Luke Marusiak - Lifeboat Moon

“We’ll need to get them down with soft landings,” Thad said. “We can’t handle another pod crash.”

“Japan Station would divorce us if we crash another pod,” Chuck said.

“I’m still not sure we’ll have enough electricity generation capacity,” Zeke said. “I need to lay this out. We can’t shift our essential Moon Base Armstrong power into the cave development. We’ll need added power for the cave preparation.”

Thad was pleased to see the operational solar array as he approached the moon base. Again he thought that if the saboteur — Art — really wanted to destroy everyone, a crash onto the solar array would’ve done the trick. He drove next to the plexiglass walkway and realized that, with the first section completely gone, it was a useless relic of plans before the gamma ray burst.

Doug and the Moon Base Armstrong crew were pleased to see the return of the moon buggy. Doug commented how all three on the expedition — Thad, Chuck, and Zeke — consumed all but fifteen percent of their precious air supply. The battery of the moon buggy was discharged to a point of only having ten percent of its power. “We may need to push this buggy to the charging station,” Doug said. “You guys cut it close. If something would’ve gone wrong, you’d have been out of air.”

“We used more than expected,” Zeke replied. “We should tell Mark and Sally to conserve their air in doing the cave mapping.”

“They saw our light from the back of the crater,” Thad said. “Do you have contact with them?”

“No,” Doug replied. “Our signals don’t go into the cave. We need another repeater.”

“We’ll rig up a repeater at the mouth of the cave,” Zeke said. “We should always be in contact with those in vacuum.” He pointed to the caked moon dust clinging to his spacesuit seams at the calf level. “There’s a lot that can go wrong out there.”

“You got my seeds!” Tina squealed in pleasure from the other side of the hangar as she inspected a supply crate. “I hoped the pod manifest was correct. We’ll have enough of these seeds to set up a whole new Agriculture Pod in the cave.”

“You know the cave has little nitrogen and carbon,” Zeke said. “We are going to run out of the nitrogen we brought.”

“How does Japan Station do it?” Thad asked. “They didn’t even bring nitrogen tanks up here and they’re operating in a pure oxygen environment.”

“They must be scavenging and accumulating the trace nitrogen from the regolith,” Zeke said.

“They’d have to,” Tina added. “There’s no plants and no food without nitrogen. Maybe the regolith has pockets of nitrogen we can mine.”

“Maybe the cave has some.”

Thad looked at the counting timers in the control room. “When are Mark and Sally due back?”

“I told them to watch their air,” Doug replied. “They should be back in forty minutes.”

“I hope they’re enjoying the cave exploration.”

Sally struggled to pull her excavated leg free. The fine moon dust compacted around her leg and fixed it in place for a precious twenty minutes. She had removed as much dust as she could until she cleared her leg down to her ankle. She pulled her leg and felt her foot pull out of her boot. The boot compressed from her foot’s partial extraction and, blessedly, the compacted dust released her boot. “One down, one to go.” She tried to be cheerful.

Beside her Mark was in an equal struggle. “This moon dust isn’t just abrasive to our suits, it’s like dry cement.” His dread simmered just below the surface. They both were trapped in the first branch of the cave without communications and with limited air. We have extra air tanks on the moon buggy. He looked at his air gauge. But if we can’t get there in time…

“How’re you doing?” Sally asked.

“I’ve got both legs cleared to my calves. I used Zeke’s sealant to make a ledge to stop the dust from coming back down. So much for the pristine caves.”

“The vibration from the pod crash may have created this dust,” Sally said. “It did uncover the cave after all.”

Mark sprayed sealant on the dust he just piled above him. “I don’t have much air.”

“We can do this,” Sally replied. With a heroic pull she extracted her second leg. She exhaled a sigh of relief. “I’m free.”

“Careful you don’t shake more dust down on us.”

“I’ll use my pick to get above you. Maybe I can help pull you out.”

Mark worked the dust out from around his left ankle. The excavation felt like digging his leg out of packed damp sand. He wondered if static forces were the cause of the cement-like compaction. He tugged his left leg and felt the dust release. “Okay, I got my left leg free.”

“Here, reach up and grab my hand,” Sally said.

Mark looked up and saw that Sally had fixed herself to the solid floor above him. He reached and grasped her hand. Together they pulled and Mark’s second leg came free. “Whew — finally!” He panted for a moment. “Let’s get back to the buggy. I’m almost out of air.”

“Me too.”

The two climbed up the incline of the leftmost cave branch. Mark examined the walls and floor with suspicion. He was rattled by the difficulty of exploration. He was rattled by the specter of being trapped with dwindling air supply. The wide mouth of the cave entrance, once the most welcome thing he’d seen, now looked like a large coffin. He looked at his air gauge and fought down panic. Calm, calm… we need to get to the buggy. Sally bounded down the staircase Thad and Mark constructed to access the cave entrance in three large jumps. Mark followed. They got next to the buggy and extracted their spare air tanks.

They hooked them to their suits and both sighed in relief. “That was worse than I thought,” Sally said. “I felt that trapped suffocating fear you must’ve felt.”

Mark nodded inside his helmet. “I was on the edge of dread the whole time.”

“Some astronauts we make,” Sally said. “We should be cool as a cucumber in death-defying situations.”

“The astronauts had a home to go back to. They all knew they were risking their lives but having a family back home gave them comfort. Those that did die in the Apollo 1 fire or the Challenger or Columbia all had family that survived. That’s the difference. If we die, if we fail, all of humanity dies with us.”

“Is that what you were thinking about when we were trapped down there?”

“No, the helplessness when my legs were fixed in place overwhelmed my ability to think of anything else.”

“Me too. I was ready for low air and difficult tasks. I wasn’t ready to be immobile, pinned by moon dust.”

“Let’s get back to the base, we’ve fouled our spacesuit seals.” He paused. “And I’m drenched in sweat.” The two got into the buggy and strapped themselves in.

Sally forced a chuckle. “I’ll need a thorough clean up too. We need to get the water tube in place so we can take showers.”

“We need to get so much in place.” Mark switched his communications channel. “Control panel, this is Major Martelli, we’re at the buggy and coming back.”

“Major Martelli,” Chuck’s voice came over the communicator, “it’s good to hear you. How did you guys make out at the cave?”

“We ran into some difficulty,” Mark answered. “We also found out that a pile of moon dust is dangerous. It can immobilize you if you get your leg stuck in it.”

“Really? Doctor Ben-Ami discovered the same thing when excavating the University Pod.”

“Did he get the archive?”

“Yes… and his Talmud book. How did you guys do in exploring the cave?”