The Skyhook cable was, it turned out, more a ribbon than a cable. Forty millimetres wide by a quarter of a millimetre thick, it was wound around a spool just under two metres across, reminding Eddie of an old style cinema reel. “We're going to tow the moon with this?” said Jayesh in disbelief.

“This is M5,” said Paul. “A kind of synthetic polyethylene. It can support a weight of twenty five thousand kilograms.”

“The moon has a mass of...”

“Yes, I know,” Paul interrupted, “but when they fire up the mass dampener, the original alien one, the mass of the moon will be greatly reduced, or at least that’s what they tell me.” He glanced at Koshing, who nodded.

“Our observations of the moon while our device was activated confirm that the mass of the moon was reduced to less than one hundred million tons,” the engineer confirmed.

“That's still rather more than twenty thousand kilos,” said Jayesh. “About five million times more.”

“A hundred million tons was the maximum it could have been, according to how the moon's atmosphere behaved. For all we know, the mass of the moon might have been reduced to just a few grams.”

“So what you’re saying is that it's a pure guess what the mass of the moon will be when you turn that thing on.”

“Yes, I suppose I am.” Koshing turned to Eddie. “You have experience with this alien device. What is your assessment of its capabilities?”

“Well,” Eddie looked embarrassed. “The fact is, I only joined the study team a couple of weeks ago. It's taken me this long just to get up to speed.”

“You're kidding me!” said Paul, staring in astonishment.

“The man who was supposed to come up here, Frank Wiliams, he couldn't come because he weighed too much. I was chosen because I'm lighter...”

Paul and Jayesh laughed together while Eddie floated in the middle of the module, feeling small. “So the first we'll know whether this is going to work,” said Susan, “is when we turn on the engines and see if the tether snaps under the strain.”

“The tether won't snap,” said Benny. “The manoeuvring engines can only produce twenty thousand kilos of thrust, well within the cable's tolerances. If the moon weighs a hundred million tons we'll just sit there and go nowhere, but the cable won't snap.”

“Well, let's just cross our fingers then and hope for the best,” said Paul. “Come on, let's get it into the shuttle.”

He unfastened it from its storage space on the wall of storage module two and carefully guided it towards the hatch into the connecting node past a crowded mass of other bits and pieces that had been useful once, over the life of the space station and had been left up there in case they turned out to be useful again one day. Eddie thought it reminded him of his father's garage, which was supposed to house his car but which had been unable to contain it since about the second year after it had been built.

“Nice and slow,” Paul warned them. “Remember, it's got a lot of mass, a lot of momentum and if we damage it it might not unspool properly. The slightest dent to its frame might snag it, and an awful lot of lives might be depending on this.”

“Lucky this was up here “ said Jayesh as they squeezed it gently through the hatch with just a couple of centimetres of clearance on either side. “What would you have done if it wasn't here?”

“You have other tethers,” said Eddie. “You've got that cable our Chinese friends used to cross from the Long March rocket.”

“It is not a load bearing cable,” said Koshing. “It cannot take more than a few kilos of strain. It is meant for guidance, not towing massive objects.”

“It might still be enough if the mass of the moon is reduced enough,” said Eddie. “When there’s this much at stake, you use what you’ve got and hope for the best. And you’ve got other tethers. Everything from electric wiring to steel cables ten centimetres thick.”

“Only In ten metre sections,” said Paul.

“Yes, but it might have been possible to connect it together somehow.”

“How are we going to attach it to the moon?” asked Jayesh. “I doubt you’re going to find a convenient eyelet attached to the crater floor.”

“Glue,” said Paul. “Cyano-silicate glue. Instant grab, load bearing, can withstand harsh environments. We'll polish a section of moon rock, attach the end of the cable to a metal plate and glue the two together. If the cable can stand the strain, the glue certainly will.”

“What do you normally use that stuff for?” asked Eddie.

“It was used during the construction of the boom assemblies, the framework connecting everything together. The pressurised modules, the labs, the solar panels. They sent us quite a bit, just in case, and we had some left over.”

“I thought it was just bolted together,” said Eddie. “You know, nuts and bolts. What happens if you want to take it apart again?”

“Why would we want to do that?”

“You might want to rearrange something, put it together in a different order, to make room for something.”

“We’re in space,” said Paul, smiling. “One thing we’ve got plenty of is space. Besides, this place only had a projected life expectancy of about ten more years. If there’s a more efficient way to put it all together, they'll do the next one that way.”

They took the Skyhook cable through the Rotterdam module to the airlock to which the Colibri was docked. This time the clearance was even smaller, but they managed to squeeze the spool of cable through the opening, through the short tunnel and through the inner door into the lower deck of the shuttle's cabin. “The only place it can go is against the far wall,” said Benny. “We'll fasten it there.”

“It's not going in the cargo bay, then?” said Eddie.

“The cargo bay's full of the fuel tanks,” said Paul. “There's no space left.”

“Bit of luck that the tanks fit so exactly, isn't it?”

“Not really,” said Benny with a smile. “It was the shuttle that brought them up in the first place. They were designed to fit in the cargo hold.”

“Oh. Now I feel stupid. All the work you’ve been doing, I thought it was to fit the fuel tanks into the hold.”

“The work was to connect the fuel tanks to the manoeuvring engines. They have their own fuel tanks, but they're far too small to get us to the moon. We had to half dismantle the main engines to connect the tanks to the manoeuvring engines.”

“Why not just connect them to the main engines?”

“Because they're way too powerful. They can throttle down to a certain extent, but not enough. We need precise control for what we’re going to do. Better to leave the smaller engines burning for longer.”

They then spent the next couple of hours moving more tools and equipment into the shuttle. Everything they thought they might need to solve any problem that might crop up. By the time they had finished there was only a narrow walkspace in the cabin’s lower deck between equipment and supplies securely fastened to every available surface. Benny noted the mass of every individual item and totted it up on his phone to produce a total that he frowned at. “Too much?” asked Paul.

“More than I'd like,” the Swede replied.

“You want us to take some of it back out?”

Benny looked as though he was about to say yes, but then he shook his head. “We might take out the very thing we need when we get there,” he said. “A better way to save fuel is to leave as soon as possible. As soon as we’re absolutely certain we've got everything we need.”

“I'm pretty certain we’re as close as we’re going to get,” the Commander replied. “Anything else we might need is too big to get into the shuttle anyway. What's the very soonest we can leave?”

“Get everyone aboard and we can leave right now. Are you still sure you want me for this mission? Yu and Koshing are both space construction engineers, and they can both pilot a shuttle.”

“They can pilot Chinese shuttles.”

“The Colibri and the Jinlong are pretty much identical...”

“But there are small differences, things you might pick up on faster than either of the Chinese, things that might make the difference between success and failure.”

“What if the thing that makes a difference between success and failure is having a dedicated space construction engineer on the team?”

“Susan is a space construction engineer. She has the training, anyway, and she's had plenty of practical experience the past few days. Besides, we're not going to be in space, We’re going to be on the surface of the moon, and none of us has experience there. I chose you because I think you’re the best man for the job, but you can turn it down if you want...”

“Don’t be an idiot! If you want me, you got me.”

“And I want you.” Benny nodded. “Okay,” said Paul in a louder voice. “You heard the man. Eddie, Susan, get yourselves strapped in. Jay, Kosh, Yu, see you when we get back.”

“You're going now?” said Jayesh in surprise.

“Why not? No time like the present. Benny, contact Canberra and tell them we’re launching in ten minutes.” The Swede nodded and kicked himself up through the interdeck access hatch, into the flight deck.

“Well, good luck young man,” the Indian said to Eddie. “Don't do anything I wouldn't do.”

“Spoilsport,” said Eddie with a smile.

“The last mission to land on the moon, for a hundred years at least,” said Jayesh. “You'll probably be more famous to generations to come than the first.”

“If we succeed.”

“Then make sure you succeed.” The Indian held out a hand and Eddie shook it solemnly. Jayesh then went around the others offering them his best wishes as well while the two Chinese astronauts said farewell to Eddie. “Hopefully we'll be seeing you again in five days,” said Yu into his ear as she gave him a firm hug. “Come back alive, Eddie.”

“I'll do my best,” Eddie promised her.

“Don’t catch any bugs,” said Koshing with a smile.

Eddie assumed that was some kind of Chinese colloquial expression of farewell and so he promised he wouldn't, which made the engineer smile wider. “Well, better get in my seat,” he said. “Don't want to get left behind.”

“No, that wouldn't do at all.” Eddie shook his hand and then followed Benny and Susan up into the flight deck.

“Look after the station until I get back,” said Paul to Jayesh.

“You can count on me.”

“If anything should go wrong, don’t try to mount any rescue missions. The Jinlong doesn't have the fuel to go very far anyway, but it only has one job to do now, and that’s to get the three of you back down to Earth. Hopefully, we'll be going with you, but if something should happen to us while we're fairly close, don't come after us. Just get yourselves safely back home.”

“Depends how close fairly close is. If you blow a fuel line within the first five minutes...”

“If we blow a fuel line, the most likely result will be a rather exciting explosion, and the explosion might not be immediate. It might happen after you’ve come alongside us, so no rescues. No matter what the circumstances. That's an order.”

Jayesh recognised when his commander was serious. He was no longer bantering, he really meant it. “Yes, Sir,” he said therefore. “No rescues.”

Paul nodded. He led out his hand and the Indian shook it. “Good luck,” said Jayesh.

“To all of us.”

Paul shook hands with the Chinese astronauts, and then they and Jayesh left the shuttle. Jayesh paused a moment in the Rotterdam module and looked back. Paul raised a hand to him one last time, then closed the hatch. “Copy hatch closed,” said Benny’s voice over the intercom.

“Roger,” said Paul, and he followed the others up into the flight deck.

“Everyone ready?” asked Benny as Paul took his place in the co-pilot’s chair. Behind them, Eddie and Susan were already strapped in. Eddie looked excited and was staring out of the small porthole beside him at the glorious, curving globe of the Earth. They were over the Pacific ocean at the moment, and a huge, cyclonic storm system was on its way towards the coast of Indonesia. Someone was having a bad day. Susan, in contrast, looked stressed and unhappy and just stared ahead at the back of Benny's head. Eddie had gathered, while talking to the others, that she was totally fed up with space and wanted nothing more than to go home. She had the lockbox containing the alien mass dampener latched to the bulkhead beside her, and whenever she looked at it, it was with pure loathing. If not for the responsibility her countrymen had given her over it, she’d still be on the space station, it was true, but at least she wouldn't be getting any further from the Earth. Eddie reached out a hand and touched her lightly on the arm. “You okay?” he asked. She pulled her arm out of his grasp and said nothing.

Paul strapped himself in. “You okay back there?” he asked.

Eddie looked across at Susan again. They were still docked at the space station, it would only take a moment for Susan to get out and for one of the Chinese engineers to replace her. For a moment he thought about suggesting it, but then Susan turned her head to smile at him. “We're okay,” she said.”

“Okay then,” said Paul. “Benny, as soon as we cast off, you become the commander. You okay with that?”

“Understood,” the Swede replied. “Ready to cast off.”

“Then cast off when you're ready, Commander.”

Benny touched some of the controls in front of him. “You there, Canberra?”

“Where else would I be?” said a familiar voice.

“George! That you? You're going to be our man on the ground?”

“Yeah, I drew the short straw. We show you’re all ready, Pluvier.”

“I'm green across the board, too,” replied Benny. “I see no reason to hang around. You okay with that, George?”

“Cast off when ready, Pluvier.”

“Roger that. Preparing to unlock.” He touched a couple of controls. “Unlocking bolts and latches.” Through the cockpit window, they saw the space station begin to slowly recede as the spring loaded arms pushed them gently away. “We are undocked and floating free in space. One metre from the docking port. Two metres, three metres.”

Eddie felt a thrill in his stomach as various parts of the space station drifted slowly past the porthole beside him. He looked forward, through the cockpit window, and saw Jayesh and the two Chinese engineers waving to them through a window in the Rotterdam module. He waved back. “Ten metres from docking port,” said Benny. “Closing nose covers.” The two halves of the shuttle's nose slowly closed, covering the airlock. Normally, it would have left the shuttle looking smooth and sleek, but the nose would be taking some of the worst punishment when they landed on the moon, and so they'd added plates of thick steel armour to it. It left the shuttle looking as if it had some kind of malignant tumour on its nose, but there'd been no time to make it prettier. Eddie didn't mind so long as it increased his chances if getting home alive.

“Commencing yaw manoeuvre,” said Benny. Eddie felt a slight sideways acceleration as the shuttle's nose slipped to the right, the spacecraft rotating about a vertical axis. The docking port disappeared from view and the space station's huge solar panels came into view in front of them. “Yaw manoeuvre complete. Commencing pitch manoeuvre.” This time the view slid downwards and a moment later there was nothing but clear, starry sky in front of them. Meanwhile, the shuttle continued to recede from the docking port in the same direction. Eddie looked out through his porthole again and saw Jayesh still at the window, gazing soberly out at them. Eddie waved a hand to him again, but with rather less enthusiasm this time. He had the uncomfortable feeling that he was saying goodbye forever, that he would never be coming back.

He wondered how angry people would be with him if he backed out now, if he begged Benny to take him back to the space station so he could wait there until he could return to Earth. He thought about all the people who'd done so much to get him there. He thought about all the millions of people down on Earth who would die if their mission failed. He had do stick with it, he knew, but even so the temptation was almost overpowering. He only had to say one word and the ground controllers would insist he stay behind. They wouldn't risk the safety of the other crew members with a man who might crack and become psychotic at any moment. He only had to say one word... He put his hands on the arms of his seat, squeezing hard, and clamped his mouth shut. Beside him, a small sound came from Susan. He ignored it.

“Ready for acceleration burn,” said Benny.

“Copy that,” said George. “We show you good to go.”

“Copy that. Acceleration burn in five minutes.”

“I thought it was called trans-lunar insertion,” said Eddie.

“Look who's been doing his homework!” said Benny. “It's not like every former mission to the moon. We’re not going on a minimum fuel orbit. It didn’t matter much to the Apollo astronauts where the moon was in its orbit around the Earth, but we have to be there at a specific time, when the moon's at its furthest distance from the Earth. That’s just two days from now. To get there in time, we have to catch up with the moon, so we fire the engines until we’re going really fast, then turn around when we’re half way and fire them again to slow down. We’ll then be close enough and slow enough for the moon's gravity to catch us.”

“Thanks for the Sesame Street version,” said Eddie. “Why do we have to wait five minutes? Why can't we go now?”

“Well, the Sesame Street version is that we have to wait until we’re in the right place in our orbit around the Earth,” said the Swede, looking back at him and grinning. “Otherwise we’ll go off in the wrong direction.”

“Ouch. I’ll just shut up, shall I?”

“Perhaps this would be a good time for you to turn on your wonderful machine.”

Eddie reached down to where the home made mass dampener was fastened to the bulkhead beside him. He flipped the switch. He'd adjusted its power supply the day before so that its area of effect didn't quite reach the rear of the ship. The exhaust from its engines would still have full mass and so would still provide its normal thrust. “It's on,” he said.

“When I first heard about that thing, it seemed like magic to me,” said Paul, shaking his head. “Strange how we’re almost just taking it for granted now. The power to move worlds, small enough to be packed in a suitcase.”

“Are we wise enough to use that power, do you think?” asked Susan.

“Are we foolish enough to have the power and not use it?” asked Paul.

“Is it foolishness to show humility, to admit that we might not know what plans God has for us?”

“If God’s plans are for mankind to suffer terribly...” He somehow sensed Susan glaring at the back of his head, though, and thought better of completing the sentence. Eddie stared at her in surprise and Susan glared at him as well until he turned away and looked back out the porthole.

Benny was going through a checklist while studying readouts on his screens. “Everything okay?” asked Paul.

“Seems to be,” the Swede replied. “Plenty of red lights on the main engines, of course. I know that's because we stripped out most of the pipework, but I'm worried it might be hiding problems in other areas. And we probably damaged some of the diagnostic sensors when we hooked up the fuel tanks. It might not show a problem even if there was one.”

“You want to go around? Take another ninety minutes to take another look?”

“I’ve already studied it so much that I see welds and tubing every time I close my eyes! No, we've got to take the plunge sometime. Might as well be now.”

“Might as well be now,” Paul agreed.

“Engine ignition in twenty seconds,” said Benny. “Brace yourselves, back there. Last chance to back out.”

Eddie and Susan glanced at each other. “If you’re going, I'm going,” said Eddie.

“Me too,” said Susan.

“Are we still good to go, George?”

“You've got a green light from down here, Benny. Good luck to you all. By the way, someone went to the press. The whole world knows what you’re doing.”

“Probably inevitable,” said Paul. “The whole world will see when we fire up the engines. We couldn't keep it a secret if we wanted. Speaking of which...”

“Engine ignition in five seconds,” said Benny. “Everyone think happy thoughts. Two, one...” There was a sound like the wind blowing through the trees and Eddie felt himself being gently pressed back in his seat.