Chapter 5: The Exodus

The next couple of days passed with a similar pattern. While there was a similarity to the pattern, it didn’t reduce the tension that was present in the habitat. Each day Mary would take food into the main living area for the two women who were trapped there. She would warn them she was coming so they could ensure their blindfolds were in place and then deliver their food to them.

Mary and I would gear up after breakfast and head over to Lunar Base where our salvage operation was going very well. While we hadn’t found any undamaged storerooms, we had been able to salvage a fair bit of water, metal, and even food stuffs. Personal effects, clothing, anything and everything we could find were taken because they could prove useful.

Meanwhile, Karen and Xina were becoming quite proficient at running the greenhouse and had been harvesting algae from the tanks, getting them ready for the coming lunar day. It would soon be too hot to be running the processor, and the temperature inside the greenhouse would get quite high despite circulating air and water through the rock to cool it off. Even so, we needed another couple of algae tanks and a field of soybeans if I was going to feed four people.

Lunars had been trying to increase food production on the moon and last year we had been totally self-sufficient. We had even stored “extra” food at Lunar Base in the case of an emergency. Most of that food had been destroyed, I supposed, since I hadn’t found it so far in the salvage operation.

It was possible I could barter for food with some of the other colonists. Some of the best farms weren’t near Lunar Base, as just like on earth, farmers on Luna liked to live away from the cities.

However, I was surprised at how quiet my neighbors were being. While the moon wasn’t filled with a bunch of extroverts, there weren’t a lot of us, only around one hundred and fifty or so on the planet at any time. So, we tended to stick together and at least check in with one another.

Of course, at least half of that number lived in or around Lunar Base and had been lost in the massive explosion that had wiped out the outpost. The remainder of us were spread around the lunar surface, even a couple of folks living at the lunar pole doing experiments for DARPA there.

So, when I got a message that the colonists wanted to have a special meeting, I was a little surprised but also a little relieved. It seemed that everyone was in shock from the attack on the main base and didn’t know how to deal with it. And while I had dealt with grief a bit too much in my short life, I knew I had mouths to feed and things that had to be done before I could deal with the horrendous events of the attack.

Now meetings on Lunar were conducted by video conference, as none of us had enough room or capability to host the entirety of the population of the moon. We had a special chat room set up for the quarterly meeting that we tried to have. We would get together just to talk about issues like food production, oxygen, and water supplies.

Instead of heading out to continue the salvage of Lunar Base, I headed up to my control room where the videoconferencing equipment was located. It took a few minutes to get the peer-to-peer network set up, particularly without Lunar Base to coordinate it.

I expected there to be a lot of complaining and bitching about my filing a claim on Lunar Base and salvaging the materials I found there. I figured they would all want a piece of the action, and I could understand where they were coming from. I was happy to give them a portion of the water I found as Lunar Base had been a communal resource, but since I had done most of the work to keep that water from evaporating into space, I would be sure to keep the lion’s share.

I was surprised to hear the chatter among the other lunars immediately turned to leaving the moon and returning to earth. Most of it focused on whether we could remain viable on the moon without the resources of Lunar Base. With no Lunar Base, would Earthside continue to support us? How long would it take to rebuild Lunar Base even if the governments earthside decided to rebuild?

After an hour or so of everyone talking, it seemed that there were two groups, those that were headed back earthside and those who were more self-sufficient who were going to stay as long as possible.

Being rather flush with supplies currently, I offered ion drive and thruster fuel for those who were heading back in exchange for their promise to pool their funds for an unmanned delivery of water, medicines, and other supplies we needed moon-side.

Those of us who were staying agreed to get in touch again in a week and assess where things stood.

And with that, I dialed off and headed back to the living quarters. I needed to think about what had just happened and how we were going to survive.

As best I could count, there were 73 lunars remaining after the explosion. Of those it would appear that 39 were intent on heading back earthside. And the three women in my habitat that no one knew about, I reminded myself, for a total of 47. I suspected that another 10 would end up leaving, and a population in the mid-thirties was likely sustainable as long as we didn’t have any illnesses or injuries that took that number lower.

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A man, nearly broken by loss, lives a solitary existence off planet earth in a small habitat he has constructed on the moon.

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Lorn Skye

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