"ILUB-1, Reed. I'm declaring an emergency." Her lights travel across his torso. His clothes are tight. He's swollen and still. "Commander Shaw is ejected from module. Repeat: Shaw ejected from module."

No response.

Aula resists the urge to bend down and pick him up. It should be a simple gesture, but in an EMU it's impossible to bend at the waist. She grits her teeth and exhales harshly. Then she turns away from her commander and her base to SEV-1. It appears and disappears with each step she makes. Her lights catch on an innocuous metal pole painted in bright red letters: LESA. The Lunar Evacuation System Assembly. A quadropod pulley system courtesy of the European Space Agency. It's a long shot, but it's their only one.

She digs her boots in too late and bounces off of the SEV-1's side like a pinball. It's nearly enough to knock her flat on her ass and costs time she doesn't have to waste. She grabs hold of the SEV's railing and pulls herself upright. Then she lopes towards the LESA and takes it with both hands. Sweat stings her eyes. Her fingers ache against the resistance of her gloves. Thirst scrapes her throat. All useless distractions. She unhooks it and uses her backward momentum to turn in one hop. The LESA nearly overbalances her. She sets her feet farther apart to compensate. The pulley system is lighter than it looks, but cumbersome. Once she's steady, she lopes back to Sam.

The EMU's lights swing over him like a pendulum. He's greyer now. How long has it been? Two minutes? More? Two minutes is the precedent. That's the known limit.

Well, she didn't come to the Moon to accept what was known.

Aula unlatches the LESA. The wheeled stretcher wrapped around it slowly snaps into shape. She grabs its handle and shakes it. The stretcher doesn't bend. It's locked. She hops close to where Sam's head should be, but her lights only catch his torso. There's no resistance through the soles of her boots so she sets the LESA down directly in front of her and unlocks its legs. They jut loose, a faint shake she feels through her hands, and aims for where Sam's legs shouldn't be. The quadropod extends until it hits regolith. It's a soft thud. Feather-light resistance. She locks the legs together and pushes on them to make sure they're secure. The left leg digs in a little on one side, but it's enough. The block and tackle dangles in front of her helmet. Gently spins against the blackness like a fish hook in deep water.

It's designed to work with an astronaut in full kit. To hook onto the PLSS. There's no bulk to help close that distance now. Aula grasps the hook and uses her own weight to pull on it. It takes a few blind steps backwards to create enough slack. She then leans forward and slowly falls to the surface of the regolith. Dust gently puffs up around her and the hook disappears from view. She still clutches her hand tight, but she can't feel anything through the gloves. Some dust catches on her visor and stays there, but most of her field of view remains clear. It takes a few seconds to visualize her next move. This isn't something she's drilled for. No one has. It's all new territory. She waits until she sees the hook still clutched in her hand and starts an awkward series of push-ups that drive her back towards Sam's still body. Her view constricts at intervals. The closer she gets to him, the more keenly she feels those shadows close in.

Sweat pours down her face, finds the edges of her eyes, nose, and chin, and drop onto the visor like rain. Her lungs burn. Her body aches. Her arms feel boneless. Every push off the Moon's surface cuts into her shoulders. The EMU's sockets are slicing into her like a ham. She's pushing the limitations of the suit. Fighting a losing battle. If she keeps it up, she's going to face serious overexertion.

How many minutes?

Fuck the minutes.

Sam's swollen hand slides into view. Aula scissors her legs to steady herself and rolls onto her side. Regolith rises in clouds like the finest ash. Through the haze, his eyes are open, dusty, and nonreactive. She reaches as far as she can to hook the back of his flight suit. Pain jangles down her shoulder. The pressure of her own suit makes it nigh impossible to cross the distance. But she reaches anyway. Her lights throw untrustworthy shadows, but it has to be less than inch. It has to be. She blinks sweat out of her eyes and reaches as far past the quadropod legs as she can. Regolith suddenly shifts underneath her chest. She ends up tipping into the crater that Sam's created. Her right arm is caught at an awkward angle. The EMU's hard torso cuts in. Something pops. The pain changes. Burrows deep into her arm socket. She screams through it. Her arm drops. More pale grey dust mushrooms around her. She tries to lift it again. Feels a scalding riptide. Better to operate as if her right arm doesn't exist.

There's nothing to do but wait for her vision to clear. Aula screws her eyes shut and realizes no one has responded to her first call. "ILUB-1, Reed. This is an emergency." Air scrapes her throat. Her voice sounds cracked and breathless even inside her helmet. "Commander Shaw is ejected from module. Shaw ejected from module."

Silence.

Aula's tempted to just lay there with her eyes closed. Of all the pain she feels, staying still helps mute them. If she just stays still, she'll feel better. She'll be okay. It's a fiction her body's telling her. But it's a seductive fiction. The modules can't all be breached. Harvey's still out in SEV-2. She's not alone out here.

"Where the fuck is everyone?" She asks. It sounds cramped inside her helmet.

More silence.

The dust settles. Sam is shrouded in more regolith. He looks like a statue of himself.

It would be so easy to give in. They're past two minutes. Regolith is all over him. Who knows what Sam's lungs look like. These lunar shadows are colder than anywhere on Earth. Cold is the great destroyer—and preserver. If you're lucky. But the hook is in. It snags his collar and part of his sleeve. It's a chance. She can do a lot with a chance.

Aula struggles to her breath. Goes over the next few movements in her head. Her arm blazes white-hot, hypersensitive and immobile. She prepares herself before rolling over it onto her stomach. Pain doesn't do the feeling justice. It's searing hot. So hot it feels cold. She's nearly sick. Her whole body trembles. A fresh wave of sweat pours down her face and back, glues her underclothes and ventilation garment to her skin.

All distractions. All irrelevant. She tilts her body left and uses her remaining arm to push herself off the regolith. An odd sense of free fall. Her boots catch on angled ground. She teeters back. A gut-deep heaviness catches Aula off guard. She grabs the quadropod instinctively and nearly jerks it out of position. Her right arm twitches to catch herself. The pain nearly knocks her legs out from under her. Her whole body trembles. Irrelevant. All irrelevant. She sucks in a few bracing breaths and activates the electric winch. It pulls Sam into a sitting position. His arms jut out like overfilled balloons. She grasps the stretcher and pulls it over then pushes it under him. It's like trying to wheel a suitcase over sand dunes.

Then she lowers him on the stretcher. Then she has him. She has Sam.

Aula lopes sideways so she's directly behind the stretcher. Each time her right arm is jostled, the urge to vomit increases. She digs her boots in and nearly screams when both of her arms tense as a result. But Sam's dusty head is within reach now. She can't secure him with one arm so she unhooks him carefully, takes a few steps back, and then pushes him uphill towards ILUB-1. At this angle, he lays flat, but his head and arms loll. The bare skin of his neck touches one of the stretcher's bars and immediately sticks to it.

But it's not done yet. They're not done.

"ILUB-1, Reed." She struggles to inhale enough air speak. "Ziva. I need a way in."

Silence. The loudest sound she's heard on the Moon.

Sam is heavy. It starts to dawn on her. He's heavy even on the Moon. Heavier than he's supposed to be. Dead weight caresses the edges of her thoughts, but she cuts that thought off before it goes anywhere. Just another distraction.

"C'mon." She leans into the stretcher. "C'mon, Shaw. We'll get you back in."

He's as awkward unconscious as he is awake. She leans back as she walks and nearly tips over. The strain in her back builds with each step. Her muscles bunch up, ready to spasm. It doesn't matter. She keeps her eyes forward and performs a lurching lope towards the base.

The line between sunlight and shadow is sharp and stark. Aula pauses to pull her visor down one-handed and steps across the boundary. Heat immediately bombards her suit. Sam is about to receive the worst sunburn of his life. She puts her head down and pushes as hard as she can without spilling him onto the ground. There's no use saving him if all that's left is a rotisserie chicken.

Silvering movement catches Aula's eye. She looks and sees a giant tear around the airlock. Two of the modules are torn open like chip bags. Their innards shining, the darkness inside yawning open. No lights inside or out. No sign of power. It looks like a cave system. She stares at it for—she doesn't know how long. Stinging in her eyes breaks the spell. She presses her stomach against the stretcher and follows a beaten path around ILUB-1's outer wall.

"All freqs, Reed." She stumbles and nearly loses grip on the stretcher handle. "Are any modules still viable? Shaw's been out here for...."

She looks down at him. He's caked in a thickening layer of grey dust. Caked and cooking.

"Christ sake." Aula hikes up her good shoulder and keeps going. Her throat feels raw. Tastes of rust. She turns and angles her lights up to see a jagged tear on the top of the base. Printed regolith crumbles down the sides.

There's no way the base can sustain such a loss and remain inhabitable. The only recourse is EVAC C.

Ziva didn't have a chance.

Aula doesn't allow herself the time to let that sink in. If she does, it'll beat her. So she turns and pushes Sam towards their designated EVAC C point. Her arm burns with exertion. But she doesn't pause or look down. A mistake. Something catches the toe of her boot. She glimpses a charred metallic braid before tipping inevitably towards the regolith.

Her grip on the stretcher breaks. She falls onto her right side and every nerve in her body ignites. Hot shards of glass are ground into her side. Black spots dance in her vision. The taste of cardboard fills her mouth. Her breath rasps inside her helmet. It's so loud. Another coughing fit. Her lungs feel caught in a vice. She grits her teeth, hisses through every inhalation and exhalation like she's giving birth, and reaches through the swirl of dust. Her blunt fingertips touch something. When the regolith settles, it's Sam's face. He stares at her, a patch of flesh still stuck to the stretcher, splatters of blackening blood, arms and legs bent at odd angles. His blue flight suit is completely grey. Everything about him is grey now. Even his blood.

It's only then that she can accept the reality. There's nowhere to bring Sam. ILUB-1's medical facilities, Ziva's expertise, are unreachable. The emergency module doesn't have the facilities to save him. It's futile.

He's lost to the Moon.

She tries to push herself upright. To keep focus. To keep fighting. But her left arm fails like fatigued steel. She tries until her heart is ready to burst out of her chest.

But she can't. She just can't.

***

Notes:

Interested in the LESA? Here's a link about its testing.

https://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Human_Spaceflight/Astronauts/How_to_rescue_a_Moonwalker_in_need