The sentinel

The next time you see the full moon high in the south, look carefully at its right-hand edge and let your eye travel upward alongthe curve of the disk. Round about two o'clock you will notice a small, dark oval: anyone with normal eyesight can find itquite easily. It is the great walled plain, one of the finest on the Moon, known as the Mare Crisium -the Sea of Crises. Three hundred miles in diameter, and almost completely surrounded by a ring of magnificent mountains, it had never been explored until we entered it in the late summer of 1996. Our expedition was a large one. We had two heavy freighters whichhad flown our supplies and equipment from the main lunar basein the Mare Serenitatis , five hundred miles away. There were alsothree small rockets which were intended for short-range transportover regions which our surface vehicles couldn't cross. Luckily, most of the Mare Crisiurn is very flat. Thereare none of thegreat crevasses so common and so dangerous elsewhere, and veryfew craters or mountains of any size. As far as we could tell, ourpowerful caterpillar tractors would have no difficulty in taking