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commander in a flash. Hopper can’t help but hug 
her back. The comms panel starts pinging. The 
adult crew are checking in and complaining about 
their monstrous headaches. Hopper pulls away and 
looks and the screen and then points at the clock in 
the corner.
“I’ve been out of it for half an hour? Sasha – what’s 
been happening?”
Sasha smiles, feeling great satisfaction at a job well 
done.
“Well, it started like this…”
But she gets interrupted by a distress call from the 
lunar space station. The commander tells them that 
something has blown a hole in the cupola window 
and the crew have evacuated the module.
cylinder module. Nor is it a box with solar panels. 
Ones like that are the usual “human” spacecraft. 
No, this one looks like a bug. It has mechanical 
arms and the antennae look like bug eyes with 
little dishes on the ends. A moment later an 
object moving almost too fast to see flashes in 
from the side of the picture and in a split-second 
the spacecraft is gone, replaced with a cloud of 
fragments flying out of shot.
There is a piercing scream.
Sasha’s heart is in her mouth as she stares at the 
commander. Hopper’s scream turns into rattling 
breathing, and she puts her hands on her head, 
bunching up her hair between her fingers.
“My head hurts so much,” she groans. “I’m sitting 
here and just a second later my head feels like it is 
on fire.”
“You’re ok!” shouts Sasha.
“No, I am not ok. Didn’t you hear me? I’m in agony.”
But Sasha is out of her seat and hugging the 

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