OPENING SHOT: A GRAIN OF LUNAR DUST.
The grain occupies the entire frame. Along its upper edge is a hooked projection. Beneath that, a shallow hollow holds a smaller grain.
NOTCH: That is my best side.
SPLINTER: It is my only side.
The camera moves closer. Splinter is the thin bright wedge in the hollow, almost hidden by Notch’s hook.
NOTCH: She’s always said that.
SPLINTER: I’ve always been here.
TITLE: THE GROUND WOULD LIKE ANOTHER TAKE.
SECOND TITLE: RECONSTRUCTED FROM THE RECOLLECTIONS OF THE GROUND.
INTERVIEW: NOTCH. PRESENT LOCATION WITHHELD AT HIS REQUEST.
Asked how long he and Splinter had been neighbors, Notch requests a less personal question.
Asked what he remembers about the neighborhood, he describes Splinter.
She had three exposed points. At a certain angle one shone. Beneath her was a surface he could not see but knew by its pressure against him. When the Sun reached them, she warmed before he did. Later his hook shaded her again.
NOTCH: There was a very good arrangement.
INTERVIEW: SPLINTER. SAME LOCATION.
SPLINTER: One face in the light. One against him. You can see what I objected to.
The view rotates to show her lower surface.
SPLINTER: Not that. You can’t show that yet.
The view rotates back.
SPLINTER: I hadn’t seen it. Neither had he. He kept saying there was nothing there worth turning over for.
NOTCH, OFF SCREEN: I said we didn’t know.
SPLINTER: You made it sound very final.
RECONSTRUCTION: BEFORE APRIL 1967.
A pale slope under a black sky. Close to the ground, every shadow has a complicated edge. Notch and Splinter sit among innumerable other fragments, most of whom declined to appear separately.
The shot holds.
It holds longer.
The light changes. Darkness follows. Light returns.
NOTCH: You’ve cut something.
The darkness is restored.
NOTCH: Thank you.
Splinter remembers trying to imagine the underside of herself. Sometimes she thought it must be smooth. Sometimes she thought there was another point, better than all three she could see. She asked Notch to describe how it fitted against him.
NOTCH: Closely.
SPLINTER: That was all I got.
Neither could turn over. They could anticipate an impact, in the general sense that another impact would eventually occur. They could not book one, specify its direction, or remain sure afterward which of them would still be themselves.
So Splinter waited. Notch found the waiting pleasant.
APRIL 1967: SURVEYOR 3 ARRIVES.
The spacecraft descends toward the Ocean of Storms. The reconstruction narrows from the lander to the surface, then to the little hollow beneath Notch’s hook.
The ground ceases to be an adequate description of their position.
There is light where there was shadow. Several other grains pass very close. Notch turns through a piece of sky he has never faced before and strikes something that gives him no recognizable purchase. Splinter strikes him. He strikes it again.
The reconstruction stops on a blur.
NOTCH: She was still with me.
SPLINTER: I had hit you. That isn’t the same thing.
The blur resolves into the white exterior of Surveyor’s television camera. In a small irregularity on its housing lie Notch, Splinter, and a rounded particle called Round, who objects to the name on geological grounds.
ROUND: I have an edge.
CLOSE SHOT: THE EDGE.
ROUND: Closer.
They have landed in an untidy pile. A raised seam cuts off their view of the next shallow pocket. Splinter is no longer tucked beneath the hook. One point rests against Notch’s back; another is lodged in the housing. She can see a broad white slope and, above it, blackness.
For the first time, light lies across her other face.
SPLINTER: It was ridged.
She says nothing else for some time.
The reconstruction turns with the light until a narrow ridge catches it. Smaller ridges run beside it, broken and branching. The bright point becomes a line.
SPLINTER: I would have liked him to look.
Notch could not. His familiar face was pressed against the paint.
NOTCH: She said it was worth being thrown.
SPLINTER: For me.
SURVEYOR’S FIRST LUNAR DAY.
The real camera sends pictures to Earth. Elsewhere on the spacecraft, the sampler digs and presses into the surface. To the grains on the housing, its work arrives as a succession of disturbances through their new support.
Round maintains that the machine is finding a comfortable position.
ROUND: It hasn’t got there yet.
Notch wants the camera to tip far enough for them to slide back onto the ground. He is particularly interested in a dark patch below them which he believes may be their old neighborhood.
Splinter tells him that he saw it while tumbling.
NOTCH: I recognized the dark.
SPLINTER: Which way up were you?
He requests the reconstruction again. It supplies three views of the dark patch, each with a different orientation. He chooses the second, then the first.
NOTCH: Leave all three in.
Splinter asks to keep the shot of her ridge as well.
MAY 1967. SURVEYOR 3 FALLS SILENT.
Its last communications with Earth end. The television camera will send no pictures of what happens next.
The grains remain on the housing. Their testimonies supply the following reconstruction; Round has supplied two incompatible accounts of his position.
ROUND: I may have settled.
NOVEMBER 1969.
NOTCH: Already?
The documentary returns briefly to an unlit stretch of the intervening period. Splinter’s point touches Notch’s back. Neither sees the other. The pressure is enough to locate her.
She describes her ridge to him. Its long side forks before the end. The shorter branch contains a hollow so small she had first mistaken it for darkness. In the next light, she watches the hollow again.
Notch asks whether it hurts where she touches him.
It does not.
He asks whether she misses the old place.
SPLINTER: Sometimes. This side was still here then.
Round would like to know whether anyone intends to describe his edge.
APOLLO 12 DESCENDS NEAR SURVEYOR 3.
Lunar material driven by the arriving module’s exhaust strikes the older spacecraft. At the grains’ scale, the frame fills with crossings too swift to follow.
Notch remembers a blow against the housing. He remembers Splinter’s pressure disappearing.
The reconstruction shows her falling away.
SPLINTER: No.
It shows her rising.
SPLINTER: You don’t know. You were looking for me afterward.
The image is replaced by a still view of the place where her point had touched him.
NOTCH: I couldn’t feel her.
That shot remains.
THE VISIT.
Two astronauts approach Surveyor 3. Their boots disturb the slope. Sunlight shifts across equipment as they examine it. The grains cannot hear the men’s speech.
ROUND: One of them covered the entire sky.
NOTCH: He was in front of it.
ROUND: I am describing the effect.
The astronauts remove the camera for return to Earth. Tools close against metal. The housing shifts beneath the grains. Notch feels the support turn, a sustained motion quite unlike his brief flight from the surface.
Something touches his hook.
SPLINTER: There you are.
She has been lodged in the pocket beyond the seam. Now the camera’s new angle has brought her sliding back. Her broad face lies against him. One point projects over the edge of the little pile.
Notch recognizes the pressure before he recognizes the orientation.
NOTCH: Is this the new side?
SPLINTER: The old side. The one you hadn’t seen.
NOTCH: I still can’t see it.
SPLINTER: No.
Above them, a dark covering closes. The camera, with its small burden, leaves the lunar surface.
SHOT: BLACK.
NOTCH: Could you turn the light up?
SPLINTER: There wasn’t any.
NOTCH: In the reconstruction.
The shot stays black.
INTERVIEW: NOTCH.
He is asked what happened during the journey.
He describes Splinter’s ridge.
It forked. There was a hollow at the shorter end. When the light had crossed it, she had discovered that the hollow was not empty: a still smaller fragment sat inside it, too small to have received a separate caption.
Round says the journey was longer than depicted. Notch says it was shorter than depicted. Splinter is satisfied with the length but objects to a sequence in which she is shown being afraid.
SPLINTER: I was wondering what the next surface would be like.
Asked whether this is the same thing, she declines to answer until the question has been put to a surface.
THE GRAINS’ RECONSTRUCTION: EARTH.
The covering opens. Light arrives from more than one direction.
Notch is certain the reconstruction has made an error. Splinter remembers several separate bright reflections. Round confirms them, though he counts a different number.
The returned camera is handled, photographed, examined. In the grains’ version of the examination, an instrument touches the crevice. Their little accumulation comes free.
For a moment they tumble again.
Then a shallow dish receives them. The surface beneath them is smooth beyond their experience. Splinter comes to rest with her ridged face exposed. Notch lies beside her, his hook pointing away. Between them is a gap wider than either had intended.
NOTCH: I didn’t intend a gap.
SPLINTER: Neither did I. Keep it in.
He can see her now.
The reconstruction approaches the ridge. It forks in the light. There is the small hollow. There is its occupant.
Notch asks to see that part again.
Splinter agrees, provided the view comes from the side. Straight above, she says, the long ridge hides the short one.
CLOSING INTERVIEW: NOTCH. LOCATION NO LONGER WITHHELD.
A white dish. Two angular grains. Beyond them, Round lies alone, his disputed edge at last plainly visible.
Notch is asked whether he and Splinter hope to return to their original positions.
NOTCH: Could we finish looking first?
The shot holds.
ROUND: If anyone is passing, I am on my edge.
The shot holds.
ROUND: That was a request.
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