The fact was humans just weren’t adapted to living anywhere away from Earth — the deep gravity well and thick, complex atmosphere they’d evolved in — and there was nowhere else in the Solar System for them to go.

She was glad she didn’t have a kid…

“What are you thinking about?”

Henry’s voice made her jump. He was lying in his sleeping bag, eyes wide in the dark.

“Sorry,” he said.

“I was thinking about the Moon.”

He scratched his couple of days” growth of beard. He never could grow a beard, she thought; it came up comically patchy. He said, “Plutarch said the Moon was a way-station for our souls. Humans have to die twice. First on Earth, where the body is severed from the mind and soul, and returned to dust. And the mind and soul travel to the Moon. There, a second death occurs, with mind and soul separating. The mind flies off to the sun, where it’s absorbed and gives birth to a new soul. But your soul stays here, on the Moon, sinking into the Moon dust, clinging onto dreams and memories… Maybe all that stuff about rocket ships and Cape Canaveral and Baikonur was a fantasy. A false memory. Maybe we died, you and me. Maybe we’re just clumps of memories, sinking into the regolith.”

She was shivering, despite the warmth of the hab.

“Shut up, Henry.”

“Sorry.” He rubbed his face; his patchy beard looked to have grown a little denser.

She felt she couldn’t stand the stillness any longer.

“Henry, for Christ’s sake.”

“What?”

“Tell me your plan.”

He hesitated.

“I haven’t shared this with anybody,” he said.

“Not even dippy Jane?”

“Not even Jane.”

“I promise not to laugh at you. But I could use some good news right now.”

“…I think there’s maybe a way out. It’s risky. The math is chancy; it depends on a lot of assumptions.”

“Like what?”

“How much ice there is at the South Pole. What happens when you drop a nuke on lunar Moonseed; what kind of energy amplification factor you can achieve here, in the presence of the hive remnant—”

“Why didn’t you tell me about it before?”

“I had to get here to be sure. I had to confirm the Moonseed is as extensive as I suspected. And—”

“What?”

“I had to sleep on it.”

“Why?”

He sat up. The sleeping bag fell slowly away from his chest, exposing his longjohns. “There are a lot of costs. Suppose I told you it might be possible to save some of mankind.”

“Not all?”

“Not all. A handful. Maybe enough to start again.”

“Right now, I’d take it.”

“Okay. Now suppose I told you it would mean wrecking the Moon, as it exists now, before we have any kind of chance to study it, to learn from it. Gone forever.”

That made her pause.

“Go on.”