Kemp 010: Two Hundred

(This is part of a "Captain Kemp" series I am doing for fun.)

The setting sun stretched our shadows after a long day of ice prospecting. The two-week lunar night was coming soon, and we would spend it analyzing data back at Moonbase 3.

We stopped and I called the truck over to pick us up.

As we watched it come closer, spraying lunar dust behind, Kemp said, "I remember when Karminski and I spent five days in the truck, and night caught us. It got down to freezing inside, and the drive windows got covered in condensation."

That jogged a memory, and I said, "I read that Karminski got a mock award last week from his crew for being the 50th astronaut to reach Venus."

Kemp laughed. "Good for him. Makes me wonder... Hey, computer."

"Please proceed Captain Kemp," the lander's AI said in our helmets.

"What was my lunar arrival number?" Arrival number is the sequence of astronauts to reach a destination.

"You were number 200 on the moon."

"Wow, grandpa," I said, needling. "There must be, what, 10,000 people on the moon now?"

The AI thought I was asking it and said, "The lunar population as of today's shuttle arrival is 9,371. Since the 1969 landing, there have been 27,544 different people to visit the moon."

"Hey, computer, what was my toddler pilot's arrival number?" Toddler indeed. He was barely 10 years older than me.

"He was the 719th astronaut on the moon."

"Not bad for a youngster," Kemp joked.


Inspired by the characters in:
"Moon Zero Two", Hammer Films, 1969.
More fun at https://www.facebook.com/SpaceArt57