Diamond Moon

by B K Gallagher

  Hanson noticed her looking at it. He hesitated to ask her about it, and an awkward moment passed. “What was his name again?” he said.

  Mara was reticent to answer, but she told him anyway. “George,” she whispered. “He was an astronomer. We met on an expedition to the Antarctic. He was supposed to be on this mission. He talked me into going,” she said, an expression of irony in her voice.

  Hanson nodded. “He’s a lucky guy.”

  Mara frowned. “Not really,” she said with a heavy breath. “He got very sick. He only lived to be thirty years old,” she said as she worked hard to hold in her emotions. “Can you believe that?”

  Hanson nodded his head very slightly. “I can, actually,” he said. “But he lived well… He had you, didn’t he?” He let a cautious smile out toward her.

  Mara started crying.

  “I didn’t mean to make you cry,” he said quickly.

  “You didn’t,” she said. “Seriously, it’s ok.”

  Hanson seemed relieved. “I bet he was someone that wanted to make a difference like you are,” he said. “You’ve come all the way to discover some new fish and teach kids, and you end up finding cures for diseases that will make the world a better place. I like that about you, Mara. I bet George liked that about you.”

  Hanson stopped for a moment, giving her time to grieve. “In time, you’ll see… It will get better. It does.” He sat quietly, giving her time.

  “How did you know…” she asked cautiously. “How did you know when you were really ready to get better?”

  Hanson shifted on the bed. She could see that he was contemplating how to answer her. He was thinking deeply, and she waited patiently, and then he finally spoke.

  “You know… One day I just knew…” he said. He shook his head slightly, reliving his revelation. “I knew I was going to be alright. I decided I had to be, and all I had to do was make it happen,” he said. “I knew I was getting better when I started taking care of the other miners around me. I wanted to do things better, for them. I guess…” he said, not finishing his sentence. “I think it was my way to make up for the bad things that happened. I think it helped me. We ruff-necks, we have a saying; live well for those who got you here. I understood what that meant when I started getting my life back together.”

  He leaned his head back against the wall of her bunk and stared up into the open space of the room. His thoughts were lost to someplace else, someplace far beyond the confines of her small bunk room. Then he turned to her.

  “You know… I can tell you’re already doing the same thing,” he told her. “You are already moving on.”

  Mara listened politely, but she couldn’t see the point he was trying to make. Her nose was running, and she sniffed loudly in front of him. She was still trying to make sense of her emotions. She wasn’t sure she could ever recover the way Hanson had. She sat thinking for a minute and looked at him with a confused expression.

  “You don’t see it, do you?” he asked. Then he let the slightest smile slip from his mouth. It was the kind of smile that told her he saw something that she didn’t, and she waited for him to tell her what it was.

  Then Hanson said the one thing she had needed to hear. “I think with your discoveries… the cures you are finding, you’re already making things better too. You are making up for what happened in your own way, just like I did.”

  Mara turned to him, and with those words she felt her heart stop and her breath leave her body. She realized he was right. Hanson was right. She was doing good work again. She was making a difference. She had even contributed to a possible cure already. She realized with her work here that she was starting to look forward and not backward. Her discoveries meant nobody would suffer what George had gone through… ever again. It meant nobody would have to watch their loved one wither away to nothing and die, hopeless and helpless to stop it.

  Suddenly in that moment she saw it and she knew. She was responsible for bringing that discovery to the world. It was something she could, she should, feel good about.

  There was that rare moment of clarity… She was making amends. She was making things better for the world, taking the steps that Hanson had to heal; to right himself. She was here doing it for George. “This is why,” she thought to herself. “This is why he had asked her to come on the mission.” Everything suddenly made sense.

  The weight that had been foisted upon her lifted from her sagging shoulders. Her breathing relaxed and she felt her body unravel on her bed. The forces that had held her in place released themselves, and the pressure and the guilt that had held her subsided.

  She let the revelation wash over her. She thought about what Hanson had said about going back home and not wasting time, about how she had taken things for granted, things she was angry about, and things she regretted. She thought about the time after the diagnosis she had spent so angry, taking things out on the world. She suddenly felt guilty for those days, weeks, and months she had spent on Earth with her mother, near the beach, spending her time indoors on sunny days and feeling sad for herself. She had retreated from the world when she could have been enjoying the sunshine. She suddenly felt it all so selfish.

  “Those days were a waste of valuable time,” she realized. Here on this moon, with time her enemy, she wanted all the time she had wasted back.

  “You know,” Hanson said, catching her in the middle of her revelation. “I envy you. You should feel good about what you are doing here. You are capable of so much with your teaching and your science. You can take what you are finding here and do something good with it.” He leaned back on her bed and shook his head. “I could never make a difference like that. I’m just a ruff-neck, always will be a ruff-neck,” he finished.

  Mara became agitated as she heard Hanson disparaging himself. “You shouldn’t say that,” she said. “You aren’t just a ruff-neck. You care about the other miners. You look after people, like your friends in the accident, like you do with your crew… Like you are doing with me.” She stopped herself and looked at him, realizing what she was saying.

  She was frozen there, embarrassed at what she had admitted. She found herself in a rare moment of vulnerability. In that silent minute, with her raw emotions still coursing through her, she felt herself shifting her weight towards him. Something was pulling her toward Hanson. Her eyes were flushed and red, her lips were wet with tears — she didn’t care. She wanted closer.

  Hanson let her approach him. She watched every moment as she neared him. She planted a kiss upon his lips, a tentative kiss that she could barely feel.

  He didn’t move or respond to her. Mara realized she had taken him by surprise. If she could have looked in his eyes, she would have seen the face of an awkward young man, giddy for his first real kiss, and terrified at not knowing where else it should, or could, lead.

  She backed away and looked at his surprised and frightened face. Her eyes averted his when they met, but quickly returned. She had locked her gaze onto him, unable to look away, fearing she would miss a hint of what he was thinking in the moment… fearing what their kiss may or may not have meant for him. She felt her chest tense, and she breathed in a short breath, and she reached for another kiss, and he let her.

  It was deeper and more passionate kiss, and when he wouldn’t stop her, she threw her arms over him. She let go of the conflict and the restraint and the guardedness she had held in for so long, and she leaned fully into him, and they shared long, wet, deep kisses.

  But Hanson pushed her away. He was breathing hard. “You realize… I’m leaving… tomorrow,” he said, exhaling a deep breath.

  She waited for him to say more, but there was nothing else, and she reached for him again. She wouldn’t let him stop her. She continued to kiss him, preventing him from speaking any further against it.

  Mara unzipped her jumpsuit down to her waist. She leaned backward and away from him, and sh
e pulled his body toward hers. They collapsed onto her bed, and Hanson laid over her. He leaned his body over hers, hovered over her, and held himself suspended in the air above her. They were face to face on her bunk and excited and scared all at once.

  They breathed in unison. Their eyes met for a moment. There was a look of incredulity that went between them. They would spend their last night together in Mara’s bunk room.

  Hanson put his head down to hers and kissed her again as passionately as she had, and Mara welcomed every one of them. She released her burdens and her conscious and her guilt, and they dissipated into the space around her room and through the walls and out onto the ice and up into the dark sky.

  The lights in her room faded as her burdens left her. And then the light from the moons and the planets faded with them. And then the sun… They faded away until all that was left were a million stars in the Milky Way. They surrounded her, and she let them envelop her with their warmth, and when they did, she remembered that he had named every one of them after her.

  Sol 16; Mission time - 01:11

  Mara woke from her sleep and sat straight up. It was dark. She could see a silhouette quietly exiting her bunk room. She watched to see if he would say anything. When he didn’t, she called for him as he began walking through the door.

  “You’re just leaving?” she asked.

  He turned to her, startled, not expecting to wake her. Hanson finished zipping his fatigues, unsure how to respond. “I have to be ready to go,” he told her.

  “You’re just going to get your own rig, then?” she asked. “After everything you told me last night?”

  Hanson was frozen, thinking of what he could say. He looked uncomfortable, and he stammered for words.

  “You need to stand up to Johan,” she told him. “Make him stay. This is it. You need to do something!”

  Hanson couldn’t walk away.

  “Aren’t you going to even try?” she asked.

  “What’s the point?” he said. “You saw Johan. He isn’t going to listen to anything you, or I, say.”

  “You can talk to your men. Take over the controls to the ship.”

  Hanson shook his head as if she were crazy, and Mara leaned backward on her bunk. She knew she didn’t have much time.

  “You’re going to have to stand up to him at some point,” she told him. “Get the crew on your side and tell him what you want. He owes it to you after all this time.”

  Hanson responded quickly, with an angry voice. “You want me to get the crew to turn on Johan and demand safer conditions while we stay on the most dangerous mission we’ve been on in years? Do you know how that is going to come across?” He raised his eyebrows at her. “Johan will see right through that,” he said. “And so will my crew.”

  “Tell him about your accident,” she continued. “Tell him you weren’t responsible. Isn’t your freedom worth it?” she asked.

  Hanson stood straight, then dropped his head. Her words were hanging uncomfortably in the air. She watched as he processed the outcome of her suggestions. “It’s not as easy as you think,” he said. “None of that will work like you think it will.”

  “How do you know?”

  Hanson nearly laughed. “I think I know Johan well enough,” he countered, and then he looked out of her doorway, down the corridor where he desperately wanted to leave. “It won’t make any difference. It won’t… and things will get worse for me and the crew. What you are suggesting is mutiny!” He shook his head in aversion to the thought.

  Mara could feel herself growing frustrated. The entire situation had stirred an incredible sense of injustice within her. Her crew was being held hostage to the mining rig; hostage to Johan.

  She couldn’t understand how Hanson could tolerate his situation any longer either. She worried about him staying in this life forever. Then the words she was most hoping not to say blurted out of her mouth before she could stop it.

  “If you don’t stand up to him, they’ll own you,” she said. “You’re nothing but an asset to them.” She shook her head. “Even with your own rig. They’ll own everything you have. A real captain would take his life into his own hands.”

  She sat backward on her bed, surprised at what she had just said, knowing she had cut him to the core. She feared what it had meant for her to say it, and she waited for him to respond, expecting him to be equally vicious.

  She could see Hanson’s posture change. She had upset him. He was breathing harder, and his fists clenched into tight balls. He looked like he wanted to hit something. His face had turned red.

  Mara realized she had never really seen him angry, not like this. He responded with a sullen tone.

  “You think it’s that simple, don’t you? You think after all this time I should have just taken the rig over? You call that taking my life into my own hands? As if that would erase my debts and bring back my friends?”

  Hanson was shaking. He looked out through her window and across the ice at the Zephyr sitting in the near distance. “You don’t have all the answers, Mara. It’s not as simple as you make it, and this isn’t going to end like you hope it will. I’m already in enough trouble.”

  Mara watched nervously from her bunk, hardly remembering the evening they had just spent together. Then Hanson walked out of her room and made a hard turn for the airlock and disappeared out of sight.

  She got off the bed quickly and followed him to the airlock, keeping her distance. She half wanted to apologize to him, and half wanted to push him even harder, if only to take his own life back for himself.

  She stood just outside the room as he waited for the doors to open. When she saw him ready to exit, he flipped the visor to his helmet and turned one last time to her. Their eyes met, and without another word he walked out of the airlock compartment. The doors shut behind him when he was finally outside, and Mara slapped her hand hard against the wall. She expected she would never see him again, and she knew she couldn’t blame him.

  Sol 16; Mission time - 01:28

  Luis was sitting at his control panel monitoring the orbital telemetries, surface images, radiation, and magnetosphere of Jupiter when something odd caught his eye.

  He looked toward the feeds from the Hab. The figure of a man walking from the bunk rooms to the airlock could be seen on one of the cameras.

  He watched the man, who seemed to be gesturing toward someone off-screen. He was wearing a miner’s bio-suit. He appeared agitated. Then he turned, and Luis could see his face. It was Hanson, and he was speaking to Mara. It looked like they were talking, or maybe they were arguing. He watched Hanson flip the visor on his helmet and exit the airlock.

  Luis knew immediately what this had meant. It was very early in the morning hours. Hanson had just stayed a portion of the night with Mara.

  He felt his heart begin to sink and his pulse race. A dour feeling enveloped him. Luis felt like his insides had fallen to the floor. There was disappointment, then panic, then a wretched state of despondence. And there was nothing he could do about it. Not now. Not from up here. He was in complete distress at knowing, watching, monitoring from afar, and not having any influence on what was happening.

  He hated the miners. He couldn’t imagine how Mara could end up liking one of them, or possibly be attracted to one of them. He couldn’t imagine that Mara would choose one of these men over him.

  Feelings of panic washed over him in waves as he watched the video feed over and over. He wished there was something he could do. He wished there was something to show Mara what kind of people the miners were. He knew there had to be something. He couldn’t sleep. His mind was working too hard to think of a way to show her what he knew.

  Sol 16; Mission time - 01:56

  Mara stood near the airlock for what felt like several long minutes. She realized she had been hoping Hanson would return, but he hadn’t. When she arrived in her room,
there was a message waiting for her. Luis, she assumed, and she sighed, knowing this would not be pleasant. She opened the recording, hoping to brush it off:

  Mara, how could you put your trust in one of the miners like this? Hanson shouldn’t know anything about what we are doing here. He doesn’t have the education or training… He’s clueless about what any of this means. He’s not a scientist; not like me… or you.

  Do you realize how badly you may have compromised the mission? None of the miners has any idea what could be down there, or the dangers they could expose us to. They can’t be trusted, and now you’ve allowed one of them to know what we are finding? He’ll turn on you, Mara. He’ll turn on all of us. You don’t know what their type is like.

  Luis stopped, pondering his next words. He was sullen, and his facial expressions disconsolate. Mara thought she saw him choking back emotions. She was surprised to see him this way. Then he began to speak again:

  I saw that tonight. I know he was in your room. This is beneath you, Mara. A miner, really? I thought you had better taste.

  You are compromising this mission because of your emotional instability… And I am not surprised. You’ve been acting erratically the entire time we’ve been out here.

  You know I warned Nathan about you? You know that? I did. I told him it was a bad idea to send you with us.

  But, I thought maybe if you gave us a chance you wouldn’t still be in this position. I thought maybe I could help you. Nathan was hoping you would see it that way too. He knew I would be a good thing for you. Obviously, you’re not in the frame of mind to see it or make that decision for yourself…

  The monitor went blank. The send reply message flashed on the screen. Mara sat and looked into the blank screen for a minute, surprised that she had just received a message such as this. She turned the monitor off in disgust. She didn’t think the evening could get any worse. Her head dropped. She was regretting her mistake of allowing anything to happen with Luis. The mission appeared to be ending prematurely, and now she had this mess with Luis to deal with.