Part 6

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      Brad felt a little better knowing that they apparently hadn't been attacked by some mysterious creature in the dust depression, but he was now back to square one. What had the seven people actually seen? An idea dawned on him. There was one thing all the sightings had in common. Only one person had seen each 'movement'. No one else had been with them to back up their claim.

It was time for the evening meal. He went out to the dining room. Over dinner everyone joked with him about the events of the day, but Tracy sat quietly hardly saying a word.
After dinner Brad walked along to the base doctor's office and surgery.

Dr Mark Mason was a grey-haired man in his early sixties. He listened as Brad explained.
"Yes, I'm familiar with the alleged sightings," he said, "Professor Frazer also noted the fact that each sighting was made by an individual with no one else present to confirm."

"Well, what do you think? I'm no psychologist, but a person feeling alone, maybe a little depressed and homesick. They're sitting by themselves in the train looking out the window at that desolate landscape, so their imagination plays a trick on them and they think they see something moving." He waited looking expectantly at the doctor.

"It's possible," Mason ventured at last, "but how would you explain the fact that they all saw something similar."

"The first person to make a sighting told other members of staff. The word spread, and by the power of suggestion others saw the same thing."

Again Mason paused before answering. "Brad, it's very possible. I suggest you make an announcement that you've discovered there is definitely nothing out there in the sea, and we'll wait. If there are no more sightings over the next few months, we'll know you were right."

Brad walked back to his room feeling pleased with himself. He had solved the mystery. As he sat down at his desk to write up the report on his laptop, he remembered the three cameras he had set up out in the sea. Using his computer he logged into the two cameras at Equator Loop monorail siding. They were functioning perfectly. They were set to take an image every second, so he set an alarm to send a message to his computer and his mobile phone if anything out of the ordinary appeared. The third camera out by the dust depression took a little more work as he had to patch it into one of the moon's geostationary satellites. Once that was done he stared into the image on his computer screen. It showed the Rover's wheel tracks leading away from the camera and disappearing into the dust. The dust appeared to shift and sway slightly, probably due to the heat of the sun. But there was nothing else moving. No mysterious 'creature of the sea' darted across the field of vision.

Brad laughed to himself and went back to his report.

The next morning every member of staff at both moon bases received an email from Brad Sullivan advising that an investigation of the area of most of the sightings had revealed no trace of anything living, and that he was confident that there was nothing out there in the sea to cause any concern.

Brad looked for Tracy at breakfast, but she wasn't there. He knocked on the door of her room with no answer. She must be busy in one of the research sections of the base he thought as he walked along to engineering to give them a hand for the rest of the day.

****
At four thirty that afternoon Tracy was waiting on the platform of the monorail station. She had spent the day in the hydroponics section studying the various plants and noting the growth rates under one fifth normal Earth gravity. The train from Farside arrived, and as her father stepped out of the leading car she grabbed his arm and led him quickly down the ramp to a secluded part of the lounge.

"I take it you have news for me," he said as they sat down.

"Dad, I'm worried," Tracy said, "I could have called you last night at Farside, but I wanted to talk to you in person."

"This is about your trip into the sea with Brad?"

"Yes." Tracy then related the details of the previous day. She left nothing out including the whispery voice in her mind. "What do you think?" she asked when she had finished, "Have I imagined the voice and the thing creeping into my vision, or is there something out there somehow getting into my mind?"

Her father sat silently looking thoughtful.
Tracy waited.

Finally he spoke. "Tracy, you and I have been gifted with a very rare and unusual ability. We can make contact with other telepathic people or 'entities' with our minds, and vice versa they can contact us. So either your mind is playing tricks on you and you imagined the whole thing, or there is something out there which contacted you yesterday. We need to find out. I'll rearrange my schedule for tomorrow, and Brad and I will take the same trip you did. If there is something telepathic lurking out near Equator Loop then it will surely try and contact me as it did with you."

"Do you want me to come along?"

"No. I think we should just present one open mind, so to speak, for this thing to contact. I'll get Brad to do the driving again. Ah, there he is now."

Phillip waved to Brad who was at the other side of the room. He came over. "Brad, do you have any plans for tomorrow?" the CEO asked.



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