Luke Marusiak - Lifeboat Moon

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. We lost our future when that gamma ray destroyed our planet and everyone and everything on it.”

“It didn’t destroy us. The universe knows nothing of what was destroyed. We do. We know exactly what happened and what the stakes are. We are duty-bound to struggle, to rise.”

“By going out there and getting the digger.” Doug shook his head. “I wish to hell I was on earth when the burst hit.” That sentence hung in the manufactured air for a long while. “Look, it’s time for your shift. I’m going to turn in.”

“Go ahead, I got this.”

Doug departed and Sally was left alone with her thoughts. Within moments, she wished Doug were back because when she was fighting his gloom it helped her fight her own. In spite of her pep talk to Doug, the sense of loss overwhelmed her. There was an idea, a pillar of her personality, the definition of how she saw herself, that was lost. Sally Ride Henderson dreamed of heroics and acclaim and courageous adventure. She dreamed of finding a man who matched but not overshadowed her excellence. She had awards, medals, and rare experiences. But what did any of that mean?

Staring at digital gauges of a wounded moon base; realizing all that God, nature, and civilization provided were reduced to 193 people between Moon Base Armstrong and Japan Station; she fought against despair. Doug couldn’t be right, could he? There had to be meaning in their quest for survival. There had to be a future. She nodded to herself. I won’t give up.

Sally checked the logs and indicators. Moon Base Armstrong, or what was left of it, was stable. She checked the messages and noted that Thad had sent video of the pod crash. She opened the telemetry logs, synced the log timing to the video, and ran both in parallel. Watching that video, her anxiety for the future turned to dread.

Mark and Thad entered the hangar in an ebullient mood. As soon as they got the doors sealed and their helmets off they were backslapping and laughing.

Sally regarded both. “What happened? Did you get the digger going?”

“No,” Mark replied. “A side of the crater collapsed and wiped out the ledge less than a click down.”

“That’s why you’re laughing?”

“It revealed a cave,” Thad said.

“A cave?”

“A beautiful undamaged massive cave,” Mark said. “Once we get Moon Base Armstrong fixed, we’ll have a place for expansion.” He stopped and noticed Sally’s look of consternation. “What’s wrong?”

Sally looked from Mark to Thad and back to Mark, considering whether or not to blurt it out. “Do you remember when Japan Station said there were anomalies in the telemetry of the pod crash?”

Mark frowned. “Uh… yeah, why?”

“I tried to review the telemetry against the video Thad sent of the crash.”

“And?”

“And there is no telemetry data from the moment Chuck confirmed that the beacons locked on the pod’s descent.”

“What do you mean there’s no telemetry?” Thad asked.

“I mean the data log of communication from the pod stops just before it went haywire. There’s no record of what happened when it yawed and accelerated into our moon base.”

Mark had the top half of his suit off but paused at this news. “What would cause something like that… the same glitch that caused the crash in the first place?”

“No way,” Sally said. “The telemetry was intentionally removed.”

Mark and Thad exchanged a glance and both turned to Sally. “It was Chuck,” Mark pronounced. “He sabotaged my air gauge. He did this.”

“He was the last one I talked to before the crash,” Thad added.

“Was he the only one in the control room at the time?” Mark asked.

“No,” Sally answered. “He and Doug were on shift.” She turned away from Mark’s accusatory gaze. “And Doug’s despair seems worse than Chuck’s about now.”

“Bullshit,” Thad replied. “It was Chuck who confirmed the beacons were locked onto the pod.”

Mark pulled out his contactor and summoned Chuck to the control room. He stepped out of his spacesuit. “We need to get to the bottom of this.”

“What are you going to do?” Sally asked. “Bring Chuck here and accuse him?”

Chuck appeared moments after his summons. He was obviously fatigued from the long day. He looked at the threesome. “What’s up guys?”

“We’re doing an investigation into the pod crash,” Mark replied. “We discovered that the telemetry is missing.”

Chuck stared, eyes glazed.

“Chuck,” Sally asked, “did you erase the data log of the crash?”

“What?” Chuck finally understood. “No! I was in emergency mode like everyone else. Right after the crash, we brought Shift Supervisor Art Sledge in the control room to back me up. Then I was free to go into the hangar load lock.” He pointed to Thad. “Hell, I was the one who made sure we got Thad back after the walkway section disintegrated.” He glared. “Why would I erase data?”

“To mask sabotage,” Mark replied. “Maybe you just wanted to crash the pod and never reckoned how bad it would be.”

“Mark, I didn’t crash the pod and I didn’t do anything to the data. I don’t know what happened.”

Mark shook his head. “Japan Station said there were anomalies in the pod telemetry data.”

“Maybe they recorded something of the descent,” Sally said.

“Good point,” Mark replied. “Send them a message requesting data they captured on the crash to aid us in our investigation.” He turned and glared at Chuck. “Tell me again why you tampered with my air gauge weeks ago.”

Chuck sighed. “I wanted to teach you a lesson. Your ‘I can conquer anything’ bravado was wearing us thin after the gamma ray burst.”

“Us?”

“Me, Art and Doug.” Chuck shook his head and put a hand to his jaw. “I paid my debts on that screw up. I looked you in the eye and I told you why.”

Mark extracted his contactor again. He summoned Zeke to the control room. “We need answers.”

Zeke stared at the sleeping form of Habibeh Rahimi. He admired the curve of her hip and the specific beauty of the female form. He felt love, gratitude, and a prick of angst. In this quiet moment, it was the angst that occupied his thoughts. There was a dark force loose in the moon base. He knew it was evil battling good. It was the age-old fight, a key tenet of humanity.

Doctor Ben Ami had a PhD in Physics, with degrees in Materials Science and Applied Dynamics. He was, like all crew that NASA and ESA selected for the moon base, utterly scientific, utterly secular. The book on the Talmud that he brought with him was a family link, not a testament of faith. Now that he thought about it, his one and only book was somewhere in the destroyed depressurized University Pod. I need to retrieve my family heirloom.

Despite Zeke’s training and disposition, his mind wandered to his religious studies. He stared at a seam in his living quarters in Habitation Tube Three and let his mind roam. Zoroastrianism, if he remembered right, started the whole good versus evil battle.

That there was a battle between the light and dark forces was an ancient thought. There were two strong powers battling for control of everyone’s soul. That was a different tenet than from the Talmud, where evil exists but is more an absence of the holy. This evil wasn’t an absence, it was an active malevolent force. It was a force to be reckoned with.

Zeke knew the evil stalking Moon Base Armstrong must be opposed. This evil threatened doom and extinction of the remnant of humanity. His mind grappled with the good versus evil power struggle. It wasn’t just Zoroastrianism, even modern Christianity described a light versus dark battle between powerful forces.