1990s novel with sleeping alien machine inside the moon that teleports to another galaxy

Question

I read a book a few years ago that looked like a mass-market paperback from the 1990s or so.

It was about humans just barely colonizing our own solar system and doing wormhole experiments around Pluto/Uranus. When their experiment worked, it sent a signal to an alien rock/machine race across the galaxy, who then all warped to Saturn or something and started invading. The Moon had one of the aliens inside its core, hibernating, and when it woke up, it teleported to the aliens' home galaxy, along with a human ship that was orbiting the Moon.

It was written much like a disaster film from the '70s, with lots of characters, cutting back between scenes. It also ended on a cliffhanger; were there ever sequels made? What was the title?

Answer 1

A human research base on Pluto doing gravity research and trying to create a wormhole sounds like The Ring of Charon (1990) by Roger MacBride Allen.

The gravity experiment attracts the attention of some enigmatic aliens, designated the "Charonians," who invade the solar system and steal the Earth to put in their planetary zoo.

The major difference here is that the Earth disappeared and the Moon stayed put, which is the opposite of what you're asking about. But there is a ship/habitat that is transported along with the Earth and it becomes an important plot point because it is the only way for Earth to communicate back to the remnants of humanity in the solar system.

There is a sequel, The Shattered Sphere (1994) but as the second book of a planned trilogy I don't think it wraps things up very well either. The planned third book (The Falling World) has still not been published.