Just over a day had passed since Lunar Rescue two had left the space station, and life back on Earth tried to return to normal. James and Jasmine Buckley were preparing their evening meal in their Wetherby home, something that they liked to do together, he peeling and chopping the vegetables while she prepared the meat substitute, a soya based paste that looked and tasted just like the real thing. Soymeat had been just a fad until a couple of weeks before, something that vegetarians made a big show of promoting and that everyone else by and large refused to even try, but since the first perigee farmland had become so scarce and precious that very little of it could be spared for the raising of meat. Every field on which animals had once grazed was being looked at to see of it was suitable for the growing of crops. Some would always be too stony, shallow or steeply inclined, of course, but those with deep, fertile soil were soon destined to be ploughed up, the animals sent to slaughter and not replaced. Soya was something that people were going to have to get used to, whether they liked it or not.

In the next room, Matthew was playing on the MiniVirt with his sixteen year old cousin Bethany while Bethany's parents, Jasmine's sister and her husband, were working. He at the power plant, she at an advertising agency. The children had gotten home from school about an hour before and, after changing clothes and tapping out their homework on their tablets, had immediately gone back to the game that Bethany had been playing for about eight months and that Matthew had adopted with enthusiasm. He was acting as sheriff in the city that she ruled until he’d learned the game well enough to start a city of his own, thereby avoiding all the mistakes that new players usually made and allowing him to hit the ground running. James and Jasmine smiled at each other as they listened to the two of them arguing over how they were going to deal with the outlaws that were raiding their outlying villages and attacking merchant caravans. They both seemed to favour a hard, military response but differed in how many troops should be diverted from patrolling the neutral territory between themselves and a rival city that was making aggressive moves towards them.

“We should have done this years ago!” said Jasmine as she chopped up an onion into tiny cubes, wiping her watery eyes with one hand. “In a house big enough for all of us, of course. I miss having a spare room.”

“If we were in a house big enough for all of us, they'd probably make us take in another family,” said James. “Strangers. Not family, people we know. Ted, one of the security guys, was telling me he’s coming under tremendous pressure to take a family in. The council knows they've got all that extra room, and he hadn’t got any extended family, nor does his wife, so it would have to be strangers. He's got two daughters, sixteen and thirteen, so you can imagine what he's going through right now.”

“They can't force people to take families into their homes!”

“They can't force them, no, but they can put enormous social pressure on them. Like all those telly adverts.” Jasmine’s nodded soberly. You could hardly turn the television on now, on any channel, without seeing reporters wandering around the refugee camps interviewing the homeless people there. Photogenic people with cute children in their arms tearfully telling how awful life was for them, begging anyone with a spare room to take them in. The latest episodes of all the current soap operas had been hastily reshot to cover the situation, with the characters telling each other how they had to do something, with characters with unoccupied spare rooms becoming the villains, hated by everyone else. People all across the country were responding in their droves, but out of fear rather than compassion. Fear of what people would think of them, or do to them. James and Jasmine counted themselves extremely fortunate that they had trusted family members they could take in. Not everyone was so fortunate.

James sat the saucepan of chopped carrots in his lap and wheeled his chair across the kitchen to fill it with water from the sink. As he was doing so, his phone chirped. He put the saucepan down on the draining board and pulled his phone from his pocket. “It's from Chile,” he said. “The laser radar map.”

“Bit late now,” said Jasmine as her husband opened the email and looked at the attached map. “The shuttle's been out of contact for nearly ten hours. If you see something, we’ve got no way to warn them.”

James was silent, staring at his phone. Jasmine dropped the chopped onions into the pan of soymeat and stirred it in. Her vision blurred as the onion fumes brought more water to her eyes and she wiped it away again. As soon as she could see again she looked over at her husband, still sitting silently in his wheelchair, still staring at his phone. “James?” she said, suddenly nervous. “What is it?”

He looked up, his face pale with fear. He looked down at his phone, swallowed nervously and looked up at her again. “I think we’ve got a problem,” he said in a quiet voice.

Jasmine hurried over to his side and looked down at the image on his phone screen. A low resolution map of the Bay of Success. Grainy, the pixels so large as to be visible, something almost unheard of these days. Thick, black lines ran across it where some problem with the radio telescope had prevented them from receiving data from those areas, but the image was complete enough for them to see a thick, white line that hadn't been there before. Jasmine felt her mouth go dry at the sight of it and her legs were suddenly weak. She had to clutch hold of the sink to steady herself. “Is that an escarpment?” she asked. “What you were afraid of?”

“That would be my guess,” her husband replied. “A crack right across the Bay of Success, with one side lifted at least a mile higher than the other. Right across the place where the shuttle's going to land. The thick cloud means they won't see it until just before they crash right into it. I have to tell Ben.” He was already calling him up from his list of contacts.

“Is there some way we can warn them?” asked Jasmine. James just looked at her and she saw that he had nothing, no idea at all. All he could do was hope that Ben would think of something. Jasmine walked across the kitchen, suddenly full of nervous energy, her whole body trembling. She'd only met Eddie a few days before. She'd barely got to know him, but she liked him and now he was going to die and there was nothing they could do about it. In the other room the children continued to squabble, not a care in the real world. She found herself wanting to go in there, grab the MiniVirt and throw it against the wall.

“Ben!” said James into the phone. “The laser radar image just came in from Chile. We've got a problem. A big one.”

☆☆☆

An hour later, James was back in the Wetherby research centre with Ben, Alice, Karen, Stuart and Samantha, all who could be reached at short notice. Jasmine had had to stay at home with the children but was teleconferencing, her face looking out from one of the screens on the wall. Another screen showed the laser radar map. “This is bad,” said Ben flatly.

“You have a flair for understatement,” said Karen, kneading her temples with the fingers of her left hand.

“Are we sure it’s an escarpment?” asked Alice. “Perhaps it’s a line of white ash thrown up by a nearby volcano.”

They all looked at Samantha for the answer, although none of them really needed it. Alice had been speaking from pure desperation. “It's a topographical map,” she said. “It shows how much of the radar signal is being reflected back to us. Those aren’t colours, it's radar brightness. Besides, there’s nothing in the direction its pointing that has ever been seismically active, not even billions of years ago. If it were somewhere else it might be the result of a river of lava flowing through a sub surface fissure, erupting somewhere and throwing up a line of ash, but even then the ash would be thicker at one end, tapering towards the other. I'm afraid an escarpment is the only plausible explanation for this feature.”

“Where's the crater they’re supposed to land at?” asked Stuart.

“Right here,” said Ben, touching the display. His finger left a yellow dot right beside the white line. “Less than two kilometres from it.”

“Maybe they'll come to a stop before running into it.”

“Doesn’t matter,” replied Samantha. “The whole reason for using the Bay of Success in the first place was because it’s a large area of unbroken rock. We can't use anything in that area now. How great an area does the map cover?” she asked James.

“I asked them to focus on the Bay of Success, but they did an area around it as well. The entire eastern half of Mare Fecunditatis.” He zoomed the map out until the Bay of Success was just a small area in the middle. Then he zoomed in on the Sea of Fertility. “There seem to be a few new features in the north,” he said, pointing to some white marks that had no counterpart on any existing moon map, “but the rest seems unchanged.”

Samantha stared at the image. “I wish it was better quality,” she said. “I can barely see anything! There are craters fifty miles across that just don’t show up here!”

“We just have to do the best we can with what we’ve got,” said Ben.

Samantha noted the slight tone of rebuke in his voice and arched an eyebrow at him, but then she returned her attention to the map. “Well, this was always good, solid ground, and so far as I can tell it still is. The problem is that it’s quite a bit further from the prograde point, over a hundred kilometres. Does that matter?”

“Beggars can't be choosers,” said Ben. “If that's the closest we can get then it’ll have to do. I assume we’re still looking for a small crater, large enough for the impact to have cleared the surface regolith but not large enough to have fractured the underlying rock.”

Samantha nodded. “There are several in the area.” She pulled up a map of the moon and overlaid it on the laser radar map. “We should avoid this area, I think. This crater is likely to have fractured the bedrock for a dozen klicks in all directions. That one too. This area here is our best bet, I think. Between Webb B and Webb S.” She indicated two smaller craters named after their proximity to the large crater called Webb. “There's a whole rash of small craters in this area. They could land anywhere this twenty kilometre region and there'll be a small crater nearby they can use.”

“Okay, so that's the new landing site,” said Ben. “All we’ve got to do now is figure out how to tell Eddie.”

“Is there any chance they'll pick up a normal radio signal?” asked Stuart.

“We'll try, of course,” said Ben, “But we should assume not. We need something else.”

“We could just get a radio telescope to blast a super powerful signal to them,” suggested Alice. “Something so powerful they'd pick it up even if they were half way to Alpha Centauri.”

“The problem is that they may not be listening,” said Ben. “They’re not expecting word from us, they think they're cut off. They think they know what they have to do. They may have turned their receiver off.”

“They'd leave it on, surely,” said Alice. “Just in case.”

“Even if they do receive it, they have no way to reply,” said Stuart.

“The Deep Space Network could hear them, surely,” said Alice. “If they can receive signals from the Neptune probes...”

“They send data at very low bit rates, because of the signal to noise ratio,” said Ben. “You can't send a voice over that kind of distance, not without the kind of equipment the Apollo missions carried. No, they can't reply. We just have to send them signals in every different way we can and hope that they receive one of them. So, let's put our heads together and see what we can come up with...”

☆☆☆

“Engine shutoff complete,” said Benny. “Deceleration burn accomplished.”

Everyone relaxed, including Eddie. Over the past two days, as they'd chatted together and the others had explained the challenges they'd faced and overcome in order to modify the engines, Eddie had come to understand just what a gamble they’d been facing the first time they used them. “Well, that's twice,” he said, “and we're still here. Looks like you guys did a good job after all.”

“Maybe,” conceded Paul. “But the load we’ll be putting on them when we start towing the moon... Perhaps we're better just not thinking about it.”

Benny turned the shuttle to place the engines between them and the sun again. As he did so, the moon came into view through the cockpit window. Streaks of cloud, moving visibly in the supersonic winds, lit up with almost continuous flashes of lightning any one of which dwarfed the largest lightning discharges ever seen on Earth. It was a majestic but terrifying display that pulled the eye irresistibly and held them, forcing them to stare in awe. They’d been watching it grow over the past two days, they should have been used to it, but it somehow seemed more real now that they'd been caught in its gravitational pull. Before, if the engines had failed, they would have simply sped past it, continuing on their elongated orbit until they came close to Earth again, some twenty days later, but now they belonged to the moon until they used their engines again to break away from it.

“Where's Lunar Rescue One?” asked Paul. “It should be nearby.”

Benny looked at the cockpit radar display. “I'm guessing that's it there,” he said, indicating a green blob all alone in the darkness. “Two hundred klicks from us, pretty much right in our path. We'll need to perform a six minute burn to match velocities with it, starting in twenty minutes. Be ready with your wonderful machine, Eddie.”

“I haven’t turned it off yet. Might as well leave it on if we're going to need it again so soon.”

“Time to suit up, Susan,” said Paul, floating up out of his seat. “Last one to get their wings on buys the beer.”

“Did someone say beer?” said Eddie, giving the mass dampener a quick looking over. The fuel cell powering it was a little warm but he didn't think it was anything to worry about.

“When we get back home,” said Paul. “After the cheering crowds and the medals, when we have a little time together, there will be beer!”

“Swell,” said Susan without enthusiasm. She floated over to the interdeck access hatch, the opening in the floor that led down to the lower deck, and pushed herself down it.

“I expect fruit juice will also be available, if that's what you prefer,” said Eddie.

“I suspect it’s the spacewalk that's the source of her unhappiness rather than the prospect of alcohol,” said Paul quietly to Eddie. “The poor girl didn't sign up for all this going outside. She was supposed to be a space scientist, not an astronaut. She's a victim of her own qualifications.”

“Can you please leave the talking about me until I'm out of earshot?” came Susan's voice, floating up through the interdeck access hatch.

“Since I'm coming out with you, that's going to be rather difficult,” called back Paul.

“Is this going to be a problem?” asked Eddie nervously. “Maybe we should have brought one of the Chinese after all.”

“They're engineers, not scientists,” replied Paul. “Basically construction workers. They wouldn’t know where to begin working on a mass dampener. We don't know for certain that it’s the alien gizmo that failed. For all we know it might just be a blown fuse or a micrometeorite impact. We need someone who can diagnose and fix a piece of sophisticated electronic equipment, not a welder. We need Susan.”

“It's great to feel wanted,” came Susan's voice again. “You coming or what?”

“I thought you might want some privacy down there while you get undressed.”

“Right now, us seeing each other’s naughty bits is about number nine thousand on my list of things I'm not happy about. At least we won't need catheters for a spacewalk this short. Get down here and let's just get this over with.”

“If you're sure.” Paul gave Eddie a ‘you can't win’ look and then followed Susan down through the hole in the deck.

The course correction went without a hitch, and twenty minutes later the shuttle was parked alongside the third stage of the Long March rocket. Benny carefully manoeuvred the shuttle closer and closer until he was able to reach out with the robot arm and link the two craft together. “We are docked,” he said over the intercom. “You may proceed when ready.”

“Copy that,” said Paul's voice from the cockpit speaker. Eddie had come forward to sit in the co-pilot's chair and could see the Long March clearly through the upper window. From a distance, we must look like a glider attached to a windmill, he mused as the Long March's four solar panel arms gleamed in the sun. Beyond, the moon's churning, lightning riven atmosphere made a fearsome backdrop and Eddie tried not to think that they were planning to go down there, into that thunderous, hurricane force storm. Now that they were this close, the idea seemed more insane than ever!

Susan came into view from behind and to the left, followed by Paul. Both had their wings fully deployed, making them look like herald angels come to announce the end of the world. Tiny jets of incandescent fire blossomed at the ends of the feathers as they turned and flew towards the Long March. Susan held a small box in her hand, Eddie saw. The box containing the American mass dampener. Their faces were invisible in the darkness inside their helmets, but Eddie knew that if he could see it, Susan's face would have had an expression of grim determination to get the job done as fast as possible and return to the shuttle.

Paul reached the Long March first and began unscrewing the bolts holding the outer casing in place. By the time Susan reached him he had the panel off and was peering inside. “No obvious sign of damage,” said his voice from the cockpit speaker. “I'm going to perform a diagnostic on the human elements of the device.” The Chinese had already performed a remote diagnostic, of course, but there was no harm in checking. Eddie imagined Paul’s helmet translating the Chinese characters into English and displaying them on the inside of his visor. “Diagnostic confirms no fault in the human elements,” he said. “That only leaves the alien device.”

He shifted position to give himself a better view inside. “I can see it,” he said. “It may be just my imagination but it looks darker than it did the first time I saw it. Wait a minute...” There was a pause as he told his helmet to find a photo he'd taken with the helmet camera and display it on the inside of his visor. “Yes, It’s definitely darker,” he said. “That's probably what a burned out mass dampener looks like. So hopefully all we’ve got to do is replace it with Susan's one.”

He beckoned for her to come closer and moved aside to make room for her. Susan took his place in front of the opening in the side of the rocket and looked in. “Should only take a few minutes,” she said. “I'm unfastening the first of the power leads.” She reached down to the toolbox she was wearing on her belt and removed a small screwdriver. She reached carefully in with it, past cables and delicate components to where a screw was holding the power lead in place. The powered head turned to loosen the screw and then she used it to lever the thin cable out of its housing. “One down,” she said. “Now for number two.”

It took about half an hour to unfasten all the cables and linkages holding the alien device in place, and then she reached in with a pair of pliers to remove it. As soon as it was clear of the rocket Paul took it from her and tucked it into a pocket of his spacesuit. Susan then reached down for the small box she'd brought from the shuttle. She entered a long number into the keypad on the front and the lid opened. Inside was the other alien mass dampener. It was visibly lighter in colour than the other one had been. It looked healthier, if such a word could be applied to an inanimate object. Susan looked at it for a moment, and then carefully picked it up with the pliers.

Inside the shuttle, Eddie watched as Susan simply stared at the alien device. What’s she waiting for? he wondered. Paul’s body language also seemed to suggest puzzlement, but he made no move to intervene, simply waiting for whatever thoughts were passing through Susan’s head to complete themselves. Maybe she's contemplating the fact that alien hands once held that device, three hundred million years ago, Eddie thought. Or perhaps she's trying to reconcile it with her religious belief that the universe is only a few thousand years old. Whatever she was thinking, Eddie found himself growing suddenly nervous. If she were to suddenly throw the alien device away, into space, what chance would we have to find it again? he wondered. Then he wondered where that thought had come from. Surely she would never do such a thing! It would be purest madness!

Whatever she'd been thinking, she evidently decided that she'd been thinking for long enough because, to Eddie's relief, she reached out with the pliers to place the device inside the rocket. “Placing the new device in its housing,” she said. “There, it’s in.” She withdrew the pliers and took hold of the screwdriver again. “Reattaching the fastening strap.”

It took longer to replace the wires and cables than it had to remove them and it was a full hour before the job was done. “Would you like to check my work?” she asked, moving aside from the rocket.

“I'm sure that's not necessary,” said Paul, but he moved in front of the opening in the side of the rocket and peered in. “Looks good,” he said. “Connections look good. Securing straps look good. Looks like a perfect job. Shall we close up?” He took hold of the section of outer casing and replaced it on the side of the rocket. Ten minutes later he'd replaced the screws and the Long March once again looked the same as when they'd arrived. “Done,” he said with satisfaction. “Let's get back inside.”

Paul took a moment to look around first, though. This was only the second time he'd walked in space, separated from the hard vacuum only by a spacesuit. He'd worked in space many times, but always with the ROMIS, the remote operated robot, while he remained safely inside. Like so many other astronauts before him, he was finding that seeing space through a pothole or on a display screen just wasn’t the same. The difference was that the immensity of space stretched out from him in all directions, most importantly below him. Although it was true that there was no up or down in space, he had the powerful sense that the direction under his feet was down, and there was nothing there. Nothing but empty space going down and down, forever. Instead of giving him vertigo, though, Paul felt a strange sense of exhilaration as if he were being lifted up and up towards some glorious, transcendental fulfilment. How do people ever let go of this? he wondered. How could anyone return to a mundane life down on Earth, walking on the ground, after experiencing this?

The thought of Earth made him look to where his home planet was hanging in space, beyond the shuttle. So small! Aboard the space station, he'd only ever been able to see a small part of it, curving away beneath him, but now he could see all of it, a ball in space! Fragile as a soap bubble and far more beautiful! There was a spark of light from it, probably caused by sunlight reflecting from one of the handful of satellites still in orbit around it. What a miraculous chance, he thought, that it should just happen to reflect the rays of the sun in exactly this direction, even if only momentarily...

The flash came again, except that, now that he was getting a better look at it, it didn't look like a reflection. It looked more as if someone was turning a light on and off. There was no perceptible increase and decrease in brightness the way there would be if the Sun’s reflection was sliding across a rotating surface. Instead, it was instantly at full brightness and then instantly off again, as if someone was flipping a switch.

And there it was again, and again! A longer one this time, lasting nearly a full second where the previous ones had only lasted half as long. As he watched in bafflement the flashes kept coming, some long, some short. Almost like Morse code...

“Er, guys?” he said. “Anyone else seeing that?”

“Seeing what?” asked Eddie.

“Someone down on Earth’s flashing a laser at us.”

There was a pause as the others looked. “Probably just someone flashing a good luck message at us,” said Benny. “There's plenty of people with lasers that powerful. Probably someone half drunk at a party trying to impress the other guests.”

“What are they saying?” asked Eddie. “Do any of you know Morse code?”

“The computer does,” said Benny. “Let's see.” He searched the computer's memory for a Morse code translation chart and put it up on one of the cockpit monitor screens. “So. That's an N. Three dashes, that’s an O. Another N. R, A, D, I, O...”

“Turn on radio!” said Eddie.

“They’re telling us to turn on the radio! Have you turned it off, then?”

“Didn't seem much point keeping it turned on when we're out of range,” said Benny. He touched the touch screen. “Okay, it’s turned on.”

A voice immediately started to come from the speakers. A voice that Eddie recognised, to his surprise. “...we used to scan the area has very low resolution, but you knew you were risking your lives when you went up there. All we can say for sure is that any changes to the terrain are too small for us to see at one kilometre resolution. Please keep your radio turned on and we’ll give you any further information as we get it. This message now repeats. This is Ben Wrexham from the Wetherby exotic materials research institute...”

They listened to get the complete message. “This is Ben Wrexham from the Wetherby exotic materials research institute. My voice is being sent to you by means of the Lovell telescope at Jodrell Bank, which we’ve modified to transmit a signal powerful enough to reach you and at a frequency that you should be able to receive. We know you can't respond, so just listen. You must abandon your plans to land in the Bay of Success. Moonquakes have broken up the lava plain and created large escarpments that will make landing impossible there. Instead, we have found an alternative landing site for you at zero point seven seven one degrees south, fifty seven point nine one degrees east. There are a number of small craters in that area where you can attach the cable. We can't guarantee you a smooth landing, I'm afraid. The laser radar we used to scan the area has very low resolution, but you knew you were risking your lives when you went up there. All we can say for sure is that any changes to the terrain are too small for us to see at one kilometre resolution. Please keep your radio turned on and we’ll give you any further information as we get it. This message now repeats. This is Ben Wrexham...”

Benny called up a map of the moon and put it on one of the cockpit monitors. “In the Mare Fecunditatis,” he said. “Near the Webb crater.”

“About two hundred kilometres from our original landing site,” said Eddie, his face turning pale. “Our original landing site was as close as possible to the prograde point, where the winds are lightest. This new site, the winds are going to be quite strong. Nowhere near supersonic, like elsewhere on the moon, but still strong. We'll be landing in a gale.”

“You getting all this, you guys?” asked Benny.

“Yes,” said Susan's voice from the cockpit speaker. “I was just thinking that this mission was a bit boring. Thank God we’ve got a bit of a challenge now.”

“You coming back inside now?” asked Benny, giving Eddie a worried look.”

“You want to test the mass dampener before we come back in?” said Paul. “So we can take a look and maybe fix it while we're still out here?”

“Okay,” said Benny. “Let's see if these codes the Chinese gave us are any good.” He tapped on the touch screen. “Long March One is giving me a ready signal,” he said. “You ready out there?”

“Do it,” said Paul.

“Roger. Activating mass dampener in three, two, one...”

The moon's atmosphere below them leapt upwards and Benny hurriedly shut it down again before the convulsing moon caused any more damage to their landing site. “Confirmed,” he said. “Lunar Rescue One is back in action.”

“Good!” said Paul with satisfaction. “Come on, Suse, let’s get back inside.”