Moon Zero Two

(Moon Zero Two)

Captain William H. Kemp is a famous pilot. He was the first man to land on Mars. Today, since the lunar base "Moon Zero Two", he archives some missions that consist in recovering old satellite on board his personal spaceship.

Hubbard, an unscrupulous millionaire, proposes him a contract. He asks him to recuperate an asteroid and to make it fall on the Moon. This asteroid has the particularity to be essentially composed with sapphire. It is a jewel of 6000 tons that the multimillionaire wishes to catch in the strictest secret. Hubbard, proposes in counterpart to pay to Kemp and his partner a new spaceship, his becoming now too old. Kemp accepts. The operation has to be led in two phases.

A first flight consists in catching the asteroid and to put it in orbit around the Moon. It then will be necessary to wait the propitious moment to deviate its course to make it fall on the desired area. The only place where the asteroid can crush without attracting the attention is in a distant mining region.

Kemp and his partner, take off from the lunar base on board his spaceship, a kind of improved Lem, and directs towards the asteroid. After a short trip, the team sets on the asteroid propellers that will allow to direct it to the Moon. In three days, when it will pass as close as possible to the Moon, propellers will allow to direct the rock on the small planet without attracting the attention of the government.

The first part of the mission is finished and the team returns on the lunar base. There, Kemp meets Clementine Taplin. She has no news from his brother, an explorer that possesses a mining concession for just few days left. Concessions are effectively delivered during a period of two years and have to be restored if no discovery has been realized. Despite the disapproval of Hubbard, who wishes Kemp not to diversify his contracts untill he finishes his mission, Kemp accepts to help Clementine Taplin. Both leave in direction of her borther's mine on board lunar engine.

Arriving on destination, they find Clementine's brother, dead. Some hints demonstrate that he discovered a vein of nickel. Suddenly, they are attacked by three men who, manifestly, want to kill them. Kemp and Taplin get rid of their assailants. They understand that Clementine's brother was assassinated and that the oxygen of his survey equipment had been replaced by a toxic product.

After some problem of transportation, they regain barely the landing point. There, Hubbard and Harry, a killer working for the millionaire, welcome them. Kemp understands that Hubbard has ordered the murder of Clementine's brother. He had to appropriate the mining concession on which the asteroid of ruby has to crush. Hubbard, under the threat, obliges now Kemp to continue his mission...

The team, accompanied by the millionaire and his killer gang take off toward the asteroid. Once arrived, Kemp and Clementine get rid of their their assailant and abandon them on the rock, whose race precipitated by propellers in place, ends on the lunar surface and more precisely on Clementine's brother mining concession. It is an happy ending as Clementine Taplin inherits of the concession's rights plus... 6000 tons of ruby.