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It was first visible as a tiny star, indistinguishable from the carpet of luminous points scattered across the dark velvet of space. Commander Heather Kimball diverted her attention from the controls momentarily to point it out through the front windows of the lunar-based Lifter vehicle Tranquillitatis, then returned her focus to her work. The other three were skeptical until David Alaoui, who always prided himself on having 20:10 eyesight, announced that the star did indeed have a pair of solar panels. Five minutes later Will Elliott nodded. “I see them, too; you’re right, Dave.”

“As always, Moonman,” Dave joked, using a common nickname for Will among his friends, referring to his extensive experience with lunar geology.

“You’re right too often,” replied Kimball, who was always addressed by her last name.

“Oh, now I see them as well,” added Dr. Armando Cruz, their physician and the fourth person on board, whose eyesight obviously was worse than the others, though not by much. “I guess I should consider glasses after all.”

“Lasik; the only way to go in space,” replied Will.

“No thanks; I don’t want to have my eyeballs shaved.”

Will laughed. Dave stared through the window. “The L1 Gateway; boy, is it a sight for sore eyes.”

“You guys should have been here three months ago,” replied Kimball. “But at least you’re not too late.”

“Just for our training!” replied Dave.

“We’ve been to Devon Island before,” replied Will. “We really didn’t need it as much as the others did.”

“True, but there’s been no time for the team to bond, and there’s even a new member.” Dave shook his head.

“NASA’s never been strong on crew psychology,” replied Armando. “I’ve seen some disastrous personal chemistry at ISS. It wasn’t great at Shackleton recently, either.”

“Safe to say, now that we’ve left,” observed Will. “I have to admit to some trepidation.”

“Y’all will be fine,” replied Kimball, lapsing into more of a southern accent than usual. “I’ve seen some pretty strange things in my five years of lunar flying. But everything was fine in the end. Don’t worry. We’ll all get together three years from now and have plenty of laughs about our various respective experiences on the moon and Mars.”

“I suppose,” said Will, hesitating to say more. Kimball heard the pause and actually took her eyes off the controls to turn around, as if asking for the reason for his silence.

“It’s Commander Stillwell,” replied David. “When we got separated from the rest of the crew because of the grounding of the Lifter fleet, she tried to get us dropped from the team.”

Kimball frowned. “Why?”

“Officially, because we would be stuck on the moon so long, the Mars trip would exceed our lifetime radiation allowance.”

“They make exceptions. Maybe she was concerned about crew morale if everyone couldn’t train together.”

“If so, she should have said so,” replied Dave.

They grew silent, while everyone considered the situation. Three months ago Lifter Nectaris had had an engine failure during ascent from the lunar surface to L1, stranding the other four members of the Mars crew in lunar orbit until they were able to override the computers and proceed on the other engine. Consequently Elliott and Alaoui had been stuck on the moon three months longer than intended—seven total—while the entire fleet of Lifters—lunar-based stages with fixed landing legs and no heat shield, able to haul ten tonnes of liquid hydrogen and oxygen to L1 at a time or haul twelve tonnes of cargo to the lunar surface—was checked for the same problem. Kimball watched her systems; the others watched the star resolve itself into solar panels, then three clusters of objects, then the individual objects. Finally Armando said “Columbus’s on the left, right?”

“You mean ‘left, correct,’” said Kimball stoically.

“Ah-hah.”

Will nodded and pointed. “The right hand collection of objects is the garbage dump, I think; I think that’s the Nectaris there.”

Dave nodded. “Definitely; it’s the Nectaris. The infamous source of all our troubles.”

“At least no one died,” said Kimball. “I suppose it hasn’t been hauled back to low earth orbit for examination yet because the SIP tugs have been tied up lately.” She referred to the solar-powered ion-propulsion tugs that pushed cargo from low earth orbit to the lagrange point where the earth’s and moon’s gravities canceled each other out. The Nectaris was scheduled to be taken to low earth orbit so that its engines could be examined for defects.

Actually, the Nectaris is attached to an SIP,” said Dave. “But I guess it hasn’t gone anywhere yet. Probably not enough fuel.”

“More xenon’s probably on its way, but it’ll take a few more months,” said Kimball, pushing a button to examine a worrisome computer screen.

“The other item on the right is a waste capsule, I think,” continued Will. “I guess no SIP has been available to push it to atmospheric reentry. Then in the middle is Gateway Station itself. I’ve never seen so many Lifters docked to it.”

“There should be three,” replied Kimball. “The Mars shuttles need 25 tonnes of fuel each.”

“And the left?” asked Armando. “Mars vehicles are not my expertise.”

“Well, you can see the ‘docking cube’ in the middle of Columbus,” began Will, shifting into a didactic tone of voice. “To the left and right of the docking cube are the two interplanetary transit vehicles, the Cimmerium and the Ausonia, though I can’t read the names on them yet so don’t ask me which is which. Attached to the top and bottom of the cube are the Mars shuttles Olympus and Elysium.”

Armando nodded. “‘Interplanetary cruise’ configuration.”

“Exactly. We’ll head to Mars as two separate pairs of vehicles, each consisting of a shuttle and an ITV, then dock back together,” replied Dave.

“For artificial gravity,” said Armando, nodding. “I hadn’t seen a Mars shuttle before. I didn’t realize they looked so much like the ITVs.”

“They’re hard to tell apart from here,” agreed Will. “They’re both cones with a six meter basal diameter, with ten-meter heat shields attached, but the ITVs are thirteen meters long, whereas the shuttles are sixteen.”

“Ah, yes, I see the length difference.” Armando nodded, pleased he could finally differentiate the vehicles. “The windows, too; ITVs have five levels with windows, whereas the shuttles have a window in the capsule on the top and around the cargo hold on the bottom. Are your ITVs laid out inside basically like Gateway?”

Will nodded. “Basically. Same dry mass, too; twenty tonnes including heat shield on the bottom. It’s big enough to accommodate four people on the interplanetary cruise, though we’re flying two ITVs with three in each for safety.”

“A historic trip,” commented Armando.

Kimball snorted. “It’s friggin’ about time! Here it is, 2020! We should have landed people on Mars twenty years ago!”

“Kimball, twenty years ago we were stuck in LEO with no hope of leaving it,” said Will, calmly.

“Will, they shouldn’t have stopped landing people on the moon. They never should have built the space shuttle. They should have cut back Apollo to two flights a year to make it affordable and continued with Saturn Vs. There could have been 100 Apollo missions, and we’d really understand the moon.”

“Assuming none of the Saturn Vs blew up. That rocket was a death trap. But politically, NASA couldn’t, so they focused on Earth orbit.”

Kimball scowled. “Sort of. A hundred billion bucks for ISS when they could have built and launched it for a fifth as much with a Saturn V or a Shuttle-derived cargo vehicle. They could have built ISS and continued lunar exploration for the cost of the shuttle and ISS if they’d been smart. Then five billion for the crew exploration vehicle three more for a tiny, man rated booster that could put only thirty tonnes into low earth orbit. Then five billion wasted on the shuttle-derived vehicle that Congress shortsightedly canceled to ‘save money.’ Then five billion on a solar-powered tug with an ion engine; they could have almost finished SDV with that!”

“The ion vehicle was built with European money, not American.”

“Political shortsightedness; we had to compromise and build an international system. No offense, David. That five billion could have created an efficient and reliable bimodal nuclear thermal rocket.”

“The public wouldn’t support nuclear engines,” replied Will.

“No, Democrats and their environmentalist buddies wouldn’t.”

“Kimball, that’s not completely fair, the European and Japanese governments wouldn’t support them either,” objected David.

“That’s true, and now you guys are going to Mars without a reactor for surface power, which is really foolish!”

“I admit, I’m nervous going to Mars with just solar panels for power,” agreed David. “At least we arrive after the dust storm season is over.”

“But you won’t leave before the next one!” she replied, getting worked up. “Eight billion more spent on two upgrades of the CEV, including the ITV. Three billion to design and launch the L1 Gateway. Five billion for the lifters; they called them LSAMs then. Another billion for lunar surface systems. Ten billion for the Mars Shuttle and two billion for surface systems. Two billion more for two shake-down missions to near-earth asteroids. And the vast administrative cost. . . it was so expensive we had to switch to an international partnership and fly under five flags rather than just sell a few seats to other countries; no offense to you all. It could have been quicker and cheaper, as everyone knows.”

“Well, the one hundred billion’s been spent and we have a functioning system; let’s just be thankful for that,” said Will quietly. “Maybe Mr. Swift will build a cheap shuttle and the cost situation will improve.”

Kimball snorted. “Jonah Swift is just the latest alt-space businessman to throw away his money chasing the dream of cheap launch to low earth orbit.”

They all grew silent. Kimball was known for her strong and nationalistic opinions. Will stared out the window; he was not one to dwell on the delays and detours of the past. The Tranquillitatis was now close enough for them to read Olympus on the side of one Mars Shuttle and Elysium on the side of the other. Mars Shuttles were named for mountains; the shuttle already sitting on the planet, awaiting their arrival and ninety percent fueled up for their trip back to Earth, was the Pavonis. The ITVs were named for plains and other regions on Mars: the Cimmerium and Ausonia. Solar panels sprouted from the vehicles at various angles, making the complex look unplanned and unkempt.

The Tranqillitatis closed slowly but steadily. Docking was not to be rushed; they involved a careful, even delicate dance of vehicles that could puncture each other if they contacted incorrectly. The last kilometer took an hour. They could count every row of cells on the solar arrays by the time they were in the final stages of the docking. Kimball occasionally spoke laconically to Commander Stillwell, but there was little she needed to say. The computers did much of the work, showing when the vehicle was properly aligned and when it strayed even slightly. Finally, there was a faint scrape of metal, then a clunk as soft docking was achieved. A few minutes later the docking latches slipped into place and they had a hard docking.

David and Armando turned to the docking tunnel, verifying the pressurization, opening the hatch, and removing the soft docking apparatus. Soon it was ready to open up. By then, Kimball, assisted by Will, had completed her power-down of the navigational and propulsion systems. The four of them gathered around the tunnel as the latches were opened.

“Welcome to Columbus,” exclaimed Laura Stillwell. She sounded welcoming, but Will had to wonder whether he heard a certain ambiguity in her voice. She focused on Heather Kimball. “Kimball, you old salt, how are you! Good to see you again!”

“It’s good to see you, too, Laura.” Kimball pushed herself forward and floated through the docking tunnel perfectly, without touching any walls. She and Laura caught each other by their shaking hands and shook at the same time Kimball stood upright inside the docking cube. “I’m looking forward to seeing your vehicle.”

“I’ll be delighted to show you.” The two women moved out of the way so that Will could float through. “Come this way, Heather. We can go down into the Cimmerium; Will and David have to go into the Ausonia. Will, do you know where you’re going?”

“I think so,” he replied.

“Good.” Stillwell led Kimball to the right, out of the docking cube and down the tunnel into the Cimmerium. Will, holding onto his garment bag, stood in the cube and waited for David and Armando to come through.

“Some greeting from our commander,” growled David.

“Really,” agreed Will. Even Armando seemed surprised. Then the three men turned left and floated into the Ausonia. The first level down was a small room 3.2 meters across, stuffed with supplies for the trip out and back. The storage lockers narrowed the space to a mere 2.2 meters, not much wider than the standard 1.2 meter hemispherical access shaft. “Flare shelter,” observed Armando, and he was right; this was where they came if a solar flare exploded on the sun and sent deadly radiation their way. The packed provisions protected them from most of the particles.

They paused long enough to push a button that opened the hatch, allowing them to descend to the next level. They ignored the hand holds built into the shaft on two sides; in zero gravity there was no need to use them. The tube-like sides of the shaft were interrupted by a “porch” on one side that was just 1 meter deep; two doors opened onto it. The level, which was 4 meters in diameter, had two rooms, each barely five square meters in size.

They continued downward. They could hear voices farther down, but they stopped at the third level. Four doors opened onto the porch there, which was a broader 1.2 meters wide and 1 meter deep. The doors to the left and right led into private rooms, while the two straight ahead opened onto a tiny toilet and shower stall respectively. Will, who was in the lead, pushed buttons to open the doors to both rooms. “The usual?”

“Sure.” They had stayed in the ITV during training and thus already knew their quarters.

“Okay.” Will entered the right-hand room, garment bag floating behind him. It was a standard design. Straight ahead was a small closet for his clothes. To the right of the closet was a desk with a chair pulled up to it; the legs had Velcro on their bottom and stuck the chair to the carpeting quite strongly. A small porthole-sized window provided a bit of sunlight and a view. To the right of the desk was the bed, with drawers below it. There were also shelves above the foot of the bed, some facing the desk and some facing the bed. Most of the shelves had strips of transparent plastic across the front to keep any floating objects inside. Around the head-end of the bed was a fifteen-centimeter thick layer of polyethylene plastic, which had a high concentration of hydrogen in it and therefore provided good radiation shielding for the upper body and head.

The room was barely 1.8 meters wide and 4 meters long and curved to fit inside the circular outline of the ITV. But it was private space, small but efficiently designed, and on a long trip like this a personal area was essential. It was large enough to entertain as well; one person could sit on the bed and the other on the chair.

Will could hear David entering the other room, through only through the open doors because the walls were sound proofed. Armando drifted in and watched Will unpack, a simple and quick task. The clothes—nine changes, including six uniforms, a nice sports jacket, dress shirt, and slacks, and two other casual civilian outfits—went straight into the closet. Their hangers latched quickly and securely onto the bar. There were two polypropylene radiation vests hanging in the closet as well; he could put one on over his shirt and cut the radiation exposure of his internal organs in half. Socks and underwear went into the drawers under the bed. Pictures of his mother, father, and two sisters slipped under a sheet of transparent plastic covering the back wall of his desk. He put his attaché—a computer and communications device about the size of a large, thick clipboard—on the desk and anchored it to Velcro strips on one side. He pulled out several notebooks and pads of electronic paper and an electronic writing pen; he had learned always to bring a generous supply of electronic paper with him because efforts to create paperless offices had never worked and NASA never supplied enough. They went in a drawer. Six books—mostly small paperbacks—went on one of the shelves behind the vertical plastic strips. He pulled out a collection of very small rocks, looked at it, then put it back in his bag.

Armando chuckled. “You and your rock collection.”

“Well, it’s suitably sized for the trip! I am a geologist, after all.”

“True. And they are nice specimens.”

“Actually, some of them are meant to be gifts. But since we didn’t get back to Earth three months ago, as scheduled, I guess they’ll have to go to Mars first.” Will looked at the bed; it had a pile of sheets and a blanket on it, anchored under an elastic strip. A washcloth, hand towel, and bath towel were there as well. “Someone was kind enough to put my linen in here.”

“A nice touch,” agreed Armando. “I wonder where everyone is.”

“I’m surprised we weren’t greeted by more people. Let me put this away and we’ll go look.” Will grabbed the garment bag and pushed it toward the closet floor, then closed the door before it bounced back and escaped. Then the two of them crossed the porch to David’s room.

David was almost finished as well. He had pictures of his parents, wife, and children on his desk, his Qur’an in a prominent spot on the shelf, a small framed “Allah” that he had already hung on the wall—there was a velcroed hook available—a hand woven Moroccan blanket on his bed and a smaller, more delicate one velcroed to the floor. He also had set up a large framed citation he had received from the government of France for his contributions to the nation.

“Looking for people?” he asked. Will nodded, so the three men headed down the ladder shaft again. They stopped to glance around the next level down; a large science and medical room occupied most of the space, with a storage area, a toilet, and the ITV’s control area occupying alcoves or rooms off the main space. But no one was there. So they went down the shaft one more time to enter the great room, from which they had heard talking. The great room had an alcove—formed by a wall running from the central ladder shaft to the outer edge—occupied by the kitchenette. The rest of the floor, which was six meters in diameter, was a large room with a dining room table able to seat six and a living room area with comfortable chairs that could either be pushed together to form a couch or separated to make separate chairs.

They quickly saw the source of the conversation; Sergei Alievitch Landsberg was talking in Russian to a woman with slightly oriental features on the videophone. The great room had a screen almost a meter and a half across, which allowed life-sized imagery. When he saw the three of them, he was surprised.

“Sorry, my dear,” he said to the woman. He turned to them. “Gentlemen, I didn’t realize you had arrived; I apologize for neglecting you. Welcome on board. I’ve been in conversation with my wife for over an hour about a private matter of great importance.”

“Oh, I’m sorry; we’ll head over to the Cimmerium, then,” replied Will. The other two nodded and they headed back into the ladder shaft. “Well, might as well give this a try, for the first time in seven months,” he said, looking straight up and estimating distances. The shaft was open all the way to the top of the Ausonia and at least part way down the Cimmerium; a straight, open shaft twenty-six meters long. He carefully jumped and soared straight up. “I didn’t touch until I reached the Cimmerium!” he called back to the others. They repeated his leap and managed to go all the way to the Cimmerium’s great room.

All three of them “landed” at almost the same time. The thuds surprised the four people gathered there. In addition to Kimball and Laura, the other two Columbus crewmembers were present: Shinji Nagatani, Japanese, their exobiologist, physician, and horticulturist; and Ethel McGregor, a Scot, whose expertise was engineering, mechanics, and computers.

“Ah, you made it,” said Laura. “I’m sorry I didn’t greet you up top; I hadn’t seen Heather for months.”

“We go back a long way,” added Kimball.

Will nodded. He extended his hand to Nagatani. “Shinji, it’s good to meet you. We were all surprised when Yamamoto suddenly had to withdraw, but I hear you can do just about everything.”

Shinji shook his hand. “Not everything. I’m not a geologist, after all. Never been to the moon; it’s strange to look out my window and see it so big and close, and know I’m not going there!”

David extended his hand as well. “Looking forward to getting to know you.”

“Thank you.”

Will turned to Ethel and offered her his hand. “It’s good to see you again as well, Ethel.”

She smiled. She was attractive, about his age, with short light brown hair and blue eyes. Her eyes lingered on his green eyes for a moment. “Thanks, Will. There have been a few times in the last three months I didn’t think I’d see you again.”

“I worried about that, too, when the Nectaris lost an engine and left the three of you in low lunar orbit for twenty-four hours,” replied Will.

“It was a pretty worrisome moment,” she agreed in her typically understated way.

“The emergency messed up the entire end of training,” growled Laura. “But I guess we’ve got six months to catch up, if necessary.”

“And I hear there was a rescue on the lunar surface,” added Shinji.

“Indeed there was, of sorts,” agreed David. “Since you all had had your brush with death, Will and I decided we had to have ours.”

Will rolled his eyes. “I guess Tycho crater was never meant to be explored over land. The next explorers will have to arrive by hopper.”

“Well, I did manage to get almost a hundred meters below the rim!” replied David.

“Yeah, and it took me so long to get you back up, we both almost ran out of air.”

“Well, you’re here safe and sound now,” said Ethel. “And David’s tumble has left a mark in the regolith that will be visible a million years. I was surprised a man could make such a track!”

Laura laughed. Will smiled. “It could have been either of us; the slope was steep and we were too close to the edge. The suits are pretty top heavy.”

“I was really surprised by the accident,” said Kimball. “You guys both have a lot of experience on the moon; what is it, fifteen months?”

Will nodded. “For me. Dave has nineteen, actually.”

“It all goes to show anyone can make a basic mistake,” replied Dave.

“Maybe it’s all the brain cells that have been fried by the radiation,” said Laura, no doubt trying to justify her effort to remove them from the team. But Kimball shook her head.

“No, my friend, nothing like that. I’ve spent twenty-three months on or near the moon. You can get permission to do it. I wear these radiation vests almost all the time. And I’ve spent a lot of time in the hab, buried under three meters of reg. My radiation count is still okay.”

“It’s true; you can be careful about it and spend a lot of time up here,” agreed Shinji, who was also wearing a radiation vest.

Just then there were sounds in the ladder shaft and Sergei came down. “I finished; I apologize again for being inhospitable.”

“Oh, no, Sergei, that’s alright,” replied Will.

“Have some punch,” added Ethel. She reached over to the counter and pulled several sippy cups from their restraints, and passed them around.

“Kimball, you were on the first flight to the moon,” noted Shinji.

She nodded. “I was a junior officer, then.”

“The first woman on the moon,” added Laura, a touch of admiration in her voice.

“What was the first flight like?” asked Shinji.

Kimball shrugged. “I’m not sure what to say because it was so routine. Ours was really the tenth launch, if you include the Gateway setup phase and the Shackleton setup phase. The first booster put two solar powered ion tugs and xenon fuel in low earth orbit. Then booster two launched an ITV to serve as Gateway Station, it docked to solar ion Tug 1, and the tug pushed it right here—the Earth-moon Lagrange 1 point—over six months. Houston brought Tug 1 back to low earth orbit for refueling. Boosters three and four orbited a translunar injection stage and the Crew Exploration Vehicle Lyra with a crew. They tested a CEV beyond low earth orbit for the first time by visiting and setting up Gateway.

“The Shackleton setup phase began with booster five, which launched the Lifter Imbrium and the first lunar propellant manufacturing plant. Tug 2 pushed them to lunar orbit, where the Imbrium fired its engines and landed the plant at Shackleton. Of course, we already knew the Shackleton station site really well, thanks to the automated rovers; two were still functioning. Houston landed the plant near a patch of reg known to be ice-rich, but telerobotic deployment of the plant ran into problems and had to be canceled.

“Then booster six launched the Lifter Serenitatis, an inflatable hab, and xenon fuel for Tug 1, which slowly pushed them to the moon. The Serenitatis landed the hab at Shackleton. Booster seven launched the Lifter Nectaris, xenon, and surface payload: a ranger and portahab, two buggies, extra solar panels, consumables, and scientific equipment. Tug 2 pushed them to the moon and the Nectaris brought the supplies down safely. Thank God the three landings worked, but if they hadn’t, replacements would have been launched instead. In those days the launches were thirty tonnes at a time and almost one quarter of the total was xenon propellant for the tugs, a ridiculous arrangement because xenon’s more expensive than gold. We would have saved money, long term, with a SDV, or if we had let the Russians launch cargo! Only half of the payload was cargo for the lunar surface, the rest was engines and fuel.”

“We should have developed a nuclear upper stage,” growled Laura.

“Exactly,” agreed Heather. “Or used Mars Direct, though its safety margins were inadequate. And as a result we have a dinky little lunar base, the human presence is confined to the south polar region, and the program is starved for cash because Mars has soaked up the rest. I guess that situation will improve next year.

“Anyway, the surface crew phase began with booster eight, which launched the Tranquillitatis, its full load of methane-oxygen fuel, and the xenon for Tug 1 to push them to Gateway. Then booster nine launched a trans-lunar injection stage and booster ten launched us in the CEV Perseus. The booster sent us to Gateway, where we transferred to the Tranquillitatis, fired its engines, and down we went to Shackleton. And it wasn’t like Apollo when we arrived; thirty tonnes of stuff was ready for us to deploy and use, there were two other Lifters that could have launched us back to Gateway, and the hab was nice and comfortable—we covered it with two meters of reg and were snug as bugs in a rug.

“We spent most of our time getting the ice mining equipment set up and working so that future missions could count on lunar hydrogen and oxygen for fuel and consumables. We redeployed solar panels on top Palmer Pinnacle to put them in 95% permanent sunlight and restrung some power cables. It was really a pretty unexceptional mission; more mechanical than scientific. Afterwards, the lunar propellant making plant refueled the Lifters, so future expeditions only required two boosters to launch from Earth.”

“Still, it was the first,” replied Shinji.

“You’re too modest, Heather,” added Laura. “You all broke ground. Even if every centimeter had already been photographed robotically, it was a big risk. A big unknown.”

“I don’t know. The elements of the system had all been tested. I think the six of you will be much bigger heroes, frankly. You’re going a lot farther. We could have been rescued any time; there was a backup CEV waiting in low Earth orbit. You have no possibility of rescue. You don’t even have a fully fueled return vehicle.”

“It’s almost full,” replied Will. “By the time we arrive it’ll be full. As for rescue, Columbus 1 has two ITVs and two Mars shuttles and each one is flying three crew instead of four so we can rescue each other if necessary.”

“The Pavonis will be ready,” agreed Sergei. “So we have three shuttles. Our mission’s the product of more like sixteen launches over three years: three to launch the shuttles, three to launch cargo to be carried by the shuttles, two more to launch the ITVs, three to launch automated cargo landers with supplies already on the ground, three more to launch automated cargo landers for the next mission. . .fifty tonnes of supplies are already there and sixty-six tonnes more are on the way. . . and don’t forget the Phobos propellant plant we Russians designed and launched. It has already made some fuel for the Lifter Stickney, even if the plant hasn’t functioned fully. And a second plant’s on the way. We’ll have a lot more than you had, actually.”

“That’s true,” said Kimball. “And we had a lot more than Apollo 11; they just had a flimsy little lunar lander, they didn’t know where they were landing, they had no supplies ready for them, and they had no backup.”

“It makes me wish we could go along,” added Armando. “Hey, you’ve got room for two more, too! We could command the Imbrium to fly up with a couple tonnes of consumables from Shackleton and maybe a little more fuel to push the extra mass on its way. . .”

They all erupted in laughter at the idea. “It actually would be pretty easy,” added Will. “Of course, we’d all be fired!”

“I’ll wait for Columbus 2, then,” said Armando. “After seeing you all, I think I’ll put in my name. My wife will kill me.”

“No; just divorce you,” said Sergei, a sad tone in his voice.

Laura glanced at Sergei, startled. Then she looked around. “Well, all six of us are here, now. The shuttles are fully fueled. The ITVs are set up and functioning nominally. And our launch window opens in twenty-four hours. The sooner we get underway, the better it is from the point of view of planning. What do you say? Will we be ready?”

She looked at each one of her crewmembers, one by one, and they nodded. “Good,” she said. “We’ll entertain our guests a few more hours, but then they’ll have to get to Gateway so they can rest and prepare for their flight to Earth. I’ll call Houston and tell them we’ll be ready to go tomorrow morning.”

 

 

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