The earth was a crescent on the horizon; this was once a wondrous thing. Now, its colours were garish, the sun’s reflected light piercing Lim’s retinas through the almost absent atmosphere. The seas were too blue, too shining, hyper-real. The white, wispy clouds were air and dust and condensation crafted into a beauty that mocked Lim from a distance. Lim turned his back, and returned to the grey. The moon’s surface always felt like it was swallowing you; like it was the tongue of a great void beast that would suck the juice of life from your bones before enveloping you in the nothingness. Its surfaced dipped and rose, existing on a spectrum between almost-white and almost-black. Its sameness was acidic, the bile of that void-beast, dissolving the edges of your memory. You could walk and walk and walk with no concept of how far you’ve gone, your perception of time disintegrating as your mind struggled to notice the minute changes in the landscape. This place embodied stasis. Even as they built, little seemed to change, the act of creation muffled by emptiness. They assembled structures: unassuming grey shelters that spread across the moon’s surface. The machinery’s steel sheen was dulled by moon dust. The crane’s movements were silent. It had been eerie, at first, but now the nothingness grated. Lim’s cleat dug into the dirt as he pushed himself towards the stretcher on which Cine’s body had been strapped. Cine had done her best to colour this place. Her hair was bright red from smuggled-in dye, and her dark skin littered with tattoos whose vivid tones had been preserved by the shelter of their suits. Someone had clumsily applied cosmetics to her corpse; probably Leena, who was the only person who allowed Cine to “make her over” in an effort to lighten the crew’s overall mood. The bright pink lipstick wasn’t quite Cine’s style, and it bled onto her skin. The powder blue eyeshadow was thick on her eyelids, and Lim could see the dust from the blush that splotched across her cheeks. He would never have said anything, of course. Leena was the only one of them who had managed to conjure tears. Those tears had been near-constant for the entire night, amplified by the tinny echo off the steel walls of their bunker. Her grief was thick, heavy. Lim lacked grief the way a stomach starved— he had emptiness, pangs and gas where sadness ought to be. Alawa helped Leena strap rockets to the stretcher. They had to be careful when stealing supplies; the inspectors were cheap, but ignorant. They could be lied to, until the budget spilled over a certain line. Rockets were difficult, because they had little intra-lunar use. They would have to be written off as defective, so thiefs had to mind their expected rate of failure. Lim wasn’t sure how many of them cared about getting caught these days, but there was an obligation to restrain one’s nihilism for the sake of those with hope. Alawa stepped back to type furiously on her palm pad. The rest of our half-a-dozen mourners moved away in unison. Without sound, though, it always felt as though you were moving alone. Space burials were incredibly illegal. One body could take down a satellite. Lim hoped that Cine’s body managed at least that. It was what she would have wanted. The rockets sparked, and with them an anger inside of Lim— an anger he could only sustain in bursts. Fire was harder to maintain in a world without oxygen. It burned fast and hot. Cine’s ascent was inelegant. The rockets flung her from the moon’s atmosphere, towards the half earth that floated above the horizon as though it expected them to marvel at it. Lim watched Cine go. His anger sputtered and struggled as her body became a speck in the distance. Once again, he turned his back. They trudged back towards their compound— one of a hundred scattered across the rocks. Leena glanced over her shoulder. Once. Twice. A third time. Lim pressed a buttom on his comm. “You’ll drive yourself crazy,” he said, as kindly as he could. Leena’s voice crackled into his helmet. “Cine said that sanity was a curse in a place like this.” “Cine is dead.” Lim said, and the look Leena gave him was one of pity. She stopped, and spun around. “Go. I need a minute,” Leena said. “You’ll be late,” Lim said. He knew how hollow his words sounded. That was the point of them— to carry the emptiness. “I know,” Leena said. The punishment for lateness was gruelling and cruel. But through the glass of her helmet, Lim could see her eyes full of the fire he had never bothered to stoke. This would bring more trouble than it was worth. But there was nothing to be done in this moment. He shrugged. “Have fun in the spinner,” he said. She ignored him. He walked away, leaving her there, staring at their home as if it hadn’t betrayed them. As if it was still something wondrous.