Beeping. Then a buzzsaw in her ear. Full volume.

"ILUB-1, this...Hous.... Comm ch...."

"Houston, this is Martin through SEV-2. I'm by Short A. You're weak as hell."

"Getting the silent treatment down here, Martin."

"ILUB-1, SEV-2."

A coughing spasm wrenches Aula into a foetal position. Her right arm clenches into an agonizing snarl. She gasps, cheek flush against the mic, and opens her eyes. The sun hangs overhead. Pure punishing white. Sam lays where he fell. Greyer than moth scales. It feels like she's inside an oven.

Somewhere from across the Moon, "Al?"

It's the same voice that called her at 3:30 in the morning to crow about his new fiancé. Called her breakup with Sophia cowardly bullshit. Harvey's always calling and she's always answering. He'll circumnavigate the Moon before he leaves a living soul behind. It's the way he's wired.

"Skies clear. ILUB-1 is dark. No response. I'll pack up early and return home, over."

Aula musters enough breath to speak. "Get going, Harv."

"Al? You're breaking up."

Another few breaths. "Get to EVAC C."

"Evac...confirmed. Reed, is....ly deact....?"

More buzzsawing in her ears. Earth is sliding out of reach.

"Only one ping up here," Harvey says. "Where's everyone?"

"Gone." Another coughing fit. Pain knifes Aula's chest. "Get to EVAC C."

"Where are you?"

"On my way."

"Okay, I'll meet you there."

Aula nods as if he can see. Then she pats Sam's distended arm and flops back into the dust.

Time passes jaggedly. Measurable only in discomforts. The sun pummels her with its full force, none of its power diluted by an atmosphere. She can almost see its radiation hit the regolith and ripple up and outward like the bottom of a waterfall.

There are no microorganisms up here besides what people carry with them. Nothing to break their bodies down into nutrients for other forms of life. No other life to benefit from it. Sam and herself will be oases for a time. But their bodies will stay here until the same forces that create regolith wear them down. It will take a long time. They'll be visible for all of Earth to see.

She tries to imagine what that will be like. To see the intrepid Commander Shaw disintegrating under sunlight alongside her anonymous EMU. A legendary part of the space program would be nothing more than an expensive coffin shimmering on the lunar surface. Circling every month. What would Sophia and Anaaya make of that? Would they even look? Would it be more merciful to keep her face turned away and remain a white vaguely human-shaped blob or would that sterility just be another form of cruelty? Her back to turned to Earth, her body out of reach, her face hidden behind a gold shield. All decay left to the imagination.

She looks at Sam for an answer, but his dusty eyes are blank. Surprised, maybe. It's hard to tell.

Aula clenches her teeth. Daggers in her lungs. Rust in her mouth. The inside of her suit is swampy with sweat. It's like she's locked in a car on a hot day.

Her eyes sting. The muscles in her face draw taut. It's not the pain. It's the waste. Sophia and Anaaya. Sam. Two chances. Two kinds of family. Two good lives to lead. But each time, she ejects at the first sign of trouble, and that sleek shiny life crashes into the ground.

People are born having no chance. And even here, dying on the fucking Moon, she can't open her mouth and say anything. Harvey will pick it up. This is his second chance and she's not going to screw it up for him. Or Ross. Or the ILUB program. Because without a hero to come home, this might be the last time anyone sets foot on the Moon for another 60 years.

But even without Harvey's life in the balance, something just sticks in her throat. A strange and immobile cowardice.

The pain in Aula's chest tightens. She fights off a coughing fit. But only just. More rust in her mouth. Her head feels thick. When she looks at the horizon, it banks like a plane. It makes her light-headed to watch. So she doesn't. She waits. This is going to take a long time, too. Either the overexertion does her in or hypoxia. If it's the latter, she has over six hours of air unless she vents. Both of her arms feel like 100 pound weights. Heat is really penetrating her suit. Solar radiation starts scalding the back of her body, even her head. Only the PLSS gives some respite to the middle of her back.

Movement draws her eyes back to the horizon. It's smaller than Earth's. Clean-cut and curved without an atmosphere to fuzz its edges. Except there is a fuzziness now. A dimming. Aula wonders if it's her eyesight that's going, but no. Night is approaching. She cranes her neck to watch and her stomach flips. The sun is over her shoulder, its light harsh and bright, but the shadows cast by Sam and the LESA are longer than they were a few seconds ago. All around her, shadows appear. Abrupt, inky black, and neatly lined.

A chill washes across her body. Aula nearly whimpers in relief. A smouldering ache remains, but it fades into the crisp cool shadows. The moonscape begins to lose detail. Even the swirls of disturbed regolith in front of her blur. Obscured by what looks like dust caught in a sunbeam.

A moon fountain.

Aula summons the energy to raise her visor. It takes a few tries. Her fingers feel shaky and rubbery. It's awkward with her left hand. But, eventually, she manages to push it high enough to see. The Moon's surface regains some detail. Full of slanting white light and streams of dust. Glinting, sparking, drifting motes. Each particle of ground rock is lifted by sunlight. By the differences in charge between the dayside and nightside of the Moon. A silent, slow-moving geyser expands into her line of sight. Obscures the horizon. It rises over her with the kinetic power of a wave, which makes her back tingle in anticipation of impact, but it simply drifts by like a mist. Bronzes the sunlight. Fills the gaping maw of ILUB-1 with the late evening glow of a neglected room. Transforms it, for the briefest moment, into something earthly.

Stinging. Aula blinks. It takes her a few seconds to realize tears are pricking the edges of her eyes. She crimps her mouth, but doesn't make a sound, and lowers her head against the inside of her helmet. Shadows stretch and thicken until little light remains.

Then all light vanishes. Just like that. The sun disappears behind the horizon and the Moon plunges into absolute darkness. Aula shuts her eyes, then opens them again. It takes a while for her vision to adjust. The first thing she sees is Sam's face. His features are covered in dust. It looks like a mask. But his eyes glint from underneath. Just barely discernible by their shape and paleness. She can only hold his stare so long. Even she has to look away.

The night sky is dappled with tiny, perfect, unwavering pinpoints of light. Most are white. Some bear an elusive red or blue tinge. The Milky Way arcs across the sky, brindled by dust, and crested by a thick swirl of light from the galactic centre. But it's Earth that dominates the view. Fully illuminated and as spherical as a finely crafted marble. Even here, she can see the jut of continents and the feathery whorls of clouds. But most of all, the shining, deeply complex, ombre blues of its oceans. Home to billions of people, billions more of plants and other animals. Seething with life. And yet, it looks still. Almost uninhabited.

It holds Aula's eye and this time she can't look away. Something about it reaches into her and quiets everything else. The pain, the squeezing in her chest, fades out. She's caught in tidal lock. Everything about her is crafted from and for this place and the only way she can reach it now is with sight. Four days of space span between them. Invisible and uncrossable. She stares until the edge of that space creeps into the corners of her vision. It expands until the last source of colour is the perfect dew drop of Earth.

Then that passes behind the horizon, too.

***

Note: It's not 100% clear if moon fountains exist near the Moon's south pole. If I find research to the contrary, this will be corrected later.

If you'd like to learn more about moon fountains, follow the link:

https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2005/30mar_moonfountains