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MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE?

We were being invaded and it was impossible.

I know it happens all the time on Earth. We studied history and I’ve read and watched movies about invasions and wars and countries fighting each other. Dad was in the military, before he got his degree and came to the Moon. He said there was hardly ever a time when some place on Earth wasn’t at war with some other place.

But we were on the Moon. There were only twenty adults and five of us kids, The adults were all scientists, and none of them military.

Mom said it was a chance at a new beginning, a clean break with the old Earth rivalries. That with infinite space there would be less war.

My first hint that something was wrong came when I was exercising in the centrifuge room. Okay, it wasn’t a room exactly. The entire place we live in is a vast cavern, a tube really, created by lava flow. We had the type of centrifuges where you lay on your back and are centrifuged to get your muscles used to Earth gravity. I—Robert Anson MacDonald—was the first baby born on the Moon, so I was used to being spun to simulate higher gravity.

In the centrifuge, I used to go into my head and design space ships. In six months, I was going to go to Earth to study aerospace engineering. I’d gone through most of what I could learn long-distance. So, I was lying there and designing a space ship. Which I think is why I was the only one to hear the shots.

The first one sounded odd, and I thought it was just some lab equipment malfunctioning.

Then there was another one, and this time I was sure it was a shot.

—Sarah A. Hoyt and Jeff Greason

“Home Front”


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Framed