Hope.

A man stands by a bed, surrounded by high tech gizmos, and the green uniformed medical team.

The man is trembling. He tells himself: ‘You’re about to become a father – it’s the happiest moment of your life’.

He’s still trembling.

She grabs his hand - his blonde haired beauty - and manages to crush the blood out of it, despite the damage years of low gravity have done to her muscles.

Well, at least that’s stopped him trembling.

“I hate you Simon,” she yells. “You so much as look at me again and I will kill you!” She shrieks, through another contraction.

It was the colonists 'tradition' to be born in sight of the old world. So, beyond the UV proofed window, Earth is blue and silver in the lunar sky.

Blue oceans. Silver continents: Covered, kilometres deep, in the metallic stems and leaves of the Zeus plant. The Zeus plant, that had grown through the rock of the Earths mantle. That had grown faster than a man could run. That consumed everything living in its path.

“Push!” The midwife says, over the rising screams.

The tradition is in danger of becoming needless, after just fifteen years. Humans aren’t designed to live on the Moon, even in their underground colonies. There’s too much radiation. Too little gravity. Fertility rates are dropping. Stillbirths are getting more and more common. This colony is loosing the fight to keep humanity alive.

Blonde hair plastered against her forehead, she’s squeezing his hand so hard. He’s waiting for the pop of a knuckle dislocating. Like last time.

 “I am bloody pushing!” His beauty says.

“One more..!”

She’s howling, his beauty.

Then the medics are pulling a limp shape free of her.

He can see a tiny, still, arm, surrounded by the medical teams frantic ministrations.

Just like last time......

A voice suddenly pipes up. Ragged, wordless. Railing at the unfair universe.

“What’s her name?” The smiling midwife asks.

Image above: The earth, over the horizon of the moon. Picture taken by astronaut William Anders, during the Apollo Eight mission.