Protect earth from alien invaders

Story:THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

December 1968, T -7 minutes 11 seconds. The Saturn V rocket was perched on pad 39A like a long finger pointing to the sky. The three astronauts huddled together towards the tip of the cold steel projectile. The control room is bustling with activity as they prepare for launch. T – 7 minutes.
Inside the 70 pound, 36 kilobyte computer on the wall inside the Command module, Morris the mouse is thinking of what he might have for lunch. T-3 Minutes, thirty seconds. You may have heard of a computer bug, a term that came about when Grace Murray Harper, on September 9th, 1947, found a moth between the contacts of a relay in the Harvard University Mark II computer. Morris, having stowed away inside of the NASA onboard guidance computer, has become a sort of ‘computer mouse’ – not to be confused with the one invented by Douglas Engelbart and his colleagues at Stanford Research Institute just one year earlier. T – 2 minutes and counting.
Morris knew that the astronauts had some freeze dried macaroni somewhere in the cabin, he just wasn’t quite sure where. Soon he found a food locker and some foil packages labeled NASA rations. Bringing one package containing mac and cheese back to the guidance computer, Morris nestled up to the core memory for warmth and settled in for the launch. T – 1 minute.
“Countdown 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1… “ there is a moment of silence and then a deafening roar as the rocket began it’s ascent. Slowly moving upwards, Morris felt like he was going up an elevator, a very long elevator ride it was – well over sixty miles before going into orbit around the earth. Morris began to feel like he was floating, actually he was floating. Bouncing off of capacitors and relays, Morris began to feel like he was in a pinball machine. Morris didn’t quite know what was going on, but in less then 10 minutes he had traveled entirely around the earth. A couple minutes later he heard some more noise outside as the rockets third stage blasted them into the course for the moon. Morris then began to move about the cabin. Peering out the triangular windows of the cone shaped module, Morris could see that it was pitch black outside; no stars, no moon, no earth. Panicking when he realized that the crew was about to notice him, he flapped his arms like a bird but was unable to do much but float around randomly. He soon drifted past a window away from the astronauts and could see all the stars like he had never seen them before. The moon shone brilliantly in the distance and a large blue surface glowed from beneath.
What a wondrous view Morris had as he journeyed towards the moon. So amazed was he that he did nothing but float about the cabin, drifting in and out of dream. He dreamt of what it might be like on the moon, what he might find. Would there be other mice? Would he find cheese, he heard some people say that the moon was made of cheese.
Three days later, Morris could see now that the moon was as large as the earth was before. After a few orbits around the moon, Morris saw for the first time, the Earth Rise. The earth rise is similar to the sun rise, only it is the earth, in its entire blue and brown splendor, rising above the grey desolation of the moon. As the module orbited the moon several more times Morris noticed through the windows that the moon looked like a gigantic, deserted, inhospitable expanse of nothing, and much to his dismay, there was no cheese. Before long Morris could hear the three astronauts saying something into a radio.
“We are now approaching lunar sunrise,” announced astronaut William A. Anders, “And, for all the people back on earth, the crew of Apollo 8 have a message that we would like to send to you. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. " Anders then passes on to James A. Lovell, Jr.
"And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day."
"And God said,” Astronaut Frank Borman went on to say, “Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good." And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close, with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you, all of you on the good earth,” Borman finished as the spacecraft approached a large jagged mountain range on the moon’s surface.
Better than finding cheese, Morris now had something much better. The peace which surpasses all understanding now flooded over him as the spaceship slowly and silently glided over the Sea of Tranquility. Morris knew beyond a moon-shadow of a doubt that it was God that had created that big blue marble called the earth that he could see through the triangular window of the Command module.
2½ hours hours later Morris over – heard one of the astronauts saying that they would need to perform the Trans-Earth Injection while they fly over the dark side of the moon. Morris also heard that this would be a very critical procedure and if it didn’t work, they would be stuck orbiting the moon forever.
Soon Morris could feel the thrust of the engines that meant they all would be on their way home. Morris felt a peace in his heart as the module again flew slowly across the Sea of Tranquility. Morris noticed that one astronaut was at the computer controls – his home – punching away. Through the window the star Rigel, the brightest star in the constellation Orion, and what would be his left knee. Then the star Sirius came into view, the brightest star in the night sky.
As the ship cruised back to earth, Morris snuggled back into the computer, which was now nice and warm due to all the calculations performed in the mission. It would be two and a half days before returning to earth so Morris decided to take himself a good long nap.
Half a day into the trip, Morris was restless and hungry so he came out of his cabin and sneaked around the module while the crew were sleeping. He went over to the food locker and inside found some fresh turkey with stuffing. He nibbled a little bit of the turkey and made his way back to his home in the wall of the spacecraft and fell into a deep sleep for the rest of the trip.
A couple days later, Morris awakened to the sounds of the guidance computer coming to life. Relays chattered away while the system calculated re-entry coordinates. Soon Morris experienced the gravitational pull of the earth again as the module was engulfed in a bright plume of plasma. The whole capsule skipped along the atmosphere like a rock along the water of a lake and before long the parachutes came out and brought the craft to a leisurely splashdown on the biggest sea of all - the Pacific Ocean.
After splashdown, Morris felt gravity switch so that now up was down and down was up. As 10 foot waves hit the walls Morris felt like he was on an amusement park ride. It would be about three more hours before the capsule was loaded aboard a large ship and Morris was able to find his way out through the hatch of the cone shaped command module and become a more traditional stowaway.

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