The dark spacesuit was assembled from ring after ring of metal armor. Silver-gray tubes extended from its spherical helmet and connected to the shoulders, reflecting the bright light.
Though it looked a little round and bulky, it moved with remarkable agility and speed. The armor on its feet had claws that could grip the lunar surface in any direction.
The armor on the spacesuit's calves and back bulged slightly, glowing with a faint blue light as it propelled the towering figure swiftly over a lunar canyon more than fifty meters wide.
With the strange, rectangular equipment in his hands, he looked just like one of those interstellar mech warriors from video games that had appeared in recent years, battling swarms of giant alien bugs.
He dropped from a height of more than ten meters without making a sound. The armored figure kicked up gray-white lunar dust, which rose high into the air before gradually beginning to settle.
Hopping and gliding through the constantly rising "white mist," he carried on for a while before finally slowing to a stop beside an upright metal monument. He leaned over the surrounding alloy railing and peered inside.
Hiss. Hiss.
"Valery Polyakov! What do you think you're doing?"
The tall, heavily armored figure was awkwardly stuck halfway over the railing. A woman's furious demand came through his helmet. Polyakov habitually scratched the back of his head, only to make his helmet ring with a hollow clang.
"Cough. I was just looking at some construction debris that fell inside."
"Don't give me that! You can't fool me. I know what you're thinking. That footprint belongs to all of humanity. It's part of the history of human interstellar civilization—"
"Harasho, harasho."
Muttering in heavily accented Russian, Polyakov twisted his bear-like body back to the outside of the