The afternoon soon bled into evening… and when the twins had sufficiently freshened up, they recounted their adventure to snickering crewmates and family over a dinner that mercifully didn´t contain a single zoo animal.

“Can we please not talk about farts at the table?” Evelyn groaned, as Matvey guffawed at Peepah´s antics.

“You need use gyrotron, for no gas escape!” Pavel persevered, adding to the general hilarity.

Barney, however, took note of his wife´s more delicate sensibilities and tried to tone things down, at least till they´d finished eating. Fortuitously, Quentin´s clunky homecoming provided a reprieve from the potty-humour, by shifting the spotlight to his fatigued, but satisfied rant.

“That´s it…” he exhaled, enumerating his exploits on each finger while still wearing the bottom of his suit. “I mended the transmitter, adjusted the aqueous salinity to absorb some of that stink… Oh, and I was right: they were doing some lighting test -his words, not mine- that sucked part of the reactor´s juice…”

“Wow, OK. What a slimeball,” Sander added, flummoxed by the duplicity. “He was pretending it was the bio… the machine´s fault!”

Quentin paused his diatribe on the teen´s remark, looking at one of the half-empty bowls in front of him.

“Why am I not surprised… Hey. You done with this?”

“Da, da… wait, I get you plate!” Sergei nodded, going to the galley.

“Oh, you rock… So yeah, if Re-vis screws things up this time, it´s on him.” Quentin preened, uttering the name with an affected South-African accent. “And I know he´s deaf and all, but damn! This guy… It´s like talking to a wall! He´s just obsessed with making this harebrained documentary-”

Sergei returned with a fresh serving and as Quentin popped one of his pills and dug-in, gave him a conciliatory pat.

“You is doing great. They are not easy.”

“I think it´s a religious show, actually… or online?” Lori proposed, mid-mouthful.

“Yeah well, whatever… It´s a shitty idea and like I told him: I´m done being a handyman for dysfunctional fanatics. This is ridiculous.”

A bit liquored up in preparation of their weekly poker game, Matvey slid his bottle over in solidarity.

“Relax. Tomorrow, we back in operation.”

“You sure? How´s the foot?” Quentin inquired, peering beneath the table.

“All good!” Matvey began, distracted by a sudden radiance in the cockpit. “Oho… I think, you getting call?”

Fourteen eyeballs danced between the captain and the flight deck, awaiting the man´s reaction… but he just started laughing.

“Do you… want me to get that?” Barney asked, going to dispose of his cutlery.

“You´re call, bro,” Quentin chuckled, swigging from Matvey´s bottle. “Whatever it is, it´ll wait for tomorrow.”

Their father veered off to pick up the radio, and Sander regressed to picking fun at the Coplands, spurred on by Quentin´s rising, chemically-induced euphoria.

“Any bets on what the issue is now?” he joked. “I feel like Bobby might have lost his Pokemon cards!”

Tragically, this bout of mirth was destined to be short lived, as Barney craned his head back into the common area with an alarming announcement.

“Uh… Peepah died. They want to talk to you.”

The statement cut through the room like a knife, sending chills down his children´s spines. Quentin´s blissful visage devolved into slack-jawed anguish, and he stood shakily to face the unenvious summons.

“Blyat…”

“Is it- are they sure?” Evelyn asked, amid the Soviet profanity.

They watched him numbly wander towards the cockpit… and, with nothing better to do, slowly gathered around Barney to listen at the door. Eventually, Revis´ radio patter ceased.

“Add a name to the list…” Quentin sighed, turning glumly to the crowd.

“What happened?” Lori queried, although the answer was elementary once Quentin responded.

“They tried to wake him up. Couldn´t… probably some sort of oedema, because of the low oxygen…”

As the man replied, he slumped farther into his chair and cradled his forehead, apparently more crushed by the event than anyone imagined. Sharing a look, the Russians rapidly identified the tell-tale signs indicating that their friend was on the verge of another depressive episode and hurried to hopefully nip the problem in the bud, by cheering him up.

“My friend, hey… Don´t upset!” Matvey asserted. “He very old man. Is maybe just normal for him…”

“Is not your fault!” Pavel emphasized, placing a soothing hand on Quentin as he squatted down to his level. “How can you control-”

Quentin interrupted their kindness with a teary, bitter cackle and spread his arms at the Firmament´s windshield.

“I opened Pandora´s box,” he bemoaned, reaching for the pill bottle beside Sergei. “It´s always my fault… What if that pregnant chick is next?”

“That´s illogical, man: you were literally just complaining about Revis tampered with your configurations!” Barney pointed out. “This is nothing like the Hyundai… not that you did anything wrong there, either!”

But the captain just stared off into space, lost in self-imposed recriminations that only he could hear. Before things got more awkward, Quentin requested to be alone… which reminded everyone that they were technically standing in what served as his sleeping quarters.

“Oh, yeah… sure. Sorry…” Barney sputtered, retiring with his family to clean their leftovers, while the Russians renewed unsuccessful attempts at pulling their companion out of his malaise. “Let´s go guys.”

Discombobulated by both Peepah´s demise and Quentin´s mood swings, the twins obeyed in a gloomy funk… already fantasizing about how good it would feel to finish washing up, and leave the extenuating day behind them.

Yet unlike Sander who dozed off as soon as his head hit the pillow, Lori failed to attain solace through slumber that night, laying for hours in an mentally over-excited, liminal state between awareness and reveries.

Peaks of seeming lucidity melded together under the teen´s closed lids, coalescing into a chimeric vista where her old, terrestrial life became a farcical parody of itself… until Lori´s perturbed circadian rhythm conjured up the uncanny dream of her own self, awaking.

In this phantasmagorical, semi-conscious realm, as she lifted from her bed and executed disjointed fragments of her daily routing in a hazy trance, Lori found herself outside of the Firmament, wearing just her pyjamas.

“Something´s off…” Lori thought dully, totally disoriented by her predicament.

To her left, Sander also lacked a proper spacesuit, with only his favorite sports jersey to protect against the vacuum of space… but, akin to the tie-dyed bathrobes their parents were wearing, the Russian´s Cossack regalia or Quentin and his medieval jester garb, all those in attendance remained completely unfazed by the dangers their ludicrous clothing exposed them to.

Trying to speak, Lori´s words reverberated ineffectively in her throat as if trapped underwater and she gave up, realizing that the absurdly-dressed audience was instead captivated by a rectangular hole in the moon rock, that basically answered the most pressing of her previous, unarticulated questions.

A pink light enveloped them, casting a forest of ephemeral shadows into the empty grave at their feet… and although the Firmament´s statuesque crew kept staring balefully toward the pit, Lori tore her eyes away, to watch the dying sparks of a crimson flare traverse the stars overhead.

Right on cue, an old man that she vaguely recognized to be Peepah penetrated her peripheral vision. Cloaked in rags, the elder rolled a large golden barrel to the edge of the tomb and tilted the drum upright, only for Revis to rise from its confines and deliver an incomprehensible eulogy, while wearing the cask as a pair of gleaming overalls.

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Rather than concentrate on the gibberish, Lori´s attention was diverted to the odd sensation radiating through her feet… and she blearily noted that the ground had begun to swallow her lower extremities, in an almost nauseating backslide…

Erasing her, grain by grain… like when the receding tide in her childhood beach memories used to suck her into the sand…

The pulsing intensified, wave after scarlet wave… vibrating the dreamscape to the tune of her accelerating heartbeat… And, as Peepah climbed into his pit, a knobby finger held to the horizon, Lori somehow knew what would come next:

In a gargantuan blaze, the grave around the old man detonated, belching forth a wall of fire that instantly teleported Lori back to her sweaty sheets, with a fright that nobody thankfully witnessed at 5:30 a.m.

Breakfast was a somber affair that morning, in no small part due to the uncertainty surrounding Quentin´s frame of mind after he didn´t show up for his habitual cup of coffee… but when he did appear for lunch, the man´s disposition had moderately ameliorated.

“OK guys, so I´ve been in contact with Revis-” he began, exiting his cockpit just as Pavel was about to check on him. “Oh, hey.”

“Aha, hello! They… you is talking!” Pavel hesitated, having almost bumped into his friend…

He backed up to give him some room.

“Yup… They called back pretty early; we had some stuff to straighten out. Good talk.” Quentin explained, then clearing his throat to address the others in a louder voice, “Anyways they, uh… they invited us to Peepah´s burial, for those who want to go.”

“But… don´t they need our suits?” Barney asked.

“That´s the thing, I have a mission for you guys… if you would be so kind.” He pivoted to the Russians amenably. “Remember how we maybe wanted to let them borrow some of your suits?”

Cocking an eyebrow, Matvey thought back.

“You mean from Strikaza?”

“Exactly. We´re too damn responsible for these people… This chaperone business- It´s making everybody crazy, on both sides,” Quentin shrugged. “So if you could bring, like… ideally, four suits… they´ll be that much more autonomous, can dig their own hole… and we can stop playing babysitter.”

Matvey gazed to his comrades, who nodded in agreement.

“Da, of course!”

“Cool. Thanks… So, well then, yeah. Anyone that wants to come, we´ll be leaving once the boys get back… probably late afternoon. Oh, and when the funeral´s over, there´s going to be some kind of memorial reception. Remind me to bring snacks…” the captain concluded, frowning at the empty coffee pot. “Sound good?”

This last revelation in particular drew fascinated whispers from Evelyn, desirous for an excuse to go see the now-infamous New Nazareth for herself… and even though her husband wasn´t very keen on the prospect of interfering with the Coplands’ bereavement, Barney also couldn´t deny the underlying curiosity with which he accepted their invitation.

“I… guess so. What about you guys… You in?” he asked, turning to his children.

The siblings glanced at one another and Lori, who had been avoiding conversation for the past few hours to analyze her secret nightmare in silence, roused from her meditations to deflect the proposition.

“I´m good. Didn´t really know the guy…”

“Yeah, it´s a bummer!” Sander added, relieved to hear his sister´s decision after what he had until then, interpreted as aggrieved pouting. “What´s the point if we show, anyway? We´ll, um… keep the ship safe.”

“I´m sure you will,” scoffed Quentin, ruffling the teen´s hair as he went to pick food in the garden. “Then that´s, what… six of us? Tell you what: You and Lori can fill our canisters!”

Pleased by the arrangement, Sander coiffed his locks back into place and got to work, before any supplementary conditions could be tacked on to his freedom, while Lori slowly meandered to the bathroom, in desperate need of sleep but dreading what she might see.

When the Soviet trio returned from their ship early that evening, Lori stirred from a nap she didn´t remember taking… and made her way to the dock, rubbing her face to look less drowsy.

Nevertheless, she soon lost all torpidity upon discovering the bulbous, shiny space suits that Matvey and his gang had just lugged in and let out an identical exclamation to her brother´s, as he too strolled by.

“Woah!”

“Darova…” Pavel grunted, as he set his load on the floor. “Where´s Quentin? We already late!”

Having seemingly been designed by someone more familiar with science-fiction novellas than human anatomy, the Strikaza´s apparel followed the basic shape of an acorn, with a retractable dome on top and ribbed, flexible sleeves to accommodate the wearer´s arms and legs… and Sander beheld the exotic garments longingly, wishing to try them on.

“I think he´s in his room… Shouldn´t you take this stuff to New Nazareth directly?” he wondered.

“We need make sure air-tanks compatible…” Matvey replied, referencing the Strikaza´s financier. “With eccentric billionaire, could be custom design. Who knows!”

The cockpit doors glided open as he spoke and Quentin, attracted to their noisy arrival, came to inspect the foreign suits.

“Now that´s what I call Russian ingenuity!” he jocularly declared, amused by the outlandish constructions. “Can you even bend down in those bulky things?”

“Not really… but has huge battery!” Sergei admitted, quipping to reassure him. “And if you fall, at least can spend full weekend on back, like turtle… no problem!”

They shared a laugh, just as Barney and Evelyn also stepped into the chamber.

“Nice, you´re here!” exclaimed Barney. “OK so… are we going, or what? It´s already quarter to six…”

For the next fifteen minutes the Firmament was engulfed by a flurry of activity, with their parents and Quentin dressing in a cacophony of clinking boots, zipping straps and twirling nozzles that the twins watched passively, all too glad to be excluded from Peepah´s interment.

Evelyn packed some last-minute perfume and bearing a selection of greenhouse treats as gifts for their subsequent reception, the group descended in pairs to bring the Coplands their new suits.

“Finally!” Sander sighed, scampering off to raid some sweets from Pavel´s secret stash, once the dock had ceased transporting people. “So, we´ve got a few hours of liberty… what do you want to do?”

But after having wasted most of her day engulfed in a stupor, Lori abruptly became inspired by the stillness now permeating their craft… and hastily concocted a plan to elucidate the meaning of her nocturnal terrors.

Marching toward the suit-rack, she grabbed her helmet and began changing, only for her brother to groan as he returned from his crime.

“No, man… Come on!”

“You don´t even know where I´m going, and you don´t have to come,” Lori responded curtly, fearing she´d lose her nerve by verbalizing too much of her intentions.

“Oh… you´re not-” the adolescent laughed, regretting his faulty assumption. “My bad. You´ve been acting weird today… I thought you might want to go cry for Peepah or something!”

The smile slid from Sander´s face however, when his sister expounded her daring plan:

“I had another dream last night, with Peepah… I need to visit the bunker.”

Frozen by the words, her brother was rendered almost speechless.

“No… no! We…” he gulped, “What are you talking about? I´m not-”

“That´s fine. You can stay here and tell everyone where I went.”

“Lori!”

With a last click to fasten her helmet, she unsealed a fresh oxygen tank and activated the dock, leaving Sander to his worries.

Outside the vessel, Lori retrieved the Landshark from its slot, spotting six little humans on Mons Rümker´s distant flank… and pulled the rover beyond their line of sight, to avoid being observed. Yet surprisingly, just as she sat down in the driver´s seat, her brother jogged over and killed the engine.

“Hey!”

“Are you mental?” he demanded, chocolate still staining his cheeks behind the suit´s visor. “Don´t run off like that!”

“I´m not arguing this, Sander,” Lori insisted, fighting to maintain her wavering bravery. “Something is going on… I need answers.”

A look in her eye told him she meant business, but Sander wasn´t about to back down.

“I don’t care! You´re not going to that creepy place alone,” the teen rebuked, plopping himself heavily onto the Landshark beside her, in spite of all his reservations. “What? I´m just supposed to sit in the ship and twiddle my thumbs?”

“I thought-”

“Just shut up and drive! You´re forcing me to do this, you know that?” he raved, furious that his brotherly conscience had guilted him into her godforsaken venture. “And I´ll be damned if something happens to you, that I could have prevented! Fuck that. We go real fast, you flush this bullshit from your system and see that there´s nothing!” he screamed the word into her headset. “And we get back before they do… and then you- no, I fucking tell them everything! And you owe me… Big time.”

Shell-shocked by the outburst, Lori held her tongue while the rover growled back to life and they were off, each twin lost in their own personal phobias and fantasies of what was to come… circumventing the Beginner´s Luck´s debris field before they knew it, to park in front of the Bunker´s little door.

“God damn it…”

Ears still ringing from his fit, Lori rotated toward Sander as he broke the silence, and looked around.

“What?”

“It´s still there,” he grumbled, dismounting from the Landshark and eyeing the portal sourly.

Plodding up to the rocky hillside, Lori´s stomach sinked a bit lower with every step, and checked if anything had changed from their last visit. When nothing seemed amiss, they entered the airlock together and were again filled with unsettling, half-remembered impressions from their first exploration.

The spiral staircase…

The blinking, red light…

“Radios off, right?” Sander verified, using sign-language… to which his sister complied, figuring that their stealthy manoeuvres certainly hadn´t hurt the last time.

They switched off their headsets and, acclimating to the intermittent penumbra of the flickering glow beneath them, advanced once more into the unknown.

At the base of the stairwell, Sander´s discarded section of aluminum piping lay undisturbed, in the same spot that he had dropped it, but as he internally debated whether or not to rearm himself with the improvised cudgel, Lori snuck ahead.

Past stubby benches and diminutive lockers, Lori´s sibylline mural leered menacingly to her side… but she kept her eyes fixed forward, lest she lose herself in its hypnotizing effigy.

Indeed, the bomb-proof chamber beckoned her with mysterious urgency, throbbing brighter the closer she crept… and she exhaled restlessly to squeeze through the blast door´s aperture, just enough for a peek. Inside the reinforced room, a large, curved desk made of the same silver metal as the moon-door sat in the middle of the floor, with a blinking red button on top.

“Come here!” she waved behind her, noticing that the little plastic cover had already been lifted, as if someone had been about to push the blinking beacon.

“Show me!” Sander signed back, bumping her shoulder to indicate that he was much nearer to her than she had blindly estimated.

Strangely enough, the chamber itself appeared to have at one time served as a command center of some sort… except that now, a large dent in the middle switchboard had bent the shattered console inward.

But besides the broken electronics and a few overturned swivel-chairs, neither of them could see much as the room’s ceiling lights had all been shattered. So having peeked in as far as she could, Lori gave up trying to squint into the pulsating, crimson light and willed herself to take one final step.

Weary of using her flashlight, Lori crouched down and tried to make the least amount of noise as possible as she approached the console, reaching her destination only to immediately jumped back upright and retreat… having come face to face with something naked, gray and very much dead.

Sander charged in, spooked by his sister’s reaction, only to skid to a halt when he got close enough to see what the problem was: curled up in a bloody ball beneath the desk, was a four-foot-tall humanoid, with a leathery, over-sized head.