Free In Perpetuity by Ellis Morning Page A

his initials and the date. If left alone, the markings would last as long as the Moon did.

    Nazari and Talbot huddled before the glow of a terminal monitor in the Lunar Science lab. Ambient lighting had shifted into night mode hours earlier, prompting the men to balance battery-operated lamps atop the clutter on their workbench. They were alone; the hum of power supplies and the ventilation system filled their ears. This was the only time during which one could pursue matters of personal curiosity without absorbing flak from one’s superiors.
    Talbot squinted and fiddled with dials, his angular neck craned to its limit. Nazari sat behind him, occasionally remembering to sip from a thermos of tea that had cooled long ago. His gaze never deviated from the monitor, which displayed the fractured crystalline patterns of the sample they analyzed with a scanning electron microscope.
    “You sure that’s a low-titanium region?” Talbot asked. “The chemists’ll be thrilled to hear otherwise.”
    “No map I’ve seen shows that high a concentration at that spot,” Nazari replied. “Granted, the maps we have are pretty old.”
    “No erosion, no water… no wind, quakes, microbes, volcanism, or continental drift,” Talbot rattled off. “Selenology: geology for the dead lazy.”
    Nazari shrugged. “Maybe a meteor impact in a titanium-rich mare sent over some ejecta. I’ll show this to the boss. What are the odds he’ll put us on point for an investigation?”
    “About as likely as shedding gofer detail for something dignified,” Talbot answered.
    Nazari frowned. “Think if we do enough homework ahead of time, it might convince him otherwise?”
    In a rare display of restraint, Talbot waited for him to continue the thought.
    “When we go back out for slag, we can scout for more ilmenite, try to establish a pattern of distribution,” Nazari explained. “Meanwhile, we can hunt through old data for meteor impacts that might have thrown the ilmenite that far.”
    “Think it would’ve been that recent— as in, recorded-history recent?” Talbot asked.
    “Probably not, but there’s a recorded history on the Moon’s surface that’s a lot older,” Nazari said. “We can look for craters that indicate a collision with the requisite force, at least narrow it down to a specific region.”
    “Big region, I’m guessing.”
    “Information Science ought to have something to get us started. I’ll leave a note.” Nazari darted from his chair. The action lifted him off his feet for a moment, but he quickly regained his balance. His terminal rested on the opposite end of the same workbench. He tapped it awake, then flipped to a messaging client. Its readout made him blink in surprise. “The IS main desk is still online. At this hour?”
    “You don’t think we’re the only night owls in the Luna-Bin, do you?” Talbot asked.
    Nazari sent a brief message to the main desk. The response appeared in an instant: By all means.
    “Might as well head over now.” Nazari doubted he would get any sleep otherwise. He logged out of his terminal.
    “That’s right, leave me to clean up,” Talbot grumbled.
    “You mind?”
    The false annoyance disappeared behind a smirk. “No, but when I finally get to work out why there’s so much thorium in Compton-Belkovich, you owe me.”
    Exiting the lab deposited Nazari into a metallic corridor with a high ceiling and walls lined with labeled doors. This was the Lunar Science pod, in which he spent the majority of his days. At either end of the pod were openings to tunnels branching to other pods. He opted for one of these.
    Unlike the pods, the tunnels connecting them were lengthy and transparent on all sides, offering a view of the colony, the mare in which it rested— and, often, a phase of Earth. During colony night, one could bound through these halls without fear of discovery or collision, challenging himself to leap ever higher and farther. Nazari supposed he hadn’t grown up yet,