Luke Marusiak - Lifeboat Moon

He blinked his eyes and wondered if he were delirious. Mark didn’t know if he was out for a time but he felt well enough to creep toward section four. Again, pulling Chuck and crawling in inchworm-like increments, Mark traversed the third tube section.

He pulled himself up, opened the inner hatch, and got Chuck inside the lock. He closed the hatch behind him and opened the hatch to the fourth section. Mark was stunned he was able to step into the fourth section without collapsing. The pressure must be getting higher. I feel extra oxygen like sweet energy in my muscles and my mind.

Mark clung to the idea of thicker air. If I keep moving, I can make it. And with that thought and Sally’s image in his mind’s eye, Mark shuffled through the fourth section of the plexiglass tube and dragged Chuck with him.

The fifth section was filled with thicker air and the sixth was even better. Mark’s mind slowly cleared and the struggle, once so uncertain, became a holy quest — a reach for survival, love, and future.

“Mark!” Sally’s relief was apparent as she opened the hatch to the cave hangar. “You made it!”

Warm lights and a crowd of faces greeted Mark’s open eyes as he lay on the cave floor. He took a deep breath of rich thick air, exhaled, and grinned. “I wondered if that was going to work.”

“It almost didn’t,” Thad said. “In all the excitement, I’d forgotten you only took one air tank for your suit. What you did was damn near impossible.”

“Did Chuck make it?”

“He will,” Sally said. She knelt beside him and kissed his cheek.

“You saved the one who nearly killed you,” Director Katsumi Hayashi said hovering over Mark. “That was an act of great honor.”

“We’re all precious,” Mark said. “Every human life should be guarded.” He felt a pang and, in his mind’s eye, saw Doug’s outstretched hand. Doug wasn’t a human life — he was a destroyer. No one ever needs to know about his outstretched hand — his last grasp at life. Mark sat up and held his head in his hands. He felt as if overcoming a hangover. “I hate not having enough air. Suffocation is my demon and worst fear.”

“You slayed that demon,” Thad said. “I don’t think anyone else could have made it through that tube without a helmet.”

“I didn’t slay it,” Mark replied. “It’s still out there snarling and waiting.” He got to his feet.

“You must rest,” Katsumi said. “We are taking stock of all that’s happened.”

Mark’s awareness expanded to include the crowded cave hangar. He saw dozens of crew from Moon Base Armstrong and dozens who could only have come from Japan Station. He turned to Katsumi. “Did we get everyone out?”

“No,” Yumi said. She came alongside Katsumi. “The last pod crash caused a vacuum breach in our living quarters. Something strange happened and three of our crew acted against procedure.” She shook her head. “We lost three of our crew.”

Mark swallowed at this bitter news. He turned to Thad and Sally. “How about the Moon Base Armstrong crew?”

“Only Doug’s missing,” Sally replied.

“We were about to count you and Chuck as missing a moment ago,” Thad added. “It’s sure good to see you.”

“Is the power and air working?”

“It is but both Moon Base Armstrong and Japan Station have depressurized sections. We’re wasting some of our manufactured air that is still piped to those stations. We’ve isolated our air supply to the cave moon base.” Yumi was all business.

Mark nodded. “We’ve got a lot of work to do to get this cave in better shape.” He looked around the stark interior. “But since it’s still holding together now and we’ve got air, water, and power — we’re going to make it. We’re going to be all right.”

The image that pulled him through the suffocation horror in the plexiglass tube was no longer a dream. The image was a living breathing person right in front of him. He put a hand on Sally’s shoulder and pulled her toward him. Sally wrapped both arms around him and they kissed for all that was left of humanity to see. He felt her hug him in a vice grip of yearning and heard her sob. “I thought I lost you.”

“It was you,” Mark whispered to his love. “It was you that got me through the tube. It will always be you.” He leaned back and saw her tear stained face. It was the most welcome and most vulnerable thing he’d ever seen. “You’re crying.”

“So are you.”

They kissed again and clung to each other. Mark lost all sense of time. He lifted his head and saw the strength of humanity that Doug missed. He saw the thing that would secure their future even on this barren lunar rock.

Tina and Thad embraced in unabashed joy. Habi and Zeke, Gitty and Jim, Katsumi and Yumi — all clung to each other in an embrace of love. Even Chuck, flat on his back, was clinging to Carol — the one who nursed his broken jaw and escaped the med-bay depressurization. Mark’s smile widened. Of course. That’s what’ll get us through , he thought.

It was never a mystery and it was something that Doug and Art completely missed. Humanity had nothing but each other. For purpose, they only needed to love one another. The visceral human choice of love would ensure their survival.

Major Mark Martelli and Director Katsumi Hayashi stood side by side and faced the lunar crew in the massive assembly area. There were smiles all around. It was six months since the last of the pods crashed into the moon. There were no more orbiting pods and the combined crew, 188 former NASA and JAXA moon base colonists, had been living together in the cave the first pod crash uncovered.

They decided to throw a ball — a celebratory dance honoring their survival. Some of the crew wore clothes newly produced from lunar material in garish colors of mauve and turquoise.

“I wouldn’t have believed this in a hundred years,” Katsumi said. “We are three months away from being wholly weaned from earth produced material.”

“It’s classic irony that Doug’s destructive actions are responsible for our self-sufficiency. No one, not Director Collier or the ArmCon, thought we could be self-sufficient less than a year after the gamma ray burst.” Mark was content in a stoic manner. “Moon Base Initio is truly the beginning of everything, not the end.”

“Should we tell them?” Katsumi asked.

“Yes, no more secrets.”

“This is a big one. Something else no one expected.”

“We should tell them all.”

“Proceed.”

“May I have everyone’s attention,” Mark said to the group. He toggled the lunar produced aluminum and magnesium composite microphone. “We have two very big announcements and then we’ll get to the celebration.”

The milling crew stopped and regarded their leaders. So much had happened so fast that all wanted to enjoy the celebratory intermission in the start of their conquest of the moon. They all wanted to dance and enjoy their precious earned moments of joy. But Mark and Katsumi had got them this far. The crew was anxious to celebrate but gave their leaders deference.

Mark flicked a remote button and a projected image filled one of the textured white assembly area walls. “This is an image of our remote station design. Tina and Thad put two of these stations together and are scheduled to be the first tenants. Please come up.”

Tina and Thad came to the front and stood alongside Mark and Katsumi. “As you can see this station has an ultraviolet light shielded transparent bubble facing the lit sun. Underneath the bubble are crops growing in the regolith and underneath the crops is a living area suitable for up to six people. It’s powered by these four solar panel assemblies, a small air reactor, and has a new model moon buggy in the driveway. All of it, every bit of it, was produced with lunar material.”