day.
"If we accept this account, many of the other things that have been
causing problems suddenly make sense. Take, for example, the excess
material that covers most of Lunar Farside and has been shown to be
of recent origin, and coupled with that, the dat-
lug of all Farside craters and some Nearside ones to around the
time we're talking about. Now we have a ready explanation. When
Minerva blew up, what is now Luna was sitting There right in the
way of all the debris. That's where the meteorite storm came from.
That's how practically all evidence of the Lunarian presence on
Luna was wiped out. There's probably no end to remains of their
bases, installations, and vehicles still there waiting to be
uncovered-a thousand feet below the Farside surface. We think that
the Annihilator emplacement at Seltar was on Farside. That suggests
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that what is Farside to Earth today was Nearside to Minerva; hence
ft makes sense that most of the meteorite storm landed where it
did.
"Charlie appears to have referred to compass directions different
from ours on the Lunar surface, implying a different north-south
axis. Now we see why. Some people have asked why, if Luna suffered
such an intense bombardment, there should be no signs of any
comparable increase in meteorite activity on Earth at the time.
This too now makes sense: When Minerva blew up, Luna was in its
immediate vicinity but Earth wasn't. And a last point on Lunar
physics- We've known for half a century that Luna is formed from a
mix of rocky compounds different from those found on Earth, being
low in volatiles and rich in refractories. Scientists have
speculated for a long time that possibly the Moon was formed in
another part of the Solar System. This indeed turns out to be true
if what I've said is correct.
"Some explanations have suggested that the Lunarians set up
advanced bridgeheads on Luna. This enabled their evident presence
there to be reconciled with evolutionary origins on Minerva, but
raised an equally problematical question: Why were they struggling
to master interplanetary space-flight technology when they must
have had it already? In the account I have described, this problem
disappears. They had reached their own moon, but were still some
ways from being able to move large populations to anyplace as
remote as Earth. Also, there is now no need to introduce the
unsupported notion of Lunarian colonies on either planet; either
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way, it would pose the same question.
"And finally, an unsolved riddle of oceanography makes sense in
this light, too. Research into tidal motions has shown that
catastrophic upheavals on a planetary scale occurred on Earth at
about this time, resulting in an abrupt increase in the length of
the
day and an increase in the rate at which the day is further being
lengthened by tidal friction. Well, the arrival of Minerva's moon
would certainly create enormous gravitational and tidal
disturbances. Although the exact mechanics aren't too clear right
now, it appears that the kinetic energy acquired by Minerva's moon
as it fell toward the Sun, was absorbed in neutralizing part of the
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