"The eagle has landed..."
"Finally!" Neil Armstrong shouted. His neck ached from sitting in a tight space, and his head kept bonking on the roof of the command module. The few storage boxes took up most of the space, and the two tall astronauts had to squat in order to fit in the cramped space.
The spacecraft descended slowly onto the moon's surface. Rocket engines roared beneath them, trying to slow down their fall. When the command module touched down, a colossal cloud of dust rose above the pod, obscuring his vision. The engines sputtered out, and the astronauts opened the hatch.
As Armstrong stepped off the ladder, he uttered the famous phrase: "One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."
Wiping his visor, he noted the brightness of the ground. It shone like glossy cheese, and sunlight blanketed everything in a warm glow. Despite the shine, you couldn't avoid the blandness of the surroundings. The gray made it feel dark, clashing with the light. Rocks littered the ground for as far as the eye could see. Craters dotted the landscape. The photos taken made the landscape seem even duller.
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set up the experiments. Every time their feet touched the ground, they bobbed up again, making it hard to get precise results. The thermometer's red liquid turned hot pink, then white, and exploded.
"Hot hot hot hot HOT!" Neil screamed, smothering his smoldering glove.
The barometer showed an air pressure of zero. The wind vane stayed still. They retrieved many samples of rock, most of them basalt, the cooled lava on the moon's surface.
Bounding to the landing pod, they conducted some further experiments, such as defining the chemical properties of the surface, and determining whether life could be supported. They opened a big cardboard box and dumped everything out onto the floor. Microscopes, more thermometers, and other instruments spilled onto the ground. After straightening things up, they went to work. Later, they reported their findings to the Houston Space Center.
"No organisms spotted yet...sunny, hot—"
"—Extremely hot," said Buzz.
"No wind," Armstrong went on. "Basalt rock samples..."
After some testing, they rested. Ground-up beef and vegetables awaited them. The grounding turned them into a gooey substance. It lacked flavor, because of the loss of smell.
"What in the world is this gooey thing!" Armstrong exclaimed.
"I don't know. It tastes horrible!" Aldrin cringed.
After a packet of gooey gunk, they had no more appetite for the rest of their lunch.
"I'll do some more experiments on the rock samples," Neil said.
"O-o-okay?" Buzz replied.
"What's the worry?"
"Uh, nothing." Buzz started fidgeting with his fingers.
He opened the box. Empty.
"Where did you put it?"
"I didn't touch it!" Neil suspected something in Buzz but didn't show it.
"Oh, well. I'll take some more," Neil replied.
Sauntering out of the pod, he picked up a few pieces of rock and brought them back. Walking out again, he grabbed another handful and came back, but all the samples had disappeared.
"Where did you put them?" he asked.
"I didn't take them!" Buzz already had cold sweat on his forehead.
"Are you sure you didn't take it?"
"Y-y-y-es."
"Then who took it?
"Umm... an alien?" Buzz quipped.
"Yeah, yeah, okay," Neil deadpanned. "So go find it."
Neil followed Buzz out of the module and started searching. They covered almost all the ground within a mile, and their legs wobbled. The landscape never ended, meter after meter of gray. After half an hour of searching, they came back to the pod.
Back in the pod, Neil tried to pry the truth from Buzz, but he remained stubborn.
"So, why are you stuttering?" Neil tried.
"Because...because...of the cold." Buzz lied.
"So why did you have sweat?"
"Because I was hot."
Neil sighed and kept trying. Stop lying, Buzz, he said to himself.
"Just tell the truth, all right?" Neil yelled. His foot kicked one of the boxes in the corner, and it wobbled and toppled over. Dust filled the room, and they started coughing. A few seconds later, the dust settled on the ground, and they stopped.
"Look at the mess you made!" Neil huffed. "And also, if no alien came, then who took these and put them in this box?" Neil continued, pointing to the pile of rocks.
"Okay, I did take them." sighed Buzz. "There was n extra box the engineers didn't notice. I wanted to make use of it, and thought a small prank would be funny. But then, I thought I could make money by selling them, so I stole the samples." "Sorry for making you worry," he ended.
Neil felt extremely cross. The tests on the samples had not even finished, and much more studying had to be done. After minutes of pacing, Neil forgave him. "Just don't lie next time, okay?" he said.
Back on real land, the astronauts all boarded the USS Hornet. A small crowd stood on the deck, cheering. Handshakes abounded, then the crew escorted the astronauts to a small-sized trailer. The Hornet's crew said that it would be their home for the next day, to keep any bacteria or other life forms away from other people. They crammed themselves in the tiny trailer. It felt exactly like staying in either the Eagle or the Columbia.
Tensions between Buzz and Neil raised, and they still had many arguments. They made a stop in Hawaii before ten dead-boring hours in the cargo hold of an airplane on the way to Houston. Instead of friendly greetings or handshakes, they rushed to the Lunar Receiving Laboratory.
The bland room stayed silent for the majority of the time. Doctors came in and checked on them. Neil still gave Buzz stares, but nobody noticed.
After the three months, the astronauts had permission to leave the Lunar Receiving Laboratory. Crowds congratulated them, interviewers asked millions of questions, and photographers strained to get a good picture. Smiles covered their faces for days. It was as if the incident never happened.