The ground shook again. Samantha froze in the act of making sandwiches and gazed anxiously at the ceiling where a crack had appeared in the plaster sometime during the night. The tremors were coming more and more frequently as the moon pulled inexorably at the Earth’s crust and fault lines that had lain dormant for millions of years were torn open. So far, none of them had been really serious, though. Not here in Britain, anyway. The news, earlier that day, had been full of the Los Angeles earthquake, an eight on the Richter scale, with reporters standing in the street in front of collapsed sections of overpasses and fallen bridges while bemused citizens strolled past as if wondering what all the fuss was about. They'd been expecting the Big One for a long time and so felt relieved, more than anything, now that it had actually happened with the city standing up to it so well. They didn't seem to realise that another Big One would be coming twenty seven days later, when the moon made its next close approach, with another twenty seven days after that and another twenty seven days after that, forever. She wondered whether they’d look quite so relaxed when the skyscrapers began falling down.

She chastised herself for being uncharitable and returned to the sandwiches, putting the second slice of bread on top of the first and cutting diagonally. “Lily!” She called out. “Come get your lunch!” There was no reply, but the sounds of a computer game were coming from the living room. She put the sandwiches on a plate and carried them through.

Lily was sitting on the living room sofa with a MiniVirt helmet on her head and a controller in one hand. “Turn down the volume,” said Samantha anxiously. “I can hear it in the kitchen. You'll damage your hearing.”

“I'm getting to the good bit!” her daughter replied indignantly. “I've almost reached the Goblin King’s throne room!” She waved the controller around wildly. In her virtual space, it was a sword with which she was dispatching an army of killer pixies. Her pretty face was contorted into a grimace of grim determination.

“You can kill the Goblin King after you've had your lunch,” said Samantha, putting the plate of sandwiches down beside her. ‘Save your position and quit for a little while.”

“I can't! I'm in the zone!”

Samantha smiled at her daughter's use of language while Lily continued the slaughter. Then she reached out and touched the button on the side of the helmet. Lily gave a cry of outrage as the game saved itself and quit. Then she took off the helmet and glared at her mother. “Why'd you do that?”

“It's time for your lunch. Eat!” Lily continued to glare at her, but then her eyes drifted to the sandwiches. She picked one up and took a bite. Samantha smiled at her, then returned to the kitchen to fix something for herself.

She had the cupboard open and was searching around among the tins and packets of dried food, looking for something that took her fancy, when she heard the hum of a vehicle’s engine pulling up outside. There was the sound of a car door opening and the sounds of people getting out. More than one person. Two or three by the sound of them. She heard no voices, though, and that struck her as curious. When a group of people arrived uninvited at someone's home, they would normally be speaking to each other, things like ‘I wonder if she's in’ or ‘I hope this isn't a bad time for her’. Maybe they’d already had that conversation in the car, but Samantha still found herself getting a little spooked. She found herself acutely aware that there was no-one else in the street. No-one within half a mile but her six year old daughter and a group of strangers.

When the doorbell rang her heart leapt with alarm but she forced herself to remain calm. She looked around for something she could use as a weapon, just in case, and grabbed a ten inch kitchen knife. Then, holding it behind her back, her heart pounding in her ears, she went to open the door.

The moment she turned the latch the door was pushed open and three men forced their way in. A father and his two adult sons by the look of them. All with greasy hair and two days growth of stubble. They looked evil. If she’d seen them earlier, she would never have opened the door to them. “Check the house!” said the father, and the two younger men pushed their way past while he grabbed her firmly by the shoulders and held her fast. “What are you doing?” she cried. “Who are you?”

“Never mind who we are,” the man replied. “Just stay calm and you won’t get hurt.”

Samantha wasn't prepared to take his word for it, though. Not with her daughter in the house. She tried to stab him but the man caught her wrist and held it painfully tight. Then he twisted hard. She gave a cry of pain and dropped the knife. He snatched it up before it hit the ground and eyed it appraisingly. Then he tucked it into his belt.

“Parker!” She cried. “Call the police!”

“Hi regret, M’lady, that hall the phone lines are busy...” One of the sons opened the door to the cupboard under the stairs and ripped the server off the wall.

“I don't have any money!” cried Samantha. “There's nothing worth stealing!”

“Everybody's got something.” The father replied. “Show us where it is and we'll be on our way.”

“The whole street's empty. Why not search one of the empty houses?”

“Cos they'll have taken all their valuables with them when they left. It's people who stayed we want.”

“Hey, Dad!” one of the sons called out. “They got a ton of food here! The freezers stuffed!”

“Load it up,” The father called back.

Then Lily screamed. “No!” cried Samantha desperately. “Leave her alone!” She struggled in the man’s grasp but he held on to her effortlessly.

“There's a kid in here,” the other son called out. “Wadda we do with her?”

“Get rid of her,” The father replied. Samantha cried out again and struggled even harder, as uselessly as before. Then she brought her knee up hard into his groin. He cried out in pain and fury but only let go with one hand. He clenched it into a fist and punched her with all his strength full in the face.

☆☆☆

“George?” said Paul Lewis urgently. “What's happening to my family?”

The news channels were filling the command module of the Harmony Space Station with reports of disasters and calamities all over the world. The astronauts had watched and listened with grim sympathy until the BBC reported the tsunami that had struck the east coast of England. Then Paul had cried out in horror and turned to the internet for more details. The flood map clearly showed RAF Cranwell to be inside the affected area. The supposedly safe place where his family was taking shelter.

“We’re waiting for details,” the ground controllers replied. “Almost all channels of communication have been cut by the floods. The British government is communicating by long wave, but they haven't managed to contact RAF Cranwell yet. They probably don't have a long wave set. It's obsolete technology. Everyone uses satellites these days. Who could have guessed we'd lose them all...”

“Then get someone over there!” cried Paul, his hands balled into fists. He wanted to pace back and forth to vent some of his nervous energy, but all he could do was float. “Get someone over there to see if they're safe.”

“We're already on it, but most of the roads are out, or blocked with debris. It'll probably be a few hours yet. I'm sure they're safe. The airport authorities had orders to give them priority in the event of an emergency.”

“I'm coming down I'm taking the shuttle and coming down.”

“Paul! Take a moment and think! We'll have news of your family in just a couple of hours, at most. It'll take you three, maybe four hours to get back down to Earth, and even then you'll be landing in North Africa. How long do you think it’ll take you to get home from there, the way transport links are at the moment?”

“He's right, Paul,” said Koshing gently. “There’s no way you can get to them in time to make a difference.”

Paul cursed in frustration. He wanted to hit something! “I should have gone when Benny asked me,” he said. “We’d all be safely home by now.”

“If you were home, we'd have no reason to take special care of your family,” said George.

“You call that taking special care?” cried Paul in fury, pointing at the monitor screen. A helicopter was flying over a small town and was sending back pictures of utter devastation. Buildings had been totally demolished, as if by the shockwave of a nuclear blast. Trees and lamp posts had been overturned, cars were piled up in crumpled heaps. Pools of water lay everywhere and a handful of miserable looking figures were shivering as they waded through the wreckage in soaking wet clothes. Some were digging through it with their bare hands, looking for buried loved ones. He didn't dare wonder what the death toll had been.

“That village was just a few metres above the high tide line,” pointed out George. “Your family was forty metres above it. There was almost nothing left of the wave by the time it reached them. And if you hadn't been up there, they would probably have been in a refugee camp. Maybe Nettleton. Paul, there's nothing left of Nettleton. It's just gone. You probably saved their lives just by being up there. That goes for the rest of you, too. So long as you're up there, we've got a special interest in seeing that your families are safe. Once you come down, your families are no more important than any other.”

“So you're holding them hostage to ensure our good behaviour?

‘Paul, you're distraught. You're not thinking straight. Understandable in the circumstances, but you have to get a grip on yourself. We're moving heaven and earth to keep your family safe. We'll have news of them very soon, I promise.”

“I don’t understand why you still want us up here anyway,” said Benny, floating just beside the hatch to Node Five. “I mean, what good are we doing? We only have one scientist up here now, and her experiment burned up in the atmosphere a week ago. The rest of us are just doing the essential work of keeping Harmony in good shape and kicking our heels the rest of the time. Why not let us come home and leave Harmony empty until you have a use for it again?”

“We were going to do just that,” replied George. “We were going to call you home just a couple of hours ago, but then we had a communication from the British Prime Minister. They want to have another go at dealing with the moon, and they say they’ll need your help.”

“Will it involve another spacewalk?” asked Susan anxiously. She glanced over at the two Chinese crew members. Maybe they could do it and spare her from another ordeal out in empty space.

“I don’t know, but I understand that you'll be playing an important part in whatever happens. Apparently, the Brits need the Americans, and the Americans will only play along if there’s an American in charge up there. Apparently, you're to be in charge of a very important American asset, something they don’t want to let fall into foreign hands.”

“Another mass dampener?” asked Paul. “I thought the Chinese invented it.”

“You now know as much as I do, Paul. Just hang tight, and remember that, so long as you're up there, we’re as desperate to protect your family as the Royal family itself. The best thing you can do to keep them safe is to stay up there. That goes for the rest of you as well. Oh, we're sending the mule to refuel the Jinlong shuttle. Sorry it's taken so long.”

“Now that we’re pretty much the only thing left in orbit,” said Benny with a humourless chuckle. “Big of them.”

“I can pretty much guarantee that you’ll all have your feet back on solid ground within a week,” said George. “Apparently, this second rescue mission is very time sensitive. If they can't do it when the moon reached apogee, they’ll have lost the chance forever. So whether it works or not, when it's over you can all come home. There'll be no reason for you to stay up there any longer.”

“Good!” said Susan and Benny together. They looked at each other in surprise and then laughed nervously.

“God, but I hate this place!” said Susan with feeling. “When I first came up here I was so excited. The pinnacle of my career! The very cutting edge of science! Now, though, I hate every little thing about this place. I hate how the air stinks. I hate how you can't get away from the sound of pumps and machinery. I hate the food and the ridiculous procedures we have to go through to perform bodily functions. I hate being weightless and I hate not being able to have a proper wash.”

“But on the plus side, you have us to keep you company,” said Jayesh with a smile. Susan’s answering smile was clearly forced, though, and Paul wondered whether she was coming to hate them as well, because of the forced intimacy. Harmony was huge by the standards of any space station that had ever existed before, but when you were cooped up in it for months on end it began to feel very small. She might come to feel more fondly towards them once they were all back on the ground, able to truly get apart from each other whenever they wanted, but right now, while they were stuck up in space, he found himself growing more and more certain that she was starting to hate her fellow crew members as much as the food and the toilets.

His eyes were drawn back to the monitor screens and the images of destruction that filled them. Anxious thoughts of his family returned, until Jayesh gently touched his arm. “Don’t fret, my friend,” he said, guessing his thoughts. “There's nothing you can do for them, and our lords and masters will be working miracles to keep them safe. Come on, let's go inspect the solar panels again. What you need is something to occupy your mind.”

Paul nodded, knowing he was right, and the two men swam through the hatch into the next module.

☆☆☆

“I have some good news and some bad news,” said Ben, pausing in the doorway.

The others, relaxing in the common room, looked up at him. Everyone except Stuart and Jessica, who’d set off by car to find Samantha Kumiko, had gathered to take a break and enjoy a well deserved cup of tea. The television screen was blank. The images it had been showing had been just too distressing. On the other side of the room, though, a couple of junior researchers were looking at a tablet with a look of entranced fascination. Eddie found himself feeling a little disgusted by them.

“Give us the good news,” said Alice. “God knows we could use some.”

“There's a rocket sitting on a launch pad, just waiting to lift off. The Prime Minister has been in touch with them and they're apparently willing to give it to us. I would imagine that some financial inducement was involved.”

“Great!” said Frank. Ben was looking grim, though. “Not great?”

“It's a Star Pigeon,” the older man said. He didn't say anything more. He didn't have to.

The Star Pigeons were the last privately owned launch vehicles. The brief golden age of private launch companies had been brought to an end by the lawyers. Governments could, by and large, shrug off the lawsuits brought by environmentalists and other special interest groups, but private companies had a much harder time of it. The cost of the almost constant legal actions had been so high that, one by one, they had given up and gone into other lines of business. Now, PigeonCo was the only one left. It had survived by virtue of being small and keeping a low profile. Most people had never heard of them, and they were keen to keep it that way. They launched small satellites onto low Earth orbit, mainly for communications and environmental monitoring. Perhaps that was why the lobby groups had left them alone. They used the data collected by their satellites to attack everyone else.

“They can't carry people,” said Frank, rather unnecessarily.

“They're not designed to carry people,” Ben corrected him. “Maybe we can rig something up.”

“Rockets that don’t have to carry people can accelerate harder than crewed flights,” added James. “They may not be survivable by a human crew.”

“Star Pigeons launch at six gees,” said Ben. “I looked it up. It would be uncomfortable, but survivable for someone in reasonably good health.”

“How much of a payload can they take up?” asked Frank.

“Six hundred kilos.”

“Well, there you go then,” said the younger man, throwing up his hands. “No-one’s ever made a crew capsule that small.”

“Not openly,” said Ben, though. “I wouldn’t be surprised if someone’s created an ultra small launch vehicle to put a single man into space for some kind of secret mission. It's exactly the sort of thing the Americans would have done back in the Cold War. Doesn't help us, though. Just getting them to admit that such a thing existed would take more time than we have.”

“So that's it then,” said Frank. “It was a good idea, but it never got off the ground. Either literally or figuratively.”

“How much did a Mercury capsule weigh?” asked Eddie. The others stared at him. “Well, I mean, the Chinese did it! They put a used capsule on a new rocket and launched two people into space. If they can do it, why not us?”

“China is a totalitarian state,” pointed out James. “They can do things we can't. The Premier can say ‘Do this!’ and people have to obey. We don’t have that luxury.”

“This is a time of emergency,” said Eddie, though. “The government has emergency powers. They can pretty much do anything.”

“Doesn't matter,” said Alice glumly, though. She'd pulled her phone from her pocket and had been doing an internet search. “Mercury capsules weighed fourteen hundred kilos. More than twice as much as the rocket can lift.”

Silence fell as they all stared at the floor or off into infinity. Ben tried to imagine what a Mercury capsule was made of and how much lighter they could make it by stripping out as much as possible. It would be made of heavy alloys, he mused. Modern alloys were much lighter. How much of it could they swap out in the time they had? He laughed internally. They had two days, maybe three. A laughably inadequate amount of time.

“If you reduced the weight by fifty eight percent...” began Alice hesitantly.

The others stared at her. “Damn, yes!” said Eddie. “The mass dampener! We've got to launch it anyway. Why not make it earn its passage?”

“We've only got the one,” said Frank, “and we’ve modified it to act as a mass amplifier. Can we make another in time?”

“Better to just have the one, I think,” said Ben, though. “We can't afford the weight of a second device. Convert it back into a mass dampener for the launch, then turn it back into a mass amplifier when we move the moon.”

“That's a lot of juggling around components,” said James, though. “Easy for something to get damaged.”

“I can do it,” insisted Frank. “I'll be careful.”

“Suppose we could rig up a second device,” said Eddie. “What would happen if you had two of them active at the same time? Would the second device reduce mass by a further fifty eight percent? Could we reduce the capsule’s mass by, er, what? Eighty percent?”

“That's an experiment we should have performed long before this,” said Frank, nodding. “We've got absolutely no theory to tell us what'll happen. The plan requires that we have our home made device and the original alien device active at the same time, with the area of effect of one completely within the other. We’re assuming that they'll just cancel each other out, but what if something more complicated happens? Maybe something disastrous.”

“Can we try it out before we launch them?” asked Eddie. “Turn them both on at the same time and see what happens?”

“We’re talking about a device that can render the entire moon virtually massless,” pointed out Ben, though. “If it does something unexpected, it could potentially affect the entire world. I think we're better off doing the experiment up on the moon, a safe distance from the Earth.”

“Where I’ll be the only one killed,” said Frank with a smile.

“Frank,” said Ben seriously, “You would have to be crazy to go along with this mad plan. I mean, we’re talking about somehow bolting a nearly hundred year old Mercury capsule on top of a rocket that was never designed for such a thing, with no way of knowing whether some factor that we’ve overlooked will make it crash before reaching orbit. There’s certainly no way we can arrange any kind of abort procedure. You survive only if you successfully reach orbit. If anything goes wrong, anything at all, you die. I don’t know why we’re even talking about this! It's completely mad!”

“And even if everything goes perfectly, you may die anyway,” added Karen. “You’ll be taking twice the gee force they normally experience going into orbit. There may be a problem with your oxygen supply, there may be a fire... And even if you reach orbit there may be a problem rendezvousing with the Space Station. A delay of just a few hours might mean that your oxygen runs out before they can get you aboard.”

“What about modifying one of the shuttles so it can get to the moon?” asked Eddie. “Can it be done? Is it even theoretically possible?”

“I talked to some of the ESA engineers,” said Ben. “They said it might actually be quite simple. It would need pretty much all the fuel the space station has left, though. Harmony would be left with no way to boost itself back up into a higher orbit. They'd have to de-orbit it to prevent it coming down later and maybe landing on a city or something. If we do this, we'd have to sacrifice the space station.”

“But if everything goes to plan, we have a chance to put the moon back into its old orbit,” replied Frank. “We might be saving thousands of lives! Millions, maybe! In times of war, people take these kinds of risks routinely Officers order their men to take those kinds of risks ”

“We're not at war,” pointed out Ben. “And even if we were, you're not in the army. You never signed up for anything like this.”

“I'm willing to take the risk. I have to...”

“Of course you don’t!”

“Yes, I do! Listen, suppose I don’t. Suppose I chicken out, refuse to go up. Then I spend the rest of my life watching the moon causing disasters around the world on my television. I spend the rest of my life hearing about people dying in floods and earthquakes, knowing that I might have been able to stop it. How am I supposed to live with myself? If the rocket crashes and I die, at least I'll have tried. I'll be able to rest easy in my grave knowing that I tried.”

Karen put her hand on his, gave it a gentle squeeze. “It's not fair that it’s all on you,” she said.

“I’m the only one who knows the device well enough.”

“No, you’re not,” said Eddie in a quiet voice, as if hoping the others wouldn't hear him. “I could go. I know the device well enough to fix most problems that could crop up.”

Frank smiled at him. “You're a good chap, Eddie,” he said, “but you're still bringing yourself up to speed with what I’ve been working on for years. You don’t know the device a fraction as well as I do.”

“I know it well enough to create the mass amplifier!” protested Eddie indignantly.

“You had one flash of insight, yes, but that can’t compare with my depth of knowledge. Look, you can be my understudy. If anything happens to me, you get my seat in the rocket."

“We'll see you both get trained for the mission,” said Ben. “Send you off to Cologne for a crash course in the astronaut training program.”

“I don’t see why we need to be trained to just sit in a couch,” said Frank. “I mean, I won't be piloting it or anything, will I? I’ll just be sitting there, like the chimpanzees they used to put into space.”

“The Mercury astronauts were trained for four years before being allowed anywhere near a space capsule,” said Ben. “Granted, the Mercury capsules had a lot of manual controls which your capsule won't have, but even so I would imagine they'll be very unhappy letting you go into space with only a couple of days of only the most basic induction.”

“Could they refuse to let him fly?” asked Alice. “Could they just flat out say no?”

“They could say no,” replied Ben, “But they can't stop us. Star Pigeon is based in Guyana, they launch from a town called Mahdia. It's a completely privately owned and operated company. Technically, they need permission from the ISA to launch anything, but since there's virtually nothing else in orbit at the moment and no launches planned by anyone for the foreseeable future, I see no reason why Mark Pigeon can't just tell the rest of the world to go to hell and launch anyway. If the mission works, the rest of the world will be falling all over themselves to congratulate him.”

“And if the mission fails?” asked Alice.

“Then censorship from the rest of the world will be the least of his problems,” said Ben. “But I think that, even if it fails, the rest of the world will congratulate him for trying, just like the Chinese.”

“Does Mark Pigeon know why we want his rocket?” asked James. “Does he know we want to put a man into space?”

“No,” replied Ben with a smile. “He does not.”

“How do you think he’ll react when he finds out?”

“I would imagine he'll be rather surprised,” the older man said, and his smile was reflected by everyone around him. “So. Are we really going to do this?”

They all looked at Frank. “Yes,” he said. “We really are.”

Ben gave a heavy sigh. “Okay, then,” he said. “I'll get back to the Prime Minister and ask him to do whatever he has to do to make it happen.” He stood again and left the room, leaving the others sitting in a stunned silence as they contemplated what they were planning to do.