Lunar regolith is awash in secondary radiation. Cosmic rays and the solar wind hit the surface, which creates a splash of radioactive particles in the soil. It's relatively weak and stays close to the ground, but it's an extra dose neither of them needs. After one last tour around the landing gear, they return the MAF's rear platform. A deep ache pushes through Aula's legs, her back, and up into her shoulders. The heat doesn't help. Thirst scrapes at the back of her throat. They're more prone to overheat than freeze out here. The vacuum of space is a surprisingly good insulator. They all wear a liquid cooling and ventilation garment, which is a fancy pair of long johns filled with tubes to circulate cold water and draw sweat away from their skin.

Kelly holds the camera up for inspection. Her face is scrunched in concentration. Some of the colour has returned to her cheeks.

"Just a few scratches. Miraculous, really."

What's miraculous is that a rock pierced the MAF's inner wall without causing explosive decompression. Aula rolls her shoulders and sharp pain strings all the way down her back. Years of training in decommissioned EMUs is rough on the shoulders. The planar hard upper torso causes a lot of strain and chafing. Switching to a pivoted version helped, but she still needed surgery for a torn rotator cuff. A lot of older astronauts have the same problem, which is why they now train in Z-1's.

"Alright?" Kelly lowers her camera.

"Yeah."

She quirks her lips in way of a shrug and looks out over the moonscape. "It's weird. I haven't gone to Glengarriff Forest in ages, but I keep dreaming about it. When I wake up, I can still smell the trees."

Aula keeps her eye ons the horizon. There's no solid line where ground meets sky, only where stars stop. The view hasn't changed much in ten years. She bites the in-suit drink bag and takes a big gulp of water to distract herself. The last meal she had was at breakfast. Half a power bar before their EVA just doesn't cut it. While Kelly is slathering everything in symbolism, she raises her arm to look at the screen on the back of her mirror.

They're each given a Crew Active Dosimeter or CAD. Three badges on their head, torsos, and leg measure the radiation hitting things like the eye, blood forming organs, and their skin in real time. Solar wind and cosmic rays are the biggest culprits. Without a shield of lunar regolith to insulate ILUB-2, they'd be exposed to more than 69 times the radiation they experience on Earth. It doesn't count events like solar storms, which are fatal to anyone exposed. NASA likes them to keep doses below 25 rem a month. Lower if they're women of child-bearing age. Aula's 37 years old. She doesn't care. Ross and Harvey threaten her with a babysitting roster all the time. They want to adopt and she's going to be their backup. That was the plan, at least. She frowns a little and drinks more water. Kids were never on her radar anyway. Nobody should have to love that much without a choice.

One star detaches from the sky. It's hard to tell at a distance, but it looks to dip in front of where the horizon should be.

"...you there? How do I read?"

"You're fading in," Aula replies.

"How about now?"

"Better."

"Good. I heard someone needed a lift."

"Took your sweet time." Kelly leans forward slightly. "I thought we'd have to start walking home."

Harvey laughs. "That was Plan A. This thing is a hog."

The star slowly comes closer. A single point of light becomes four and the twinkling becomes sharp jerks up and down. Harvey is hauling ass over the mare. Maybe he feels it, too. He took a gamble on nothing more than a voice dying with the comm system. Sometimes she wonders what that drive must have been like. Trying to find the only other living person on the Moon.

"SEV, ILUB-2. You have made contact?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Aula starts toward the ladder. "We're here, ILUB-2."

"Good. We wondered." Ward's tone abruptly shifts. "You're very late."

"Roger."

The SEV steadily closes in on their position. The surface version looks like the front end of a Skycrane wielded to an airlock, which isn't that far from the truth. Its wheels kick up small arcs of regolith that drift back to the surface half a second slower than they would on Earth. This is the successor to Apollo's lunar rover. Without the weight and shipping constraints of the 60's and 70's, the SEV is the size of a small truck. It has twelve wheels, a ten year life span, and houses two people for up to two weeks. It can also reach a snazzy 12 km per hour.

"Alright, kids." Harvey parks near the MAF's back right landing gear. "Come on in."

Aula turns to Kelly. "Go on."

"Right."

Kelly slowly wedges the camera into the tool pouch on the side of her PLSS. Only half of it fits, but it keeps both of her hands free for the climb down. She turns and shuffles backwards until one boot hangs off the MAF's edge. Her left arm flails to maintain balance and she starts to swing like a door.

Aula grabs her hand and guides it back to the ladder.

"Thanks, Reed."

She leans against the railing and watches Kelly slowly inch out of view. Each footstep reverberates silently through the ladder. It's like watching a flashlight slowly sinking into the ocean. She looks at the SEV's cabin and catches Harvey looking back at her. His face is unreadable. He called her a coward that day. Maybe he's still right.

"Christ on a bicycle."

Aula glances down in time to see the camera land in the regolith with a small puff of dust. Little surprise considering how small the pouch is on their Z-1's PLSS.

"Goddammit, Kelly," Harvey says. "Way to ruin the Moon."

"It's what I'm here for."

There's something brittle in Kelly's tone, though she tries to hide it. Everyone in the ILUB program knows the risks of being here regardless if they're civilian or military. They're all screened, prepped, and drilled for it. But this has been a very long day and Kelly is still new. She tries to bend forward at an angle to grab the camera and falls over. An irritated huff echoes over the comm. She pushes herself up with one arm and slowly grasps the camera's broken tether.

"You did answer an ad in the paper." Aula leans casually against the MAF's ladder. "That's how they shack up on the ISS."

Their career entails a paradoxical mixture of competition and cooperation. Ribbing is friendly and ever present. Astronauts on the ISS are shit on by astronauts on the Moon, who are then shit on by astronauts who went to Mars. Each mission is equally important in the pursuit of making space exploration safer and more permanent, but that doesn't stop anybody from whipping out the measuring tape.

"You know what?" Kelly breathes heavily against her mic as she uses both hands to sail backwards. Because of low gravity, one push is enough to stand upright. "The pair of you can feck right off."

Aula smirks and Harvey laughs, which makes Kelly sigh irritably. The brittleness in her voice is gone.

When the ladder is clear, Aula turns around and grips the railing tightly. Her hands are stiff with exhaustion, but it's something they all learn to push through. She slowly steps off the MAF and her foot dangles. It's not a pleasant feeling. Then she manages to find the first rung. Even without visual cues, she has the muscle memory to continue down. She counts her steps. A meditation of numbers. It helps edge out all the aches and pains thrumming from her hands all the way into her hips. Her lights shine off the ladder and cast crisscrossing shadows on the regolith beyond. The SEV casts a broad arch of light. She remembers being caught in it. Being conjured back into existence by four headlamps with her shadow looming over Sam's corpse.

Her boots hit regolith. She turns and heads toward the SEV's rear. It has two hatches like the MAF so their Z-1's can dock directly. It has a conventional airlock as well, but lacks the same cleaning equipment as ILUB-2. Tramping into the SEV after their EVA will introduce every sort of contaminant the Moon has to offer. Once the dust gets in, it's damned hard to get out, and they'll all have an appointment with Ward.

She takes a sip of water. "MUM?"

"I'm up for it," Harvey says. "ILUB-2, we'd like to start MUM."

"We hear," Ward says before a long pause. "You can go ahead."

The Mechanical Undocking Manoeuvre is when a suit needs to be disengaged from a vehicle without an astronaut inside it. Aula lopes past Kelly until she's faced with another ladder. She doesn't allow herself time to dread climbing more rungs. The SEV is much lower to the ground and its rear platform looks like a flatbed. She hauls herself up and pain grinds through her arms into her back. Harvey's Z-1 hangs limply against the SEV's external hatch like a puppet. She turns and offers her hand.

"Give me the camera."

Kelly stretches her arm as far as it will go. "Here."

The camera dangles between them. Aula grasps its tether and slowly turns toward the SEV's Sample Collection Compartment. Her fingers ache in time with her pulse. It's hard to work against the stiffness of her gloves. She opens the SCC and stares down at what looks like a small chunk of charcoal left in a bag. It's not charcoal, of course. The thin black rind is called a fusion crust. It forms on freshly fallen meteorites. She carefully lowers the camera into the second pouch. It's slow and her arms tremble from a day's worth of exertion. She can't bend very far in the Z-1 so it takes three tries before the camera slides into the second partitioned section of the SCC. Sweat stings the corners of her eyes. She straightens up and closes the SCC's lid. Bauer's going to have a field day.

"Camera's secured." She looks at the empty Z-1. Its gold-tinted visor is down. "Ready, Harv?"

"I'm waiting on you."

She rolls her shoulder and the resulting pain helps centre her in the moment. The Z-1's DCM is labelled backwards so words appear the right way around when viewed in a mirror. They all simulate MUMs, but it takes her a moment to find the controls for docking. Kelly comes up from behind her and more light shines on the suit. Their reflections slide across the visor in distorted colours and proportions.

"Prepare to undock," Aula says.

"Be gentle, ladies."

A vibration rumbles through the suit. That's their cue. Aula pushes a large silver switch beside the actuator control. Harvey's Z-1 gently disengages from the SEV's external hatch. On Earth, it would weigh nearly 300 pounds, but on the Moon it weighs less than 50. She holds its right arm while Kelly takes its left, and they guide it across the platform towards a hook anchor. The trick is arranging the suit down with limited mobility. It's like trying to waltz with three partners and one of them is unconscious.

Aula ignores the pain drilling into her ribcage. "Alright, set it down."

They slowly lower the Z-1 to the platform using its arms as a tether. She bends as far as she can to lessen the strain, but her right dorsi is screwing into a knot. The same raw red chord pulls through her shoulders and down into her hips. The lights mounted on her helmet make it easier to tell distance, but it's still challenging to track her centre of gravity. She grabs the railing to steady herself and slowly sinks to one knee.

"I'll pull to my side. Ready?"

"Yep," Kelly says and carefully kneels down without using her hands.

They both turn the suit so it faces Aula. She braces her leg against the platform to hold the Z-1 in place while Kelly pulls the safety tether from its belt and snaps it onto the anchor.

"There we go. Nice and snug."

Harvey is silent, which means he's on the brink of capitalizing on the innuendo. Aula pushes herself away from the floor and drifts to her feet. The Z-1 lays motionless between them, only partly visible under their lights.

"Suit's secure."

"Thank God." Kelly straightens up and lopes toward the SEV's left hatch. "I can't wait to have a shower and lie down."

"Then come on in," Harvey says.

The MAF looms beside them, but is little more than a silver outline in the darkness. Aula takes one last look at it before she turns and heads toward the SEV's right hatch. It's the same dance. She positions her feet and slowly aligns the external hatch with her suit-port plate. It takes longer than before, but eventually she feels the telltale lock. A click and hiss mark the end of her unplanned EVA.

She leans back out of her suit and is rewarded with a series of pops and cracks down her spine. The cabin smells of sweat. Her whole body aches when she slides out of the Z-1's lower half and stands up. Kelly takes the elastic out of her hair and reties her ponytail. Harvey gets out of his chair and grasps both of them by the shoulder.

"You assholes," he says tiredly and smiles. "All those years of training and you still can't fly around a rock."

Aula chuffs and closes her eyes.