Luke Marusiak - Lifeboat Moon

“Yeah… wow.” Thad got out of the buggy. “There’s no driving around that.”

The ledge in front of them was obliterated by a slide of moon regolith and rocks. There was a steep grade to where the side of the crater gave way. Mark got out of the buggy, checked his air, and turned on his camera and helmet lights. He shuffled slowly to the edge of the drop as close as he dared. The slide disappeared in a startling abrupt cliff.

Thad was beside him and the only thing Mark heard from the Bluetooth communications were long breaths. Mark looked over the cliff into the dark abyss. His helmet lights didn’t penetrate and he realized the drop was four kilometers straight down into the unchartered bottom of the crater. He felt a rush of terror. He bounded backward toward the crater wall. “Stay on solid ground.” His voice was raspy.

Thad bounded back. “Good advice.” Thad followed Mark’s example and turned on his helmet lights. He tilted his head back, illuminating the obstacle.

Mark followed Thad’s light beam with his own. He looked up the wall of Shackleton Crater, where the slide began. “Do you see that?”

“Yeah.”

Mark noticed the slide didn’t begin at the very top but started from a shadowed area. He reached up and adjusted a helmet knob that narrowed his light beam. The beam brightly illuminated an outline of a dark shadowed area. The shadowed area looked like a hole in the side. “What is it?”

Thad turned and added his light to Mark’s. “That looks like a cave.”

“That’s right,” Mark replied. “The radar scans of the unmanned rovers indicated a large multi-chambered cavern.”

“You’re saying there’s a cave in the side of the crater? How did it get here?”

“If I remember right, ancient lava streams.” Mark looked up and curiosity, parent of much of his ambition, overcame his anxiety. “We should see what it looks like.”

“How?”

“Let’s make a staircase. I’ve got Zeke’s spray sealer and heater.”

“Now we’re talking.” Thad extracted two shovels from the buggy and handed one to Mark.

The two used their shovels to construct a stair step a meter wide and half a meter deep. Mark sprayed on sealer and used a portable battery powered microwave to cure it. They decided to put the next step a half a meter high and the two shoveled the moon dirt again. They tossed the removed dirt on the slope and paused from time to time to watch the dust and rocks roll off the edge of the cliff and into the crater. After the second step they got into an alternating rhythm that made the work proceed at a good pace. Step by step they constructed the first lunar staircase in the history of the universe.

They completed the fourteenth step and their heads were above the lip of the cave entrance. Mark pushed a large rock aside and shined his light inside the cave. “Wow.”

Thad leaned on the crater wall beside him and a set his helmet light to wide beam. The two lights showed a massive internal structure that had three visible branches. Although the opening was small the sides widened to nearly twenty meters across. The cave walls were smooth and the cave floor showed no indication of recently fallen debris. “The quake didn’t disturb this at all,” Thad said in wonder.

Mark moved his narrow light beam to one of the branches and saw that it appeared to go down. There was no way to tell the length. Again, curiosity trumped fear. “We need to get in there. Let’s use the emergency air packs on the buggy to add to our time.”

“Let’s do it.”

Mark and Thad descended their just-constructed staircase, extracted emergency air from the buggy, and hooked the supplemental air packs to their spacesuits. Mark looked at the gauge and fought off a surge of panic. “Okay, we give ourselves thirty minutes to make it back. That gives us twenty-five minutes to explore.”

“Thirty minutes to get back? We can do it in ten.” Thad’s curiosity was not tempered by fears of suffocation.

“Thirty minutes — I don’t want to cut it close in case these gauges are wrong.”

“I understand.”

Mark went into the cave first and felt giddy at the size. “This cave is massive.”

Thad was right on his heels, bounded to one of the branches, and began laughing. “Check out this side. It branches three more times in there.”

Mark went beside him and couldn’t help laughing himself. It had always been a dream of NASA and ESA to find a large subterranean moon cave. “I wish we could show this to Houston,” Mark said. “They’d never believe it.” He shined his light around and noted that there were no piles of recently collapsed moon rock. “You’re right. The pod crash didn’t affect this cave at all. This is perfect and I’ll bet anything it’s airtight.”

Sally went to the control panel and found Doug there with his feet propped on a chair. Her stomach knotted seeing Doug’s relaxed attitude. “What are you doing?”

Doug turned to Sally and smiled. “Thad fixed the air leak.”

“I know.”

“Thad and the major are out looking at the ledge.”

“The ledge?”

“Mark’s got some cockamamie idea that he roped Thad into.”

“Well, he is out there.” Sally was pleased Mark found the nerve to suit up for a moonwalk.

Doug swung his feet down and stared at Sally. “Do you ever wonder what it would’ve been like to be on the Titanic after all the lifeboats were full?”

“What?”

“The Titanic’s musicians who kept playing probably thought they were accepting a great death.” Doug chuckled. “Legend says the last song they played was ‘Nearer My God to Thee.’”

Sally didn’t like the comparison. “We aren’t the Titanic.”

“We weren’t but then the director was killed today. Or was it yesterday? I can’t remember.” He turned back to the control panel. “I mean seriously, it’s asinine to think Mark’s going to save us. The dumbass is out there with Thad trying to get the digger going.”

Sally masked her reaction. Why the hell would Mark go after the digger? She gave Doug a thin-lipped smile. “How’s our other life support systems?”

“Shaky,” Doug replied. “Pun intended.” He sighed. “What’s wrong with the Titanic comparison? Of course, the song is ridiculous. There is no God… no nothing.”

“There’s us.”

“You know,” Doug ignored Sally’s comment, “in college I was so proud to lead an environmental group to preserve the old growth redwoods. All that effort for what?” He turned to her. “There’s nothing left but this lifeless rock. There’re no plants except what we brought. Up here there’re no animals, no trees, and no hope.”

“There’s always hope.”

“How can you say that? Between us and Japan Station we’ve got what, 200 people? That’s it. And after the pod crash, it’s only a matter of time before we’re nothing but some petrified relics for aliens to find.” He harrumphed. “And boy won’t they be impressed.”

“Our survival’s worth everything. If we can claw our way to succeed on the moon, we have a chance. Humanity has a chance.”

“For what purpose? What the hell is the point of working ourselves to exhaustion?”

“We are the point.”

“Have you studied history? People lay themselves on the line in wars for the motherland, the fatherland, or amber waves of grain. Radicals protest for justice. People sacrifice for their families. All of that, every bit of it, is gone. There’s nothing to sacrifice for. There’s nothing left but this pathetic lifeless rock.”

“The biggest sacrifice people make is for the future. It’s so the next generation can live. Whether we succeed or not, that’s our duty; to whatever future humanity may have.”