Cold Trap: Hard Science Fiction from the Lunar South Pole by Alan Voss

NASA flight surgeon Vikram Patel has been on the lunar surface for three weeks when the cascade begins. A solar particle event worse than any forecast hits while his geologist is outside. The power bus catches fire. The lander cooling loop starts failing on a seal his engineer never got around to fixing. The relay satellite drops to safe mode. Earth can hear him but cannot help him. The Chinese base across the ridge can help him but has been told not to.

Then the Chinese commander reverses his own order, loads a rover with medical supplies and a satellite transponder kit, and drives forty seven kilometers across irradiated regolith to a base he has never seen the inside of, built by people his government considers competitors, to keep a crew alive that his own career will not survive saving.

Category: Hard Science Fiction