Reaching for their com-link, Lori contacted the cockpit to alert them of their presence.

“Hey… we’re here. We got it… Hello?”

And after a brief delay, their mother´s voice answered.

“Lori! Thank God… Are you guys OK?” Evelyn jubilated, evidently ecstatic at their return.

“Yeah…” Lori returned, looking to her brother as she blanked on what exactly to say next.

They drifted to a halt beside the Firmament… but before she could relate any more of their trip, Quentin and Barney jogged over.

“Perfect timing, guys!” their father beamed, reaching over to help them unload the awkward cargo. “How did it go?”

“Yeah…” Lori repeated, stuck on the same word as she failed to come up with an introduction to their incredible find.

But Quentin already wasn’t listening and quickly scanned their surroundings, looking for the optimal place to install the balloons.

“So what’s the situation? Are they damaged?” he asked, facing the crater. “Will it work?”

“Oh, uh… I don’t know, it looked OK. Kinda dirty maybe…” Sander answered, thinking back to when they´d unearthed the balloons and turning to Lori for confirmation.

She nodded back, as Quentin and Barney had begun unrolling the inflatable material. After a quick but thorough check to make sure it wasn’t damaged, their father started inspecting the pump system. Once things were deemed satisfactory, Quentin assembled the final components and together, the two men squeezed each latch closed, just long enough for them to realize they were missing one of the tanks…

“Ah… shit!” Barney moaned, after taking a step back and seeing the mistake.

“Hang on, I got something that should fit,” Quentin told him, sidestepping the twins as he went to fetch a new canister… and fought, even in the reduced gravity, to support its weight “Damn… where´s Matvey when you need him?”

Lori rushed to his aid, grabbed the other end and waddled toward her father, while Sander took Quentin´s cue and held out a length of fabric tubing to slide beneath the suspended tread.

“Alright, Evelyn? You ready?” Barney checked, to make sure she was in position.

Waiting for her signal deep within the Firmament´s undercarriage electrolysis chamber, Evelyn shot back an affirmative response and opened their hydrogen conduits.

“Please work…” Quentin pleaded, as he connected both nozzles to a valve that Barney was steadying.

The twins stepped back as a blast of gas rippled through the balloon, straightening it out like a swelling snake, directly beneath the Firmament’s right side. All five of them held their breath, the closer the balloons got to their full size… but before they knew it, the tubes were fully inflated.

“OK babe! Hit it!” Barney shouted, trying not to rejoice too soon.

Having hurried back to the cockpit, Evelyn gently nudged the Firmament´s controls, exactly how Quentin had showed her… and the craft lurched, still teetering dangerously on the crumbling crater’s edge.

“Little more…” he coaxed, talking both to the ship and his wife.

And with one more turn of the tread, the Firmament made a sharp left turn and regained solid ground.

The balloons slid free, no longer pinned between the ground and the ship, and began their long, bouncy descent into the crater’s inky depth… although nobody saw them disappear, because a cheer had erupted not only in the huddle of hugging space suits, but also on their radios from the single voice still inside the ship.

After another minute, the celebration died down and the crew returned onboard… but before the twins could reach their mother for a long-overdue hug, a new challenge presented itself, as the Firmament´s main lights flickered and died.

“Don´t worry, we´re just low on fuel… the backup should-”

As he spoke, the ship´s secondary generator rattled to life, once more illuminating them in a pale, cold hue… and Quentin raised his arms in tired triumph.

“Ta-daa… now let´s check up on our Russians, huh?”

“Wait, are we gonna be OK?” Evelyn asked, looking at the lights dubiously. “I might have used a lot of helium…”

“Hydrogen,” he corrected her, already on his way towards the cockpit. “No we´re good, there´s an emergency reservoir that should tide us over until the primary can refill… Just don´t flush the toilet. You guys hear that?”

Radio in hand, he then plopped down in his pilot seat and began to manually guide them towards the Godsend´s landing zone, with utmost care.

“It worked, we´re free! You guys alright?”

Marking a short pause, Quentin studied the ship´s terrain readouts and tried again.

“Hey… You copy? How´s it going over there?”

“Almost ready,” Sergei´s voice crackled back faintly, almost washed-out in a sea of static. “Where are you?”

With a little pang of relief at the sound of his friend´s reply, Quentin corrected their course by a few degrees and continued.

“That´s what I like to hear! OK, they´re touching down in about forty-five minutes…” he smiled, checking the time. “So another hour or two… we should be there like, late afternoon... Does that give you enough time?

The line fell silent for a few seconds.

“What´s there left to do? Is it pressurized yet?”

Just as Quentin began to press the issue, Pavel interrupted him with a progress report.

“Wait please, thank you!” the man responded testily, before explaining, “Da, Quentin. We are still looking… verify seal integrity…”

“Hey, you´re fading out. Can you read me?”

Finally removed from their space suits, the Schwabs came over as white noise filled the cockpit.

“Hey, come get changed,” Evelyn offered, but had a finger held in her face for silence, as Pavel repeated himself.

Stolen novel; please report.

“They’re still leaking. Don´t worry, we find… I call back soon.”

The radio once again went quiet, and Quentin rubbed his head.

“What, is that bad?”

Quentin slowly turned towards the crowd of concerned Schwabs and, after taking a moment to collect himself, refocused his eyes.

“Uh, yeah! Yeah… I just always worry about that electromagnetic resonator they´re using, because I kind of had to jerry-rig it together...” he mumbled, before scolding playfully, “Anyways, you mind backing up a bit? You´re crowding me!”

Realizing that the cockpit had indeed become too crowded, the family retreated to the common area.

“Oh, hey. Can someone get me a coffee?”

“Already on it!”

Both parents went to boil some water and Lori started off towards her bunk, with Quentin´s mundane request slowly reviving her sense of normalcy as it rang in her ears. But before she reached the door, a nudge at her waist reminded her of what remained to do…

“So? Are you gonna tell them, or what?” Sander asked, keeping his voice down.

“Give me a sec.” she answered “I´m… tired.”

Seeing that his sister did in fact look a little ragged, Sander relented and watched her go lie down, with plans to do the same. But for the next half hour, as the twins lay quietly beside one another, it was as if their minds had never left the bunker…

Eventually, Lori found the strength to sit up and rose to go get some water.

“Come on. Let´s do it…”

Roused from his thoughts by the solemn proclamation, Sander caught her eye and followed, still undecided of what he even wanted her to say. Yet just as they left their room, both Barney and Evelyn almost ran into them, turning the corner.

“Woah! Sorry!” their father laughed, tiptoeing to the side to avoid a collision.

Not expecting to be confronted so quickly with her task, Lori blushed nervously and cast around for how to begin…

“You guys coming? We might need all hands on deck, depending on the injury we´re dealing with…”

“What?”

Confused by her mother´s question, Lori froze up.

“Either way, this isn´t something you want to miss: they´re about to land!” Barney grinned, excited at the prospect of observing a moon landing from this novel perspective.

The Godsend´s imminent arrival leapfrogged back into the forefront of her mind and she turned to Sander… who had already started off behind their father to suit back up.

“Are you OK? What´s going on honey?” Evelyn frowned, checking her daughter´s temperature with a worried palm. “You´re so chilly!”

Lori collected herself and gave a little nod back, grateful for the temporary reprieve.

“I´m good… hungry, that´s all.”

“Well then let´s get you some food!”

And just like that, after hurrying through the galley for some energy bars, the family found themselves gathered once more around the Firmament´s dock, in preparation for their mysterious guests.

“Everyone ready?” Quentin called out from the cockpit as he finished parking, despite still lacking a suit of his own.

“Yeah, we´re waiting for you!”

“I don´t watch this shit anymore… too stressful,” he answered, bristling at the suggestion. “But if you guys want, this is the best view.”

With the flick of a switch, Quentin sent a hiss through the Firmament walls and went to grab his helmet… yet as the Schwabs looked around in confusion, nothing seemed to have happened.

“In the garden,” he added, sensing their befuddlement.

“Oh, I- I thought we were going out…” Evelyn stuttered, about to leave the ship.

“Not ´til they stick the landing…” he corrected, ominously. “We´ll pull up beside them once they´re here, I´m not risking another Hyundai situation!”

“Oh…”

“Sorry, I should have been more clear ab-”

The cockpit´s radio sizzled to life and broke off their exchange, as the Godsend sent in an update on their descent, which prompted Quentin to thud off and give some final pointers… But Evelyn was only alone for a second, as Barney had doubled back from the greenhouse to show his wife what she was missing:

On the far wall of their garden directly adjacent to the tomatoes, a pair of windows had appeared as if by magic, to create an observation deck.

“What the…”

Pushing between her kids, Evelyn went up to the reinforced glass, without daring to press her gloved hand against it.

“It´s safe… tons of layers.” Quentin reassured her, thumping past the crowd to grab a part of the wall that hadn´t retracted correctly. “Can´t even scratch the thing. At least from the outside…”

With a grunt, he then proceeded to rotate the metal blade into its sheath, producing a third window.

“Oh, the joys of being at minimum power… Anyways, welcome to Oceanus Procellarum, also known as landing site B… or the Ocean of Storms,” he mocked in a nasal voice, before resuming normally. “Thanks to some overzealous astronomy nerds. Let´s just hope it´s smooth sailing for us, eh?”

But no one heard his jokes, too engrossed in discovering the view. Unaccustomed to experiencing the lunar landscape without their visors, the Schwabs gazed in wonder across a pockmarked plateau of silver moon rock, to the starry heavens above.

“This is… beautiful, my God…” Barney marvelled, soaking it all in. “You should keep this open all the time!”

Half-way to the door, Quentin paused briefly.

“Tell Pavel, he says the stillness bums him out…”

Sander conversely, having spent the past few minutes scouring the sky in search of the elusive Godsend, had more pressing issues to share and erupted with a cheer.

“Got it!” he exclaimed, pointing to the upper right-hand corner of the glass. “That´s them, up there!”

Not able to spot what he was talking about, Lori crouched next to her brother for a better angle and squinted upward… until she too noticed a little group of flashing navigation lights.

“You see it?”

Through a sea of distant constellations, their module grew larger with each passing second, and in so doing highlighted an unexpected addition to the vehicle: on the left side of their hull, where most Runners welded their exhaust ports, an extra compartment had been installed.

Consequently, instead of the angular and vaguely turtle-shaped spaceships that Quentin´s designs usually produced, the Godsend´s lopsided contour gave off a distinctly unbalanced impression from beneath its billowing parachutes, like someone had started building a steampunk tree-house without ever truly completing the endeavour.

“Why does it look so weird?” Sander asked, briefly turning to his parents without taking his eyes off the spectacle.

“I have no idea…”

Between its landing gears, a series of tiny, gyroscopic nozzles fought to stabilize the hump-backed craft as it shuddered and wobbled through the descent, by firing repeated jets of pressurized gas… but despite their best efforts at maintaining equilibrium, the extra weight was clearly straining the Godsend´s autopilot system.

Sensing an impending collision, their main thrusters kicked in for one final, desperate blast to slow them and, with only yards to spare, the ship vanished into a plume of dust.

“Hey Quentin! I think they landed!” Barney called out, momentarily losing sight of them as he looked to the hall. “Quentin?”

From back in the cockpit, their host simply raised his hand to ask for quiet and waited, restraining his reactions… until the radio lit up, after several tense seconds.

“Firmament, do you copy? We´re here.”

“Great news, we´re five minutes out,” he responded, waiting to release the mic before letting a relieved sigh escape his lips.

Quentin then settled himself with a trusty pill, got up and joined the family as they watched the cloud dissipate, to remind them of their roles.

“OK, parents: you´re with me in case we need the stretcher,” he announced. “I got the med-kit… kids, you´re our reinforcements, so just hang back until… Hey! You listening?”

He snapped to get the twins´ attention, but noticed the Godsend´s unorthodox construction with a wayward glance, as it slowly materialized before their eyes.

“Wait… Why the fuck is there an extra cabin?” Quentin raged, pivoting towards the window “Like- No shit they were coming in hot! Why can´t people just apply the damn blueprints?”

“Well they´re safe, that´s all that matters.” Evelyn mentioned, feeling a bit targeted by the disparaging comments in light of her own ship´s build. “Maybe we should go?”

“Yeah…” he agreed absentmindedly, still studying the new ship with a glare. “Let´s go.”

The crowd carefully exited the garden and as Quentin returned to the cockpit to pilot them closer, each Schwab dutifully snatched up their helmet and sealed their suit. Luckily for Lori, her brother had forgotten about their secret for the time being, and was prowling instead around the exit in trepidation.

“And they haven´t told us who´s hurt? Or how, or… anything?”

“I think something´s wrong with their radio. They haven´t been clear on that,” Barney told him, air-tank in hand. “But that´s why you guys are a second wave. Who knows what´s really up. Can´t be too careful…”

A light on the dock´s controls reminded them they´d come to a stop, giving Sander no time to ponder the worrisome implications of his father´s answer… and a few seconds later Quentin strutted over with a toolbox under his arm, motioning for someone to help him secure his collar.

“Alright, guys: show time!” he declared, moving to the middle of the room as soon as his helmet was fastened. “They´re gonna be on channel three, so let me do the talking… and I´ll give you a signal.”

Helping their parents stand the stretcher upright, Lori gave a hopeful thumbs-up and stood back to let the floor close behind them, before taking her place and waiting to do the same…

“Hey, what´s going on?” she radioed, feeling compelled after a long silence to check-in with the adults.

“Uh, yeah. Come on.”

Puzzled by the nonplussed response, Sander shot his sister a final look… and lowered them back through the Firmament.

TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 2…