My name is Ray. I'm 27. I'm five foot ten and the shortest of my siblings. I am
taller than both my parents though, but that's to be expected. They're first
generation. Technically, so am I. I don't remember anything from before though.
I was very young when we came here. 

My earliest memories are dim but they all have the thunderous noise of rocket
lift off. Maybe that's what leaving the womb feels like. Dark and safe and then
a push so hard that you break free into a new and terrifying world. That's how
I imagine it anyway. 

My father is a Kenyan physicist. I say Kenyan, not because it means anything
here, but because it means something to him. He worked hard to get here. 

My mother is from Kansas. It's not all that important to her, she says, but she
says it did make her ready to see the endless barren sprawl of rock that
surrounded the colony for the first twenty years of its existence.

There weren't many of us here at first. The moon won't support those who live
on it, not alone anyway. The first domes were trekked from Earth at great
expense, of course. Everything from Earth is expensive. They measure cargos to
the gram and charge accordingly. It's a deep well to climb out of, and worse
when you're carrying a load, so to speak.

The first capture changed everything. Both the one that got here safely and the
one that didn't. The first try was when I was ten. I still remember. We sat
under the dome, and they opened the shield all the way so we could really see.
I'm not sure what part was more amazing, seeing the great ball of rock and ice
come streaking in, or the stars. Seeing the stars directly always leaves me in
awe. That was the first time, and it was a new Earth then.

They aimed for the north end of the Sea of Tranquility. It's far from the
colony, but that was on purpose. The angle wasn't right, though, and instead of
a direct landing where they wanted it, it glanced off. Apparently the moon
isn't as big a target as you'd expect. They were off by only a tiny piece, but
instead of a heap of ice and rock and minerals to work with, we ended up with a
disaster. Pieces broke off, and a small one -- small, I mean, is the size of a
cargo container -- made its way all the way to the colony, skipping along the
surface. It destroyed Dome Three, cracked its shield in two and broke the
plastic. The airlocks sealed right away, but everyone in Three was in the dome
itself. Five hundred lives sucked out in an instant. 

I still remember the alert going off, my parents both looked at their comms and
mom went white. Whiter than usual, even, and she's as pale as anyone. That day
changed everything. We started spending a lot more time in the tunnels. If a
rock from half way into the earthside could do that that easily then nobody
wanted to think about what might happen with the random things coming from
orbit. It feels so random. 

The day of the second chapter changed everything again. They didn't miss this
time. We'd had the solar fusers online for six years by then. New domes, melted
right into the basalt, titanium and microglass turns out to be a hundred times
stronger than the plastic domes and they don't need any organics. They don't
let in as much light but that's actually a good thing. Anyone who has been on
the surface in full light knows how hard it is to keep cool.

When the second capture happened, it went very right. As badly as the first
went, this one was good. The descent angle was perfect and the rock put a new
hole on the sea of Tranquility. The dust covered the colony for a month before
it settled, but we expected that. We built scrubbers to move the dust off the
domes and we got ready.

The first mining crews brought back the best first. Rocks of Cobalt and Nickel.
Black gleaming peices of coal and graphite. And best of all, water. Giant
chunks of ice, slowly sublimating into the void. But enough to fill every
reservoir we'd made.

Dome ten was the biggest. A hot solar fuser had worked for the better part of
twenty cycles to make it. A cavern fifty klicks across, sealed with a perfect
and airtight sphere of microglass. When you stood inside you only half saw the
top. It always made me a little uneasy to not see the familiar curve above me,
but mom nearly wept when she saw it.

The first dark after the capture, every worker in the colony went outside. Ten
hour shifts for as long as the dark held. They cut the ice with laser utters
and pulled it out of its thick protective cover of dust. It just looked like
rock except for the vapor coming off the surface.  The workers looked like
something swarming all over its surface, working in pairs to guide the cutters
from as high as they could jump to the ground. Eight or ten people would lift a
piece the size of a transport bed into the back of one and the crawlers would
start the long caravan back.  A thousand klicks is far even when things are
light.

They made a great pile outside dome ten. Five tenths of a cycle before light
struck,  they started moving it indoors.  Even us kids got to help. Twenty of
us can move almost anything smaller than a transport crawler. The last of the
chunks was piled in the loose heap in the center of the dome. They sealed the
doors and we waited. Sunlight came.  The light side of the cycle burst into
full brilliance.  Those of us who were in the old plastic domes saw just the
flash of light off the new giant dome, glittering like a million jewels before
the shield snapped shut.

Darkside came again. We waited. The scientists and engineers who had built the
capture dome had to wait with the rest of us too. We probably saved half our
oxygen for the cycle by holding our breaths.

When lightside came again, the engineers finally went inside the dome, to look.
They returned, more excited than any of us kids on a holiday. They unsealed the
doors again, and we all trailed inside. Five hundred of us were tiny in
comparison to the huge cavern, but it was no longer the huge empty sphere we
had seen in preparation, and the huge grey rocks of ice were gone. In their
place was a flat sea, smooth water as far as the eye can see, and the dome
above is a million jewels in the distance, glittering with the first light of
lightside.

My sister Selene is normally the most outgoing of all of us, but she held back.
All of the firsters were grinning wildly and congratulating themselves.