Son of a Pitch Entry: Lunar Base Lost

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Title: Lunar Base LostCategory and Genre: Adult SCI-FIWord Count: 89,000
Query:Lunar Base Three hangs on by maintaining a strict society and limiting its population. Over 
fifty years have passed since Mission Control’s last transmission.
Izzy Rodriguez is an admiring, young assistant to Presider Barbara Graham. Izzy strongly 
believes that Barbara’s more flexible policies are vital to the long-term survival of the moon 
base, but these policies have politically split the colony. Barbara’s son, Matthew, has become
 an outspoken critic. Izzy keeps a close watch on his core values activism.
When Matthew and his wife become pregnant, their unborn child exceeds the population the 
colony can sustain. Because the young have priority over the old, Barbara, as the oldest 
colonist, must be euthanized.
Izzy suspects their pregnancy is politically motivated to force Barbara out of office, so she 
decides to run against Matthew during the special election. Izzy’s campaign platform would 
further expand Barbara’s relaxed policies, and the race grows heated and tight. When the 
healthy baby arrives, Barbara fulfills her legal obligation and dies. Fighting explodes between 
rival political factions. Izzy must somehow stop the violence before the fragile moon base 
devolves into anarchy and airless oblivion.
First 250 Words:Each time the nurse pulled back the privacy curtain, Izzy would jump – as did those that 
needed to be here and those that didn’t need to be here but were here anyway. Once when 
the nurse came out, a quiet gasp echoed off the round metal walls. But the nurse silently 
picked up a stethoscope from her supply cart and ducked back behind that curtain.
One new life, one old death.
Stressed and nearly numb, Izzy somehow managed to do her job a few hours before, getting
 the custodial staff to move folding chairs to the bottom floor of the white, round, antiseptic 
Hospital Tower. Along with Izzy, most Assembly members sat on this floor now, although 
Izzy couldn’t see her dad. As the Manager of Light, he should be watching. But Izzy knew 
what he would say… a bulb was burnt out. No one would challenge that excuse. In an 
underground moon base, light was warm gold.
Off duty specialists and novices from the Nuclear Plant sat or stood around the bottom floor 
too. Of course, they would be there to congratulate their boss if what happened happened.
She looked up at the curious worried sneering faces gazing down from the six ledges that 
ringed the Hospital Tower. Izzy gasped when she saw Billy Smith on the third level. 
Ten-year-old Billy had fractured his leg when he fell in the AgCenter. He shouldn’t be here 
now, but this was the Hospital Tower, so of course he should be here.