The interior lights brighten again. Aula unbuckles her harness and flexes her hands to work the stiffness out. Pain drills up the bones of her wrists. She ignores it and stands up. The pressure alarm warbles constantly. Kelly stares at it for a moment, then unbuckles herself and heads towards the back of the MAF. In a decompression event, everything has to be deactivated and secured. Their job isn't over yet.

Aula scans the green text on screen. "Still can't localize this leak."

"Then prepare to evacuate," Volkov says sternly. "Martin is an hour out."

She clamps her jaw and stares at the pressure gauge. It's nearly 230 mmHg now. If they stay too long, they risk getting the bends.

"Rog."

When she looks over her shoulder, Kelly is shutting off the laptop and trying to look like she isn't listening. She wouldn't do well at a poker table. Aula stands and pushes through the pain that zig zags through her body. The MAF's systems are shut down. She closes the vacuum valves to protect the equipment while the interior is depressurized. The alarm continues to warble as pressure slips past 229 mmHg.

Kelly rubs her forehead with the side of her thumb. "Suits are good, everything's sealed up back here. Just say the word."

"Get into your Z-1."

Aula turns back to the screen without waiting for a reply, but she can hear Kelly banging around. She presses the comm. "We're ready, Moscow. You've got our coordinates?"

"Yes," Volkov says. "Evacuate the MAF."

Their pressure is down to 227 mmHg. A creak and hiss behind her signals that Kelly has reentered her spacesuit and sealed the rear-entry hatch. Aula closes the final vacuum valves and activates the MAF's evacuation procedures. When her suit detaches, everything will shut down. They'll have no lights or communication beyond what their Z-1's provide.

"Final comm. Sending our last logs."

Volkov's voice is underscored by a buzzing sound. "...understand."

Their pressure is down to 224 mmHg. She reaches over and shuts off the alarms. One red light glows steadily. The other blinks. She makes her way to the back. Something crunches under her foot. It's the goddamn power bar. She picks it up, folds the wrapper closed, and sticks it in her pocket. Then she prepares for the ignoble process of sticking her ass out and sliding into the Z-1's upper torso. Her legs slide into the lower half easily enough. When she looks up, the sky is stippled by starlight. Earth looks small and exquisitely blue. Kelly is already on the ground. She holds the camera in both hands, marooned on a grey island in a black ocean.

Aula uses her mirror to read the DCM on her chest. She activates the Z-1's hatch and hears its familiar click and hiss. The fan comes on and sweat starts drying from her face. She steps away from the hatch and the MAF's lights flick off. It takes a moment for her eyes to adjust. She changes the angle of her lights, then starts down the ladder. A deep ache burns from her forearms all the way to her shoulders. She counts the rungs until her foot hits regolith.

Kelly waits until they make eye contact. "I can't believe you landed that yoke."

"It's why I'm here." Aula turns and lopes around the MAF's right side.

"Did we get knocked by a rock?" Kelly hefts the camera up against her DCM and follows. "Hope to God none of them hit the Apollo shells. The Perseids are bad enough."

Every July and August, the Earth-Moon system passes through a cloud of debris left by the Swift-Tuttle comet. This is called the Perseid cloud. It means pretty meteor showers on Earth and a state of heightened alertness on the Moon. It's late June. Perseid season isn't far off. Everything looked green for the next 24 hours. No anticipated blackouts, radiation, or geomagnetic storms on the horizon. No Near-Earth Objects reported. It's supposed to be quiet, but the Earth itself is surrounded by its own cloud of debris. A NEO could get through unseen. Rare, but not impossible. It's a big, increasingly crowded sky in this part of the solar system.

The first impact had been singular and blinding. The second was a smattering of lights. Either multiple objects or a single object that broke apart before hitting the lunar surface. Aula remembers watching old footage of Shoemaker-Levy 9. A comet ensnared by Jupiter's gravity, ripped apart by its tidal forces, and then colliding in a long string. The visual is much the same. If an object like that hit the MAF, no amount of self-healing polymer would save them. So that begs the question: what did hit them?

Her lights shine on one of the landing gears. She reaches out and pats it. The metal burns cold through her gloves. It gives her stability when she adjusts one of her lights and leans back. It should be easy to spot any damage, but the Z-1 only bends so far. The cramp from earlier starts to bite into her side again. She straightens up and the pain fades.

"It's so dark out here," Kelly mutters. "Wish we had earthshine."

Aula suppresses a sigh and continues along the MAF's side. When she looks up, something glints. She adjusts her light and stares for a moment. A jagged piece of black stone juts out of the MAF's aluminum Whipple shield. To protect against impacts, the spacecraft is lined with an outer bumper, a gap, a series of inner walls with foam, and then self-healing polymer. When something hits them, it punches through the outside layer and loses most of its velocity before it hits the MAF's wall. All of this is rendered null and void by the giant rock lodged in the hull like a sliver.

She follows the damaged bumper down the MAF's side. It looks like debris came from below them like she feared. The landing gear is undamaged, but E2 sports a large diagonal dent. It's enough to change the engine's shape and angle.

"Found the problem."

Kelly hops over. "You don't sound thrilled."

"It's a problem."

"Oh." She skids to a stop and looks at the MAF. "That's a fine big rock. Can you fix it?"

"Maybe."

Aula starts to file through the logistics involved, the materials, the time. Time is their biggest constraint. If they can't get the MAF going, there will be no trip to ILUB-1. Things could've easily ended with two more freeze-dried corpses on the Moon, but it still feels like a loss. This machine is a large part of why she was able to come back. Her experience with the MAF is matched only by Harvey. Public pressure over the Apollo 11 site and commercial pressure over lunar ore fields finally aligned. Long-distance travel across the Moon became a priority. They became a priority.

Kelly sighs harshly against her mic, which creates a blast of static. She leans against the landing gear in the universal posture of weariness.

"Still sick?"

"A bit."

Few things are as unpleasant as vomiting inside a spacesuit. The risk of inhaling it is much higher, especially in low gravity. They have SCOP-DEX onboard the MAF to treat motion sickness, but neither of them can go back inside. It has to be mind over matter now. The Z-1 has a larger range of motion than the EMU. The pain is manageable. Aula puts her hand on Kelly's shoulder and turns her so they can face each other. The lights on their helmets make a bright white frame around their heads.

"Look at me. Focus on me." She leans forward so their visors nearly touch. "Take deep breaths through your mouth. Talk if you need to."

Kelly's face is slick and pale, and her attention is directed inward. She exhales slowly to pace herself. The freckles on the bridge of her nose stand out like ink on paper. It's something they all experience in and out of simulations.

"I'm alright. Just need to stand on my own two feet. I'll take a picture of this thing in a second."

Aula lets her hand drop away, takes a small hop back, and turns to the MAF. It's curved and silver like a breastplate. She starts to lope around it. Her vision is limited, but it looks like there are no other large breaches. Only small dents and holes that could've been made by bullets. The comparison isn't far off. Even small rocks can have tremendous force at sufficient speed.

"Stay over there for a second. I kept thinking this on our way down and I can't say it when I'm looking at you."

She pauses on the opposite side of the MAF.

"They advertised for this spot in a newspaper. You know that, yeah? Ireland finally had a shot at the Moon and it all hinged on an ad. I thought they were taking the piss so I ignored it. Went on a vacation to Washington with the fam. Had to go sightseeing, of course." There's a long silence as if Kelly's voice is coming from a great distance. "They have your EMU at the Smithsonian. Dusty old yoke. It looks like you rolled around on the ground before coming back. The whole lot of them from Apollo to ILUB were lined up in a timeline. Plastic in the suits was really starting to fall apart by then. It upset me like you wouldn't believe. So I answered the ad that night."

Everyone creates their personalized version of a celebrity to idealize or demonize as they please. It's a different angle on the same story. Ziva had been the first woman on the Moon, but Aula had been the only one to survive. A new generation of moonwalkers nearly wiped clean and this is what people remember. She looks up at Earth. It jogs memories of flying in the Arctic. The blue of deep waters on a sunny day.

Light cuts a line of regolith out of darkness. Kelly lopes around the corner, arms held up for balance, lunar soil puffing up around her boots. The camera swings back and forth from her right hand. She skids to a stop, but overdoes it and nearly topples over.

Aula steadies her with one hand. "You done?"

"Sorry." Kelly hops back. "I feel a bit better."

"Good. Get your lights out of my face."

She turns slightly to illuminate a patch of regolith a few feet away. Over millions of years, impacts on the Moon's surface have ground it to a fine powder.

"Aldrin was right," she says after a moment. "Magnificent desolation."

It took seconds for Sam to collapse. He spasmed in a dim spotlight cast by the EMU. Fine grey dust hung around him like a cloud. It clung to everything. The whites of his eyes, his teeth, even his socks.

Aula turns away. "I'm going to have one last look at that engine. Keep an eye out for Harvey."