“We've just had confirmation that the heroic crew of Lunar Rescue Two have successfully repaired Lunar Rescue One,” said the reporter excitedly. “The mass dampener, donated by the United States government is, we believe, similar in design and capabilities to the one used by the Chinese. It seems that both countries have been following parallel research paths and may have been collaborating in the effort, which would explain why the American device was compatible with the Chinese apparatus.”

“What about Dad?” said Richard irritably. “Never mind about the bloody mass dampener. How's Dad?”

“If anything had gone wrong, they'd have told us,” said Margaret bitterly. “It would be a good bit of drama, after all. They don't want everything to go smoothly, that would be boring.”

Len looked as though he was about to say something, but the reporter was still talking and the family fell silent to listen. The man himself had disappeared from the screen, to be replaced by a magnified image of the moon, fast moving clouds lit from below by titanic flashes of lightning like flashbulbs going off at the bottom of a muddy stream. The shuttle and the Long March, so close together that they seemed to be two parts of the same object, hung in front of it, floating serenely against the furious backdrop. The image was just detailed enough to show two tiny white blobs drifting slowly towards the shuttle.

“These images are being sent from the Nevada Lunar Observatory and show Astronauts Paul Lewis and Susan Kendall returning to the space shuttle Pluvier. They are unable to communicate with us and tell us what obstacles they faced and overcome, because the shuttle, which was adapted for the mission at extremely short notice, lacks the means to communicate over such a great distance, but the whole world saw the disturbance of the moon's atmosphere that told us that their test firing of the mass dampener was successful. Astronaut Eddie Nash must now convert their much smaller and less powerful mass dampener into a mass amplifier in preparation for the most dangerous part of the mission, the descent to the surface of the moon. You can see, behind the shuttle, just what kind of environment they will be descending into. This must surely be the most desperate, most dangerous mission in human history, and we can only pray that these brave men survive the terrors of the moon's turbulent atmosphere...”

“Turn it off!” cried Margaret in distress. Richard reached over and pressed the power button. Silence fell in their small, prefabricated apartment, broken only by the sound of a small aircraft taxiing along the runway just outside. “Paul's risking his life, and it’s just entertainment to them!”

“What chance has he got, really?” asked Hazel, looking just as scared as her mother. “They say the winds on the moon are faster than the speed of sound!”

“Not where they're going to land,” said Richard, trying to sound calm and confident. “They're going to land on the cold side, where the winds from the hot side are all coming together and slowing down. It'll just be a stiff breeze where they are.”

“Is that actually true or are you just saying that to make me feel better?”

“Both. Is it working?”

“No! Those reporters kept asking how we were coping with dad being in so much danger!”

“They just want everything to be as sensational as possible,” said Richard. He'd almost punched the man in the face when he’d asked the question. He'd spent the whole day trying to reassure his mother and his sister, and then a bunch of stupid reporters had turned up, hammering on the door, demanding to talk to the family so they could quiz them about the ‘almost certainly suicidal' mission Paul was about to attempt. Richard had thrown them out and then stormed off to have harsh words with Group Captain Arndale about letting the reporters on the base in the first place. The Group Captain had apologised and assured them that there would be no repetition, which was something, but the damage had been done. Margaret and Helen were nervous wrecks and it was everything the others could do to stop them tearing their hair out.

“When are they going to attempt the landing?” asked Len.

“Soon,” said Richard. “Within a couple of hours, probably. As soon as Golden Boy Eddie’s finished with the mass amplifier, I expect. The sooner they start, the sooner they'll be done and out of there.”

“I wish we could talk to him!” said Hazel. “Once they go down into those clouds we won't even be able to see them! If something happens to them, we'll never know what happened! We'll never know what his last thoughts were.”

“His last thoughts will be of us,” said Margaret confidently. “Unless it’s all over so quickly that he doesn’t have time for any last thoughts at all.”

“Yes, there's that,” said Cathy. “If anything does happen to them, chances are it’ll be instant. They won't suffer.”

“How can they even land on the moon?” asked Len. “I heard, a few years back, that flying a shuttle was like flying a brick, even in the conditions it was designed for. The shuttle's designed to glide through Earth’s atmosphere, through air of a certain density and under a certain gravity. The moon's atmosphere’s completely different! The experts must think it can do it, but I don't see how.”

“Some expert on the telly earlier said that all the differences tend to cancel out,” said Richard. “He said it flies just fine on a simulator.”

“But the pilot's got no experience on the moon!”

“I would imagine that the autopilot will be doing all the flying,” said Richard. “It has reflexes a thousand times faster than any human, it can adapt to any situation. If the human was flying, then I'd be worried.”

“But there's still no runway!” said Hazel. “They could hit a rock, go down into a ditch...”

Len reached over and took her hand, gave it a gentle squeeze. “They probably will take damage landing,” he said, “but they'll be okay so long as it’s not too great. They won't be returning to Earth in that shuttle, they'll be using the Chinese shuttle for that, so it doesn't matter what happens to the heat shield. The wings can rip right off. Once they're on the ground they won't need them any more...”

“Can we please talk about something else?” begged Margaret. “I know what danger he's going into! I just want to pretend he'll be coming safely home and that, one day, this will be nothing but an awful memory!”

“He is going to be coming safely home!” insisted Richard. His phone started ringing. He took it from his pocket, looked at the screen and swiped it to reject the call. “Unknown number,” he said. “Another reporter wanting a quote about how we're bearing up during these stressful times.”

“Vultures!” spat Hazel. “Preying on other people's misery!”

“They're just going to keep on calling,” said Len. “I've told my phone to automatically reject all unknown callers. You should do the same.” Richard nodded and opened his phone's settings menu.

“If everything goes well,” said Margaret, “What's the earliest we'll know?”

“We watch the moon's atmosphere,” said Richard. “If it starts pulsing, we’ll know they're pulling the moon.”

“But that won't mean that... That everyone's still alive!” said Hazel. “Why did it have to be him? Why couldn't he have stayed on the space station and let someone else go instead?”

Len squeezed her hand tighter. Cathy came forward and quietly took Richard's hand. “All we can do is wait, and hope for the best,” said Richard. “I believe he'll be coming safely home. I don't know how I know it, but I believe it’s true.”

Margaret knew that he was just saying that for her and Hazel's benefit and that, inside, he was as scared as they were, but she was grateful to him for saying it nonetheless. And then, because they wanted to know as much as possible about what was happening to Paul, they turned on the tablet again and watched the news reports in an anxious, terrified silence.

☆☆☆

“We may have a problem,” said James Buckley as the door closed behind him. The others, most of the senior researchers and half a dozen junior members and assistants, looked around as he drove his chair towards them. Most of the institute's normal business, indeed almost all activity around the world, had stopped as everyone, from world leaders down to the homeless people in the refugee camps, gathered around anything that would display a television picture. The wall mounted television of Wetherby Institute's common room was currently tuned to the BBC, where a reporter was still explaining the risks the astronauts would be facing as they prepared for their descent to what was left of the moon's surface.

“Another one?” said Alice in disbelief, sitting up straight and brushing the hair out of her eyes. “Because God knows this whole endeavour isn't risky enough already.”

“I just said maybe,” said James, parking his chair between the sofa on which Stuart and Jessica were sitting, his arm around her shoulders, and the padded armchair on which Karen was sitting. She put down the tablet on which she'd been writing some notes to give him her full attention. James synced his tablet to the television so he could display the latest images of Mare Fecunditatis he'd just downloaded. “See the bit where the red arrow’s pointing?” he said.”

“What about it?” asked Frank, leaning forward to stare at it intently.

“There are no details there,” said Karen, frowning. “Is that it? The land there is completely smooth.”

James nodded. “Just a sec, let me...” He tapped on his tablet and the screen split to show two images of the same area side by side. “The image on the left shows the first radar map we got of the area. The one on the right just came in. As you can see...”

Everyone nodded together, their brows creasing with concern. The area had always been almost completely smooth and level, that was why they'd chosen it as the place to land the shuttle, but there had nonetheless been the occasional small crater and escarpment left behind by some seismic event millions or billions of years before. They showed up clearly on the older image, but were absent across a wide swathe of the newer image. Ben felt his heart miss a beat with fear. “Lava?” he said. “Is that a flood of lava sweeping across the moon?”

James nodded and displayed another image on his tablet, a magnified image of the moon taken in infra red. “This is a heat image of the same area.” Most of the image was various shades of blue, signifying cold, but a finger of livid, angry red was pushing across the moon, reaching towards the spot where the astronauts were soon going to be landing their shuttle. “It seems that almost the entire volume of the moon is now molten,” he said. “What's left of the solid crust is an island about two thousand kilometres across and probably no more than a few hundred kilometres thick.”

“And it's denser than the molten rock below it,” said Karen, her face pale with fear. “It's starting to sink.”

“The infra red image shows heat spreading towards the prograde point from the west,” said James, his voice giving no hint of the turmoil of emotions he was feeling. “And the eastern side is lifting. The solid remnant is tilting as it sinks. Lower regions will be flooded first. Valleys and depressions that reach the edge. Soon, only the eastern rim will be left above the sea of molten rock, and it will disappear as the entire landmass sinks with increasingly greater speed.”

“How long have they got?” asked Ben.

“We don't know when the lava first began to spill inwards,” said James. “We can monitor how fast it moves from now on, but it takes time to do a complete laser radar scan. Also, our knowledge of the viscosity of magma from the deep mantle is little more than guesswork.” He looked across at Samantha hopefully.

“It was,” she said, smiling as every eye turned towards her. “It just happens to be the subject of a research project I've been working on, on and off, for the past couple of years. Quite a bit of luck, right? I was planning to publish in about six months, as soon as I'd checked the figures and run it past my collaborators. If you’ll give me a moment to do a few calculations...” She picked up her new tablet and began tapping on the screen. “Copernicus gave us good data on rock density and chemistry from all depths almost all the way down to the core itself, and for the past few hours I've been running some heat flow models to try to project what the moon will be doing next. The timescale seems to be a little off, it wasn't predicting the last bit of crust to sink until around this time tomorrow, but if I adjust the timescale to bring the prediction into line with what’s happening now...” She stared down at the screen. “It gives them about twelve hours before the magma reaches the landing site.”

“Is that long enough?” asked Frank. “It's not just the time it’ll take them to land, do the job and take off again. The cable has to be attached to solid ground long enough for them to tow the moon back into its correct orbit.”

“Once they begin pulling, they'll lift the entire two thousand kilometres of rock back up again,” pointed out Stuart. “They may even rip it entirely away from the rest of the moon!”

“Doesn't matter,” said Jessica. “During the intervals when the mass dampener’s turned off, its mass will be enough to pull the rest of the moon towards it. A gravity tractor.”

“Yes, I'm just saying that it’ll give them more time before the magma reaches the cable.”

“A pancake of rock two thousand miles across is easily large enough for gravity to pull it into a spherical shape!” said Alice.

“Eventually, yes,” said Stuart, “but it’ll take way longer than the five minutes it’ll take to fall back to the moon's surface.”

“Five minutes is easily long enough for the pancake to start breaking apart,” his wife countered, “and the impact with the magma ocean below will also break it up! Who knows how large a chunk of rock they'll end up pulling.”

“It can be big enough to act as an effective gravity tractor even if it only ends up a couple of hundred kilometres across,” said Ben. “We've had this discussion before. We agreed that it should work.”

“If we warn them of the approaching lava, they may hurry,” said Frank. “Make mistakes.”

“Are you suggesting we shouldn't warn them?” asked Alice, staring at him in disbelief.

“They need to know they're facing a deadline of some sort,” said Karen, “or they may take their time. Make sure they're doing a good job and end up taking too long.”

“And if they know there's a river of lava racing towards their landing site they may decide not to risk landing at all!” said Frank. “They may scrub the mission!”

“As they're perfectly entitled to!” said Alice, he eyes flashing with anger as she glared at him.

“Okay, let’s try to keep cool heads,” said Ben, glancing from one to another of the team of scientists. “Clearly we have to tell Eddie that they have a new deadline. They have to know the timescale they're operating under. I’ll tell Jodrell Bank, tell them to send a warning.” He stood and pulled his phone from his pocket, then walked to the other end of the room.

“They can take off again any time they want,” said Frank. “Just turn on the mass dampener and they're up. The atmosphere will carry them up as it rushes upwards, into space. Even if they didn't have warning, they'll see the magma flowing towards them in plenty of time to be ready for it.”

“There may be people outside the shuttle, on the surface,” said Alice. “They may not have time to return to the shuttle.”

“Which is why Ben's sending them a warning right now. Besides, the most dangerous part of the mission is their descent and landing. That alone is crazy dangerous! If they're willing to try that, I can't imagine anything else putting them off.”

“Do you really think they'll go through with it?” asked Alice. “Try to fly through that, that...”

“They knew what they were up against when they volunteered to go,” pointed out Frank.

“Yes, but now they’re just a couple of hundred kilometres above the cloud decks! I bet it's feeling a lot more real now than it was when it was just images on a monitor screen. Their pilot may have his finger on the button, ready to fire the de-orbit burn, take another look out the cockpit window and say ‘To hell with this, this is insane!' If it was me up there, I'd probably just turn the shuttle right around and come on home!”

“They won't do that,” said Stuart, but there was a tone of doubt in his voice. “They know what’s at stake.”

“They might do it, and if they did I wouldn't blame them one bit! I only knew Eddie for a few days, but I liked him! If he came home instead of trying to land, I'd give him the biggest hug!”

“Let's not talk about him as if he's already dead,” said Karen. “They say that, aerodynamically, the moon's atmosphere is now almost the same as Earth’s. If they can land on Earth, they can land on the moon.”

“A wheels up belly flop across ground strewn with boulders. It'll only take one tiny rupture of a fuel tank or a feed line.”

“The heat shield will take most of the damage. It's tough, designed to take punishment.”

“The Columbia was destroyed because its heat shield was hit by a piece of foam!” said Alice, glaring at the other woman. “A piece of bloody foam!”

“They don't use RCC any more, precisely because it’s so brittle. They use BKL now, it’s much stronger.”

“But still designed to protect against heat, not mechanical damage!”

“The fuel tanks are in the cargo bay and the engines are in the SMS pods, all high up on the shuttle, away from the ground. They're pretty much all they need to get home, so long as the basic airframe remains intact. It doesn't matter if everything else’s trashed.”

“And what about the crew cabin? What about the crew themselves?”

“Ladies, please!” said Ben, returning and tucking his phone back into his pocket. “I've told Geoff to send them a warning. It's down to them now. They know what they're up against. Whether they proceed or whether they return, it’s their decision and we should support them whatever they decide to do.”

Alice and Karen glared at each other a moment longer, but then Alice nodded reluctantly and dropped her eyes. Karen reached over to touch her hand. Alice's hand jerked back at the unexpected contact, but then she glanced across at the other woman and took her fingers in a firm grasp. Then they all looked back at the television where the reporter was still talking about the weather on the moon as if he was reading the football results.