True to her word, the captain announced, in a lull in the conversation over lunch, "The Doc has some research equipment to set up on the Moon surface. Dex, I want you to take her out this afternoon and make sure she gets everything she needs, ok?"
It was formed like a question, but the only acceptable answer would be "yes", of course.
"Sure thing, Cap!", he sounded pleased. He looked over to me and winked, "Your first real moon walk. Nothin' quite like it."
There were other murmurs of agreement, but Tiny spoke up, saying, "Nah, you can have it. Gives me the creeps being out there. Gimme solid walls any day!"
The crew was all good-natured, and the men gently ribbed Tiny for being a "wuss", but he stood firm, saying, "I dunno how I'm supposed to feel comfortable looking up in the sky and seeing the only other place in the universe that has humans on it. Can't help thinking how small the place is, and how big everything else in the universe is." He theatrically shuddered. With this, the others let it drop.
"Well, I'm keen. I'm really excited. Thanks Cap! And thank you, Dex," I was starting to get butterflies in the stomach thinking about it, but it was at least partly excitement and not all terror. At least, that's what I told myself.
I tried not to think about what Tiny had said, and how incongruous it was that I, a junior professor at a small university, should be on the moon playing concubine to six burly spacers. Ok, seven, if you count the captain, but she's not burly. And I was about to step out on the surface of the Moon and wander around. Despite having been on the Moon for a couple of weeks, it was still a daunting prospect. The view from the gym still boggled my mind.
After lunch, the boys and I all headed down to the workshop. There was a lot of prep we needed to do for the moon walk. We had to set up the surface buggy with my experiments, and although I had done the induction training back on Earth, Dex ran me through all the details again, especially talking about how the space suit worked, its climate control, air supply, the intercom system, and emergency procedures. That took about an hour! I tried to pay attention, but I admit I was a little distracted by the dread (I mean, 'excitement', of course), as he ran through everything about how the suits were monitored back at base, and the whole crew could monitor our vitals, the suit telemetry systems, the intercom, and our locations.
Finally, we were ready to suit up! Dex showed me a set of coveralls like the ones the captain wears, and waved me into a room where I could change. "Don't you wanna watch?" I teased with a raised eyebrow as I swept past him, closer than really necessary.
The poor guy actually blushed. I had caught him off guard! He was so much in the zone in business mode, he had forgotten that I was right in front of him, willing and available if he should want to fool around.
I stepped into the room as he held the door open. As I spun around to face him, I pulled the string to release the bow behind my neck that was keeping my airy summer frock from wafting to the floor, which it promptly did. By the time I had turned all the way around, my bare breasts were showing and, as fast as the weak gravity could manage it, my dress was falling to very soon reveal my little cotton knickers. I just stood, as coy as I could, suggestively biting my bottom lip as the Moon's underpowered gravity labored to pull the garment eventually all the way down to settle at my feet.
In his momentary surprise, Dex not only blushed, he then stuttered, gawked, and swallowed hard before regaining his composure, "Hmmf, um, yeah," he began. "You're really something, you know that?" he continued ambiguously before closing the door over in what appeared to be the result of an internal battle of will power, and I'm not sure whether it represented a win or a loss in that battle.
I suppressed a giggle as I stepped into the coveralls. It only took a moment. I opened the door to find Dex was facing away, as though protecting my modesty. He's such a sweetie. "How do I look?" I asked, unnecessarily. I mean, I looked like I was wearing a utilitarian garment. It's not like it was a Garavani or something.
He turned to look, drank it in as I did a little twirl, and then let out a deep sigh and muttered, "You are fuckin' spectacular." He then switched back to business mode, and we went together to get suited up.
When we finally emerged from the airlock, perched absurdly in the peculiar buggy that would take us sufficiently far from the base so that my experiments would not suffer interference from it, my mind sort of rebooted.
Here we were, descending a ramp onto the Moon's surface. The buggy only went about 15kph, but it was still faster than I could take everything in. It all appeared brutally clear in the harsh light, unfiltered by any atmosphere. The rocks, each one casting a severe shadow, were like an image on a TV with the contrast turned up too high.
I was agape, and trying to absorb the reality of it. Finally, I realized I could hear Dex in my helmet, asking again for a second time, "Which way? Where would you like to go?"
I looked towards him and saw only his space suit from the side, as he was facing forwards. Only intellectually could I know that his disembodied voice had originated from within that inhuman form. I was less than a foot from him, but the vacuum void of space was between us, and there was no way to achieve human touch. The whole situation was otherworldly. Not least because we were, you know, on another world, so to speak.
I collected my thoughts and eventually motioned away from the base, "Let's go just over that ridge," I said in my fishbowl helmet, my voice electronically squawking back into my ears via the intercom, disconcertingly delayed by a fraction of a second, like an echo.
"Roger that, doc!" Dex sat back in his seat and braced his arms on the steering wheel. He raised one arm, and then pointed it forward as though signalling a cavalry charge. I braced, inferring that the buggy was about to lunge forward.
The buggy immediately responded to Dex's foot stomping on the pedal. It vibrated lightly, and gently accelerated to its ponderous 15kph speed. He was looking at me with an enormous grin, and I giggled involuntarily. "Ok, Fangio," I quipped, at which he gripped the steering wheel all the more, and pretended to be driving a racing car.
I suppose he might have liked the chance to have a girl in the passenger seat of a more impressive car, but to be honest, I don't find reckless driving appealing at all. It was better that we were here, at barely more than walking pace, making light of it. I was having a great time!
The strangest thing happened when we topped a rise, and found ourselves on the other side of a low ridge. Suddenly, we were no longer able to see the base. We were surrounded by the lunar surface, unbroken in all directions except by a long section of maglev rail I could see disappearing to the south. It was as though we were a million miles from anywhere. In truth, we were almost half that distance from most places we would think of as significant, but now it really *seemed* like a million miles.
Dex stopped the buggy in the relatively level dust bowl formed by a shallow, ancient crater. "How about here?" he turned towards me.
I could see his face, but superimposed, I could see a reflection of the stars in his helmet visor. A faint image of the Milky Way splashed across the image of his face, and the effect was breathtaking. He sat patiently, his broad grin unwavering. I have no idea what was going on with my face, but I probably had my mouth hanging open like some stupid monkey, and a look of dull incomprehension in my eyes. "He must think I'm an idiot," I thought, trying to collect myself.
Eventually, I nodded. He hopped from the buggy and began unloading my experiments. It was a sweet gesture. On Earth, they weighed twenty kilos each, and I found them quite heavy, but here on the Moon they would have been no trouble at all. Still, he seemed happy doing it, so I let him.
Dex took an interest in how I set up each of the experiments. It was pretty simple, and they all had a similar set of controls. Once I checked that everything was in order, I started it up, and waited for it to signal that it had established a link to base. That was important so that I could monitor them without having to come out here very often.
