Free Over the Moon (Star-Crossed Book 1) by K. McLaughlin Page A

good,” she said, forcing herself to take even breaths as she slowly relaxed. The more she relaxed, the more she was able to enjoy what she was seeing. “It’s really beautiful up here.”
    His eyebrows went up a little in surprise. Aha! So he had done that fast ascent to see if he could shock her. She smiled. Well, he had his fun, but she wasn’t that easy to scare.
    “I’m glad you like it. It’s too stark for most people,” he replied.
    She could see that. It was stark – bare rock, and fields of dust. Craters, mountains, boulders, cracks and crevasses all displayed themselves beneath the hopper. The terrain was geographically diverse. But it was missing the play of color that you’d see on Earth. No blues, no greens. No amber fields, or rolling hills covered with corn. Despite that, she could see the beauty here.
    “I do like it,” she said.
    They flew on in silence a little while, each taking in the scene rolling by outside. But the lunar landscape looked much the same in one place as it did in another to Carmen. And she realized she didn’t know much about the mission they were on. Patrick said this was more than just a joyride to show off, right?
    “What are we doing?” she asked, breaking the silence.
    “Right,” Patrick said, looking over at her. “I have little stations set up, collecting surface data. But they need maintenance. Nothing lasts forever out here, especially if it’s not tended regularly. We’ll check out four of them, but I’m especially worried about one down on the south pole that’s acting up.”
    “Isn’t that far?” she asked.
    “It is. But we’re moving pretty rapidly. We’ll be there in two hours, work for a bit, and then be back in time for you to be back at the lab.”
    Now she was really curious. Two hours seemed an awfully long way away for a remote station. “Why so far?”
    “It’s the pole,” he said. “There’s ice down there, in some of the craters, where the sun never shines. Water ice. It’s a great resource for us. This station is doing all sorts of readings – radiation, temperatures. But it’s also a control and charging station for a bunch of little robots that are checking the craters nearby for water.”
    “Water seems like such a simple thing,” she said.
    He laughed. “On Earth, it is! But out here, it’s life. It’s expensive to get water up here from Earth, but the more humans we bring here, the more of it we need. So if we can find some decent supplies already here…”
    “Then you can bring more people, expand the base, maybe even have a small city here,” she said.
    “City!” Patrick seemed startled by the idea. “Well, I suppose. But we’re a long way from being ready to build a city here.”
    He seemed lost in thought after that, and Carmen felt awkward interrupting his musing. He was such a strange man! Every time she thought she had a bead on him, he went and showed her some new aspect to his personality. It made him both frustrating and fascinating at the same time.
    A short while later Carmen felt the thrusters shift and looked over at Patrick again. He was working the controls, and she realized that he was throttling back, applying thrust to slow them down. They must be closing on their destination. She looked outside, but all she saw was more craggy rocks and ridges.
    “I’ll bring us down near the site and show you around,” Patrick said.
    “We don’t have suits, though?”
    “We won’t need them. The Hopper has arms that will manage the maintenance we need to do today. If there was a more complex malfunction, I’d come out with a suit. But mostly I think we just need to blow dust off the solar panels. And probably clean another rock out of one of the robots’ charging ports.”
    She nodded, trying to picture what the work would look like. She’d see soon enough though. Patrick had stopped their forward motion altogether, and now the Hopper was descending. The ground was coming up fast, and Carmen found