Diamond Moon

by B K Gallagher

  Sol 17; Mission time - 03:10

  Hanson pressed his visor up against Mara’s. He looked at her intensely, with a passion that conveyed unsaid words. He knew this was their time. He wanted to calm her, help her give herself to the moon, but he lacked the composure to say the right words. He held her tightly, and that was all he could do.

  He brought her closer to him, and their eyes met. They shared a moment that only two people that had newly fallen in love could have for each other. They accepted their time would be brief. They had had their one moment, their one night. They seemed to see it in each other’s faces; they were both happy to have had the little time they did.

  Mara closed her eyes and gave in to her surroundings. She had thought of this moment so many times before. There were times she had prayed for it, ready to submit herself to fate. She had given herself to it so many times in the past, nearly tried to will it to happen… But it had passed her by, leaving her desiring, empty, unfulfilled. And now it was here, and she could finally let herself go. She could detach from the world as she had once wanted, releasing herself of the burdens she had carried.

  But not this time — she prayed it to pass her by and leave her. She had decided she wanted another chance. She prayed this time, not for an ending but a beginning, and she feared it was far too late to expect her prayers to be heard. She lifted her head to the sky to share her final thoughts with anyone that would listen, and when she opened her eyes she couldn’t believe what she saw. Her prayers it seemed, had been answered. There was still a chance.

  Sol 17; Mission time - 03:12

  Mara tapped furiously on Hanson’s shoulder. She gestured for him to look up. When he did, he noticed Johan standing on the ledge above them. He was signaling for them. A safety-line attached to his belt was being lowered for them to climb. Johan had come back. Hanson looked up at him, balancing on the edge, and the vision of him attempting to help was as divine as anything he had ever seen.

  Hanson signaled to Johan that he had seen him. He waved his hand and urged him to drop the line further as the eruption got closer. Johan fed the rope over the edge as fast as he could.

  Hanson began to estimate the climb, calculating how much time they had. He didn’t think they would make it. He signaled for Johan to feed the rope faster.

  The line descended to within reach, and he attempted to jump and grab it in his weakened condition. There was an eyehook on the end that made grasping it easier.

  Mara yelled. “Climb! You first. There’s no time to argue,” she said. She was frantic, insisting he attempt the climb first in his weakened state.

  “I’m not going first, Mara. You go. Now!”

  “You’re sick! GO!”

  “Quit arguing for once, damnit!” Hanson said, and he handed the line to her.

  Mara grabbed the hook. She knew they didn’t have time for a standoff. She attempted to climb but she could not lift herself, even in the low gravity. Her suit was too heavy. Johan tried to pull her, but he clearly could not help her either.

  “I’ll get up there and lift you up,” Hanson told her. He grabbed the rope and did his best to begin climbing, but he also could not lift himself in his weakened condition. “I’m too weak… too sick,” he said. “Try it again,” he said, “I don’t have much time anyway.”

  “Don’t say that,” Mara said. “Doesn’t the rover have a winch or something?”

  “That one doesn’t,” he said.

  Above, Johan urged them onto the rope as he watched the approaching destruction, the situation was quickly becoming

  hopeless.

  “Grab the rope!” Hanson insisted.

  Mara hesitated.

  “I’m not going anywhere without you,” she told him.

  “Yes, you are,” he said, handing her the rope.

  They could see the individual droplets of water and ice in the geyser now. Each drop was glistening in the weak sunlight like a shooting star. There were billions of them. And then Hanson noticed Johan was walking away from the edge.

  “He’s leaving us,” he said as he saw his captain turn and walk away. “You had to fight about it,” he yelled at Mara.

  Mara looked upward and confirmed that Johan was no longer above them. She was not surprised. Then to her astonishment, Johan returned to the ledge. He was on the rover, riding it to the very edge of the ice fissure.

  Johan jumped off the seat and placed a spike in the ice near the ledge. He quickly hammered it in place with two powerful drives of a sledgehammer. Then he wrapped the rope, still attached to his belt, around the spike, tied it to the vehicle, and created a pulley. He got back on his rover and looked into the fissure, judging the speed of the oncoming destruction. Then he looked back down at Hanson. He pointed at the ice-spike, gesturing to him for something.

  “What is he doing?” Mara asked.

  Hanson knew what it was. It was an old mining trick they had used on asteroids from time to time. They’d pack ore or other waste material on one end of a rope and the crew on the other. Then they’d use the material to create a counterweight and lift the men up and down the ridges of the asteroids. Johan was making himself into the counterweight.

  Hanson shook his head, trying to dissuade him, but there was no removing Johan from the precipice. There was little time to argue. He would take Johan’s offer, or they would all die.

  Hanson looked through his captain’s visor. Johan’s face was blistering and red. Even from the distance below Hanson could see that Johan was dying the same gruesome death that Larue and Morrison had. He convinced himself this was the only way they could escape the situation.

  “Grab the rope, Mara,” he said as they looked up to the top of the ledge.

  “What is he doing?” she asked.

  “Just hold on to me.”

  Mara did as she was told, grabbing the rope and holding tight to Hanson. He wrapped the line around his wrist several times and put his arms around Mara, solidifying their hold. They were as ready as they were going to be.

  They looked up as Johan hesitated the brief second it took for him to gather his nerves. He coughed into his visor, and Hanson saw it turn a bright red color as he exculpated the rot of disease within him. Blinded by his bloody excretions, Johan flipped the switch on his rover and drove over the ledge.

  Mara gasped when she saw it. His limp body leaned across the steering wheel as he guided the rover over the ledge, still working the wheel.

  The rope went taught.

  The weight of Johan’s falling body and the vehicle that had carried him there pulled Mara and Hanson to the surface as quickly as the rover fell. Hanson turned as he ascended and passed his captain, his friend, the only father he had known, and he watched him fall peacefully into the belly of the moon. He saw Johan’s body relax and go limp as he drifted downward, cartwheeling end over end into the abyss. It was a gentle, blissful, merciful fall. His white suit stood out from the murky recesses as it spun into the depths of the moon, and then his body disappeared into darkness.

  Hanson snapped at Mara quickly. “Let go of the rope!” he yelled. They raised in elevation, still ascending from their momentum, and the rest of the line followed Johan’s rover to the bottom.

  Mara let go. She rolled onto her back when she arrived on the surface, stunned to be there.

  Hanson had to quickly remove the line from his wrist before it dragged him down along with Johan. He smartly extended a utility knife from the arm of his suit and swiped at the rope, cutting it from his body. The rope snaked around the spike and followed Johan into the crevasse.

  Hanson took to his feet quickly. He looked down where Johan had fallen. He was gone. There was no sign of him in the roiling water. The grief of having lost his friends, his family, his mentor, suddenly weighed heavily on him. He wasted precious seconds honoring his captain.

  Mara took to her feet along with
him and ran over the shifting terrain, then turned to see the ground beginning to give away under Hanson’s feet. He once more nearly fell into the fountain of ocean water.

  “Don’t make that all for nothing,” she told him. They began to run, but they had spent too much time in one spot. The eruption had caught them.

  The water that had been erupting on the horizon was now reaching them. Johan’s heroic gesture had come too late. The geyser began to swell around them, through the cracks in the ice in every direction, and it tore into the sky directly behind Hanson. The raw destructive power sent shivers down Mara’s spine as she watched it close on them.

  This was the epicenter of destruction. Unbelievable forces were being unleashed all around them. There was no obvious direction to run. Water soared into the heavens from the fissure just meters behind them, reaching kilometers into the sky in mere seconds.

  Mara guided them through the eruption. Ice was tearing away and flying into the sky all around. It was blind luck that kept them on solid ground. She held Hanson’s hand and guided them into a clearing. Mara reached a safe spot and looked for the Hab. She could see it on the horizon. She pulled at Hanson and they ran again.

  He was putting up a valiant effort. Mara helped Hanson climb over crevices and escarpments, pits and fissures, and heaving chunks of ice that would loosen geysers of vapor around them as the surface ice broke apart. No place was safe. The entire icy plain had become a minefield of volcanic gas, geysers, and destruction.

  Mara thought to try and contact the Hab. She reached for her comm-link button as she ran, which slowed her down. “Hab One, this is Mara. Come in Hab One!” she pleaded. “Hab One, we need you, Goddammit! Answer the comm!” Her breathing was breaking up her words. It was hard to speak through all the commotion. She wasn’t even sure she was making sense.

  Seconds felt like minutes as they ran dodging the eruption. Mara stopped to check on Hanson, expecting to see him struggling behind her, but he was keeping pace.

  “Mara, don’t wait for me,” he said. “If you can reach the capsule… go,” he told her.

  Mara didn’t respond. The thought of leaving Hanson was impossible for her to imagine. Especially after risking so much. Especially seeing so many lives lost already. She pressed on, pulling him behind her.

  They continued to run. From crevice to crevice, ridge to ridge, they worked over the surface of the moon. Ice fell around them. It was raining boulders.

  She tried the comm-link again. “Hab one, this is Mara. Come in Hab One!” She pleaded again, hearing nothing.

  “Hanson, I don’t think the crew is with us anymore,” she said. “They left us.”

  “It’s not like them to leave someone behind. If they are on the surface, they are waiting for you. You need to get to them!”

  “I don’t even know if they have the fuel to leave.” Mara checked the sky and saw no sign of a launch. There was nothing but ice and water and vapor around them. The cloud of debris from the eruption was spectacular, if not terrifying. She didn’t have time to be looking at it like she wanted.

  “Could the eruption be screwing with the radio signal?” Hanson asked, breathing heavier and heavier with the activity.

  “Hab One, this is Mara. Come in Hab One! Don’t launch yet, we are coming!” Mara was screaming into her commlink between heaving breaths, ice still falling all around her, and the geyser still approaching.

  Finally, a voice on the comm-link; “Hab One here, this is Reese.”

  Sol 17; Mission time - 04:14

  Julian went to the electrolysis unit and peeked into the water tank next to Reese. The Hab was shaking as they watched the system create the fuel they would need. It was an agonizing few minutes, watching the bubbles ascend slowly into the capsule’s tanks aa the ground around them jostled the entire Hab.

  The tanks were nearly full, but the process had gone slower than expected. Julian had gone to the electrical panels hours ago and turned off as many systems as he could, hoping to send extra electricity into the system. He turned off the heating and ventilation units, figuring they would no longer need them if they were to launch as they hoped.

  The electrolysis system they had borrowed from the Zephyr worked like any unit on Earth, with a positive anode and a negative cathode immersed in water and separated by a membrane. One side produced hydrogen, and the other oxygen. Julian had poured sulphuric acid into the system that he retrieved from the laboratory. He explained to Reese that the nearly pure water from Europa’s surface wouldn’t conduct electricity very well, and it was the acid that would create ions and increase the electrical current within the system, making the process more efficient. But not efficient enough, apparently.

  “It’s going to be close,” he said quietly to Reese.

  “We’re going to have to ride it out, aren’t we?” she asked. “Dr. Aman was right?” She sighed. “Is there any way to tell how bad it will be?”

  Julian shook his head. “Look at the signals.”

  They watched the device slowly churn bubbles of precious hydrogen and oxygen rocket fuel into separate compartments. They trickled slowly into their respective tanks. There was nothing more to speed up the process, and the wait was agonizing.

  Dr. Aman approached them, and he sensed their desperation as they watched the bubbles trickling through the system. “I told you we would not have time for this. We can still leave, you know?”

  Reese shook her head. “With Mara still out there?” she asked. “The tanks are ninety-percent full. We ride this out here,” she added.

  The ground beneath heaved upward, forcing them all to catch their balance.

  Dr. Aman found his footing, and he watched the system for a moment, like he was willing the unit to work faster. His jaw clenched tight as he watched the gauges. They were barely moving.

  “She left us,” he said. “You even said yourself… she does not plan to return.”

  Reese shifted her jaw angrily, not believing what she was hearing. “I’m sure she’s doing everything she can to get here. We need to wait for the tanks to fill. She has time,”

  “It will not be soon enough,” Dr. Aman told them. “How can you stay here knowing that eruption is coming?” he asked. “I say we start heading to the highlands,” he said. “There is still a chance.”

  Reese tightened her lips, and she felt her jaw clench even more than before. “I am staying,” she said defiantly.

  Another massive vibration worked through the Hab, throwing cabinet doors open and spilling items onto the floors.

  Dr. Aman looked at Reese with an accusatory and angry stare. He turned quickly and walked away into the communications room, and he sat by himself next to the window. He could see the eruption in the faraway distance. He folded his hands upon the table and pressed them to his forehead, resting his head there. His thoughts were on his children back home.

  He expected the worst. Before any more time would pass, he realized there was something he would have to do. He pressed the button for a final communication.

  “Stenner here, how are things holding up?” he asked.

  “Stenner, Dr. Aman. It is not good. We are not going to make it. I am going to send you a recording. It is for my family. I will send it in a few minutes.”

  Stenner seemed to lose his breath for a moment, and he sat silently. “That won’t be necessary, Aman. You are going to make it,” he said.

  “We will not have time. The system is not working fast enough. You can send it after…”

  Stenner remained defiant upon the monitor. “Dr. Aman, stop talking that way. I am sure you will have time.”

  “Send this only to my family, Commander,” Dr. Aman said. He turned off the comm-link and he pressed for a recording. He brushed his coat tight across his shoulders, corrected his posture, and began to record a short message to his wife and kids. He sat in that spot for a minute after
he pressed the ‘send’ button. He hoped it would find them the peace they would need when the bad news reached them.

  Dr. Aman waited a second before going into the storage room, and he took the small amount of the remaining enzyme in his hand. He looked at it through the vial with a curious eye, and he turned it in his fingers just enough to get a good look at the swirling material in the vial. He placed it in the pocket of his jumpsuit, and he closed the zipper so it couldn’t fall out.

  He had decided that his fate, whatever it was, would be the same as the enzyme. He would either make it off the moon, or he would perish along with it. Just as Mara had asked him, he would do everything in his power to get the vial and the few drops of the enzyme off the moon and to the orbiter. And he knew she would as well.

  Dr. Aman pulled his lab coat tight again and walked into the conference room. He expected the situation to be even more dire. He overheard Reese speaking with Mara.

  “Hab One, this is Mara. Come in Hab One! Don’t launch yet, we are coming!” Mara was screaming into her commlink between heaving breaths, ice still falling all around her, and the geyser still approaching.

  “Hab One here, this is Reese.”

  “Reese! Listen to me. We’re out on the surface. We’re coming… about a half-kilometer out. Hold on until we get there!” She was screaming out of pure fear.

  Dr. Aman approached Reese, concerned about Mara’s condition and location. “Mara, we’re still waiting for the fuel tanks, they’re almost full, but you need to hurry. We’ve prepped the launch sequences. The eruption is headed right for us. You have less than five minutes,” he told her.

  “I need the immune-boosters, Aman” Mara yelled. “Tell me you have them on board with you. Grab what you can from quarantine. I need them for Hanson.” Her breathing was heavy and coming across as nothing but rough static on the comm-link.