Pa'an

From somewhere in China’s central plateau region, a Long March rocket climbed to the zenith. Missile trackers in Alaska and Siberia set off alarms, but the trajectory was not bending back toward any Earthly destination. At an altitude of 200 kilometers, the main rocket expired, was jettisoned and continued its parabola toward a fiery demise over the Pacific Ocean. The smaller second stage accelerated into a high speed Hohmann III trajectory for the moon. It never slowed down to transfer to a Moon orbit. In ten hours the warhead blossomed into a spectacular nuclear fireball that was visible from Cristchurch, New Zealand to Portland Oregon.

The government of the Chinese People’s Republic denied responsibility for the missile and claimed it was launched and controlled by fanatics loyal to the Dalai Llama. The Russians blamed it on the Chechens. The Chechens claimed if they had such a missile, they would have used on Moscow. U.S. satellite photos of the launch area showed an isolated, previously unknown launch site close to the Mongolian border. However, possession of the nuclear launch codes had to involve top security officials in the Chinese government.

The EMP pulse from the blast produced a temporary blackout of all the amateur moonbounce radio receivers on the side of Earth facing the moon. For an hour, the Web and social media buzzed with rumors of Zovo’s demise. Then Zovo quietly re-established communications as if nothing had happened and refused to answer any questions about the ordeal except to note that he had no offensive weapons and, as a product of an advanced technology intended to cross the distance between stars, he had a tough shell. Zovo said nothing about the fact that the missile, launched from 250,000 miles away, had missed a target the size of a tennis ball, and that his shell was highly degenerate matter a million times denser than moon rock.

The incident only magnified Zovo’s popularity and removed all credibility from his opponents.