[ WP ] The moon suddenly becomes habitable , with wildlife on it . Your on the first expedition to the moon .

The orbiter took its second lap around the now blue and green moon, the crew watched as the sun crested over it. `` And man separated the light from the dark and saw that it was good,'' said Marley into the radio. 
 
 
 Commander Ramos snatched her receiver and toggled it off, `` Are you going to do this the whole time?'' 
 
 
 `` Hey man, one of us is going to say the words that people remember forever. I'd rather be the one with'One small step for man,' than,'Tranquility base here.''' 
 
 
 Ramos tossed the radio back to his rover driver, `` Do n't clog the frequency.'' He pointed her down to the squat, cylindrical crew quarters beneath the cockpit. He toggled his own radio on, `` CAPCOM, this is Safari 1. Landing zone identified. Making our approach. Read.'' 
 
 
 In a board room back on Earth, the CEO of LunEsCom with his investors watched the camera feeds as ground control monitored the ship and crew. Another team of equal size was quickly cutting and editing the feed for the five minute delayed broadcast for general consumption. All eyes were watching, but none more so than the men and women with fortunes invested in the real-estate deal of the millennium. With clammy hands, the CEO patched himself over the CAPCOM radio, `` This is Throne Room. We read you, Safari 1. Relaying our feed back to you. Can you confirm what we're looking at?'' 
 
 
 In the orbiter, Ramos looked over the video that had started at his ship and bounced back from Earth. The delay between the feed and his window was disorientating. He shut it off. He scanned the atmospheric data coming in from probes: nitrogen ( 77 % ), oxygen ( 22 % ), argon ( 1 % ). `` Looks like home.'' 
 
 
 With that news the board room erupted into cheers. Champagne bottles popped and celebrations had begun. Five minutes later, LunEsCom share prices rocketed. Beyond the glass that overlooked ground control, the team held focus, one person more than the others. Ecology Command, ECOCOM spoke directly to her opposite orbiting the moon. `` ECOCOM to Doctor Luz, anything from the drones yet?'' 
 
 
 `` Nothing new. I've sent everything I've got. A few seconds of live video and then nothing.'' He stared at a single photograph on his tablet, blown up and processed thousands of times, looking for something in an ovoid ring captured just before that drone's feed went out. 
 
 
 ECOCOM did the same, watching again and again the feeds carefully curated out of the boardroom screens. Her friends still working for the ESA warned her of the unpredictability of accelerated terraforming. Her best friend while she worked there, the lead astrobiologist, told her that even if we rolled the dice again on Earth, there was no guarantee that things would come out the same. Experts at ESA, NASA, JSA, and even the newfound UN AeroSpace Command, UNASCom, agreed that slow terraforming was advisable because it could be controlled. Even with the most advanced evolutionary accelerants, UNASCom predicted that the process would still take at least a hundred years to prune and tailor a world to suit humanity's needs. LunEsCom had it done in three. UNASCom wanted people willing to start work whose end they would not see. LunEsCom wanted to plant the trees and be paid for its shade. 
 
 
 `` Safari 1 to CAPCOM,'' the line this time staying in ground control, `` Making our approach. Gravity's a little lighter than expected. Advise.'' CAPCOM looked over to FLIGHT who had been listening. FLIGHT turned to Gravity Control. Questionable readings had been coming in from the probes launched a year ago; it was anyone's guess how long the artificial gravity generators, ArtGrav, had actually been out. The green light had come from corporate regardless. 
 
 
 `` CAPCOM to Safari 1, we've got noise coming from the gravity probes. ArtGrav may be out. We advise using on-board instruments to calculate a landing solution.'' 
 
 
 `` So you're blind,'' came the response. 
 
 
 `` Not entirely. For all intents, assume normal lunar gravity.'' 
 
 
 `` Read. Out.'' 
 
 
 CAPCOM looked up through the window to the celebrants and shook his head. He tapped his radio for private channels to ECOCOM and SECURITY. 
 
 
 Marley watched as the entry flames died outside the window. They were neither as intense nor as persistent as they had been during training. She braced herself for the sudden jolt that accompanied the parachutes, but it did not come. `` Ramos, what's going on?'' 
 
 
 No response. 
 
 
 She looked over the Doctor Luz who had blacked out his flight visor, but could see well enough his terror with how tightly he gripped his landing straps. She looked over to the Chief Engineer and Corporate Accountant who were doing likewise. She felt a rattle begin to stir and everything began to vibrate. At once, white noise klaxons sounded and flashing red icons appeared on screens all throughout the lander. One by one, the word'OVERRIDE' appeared on them but the descent did not slow. A sudden word shot through all the flight helmets, `` Brace!'' Marley spun her head to the lander diagnostic screen and watched as parachutes opened, but only one set on one side of the lander. She felt her body slam into her landing belts and as the other crew were throttled. She dared look out the window as the clear blue outside went suddenly opaque pink, and the window grazed by something that might have been an enormous eye. An impact rattled the whole ship and something milky white smeared across the glass. She nearly screamed before the other set of parachutes opened and slammed her down into her seat. She watched as the lander diagnostic showed those chutes jettisoned and she felt a moment of weightlessness before stabilizing thrusters ignited. She thought she might fall forever, when a sudden impact ended all motion. 
 
 
 Many eyes watched the flaming hulk of metal drop from the sky like a javelin, not just the unfortunate sky whale who was now blindly crashing into the verdant moon, but other things on the surface that gave no hint of their movement beyond the light rustling of the places where they had been. They readied their tools of war as a square of that alien vessel exploded off and its contents began to crawl out.
