Over the Mountains of the Moon

Over the Mountains of the Moon

also see ten year sentence and Willie Tucker's blues-06/08/10

fiction
edward w pritchard

I went all the way to the moon to become a criminal; and I am talking of the earth's one moon not the dozens and dozens of the moons of Saturn and Jupiter where I went a few years later. I could have stayed in Chicago if I wanted to become a common thief.

I drive a dozer here on the moon. Just a grunt. I am not a scientist or engineer or even a skilled technician. Just a bulldozer driver class 3 uneducated and underpaid.

I am on the American team mining molybdenum in the mountains. Molybdenum is one of the few minerals economically practical to mine here. It's like oil was to mine on earth in Antarctica back twenty years ago. Very expensive to mine and transport but economically necessary for strategic reasons. I just go where they tell me and work in the moon's low gravity driving a bulldozer. Naturally I understate it a little for the machines are very expensive to operate here.

My criminal background began when I got involved in pirating emeralds here on the moon. Coming to or from a job site while driving the dozer I knock out a few feet of mountainside where instructed. Groundhogs, men who hand sift for emeralds do the rest. Once or twice a week I knock out some mountainside and about once a month I am given a blue green emerald for payment.

My boys back in Chicago would give one hand for one of these emeralds. They are very beautiful, ultra expensive and the ultimate status symbol. I have three emeralds now. When I get back to earth I am going to sell two. My favorite emerald I am going to keep. It's very beautiful.

The molybdenum I help mine here on the moon keeps many poorer people in Asia alive. Trace elements of molybdenum in the soil are rare now in China and India. Their large populations need molybdenum to keep from getting many diseases such as copper poisoning of the blood. The work I do here in Molybdenum mining is important and humanitarian.

I pirate emeralds here on the moon somewhat for the extra money but mostly I like the appearance of the beautiful emeralds we mine. If the moon did tear off from the earth a few billion years ago why shouldn't I help bring the exquisite emeralds collected from the Mountains of the Moon back to gem collectors on earth. I guess that makes me a criminal, at least if I get caught before I return to earth four months from now.