Lunar Camp (exerpt)

Athena's Daughters: Lunar Camp - exerpt

This full story is available in the Athena's Daughters anthology, available here: http://www.silenceinthelibrarypublishing.com/product/athenas-daughters-vol-1/

Below is an exerpt.

Lunar Camp is about a thirteen-year-old, African-American girl named Bee who spends her summer vacation at camp on the moon.  Her passion is botany and anything to do with growing plants – so you can imagine her excitement at spending a summer learning about moon rocks.   Lunar Camp ends up being way more than she bargains for in many ways.

* * *

10-9-8...

Bee glanced around at the other passengers, trying to judge whether any of them looked nervous.

7-6-5...

Some people had their eyes closed, and some were looking out the window, squinting a bit at the bright Florida sunlight.

4, 3, 2, 1...

The engines roared to life. Liftoff! Bee felt her body pushed into the padded seat as the Firefly-class rocket she was on thrust itself into the air. She managed to turn her head and watch through her window as the sky turned from bright blue to black.

She'd ridden on a rocket like this before, on her first trip to Luna City, but she'd been much younger then and accompanied by her parents. Today she was on her own and on her way to Lunar Camp. Many a 13-year-old would have been thrilled to have the chance to spend their summer at camp on the Moon. Bee Williamson was not that person.

"The Moon has no plants," she'd grumbled to her parents. "And who's going to take care of my garden?" Her family lived on an Iowa farm that was lush and green and gold. Bee loved it there. Though much of the farm work was automated or operated robotically, Bee had been given a patch of her own to use as she pleased and she loved working it herself. She'd both downloaded books on old-fashioned farming and pored through screens of the latest research so that she could experiment with a variety of plant-growing techniques. She'd had big plans for her summer, and a trip to the Moon wasn't included in them.

 "Beyoncé, you know that Lunar Camp will look good on your application to SATAS," her mother had said. The sound of her given name always made Bee roll her eyes. Besides it was too soon to even think about leaving the farm to go to the Space Academy of Technical Arts and Sciences, even though it would have something to teach her about plants grown on ships or about terraforming other worlds. That was still more than she could say of Lunar Camp.

She suspected that Lunar Camp had little to do with agriculture or horticulture. Most likely she'd be tromping around in lunar dust collecting rocks and tripping into craters. Rocks were something Bee routinely pitched out of her garden. She didn't see much point in collecting them.

But all of her protests fell on deaf ears, which is how Bee found herself on the way to the Moon...

...read the rest in Athena's Daughters:

http://www.silenceinthelibrarypublishing.com/product/athenas-daughters-vol-1/

or the Young Explorer's Adventure Guide:

https://www.amazon.com/Young-Explorers-Adventure-Guide-Guides-ebook/dp/B018RSIKXK?ie=UTF8&btkr=1&ref_=dp-kindle-redirect