Back to the Moon

by Travis S. Taylor

  Caldwell’s voice then faded a bit as he was obviously speaking to someone with him and not into the microphone. “I don’t care if you have to personally search every bathroom in the building. Find him. What about the cafeteria? Okay, just go!”

  “Ahem.” Caldwell cleared his throat and collected himself before he spoke into the microphone again. “Ms. Hui, there is a rescue mission on its way to the Moon. They know where you are, and they will be landing very close to your location.”

  “A rescue mission?” said Hui. She was confused, knowing full well that China did not have another vehicle anywhere close to launch status. The transmission lag was quickly becoming intolerable.

  “Yes. A NASA crew launched about two days ago. They are on the way to bring you home.”

  Hui and Dr. Xu were visibly relieved. Help was on the way. They might just survive the wreck after all! Hui looked from Dr. Xu to the wounded pilot and then to Zhi Feng. Zhi’s expression was unreadable. It was clearly not the same one of relief that she was experiencing.

  Moments later, a voice speaking Mandarin was heard through the radio. It was a voice Hui recognized. It was one of her fellow taikonauts, Gong Zheng. She and Gong had trained together, and she considered him to be a friend.

  Gong said, “Hui. This is Gong Zheng. You sound well. Are you okay? You said someone was injured. Who?”

  “Pilot Ming Feng was injured during landing. He needs medical attention.” Hui’s voice was firm, but she was very clearly tired.

  “I understand,” Gong replied. “How are Dr. Xu and Zhi Feng?”

  “They were not injured. But we are all very cold and tired.” She went on to explain their general situation.

  After listening intently to the status of the crew, Gong said, “In order to help you, I need to know the status of the ship’s system in detail.” And so began a rather lengthy discussion of virtually every system on the Harmony—working and nonworking.

  During the discussion, Hui once again glanced at the faces of her crewmates. Something was clearly bothering Zhi, and she had no idea what it might be. At the moment she needed to focus on keeping them all alive—and preferably warmer.

  Chapter 24

  “Houston, this is Mercy I. All systems look good for LOI,” Bill Stetson said calmly into the microphone. LOI, Lunar Orbit Insertion, would be the first time the Altair’s engines would fire during the mission. In a few minutes, the modified Aerojet RL-10 rocket engines, burning liquid hydrogen and oxygen, would begin to slow the mated Orion/Altair Mercy I spacecraft so as to allow it to enter orbit around the Moon.

  “Copy that, Mercy I. All systems look good on our end. How’s the view up there?”

  Stetson looked at Chow and then briefly out the window before replying, “Awesome. But it sure as hell would be a terrible place to spend eternity.”

  “Nice place to visit and all that…,” Chow added.

  Stetson and Chow had been watching the Moon grow larger, and the Earth grow smaller, with each passing hour. As the Moon now dominated the view from their windows, so did its gravity dominate the little spaceship the astronauts inhabited.

  “Couldn’t agree more, Mercy I. Let’s get you guys in orbit and down to the ground for that visit.”

  A few minutes later, the engines fired, and the Mercy I began to slow. At first, though Stetson could feel the engines firing and the resulting acceleration, it was not clear that it was having much of an affect. The Moon’s apparent size was still changing—getting larger. Looking at the instruments to confirm that the engines were, in fact, working and slowing the vehicle, Stetson tried to hide his nervousness. He knew the engines were functioning and that they were slowing—but his innate Earth-evolved senses could not tell that anything was happening.

  After the burn, the instruments confirmed that they had entered orbit, and Stetson breathed a sigh of relief. Looking out the window, Stetson could finally perceive that they were not going to fly by the Moon and off into deep space; rather, they were clearly circling the gray world for the first time. He thought again about Gene Cernan and his bittersweet departure from the Moon almost fifty years ago.

  With that, Stetson and Chow once again had to run through their endless checklists. They were going to leave the Orion parked in lunar orbit while they went to the surface in the Altair. Unlike Apollo, there would not be anyone in the orbiting Orion while they were gone, and Stetson wanted to make certain everything was in perfect working order before he left. He looked at the solar-array status screen and saw that it was still working normally—to his great relief.

  “Mercy I, do you copy?” asked one of the controllers in Houston.

  Chow replied, “We haven’t gone anywhere. What’s up?”

  “According to the orbital-analysis guys, you should be in a good position to see the Harmony in about twelve minutes. Look aft, as you’ll be flying almost directly over it, crossing from eleven o’clock to about four o’clock in your field of view. The sun angle will be favorable, and if you use the terrain imager you should get a good view. If the Lunar Mapper hadn’t failed, we’d have some great pictures of the whole area for you. Unfortunately, all you’ll have before descent are the images you get on the next two passes. You might say hello to the folks on the ground there while you’re at it.”

  “Roger that. We’ll make a phone call or two before dropping by.” Bill looked at the surface and squinted, trying to see something, but eyeballs weren’t anywhere near big enough to detect the downed spacecraft at the orbital distance of the Orion/Altair.

  The terrain imager, on the other hand, was a different story. It was on the Orion to allow the crew to perform last-minute inspection of the planned landing site with ultrahigh resolution. From lunar-orbital altitude, the terrain imager could capture the license number on the old Lunar Rover—if it had had one, and if the spaceship happened to pass over the Rover during the lunar day. Night imaging was still good, but not as good as what would be possible in full sun.

  “Imager is coming online,” Chow said. “Okay. Upload the targeting data and we’ll see what she sees.” Chow then used the touch-screen display to bring up what the terrain imager was viewing. With the imager tracking the ground, and with it set to nearly maximum magnification, the ground whizzed by dizzyingly fast. The onboard processors were able to extract still images from the video, making inspection of any particular spot relatively easy to accomplish.

  Bill Stetson had been listening to the exchange in the background while he was checking out his suit for the surface EVA that would begin in just a few hours—once they were on the ground. He pushed off and floated over to Chow, stopping just behind him so that he could easily see the terrain-imager pictures as they came in. He also keyed at the microphone and tuned the digital transmitter across the band the Chinese were using while leaving the homeward-pointing communications links still in place.

  Chow looked at the display, noting that mission control had synchronized a countdown clock to the time at which they should be able to see the Harmony. The camera would then lock on to the crashed ship and track it as they flew over, providing images from several viewing angles and giving the crew a good idea of where they should land the Altair. On the next pass, their orbital position would be different and provide yet another complete set of viewing angles. To complete their mission, they would leave the command capsule Orion and land on the surface in the Altair lunar surface access module. Then, if all went according to plan, they would bring the Chinese survivors back up in the Altair, dock with the Orion, and successfully complete their mission of mercy by getting everybody back to Earth safely.

  “Harmony, this is NASA spacecraft Mercy I. Do you copy?” Bill and Tony kept their eyes focused on the imager screen. Still no sign of the downed vehicle.

  “Harmony, this is NASA spacecraft Mercy I about to orbit over your position. Do you copy?”

  “Not seeing it, Bill.”

  “Keep looking, Tony. It’s there.” Bill tried not to show any pessim
ism in his voice. “Harmony, this is NASA spacecraft Mercy I. Do you copy?”

  At almost the same time that Stetson and Chow spotted the Harmony on the imager, a signal burst over the intercom.

  “There it is!” Bill pointed at the screen.

  “Mercy I, Mercy I, this is Harmony! It is great to hear your voice!”

  Though the surface was in darkness, the camera’s infrared augmentation and automated signal-processing algorithms were able to provide the two men with an image that was clearly identifiable as a manmade spacecraft sitting on a plain. It looked very small. As the camera locked on to the Harmony and tracked it, the image became relatively motionless as their ship flew overhead.

  “Harmony, be advised that we are beginning our decent after the next orbital pass and will land as close to you as possible. Do you copy?”

  “Copy that, Mercy I. We are eagerly awaiting you. Good luck with your landing procedure. Be aware that there are several crater rims to our north and west. There are boulders as large as automobiles scattered about to our east.”

  “Roger that, Harmony. Thanks for the advice. It’s a little dark down there, so if y’all want to turn on the runway lights, it would help.”

  “If only we had the power to spare, Mercy I.” Bill wasn’t sure the Chinese taikonaut understood his light levity. Rather than easing the mood, it might have been more unsettling to them. He made a mental note to forgo the jokes for the time being.

  “We’re moving quickly out of range, Harmony. We’ll see you on the next orbit.”

  “Understood, Mercy I. Harmony out.”

  Chow looked at Stetson as they flew out of range and said, “Are we ready?”

  “Damn right we’re ready. Let’s go get those people before they freeze to death. We’re supposed to start descent just after the next pass. Suit up!”

  On the surface, Hui and her crew were elated that the two American astronauts were directly overhead and looking down upon them. But they were too cold for that elation to help much. It would take a couple of orbits for the Americans to land, and they might not land very close. Help was coming, but it would still be a little while.

  They huddled together in the crew compartment watching the power indicator fade to nothingness. With the lander’s last battery drained, and the fuel cells fully depleted, they were now totally dependent upon their spacesuits for warmth. If nothing were to go wrong, they should be able to survive in their suits for another eight hours.

  “Americans. How are we supposed to light up the runway when we can’t even heat our suits?” Hui asked Dr. Xu.

  “I think that was an attempt to lighten the mood.” Xu smiled at his captain.

  “Humor? At a time like this? Americans.” Hui shook her head. “How’s Ming Feng?”

  “Hard to say.” The doctor peered through the listless pilot’s faceplate and didn’t look too happy. “He’s still breathing. The breaths are rapid and fitful, but he’s breathing. I don’t know the extent of his injuries, and I fear that even if we get off the Moon, he might not survive the trip back to Earth. Hopefully, we can get him out of his suit and examine him better once the Americans are here.”

  “Carried home by the great Americans. Coming to the rescue of those poor, backward Chinese, saving us all and heaping shame and embarrassment on our country.” It was the first time Zhi Feng had spoken in several hours, and the bitterness was impossible to escape.

  “Zhi, we’re going home. We’re not going to die! And we got to the Moon ahead of all of them. Our countrymen will be proud—and it is better to come home to our families than to die here. I miss my family, and now that I have a chance to see them, I will not begrudge those who are coming to help us.”

  “I will. It is shameful. I will not be able to face my father—he served his country proudly and never had to bow before the Americans or anyone else.”

  “Would you rescue the Americans if they asked?” Dr. Xu joined the conversation. “My job is to save lives. Though it grieves me that our moment of glory is now one of humility, I will gladly accept help to save Ming’s life as well as my own.”

  “We took China to the Moon!” Hui said, more than a bit frustrated with the younger man. “Besides, we survived! We crash-landed on the Moon—two hundred and forty thousand miles from home—and have survived longer than we would have thought possible. And we owe that survival to you, Zhi. Without your engineering skills at keeping us warm, we would never have made it. You will be a hero!”

  “Some hero. I kept us alive long enough for the Americans to get the glory. We would have been better off dead. At least then our countrymen could have come to get our bodies in a Chinese spaceship.”

  “You will be quiet now, engineer!” Hui, now clearly angry, asserted her command position. She calmed herself but left the edge to her tone. “Zhi. That is enough. We will not let misplaced pride stand in the way of doing what we must do to survive. We will not serve our country by being buried here. Enough! Need I remind you that I am in command of this mission? We will carry ourselves appropriately with the Americans and represent China with pride. That is an order.”

  Zhi did not appear to be impressed or affected by her order. But he did quiet and for that, Hui was grateful.

  “It is not long now,” she said. “They will be on the ground within the next three hours or less.” Hui was reviewing the information provided from their last radio contact with Earth. Her colleague had stayed with her on the radio until she had to switch it off due their rapidly fading power. Had their counterpart on Earth not told them precisely when the American ship would arrive, they would not have had the power to communicate with them. She looked out the window and into the darkness.

  “There are quite a few boulders out there. I hope they can avoid them on their way in.” The thought of trying to pilot a lander in the lunar darkness terrified her. They had not been equipped for a night landing, and they had certainly not planned on staying until nightfall. She then thought about the American Apollo program and recalled that none of them had landed at night, either. The Apollo missions were carefully choreographed to occur during the day and at locations that would provide direct line-of-sight communication with the Earth. Did their current lander even have landing lights?

  Chow and Stetson were in their suits and in position for the Altair’s separation from the Orion and their descent to the surface. All systems checked out, and they were ready to go.

  Stetson was worried, but not about going down to the Moon. He was worried about the timing and the fact that the taikonauts had less than five hours of power left in their suits. He’d have to get the Altair on the ground close to the Harmony, walk to the Chinese lander, and help the four taikonauts get back to the Altair. While he was taking care of getting the stranded Chinese, Chow would begin off-loading the equipment from the Altair that would enable them to get off the Moon and back to Earth. Once he returned, they would have to break out some tools to remove a few panels on the exterior of the spacecraft. That was a two-man job at a minimum, and none of them had ever tried it. Stetson was worried about the timing and the actions. If everything went according to plan, they would have about an hour or two to spare to get to the downed Chinese. That wasn’t much margin.

  “Tony, separation in five seconds. Four. Three. Two. One. Separate!” called Stetson. The Altair jolted as it separated from the Orion. There was a slight roll as the two vehicles moved apart and then a low rumble—the Altair’s engines were lit, and they were beginning their descent.

  “How many times did you simulate landing in the dark?” asked Chow.

  “This is my first,” said Stetson. Unlike during any of their simulations, Stetson and Chow were descending to the surface in total darkness. “This was a mission scenario that was never supposed to happen,” he said.

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Nope. All the sims had us landing and taking off during the day. We don’t have enough power to last through the night, and it’s just too d
angerous to land in the dark. Why on Earth would we simulate such a thing? It was never on anyone’s mission plan!”

  “So this will be your first time,” said Chow.

  “Yep! But, like I said, don’t worry. We got pretty good pictures of the landing site from the Lunar Mapper before it crapped out, and now we can compare them with those we just took to make sure we don’t put this monster down on any rocks or a crashed Chinese lander. We’ve also got the terrain-mapping radar and some pretty good lights that I am supposed to switch on now.” Stetson paused long enough to activate four halogen lights pointing downward in their direction of travel.

  Stetson continued, “The lights were put on here to help us avoid tripping on something in the shadow of the lander as we walk around. Depending upon the time of year and where you are on the Moon, the shadows can be rather long. We’re going to use them to help us land instead. Can’t talk anymore; I’d better pay attention to what I, er, the computer is doing as we land.”

  Stetson returned his attention to the view screen and the altimeter data. Though the lights were bright, the ship was still too far away for them to reflect from anything on the ground. The radar told him that they were five miles from the surface and descending rapidly. The automated system was taking them to a site about three hundred meters from the Harmony, in an area that was relatively free of boulders.

  As the descent continued, Stetson closely watched the cameras for any sign of the ground beneath them. He was painfully aware of what had happened the first time an American astronaut descended to the surface of the Moon. That commander had been Neil Armstrong, and he had had to manually bring the lander down to avoid some boulders that weren’t supposed to be in the way. They’d made it, but with far less fuel remaining than planned for. That’s why we have margin, thought Stetson.