DARLAH (English title: 172 Hours on the Moon) is a 2008 young adult science fiction/horror novel by Norwegian author Johan Harstad. The book was originally published in Norway on September 15, 2008 by Cappelen Damm, with an English language translation being published by Little, Brown in New York City on July 10, 2012. Rights to DARLAH have also been sold to sixteen other countries: Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Faroe Islands, France, the Netherlands, Germany, UK, Turkey, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Taiwan, South Korea, Mexico and Brazil. In 2008 Harstad's work on DARLAH won him a Brage Prize.
Plot
After a prologue set in 2010, the book begins in 2012, after NASA has announced its intent to hold a contest for teenagers between the ages of 14 and 18. Three winners will be selected from all over the world, with the prize being a coveted spot on an upcoming mission to return to the Moon. The stunt is believed to be a way of increasing both funding and public interest, but the real reason is that NASA intends to study a mystical phenomenon with a sinister edge that was previously discovered during the original Moon landings. This is the reason that NASA stopped sending people to the Moon in the 1970s.
Three teenagers from Norway, Japan, and France (Mia, Midori, and Antoine respectively) are excited at the rare opportunity to see the Moon firsthand as well as stay in the formerly secret lunar base DARLAH 2, which was built in the 1970s during Operation DP7. Their excitement is short-lived as they realize that this base might become their tomb, discovering what keeps other from visiting the Moon: beings that can only be described as doppelgängers, which are revealed to have appeared in Earth's history before. Before the Moon landings, they were harmless, but after a radio telescope receives what has been called the "6EQUJ5" signal, humans decide to investigate. The code "6EQUJ5" has been following the three teenagers everywhere since shortly after they are selected to travel to the Moon, with Mia seeing "6E" written on a hobo's jacket, Antoine seeing "QU" on a crashing plane, which never existed, and Midori seeing "J5" as the airport gate leading to where she is to depart for the United States. Ever since the first Moon landing, the doppelgangers have attacked any and all astronauts, nearly killing the crew of Apollo 13, and after analyzing a detached doppelgänger arm, NASA finds that the beings are not living, as they are composed of an unknown inorganic material.
Meanwhile, a retired NASA custodian from the era of the first Moon landings, living in a retirement home, slowly remembers the horrible secret that will mean the teenagers' imminent death if they are allowed to travel to the Moon. Back on Earth, after the doppelgängers attack the Moon base, the children and their "chaperones" are declared dead, leaving no hope for them. One by one, each are killed by their doppelgängers: the two engineers on the mission are locked in an airless room to suffocate; Antoine and Mia's short-lived romance is extinguished by his disappearance with the mission commander; the lunar module pilot, a young woman, is murdered by Antoine's doppelgänger, leaving Mia and Midori to fend for themselves.
The retired NASA worker tries to alert the military, but because of an inability to speak, fails, and dies shortly afterwards.