Gateway

The docking mechanism on the side of the orbiting lunar gateway grew from a needle prick to the size of a circular toothed orifice, a shark’s round mouth, as the vehicle made its stately, inexorable progress from the Earth. Harriet watched the viewing screen intently, the next step on their journey to Antilunar-1, known as AL-1, the research station not far from the lunar south pole but hidden from earth view on the far side of the moon. 

‘Alignment secure,’ the autonomous docking program reassured its biological passengers. Harriet turned to double check that her three young charges were strapped into their seats. They had done a fair amount of bouncing around on the 48 hour journey covering a quarter of a million miles from earth. Selina and Scout were the most exuberant, Sol a little more reserved. Now all three were sleeping in their cradles. The mass of the gateway, stark white glaring against the blackness of the void around, grew to fill the screen. The photon-rich dazzle was like nothing on Earth. Then, through the viewer, the blackness of space suddenly gave way to a rush of craters and mountains as the two space ships, locked in a dance of their own, orbited the moon. Harriet watched as the stark white sunlit peaks, defined by shadows of the deepest black raced by, the ranges separated by flat featureless plains of grey regolith. A gentle clunk marked their engagement with the Gateway. 

Harriet roused her precious load. Blearily, they broke free from their cocoons and floated one by one through the short tunnel into the Gateway. Gathered around a porthole, Harriet pointed out the lunar surface passing below. Scout yawned. 

‘Look! There’s the Earth,’ shouted Selina. The gateway had angled on its orbit in such a way as to allow a look back at the gibbous planet, blue against the blackness and sitting above the arced surface of its monochrome satellite. All she had ever known, everything that had ever happened, the totality of life could be obscured by her raised hand at arm length. As the orbit carried them around and away, the distant Earth approached the moon's edge. Harriet braced for her first Earth-set.  There was no warning, no atmospheric colour change to act as herald, just the stark disappearance of home behind a mountain range. A chill set in, a sense of panic, separation: she revisited all those emotions from her childhood, being abandoned by her mother, but this time it was by Mother Earth. She knew this was going to be the challenge. How do you cope without line of sight with the home planet? What does it do to you?

*

Ivy joined her at the table, two coffees in hand. Her face looked strained in the cool side light from the glowing walls of the sunken tube, which served as residence and refreshment area. It nestled beneath the surface, a natural burrow to provide radiation protection to the crew. They could keep an eye on the children above as they enjoyed the freedom of lunar gravity under the dome, each jump giving six times the value of an earth leap. 

‘What’s that noise?’ Harriet asked.

‘Oh, the hum,’ Ivy replied. ‘I always assumed it was 3-D printers. There’s a lot of building work going on all around.’

Harriet had seen on their descent from Gateway the spread of AL-1 over the surface. Scars were already appearing on the lunar surface with mineral extraction proceeding apace, as the fine regolith dust was converted into material for construction by the robot machinery.  Billion year old water-ice nestled in the polar shadows. Never once touched by the sun’s rays, which would have instantly evaporated it to steam and sent it into space without the containment of atmosphere, it was being harvested and electrolysed into oxygen for life and hydrogen for fuel. 

‘I’m glad you’re here,’ sighed Ivy, lines on her face reflecting the strain. ‘It’s been hell since the Q-team left.’

Ivy was looking after the R’s. Roy, Regina and Red. Harriet’s charges, Sol, Selina and Scout, were playing with them in the dome.