He shook his head inside his helmet as he continued to make his way down the crater’s side.

“Gideon, are you receiving?”

As he reached the bottom outer wall of the crater he pushed the transmit button on his wrist. He started whistling and spitting, blowing air through his pursed lips. “I-unable-radio-static-”

“Knock it off, Gideon, I know you’re hearing and transmitting just fine. The computer says you’re low on oxygen, so you’d better get back. Things here are starting to get weird.”

Major Gideon smiled at hearing the sweet and calm voice of the youngest member of their lunar team. Lydia was cute and sassy, but had a no-nonsense streak that was suffocating to men like himself. But she had the cutest pointed ears of any woman he could remember.

“Yes, mother, I am very capable of reading an oxygen gauge.”

“Hmm, you could’ve fooled me. It seems I have to remind you on a daily basis. Dr. Joshua says you could hurt yourself if you get low on O every time you go out on your little strolls.”

“I get the drift, Doc,” he said as he heard Lydia talking with someone on her end. Apparently she had inadvertently left her transmit key on.

“Major, I have a request from Professor Remiss to observe the eastern quadrant as Guidon, Vortex, and Ranger pass overhead. He wants you to measure their orbits with your laser range finder. Ours is malfunctioning at the moment along with everything else. Radar and sonar echoing is down also. Can you manage that while in transit back to base?”

Gideon heard the request and froze. He frantically looked at the timepiece on the lower portion of his left wrist and then back at the western sky. It was barren, devoid of anything but the immense star field.

“Damn!” he said, as he bounded forward using the elongated hops he had come to be very efficient at. He saw the deep crater that housed the base a quarter mile away and knew it would take him forever to get there. He should have recognized what was happening when he had seen the ships only moments before, but he was daydreaming about the planet below and hadn’t made the connection, a sign that he was starting to lose his edge since the war with the barbarian species had ended.