Rick Casey was talking to Natalia Romeo on his slate when the lights went out.

“I’m sorry I have to work late,” she said, her face filled with tiredness and worry. “If we get through the CME all right I promise I’ll make it up to you.”

Rick smiled. “I’ll hold you to that. But I am disappointed. Ah well. Raincheck then.”

He was about to sign off when everything went dark. The only light was the glowing slate in his hand. “Nat?” He tapped at the screen but got a no feed warning for his trouble.

“Damn.” He tapped on his slate’s flashlight and waved it around. He was in a small office at the far end of the docking area. He thought he heard an alarm trilling somewhere. He appeared to be alone.

After what felt like an eternity the emergency lights came up, LED strips flashing to life in the corridor outside the office. He turned off the light on his slate and opened the door. He could still hear the steady hiss of the air handlers. That was a good sign. If they had gone down, they were now running again on emergency power. At any rate, he could kiss his romantic date with the lovely Natalia Romeo goodbye. He wished now he had asked her for something to do. His ship was parked and locked down, so there was nothing for him, but he was not the type to sit around twiddling his thumbs.

Rick left the office and moved up the corridor, attracted by a hint of movement up ahead.

“Hello?” he called, his voice echoing hollowly off the lunar rock surrounding him.

He heard the rustling of fabric from the shadows between the emergency lights. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom he saw a conglomeration of figures spilling into the docking area and headed straight for him.

“Hello?” he said again, more cautiously this time. When the group of figures came into the light he turned and ran for his life.

Rick did not know who these figures were, but he knew whatever they wanted with him couldn’t be good. They wore nondescript black jumpsuits, and their faces and arms were covered in some silver-black gunk.

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Panicked, Rick pondered his situation. He had no weapons, and he was cut off from the main base. He was also in the docking section. There weren’t many places he could hide. Except one.

Rick hung a hard right and headed up the docking tube toward his ship. His biometrics opened the airlock door almost immediately, and he jammed himself into it before it had fully opened. Before it was sealed again he was in his cockpit and unspooling the docking tube. He watched on the ship’s cameras in surprise and horror as the black-suited and silver-colored figures spilled out of the retracting docking tube and into vacuum. And kept coming towards the ship.

“What the hell?” Rick muttered. Was he being pranked? He felt as if he had inadvertently stumbled onto the set of one of those outlandishly gory zombie movies Nat liked to watch. He sped through his pre-flight checklist, throwing switches and turning dials in an effort to put as much vacuum between himself and those things as he could.

The lights came up in the cabin. The oxygen bottles had been recently topped off. In spite of the coronal mass ejection that had dealt the base a glancing blow, everything in the ship appeared operational. He didn’t know if it was safe to fly, but he was willing to risk it.

He heard loud banging on the hull of the ship, the sound of many fists pounding on her skin. He didn’t know what they were, or how they could survive in freezing vacuum, but he had no intentions of sticking around to find out what they wanted with him.

“Come on, baby. Just one more, for old time’s sake.” Rick fired the engines and felt the comforting rumble of the takeoff thrusters vibrating beneath his bootheels. He glanced at the photo of Natalia gummed to his console and wondered if she was OK. The base was probably full of the things that were clawing to get aboard his ship, and he feared for her safety.

With a grimace, Rick took the controls, lifting the ship gently into the sky. One by one the pounding subsided as his attackers fell from the rising ship. With any luck, some of them were caught in his thrusters and were burned to a crisp. He turned the craft so he could get a better view of the base.

Luna 1 was dark. Only a few emergency telltales glowed amber on the surface. The rest looked as if everyone had turned off the lights and gone home. He turned the craft away from the base and higher into the airless sky. He had hours of fuel and nowhere to go, so he decided to circle Luna and try and get a sense of what happened.

The figures milling below were most disturbing of all, standing in cold, airless vacuum, shaking their fists up at him. Rick flipped them off before starting his circle of the base.

He knew it was pointless, but he tried the comms again, getting only static. “Somebody talk to me,” he muttered. “Nat. Anybody. Please tell me what’s going on. Let me know you’re OK.”