“Ready for the fourth pull,” said Benny. “Turning the mass dampener on in sixty seconds.” Eddie acknowledged and reached again for the switch on the side of the device mounted on the bulkhead by his feet.

“My oxygen's getting low,” said Susan. “Please hook me up before I run out.” She nodded her head towards the hose lying on the floor by her feet. It ran across the floor and down through the interdeck access hatch to the spacesuit storage rack in the room below where they were normally hung while their air tanks were refilled. Paul had rigged it up just after she'd been secured to the chair, to avoid having to release her and take her below every few hours.

“Can you wait?” asked Eddie. “We’ll be done and on our way home in thirty minutes.”

“In thirty minutes I’ll be dead. I'm almost out.”

“Why didn't you say something earlier?”

“I didn't think. There was too much going on.”

“The spacesuit sounds an alarm when you get down to thirty minutes.”

“There wasn’t an alarm. I think the suit may have been damaged when we were fighting. I'm serious, Eddie, I'm almost out of oxygen!”

Eddie checked the clock on the edge of his visor display. Still forty five seconds before he needed to turn the device on. It would only take a couple of seconds to plug the hose in. He unfastened his safety belts, therefore, and leaned down to grab the hose, forcing the stiff spacesuit to bend. He got his thick, clumsy gloved fingers around it and picked it up. Then he pushed himself over towards Susan. The attachment point was on her waist. He reached down to grab a fold of her spacesuit to steady himself and pushed the end of the hose towards the socket.

With a grunt of effort, Susan pulled her arm the rest of the way free from the zip tie and threw it around his waist, pulling him tight against her. Eddie gave a gasp of surprise and tried to push himself away, but she held on with manic strength, her face twisted into a grimace of effort. “Susan! Stop it! You'll kill us all!”

Paul and Benny looked around to see what was happening. “Susan!” cried Paul in horror. “Let go of him! Now!” Susan made no reply, just held on tighter with her free hand as he struggled in greater desperation to free himself. He put a hand on her shoulder and pushed, but the angle was awkward and he couldn't use his full strength. “We hit the ground in two minutes!” cried Benny urgently.

Paul left his seat and pushed himself over it to go to Eddie's aid. He took hold of Susan's gloved hand and pulled. It came away from Eddie's waist, but Susan then lashed out with it, tearing it free from Paul's grip and grabbing Eddie's waist again. Paul turned himself so that he could brace his feet against the floor and reached out again to grab Susan's hand.

“Never mind that,” said Eddie, though. “Just flip the switch when Benny tells you to. Susan can cuddle me all she wants.” Paul nodded and moved to sit in Eddie's seat. Susan gave a cry of anger, though, and changed her grip to grab hold of the soldering iron he still had strapped to hisequipment belt. It was cold now, but the end was fairly sharp and made a pretty good dagger as she pulled it loose and stabbed it as hard as she could between his shoulder blades.

The air tanks of the spacesuits they were wearing were distributed around their upper bodies, adding a few centimetres to their thickness without the need for a bulky backpack. The end of the soldering iron penetrated the outer layers of fabric and sliced through the thin hose connecting two of the small tanks. Eddie heard the sound of escaping air and saw a warning light in his visor display. He pushed himself away in alarm as Susan stabbed again, this time puncturing one of the tanks itself. “Susan!” cried Eddie. “For God’s sake...”

“Yes, for God's sake!” replied Susan. She pulled the soldering iron free to stab again, but Eddie grabbed her wrist to stop her. He pulled the soldering iron out of her grasp and threw it across the cabin. Susan went to grab him about the waist again but Eddie had enough distance from her now to keep out of her grasp. “I'm leaking air!” he cried.

Paul began rising from his seat to help him, ”No!” cried Benny. “Throw the switch! Now!” Paul hesitated, looking at Eddie, floating near the ceiling. Every instinct he possessed screamed at him to help a crewmate in trouble. He could actually see the air jetting out through the two small holes in his back. “Paul!” cried Benny in distress. “Now! Before we hit the ground!”

Paul nodded, sat himself back down in Eddie's seat and flipped the switch. A small amount of gravity returned, turning the rear bulkhead into the floor. Eddie dropped down onto it and stood there. He reached one hand around for the punctures in his spacesuit, but his arms weren't able to bend nearly enough.

Paul climbed carefully out of his seat to help him, while the sound of Susan's laughter came from his helmet speakers. “Crazy bitch!” he cried. “What the hell’s gotten into you?” He went for the puncture repair kit while Susan used her free hand to try to free herself from the remaining zip ties.

“I can patch the suit,” Paul told Eddie, “but I can't patch the air tanks. You’ll be leaking air into your spacesuit, bypassing the regulators.”

“Does that matter?” asked Eddie. “So long as I’m breathing it?”

“Yes, it matters. The pressure inside your suit will be too high, like you’re deep sea diving. So long as you keep it on you’ll be okay, but the moment you take it off you’ll get the bends. You’ll have to decompress, and I don't know how long that’ll take. You might have to keep your suit on until we get back to Earth...”

Suddenly, though, Susan was free. She jumped out of her seat and threw herself up between the two front seats to make a grab for the joystick. Benny yelped in surprise and reached out to stop her, but she hauled herself hand over hand upwards towards the banks of screens and control panels that currently formed the ceiling. She hauled herself into the co-pilot’s chair and sat on its back while Benny reached over in an attempt to throw her back down. Susan kicked upwards, though, and her foot hit one of the touch screens, smashing it and causing the others to fill up with warning messages in flashing red.

Benny cursed in Swedish. “Dammit, what are you trying to do? Some help up here, guys!” Paul was too busy trying to patch the back of Eddie's spacesuit, though. Benny should be able to keep one slimly built woman from doing too much harm, he thought, but then he heard the alarms sounding in his helmet speakers and he looked up in shock. He gave the holes in Eddie’s spacesuit another quick glance. They weren't big, Eddie wouldn't run out of air in the next few minutes. Susan was the priority right now. He turned and kicked himself upwards, therefore, sailing easily between the two front seats in the low acceleration.

Benny, meanwhile, had unbuckled himself from his seat and was leaning over to try to stop Susan, who was reaching for the co-pilot's joystick. Benny’s hand landed on hers and they struggled for control of it. The shuttle pitched left and right as the attitude control jets in the nose fired erratically, but then Susan gathered all her strength and thrust it forward as far as it would go. The shuttle pitched forward and Benny and Susan were thrown against the control panels. More alarms sounded in their helmet speakers as they inadvertently activated several controls simultaneously and the shuttle spun around out of control.

Benny reached for the joystick again, but Susan had a firm grip on it and refused to let go. Paul hauled himself into the forward cockpit area and added his strength to Benny’s and together they pulled her gloved hand from the black, stubby handle. The joystick automatically centred itself, but the shuttle was still tumbling and as the tether wrapped itself around the small spacecraft the front window momentarily became down. All four astronauts fell towards it. Paul grabbed hold of the co-pilot’s chair and Benny hit the intact right hand window, but Eddie and Susan fell against the broken left hand window and Eddie fell through it and out into empty space.

For a moment, Eddie’s brain froze up as it refused to accept what had happened to him, but then he looked back and he saw the cockpit window from the outside. The realisation shocked his brain back into life, and the realisation that he was a dead man hit him like a sledgehammer. There was nothing within reach that he could grab hold of, he could only stare at the stars wheeling around him, regarding his predicament with dispassionate curiosity. He wondered whether his air would last until he fell down to the moon, and if he did, whether he would fall onto the remaining rocky crust or into blazing hot magma. It suddenly seemed very important that he knew which, even though his death would be immediate either way. Calm descended upon him. He thought back on all the things that had worried and concerned him during his life, all of which now seemed trivially unimportant.

The shuttle was still close alongside, and he wondered why he wasn't drifting away from it. He turned his head and was astonished to see Susan leaning out through the broken window, his wrist held in one outstretched hand. He realised that there had been voices coming from his helmet speakers for a while and that he'd been too shocked and terrified to notice. “We've got you,” said Benny’s voice. “Careful, we’re going to pull you back in.”

“Susan?” said Eddie. “I thought you were trying to kill us!” She didn't reply, but he could guess what had happened. Seeing him flying away through the window, she'd reached out and grabbed his arm in a pure reflex action before she’d known what she was doing, and once she had him she couldn't bring herself to let go. Stabbing him with a soldering iron was one thing, she'd known there were layers of thick fabric and gadgetry in his spacesuit. The sharp tip was very unlikely to reach his skin. Stabbing him had merely been a delaying tactic, forcing Paul to help him instead of stopping her. It had been the same when she’d come at him with the power drill. A puncture to a spacesuit was easily patched, and even if she'd reached his flesh it would have been a comparatively minor wound. This, though, was different. Letting him drift away into space would have been nothing less than cold blooded murder, and she simply wasn’t capable of such an act.

Between them, Susan and Benny carefully guided him back in through the broken window. He tried to see Susan's face as she leaned out to grab his waist, but the cockpit lights were reflected from her visor and he couldn’t see anything inside. He grasped hold of their arms and shoulders and carefully guided his legs in through the shards of broken glass around the window frame. Then he was inside and he realised he was trembling all over, shaking with the nearness of his escape. He allowed himself to just float there in the cabin while his body recovered.

The others were still talking, or rather shouting urgently. Once again, he'd been too wrapped up in his own concerns to notice. Benny had returned to his pilots seat and was wrestling with the controls in an attempt to get the shuttle back under control. He was yelling at Paul to turn the mass amplifier off, but Paul was reluctant to leave Susan alone in case she tried to sabotage the mission again. “You have to turn it off!” Benny repeated, though “I can't turn the mass dampener off until you turn the mass amplifier off!”

It took Eddie's overloaded brain a moment to process what he was saying, but gradually his mind cleared. Of course. They had to turn the mass dampener on the Long March rocket off every few minutes to allow the moon's gravity to slow down its expansion. Otherwise it would fly apart into a cloud of debris that would inevitably destroy the Earth as some of it was thrown downwards by gravitational interactions with larger fragments. They were long past the time they had intended to do so, and the cloud of fragments the moon had become was growing dangerously large. Also, the solid portion of crust they were pulling was getting too far from the rest of the moon, approaching the maximum range at which its gravity would have a useful effect on the moon’s orbit.

“I'll get it,” he said, pushing against the chair to propel himself to the back of the cabin. The shuttle continued to spin as he did so. He imagined the tether wrapping itself around the wings and rudder, perhaps getting burned in the exhaust from the engines. Benny was trying to keep the shuttle side on to the moon to avoid this, but as a result the tether wrapped itself around the largely undamaged right wing. As the shuttle once again pulled it tight it slipped towards the wing's tip. It snagged momentarily on a place where an impact with a boulder during landing had crumpled the wing's forward edge, but then it slipped free and the shuttle gave a sudden lurch forward until the tether was once again pulled tight. He heard Benny give a sigh of relief and he turned the shuttle so that it was once more pointed away from the moon.

Eddie reached the mass amplifier and reached down to flip the switch. Then he turned himself around and pushed himself down into his seat, fastening his seat belt to hold himself in place. He spent a moment contemplating the fact that he was still alive, then brought his attention firmly back to the here and now and the things that still needed doing.

Susan seemed to have gone lifeless. She simply floated there while Paul gently guided her through the air back to her seat. There wasn't enough room in the rear of the cabin for all three of them, so Eddie got back out of his seat to help. “I'm sorry,” said Paul, “but we have to tie you back to the chair. I know you saved Eddie's life, but we can't take any chances. You understand?”

Susan made no reply. She allowed herself to be placed back in her seat and remained there motionless while Paul went below to get some more zip ties. When he returned she made no protest as he tied them around her arms. Paul then made Eddie turn around so he could finish patching his spacesuit.

“Susan?” said Eddie hesitantly as Paul smeared fast setting sealant into the holes, followed by a layer of glue all across his back. “Susan, thanks for saving me.” Susan remained silent. So far as Eddie could tell she was simply staring straight ahead. “You saved my life.” Still no reply. “Susan? Are you okay?”

“What do you think?” she said at last.

Eddie breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you for saving my life,” he said again.

“I didn't mean to. I wanted to kill you. I wanted to kill all of us. I failed God.”

“Do you seriously think that saving a man's life is failing God?”

He has a plan. We are working against that plan. It was my duty to stop you.”

“What makes you so sure you know what God's plan is? Maybe God's plan was for us to succeed in our mission.”

“It wasn’t.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“I’m sure.” Eddie heard her giving a greatly heavy sigh. “I suppose I'm damned now.”

Eddie almost laughed aloud. “You seriously think you're damned for saving a man’s life? You are seriously screwed up!”

“One man's life is a small thing when compared to God's plan for mankind.”

“Doesn't it say in the Bible that whoever saves one life saves the whole world?”

“That's the Qur’an, and it’s based originally on Jewish texts.”

“But it’s what Christians believe too, isn’t it?” There was no answer. “Well,” continued Eddie. “If you're going to Hell, then I guess I am as well. Let's make a deal, okay? When we get there we’ll look out for each other, and then maybe Hell won't be so bad.”

Susan chuckled. It was a mocking, desperate laugh but it was something. “I don't think it works that way,” she said.

“Well, if it turns out that it does work that way, we'll stick together. Watch out for each other, and if a demon tries to stick a pitchfork into one of our arses, the other will chase it off. Deal?”

“Hold still,” said Paul impatiently, “or I’ll be the one sticking a pitchfork up your arse! This glue takes a couple of hours to set, the spacesuit is supposed to be hanging motionless in the meantime. If you keep moving, the patch won’t form a proper seal.”

Eddie nodded, forgetting that Paul couldn't see his face, and kept his attention on Susan. “Deal?” he repeated.

“I suppose,” she replied, “but you have a very simplistic idea of Hell. It’s not devils with pitchforks, it’s separation from God. All the human companionship in the world can't compensate for that.”

“Then we’ll just have to do the best we can for each other, won’t we? So, deal?”

“Fine, if It’ll make you happy.” The cabin lights were shining in through her visor and Eddie was relieved to see her give a weak smile.

“Now, start thinking what you're going to say when they ask you to make speeches. When you're a hero, the woman who fixed the Long March. One of the people who saved millions of lives...”

“Hero?” said Susan. “I'll be the most hated person on Earth! I’ll be going to prison for sabotage, attempted murder... They may just hang me from the nearest tree!”

“Of course they won't!” replied Eddie. “You're just being silly...”

“I tried to kill you! You think they're going to just ignore that fact?”

“Maybe...” Eddie hesitated as he considered possibilities. “Maybe they don't have to know. I mean, nobody except the four of us knows what happened. Suppose we just... Just didn't tell anyone?”

Susan actually laughed. “You think that'll work? What about the damage to your spacesuit, the mass amplifier? How are you going to explain that?”

“She's right, Eddie,” said Paul, pressing a patch onto his back between the shoulder blades. He smoothed it into place to make sure there were no gaps where air could escape. “Anyone with any technical knowledge will see immediately what happened. There's no keeping it secret.”

“Well, maybe we can persuade them to join us in a little deception. The Americans will want an American hero, after all. They won't be happy with the world being saved by two Englishmen and a Swede. They'll want to be able to tell the world that there was an American up here as well. Give it twenty years and most ordinary Americans will think that it was an entirely American mission. The rest of us will be forgotten.”

“You don't have a very high opinion of my country, do you?” said Susan, narrowing her eyes angrily.

“Sorry. I'm serious, though. The Americans will resist any suggestion that you're in any way less than perfect, and they've still got enough clout to persuade other countries to go along with them. I think they’ll go along with it, on the condition that you never go into space again.”

“That suits me,” said Susan earnestly.

“What do you think, Paul, Benny? Think we can pull it off?”

“I think we should definitely try,” said Paul. He gave Eddie’s back one final pat, then moved around him to where he could see Susan. “You're one of us, and we're with you no matter what. You weren't responsible for what happened. I knew you were stressed out, I should have supported you more...”

“I acted out of my faith, not because I was stressed out! I believed in what I was doing!”

“Do you regret saving me?” asked Eddie, watching her carefully.

“No, of course not! I... It's complicated! I knew what I was supposed to do, I was just too weak to do it. It wasn't because I was stressed, though. I'm not crazy!”

Eddie had his own opinion on that, but he still felt he owed her a debt and was determined to defend her in any way he could. “Well, whatever,” he said. “What about you, Benny? Are you in?”

“I am,” the Swede replied. “Susan is one of us, a valued and well respected colleague.”

“That's decided then,” said Eddie. “We tell the truth to the authorities, there’s no hiding it from them, but we perpetrate a little deception with everyone else. I'm sure the authorities will go along with it. If you feel the need to tell the truth to your own families, make sure they don’t spread it any further. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” said Paul and Benny together.

“There, you see?” said Eddie to Susan. “No prison. You’ll be a hero for a while, giving speeches, shaking hands, and then you go home to your own family. Happy ever after.”

“God knows the truth,” she said morosely. “It's easy for you, you don't believe in Him, but I know He exists. I know! And He knows what I did, that I allowed His plan to be ruined.”

“If His plan can be ruined so easily, He can’t be much of a God. I think His plan is going very nicely, so stop worrying about it. I think that, if He does exist and you meet Him one day, He'll have some nice things to say to you.” Susan smiled back at him but looked unconvinced.

“Stand ready to turn the mass amplifier back on,” said Benny. “We've still got a moon to get back into orbit, remember? Thirty seconds.”

“Right.” Eddie sat back down in his seat, being careful not to dislodge the patch, and put his hand on the switch. “Ready,” he said. Paul gave Susan's shoulder a pat and returned to his own seat. Eddie saw her testing the zip ties holding her arms by her sides and heard her give a sigh of resignation.

It took another half an hour to finish the operation. They went through five more cycles of pulling the moon with the mass dampener turned on and then letting the moon begin to pull itself together again. Each time the moon grew hotter, the vast globe of magma turning from orange to yellow to an incandescent white. When they turned the mass dampener off for the last time he thought the moon must be close to turning into a globe of vapour. Its atmosphere was visibly thicker when they were finished, and composed of heavy elements as well as the usual volcanic gases. Eddie thought it quite likely that it was raining glass down there, under the thick clouds that once again began to hide the surface from sight.

“If the computer is right,” said Benny, “and it’s not often wrong about such things, we have succeeded in returning the moon to its proper orbit.”

“Good,” said Paul wearily. “Detach the tether, please, and then let's put some safe distance between us and that nightmare behind us.” Benny nodded and touched some controls on the central touch screen. They heard a thunk as an explosive bolt fired and Eddie imagined the tether dropping away to fall to the surface of the crustal fragment. They then turned on the mass dampened on the Long March rocket one last time while the shuttle left the moon behind, and when they were far enough away to be out of reach of the moon's gravity they shut it down for the last time. Benny then lifted the safety cover from a button far to the side of the cockpit and pressed it firmly. It sent a signal to the Long March rocket, telling the mass dampener to shut itself down permanently. It could not be reactivated now unless they went back to it and physically rewired the machinery.

“We need your home made gadget to be a mass dampener again, Eddie,” Benny then said. “As quick as you can, please.”

Eddie nodded and detached the device from the bulkhead. He picked it up, placed it on his lap and opened the cover. “Won't be easy wearing these bloody spacesuit gloves,” he said, “but I think I can do it. Give me ten minutes.”

Paul, meanwhile, was watching the crustal fragment shrink behind them in one of the cockpit screens as it fell back to the main body of the moon. “When that hits,” he said, “I hope nobody down on Earth is watching with unprotected eyes. It's going to be brighter than the sun.”

“I’m sure all the media outlets are warning them,” replied Benny. “And the moon was already bright before the clouds closed in again. They'll know what to expect.”

“Do they though? Do they really know what happens when a thousand kilometre wide chunk of solid rock hits a ball of magma three thousand kilometres across? Does anyone? I wouldn't be surprised if there are thousands of cases of permanent eye damage down there. I just hope my family's safely indoors. Just being out under the open sky might be dangerous.”

“The authorities are looking after them, just like all our families,” replied Benny. “They’ll see no harm comes to them.”

Paul nodded, still looking worried. “Okay then,” he said. “Eddie, I think we can release Susan now. Any mischief she gets up to now will only affect the four of us, and I didn’t think she’s got any interest in doing that. Right, Susan?”

“I just wanted to preserve God’s plan,” she replied. “I have no interest in hurting any of you just for the sake of it. I give you my word that I won't try to sabotage anything any more.”

Paul nodded. “Good enough for me,” he said. “Cut her loose, Eddie.”

Eddie nodded and reached out with a pair of wire cutters from his tool belt. He cut the nearest arm free, then handed her the wire cutters so she could do the other arm herself.

“Right then Benny,” Paul then said. “Let's go home.” Benny nodded and began programming the navigation computer.