Late that night, Jane slipped out of bed, dressed, and pulled on a hooded jacket. She grabbed the telescope from its usual place in the living room, carried it out into the front yard and set it up; taking care of the lighting situation in the…usual way. It had been a while since she had done any serious observing, but the joy had kind of gone away after she missed discovering that comet by one lousy night...oh well, "Hale-Bopp" sounded cooler that "Comet Lane" anyway... The Moon was low in the west, but still above the tree line. She checked the accessory tray. Jane would need both the 4 mm eyepiece and the Barlow for this one. She slid the assembly into place, sharpened the focus, and teased the slow motion knobs... She couldn't quite remember where it was, but...there! Right on the night side of the terminator, near the southern limb. Like a cluster of embers, Shoemaker glittered in the darkness. She pulled her pad and a pencil from her pocket and started sketching.
"Checking out our place of exile, are we?" Daria quipped over her shoulder.
"Augh!" Jane jumped. "Daria, don't sneak up on me like that! What are you doing here, anyway? It's three in the morning!
"The same as you. I couldn't sleep. I got up to get a drink, and the moonlight streaming through the window got me thinking about this damfool stunt you talked me into. I decided to take a walk, and next thing I know I was at your house, and I saw that your street light was broken again. I knew what that meant."
"Yeah, darn shame; they don't make street lights like they used to." Jane said, nudging an errant golf ball into the bushes with her foot. "So, how did your parents take the news?"
"It was strange. Right after I got home the yard started filling up with satellite trucks and reporters. Dad freaked, just as I thought he would, but it was Mom who talked him into it. I think that she sees my going to the Moon as the ultimate extracurricular activity."
"I couldn't get hold of my Mom," said Jane, "But I remembered Dad's sat phone number and found him in a camp on the Mongolian steppes. He seemed to think she would be all right with me going. Have your folks signed the waivers yet?"
"Yeah," Daria replied. "A FedEx messenger came right after the reporters left with a thick packet with all kinds of schedules and itineraries and releases and things. Mom plowed through all that legalese in fifteen minutes and said that she hadn't seen such airtight language since the Apple record/Apple Computer settlement. I hadn't had a chance to read it yet. What does the schedule say?"
Jane corrected the drifting Moonbase in the eyepiece and looked up. "Well, in two weeks we leave for six weeks of training in Colorado. After that, we get one week back home, then they fly us to Mauna Kea, we ride the Slingshot up to catch the shuttle, and we land on the Moon three days later...speak of the devil!" Jane pointed to a spark that flared up in the southeast and drifted towards the horizon.
"Why? What's that?"
"That's Asimov, the space station," replied Jane. "She just emerged from Earth's shadow. We''ll spend about a day on her before we're aligned for a lunar trajectory.
They stared for a minute, then Daria turned back to the telescope. "I must have passed by this thing hundreds of times, but I thought it was just a conversation piece."
"Yeah, Dad bought it about five years ago intending to use it for astrophotography", Jane said. "He never did, but I caught the astronomy bug instead and I've been stargazing on and off ever since. I have a couple of pads of sketches in my room somewhere. Wanna see?" Jane motioned to the eyepiece.
Daria removed her glasses and squinted. After a couple of twitches of the focus knob, she could barely make out the dusting of lights of Shoemaker base in the lunar darkness. After another moment she noticed a brighter light winking every second or so. "One of em's flashing," she said to Jane.
"Yeah, that's a landing beacon," Jane replied. "It's a backup for the lunar GPS system." She yawned. "I'm gonna call it a night." She started to break down the telescope.
"Yeah. I guess we've got a big day tomorrow," Daria said. She turned and headed back, glancing one last time at the sinking orb which would soon be her temporary home.