Free Moonrise by Ben Bova

Joanna smiled tightly and answered, “We’ll be glad to sit down and talk it over with him. Just as soon as we can. We can leave the station right away, can’t we, Paul?”
    Paul nodded, thinking that the few million she wouldn’t spend to alleviate her own physical distress wasn’t even a consideration in her mind when it came to trying to patch it up with her son.

MARE NUBIUM
    Dead reckoning. Paul tried not to think of the irony in the term.
    With no navigational aids to help him, Paul looked across the glassy crater that he had fallen into and lined himself up with his own boot prints, shining bright against the dark lunar regolith. Turning, he looked for a recognizable feature on the sharp horizon.
    Okay, he said to himself. You head for that big squarish boulder. March.
    He started off again, checking his watch to see how much progress he had made. How the hell can I tell how far I’ve come? he fumed at himself. Pissing suit doesn’t come with an odometer. Three hours since I started. Legs still feel pretty good. No stiffness.
    But his left heel hurt worse each time he set the foot down. Wonder if that’s the same heel that did in Achilles?
    He struggled on, doggedly aiming for the boulder, big asa fair-sized house. When I get there I’ll take a break, he promised himself. Sit down in the shade and rest a spell. Just a few minutes. Don’t have enough oxygen to sit around for long. Don’t want the legs to stiffen up, either. Got to keep moving. But you’ve earned a little break. Just a little one. Just a couple minutes.
    The horizon cut across his view like the edge of a cliff, much closer than on Earth, much sharper in the airless clarity of the Moon. Wonder what Columbus’s crew would’ve thought about the horizon here. They were scared they were gonna fall over the edge when they were sailing across the Atlantic. How’d they like to walk to the edge of this horizon?
    Paul turned his head slightly inside his helmet and put his lips to the water nipple. Nothing. Fear flared through him. No, wait. A few drops. He sucked harder. Damn! It was dry.
    The suit had a full water tank when I put it on, he told himself. He tried to remember. He had checked out the suit in a panicky hurry, but all the indicators were in the green. He looked at the indicators now. Still green.
    But no water coming through the nipple. Maybe the tube got bent when I fell down. Banged my head pretty good, might’ve whacked the pipe. It’s only a small plastic tube. Maybe it’s just kinked a little. Just needs to be straightened out. But how the hell can I fix it from inside the suit?
    Think! he commanded himself. Don’t make a move until you think it out. Remember what that old cosmonaut Leonov said: In space, think five times before you move a finger. In the meantime, keep moving.
    Think. You can pull your arm out of the suit sleeve, you know that. Maybe worm your hand up past the collar ring and try to straighten out the tube. Maybe that’d work.
    He closed his eyes to get a better mental picture of the inner workings of the surface suit. Hell, guys have smuggled women into these suits. Take a joyride up on the surface and watch the Earthlight. He remembered the first time he’d seen the night side of Earth, the glowing lights of cities and highways outlining North America. The fantastic shimmering of the aurora’s pale blues, reds and greens. Very romantic.
    Keep your mind on your problem, butthead! he raged at himself. The suit’s loose enough to jerk off in, too, but that ain’t gonna help anything.
    Wait till you get to the rock. Then lean against it, take some of the weight off your legs, and see if you can worm your hand out of the sleeve and up inside the helmet here. That’s what you’ve got to do.
    It seemed as if he’d never get to the boulder. It loomed bigger and bigger, but it still seemed miles away. Until, all of a sudden, he was right in front of it.
    Paul reached out and touched its stony side, smoothed by