Go for the Dome
By Sean Monaghan
MOON DUST SPECKLED THE cockpit’s cool glass. The dust fell in long, slow arcs, kicked up from the failed engine’s last blast. Maree peered through, trying to pick up a glint from the dome. Trying to figure out if they were within walking distance. The ship’s interior was already getting chilly.
It reminded her of saying goodbye to Michel in Denmark when he was heading to Africa. “The hot and the cold,” he’d said, a cool wind coming off the North Sea.
“Try again,” Brody Shays said from the alcove below the command seats.
Downed ship, Maree thought. Regular flight. Standard pattern. And some loose bolt had thrown them off kilter, right into the surface.
“Maree?”
“Yeah.” She took a sip from the suit’s water tube. Bitter, almost brackish. As soon as the ship had hit they’d both put on their helmets. Regulations meant they should have been wearing them anyway, but who bothered? She’d logged more than one thousand hours over the last year. She’d almost attained a full co-pilot rating. It would still take another year.
They were lucky the hull hadn’t breached.
She wondered if she would last another hour.
“Try the engine again,” Shays said.
“How about the radio?” she said. “We should call for help before we try blowing ourselves up.”
Shays huffed. “Try again, be my guest. Like I said, already, we lost the comms. The antenna went down and the whole dash is busted up.”
Maree looked over the wrecked control panels. Jen’s harness had failed when they came down. Her whole weight had gone into the consoles. Smashed almost right through. Maree had thought the skimmerships were made of stronger stuff.
The body was in the tool rack. It was half-empty anyway, pilfered over the years.
Shays was smart with his hands. He should have been able to cobble something together. Wire a suit radio into the panels. Even with the antenna down, they should be able to contact someone.
Shays clambered up from the alcove. He had his helmet off. Sweat on his brow.
“Is it hot?” she asked. Her helmet HUD was fritzing, but the temperature data showed cooling.
Shays glowered at her. “You want to try a little hard work for a change.” He nestled into the pilot’s seat. “Strapped in? Still?”
She hadn’t moved. Was this shock? she wondered. She hadn’t even been able to help move Jen.
“Trying engine again.”
“What about the suit radios?” she asked.
Shays muttered something that might have been rookie. He reached for the ignition switch. He’d wrenched that part of the dash back into place, and worked on the wiring.
Maree’s seat slammed into her back. The ship shot forward. More dust roiled outside. The ship shuddered.
Shays cursed and pulled on the switch. The shuddering continued.
Maree could feel the ship tipping.
“Shut it down,” she said.
“Trying.” He kept pulling on the switch.
Jammed.
Already they’d gone thirty degrees over.
Maree thumped her harness release. She fell. Right into the dash where Jen had gone.
Shays yelled at her.
Ignoring him, Maree reached for the cables leading from the ignition. She gripped and ripped. Just like a parachute release.
The shuddering ceased. The cockpit fell quiet.
“Well,” Shays said. “Fixed that.”
Maree guessed that meant thank you.
She could feel the ship still moving. Still tipping.
“Uh-oh,” Shays said.
“We’re too far over,” Maree said. She stretched for her seat, but slipped. She fell back in the mess of dashboard components.
“Hold on.”
It took too long. In one-sixth gravity things fall slowly.
Unless they’re rocket powered. Doesn’t matter how much gravity there is if you’re moving at over one thousand kilometers per hour.
“Sit tight,” said Shays.
The ship was almost upside down when Jen’s body fell from the rack. Maree saw it coming. Jen landed right on her. Their helmets clacked together. Jen’s face mashed up against the visor.
Maree yelped.
The ship crashed down. Reverberations shuddered along it.
Jen rolled away.
“Upside down,” Shays said, hanging from his harness. “So much for flying out of here.”
“We weren’t flying out of here anyway,” Maree yelled. She scrambled around. As she got to her feet she saw the crack in her visor.
The HUD flickered and died.
Michel had been right. If you’re going to go someplace where things might go wrong, you should at least do it where there’s air to breathe. Africa seemed like a good option right now.
“Yeah,” Shays said. “We’ll have to walk.”
“Sure. I’m not going anywhere.”
“You want to wait for rescue?”
“Maybe the second crash dislodged the antenna again. We might be able to make contact.” She felt pleased with herself coming up with the phrase second crash. She wondered how much retraining he would get for crashing the same ship twice on the same run.
“We’ll have to walk it,” Shays decided.
“Yeah, I don’t think so.”
“Help me here,” he said, struggling with his harness.
Maree stood on the ceiling. “Hold the armrest. I’ll unbuckle.”
Shays held on and dropped when the straps released.
Standing by her, he rubbed his arms. “We’ll take Jen’s air. We can buddy breathe, if we need to. We’re only a few kilometers out.”
“Define a few,” she said. She was going to die here. She would be the first black woman to die on the moon. How about that? She wondered if that counted as a form of immortality.
But she wouldn’t see Michel again.
“Weren’t there emergency caches on the surface once? On all the routes?” Maree had read about them on the long flight up from Earth. She’d had a couple of days to kill. Things had changed a lot since the first return to the moon. Systems were sophisticated.
Taken for granted, she thought.
“Sure,” Shays said. “In the early commercial days. Before the skimmers got so reliable.”
“We could find one of those. Inflatable shelter. Air. Food.” So much for the skimmers being reliable.
“We could,” he said. “But we don’t have any tracking systems.” Shays waved at the wrecked dash. “No way to communicate with it, or to pinpoint a location.”
“But—”
“Even if they were still working,” he said. “We need a positioning system to locate one.”
“It can’t be far. Maybe we can eyeball it.”
Shays shook his head. “Sorry to disappoint.”
Shay licked his lips. “I’ll find my helmet. The sooner we start out the better.”
“Sure. Whatever.”
Shays shivered. He gasped. “We’ve got an air leak.” Wide-eyed he looked around the cockpit.
“I knew the hull was breached,” she said. “Flipping has torn the holes bigger. Get your helmet on.”
“Roger that.” His feet crunched through the debris and he climbed up over the seat to the service alcove. He fell back before he got there.
“What?” Maree said.
Shays gasped. “Happening fast.” His voice was high. Ragged.
“All right.” Maree jumped and grabbed the seat. She clambered into the service alcove. As much mess in there as in the cockpit.
She rattled around for a moment, looking for the helmet among the tools and broken equipment. She found it fallen into a corner.
“Coming,” she said. She dropped out of the hole and landed right by him.
He lay back in the wreckage, mouth open, gasping like a hooked fish. Maree bent and fitted the neck ring into place. Shays’s eyes fluttered. Veins stood out on his face. The cockpit barometric pressure had to be really low.
Maree pushed him over and adjusted the oxygen flow. Through the radio she heard it hiss.
Shays shook. He gasped. For a moment he lay breathing.
“Thank you,” he said.
“You bet. What’s the plan now?”
Shays shifted and sat up. “Move fast.”
“All right.” She tried not to look directly at him. The moment he saw the crack in her visor he would try to trade helmets. “You get Jen’s pack. I’ll get supplies.”
“Supplies?”
Maree went to the tool rack. A lot of tools had fallen onto the underside of the shelves. All she needed was a suit patch. She’d have trouble seeing anything, but it might protect the integrity.
“Who am I kidding?” she whispered.
“Please repeat,” Shays said.
“How are you going with her pack?”
“Give me a moment to catch my breath. What do you mean supplies?”
“Oh, you know.” She shuffled and shifted the tools around. There was no suit patch.
“Got it,” Shays said. There was an edge to his voice. Maree was glad she hadn’t had to take Jen’s airpack. It would have been too much.
She didn’t like goodbyes. Last thing she’d said to Jen had been grumpy, too. Something about the payload—fuel ratio. Jen hadn’t calculated the figures correctly.
Maybe that was why the ship had gone down.
Well, Maree thought, searching the seatbacks for a patch kit, maybe that will all come out in the investigation. Two dead, and one walking back to Icarus dome.
She knew she wasn’t going to make it.
“Come on,” Shays said. “Time is air.”
“And air is distance.”
“We need to move.”
Maree sighed. “You need to take my pack, too.”
“Say what, now?”
“There’s just not enough air for the both of us.”
“Sure there is.”
Maree’s helmet already smelled hot and heavy. As if there was too much carbon dioxide. “Brody. You’ve got the kids to think of.” He had two, a boy, Grant, about to enter high school, and a new baby. Lisa was the late surprise for Brody and Dayna. “You’ve got to go see them.”
“Come on,” Shays said, all business now. “Let’s blow the hatch. We can radio in as we go. Maybe they can send a rover. Come pick us up.”
“Brody.”
“We have to go now.” He looked at her face. “Oh.”
“The visor’s cracked,” she said. “I’m already bleeding air. The pack’s compensating to maintain pressure.”
“Maree. Please.”
“It won’t take much for the thing to shatter. What if that happens when we’re just about within reach. I slow you down.”
“You should have said. You could have taken my helmet.”
She had thought of that. When she’d found it, she could have unclipped her own helmet and put his on. Identical neck rings.
Shays looked around the cockpit. He bent and started searching through the debris.
“You need to go,” Maree said. “If you’re going.” She thumbed and twisted her airpack harness release. Normally the HUD would ask for a confirm, but it was dead. She thumbed and twisted again.
“Don’t do this to me Maree.”
“Take it.” The pack slipped to the floor, hanging by her hose. “What are you doing?”
“Looking for a suit patch. I saw the bag here.”
“I looked already. Here, take the pack. Run.”
“Don’t be so noble.” Shays grabbed her pack. He moved fast and clipped it back onto her suit.
“I’m already feeling lightheaded.”
“That’s nerves. We’ve got a long walk ahead of us.”
“I thought you said it wasn’t far.”
“Humor me. I’m not leaving without you.”
Maree sighed. She wondered how Michel would take it. They talked every week, usually more than once. He was busy negotiating with tribes to build infrastructure and to disarm.
Trust was a big issue. The African-American telling the Africans their business. Some days he told her it felt like they trusted the white French more than him. “How back-to-front is that?”
It had always seemed so much more dangerous than being on the moon.
Shays did something with some kind of reel. He pulled off a gray strip and tore across.
“Seriously?” she said. “Is that duct tape?”
“Duck tape.”
“No, I don’t think so. How is that going to seal this crack?”
“It’ll keep the visor from shattering.”
“It’s not going to save my life. And only diminishes the chances of saving yours.”
“You’re not dying on my watch.”
“Now who’s being noble?”
“Hold still.” He slapped the strip over the crack. Vertical across the middle of her visor. It blocked most of her view. She glimpsed him tearing another length. This he stuck horizontally. It left her with four quarter circles, one at each corner of the visor.
“So basically I can see nothing now,” she said.
“I’m your eyes.”
Maree wanted to kick him. She wanted to reach up and unclip the helmet. It was hard in gloves, but it could be done. Then he’d have no choice but to abandon her and Jen and the ship and head for Icarus dome.
She couldn’t do it. With her hand on her neck she thought of Michel.
He deserved better. She ought to die a valiant death. Trekking across the rough regolith, striving to reach the safety of the dome.
“Blowing the door,” he said.
She felt the ship shudder. There must have still been some air in the cabin.
“Come on,” he said.
“Just go.”
“Stop arguing. Jen is already dead. Now you and me, we’ve got a choice. Either we both survive or we both die.”
He grabbed her arm. She stayed still. Arguing wasn’t going to stop him.
“Maree. What would Michel say? Would he say to give up?”
“Don’t bring him—”
“Stop it.”
She sighed. “All right. You lead.” Her mind raced now. How were they going to make it to the dome? She followed when he pulled.
“Duck,” he said. “The door’s at a low angle.”
“Okay. Did you get the other backpack?”
“Yes.”
Shouldn’t there be oxygen in the cargo compartment? Maybe, but it would take an hour to get in there. It was sealed up against the dust.
That made her think of all the oxygen in the fuel tanks. Enough in there for them to take a week to walk to the dome. All inaccessible. Even if they could get at the tanks, and connected somehow, the pressure would overwhelm their little suit packs.
“Step down now,” Shays said. “Set foot on the moon.”
“Done that already,” she said. “Numerous times. The jokes are old.”
“And so will you be.”
“Don’t. Just don’t try to make jokes.”
If there was some way to boost their radio signal. With the antenna down they were radio dead.
“Hey,” she said, still formulating the idea as she spoke. “Was there some wire in there? In the alcove?”
“What are you thinking?”
“We’d need a spool. I don’t know the gauge, but enough to carry a signal.”
“Maybe,” he said. “Lots of inventory missing.”
“At least something will come out of this.”
“What?”
“Well, the investigation is going to say that if half our equipment hadn’t been missing we might have made it. New audits and checks will go into force.”
“Whatever. Doesn’t help us now. Spool?”
“Get up on top of the ship,” she said. “Tie it off and unspool it as we go. Extend our suit antennas.”
“Fair idea. I didn’t see a spool. Maybe some lengths of bell wire, and a soldering iron.”
“Want to go look?”
“Nah. I want to get into the dome before dinner.”
“What are they serving?”
Shays grabbed her arm again. “Duck à l’orange. With raspberry cream crepes for dessert.”
Maree ran with him. Long loping steps. She could see just enough to watch her feet as they came down. She had to trust him to make sure they didn’t land on some crater rim or boulder.
“I’ve got it,” he said after a few minutes.
“What?” Maree felt lightheaded. She was glad the HUD was busted. She couldn’t see whatever oxygen warnings her suit would be flashing up.
“Find a rover.”
“A rover? How are you going to do that?”
“There are dozens up here. Must be one close. I can see tracks ahead.”
Maree came down awkwardly on her leg. She stumbled and fell to her knees. Shays pulled on her arm, keeping her from smacking on her face. She pulled her legs around and got herself upright again.
“All right?” he said.
“Tracks could have been made weeks ago. Or years. They could be eighty years old. They all look the same.” The only thing messing up rover tracks in the lunar dust were more rover tracks.
“We’re nowhere near any of the original sights,” he said. “But granted. These could be twenty years old.”
“Which doesn’t help us find a rover, right?”
“Run.” Shays pulled on her arm again. “Keep coming up with ideas.”
She loped with him. Her ankle hurt. It must have twisted when she’d come down badly. She wondered how long she would last.
Every landing sent shards of pain up her shin and thigh. Gritting her teeth, she carried on.
“Who’s on kitchen duty?” Shays said. “Hope it’s not Greenfield.”
“Yeah. Remember what he did to the duck last time?”
Shays laughed.
“We should send maydays anyway,” she said. “They’re not going to know from our chatter—if they can hear it—that we’re in trouble.”
“Yeah.”
“Mayday, mayday,” she said. “This is skimmer A.C. thirteen twenty. We are down and on the surface. Need evacuation. Urgent. Mayday, mayday.”
“They’ll have our telemetry,” Shays said. “They know we’re off schedule.”
“Yeah. How’s your oxygen looking? Might be time to put on Jen’s pack.”
Shays pulled and they lofted again. “I’ve got about twenty minutes.”
As she landed she saw a glint of light to the left. But for the cross of tape across the visor, she never would have seen it.
“Stop,” she said. “I saw something.”
“What?” They were already floating up from the surface again, momentum carrying them on.
“Over there. Ten o’clock. I saw something.”
“A rover?”
They landed and stopped, skidding in the dust. Maree’s leg hurt more. She bent her knee, keeping her weight on her right leg. Easy enough in one-sixth gravity.
“I don’t see anything,” he said. “There’s that low-walled crater. Fair-sized.”
“Good, yeah. Just to the right of that. It might be a structure.” Maree kept her head inclined so she could see it. A flat white face. There might have been yellow markings on it. Stripes.
“It’s a boulder,” he said. “Keep moving.”
“We need binoculars,” she said. “What does your HUD say?”
Shays hesitated a fraction. “My HUD died. A few jumps back. I’m as blind as you.”
“You don’t have duct tape across your visor.”
“Huh. Fair enough. Something’s there. Noted. Keep moving.”
“I’m going there.” She pulled her arm from his grip.
He grabbed again. “Maree. Come on.”
“No.” She took a step towards the shape. “It’s hardly away from our route. At least let’s bear off in that direction until we can tell exactly what it is.”
“We have to go direct. We can’t afford to go off course.”
“We can’t afford to argue.” She jumped. High. An arc heading for the structure. She said, “I hurt my leg. I’m not going to make it as far as the dome.”
“You look like you’re doing fine now.”
Maree smiled to herself. She could feel the leg seizing already. She might have just a few more jumps left in her. Any moment now she would only have hops.
“We’re wasting air.”
“You should just go for the dome, then.” She knew her hunch carried the flimsiest, thinnest of hopes. What choice did she have? If she kept running for the dome she would die for sure.
Shays didn’t speak for the next couple of bounces. Maree knew he was following. Her breath came hard already. The air must be very low. The duct tape across the visor appeared black. She couldn’t tell if the air was bleeding around it.
She stopped when she could tell what the structure was. A low blockhouse. Perhaps a half-meter high, with yellow stripes. She could see a short pole on the top. An antenna or flag that had broken off at some point.
She glimpsed at Shays landing beside her.
“What do you think?” he said.
“Worth a look maybe.”
“Ha, ha. Don’t you want to rub it in?”
“What?”
“You were right.” He grabbed her arm again. “Come on. You must be about out of air.”
“Feels like it.” The suit was becoming like a stuffy old room. Filled with unwashed laundry.
“Jump,” he said.
She jumped with him. Again, and again. She began wheezing. The suit air was thick. Her vision blurred.
“Doing all right?” he said.
All she could do was cough.
“Stop now.”
She landed heavily, tumbled to the ground. “You should ...” she spluttered. “You ... should have taken ... my pack.”
“Get on up now. Just a few more leaps.”
“Can’t.”
“Sure you can. I’ve just bolted you to Jen’s pack. You should have good air now.”
“What?” She felt disoriented. And light. That was the gravity, she reminded herself.
She was on the moon.
Not Denmark. Not Africa.
“I’m pulling you up,” a man’s voice said. Not Michel.
Shays.
That’s right. The skimmer crash.
The emergency cache. The blockhouse.
“How far now?” she said.
“Fifty meters or so. It looks operational.” Shays didn’t sound anything like Michel.
“How’s your air?”
“I’m good.”
“Liar.” Maree got to her feet. Her air came through fresh now. The suit hummed. “Lead the way.”
Three more jumps and Shays stumbled. Maree just about went down with him.
“Almost,” he said. He sounded weak.
Maree looked ahead. The blockhouse was only a few meters away. From this close she could see the hatch on top. All they had to do was get inside.
“It was a ... long ... shot,” he said.
“Get up,” she said. “That’s what you’d tell me.”
“Yeah.”
Maree got him as far as the cut regolith wall before he collapsed again.
“Get ... inside,” he said.
“Help me.”
She tried to lift him. Just to get him up on top of the structure. So she could tip him through the hatch.
Assuming the hatch opened.
He only weighed something like twelve kilograms up here, but with his gear it was more like twenty. Tough in a suit.
There was a set of rungs on the side. She forced his hand onto one.
“Pull.”
“So tired.”
“Just pull.” She lifted him, but he fell back.
“Might not ... even work,” he said. “Might be ... all busted up. Jammed.”
“Yeah. It might be.” She pushed again. On the third attempt she got him up. He lay prone on the edge.
Maree clambered over him. She went to the hatch. Though she’d feared it might have a code box or need some kind of access system, it was a straightforward mechanical hatch. It had a locking lever, and a central wheel.
It would have to be simple. People needed it in an emergency.
She pulled on the lever. It didn’t move.
Maree cursed.
“Likewise,” Shays murmured.
She pulled again. All this was a waste. He should have taken her tank and gone to the dome. At the very least she should have let him go on.
All she had to do was fall on a rock. Wreck her visor. Then he would have been forced to take her pack, too, and go.
“Try ... again,” Shays said
“What’s the point?”
But she kicked at the lever. It jerked away. Fine dust seemed to billow from it.
Maree grabbed the wheel and turned. It was tough to hold with one hand sealed up like a bag. No fingers.
The wheel jammed for a moment. When it gave, the wheel almost spun by itself. It stopped with a bounce, coming back fifteen degrees.
Grabbing the hatch’s lip, she lifted. The hatch swept open and back. She could see one step before the hole turned black. A meter-long rope hung from the hatch.
Out here contrast was ramped up. Things were either stark or in deep shadow.
Tapping her shoulder she turned on her suit lights. They flickered and died.
“Climbing without help here,” she said.
“Try ... again.”
“Yeah. We went through that.”
She dragged Shays across to the hole. Lifting his feet, she got him over the edge. It took some shuffling, but she got him balanced. Holding his harness, she pushed him over.
“Got to drop you now. Ready?”
He didn’t reply.
“Shays.”
She tried to move her head to see inside his visor. Maybe from his internal helmet telltales she might get a reflection of his face.
With the duct tape, she couldn’t get a good angle.
“Shays. Please.”
She waited a moment.
“Okay, dude, sorry about this.”
She gave him another push and took his weight in her hands. Bending as far as she dared, she let him go. Prayed that it wasn’t some endlessly deep shaft.
A sixty meter drop here would hurt him just as bad as a ten meter drop back home.
Why would there be a shaft here though?
No time to think about it now. Maree swung her legs around and started climbing. When her hands reached the second rung, she stretched and pulled on the hatch rope.
The hatch dropped down. Light vanished.
In the darkness, she felt for the inner wheel. One-handed she turned it until it locked.
Maree sighed and took a moment. She thought of Michel, in the heat of Senegal and The Congo. He wrote most days, and they talked too often. It was hard to get their schedules lined up.
Now she was going to die in this black hole.
Or not. She owed him at least to try everything. And she owed Shays.
Moving down the ladder, after three rungs her foot touched something softer.
Shays’ leg.
Feeling her way around. Maree stepped off onto the floor. She tried her suit lights again. They flashed, but didn’t stay on. Not enough light to see by.
If this was an airlock—which it had to be—she needed to find the repressurize switch.
Crouching, she bumped the side. The lock was narrow. Feeling around more, she found Shays crumpled up. One of his legs had jammed around under him.
Bad.
Now she needed to feel around the walls. Find the switch. Useless if it was flush. If she could take off her glove, she would feel with her fingers.
But she wouldn’t last long. In the vacuum, her fingers would freeze. She wouldn’t feel anything. Except maybe a kind of knife-like burning sensation.
Anyway, if the shelter’s internal light had gone, how could she believe anything else was working?
Light. That’s all she needed.
Crouching near Shays again, she tapped his suit lights.
They blazed.
Maree gave a little prayer of thanks.
The lights flickered. They went off and came back on again.
Maree stood. She scanned the walls fast.
There. A simple, green, rubberized button. The words AIRLOCK REFILL engraved in the steel beside it.
She thumped the button.
The wall shuddered. Nothing seemed to happen.
Maree waited.
She pushed the button again. “Please,” she whispered.
Her suit shifted. Changing. Maree smiled. External pressure.
The lights went out. They didn’t come back on again.
“Michel,” she said. “If this doesn’t work, please forgive me.”
Reaching, she used the double move to unclasp her helmet. The neck ring released.
Lifting the helmet off her head, she knew it was all right. There was air. It tasted metallic and oily, but breathable.
Crouching, she felt for Shays’ helmet and took that off.
“Please,” she whispered. It was awkward bending down, but she got her ear right by his nose.
She heard the sigh of his breath.
“Well,” she said. “Bought us some time at least.”
***
When Shays came to, Maree was already done talking with Michel. She’d found the door from the airlock to the main shelter and gotten things working.
“Hey,” he said, sitting up from the lower bunk. “Where are we?” He looked around the room and she could see him taking in the bunks, the table, the kitchenette and shelves with supplies.
“In the shelter,” she said. “There’s a team on the way.
“So you were right.”
Maree nodded. “I guess I was.” She sat at the table with the ancient comms screen. She’d been surprised that they’d let her call Michel. But then she’d asked for one more thing.
“Was I out for—”
“About a half hour. Enough time for me to clean up a bit and make some calls.”
Shays nodded. “Okay. Well.” He stood and went to the small benchtop. “This is a pretty set up, huh?” He took a water flask and drank.
“Yeah. I guess the waits might have been longer in the old days.”
“Sure.” Shays put the water down with a clunk.
“And I’ve got someone on the line for you. Well, waiting for you to wake up.”
Shays frowned. He came over.
The connection went through and there were Dayna and Grant. Dayna held the baby.
“Oh,” Shays said, his voice catching. On the screen Dayna smiled.
Shays moved closer and sat down. He started talking with them. Maree retreated to the bunk.
As she got comfortable, Shays turned to her. “Thank you,” he said. “For this.
Maree nodded and smiled. “You know what? You’re welcome.” 
Sean Monaghan is a New Zealand-based writer. His novels include “Rotations” from Lucky Bat Books, “The Tunnel” and “Habitat” from Triple V. His short stories have appeared in “Asimov’s,” and frequently in “Perihelion Science Fiction.”
