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Elaine Midcoh (a pseudonym) is a retired criminal justice/law professor. Her story, “The Battle of Donasi,” was published in Writers of the Future, Volume 37. Another of her stories will appear in the upcoming anthology, Compelling Science Fiction. She’s thrilled that “Man on the Moon” won this year’s Baen Award.

Sasha Venditti hopped-skipped in her spacesuit just like the guide taught the group that morning. Two people on the tour, a teenage boy and an old woman, had already fallen at least once, but Sasha took to Moon hopping like a newborn calf takes to its mother’s teat, all natural, knowing what to do. She had saved nine years for this vacation, deciding that owning a home by age 35 was less important than getting to the Moon by age 35. And this excursion, the Alan Shepard’s Golf Ball Scavenger Hunt, had cost her at least five months’ salary, but, God, it was worth it.

“Don’t forget to look up,” the guide’s voice sounded in her ear. A full Earth hung in the lunar sky. If my smile gets bigger I’ll crack my helmet, she thought. At home right now she’d probably be reviewing a business merger deal or advising some self-important client on a hostile takeover. But instead I’m one of the .003 percenters who’ve walked on the Moon.

I’ll find Shepard’s golf ball. It wasn’t the glory she wanted, but the prize. Anyone who found one of the two golf balls that Alan Shepard famously hit during his Apollo 14 Moon mission was promised a free, all-expenses paid return vacation. And no staying in her little windowless berth, either. The finder would get a seven day stay in one of Fra Mauro Luna Resort’s best rooms, one that actually had a double bed and a window. The fact that no one had recovered either golf ball in the twelve years the resort had been opened did not deter her.

She had just hopped-skipped to the near edge of a small crater, certain she had spotted a ball, only to find yet another round lunar rock, when the tour guide’s voice sounded again in her ear.

Jim Beall (BS-Math, MBA, PE) has been a nuclear engineer for over forty years, a war gamer for over fifty, and an avid reader of science fiction for even longer. His experience in nuclear engineering and power systems began as a naval officer. Experience after the USN includes design, construction, inspection, enforcement, and assessment with a nuclear utility, an architect engineering firm, and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (USNRC).

Borders are all around us, some made by nature, some by man. Below is possibly the most recognizable manmade border of them all, The Great Wall of China.

The Great Wall of China at Jinshanling
Image Credit: Severin.stalder, Wikimedia Commons

But what is a border, when did they begin, and why do we have them?

Elaine Midcoh of Pembroke Pines, Florida, has won the grand prize in the 2022 Jim Baen Memorial Award competition for her short story, “Man on the Moon.”