Chapter I: Prologue

One of the rockets was silver; three were ashen gray. Each nested in a different spot on the great Western Desert. All were long, tapered, sisters except for color. In a way they represented the first, and last, of an era, with exotic propellants, a high mass ratio and three-stage design. Yet they were not quite alike. One of the sisters had within her the artifacts the human kind needed for life--a space cabin high in the nose. The remaining sisters were drones, beasts of burden, but beasts which carried scant payloads considering their bulk.

One thing they had in common--destination. They rested on their launch pads, with scaffolds almost cleared, heads high and proud. Soon they would flash skyward, one by one, seeking a relatively small haven on a strange bleak world. The world was the moon; the bleak place was called Arzachel, a crater--stark, alien, with tall cliffs brooding over an ashy plain.

Out on the West Coast a successor to the sisters was shaping up--a great ship of a new age, with nuclear drive and a single stage. But the sisters could not wait for their successor. Time was running out.