I wonder how long I’ve got left. I’d say we were still counting in days, rather than in hours, but the passage of time is less meaningful than it used to be. Consciousness, at least full consciousness, is elusive, and my newly-mastered habit of drifting effortlessly into and out of it means that I can’t even guarantee I’ll be aware enough to recognise the end when it comes. Is it always like that? I don’t suppose it matters, but I’m curious to know.

I haven’t been on my feet for a while. I don’t think my legs work any more. I can’t seem to move the left one at all. My arms are in better shape. I can move them. Sometimes I lift a hand – I like to alternate which one, when I remember – to wipe the sweat from my eyes. I’m not sure why I bother. I suppose it’s mostly a reflex action.

Did I imagine it, or did I read once that a man can stay alive for six or seven weeks without food, but only five or six days without water? I might be approaching that now. I tried to use my bottle this morning, but barely managed to squeeze out a couple of drops. Great: there go the kidneys, then. Death is working its way through me, from the feet upwards. I thought people generally died from the centre outwards. Trust me to do it wrong.

Things could have been very different by now. I could, when I was still mobile and strong enough, have built some kind of shelter at one end against the summer sun. I could have saved water, too. I’ve used too much of it in futile attempts to cool myself from the head downwards. If I had built the shelter, there would have been no need for any of that. Alternatively, I could have rigged up a rudimentary system for making the most of the seawater all around me. The ocean is warmer than I remember as a boy, but still would have been relatively refreshing. A couple of five-minute dips each day would have saved my drinking stash for the more important business of staying alive.

But I didn’t do any of that. I didn’t build a simple shelter of tarpaulin; I didn’t take the relatively undemanding intellectual challenge of rigging up a safety rope to the back of the boat so that I could cool myself in the sea; I didn’t ration my solid food; I didn’t make myself as visible to other sea-goers as I could have done.

And how about plain, simple luck? I still can’t believe that, even given my lack of conscious plan, I could have drifted so far and so long without crossing the path of a single vessel. Somebody who would be able to pick me up and take me along with them to wherever they’re headed. Knowing my luck, they would have been bound for exactly where I started out from, yet, no matter how unpalatable that prospect might have seemed a while ago, I would happily have jumped aboard. If one happened upon me now, it’s likely they’d take one look and leave me for the scavengers. I can’t be a particularly tempting prospect for salvation.

My eyes are fine. They have the most to do out of any part of me. The sun plays its daily part. It shows me in which direction I’m drifting. The last three days have all been on the same path, which I’ve become quite excited about, in a way. There is a sense of making progress toward some unknown goal. Although, for all I know, I might have been within half a mile of deliverance a few days ago, before turning away on the tide, and now I’m descending deep into nowhere.

The rest of my senses appear mostly unaffected also. From what I can tell, my hearing is operational. I listen for my own breathing, but can’t make it out. The friendly plashing of the salty water, I tell myself, on the fibreglass shell, inches from my ear, is clear enough to overshadow everything else. My appreciation of agony is undiminished, too. I still curse, out loud, my all-too-active hands and fingers each time they reach out for or brush past a blister on my face, or my thighs, or my chest. The sun has been relentless since I set out, and I can make out great red weals on my defeated skin. My face undoubtedly looks similar. It might even be worse. The sores look angry and implacable, yet I can’t help but touch the more accessible ones every now and then. Maybe that’s a reflex action, too.

Now, my attention is squarely on the sky. By this time I’ve become a bit of an expert. I can easily make out the shuttles bound for my old country. Those fools were right: ours seem slower and lower-tech than the others, boxier and lacking innate sleekness. I can almost make them out just from the distant wail of their ancient engines. More and more regularly, I’m seeing examples of what they were predicting all along. One of every ten, maybe even worse than that, only makes it back to earth in several thousand pieces of fireball. It’s a huge proportion to lose. I know they’re ours, too, by the area of sky the debris emerges from: there’s no doubting it. This is more serious even than they told me. If they weren’t lying about it at the time, then things have got much worse very quickly. What has changed? I turn it all over in my mind, everything I learned over the last few months, but I can’t concentrate for long before everything clouds over and I lose my train of thought.

I don’t know what the answer is, but I’m convinced that nobody at headquarters would admit to it. I know I’m dying, but it seems that the country that drove me to this painful and drawn-out demise might be following along right behind me.

How quickly both ends have come. Once the neglect sets in, it makes no difference whether it’s one man’s weak and vulnerable body or an enormous, thriving national organic mass. Could we have done anything differently? Undoubtedly. But are we really ever in a position to identify the fateful moment when it happens? Did I have a choice in the matter? Did they? My eyes close once more and consciousness departs.

---

Major Terry Thompson lowered himself into the major’s chair at the end of the long polished table. His shirt was damp and stuck to his skin and his red face glowed and he gave the impression that he was far happier seated. There was something more reassuring about him when stationary. The others continued to look straight ahead, at me.

I had only known him for around 30 minutes, yet Major Thompson was an old acquaintance in comparison with the others in the room. It had been a few weeks since I had done any sort of work at all, and I was still relishing the relative freedom, despite the nagging knowledge that it couldn’t last long. I had actually been in the pub, by myself, enjoying that feeling impossible to recreate in any other scenario, when he came to sit alongside me. He placed his pint carefully on the table, introduced himself with no suggestion of his military standing and sat down without waiting to be invited.

His company was actually quite welcome: I had spent the greater part of my hiatus on my own. He had seen me on a quiz show: his colleague had sent him a video of the footage. It was feasible: I had recently appeared on one, and it wasn’t a secret. He spoke wonderfully crisply, despite his lack of external muscle tone. He liked the way I had handled myself. More relevantly, he had heard that maybe I was in the market for my next assignment.

‘Certainly,’ I replied. ‘What sort of assignment are we talking about?’

‘We can discuss the details. I just want to spend a bit of time with you first,’ he said. ‘Form an opinion.’ He looked me over in silence for a few seconds. ‘Do you know much about rockets?’

‘Rockets?’ I echoed.

‘Rockets. Yes. Have you had much exposure?’

‘No. None at all.’

‘No matter,’ he said. ‘It’s not as important as all that. How about high volume supply chain or logistics? What’s your background there?’

I looked at him dumbly. My expertise, such as it was, lay in the rather more mundane areas of town planning and civic event management. I had no acquaintance with the world he appeared to inhabit and for which he was, presumably, recruiting. I made it clear to him, half annoyed that he had failed to conduct his own research before approaching me and raising my hopes. I spoke for some time, relishing the opportunity for conversation.

When I had finished, he allowed his considered study of me to continue, seeing off one pork scratching after another. After a while he pronounced. ‘You’re perfect,’ was what he pronounced. ‘Would you follow me, please?’ And I did.

Once the Major was ensconced, the man in the exact centre of the table spoke. He wore a military uniform of petrol blue, and old gold buttons. The shoulders were pleated and an insignia was embroidered on each upper arm. His eyes were smoky, as was his moustache. His hair was matte black, his voice sounded tired, almost resigned.

‘I’ll assume you don’t know who we are, so I’ll start with simple introductions. I aim to keep things simple. I’m Colonel Brown. This gentlemen on my right is General Mann. He is ultimately responsible for our entire portfolio of operations. The fact that he is even at this table should signal clearly, even to you, the vital importance of this programme. You know Major Thompson already, of course.’

The General lit a large cigar, sucking several times before letting the match drop into the ashtray in front of him. He seemed satisfied, as was I, with the pleasing regularity of the burning tip. His epaulettes glinted with gold braid and the stars of uncommon longevity. Either side of him, the Colonel and Major Thompson stared impassively at me. In the corner of the room, set back from the opposite end of the table to my old friend the Major, a woman perched on an uncomfortable wooden chair. Her uniform was cut from a slightly darker blue and was almost completely unadorned, save for a single stripe around each cuff. Her hands rested on her knees and she, likewise, stared unchallengingly at me.

‘Let’s get right to the point,’ Colonel Brown started, and I turned to look his way once more. ‘Our country is on the brink of starvation.’ He paused, scrutinising my face for signs of reaction. I doubt he found much: his words still occupied the surreal register in my consciousness and I was doing very little in the way of translation of sounds to meaning. I must have looked vacant.

‘You seem unsurprised!’ he barked at me, incredulously. I came around a little.

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ I addressed him with respect almost as a reflex reaction to my situation. I was no military man, and as such he was in no way my superior. Yet “Sir” felt appropriate. ‘I haven’t really caught up with my surroundings. Please, if you would, start again. I’ll pay suitable attention.’

‘Starvation, I said, man,’ he seemed irked. ‘Are you patriotic at all?’

It was a question I was rarely asked. I supposed the answer was “no”. I felt no special bond to the country I lived in. I often considered myself lucky that I had been born into a relatively highly developed corner of civilisation and that my life, when compared with many other humans, was mostly comfortable. But that didn’t make me patriotic, at least not in the sense I thought he meant.

‘Yes, sir, I would say I am, very much’ I replied.

He glared at me, unconvinced. I expect it had taken me too long to answer for his liking. ‘I repeat, starvation. And soon,’ he continued. ‘The population is growing. That’s to be expected, it’s part of the plan. But the moon isn’t up to it.’

All the agricultural land supplying our country, along with every other developed country in the world, was on the closest of our moons. A long time previously, although still just about within living memory, thanks to sky-high life expectancy, terrestrial real estate had been totally consumed by the everyday needs of housing, education, leisure, infrastructure and the like. Food production had been outsourced to the heavens.

‘How do you mean, sir, not up to it?’ I asked. This was a scenario I had never considered. If we couldn’t produce our food on that moon, what were we to do? I had learned in school that it was perfectly suited to our requirements.

‘The soil is becoming sterile. The atmosphere has almost been burned away by the chemicals. It’s exhausted, in a word. Barren.’

‘That’s terrible,’ I muttered. The revelation had set multiple trains of thought off inside me. I felt distracted and afraid in equal measure.

‘It’s not terrible at all,’ the General growled at me. ‘It’s perfectly normal. We knew it was going to happen one day. It’s completely predictable.’

The Colonel waited, eyes still fixed upon me. As soon as the General’s cigar smoke started to rise perfectly straight again, he continued.

‘It might sound bad to you, a civilian, but we know what we need to do,’ he reassured me. ‘We’ve identified and acquired another moon; much larger, virgin, perfect growing conditions that will last for hundreds of years to come, no matter how the population continues to grow down here. We know, from our research, that other countries have already moved to similar sites and the results are, frankly, spectacular. And, most importantly of all, we’ve developed a shuttle that will render the whole plan feasible. It’s bigger, faster, more reliable than the ones we use now. It can make it there and back in no time, relatively speaking. We think.’

Brown continued, outlining the major features of the new shuttle and the route they expected it to take between our planet and the new moon. As he did, I kept an occasional eye on General Mann puffing quietly on his cigar. He found no cause to even look at me: what his Colonel was telling me was so true that it needed no ratification on his part. Major Thompson, on the other hand, had become more animated during his superior’s explanation; nodding in places, making scribbled observations and darting glances in my direction to draw my attention to the most vital points. At one point he pushed an almost pristine sheet of paper across the table towards me. I couldn’t help but notice, although my focus remained firmly on the narrative. The sheet appeared to show a child’s drawing of a space rocket. I tried my hardest to ignore it totally.

Finally, the Colonel finished speaking. The silence pointed like an arrow, straight at my head. It was my turn to say something.

‘Well, if you’ll forgive me, sir, from what you’ve told me, everything seems to be in order. It’s a shame, albeit inevitable,’ I added with a slight nod to the General, ‘that our moon has run dry, as it were, but, and you’ll forgive me if I misunderstand, the solution appears to be well mapped out. We need food, we know where to get it and we’ve built a vessel that can ferry it to us efficiently. I’m not seeing where I might fit in to your plans. With respect.’

He stared at me for a few seconds. I might have been a roadkill badger flat on the grille of his armoured vehicle. He shot a sideways glance to the Major, who stood sharply and walked around behind me. He stopped in front of a blank wall. All eyes followed him. I turned my chair to face him.

‘The shuttle, in itself, is perfect’ he started, ‘but we have a number of outstanding points to address.’ He clicked the clicker in his left hand. A picture, apparently by the same child, appeared on the wall behind him. General Mann grunted his approval. The woman in the corner smiled a semi-smile. It was the first time any part of her had moved. Major Thompson gave us all a moment or two to take it in, then he turned back to the picture on the wall.

‘We can’t land it,’ he said simply, shooting me an accusatory glance. I felt extremely guilty. ‘First, the atmosphere,’ he went on. ‘It’s actually too dense for our purposes. The speed and surface area of the shuttle mean that it’ll burn up before it’s even halfway through the thermosphere. We don’t have that problem currently, since the shuttles we use now travel considerably more slowly and have a much less vulnerable form.

‘Then,’ he snapped, ‘even if we do get through the atmosphere, which we won’t, the current landing strips don’t offer us enough scope. The shuttles would simply run off the end. And besides, there’s a pretty good chance that the impact of landing would totally destroy the runway. We can’t be sure, but it’s more likely than not.’

I took myself to be the only one in the room to whom any of this was news, yet Major Thompson appeared to address the greater part of his presentation toward his superiors at the long table, who both looked suitably sage and knowing at this pause in his flow. My attention bounced between the two parties: the Major at the wall, in the shadow of an excited toddler’s vision of space, and the heavyweight military panjandrums seated potently behind me. I waited for something to happen.

The image behind him changed to what might have been a free-form diagrammatic interpretation of an atonal symphony. Irregular shapes vied for wall space with stylised mathematical symbols, one-, two- and zero-way arrows, and who knows what else. This was no work of a child. It was deeply disturbing and I felt physical pain as I tried to take it in. Thankfully, the Major recommenced his commentary.

‘I won’t spend too much time on this slide,’ he announced. ‘I think the overall picture is clear enough. Even,’ he slapped the back of his hand against the wall and drew his pointed index finger deliberately along what might have been a clearing between shapes. ‘Even if we find ways to overcome the challenges I’ve already outlined and land our shuttle, we face serious challenges vis-à-vis unloading time. Worst case scenario, we run the risk of part of each consignment spoiling before we’ve even got it into one of the holding warehouses, which aren’t actually big enough to house a whole shuttleful. It’s a bottleneck. These are the challenges we face.’

My head swam as I tried to keep up with the various points that needed attention. A few minutes earlier, I had felt I understood the whole scenario. Now, I was struggling with simple prioritisation of the potential crises.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Thompson started up again, having allowed me just enough time to consider the enormity of the problem and not drown in it. ‘How can I help? What is it they need me to do here?’ He was right, of course, but there was even more: I was tremendously excited. My previous roles had never brought me this close to the beating heart of the country. This struck at the very core of our health and well-being.

‘You can see,’ he continued, ‘that there are multiple workstreams to consider here. Multiple elements of our infrastructure that require some attention. We’re looking for somebody to bring a measure of coherence to it and determine what we need to attack first. Captain Small, there,’ he indicated the young woman in the corner, who gave me a small, friendly, distinctly unmilitary, half-wave as I turned to look at her, ‘has been assigned to pull together all the strands of the early work, but she can’t do it all herself. We need someone with your skills to fully document everything, quantify the exact requirements, bring life to it, all the way from the atmosphere right down to the roads and railways. It’s urgent. The shuttle is due for its maiden launch in six weeks’ time, so everything has to be clear for it.’

‘Six weeks?’ I stuttered. I hadn’t really mapped out how long I would have expected the remedial work to take, not that I was qualified to do so anyway, but six weeks seemed not long.

‘It isn’t as daunting as it sounds,’ Colonel Brown chuckled. He must have sensed my disbelief. ‘The first launch will take some time to return from the moon, and it won’t be carrying a full payload. It’s more of a halfway house. We might be able to support it with mostly what we already have in place. But we could do with some of the new pieces in place, just to give them a dry run. You need to concentrate on your own part, which is to draw out the problems and make recommendations. We’ll set up a serious task force of our best experts to get things really moving along. Others will build based on your vision. Everything will be done to make it possible for you to deliver, don’t you worry about that. Get out there, see people, talk to them, pick their brains, excise the emotion, boil it down to the facts, obviate the background noise, identify the weakest links, focus the solution realisation into a manageable kernel. That’s what we do around here. You’re a smart chap. It seems self-evident to me that you’re the right man for the job.’ He glanced at General Mann beside him, who appeared to concur.

I was flattered by their faith in me. If I hadn’t been patriotic before, I was becoming so quite rapidly. At first glance, it would appear that I had absolutely no aptitude for this desperate rescue job: no experience of the sort of technologies required to fix it, no feel for the best approach to take in terms of triage of the multiple impending catastrophes, no contacts amongst the community of experts we would be calling upon, not even any history to speak of in riding to the rescue of my country in any other capacity. But I smiled to myself and gave the Colonel my best steely look. This was just exactly what I had been looking for. It could make me famous.