Somehow, I skipped reviewing this book. Odd. I told everyone else about it.
One of the fears of the moon landing was the lunar dust. It's been created partially by the surface alternating between extreme heat and extreme cold so it expands and contracts a lot, eventually breaking into a powder; and debris from dead stars and dying comets settling on it. The existence of the dust was known, but they didn't know how deep it was. Turns out it's not very deep. It is, however, highly charged and very sticky. It'll be second only to the radiation as an environmental hazard when we go back.
This book was written in 1961 so we didn't know what we were getting into.
The moon has been colonized... sort of. Lots of research stations, communities associated with the research stations, hotels, and tourists. One of the things that a tourist can do is ride "Selene". "Selene" is a sort of seagoing vessel. While the dust is only millimeters deep over most of the moon there is a sea where it has gathered yards deep. If you throw a rock into it there's a small splash and the rock sinks, but the ripple die down quickly. Any disturbance settles quickly.
One night, a mere day or two from dawn, the moon shows that it's core isn't completely dead. A bubble of gas that's been building for a million years gets released under the sea. It comes up around "Selene" and the ship sinks. From an outside perspective it just vanished.
Naturally, they go looking for the missing ship when it fails to report in. A trace of a heat signature remains where it passed. Another couple of hours and the sun would have erased it. They sink a pole and hit the ship. Knowing where it is and how deep it's buried they have to figure out how to dig out a ship from dirt that flows like water.
The story switches back and forth between the rescue crews on the surface and the people stuck inside as they first fight off boredom and then fight for their lives.
This book would make for a great movie. Really. It's a pretty good book, too.
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