Battle on the moon where the defenders hide behind brightly colored rocks

Question

There is a scene stuck in my mind: Bad guys arrive to take over the good guys moonbase, and the good guys hide behind brightly painted rock outcroppings so they don't accidently get shot by their own side when the battle takes place. Basicly, the idea was to shoot everybody that wasn't hiding behind the piles of colored rocks, and to never shoot at those rocks where the defenders were placed. I don't believe much of the tale took place on the moon, just a chapter or two.

I read it at least 20 or 30 years ago and can't reconcile this scene with the rest of the book, or I'd be able to give you more details. I do think it was a 1970's apocalyptic earth story. Does anybody know which one?

Answer 1

This sounds a bit like the moon battle scene from the 1986 Clive Cussler Novel Cyclops with the protagonist Dirk Pitt (think James Bond meets Jacque Cousteau :-) ).

Cyclops wiki description

The scene was only one or two chapters of the whole book. In the story, the Russians mount a military expedition against a secret U.S. moonbase. The U.S. personnel are not heavily armed. They defeat the Russians using a secret weapon of a shovel and some orange brightly colored rocks.

If you do a google advanced search using the following terms, it should lead you to a GoogleBooks link with a chapter with this scene. It was on pages 374 - 380.

"clive cussler' moon shovel "cyclops"

It should return something like:

Cyclops - Page 380 - Google Books Result books.google.ca/books?isbn=1451621027

Clive Cussler - 2011 - Fiction Most of them flew wide into the lunar desert, but two found their mark. One of the ... “An ordinary shovel,” he replied. “Since we all have ... “You 380 Clive Cussler.

Answer 2

Might be worth having a look at Milennium by Ben Bova, which is the right age and involves a battle for a moonbase. I don't remember the detail about brightly coloured rocks, though.