Luke Marusiak - Lifeboat Moon

“Your spacesuit breached?” Doug asked from the control room. “How did that happen?”

“This moon dust fouls our seals. The locking ring of my top to bottom half connection got so caked with dust in the front here that my suit alarmed.”

“Is it damaged beyond repair?”

“I don’t know. I’ll inspect it after the dust is removed with the cleaning. We need to do something different with our spacesuit seals.”

“I’ll log that for Chuck and Zeke to consider,” Doug said.

“Is Mark back?” Thad asked Sally.

“He’s in the cave with Yumi. They have the second branch fully mapped and half of the cave mouth sealed.”

Thad nodded. His forehead was lined with worry. “I know we’ve got to go fast but we still need a separate air supply for those caves.”

“And that’s in an orbiting supply pod.”

Tina Bennet came into the hangar from the Nexus. She bounded next to Thad. The two hugged oblivious to those around them. “I’m glad you’re back Thad.” Tina didn’t hide her concern.

Those two are a couple as well , Sally thought. The director’s breeding plan was just as bad as her culling plan. The crew’s pairing off on their own.

“We got everything Zeke asked for,” Thad said.

Tina turned to Sally. “I’d like samples of the recovered moon dust from their spacesuits. I’ve got to plan on growing our five staples in something different than what we have in the Agriculture Pod. I have ideas on how to prepare the regolith dust in the cave without a huge amount of earth based preparation material.”

“Five staples?” Doug asked. “That’s what we’re calling lettuce, potatoes, wheat, rapeseed, and soybeans?”

Tina turned to Doug. “That’s all we’ve got now. Japan Station has a rice variant I’d like to try but it takes a lot of water. We do have seeds of nearly everything else, including trees and grapes if we ever get that far.”

Thad and his team got their spacesuits stowed in the racks of the clean station. “I’m going in,” Thad said.

“I’ll go with you guys,” Sally said. “It’s way past the end of my shift.” She turned to Doug. “Can you let me know when Mark makes it back?”

“Sure,” Doug replied. “I’ll tell him you’re waiting with anticipation in your best lingerie.”

Sally glared at him. “Just let me know when he’s back. There’s a lot of survival things we need to discuss.”

Doug laughed. “I was kidding. No problem.”

“Let’s get the Manufacturing Pod up to pressure. We can’t go on without it and we need to see how bad that crack is.”

Doug stopped laughing. “I will but I’ve shared my concern about that.”

Sally went into the Nexus with Thad and his team. She watched as they proceeded to stow the recovered med-bay equipment into Habitation Tube Three. She also saw how Tina and Thad worked together and wondered how long they were partners. It could have been weeks or months — Sally never would’ve noticed.

Sally waved to Thad and Tina as they went into Habitation Tube Three, one toting the autoclave and one toting a drug pack. She went into her quarters, sat on her bunk, and braced as a wave of dread washed over her. Unbidden, Sally remembered her training on instabilities as related to chaos theory. Her own emotional stability was like that.

She remembered the explanation. If you dropped grains of sand onto a smooth table, after a time you’d get a pile of sand. As the sand pile grew fingers of instability would grow. Oftentimes mini- slides would take place as the sand pile grew in size. But, when the pile grew too big and there were too many fingers of instability, eventually there’d be a large slide that took out half of the pile.

It was a model of a mini-cataclysmic event that was applied to political, economic, and environmental systems with good effect. The problem was that you could never know what grain of sand would cause the cataclysmic event. You knew you had instabilities and you knew you could expect periodic small slides but the grain of sand that caused the big event was never predictable before the fact.

Doug, even back on earth, had a pessimistic streak. Sally was used to it. It never mattered. Until now. Doug’s pinging Sally on the fragility of Moon Base Armstrong and its crews’ spacesuits became that unpredictable grain of sand that caused an emotional cataclysmic crash in Sally’s confidence in survival. She sat on the edge of her bunk in the throes of a panic like she’d never felt before.

The day to day crises of her shift combined with the big disasters had worn away her assurance layer by layer. The accident in the cave with Mark added to it. The news of the spacesuits and the fear of the Manufacturing Pod stability, were too much. There was too much to absorb, too much to push back against. They were all going to die in the unforgiving vacuum of space. There wasn’t enough air, wasn’t enough food, and wasn’t enough time to save themselves.

She saw wisdom in Art’s suicide. With no hope, why fight? Why do any of it? The struggle took too much effort to no avail. She panted in quick short breaths and felt faint. Try as she might, she couldn’t stop the slide into despair. There was nothing good to fight for.

“Your boyfriend’s back,” Doug’s voice came over the intercom in her quarters. “He’s coming to see you.”

“Thanks.” Her voice quaked. Sally struggled to register Mark’s arrival with anything but more dread. She’d lost her tenuous grip on hope.

“Are you okay Sally?” Doug asked.

“I’m fine.” It was a lie. She’s lost her faith that there was something bigger worth fighting for. She lost her faith in God and humanity. Her quarters hatch chimed. She sat on her bunk, staring at the flashing light, numb and faint.

“Sally?” Mark’s voice came from the doorway intercom. “Are you in there?”

She tried to answer but no words came. The hatch of her quarters swished open and Mark entered. He saw her ashen tear-streaked face and came beside her as the door closed behind him. He said nothing but simply hugged her tight. She shuddered and reveled in feeling his warm contact. Her panting continued. She felt Mark weld his forehead to hers.

“Sally, I’m here. We’re going to be all right.”

She wept. It was as unexpected as her emotional collapse into dread. She shuddered again. “We’re kidding ourselves. We can’t survive.”

“No, we’re going to live. I love you Sally and I’m going to make sure of it. You saved me time and again –it’s my turn to save you.”

“The Manufacturing Pod is cracked, Thad’s spacesuit breached… maybe Art had the right idea.”

Mark clung to her. “Sally, you’re the strongest person I know. You’re the strongest person in Moon Base Armstrong. Come back to hope.”

“I can’t.” She panted and wept.

Mark held her. “I’m here and I’m not letting you go.”

“I’m trying…” Sally’s intense melancholy refused to subside. “I’m trying…”

“I love you Sally. We’re going to make it. We’re going to have a family and build a new future. Our struggle is for that future. That’s our purpose.”

“Purpose?”

“Yes, our future family is what gives our life meaning.”

Sally latched onto the word purpose as a drowning person would a life preserver. “Purpose… future…”

“It all works because of you. We need each other. You and I, Zeke and Habi, Thad and Tina, Gitty and Jim, Katsumi and Yumi… we are defying our situation and choosing to live for a new future.” He hugged her tight. “I love you. I’m fighting for you.”

Sally sobbed again but now, there was a crack of light illuminating her depression. It was this moment and this love that were important. The uncertain, unknown future may or may not come. What was important was that she was here now and she was loved. She loved and she was loved. That was the thing, the most important thing of all. That was the touchstone she needed.