Mike Moscoe: A Day's Work on the Moon

D-4 was stone-cold dead on the Moon. I was trembling in my room, Mom, Dad, Jer around me. I just sat at my control station, too spent to even get up. Jer offered me a hand, helped me to my bed. I collapsed. He sat down on my bed beside me.

And the alarm went off.

“I’ll take care of that,” Mom said.

Dad came over to kneel beside me. “You did very good, young woman. Very good. Both of you. Tomorrow, you’ll have to tell me all about what happened.”

“We will,” Jer assured him.

The phone rang. “I expect I know who that is,” Dad said and tapped the speaker phone. “This is Rocket Woman’s Dad, and we may owe you an apology,” he began.

“I’m the one who owes you more than a father can pay,” was the caller’s answer. “They have my daughter in the rescue rig. All four of them. Rescue Four now needs rescuing, I am told,” he chuckled. “I believe my daughter would like to meet you daughter once she gets back here.”

“I think that can be arranged.” Dad said.

“Good. Until then?”

“Yes.”

Jer and I went to school the next day, as much to see our friends as to get away from the cameras and ringing phones. For the same reason, or so we told ourselves, we cut out before our last class, taking a roundabout way for our walk home. Not so roundabout that I missed the Teddy Bear Factory.

We stared at the bears in the window. “I’m sorry, Nikki. They don’t have the one you want,” Jer said, real sadness tingeing his voice.

“Well, Mr. Jerrold Wolfgang Ebden, we will just have to have them make a teddy bear in a space suit.”

“Riding a rover,” he finished my usual want list.

“Nope. Riding a D-4 loader. Rocket Woman will not settle for less than exactly what she wants.”

Jer opened the door for me, and together, we went in.

“A Day’s Work on the Moon” by Mike Moscoe, copyright 2000 by Mike Moscoe, used by permission of the author.