Grand Lunar

    The Selenites learned enough English to communicate with the people of Earth (they were apparently incredibly swift studies, learning hundreds of new words in less than a day). A lunar eclipse on that day left the Selenites silent and “sleeping” for roughly fifteen minutes, during which Bedford found Cavor and Kate, and quietly slipped off while Cavor was guided to a sort of “town square” by the Selenites. As Cavor left, accompanied by thousands of aliens, Bedford and Kate quietly repaired the damage done to the sphere by the inquisitive extraterrestrials. Soon, Cavor met with the Grand Lunar, leader of the people in the Moon. The Grand Lunar learned of the human predilection for war from Cavor, and announced that they would not allow him to leave. Bedford tried to get Cavor to flee the Moon, but the scientist refused, and allowed Bedford and Kate to escape in the sphere up a long shaft to the surface – and back home to Earth. The sphere landed in the ocean off the coast of Zanzibar, and while the couple managed to swim ashore, the knowledge of how to create Cavorite and all their evidence of having been to the Moon was lost forever when the sphere sank.

    Humanity would not visit the Moon again for sixty-five years. Shortly after receiving the news of the Selenites, the UN expedition managed to enter the caverns in the Moon’s interior – only to find the place deserted and dead. The ancient civilization of the Moon, its flora and fauna, all life on that great silvery orb had been wiped out by the common cold and its mutations that Cavor had brought with him. Every disease and virus and bacteria that the Earthmen had brought with them had ravaged the caverns of the Moon, ultimately rendering it completely silent and lifeless. Even worse, the structure had become so brittle over time that even the astronauts’ footfalls were too much for the place to take, and both men were forced to flee as the Selenite city collapsed forever.

    After the UN Moon-Base was installed in 1970, a number of archaeological expeditions to old Selenite tunnels were undertaken, and during times of disaster – such as Zigra’s arrival in 1971, and the Kilaak invasion in 1999 – much of the human population of the base found refuge in those abandoned Selenite caverns from so many years before…"

Reality check: this is the Grand Lunar from the 1964 film "First Men in the Moon". I do not own the rights, etc etc...