As they climb up the ladder, the gravity of the moon slowly overtakes that of the Earth, and at a certain point they find they need to carefully flip around on the ladder in order to complete the climb, now downwards, to the surface of the moon. They all manage it, and find themselves upside down on the dusty and rocky surface of the Near Moon, the world and swamp sitting above them.
They decide to travel northwards (given they are the south pole). After a short time they come across a field of strange crystalline rhombezoid bulbs, that smell like petrol. They are curious but decide to give them a wide berth and enter a deep chasm, where they hear scuttling and scurrying - in the shadows they see innumerable dog sized crabs, keepingpace with them, keeping a low profile, but undoubtedly stalking them.
They decide they don't want to fight that many crabs, so they search for something they can use to throw them off while they escape - they find an old, slightly stale cherry pie, and throw that in a side chasm, distracting the crabs while they flee to freedom.
They come over a rise to what looks like a large crater filled with ash-grey writhing worms, each as big as a cow. They go through their inventory to try to work out if they have some useful device to clear away the worms, but find that they actually are carrying very little - in fact they don't even really have any supplies and they are making such slow going they will quickly run out of food and water.
Sissy and Vitreous Orange's polybodies immediately go to the market and buy supplies of food (it is useful being in instantaneous telepathic contact with a second body) and bring them to the ladder. The exploratory team returns to the ladder and passes the food up.
Newly supplied, the explorers return to the crater with the writhing worms. But their appetite to kill or clear out the worms is gone and they decide instead to go around the crater, and enter another crevasse. After a few hours they come across a settlement - it looks like a neo-neanderthal settlement! There are two guards with stone spears who stand to attention and challenge the intruders. forgetting that he is the only one who looks like a neo-neanderthal any more, Renko steps forward and tries to explain that they have come to find the sky-keys in order to fulfil the ancient prophecy and save the world.
It goes down badly. Deeply irritated, and convinced the adventurers are frauds, the neanderthals throw rocks and spears at them until they retreat. They decide against a massacre of their kinfolk, and fall back in good order with a few light wounds from thrown rocks and spears.
Renko doles out healing potions to repair Vitreous Orange and Sissy, and they decide that peace with their kinfolk is too important to pass up.
They return to the settlement, this time holding a great gift - the Citrine Soul Sphere. The shaman of the moon-neanderthals steps forward - he has a matching sphere! Friendship is struck and the neo-neanderthals offer them food and shelter. The shaman, Mongo, speaks to them of the sky keys. He has heard the spirits speak that one can be found in the palace of the Spectrum Satraps. They rest, and in the morning the neo-neanderthals offer them supplies, and a guide, Hawk the Slayer, to take them to the Door into the moon.
Hawk leads them north for a couple of days, finally to a door set into the north pole of the moon. There is a lock in the form of a puzzle, which Hawk admits none of them know how to open. Renko ponders the puzzle for three full days before finally cracking it - the door opens and a ladder leads downwards into the bowels of the moon.
For safety's sake they leave a mirror at the surface so they can use Renko's mirror-travel spell to escape the moon if the find themselves trapped.
Using the lights on their powered porcelain armour, they navigate into the depths. After clambering down the ladder for a long, long time they find themselves in a chamber of carved stone with about twenty exits of different sizes. They debate for a while which way to go before choosing a tunnel at random. They clamber along it until it terminates at a door, which they open and find themselves in a livingstone tunnel. They carefully go along, and their care is rewarded when they realise that a section of tunnel up ahead is actually the maw of some enormous creature, lying in wait. Wanting to avoid a fight, they double back to the large chamber and choose another route.
Renko and sissy both try to use their intuition and tracking to work out the right way, and argue for a long time over whether tunnel 8 or tunnel 4 is the right one. Finally, because they can't decide they go down tunnel 12. This tunnel opens up into a wider tunnel, with carved sections of livingstone, and sections of liquid walls held in place with stuckforce. There are long sections of corridors with strange cycsts where the dessicated bodies of six-armed humanoids are curled up. They don't search or disturb them for fear of zombies. further down the tunnel they find abandoned habitats - abandoned recently (last few years) of some humanoid civilization.
Finally the tunnel terminates at - a spaceship. A huge spaceship is stuck through the moon like a pin through an orange. They enter the craft, looking for valuables. In the cabin there are only skeletons but they are approached by a weird armless bipedal droid, who shouts 'Aaaaaaah!' at them continually, though seemingly in a friendly manner. An open trap door leads them to a large open bay, where there are numerous empty bays, and a room-sized box held by clamps that looks like it is ready to be released.
The box speaks - it asks if they are authorised personnel of this spaceship. Renko says yes, and the box asks it to confirm completion of final directive. Renko, cautiously, asks exactly what the final directive is. The box is extremely reticent at revealing this but finally reveals that it is a starkiller bomb, and its final order is to explode. Renko points out that this will kill them all and destroy their world, to which the bomb protests that their lives are short anyway and to detonate is its only purpose. After some negotiation of the possibility of the bomb detonating on a long timer (say, a thousand years) or going to distant star and detonating it instead, Renko finally decides not to let it blow up at all. With the protesting cries of the starkiller bomb behind them, they leave the spaceship. The weird screaming droid follows them, much to their annoyance, but they worry it might be useful so they let it tag along.
They retrace their steps and take another tunnel - and find themselves traversing a tunnel that they don't notice at first that they are walking among toxic poisonous eels, writhing on the ground. By the time they realise this they are too deep in to easily back out. They decide to push on and manage with great luck and skill to make it past the eel nest. the screaming robot just blunders through, oblivious.
They find themselves at a wall of stuckforce with no way past. Beyond they can see what looks like an enormous musical organ made of bone. But they can't work out how to traverse the stuckforce wall and they don't want to return through the eels so they activate their failsafe and use the mirror they are carrying to return to the door, suprising a sleeping Hawk. On the bright side, they manage to lose the annoying shouting droid.
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