Artemis

“You shouldn’t fuck other people’s boyfriends.”

“Oh, come on!”

“I could get used to this new relationship we have,” I said. “Help me get all this crap over to the bubble.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Together we carried or dragged everything to the wall.

The arc of the dome, broken into two-meter triangles, was vertical at ground level. I selected a reasonably clean triangle and dusted it off with a wire brush. There’s no weather on the moon, but there is static electricity. Fine lunar dust gets everywhere and sticks to everything with the slightest charge.

“Okay, this one,” I said. “Help me move the shelter into position.”

“Copy.”

Together, we hoisted the air shelter and shuffled it over to the dome. We pressed the aluminum skirt against the shiny wall then set the shelter down.

“Goddamn, Dad’s good,” I said.

“Jesus,” Dale said.

He’d done an absolutely perfect job on the skirt. I mean, okay, he just had to make the point of contact with the wall flat, but holy hell. There was less than a millimeter of gap between the skirt and the wall.

I brought up my arm readout, which was basically just a fancy external screen for my Gizmo. The Gizmo itself was safely inside the suit with me (they’re not made to handle the rigors of the outdoors). I tapped a few buttons and made the call.

“Yo, Jazz,” said Svoboda. “How’s tricks?”

“So far, so good. How’s the camera feed?”

“Working perfectly. I’ve got your suit cams on the screens.”

“Be careful out there,” came Dad’s voice.

“I will, Dad. Don’t worry. Dale, you getting the phone audio?”

“Affirm,” said Dale.

I walked back to the skirt and faced it so the helmet cam would point at it. “Good skirt alignment. Like…really good.”

“Hmm,” said Dad. “I see some gaps. But smaller than the bead you’ll be making. Should be fine.”

“Dad, this is some of the best precision I’ve ever—”

“Let’s get to work,” he interrupted.

I dragged the oxygen and acetylene tanks to the site and fixed the torch head.

“All right,” Dad said. “Do you know how to start a flame in a vacuum?”

“Of course,” I said. No way in hell I would admit I learned it the hard way just a few days ago. I set the oxygen mix very high, sparked the flame, and got it stabilized.

When I’d worked over the harvesters earlier I’d done very rudimentary joins. I just needed it to hold the pressure in long enough to blow up. These joins would be a lot more complicated. The job would’ve been trivial for Dad, but he didn’t know anything about EVAs. Hence our teamwork.

“Looks like a good flame,” Dad said. “Start at the crown and let the bead puddle downward. Surface tension will keep it aligned with the gap.”

“What about the airflow pressure?” I said. “Won’t it blow droplets into the skirt?”

“Some, but not much. There are no eddy forces around the flame in a vacuum. There’s just the pressure of the flame itself.”