Fuse

The rocket launched without incident. Something I honestly had not expected from the prototype. The scientists could assure us all they wished, but even the newest of cosmonauts knew that even a rogue nose hair could cause the rocket to tumble back to Earth in a fiery inferno.

I was strapped into one of the further back seats on out five man team. Korney 'Astro' Genken, out Pilot, who was sitting furthest to the front. He was rather famous around the base for the fact he joined younger than anyone else. He was only 27 compared to the thirty and forty the rest of us were.

Gerasim 'German' Listratov, he was the engineer we brought along in case something went wrong. He had a toolbox in the back with most of the things we would need to fix just about anything on the ship.

Roman 'Roma' Bunin, He was the guy in charge of orienting the ship when we landed. If he didn't do well at his job we would most likely get us killed on the surface of the moon.

Adam 'Debris' Krupnov, the fellow in charge of trying to start a hydroponic farm for us to survive the six months we were planning on being up there. His nickname was a joke on the fact he assumed we would die on leaving the atmosphere.

The last one, me, Robert 'Doc' Kipriyanov, my job on the ship was the doctor. I just needed to keep everyone alive enough to make it back home. Eight years of schooling and three of training made me the only man they trusted on this job to keep their elite team alive.

I felt myself lift from my seat leaving only the thin strips of nylon that held me down to the seat. The rocket shook violently as we left and the front screen was bright red from the heat outside the ship.

There was a long pause as I looked at the group. Astro nodded with a smile as he unbuckled himself so we could begin to work on getting our trajectory corrected.

There wasn't anything I could do at the moment so rather than simply sit I went to explore the shuttle a bit. Nothing too important in my opinion, but it was worth doing while I didn't have anything to do.

The station was small, no larger than a large home, but it was packed to the gills with the latest gear the USSR could supply us. But that didn't amount to much. My station, while important, was probably the smallest.

It was little more than an examination table and the most basic of medical supplies I needed for simple cuts and bruises. I knew their thinking with that. No one would get anything worse than that and still remain valuable to us.

I pulled myself over to it and held onto the side. Even if we did have the supplies to do it surgery would be near impossible here without any kind of gravity. I sighed looking around at the various instruments that kept us alive.

There were few things I really knew about on the ship and it was often up to German to keep all that stuff working, I frowned adjusting my cap before floating out of my room and to the hall. I didn't know where to go next so I just listed slowly down with a smile.

Most of the ship was empty halls attached to different rooms, the first I floated past was the 'kitchen', if you wanted to call it that, all it really ended up being was a storage room that was full of freeze-dried food and seeds to plant on the surface.

The next was someone's room though I didn't know whose yet. It was closed and the light was off so I just assumed no one was there.

I hit the end of the corridor with a frown, luckily I had barely pushed off at the beginning of my short journey so there was little to no impact when I hit the end. It now split off into a T shape and I looked a bit down both.

On one side, I could see Roma speaking to the captain as he worked on something towards the front of the ship. Though I didn't know for sure I could only assume they were working on getting our course set right. It was weird to think we were going to be together for just over a month.

We had spent a good six months together training and learning how to survive if something happened up here. Two of which we were underwater learning to cope with living as a group and adjusting to the pressure change of being stuck in an airtight tube.

Down the other hall, I didn't see anyone so I figured I would head towards a person rather than nothing. "Roman." I smiled as I approached.

He looked from his work with a frown. "Doc? Did you need something?" The orienteer asked going back to his work as he checked his papers compared to his instruments.

"No," I shrugged, "It isn't important, just thought I would just talk until I had a patient. And you seemed like you needed some company."

"I don't really need anything," He answered as he adjusted a few dials. "But I do need to finish this before we get too far along so would you mind?"

I nodded. "Yeah, I understand," I said with a smile as I pushed off of the console. "I guess I can find someone else to help."