05/25/2025 Snippet, CALL OF THE MOON-BEASTS.

I’m trying something that may force me to finish this stuff in a faster manner. Hope it works!

There wasn’t a ladder underneath the hatch, only a rope leading to the floor below. That turned out to be fine for everybody, including the two civilians — or three, Tobias thought. Although Lily knows spelunking. He still worried about how they’d get up quickly, though. The floor was eight feet below them, which a person could leap in a hurry, if they needed to. And if they didn’t panic, which again might be a problem for the two civilians. Everybody left alive on the Moon may have been tough-headed enough to survive for this long, but you never knew what a person’s breaking strain was until they hit it.

The smell down here was more of a stink, or maybe a medley. There were all sorts of odors, from stagnant water to something that almost smelled like flowers.

There was also a underlying aroma, all burnt and greasy, that kept assaulting Tobias’s nostrils, and he wasn’t sure which meaning of ‘assault’ was the right one. It should have been enticing, but there was something about it that made him feel hungry and revolted at the same time. “Mask up, people,” he said aloud, and felt a queasy fear for a moment that the filters might not work.