.post p { margin:0 0 .75em; line-height:1.5em; text-indent:1.5em; } Science Ninja Team Gatchaman Written by Toriumi Jinzō Illustrated by Ōtori Workshop Prologue It all happened in 3.5 seconds. A point of light suddenly appeared on the outer rim of Clavius Crater, leaving a trail before disappearing behind the dark side of the Moon. Peter Mayer was gazing at the Moon through a Mizar NT-60 telescope with MADE IN JAPAN emblazoned on one side. The telescope was a multi-lens scope with an aperture of 80 mm and a focal length of 400 mm. It was an old model, manufactured twenty years before, but its brightness and resolution were outstanding. The young Peter Mayer’s gaze never left the eyepiece. It had been six years since he’d first started observing the Moon with this telescope, which he’d begged his father to buy for him. He’d never been so excited about his observations as tonight. He had seen the light. The 3.5 second flash. His heart pounded so loud that he could hear it in his own ears. It was 9:18 PM on Friday, July 9, 2010, inside a grand mansion in Zermatt, Switzerland. After about three additional minutes of observation, Peter left the telescope and ran to his room to make a video call to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England. As expected, the staff of the Royal Observatory who answered his call responded to his excitement with light teasing and good-natured laughter. Peter Mayer was only twelve years old, and foreign. For all that, when they found out that the person they were talking to was a 12-year-old boy from another country, they treated him with a reasonable amount of respect and kindness. It was old news by now, but in 1958, the distinguished Dr. Kozyrev of the Crimean Observatory in the Soviet Union wrote about a transient lunar phenomenon in the crater Alphonsus on the Moon.1 Since the 16th century, astronomers have reported hundreds of events on the Moon, but few of them have been treated as credible. In July of 1969, Apollo 11 succeeded in landing on the Moon for the first time in human history. Subsequent missions up to Apollo 17 collected a variety of data, but there was no sign of any abnormality occurring on the Moon. Even in the 21st century, strange phenomena reported on the Moon were usually ignored. The Moon was a dead satellite planet: everyone knew that. Moreover, there was no way that anyone would believe the observations of a 12-year-old boy who was just an astronomy enthusiast. Unwilling to give up, young Peter Mayer returned to his balcony and looked through the telescope again. The strange phenomenon on the surface of the Moon didn’t repeat, but Peter believed that what he’d seen was an omen. A dark omen of something dangerous to come. The pale light of the Moon illuminated the ice walls of the Matterhorn in the Alps, making them shine like a grave marker for the Earth and the ghosts of the cosmos. *** At the same time that young Peter Mayer was observing the strange phenomenon on the surface of the Moon, the Moon cast its light over a different young man standing along the seashore. He was tall with broad shoulders and wild, unkempt hair that was being tossed about by the wind. This young man had no idea about the strange phenomenon that had occurred on the Moon’s surface that night. He gazed with sad eyes at the rough waves crashing against the rocky shoreline. His tanned, dark face showed marked Japanese features, but his ethnicity was mixed with something else. His white T-shirt and jeans, damp from sea spray, clung to his muscular frame. The wind blowing in from the sea was warm. There was no one around except for the young man himself. He lifted a thick eyebrow as he noticed something moving among the rocks. There was a creature standing in the water, close to shore. The creature’s wet, dark body gleamed in the moonlight. It looked like some kind of weird cross between a horseshoe crab and a water spider, with a dark rounded body that was about a foot long. Many legs extended from beneath the creature’s shell. The young man frowned, wondering when the creature had gotten there. He had little knowledge of common sea creatures, but to him, this creature appeared quite rare and special. It moved with the moonlight, blending into the shadows. Curious, the young man stepped forward to study the creature more closely. The creature moved slightly, tilting its body. From above, the creature’s shell resembled a hexagon. Two black beady eyes studied the young man from beneath the creature’s heavy shell. Unlike the young man, the creature appeared shy, as if it would rather not be noticed. Within moments, the creature swam out to the sea and disappeared beneath the waves. Clouds covered the Moon. The young man didn’t dwell on the appearance of the sea creature for very long. He remembered why he’d come out here and scowled. Cold rage burned in his eyes as he glared out at the dark sea. He hadn’t visited this place for ten years, but it hadn’t changed at all. Or so he thought. The young man’s name was Joe Asakura. He was a racecar driver who’d recently turned eighteen years old. Within the racing community, he’d earned the nickname “God of Death.” Joe didn’t know it, but his sighting of the sea creature was the prelude to a nightmarish sea change in his life. Translator's Note 1 Nikolai Alexandrovich Kozyrev (Russian: Никола́й Алекса́ндрович Ко́зырев; 2 September 1908 – 27 February 1983) was a Soviet Russian astronomer and astrophysicist. He was indeed noted for his sightings of strange phenomena inside the Alphonsus Crater on the Moon. The astronomical details in this passage are all historically accurate. ↩
Apr 19, 2024 • Subscribe
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