Untethered is faster the way falling is faster.

The brown curtain moves. The glass cliff becomes a rumor. Your boots miss a hold that was obvious when it was obvious. Low gravity gives you time to feel foolish on the way to a drift you did not budget.

Lina finds you because that is the job, because the tether you skipped is now her tether, because rovers still have winches and patience. You are not a legend. You are a fetch. The paddle is somewhere the dust owns.

By the time you are a person in a porch again, Imani has run LEDs without you and the uncleaned bays are a dimmer green. The storm files your EVA under do not repeat. Your shoulder will be sore from a yank that saved a junior grower who wanted all the glass.

Lina sets her helmet down. Cinnamon visor. “Visibility is a number. Tethers are how numbers don’t get to write you.”

You write the log with gloves still on, then take them off, then write it again because the first version sounded brave.

THE END

What you learned: dust storms erase views. Untethered is not a speed; it is a drift. One bay, clipped, then inside to the lamps beats a hero tour of all the glass.