A map of the Moon is laid out on the table. Their path from Apollo 11's shell in Mare Tranquillitatis, over Terra Sanitatis, north of the Rupes Altai, and back to Mare Nubium is marked and dated by time and events. One of their laptops sit open with Kelly's photographs of the damaged MAF onscreen. Aula sets her tablet down and draws what she saw overtop a rough outline of the craft. It represents years of painstaking effort by a multitude of people. The relentless anticipation of problems is one of the reasons why she and Kelly survived today's collision.

She starts sketching out plans. The MAF's outer bumper is made of relatively thin aluminum that is slightly bent. Doing any work on the structure in low gravity, poor light, and hard vacuum is going to be challenging. Doing major repairs? Even more so. ILUB-2's structure is segmented so it can be taken out and replaced. With a craft like the MAF, the jigsaw of parts is a lot smaller and nuanced. The worst case scenario is parts have to be flown in from NASA's Spaceshop at great expense. The big anniversary that Earth's waiting for would be passed over. She sniffs to clear her nose. It's not an entirely unwelcome thought.

Nakamura enters the command module with pronounced lines etched around his eyes and mouth. He pauses at the sight of her. "Have you eaten yet?"

"No," she admits and straightens up. "I wanted to work on this a little more."

The corners of his mouth lift up. It's not a smile, but it's about as close as he'll let himself get. "We have put in a full day."

She glances at the laptop's clock. It reads quarter to eleven. Her spine makes several popping sounds as she leans back. The stitch in her side is much less painful, but it still tightens a little as a reminder.

"If I sit down, I'm not getting up again."

The corners of his eyes crinkle. "Exactly."

Aula takes one last look at Kelly's computer, then shuts it off. She follows Nakamura down the hallway.The Cubby is a glorified storage space with a table and some chairs. When they turn the corner, it's unusually quiet. Then she sees why. The whole crew is squeezed together around a single table. Packets of beer and food are piled in the middle. Harvey thumbs a button on his iPod. Led Zeppelin's Good Times Bad Times starts blaring over the speakers.

"Now this is the real Moon experience," he says and starts handing food and beer out.

They have everything from chicken soup to negima to candied salmon. Aula catches a packet of shrimp and grits and raises it up as thanks. It's one of her favourites.

Kalashnikoff leans back dramatically. "You still smell like old socks."

"Lucky me," she says and rehydrates her food. When she turns around, Harvey tosses her a packet of beer. She tries to catch it one-handed, but her fingers are stiff and clumsy. It clips her knuckles and spins end over end.

Ward snags it out of midair like a goalie and hands it back. "You need to rest."

"I'm on it."

She arches her eyebrow before rehydrating a pack of Swedish meatballs. When everyone is seated with food and beer at the ready, Harvey turns the music down a notch.

"Now I don't know what those damn canucks are doing half the time, but they need to teach their pilots how to fly."

Laughter bounces off the confined space of the Cubby. Aula stabs a shrimp with her plastic fork and points it at him.

"This will be you in a minute, Harv."

He grins like a kid that lit a firecracker. "That's the type of supportive camaraderie I've come to rely on."

She shoves the shrimp into her mouth and chews obnoxiously.

"The most important thing," Bauer says, "is that you brought back some rocks."

Kelly sits back and crosses her arms. "Are those rocks half as important as me, here, unharmed?"

He opens his mouth to reply, but Kalashnikoff beats him to it. "Do not ask these questions to a geologist."

"Alright, fine. I'll admire anorthosite by myself."

"You nerd," Kelly laughs.

Kwan leans over and taps his beer with Bauer's. "Nerds must stick together."

"You're damn right."

Nakamura clears his throat. They all turn to him, but his expression is relaxed. "We have been asked to provide some video for back home."

Kelly squeezes her bag of beer. "I can do it."

He nods and she lopes off with her beer in hand. Aula finishes her meal and sits back in her chair. It lets her look up without being too obvious about it, but the lights are too bright to see anything other than their own reflections. She shifts to ease the pain in her side and knows Ward is watching her like a hawk. Harvey meets her gaze from across the table. He sips his beer using a special straw designed for microgravity and looks quite content with the chaos he's created.

It doesn't take long for Kelly to return. She holds up her video camera and takes a wide sweep of the Cubby. "Say hello to Earth."

They all dutifully wave and put on their best smiles. Aula opens her bag of beer and takes her first sip. It's tepid and awful, but it's beer. Drinking is a rare enough indulgence. They can't metabolize it as well up here. Contrary to popular belief, it's not a matter of air pressure. ILUB-2 is set to one atmosphere (14.7 pounds per square inch): the average pressure at sea level. Space is simply taxing on the body. It diminishes their ability to cope with stressors like alcohol, which is technically a poison. The result is it's very easy for astronauts to get drunk off their asses.

"And here is the famous Aula Reed." Kelly swings the video camera towards her. Kwan's googly eyes have been transplanted above the lens. "She saved my skin today."

Aula sets her beer on the table. "It was a team effort."

"Rubbish." Kelly points the camera at herself. "Reed's our best pilot."

Harvey sits back in his chair. "Then what am I?"

She turns to him. "You're the most handsome."

"That's true," he says and smooths back his close-cropped hair. "I'm hard to resist in uniform."

"We all know I am the most talented and the prettiest." Kalashnikoff delicately sips on his straw. "But I will humour you tonight."

"Now there's a team player," Bauer says and claps him on the back.

Everyone laughs. The beer's starting to have an effect. Aula watches Kelly flit around like a bird, documenting the moment for the hungry eyes on Earth. Harvey's iPod has moved on to some feel-good indie song she doesn't recognize. Even Ward is drinking. It's not unlike their days as ascans. Every batch of astronauts has their own place to drink. The ILUB crews had a hole in the wall pub called the Green Boreen. Sam would turn into a pool shark after two beers, Zeva would embarrass them all by trying to dance, drink or no drink. Herself and Harv steered well away from that nonsense by competing over darts.

She finishes her drink before anyone else and tucks it into her empty food pack. Ward shifts in her peripheral vision so she pulls her chair back to make room.

"Thank you."

Aula nods and stretches her legs. Being farther away from the table, she can finally sink deeper into her chair and lay her arms limp over her lap. An old tic starts in her right hand. Her index and middle finger twitch a few times, then go still. It's an odd feeling, but not troublesome. Harvey is smiling at the other end of the table. He makes a show of sipping his beer with a pinkie raised like he's Louis XIV. Kalashnikoff pokes a hole in his own packet and drinks the rest of his beer in one shot. Kelly prudently takes a panorama of the Cubby while most of the crew drums their fingers on the table. 

"That's it for me." Aula stands up and throws her bags into the garbage bag they've started. She makes a two-fingered salute to the camera. "Goodnight."

"Lightweight," Kalashnikoff says. "A little beer and you are sleepy?"

"Guilty."

He waves dismissively. "You disgust me."

Harvey raises his bag, pinkie out. "I'll carry on in your honour, Al."

"Me, too." Kelly sips her beer in one hand, holds the video camera steady in the other. "It's the least we can do."

"I'm touched."

She pushes the chair in and gives them one last wave. A chorus of 'bye's' and 'night's' slide down her back like warm water. Their voices follows her down the hall. Sound tends to travel through each module. They're loud and laughing. She lopes slowly back to her own room. It's only when she shuts the door that things are quiet. Just the ambient noise of machines can be heard, not unlike the background hum in an airplane. It's constant and hardly noticeable.

The bed is small and rumpled. Now that she's eaten, the day's exhaustion starts to weigh on her. She goes through the motions of brushing her teeth, changing into her pajamas, and shuts off the lights. When she slips into sheets, her knee bumps into something cool and heavy. Her laptop. She opens it and is momentarily blinded. The screen immediately dims in response to ambient light and she can see messages have popped up on Skyline. News of their emergency landing have undoubtedly made it to Earth.

Aula clicks the icon. A new window flashes with an old email attached to it.

Hello, qallunaaq