“Welcome to Luna 1,” said the woman.

Adding the digit seemed an unnecessary redundancy. There was no Luna 2. Or 3 or 4, for that matter. This was the only established base on the Earth’s moon, though there had been plans from the beginning for more, much more. Plans that, at least for now, appeared to have been scrapped.

“Hello,” said Teague.

“Hello, Commander. I’m Natalia Romeo, first officer.”

“Yes,” said Teague. He recognized her from the photo on Casey’s ship console.

But that picture failed to do her justice. She was beautiful, with short-cropped dark hair to which the Moon’s lesser gravity gave a playful bounce, and large, dark eyes. She had the faintest hint of an Italian accent. She smiled and extended her hand. Teague took it and gave it a friendly shake before glancing self-consciously at his ex.

“This is our new chief medical officer, Dr. Skyler Cole.”

“Pleased to meet you,” said Romeo. The two women shook hands.

“All right,” said Cole. “I’d best go find the medical bay.”

“Straight down this corridor,” Romeo said, pointing to her left. “It’s the very next pod.”

“Thank you.” To Teague, she said, “Good luck.”

“Why don’t you give me the dime tour?” Teague said when the doctor was gone.

Romeo smiled. “Of course, Commander. If you will follow me.”

Teague had gone over Luna 1’s schematics a dozen times since taking the job, but there was no substitute for actually being there. He had always had difficulty reading maps. They were just near meaningless lines until you had been to a place, seen it with your own eyes, and found landmarks to guide you. Only then did a place become real. Especially a place as ethereal as a pressurized habitat on the surface of the Moon.

The operations dome was a small blister next to the much larger Aldrin Dome, the whole complex stretched out across the relatively flat expanse of the Mare Serenitatis, the Sea of Serenity, which joined to the Mare Tranquillitatis, or Sea of Tranquility, the site of the first Moon landing. He had studied a geographical survey map of the Moon on his way to the shuttle and found he had about as much patience for Latin as he did for maps.

“This is the Operations workstation,” said Romeo. “All station operations run through this board. Power. Environmental. Life support. The works.”

She gestured toward a large console on her left. “This is Communications, both base-wide and with Earth. Back there is the Commander’s ready room.”

Teague nodded. “Seems fairly self-explanatory. “Thank you, Natalia. That will be all.”

Romeo gave him a slight nod and returned to her duty station. Teague took one final glance around before retreating to the ready room.

It was a mess. Donovan had left—or been forced out—in a hurry. Sticky notes and styluses littered the floor surrounding the smooth, white plastic desk, and Teague bent to pick a few of them up with a groan.

When he stood, he stared at the stylus thoughtfully, letting it wobble back and forth between his thumb and index finger. Then he let it go. The writing implement appeared to float there for a moment before making its inexorably slow descent to the floor. He placed his hand under it when it was at hip level and caught it.

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Locking the door from a button on his desk, Teague reached into his pocket and fished out the drive. He turned it over with his fingers, then plugged it into a slot in his desk. His login credentials were already set up, and he found his private partition on the base’s drive easily enough. But when he tried to access the drive he found it was quantum encrypted. He told his system to decrypt, and it gave him an estimated time of twenty-seven hours and twenty-three minutes.

“Great,” said Teague. “Well, best get to it.”

He told it to start decrypting in the background, hoping it wouldn’t gobble up too much of the base’s resources in the process. Whatever was on it, Donovan didn’t want the UN or the USAZ congress to see it. Teague didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Maybe he should have alerted Donovan's UN escorts. What would General Steen think when he found out he'd let Donovan surreptitiously slip him possibly damning data? The problem with being told not to trust anyone was not being able to trust anyone.

While his system worked its decryption, Teague unlocked his door and busied himself with cleaning up the mess Donovan had left. He returned the sticky notes to the desk, set his duffel there, and opened it. He riffled around inside of it until he brought out a baseball. Yellowed with age, it had been signed by the Atlanta Braves after they won the 1995 World Series. His late father had gotten it when he was a child. Teague and his father didn’t agree on much, but one thing they had in common was baseball. This ball had been all over the United States Allegiance Zone twice and had traveled with Teague to two continents. Now it was on the Moon.

With a boyish smile, Teague tossed the ball gently into the air, careful not to throw it too hard. It climbed toward the ceiling and stayed there for a long moment before the gentle lunar gravity tugged it back down toward the floor. Teague waited until he almost had to bend over before reaching out and plucking it from its fate. He wondered idly if the one-sixth gravity would make playing lunar baseball less fun or more fun.

“I see you’ve discovered the best reason to go to the Moon.”

Teague looked up, startled. A tall, slender man with salt and pepper hair and dark, bushy eyebrows stood in the doorway. Teague recognized him immediately through the age lines and the years.

“Mike! said Teague.” "Jeez. Did you get even taller?"

Leneski fixed him with a boyish grin. "Yeah. A little. The lunar gravity decompresses the spine."

Teague placed the baseball on the desk and stepped around it to shake hands with his friend. “I heard you were up here. How the hell are you?”

Mike Leneski gave Teague’s hand a hardy shake. “Better, now that you’re here. Now we’ll finally get things running smoothly.”

“Was it that bad?”

Mike turned and closed the door. “It could have been. I don’t have to tell you we’re being scrutinized from a hundred different directions. The whole world is watching what we do up here, and with that comes no small amount of pressure.”

Teague nodded. Leneski was the chief science officer. Every piece of research being conducted on Luna 1 was under his jurisdiction.

“It was becoming quite the cluster,” Leneski said, shaking his head. “Supplies weren’t being ordered. Staff problems. Low morale. The security chief and I busted a bootleg distillery a few weeks ago.”

“I have a feeling getting supplies is going to become a problem regardless,” said Teague. “Supply chain disruptions on Earth.”

Leneski nodded. “Sometimes I don’t know where I’d rather be. There or here.”

Teague slapped him on the shoulder. “Well, I’m glad you’re right here. I need people I can trust, who can help me get a handle on things.”

“Speaking of which, was that Sky I saw earlier?”

“Yeah. Only don’t call her that. She hates to be called that. Or maybe she just hates when I call her that. I don’t know.” Teague ran both hands down his face. He suddenly felt very tired.

“Well, I’ll let you get settled in. Come see me later. I might have kept a bottle of that back alley, algae tank booze. It’s actually quite good.”

Leneski turned and left the ready room, sealing the door behind him.

Teague pondered the mess, the baseball, the drive the outgoing base commander had slipped him while being hauled back to Earth to testify, his mind light years away. He needed to focus. He had a lot of work to do, and he was unsure where to begin.

His slate chimed. Teague turned, grabbed it off his desk, and answered it.

“We have a problem,” said Romeo. “The shuttle carrying former commander Donovan just exploded.”