LAKE OF THE DEAD

~Part Two~

"Chen, old man, that's hardly cricket. There's enough for both of us, you know the rules: "Take what you need, leave the rest."
"Now, if you've come to your senses how about helping me up?"
Suddenly Stevenson's helmet was filled with a low pulsating tone, accompanied by a red flashing light on his left arm. It took him a few seconds to realize what had happened.
"That's my oxy-gauge! I'm in the red zone! I need oxygen!"
John rolled to his knees and began to crawl towards the gleaming aluminum cylinders that meant the difference between life and death which lay, tantalizingly, only inches away in the lunar dust. But before he could reach them a loaf-sized boulder came crashing down against his helmet. The force of the blow flattened him to the ground.
"Chen, what're you...," he began, but before he could get the words out a second blow cracked the outer shell of his helmet, sending a plume of water vapor spewing into the thin atmosphere where it quickly dissapated. Inside John's helmet the alarm of the oxy-gauge was joined by the hiss of escaping air...his face turned purple as he struggled to catch his breath...his head felt like it was being sucked through the fissure...blood ran from his nose and spread across his face, pulled along with the escaping air. He clawed frantically at his visor in an attempt to open it, instinctively searching for air outside its confines.
John's mind flashed back to a time when he was 10 and he almost drowned in the ocean off the coast of his native Scotland. A salty taste in his mouth now reminded him of the seawater. His life had been saved then by his brother. There was no one to save him now. A final moment of clarity brought with it the realization: "I'm dying on the moon!"
Then blackness...and death overtook him.