The sun shone down out of a clear, blue Chinese sky. On the other side of the sky Margaret saw another sun shining down. Not quite as bright, she thought. A glowing yellow, and its face criss crossed by geometric patterns of black lines like the frame of a geodesic dome, visible to anyone in the patiently waiting crowd willing to stare up into its face until their eyes started watering. A man on the morning news had said that the black lines were clouds of water vapour, silhouetted against the glowing bright magma below, visible now that the thick clouds of dust had settled.

The water had once been ice, the same man on the telly had said. Before the Scatter Cloud hit, there had been ice hidden in perpetually shadowed craters at the moon’s poles, delivered to the moon over billions of years by comets. That water had been boiled away to vapour as the moon melted and carried up to high altitudes by the convection cells that now characterised the moon’s weather now that the supersonic winds had ceased. As the air rose it cooled until the water condensed out into fluffy clouds that were carried to the boundaries between neighbouring convection cells. The scientists said that the water wouldn’t last long, unfortunately. Sunlight would break it apart into hydrogen and oxygen, the hydrogen lost to space and the oxygen binding with elements in the magma, but the moon would have clouds, and the occasional light showers of rain, for generations to come.

The small crowd of people stared up into the sky. Most of them were waiting silently but some chatted in low voices to their neighbours, asking them in worried tones if the delay might be caused by some last minute problem. No, the neighbours replied. There’s time yet. Don’t worry. Reporters circulated amongst them, looking for someone willing to give an interview. They were speaking in front of robot cameras that kept adjusting their position to keep their owners centred in the field of view. Once, there would have been satellite uplinks to take their words straight to a distant studio, but there were virtually no satellites any more, and wouldn’t be for some time. People talked about launching more, but the world’s economy had been hit hard by the perigee and would be hit even harder in years to come as the after effects began to manifest themselves.

Qamdo Bamda was a wide, flat and empty district of China. It was technically a valley in the Himalayas, but the nearest mountains were too far away to be seen and the horizon was as flat as if they were in the middle of Kansas. Margaret pulled her coat tighter around herself and shivered in the cold air, occasionally taking her eyes off the sky to watch the soldiers standing around the airport. The airport with the longest runway in the world, they said. Nearly ten kilometres long and fifty metres wide! It was the runway the Chinese used to land space shuttles on, which was the reason they were all here today. Paul was coming home! The space station was being left empty as all the remaining astronauts returned to Earth.

Richard took a step closer to stand beside her. “You okay?” he said.

“Fine,” she said. “Just cold. I should have brought a thicker coat.”

Richard began to take off his coat but she stopped him. “No, I'm fine,” she said. “I shouldn't be cold, anyway. Not with two suns in the sky now.”

“Some people say they can actually feel its heat on their faces,” said Richard. “The scientists may say that it’s measurable at the Earth’s surface, but I think anyone who claims to actually be able to feel it is fooling themselves. I certainly can’t.”

“Nor me,” said Cathy, Timmy cradled in her arms. “Perhaps next time they'll land somewhere a little warmer. Bermuda, perhaps.”

“There probably won't be a next time,” said Richard. “Not in our lifetimes, anyway. The whole world will be hunkering down to wait out the volcanic winter.” He gave a cynical laugh. “All the smug people who’ve been congratulating themselves on living far from the coast, away from the flooding, are the very people who’ll be hit the hardest as the world freezes. The stampede away from the coast will reverse itself as people flee the frozen hearts of the large continents.”

Len nodded. “We were among the countries hardest hit by the perigee,” he said, “but we'll be one of the best places to ride out the freeze. We’ve got the gulf stream. Nowhere in Britain is far from the coast.”

“Do you think it’ll really be ten years, like they said?” asked Margaret.

“They're the experts. How would I know?” He looked up at the moon again. “Be funny if heat from the moon actually helps us cope with the freeze that the moon is causing, though.”

“Either way, it will be a long time before anyone's launching any more space shuttles,” said Richard. “They say they're going to de-orbit the space station. They can't take the risk that it might come down on someone's head one day.”

“Who are those people over there?” asked Hazel, nodding her head towards another small group standing a short distance away. They didn't look like a family, like the other families standing around the airfield waiting for a relative on the approaching shuttle. They were all different races and nationalities, as if they were a group of work colleagues. They also had an academic look to them, the look shared by those who spent their lives in libraries, offices and laboratories, rarely emerging to feel the wind on their faces. The look was accentuated by the thick coats they were swaddled up in, as if cold was something that normally only happened to other people. One of them was sitting in a wheelchair, while another, a Japanese looking woman, had a young girl with her, holding her hand as she stared nervously around at all the strange people around her.

“No idea,” said Margaret “Let's not be strangers, though.” She started walking towards the other group. Richard hurried to keep up with her, as if afraid that they might start beating her about the head with the top of the range looking tablets they all seemed to be carrying.

A reporter moved to cut her off, though, accompanied by the camera that strode beside him on its spindly metal legs. “...and this, I believe, is Margaret Lewis, wife of Paul Lewis, commander of the moon mission. Mrs Lewis, you must be very eager see your husband again.”

“Yes, very,” said Margaret, sparing him a sideways glance. She tried to move past him but he moved to block her way.

“What are your thoughts on this historic occasion?”

“My mother doesn't have time to talk at the moment,” said Richard, struggling hard to remain calm and polite. “Please give us some space.”

“Yes, of course. This must have been an anxious few days for your whole family...”

“Please excuse us,” said Richard, pushing him bodily out of the way and holding him back as Margaret walked past. He then stood guard, preventing him from following after her. To his relief the reporter got the message and wandered off to talk to an Indian looking family, who seemed no more glad to see him than Margaret had been.

The Japanese looking woman looked up from her tablet as Margaret approached. “Excuse me,” said Margaret, smiling reassuringly. “I'm Margaret Lewis. Paul Lewis’ wife.”

The Japanese looking woman smiled. “Samantha,” she replied, holding out a hand. “Samantha Kumiko. And this is Lily, my daughter.”

Margaret shook the offered hand, then smiled down at the little girl. Lily smiled back. “Please forgive my curiosity,” she said, returning her attention to the mother. “Are you related to someone on the shuttle?”

“No, I’m a colleague of Eddie Nash.” Out of the corner of her eye Margaret saw Richard’s eyes roll towards the heavens. She suppressed a smile. “Well, I say a colleague,” Samantha continued. “I've never actually met him. We both joined the team in the past few days, and he’d left to begin astronaut training before I arrived.”

“The team?” said Margaret. She saw the rest of her family drifting across to join them, and behind Samantha the rest of her group were also closing in. A moment later they were just one group, with people pairing off to chat and introduce themselves.

“The others helped to develop the mass dampener,” said Samantha. “Especially Frank.” She indicated the thirty year old man who was introducing himself to Len. “He's our resident genius.”

“I thought the Chinese invented it,” said Margaret, frowning.

Samantha suddenly looked uncomfortable and glanced away to the side. “Yes, of course. I meant that we helped them. The others helped them, I mean. I only just joined the group, I’m a moon expert really. I was, I mean. The moon I spent a lifetime studying no longer exists.”

“Well, now you've got a brand new world to study. A world unlike any other in the solar system! It must be like getting a glimpse of how the moon was born! How can you resist?”

“Quite easily, actually. You can’t have any idea what it’s like. I spent my whole life studying the moon. I was the world's foremost authority. My daughter could name every crater, every mountain range. I thought she might go there one day. Become an astronaut, explore the moon. Actually walk in its surface, become a member of a permanent moon base. Now all those dreams are ended. All my knowledge is obsolete. I'll probably get some other job, just to pay the bills. Teach, perhaps.”

“Someone's going to study the moon, become an expert on what it is now. Why not you?”

“Yes, mummy!” said Lily, looking up at her. “Why not you?”

“We'll see,” said Samantha back down to her. “We'll see how I feel.”

“When I grow up, I'm going to be the world’s greatest expert on the moon,” said Lily solemnly. “They’ll build a city floating high in the atmosphere, like Venus City in Davey Crockett in Space, King of the Final Frontier, and I'm going to live there.”

“She loves those old Sci Fi series,” said Samantha with a smile. “I have to keep telling her that it's just fantasy, that it won't be like that.”

“You told me there would be cloud cities on Venus one day!” Lily insisted indignantly. “You said so!”

“One day perhaps, but not for a long, long time.”

“But what about the moon? Venus is a hundred million klicks away, but the moon’s right there!” Lily pointed up at the glowing, yellow orb in the sky. “Someone’s going to study the moon. Why not me?”

“You know, I think she might do it,” said Margaret, smiling. “She's clearly bright, determined. Who's going to stop her? By the time she’s grown up the world should be just about recovering from the angry moon, and now that it's really been brought home to people just how fragile the Earth is there might well be a determined effort to establish a permanent presence in space. Get our eggs into several baskets instead of just one.”

“Who knows?” Samantha conceded reluctantly. “If that's still what she really wants when she gets out of school, I certainly won't stop her.”

☆☆☆

“You created the mass dampener?” said Len in astonishment.

Frank, standing a short distance away from Samantha and Margaret, realised he’d said too much and backpedalled furiously. “Well, nothing in science is ever the result of just one person. People all over the world were involved, and the Chinese were, still are I mean, one of the biggest partners. They certainly deserve the credit they’re giving themselves.” And nobody must know about the alien spacecraft, he thought. No-one must ever find out where we really got the mass dampener. Wetherby must receive as little attention as possible.

“It's a really gigantic leap, though, isn't it?” said Len in amazement. “I mean, one sudden breakthrough in science and suddenly mankind has the ability to rearrange the solar system! And look at the moon!” The moon was drifting behind a thin cloud, but it was so bright that it could still be seen through it. “If a device small enough to fit on a rocket can do that to the moon, just imagine what it could do to the Earth if it fell into the wrong hands.”

“That's why the soldiers are here,” replied Frank, nodding his head towards the nearest of them. Most of the soldiers were Chinese, but there were also Americans, Europeans and British army soldiers, all keeping by and large to their own groups but keeping at least one eye on the scientists at all times. “To make sure we don't get kidnapped by the bad guys.”

“I'm not sure if I'd find that reassuring or oppressive. On the one hand, your kids will be the safest in the world, but on the other...”

“No privacy ever again,” replied the scientist. “And it gets worse.” He lifted the lapel of his coat to reveal a tiny microphone. “They're listening to everything I say, all of us, to make sure we don’t reveal the secrets of the mass dampener to you, or to anyone. Everything I say for the rest of my life will be listened to by agents, even when I'm with a woman. What’s more, if they get the idea that I'm about to be successfully kidnapped...” He indicated the airport’s control tower. “There's a sniper up there with a rifle aimed right at my head. Several snipers, in fact. One for each of us. We're all going to have guns aimed at our heads for the rest of our lives.”

Len laughed until the expression on the other man's face told him he was being serious. “Shit!” he said. He realised that he was standing almost between Frank and the control tower and moved hastily to the side, making Frank smile ruefully. Len glanced around to see where Hazel was. He suddenly felt a powerful urge to collect the others and get them a safe distance from these people as fast as possible.

“Yeah,” replied Frank. “I'm not complaining, though. All you've got to do is look up at the moon to see the power of this new technology. Mankind has to be protected, and if we have to sacrifice some freedoms to do that, then it’s a small price to pay.

“So are they going to be watching us as well?” asked Len in alarm. “Me and my family?”

“Probably not the sniper, but they’ll be worried that Paul might have learned something about the device while out of radio range of the Earth, and that he might pass it on to you. Maybe some tiny detail that he doesn’t think is important but might make the difference to someone trying to replicate the device. They’ll advise him not to discuss anything with you, of course, but I would imagine they’ll be watching and listening as well.”

“But none of us has that kind of technical knowledge! I'm an architect, Richard's an executive with an advertising agency. You could hand us the blueprints and we wouldn’t know what to do with them!”

“They might be afraid that you might learn, or your children, or you might pass the information on to someone who knows what to do with it. Pandora's box has been opened. They can't close it again, but they can try to keep the knowledge from spreading any further than it already has.”

“But we have rights! We have the right to our privacy! They can't do this!”

In answer, Frank nodded his head upwards to the moon again. “At first, we had no idea what we had,” he said. “We treated it like a toy. We even carried a prototype around the world with only a couple of hired security men to look after it. When I think back on that now... The mass dampener is a truly nightmarish device. I wish now that we'd never discovered, er, invented it. Sure, the moon would still be causing mayhem every twenty seven days, but that might be nothing compared to what the mass dampener will do to our world. In my darkest dreams, I can see government men rounding up everyone who knows even the smallest thing about the device and having them confined underground somewhere for the rest of their lives. Jessica and Stuart have children. Three and four years old, plus a baby, and James has a fourteen year old kid. I can only imagine what they’re going through right now.”

Len looked at the people he'd mentioned. They seemed happy enough at the moment, chatting with Richard and Hazel, but now that he looked he thought they looked a little unsettled, as if they had something on their minds. It wasn't something he would have noticed unless he'd been looking for it.

“Do you have children, may I ask?” said Frank.

“Not yet, but one day, I hope. How many generations will get this kind of attention? Our children, if me and Hazel have any? What about our grandchildren? Their children? Suppose they get the idea that the mass dampener has become some kind of family secret, passed down the generations? What if they decide that we just can't be trusted, that allowing us to run around loose is just too great a risk to take?” Len ran a trembling hand through his hair. “I can imagine some junior official making a cold blooded calculation. On the one hand, the rights and freedoms that we take for granted, and on the other the risk that some insane terrorist might get his hands on this device and use it to hold the world to ransom. Perhaps destroying a city just to prove a point with a device that fits in his pocket. Faced with that kind of threat, can you really be sure the government wouldn’t do something terrible? How great does the threat have to be before they decide that civilised values are a luxury they just can't afford any more?” He was backing away from the scientist now and glancing around for the rest of his family. “Hazel! Come here please, Hazel!”

Hazel was chatting animatedly with Stuart and Jessica, while Karen and Ben stood by listening, and Len had to call her a couple of times more before she looked up and went over to see what her husband wanted. Len just grabbed her by the elbow and steered her away from the group of scientists. He called out to Margaret and Richard and beckoned for them to follow him as well. He looked back at Frank, feeling guilty and ashamed, but the scientist just nodded his understanding. “Len!” said Hazel angrily. “What's gotten into you?”

“Looks like we’ve got leprosy,” said Ben as Frank went back to rejoin the other scientists. “I suppose this is something we're going to have to get used to.”

“We can't blame them,” said Alice. “To be honest, I'm surprised they let us some here. I thought they might keep us confined to the laboratory, keep us from interacting with anyone else at all.”

“Something rather disturbing occurred to me just a couple of minutes ago,” said James, driving his wheelchair a little closer so he could lower his voice. “When the shuttle lands, pretty much everyone who knows how to build a mass dampener will be here, on this airfield. Us, Eddie... The American and Chinese research teams are in town somewhere. Honoured guests for the celebrations. Everyone who can build an actual, functioning mass dampener is, or soon will be, right here, in the middle of a totalitarian country where we can quietly disappear without trace...”

“I think you're being a little paranoid, James,” said Stuart, but he frowned as he said it and Ben could see he was thinking of his children, being looked after by relatives back in England. Ben saw him wondering if he would ever see them again. “Look,” Stuart added, indicating the crowd milling around them. “Relatives, reporters... Are the Chinese going to disappear all of them?”

“No satellites,” mused Frank unhappily. “None of us has any reliable way of contacting anyone back home, we're totally reliant on the airfield WiFi, which the Chinese can cut off at any time...”

The disturbing speculation was cut off as someone in the crowd gave a cry of delight. “It's coming!” he said, holding his phone up to show the others. “The air traffic controllers say it's coming!”

Conversations were cut short as everyone stared up into the bright sky. The reporters spoke frantically into their cameras and the soldiers tensed up, glancing in all directions as they searched for threats. Then someone cried out and pointed. The others looked, and after a few moments of squinting into the bright sky, shading their eyes with their hands, they saw three tiny dark specks, far off and low to the horizon beyond the far end of the runway. The shuttle and two Chinese fighters, escorting it in. The shuttle, the Chinese Jinlong, appeared to be frozen in the sky, barely moving, which, Frank hoped, presaged a more comfortable landing than the landing of the European shuttle on the moon had been. The two fighters peeled off as the ground grew closer and the shuttle came in alone, gradually revealing itself to be a delta winged shape, similar in appearance to the ancient American space shuttle except for its rear end where it had been launched on top of two booster stages. They had also had wings and had landed under their own power after separating from the orbiter.

The crowd watched, enraptured, many of them through binoculars, as the shuttle came in steeply, its nose sharply angled upwards and its undercarriage unfolding and locking into position. The moment its rear wheels touched the ground at the far end of the runway, a parachute unfurled behind it, snapping open as it caught the wind. The crowd surged forward as the shuttle appeared to creep towards them, its great speed almost imperceptible from this distance. The Chinese soldiers formed a line to stop them, brandishing their weapons but in a way that showed they had no intention of actually using them. The crowd pressed forward as close as they could and then strained their eyes to watch as the shuttle slowed and dropped down onto its front wheels. A cluster of vehicles emerged from a hanger and began chasing it towards the spot where it would eventually stop, close to where the crowd was standing.

By the time it finally drew close it was trundling slowly along the runway, the pilot seeming content for it to come to a halt on its own without bothering with the brakes, or perhaps he’d seen the crowd, recognised relatives and wanted to end up as close to them as possible. The soldiers were keeping the crowd penned in, though, and wouldn’t let them any closer. The chase vehicles, including three ambulances and a fire engine, closed around the shuttle as it finally came to a halt and two of them, tankers of some kind, parked themselves on either side of its nose.

“We might as well make ourselves comfortable,” said Ben, unfolding a shooting stick and sitting on it. “The crew won't be coming out any time soon. Maybe not for half an hour. And when they do they’ll be bundled straight into the ambulances. We might only get a brief glimpse of Eddie as they carry him away. I don't know what we're doing here, really. We might as well wait until we can visit him in the hospital.”

“Of course we've got to be here!” said Karen, giving him a pitying look. “Eddie needs to see us when he comes out, know we're here for him. Who knows how long he'll be decompressing, stuck in that tiny chamber all by himself. Seeing us here will pick his spirits up no end.” Ben nodded his agreement, and so they waited.

Engineers and technicians surrounded the shuttle, inspecting it from every angle. A pair of stair trucks were driven up against it so that another pair of engineers could examine the engines from up close. The reporters continued their running commentary, and Ben saw one of them make yet another attempt to talk to Margaret Lewis. Her son stood protectively between them and answered the reporters questions with monosyllables until he grew bored and drifted away to talk to an elderly Swedish couple standing nearby.

Finally, the nose of the shuttle opened like the petals of a flower, revealing the outer airlock door. One of the stair trucks drove up to it and two men climbed up to open the door from the outside. They went inside, and a few moments later they emerged supporting one of the astronauts between them, still dressed in a full spacesuit including a helmet with its visor closed. “There he is!” cried Alice, pushing her way to the front of the crowd and waving her arms wildly. “Eddie! Eddie!”

“I don't think he can hear you,” said Frank as the others gathered around her.

“He can see us!” replied Alice. “He can see us waving!” She continued to wave, and the man in the spacesuit waved back. “See? He can see us!”

“Eddie Nash is emerging,” they heard one of the reporters saying, somewhere nearby. “Still trapped in his spacesuit by a faulty air tank. He's been breathing pressurised air for three days and so cannot remove his spacesuit until he’s gone through decompression, like a deep sea diver returning to the surface. You can be sure he’ll be receiving a hero’s welcome as soon as he can breathe Earth air again. Wait, another astronaut is emerging...”

A female figure was standing in the airlock, dressed in normal clothing and carrying a small box. A squad of US marines was waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs, and one of them took the box from her. He opened it and studied the contents for a few moments, then closed it again, the box locking with an audible snap. Then the soldiers hurried off with it to where a fleet of army trucks was waiting. The woman watched as the trucks drove away towards the exit from the air base, but then she appeared to lose interest in them and hurried after Eddie, tottering unsteadily on her weak legs as her hair blew in the wind. Two men came forward to support her, taking an arm each, and they helped her to a wheelchair. Eddie had stopped where he was and had turned, waiting for her.

“Astronaut Susan Kendall,” said the reporter. “The only American crew member. She seems to have formed an attachment to Eddie Nash...”

“You dog, Eddie,” said James in amusement. “Go on, my son!”

Ben scowled at him but said nothing. Susan, meanwhile, had joined Eddie and the two of them got into the ambulance together. An orderly closed the door and the ambulance drove off towards the nearest hospital.

The two men had climbed the steps again, meanwhile, and were helping the next astronaut. He waved at the crowd as they helped him carefully down the stairs. “Paul Lewis has emerged from the shuttle,” they heard a reporter saying from somewhere nearby. “Like Susan Kendall, he has spent nearly a full year in space, and so needs time to acclimatise himself to the Earth’s gravity. He'll be spending the next few weeks at the... Wait! A woman has forced her way past the soldiers and is running towards him...”

It was Margaret, Ben saw. For a moment, it looked as though the Chinese soldiers were going to chase after her, but their commanding officer barked an order and they let her go. She ran the hundred metres between the crowd and the shuttle, and when Paul reached the foot of the stairs he waved for the men supporting him to back away a little. Margaret almost bowled him over when she reached him, and then she threw her arms around him and hugged him tight while, behind them, the whole crowd burst into wild cheering and thunderous applause.