Free Lunar Descent by Allen Steele

since we’ve got windows, we can watch Earth receding in one direction and the Moon getting closer in another. But down below … well, it gets pretty fucking boring for the cattle. If you’ve thought ahead, you tossed a nice, long paperback novel into your duffel bag before you left the Cape. If you haven’t, you’re shit out of luck. There’s a couple of windows on the mid-deck, but they won’t do you much good. The LTV is flying backwards, so you can’t watch the Moon as it gets closer, and there’s radar and S-band antennas sticking out from the fuselage which prevent you from getting a last good look at Earth. Cislunar space is almost dark as pitch … can’t hardly make out any stars, despite what you’ve seen on the TV shows … so mostly all you can see beyond the glass is this great, black void. It’s about as exciting as watching a dead TV screen.
    So you’ve got two days of hanging around in the mid-deck, plenty of time to consider whether you’ve made a serious career mistake. You spend the time getting acquainted with your fellow passengers, reading and re-reading the moonbase orientation guide … which is about as exciting as reading a computer maintenance manual … and anticipating the next tasty meal of rehydrated beef stroganoff or reconstituted shrimp cocktail, neither of which are exactly four-star. You eventually find yourself practicing zero g somersaults, which is fun until one of us sticks his head through the forward hatch and tells you to cut it out before you break something, and after that there’s really nothing left to do except to sleep. And that’s how you go to the Moon … catching zee’s.
    That’s why in the saying about only making the trip to the Moon once, it’s considered to be a blessing. And that’s another one of the reasons why, when we heard that Descartes’ new GM was a NASA and Skycorp veteran who had been to the Moon twice already, we were pretty leery of him. This is his second tour of duty? He’s gotta be out of his mind! Who would want to go back to that dump again?

4. The Promised Land
    Lester awoke to the sound of an electronic cricket chirping in his ear. His eyes opened to soft, warm darkness; he pushed back the black cotton eyeshades from his face. The lights of his compartment in the Collins’ mid-deck had been turned low; he was wrapped in a nylon sleep restraint. Lester heard the cricket chirp again, and he reached up to his ear to touch the lobe of his headset. “Riddell,” he muttered.
    Good morning, sir . It was the commander of the Michael Collins , Alli James. We’re at six minutes till AOMV separation. We thought you might want to join us up here .
    â€œHmm.” Lester’s mouth tasted greasy, as if he had been eating bad fried chicken the night before. He ran the tip of his tongue across his front teeth, wiping away a thin, sticky sheen of grime. He could have used a toothbrush right now, but there wasn’t enough time to visit the head. “Yeah. I’ll be right down … um, up. Whatever.”
    Do you need help ? she asked, not unkindly.
    He winced. The Collins had been in space for two days, and during that time its crew had silently watched Descartes Station’s new general manager struggle to reacclimate himself to the big and small problems of spaceflight. He had been sick as hell for the first day, and when his stomach had finally stopped flip-flopping, there had come the fight to regain his zero g reflexes. But even if he had needed help now, it would be over his dead body before he asked for it. Ready or not, he had to be the man in charge now.
    â€œNo, thanks,” Lester replied. “I’ll be right up.” He touched the headset lobe again, signing off the intership comlink, then unzipped the bag and reached for the overhead handrail. He was fully dressed in his jumpsuit; prior experience had taught him