Old Woman and the Moon: Chapter 1

“Old Man and the Sea”, but on the Moon, and with ladies

Serena Santiago was the old ‘mad’ scientist who drove the lunar rover out to the edges of Site 105, and she had gone eighty-four days taking regolith samples without revealing her plot to drive deep into the dark side of the moon. In the first forty days a young astronaut had been with her. After forty days the base Commander replaced the young partner with a robotic Watchdog to conserve on suit maintenance.

The youngster, Marylin, was now being cross-trained in habitat systems maintenance and had made three successful upgrades. Which was good. And also bad. She wouldn’t get more moonwalk assignments at this rate. It made Marylin sad to see the her friend come in each day alone with that bot carrying meticulous and ultimately redundant sample bags. She always helped Serena dust off and doff her suit, dismantling the white mechatronic exoskeleton until the old woman was shell-less, wilted with sweat and tiny.

Serena was nearing sixty, thin and gaunt after a whole year here, and her t-shirt with its mission patch stitched over the breast hung long and flat on her wire frame. Her skin was a sheer porcelain veil over a network of purple veins. Scars were long white lines over her arms and hands from her terrestrial lifetime digging and building and exploring. They were as lines on a worn map never taking her anywhere new.

Everything about Serena seemed older in the light of the hab. Older than anything else that had ever arrived on the lunar surface. Except her eyes. They were Mississippi mud brown and cheerful and undefeated.

“Santiago, maybe I could go out with you now. I’ve got the urine processor shipshape again and Commander is pleased as punch.”

“No,” Serena said, “It’ll be the greenhouse she’ll want plumbed into the air and water regen systems next. You’re impressing her. Stick with that.”

“But haven’t you had trouble with the rover the last forty Walks? It never so much as hiccuped with me on board. Maybe I can bring you some luck.”

“Trouble? It’s a mule, it kicks. It’s quite normal. You’re wanted around the Hab. Commander has a lot needs fixing.”

Marylin smiled. “The Hab’s a hippo. It burps. It’s quite normal.”

Serena laughed a short bark.

“Care to accompany me to the mess for dinner?” Marylin asked as she always did.

Serena and Marylin sat in a corner with their backs to the rest of the crew. Others looked at Serena Santiago and saw an old, thin woman who did the same most-likely-useless routine day after day. They didn’t know her secrets and they didn’t know her humor and they were sad for her in their ignorance.

Serena looked at Marylin over her ice cream when Marylin was not looking back, and she thought perhaps she should say goodbye before saying goodnight tonight.

But she could not burden her friend.