Chad looked at her, and again at Luke, lying in the dirt just beyond his reach. He lunged towards her, both hands up as if to strike, and as she took a reflexive step back, he dug in a foot and reversed direction, hard. Even though they were light in the lunar gravity, mass was still mass. The tether between them pulled taut, and she stumbled two more steps towards the hole before she caught herself.
It was far enough. He bent and picked up the line to the body, wrapping it around the thickness of his left glove so it wouldn’t slip. He braced his feet, stabilized by the tight tether to Svetlana.
He saw her glancing at the hook releases and began counting backwards in Russian to unnerve her. “Tree, dva, udeen, nul!” He twisted and pulled with all his strength.
Luke’s body jerked up off the surface and flew the remaining short distance towards the hole’s edge, bouncing once and landing in a sitting position right at the rim. The arms continued the motion, flailing towards the yawning darkness. Slowly the body overbalanced, toppling towards the pit, accelerating as it leaned. Suddenly it was gone, leaving a fresh dark streak in the dirt where it had disturbed an eternity of meteorite dust.
But Chad had misjudged his balance. As he’d heaved, one foot had slipped out from under him. He fell on his side and bounced twice down the slope. The bulk of his suit kicked up a small cloud of dust, and the regolith shifted with him, pushed downhill for the first time in millennia. A small one-man landslide, momentarily jerked to a stop by the countering pull of the linked tethers to Svetlana.
Out of sight over the rim, Luke’s body accelerated down slowly, free-falling in the one-sixth gravity. On Earth, after one second, it would have already dropped 16 feet, well out of sight, but on the Moon it had gone less than 3. Chad’s tug, combined with his fall down the slope, had put an extra 6 feet of slack in the line.
Newton’s laws of motion were universal. In 1.5 seconds, the slack was fully taken up by Luke’s falling body. The line, still wrapped around Chad’s hand, snapped straight and pulled tight.
Chad was just sorting out how he was going to climb back up the slope when the yank on the line pulled his left arm straight. He opened and spun his hand wildly, relieved to see the line unravel and whip clear, accelerate down the slope and with a flip of the end, disappear from sight.
But the damage was done. The unexpected jolt had pulsed through the tether and jerked Svetlana forward, and now she was scrabbling to get her feet back under her in the bulky, ill-fitting suit.
In Houston, Kaz was staring intently, trying to figure out what was happening to the small figures on the screen. Luke was no longer on the cart, but one of the suits was out of sight. He’d heard someone—Chad?—saying what sounded like a countdown, but in Russian. With the minister standing next to him, he needed to be respectful. But what the fuck is going on?
“Durok!” Svetlana grunted. Idiot! She twisted and planted her left foot into the sloping dirt, leaning away hard to counter the tether’s pull. Chad was on his back, arms and legs splayed to try to stabilize. The shards of dust, rock and lunar sand under him caught and held in their new position at the pit’s rim.
Motion stopped.
Just beyond the edge, the body accelerated as it fell, the cord snaking, into the shadowed darkness. In absolute silence, with no air friction to slow it, the fall took 11 seconds. Luke’s body landed near the center of the pile of rubble that had fallen when the roof of the hole had caved in; at impact, his lifeless form was going 40 miles per hour, straight down. It bounced high once, turning, and then landed forever on its back, the Yastreb suit’s tough plastic visor unbroken. Luke’s sightless eyes stared upwards towards the small skylight in the blackness, shining with the eternity of the stars.
Chad pushed carefully with his left hand, rolling himself uphill onto his side. He dug his right shoulder in and bent his knees as far as the suit would allow. It gave a bit of slack in the tether, and Svetlana eased back to hold the tension.
Moving cautiously, Chad swung his left arm over and got onto his hands and knees. He tipped his head back hard inside the helmet and was just able to see the taut tether leading away towards the cosmonaut. Experimenting, he moved his left leg and right arm forward, and found the leverage to pry himself slightly up the hill. With the extra pulling from Svetlana, it worked. He shifted his weight and moved the other arm/leg, repeating the process, gaining a few more inches. A clumsy sniper crawl wearing a pressure suit.
Frowning, Kaz ran out of patience. “Chad, Houston, how’s it going?”