“Humans, when placed at the helm of responsibility, often grapple with a duality: the self they once knew and the leader they are now required to be. In this chasm, the true tenor of leadership resounds.”
—Athena A.I., Olympus Log
The Moon’s face was a hag’s chalky mask, cracked and lifeless, brutal against the impenetrable black depths of space. Xanthe squinted in the glare of the stark, white surface, sipped from the water reclaimer inside her helmet and bounded to the eastern wing of Olympus, leaving boot prints in little puffs of moondust behind her. Ahead of her, hanging on the horizon like a big, fat blue eye, was the Earth.
Xanthe paused. A familiar frisson of awe shot through her as she gazed at the precious, watery globe. There, on that tiny blip in space, was all of humanity, all of Earth’s creatures, foraging in the creeping greenery and swimming in the swollen rolls of the oceans.
And here we are, on the Moon, planting a bit of human- ity, a bit of life, a bit of Earth, on this implacable boulder.
Xanthe resumed her bounding. They called it ‘moon- dling’ – a combination of walking and trundling. It definitely took practice to get it right. Six months on the Moon and the novelty had still not worn off. She skipped and felt the joy of effortless movement. Well, not quite effortless. It was still awkward in the thick spacesuit, and challenging to stay balanced. Like the other Olympus crew, she often stumbled and found herself face first in the dust.
“Hey, Xanthe. Can you confirm your location?”
Jonas’s voice was a little hoarse, Xanthe noticed, no doubt due to the all the boisterous shouting he had done in the SimRoom with the others, the night before. They’d watched a football game broadcast from Earth and joined through a virtual reality uplink. They had bet chocolate rations on the outcome and Xavier, as usual, had won the pool.
Xanthe smiled as she recalled the tall, dark Frenchman waving his prize at Jonas. Jonas was stocky and well-built and, when irritated, he liked to plant his feet wide apart, cross his arms and jut his chin.
“I shall savour every little bite, mon ami. Such sweet, sweet victory,” Xavier had goaded.
“A fool and his chocolate are soon parted, my dear swamp dweller,” Jonas had replied. They called Xavier the ‘swamp dweller’ for his obsession with hydroponics and the food harvests. His domain was lush and humid and ripe with the aroma of their reclaimed faeces.
“I’ll get you in our next round of space tennis,” Jonas had said. They’d invented the sport one day in the Atrium. Actually, ‘sport’ was too grand a term; they had simply 3D printed a rubber ball and spent hours chasing it in blundering bounds around the large Atrium, which was their main communal area and only view to the sky from the underground habitat.
“Xanthe?” Jonas repeated, breaking into her reverie. “I’m at the eastern corner now, Jonas,” Xanthe said. “How does it look?”
“No sign of a hull breach,” she said. She climbed the
rounded surface of the buried roof in floating leaps. “It seems okay to me.”
“Great. Can you join Serena and Troy over at the Atrium, now? We’re testing the retractor again,” Jonas said.
“On my way,” Xanthe said.
Xanthe turned to look at the Atrium, a glowing egg poking up into space. It was the only part of the habitat not below the Moon’s surface. They built the rest of Olympus by excavating, 3D printing the habitat with a slurry made from the mined regolith and then burying it all in moondust for extra protection. The Atrium rose above the ground to act as a set of lungs to keep the recycled air fresh, as well as a grand hall where they grew trees and other climbing plants to help green the interior. It was Xanthe’s favourite spot. She spent most evenings there, staring up at the stars.
With no atmosphere to burn up incoming space debris, asteroids small and large hit the Moon’s surface with dis- concerting regularity. Space junk hit like detonations. As the Atrium was exposed, it was the most vulnerable part of the base’s infrastructure. They spent a lot of time and effort making sure it was secure and operating effectively.
The Atrium had a retractable steel roof that opened and closed like a giant eyelid. It was ideal protection, but lately it had been playing up, often getting stuck halfway. They suspected it might be moondirt dislodged from construc- tion. The dirt was sharp and coarse and got into everything. They had to be so vigilant going in and out of the pods to minimise trudging it in on their boots and suits.
Xanthe could see Troy and Serena standing on top of the Atrium. A cord of jealousy strummed in her mind. Troy was an outrageous flirt, and Serena loved teasing him. They were becoming closer while she and Troy. . . well, nothing.
There could have been something between them. Troy made no secret of his affection for her. But it was all too much for Xanthe – splitting up with Simon, preparing for the Moon expedition and leading the Olympus project build. She’d barely had time to arrange storing her belongings and settling affairs with Simon before they were strapped into the rocket, ready for launch. Too much turbulence to squeeze in a romance with the planet’s most famous world designer and notorious ladies’ man. Besides, they all had to work together. The Moon was not the most private place.
Xanthe did manage to find solace in the Atrium. With its window, it was the one place in the Moon base where she felt less claustrophobic; otherwise, they were like moles, scavenging a life underground. She hoped their boots and the moondirt wouldn’t scratch its window. If the window got blurred by wear and tear, there was no fixing it.
She clambered down the eastern pod roof by leaning forward and semi-falling, catching herself on a footfall, and repeating those actions on the other side.
Nice and easy, she thought. All good, as long as you don’t miss and smack yourself face first.
It was almost like flying.
Six months. It seemed like forever, Xanthe thought. From the launch to the landing, Xanthe had been wired with anxiety. She felt the pressure of responsibility for her teammate’s lives. They’d been through a lot together over the last couple of years. Selection to get on Gaia Enter- prises’s Olympus project build and bid team, then the twelve-month simulation. They’d grown so close.
It was a big adjustment when Madison joined them. ‘Mad Dog’ was brought on by the crew to replace Dave as pilot. In a torturous team meeting, they had decided with Dave that he wouldn’t join them on the Moon build after all. Xanthe wondered again what she would have done in Dave’s place. If her family was threatened, could she have spied on and sabotaged the project to save them? Would she have stood up to blackmail? Or would she have kow- towed as Dave had done, betrayed friends and almost got them killed in the sabotage?
It was probably for the best they’d left him behind. Not everyone was disappointed. Serena did little to hide her satisfaction that the ‘traitor’ had been sidelined.
Xanthe hit flatter ground at the base of the eastern pod and took another sip of water. She felt her heart rate creeping up. She took a few steadying breaths and checked her suit’s oxygen levels. She still had two hours. Good. Ten minutes to get to Serena and Troy, fifteen to get to the entrance portal, leaving an hour to get the retractable roof working again and a little over thirty minutes to get back to base. Plenty of time.
Xanthe tuned her helmet comms to Troy and Serena. She was in line of sight, so she should be able to pick them up. Their voices came through a bit patchy but grew clearer as Xanthe moondled towards the Atrium.
“If we run a cloth on a pole, we might be able to dis- lodge whatever is locking it up,” Serena said.
“That’s your trademark style. . .just jam something in and hope for the best,” Troy said.
“Well, what are you proposing we do, Prince Troy? Charm it out?” Serena laughed.
“Nothing can escape my magnetism,” he said.
“I am not so sure about that. I know a certain Commander—”
“Hello there. Troy and Serena, I’m on channel,” Xanthe said.
“Commander Waters,” Troy said. “Welcome to the party. We think we’ve found the problem.”
“Good to hear.” Xanthe panted as she moondled to the base of the Atrium. Climbing it was more challenging than the pods, as it was steeper and higher. Xanthe favoured what she called ‘gorilla jumps’. This required a deep knee bend and then a two-legged spring onto the hull with hands hit- ting the hull briefly in front for balance, and then drawing the legs under again ready for another deep knee bend. It took some coordination, and she didn’t always get it right.
Like this time.
She made her first jump, but her toes slipped on the smooth surface of the Atrium hull, and she did a full-fron- tal pancake and bounced off to land on her behind. When weight is a fraction of that on Earth, it’s not painful, just embarrassing.
“Xanthe, are you trying the gorilla move again?” Serena asked over the helmet comms.
“Trying is the operative word,” she said, rolling onto all fours to push herself upright once more. She checked her suit and brushed the sharp regolith that had caught in the fibres of the Gaia Enterprises’s embroidered logo, a compass. Xanthe wondered again why they hadn’t chosen a different logo for the Moon. With no magnetic field, a compass was all but useless here. They would have to find their own way.
“Let me throw you the ascent rope,” Troy interrupted.
His voice was deep and smooth and purred through the helmet. Xanthe shivered with desire, like she always did around Troy. His blue eyes and lopsided, slow smile pulled threads through her body. He moved like a panther, all grace and power. He had a way of looking at her that made her feel like she was the entire universe laid bare before him. Regret tangled her thoughts yet again.
The rope floated towards her, and she reached to grab it. She clipped the karabiner to her belt loop.
“On belay.”
“Roger that, Xanthe,” Troy said.
She loved it when he said her name. It reached down
inside her soul and squeezed. She shoved these thoughts aside and focused on planting her feet against the hull and leaning against the tug of the rope so she could walk up the surface. Once she reached the top, she took a moment to catch her breath. She was struggling today.
She checked her suit vitals again. Heart rate at 120 beats per minute. Way above her usual. Was she dehy- drated? Maybe she just needed some more sleep.
“Okay, show me the problem,” Xanthe said, still panting.
“We think there might be some dust between the retractable roof and the dome,” Serena said. “Maybe along the roof running tracks.”
“But how did it get there?” Xanthe said. The thought was still bothering her. “We haven’t had any construction activity that would flick up debris this high.”
“It could be meteorites,” Troy suggested.
“You keep saying that. But there are no marks on the eye,” Xanthe said as she bounded carefully across the dome surface. “It’s highly unlikely that one random piece of meteorite would hit the dome without some other space debris alongside it.”
“Let’s retract the roof fully and try to close it again, and see where it gets stuck,” Troy said.
“Jonas,” Xanthe said, hailing him on the helmet comms. “We’re going to use the manual override up here to retract and close the roof.”
“Roger that, Commander. Watch your feet. We don’t want to add ‘trapped leg’ to our list of dramas today,” Jonas said.
Serena and Xanthe took up prone positions at the edges of the retractable roof. Troy made his way over to the mechanical lever and hauled it to ‘open’. Serena and Xanthe swept the surface of the roof with a cloth. The roof retracted smoothly.
“Nothing on this side,” Serena said.
“Same,” Xanthe added. “Troy, let’s reverse it and see if we can find where it stops.”
Troy pushed the lever, and the roof reversed its trajec- tory. It closed without a hitch.
“No debris, no obstacle. It’s probably mechanical then. Or electrical,” Xanthe said.
“You know what that means, right?” Serena trampo- lined herself to vertical with a flourish. “This looks like a job for . . .”
“Super Jonas!” the three of them cried in unison.
“Bloody hell!” Jonas’s voice filled their helmets. “Is there anything that’s not a job for me?”
“That’s the scourge of being the handiest man on the Moon,” said Troy.
“If it’s not the damned waste reclamation, it’s some- thing else,” Jonas muttered.
“Commander, shall we set the roof to open or leave it closed?’ asked Troy.
“Open. We need the stars to keep us bright,” Xanthe said.
“What if there’s a meteorite shower and it jams again?” asked Serena.
“There’s nothing on the long-range radar, right?” “Not according to Madison’s last report.”
“Then let’s keep it open and enjoy the view.” There was
a small risk, she acknowledged. But Jonas would have the malfunction assessed and completed in no time.
After Troy moved the lever again, they clipped to the descent rope, walked backwards off the dome and moon- dled back to the main entrance. Madison met them at the regolith removal chamber. She seemed unusually agitated.
“Commander, come quickly. We’ve got a hail from the Chinese base and it sounds urgent.”
