The rocket swayed upright and stayed close to still, oscillating only a little.
“Vertical. You are Go for egress.”
We’d stopped hearing the LGC. Either they were keeping our lines of communication clear for the evac, or Eugene had taken the cabin out of the Big Loop now that he was in the command module. I was betting on the latter.
I swung to the side, to let Aahana out of our row. Her concern was clear through her visor, but she stuck with training and didn’t pause, moving like she was a full astronaut. I was so proud. I uncovered the harness carabiner on my left shoulder and opened it, so I would be prepped when I reached the hatch. Ana Teresa got off the ladder next to me and tethered herself, bracing her feet on the chair back below me.
At the hatch, five stories above the ground, Myrtle sat on the edge of the airlock clipped onto the rappelling line hanging over her left shoulder from a support bar that extended a meter from the ship. Curt leaned out of the hatch, tethered to the ship with a safety and a local tether, to watch the ground and act as a spotter. He gave her a thumbs-up.
Myrtle leaned forward, swinging out with the motion of the ship, and vanished in a controlled rapid descent down the side.
From the hatch, Curt said, “She’s on the ground. Rappel off. Hand signals indicate line secured.”
“Copy that. Ten minutes fuel remaining.”
Helen replied, “We’re sending the colonists down.”
Ana Teresa leaned forward for helmet-to-helmet communication. “Do you need the egress sling? And don’t be a pilot when you answer.”
I toggled my mic off, holding in my urge to make a snappy comeback. “I can rappel one-handed.” I’d practiced that carrying “incapacitated” crew members in a sim. “But I may need a spotter on the ladder and with landing.”
She nodded. “I’ll go down first and wait for you at the bottom.”
I could feel the quick pulses of the attitude thrusters through the frame of the ship as Eugene kept us upright with an elegant economy of thrust. Below us, Curt, Helen, and Mikey helped colonists attach their carabiners to the Sky Genie and egress. Some of them hesitated on the threshold, before slipping off the edge and out of sight. Most of them moved, if not smoothly, then with purpose.
I glanced at my watch. By my mark, we had about five minutes of fuel left.
As soon as the ladder was clear, Ana Teresa nudged me. I unplugged into silence, and swung my legs out to join her on the ladder. She positioned herself two rungs below me, with her hands on the outer rails. I could feel her helmet pressing against my lower back.
Climbing down one-handed was slower than I liked, but rushing had the potential to knock us both off the ladder.
Ana Teresa led me to the hatch, as if the broken arm somehow affected my other senses. Two more colonists went out the door, directed by Helen with precise hand signals. When the last left, Ana Teresa clipped onto the rope and went out the hatch on signal.
As soon as Curt gave the thumbs-up that she was on the ground, Mikey wrapped the line quickly once around the shaft of my Sky Genie, which was all the friction we needed in lunar gravity, and fit the cover cylinder back in place with the thumbscrew. Helen clipped it to my harness carabiner as if I were a child. That was the correct procedure for an injured crew member, but I dislike being out of control enough that it still rankled a little.
It felt weird to sling the rope to my right, but I gripped it and tucked it behind my back to apply full tension to the line before sitting on the edge of the hatch.
Below me, Myrtle held the end of the line to try to guide rappellers clear of the teetering ship. Leaning forward, I fell away from the airlock as I brought my right arm out from my body. I hung from my left shoulder, and my rate of descent was so slow that I thought, for a moment, my Sky Genie was malfunctioning.
But with all my Earthside training, I had never rappelled in one-sixth gravity. Line fed through the Sky Genie at a fraction of the speed I expected, even though we’d discussed this in class, and I gently fell down the side of the rocket.
Until my back slammed into the ship with all the mass I’d brought from home. My arm flared into red-hot anger again. I spun back out, twirling on the end of the line, as the ship oscillated forward. The moonscape swung past in blacks and whites. Above me, on the far side of the ship, the rocket’s attitude thrusters fired a white plume across the dark sky as Eugene pushed the rocket back to vertical. I careened into the ship again, barely catching myself with one foot.
Banging into the side, I was unstable coming down and would have fallen in my stiff suit, if Ana Teresa and Myrtle hadn’t been there to steady me.
They helped me unclip my snap shackle. I backed away, clearing the line as Mikey egressed. Silhouetted against the side, I only knew it was him because they would be coming out in order of seniority.
Across the landscape, a mining rover trundled around the mounded regolith of the lunar colony. Gray dust sprayed up in a rooster tail behind them, arcing back to the ground with perfect trajectories unmarred by breezes. I headed with Ana Teresa toward the gantry to wait for our rescuers, fighting the suit for every step.
Even with that, it was easier to move than any other time I’d been out on the surface. I could feel the heat radiating from the sun and started to sweat inside my IVP suit.
Intravehicular pressure suit. This was never designed to be worn on the surface of the Moon. I had air, but no cooling system. My boots were not rated to handle the sharp glass grains of lunar soil.
I veered, clear of the pad, into the shadow of the gantry. Turning, I was in time to see Helen sliding down the ship. I started counting, in my head. She would have told Eugene that she was last out before unplugging. He’d give her thirty seconds to get clear.
Helen touched down as lightly as possible in an IVP suit. Curt and Mikey stepped in, helping her unclip.
The moment she was free, Myrtle pointed to the gantry. They all turned and ran in the awkward skip-hop it took to fight a pressurized suit on the surface.
Behind them, the thrusters stopped firing, letting the rocket slowly list away from us.
I moved on an intercept course to Myrtle, who should not be alone to watch her husband … fall. She hit the edge of the landing pad and turned to face the ship, staring up at it as if she could see into the command module at the very top. Helen stopped by Myrtle, offering her gloved hand. I got to them as the thrusters on the far side fired a series of quick noiseless bursts.
The rocket kept falling.
I grabbed Myrtle’s hand with my right. She clung to it so tightly that I could feel her palm even through the pressurized layers of rubber and fabric. Inside her helmet, her mouth was moving in constant silent prayer.
She was still in the sun. I dragged them both into the shadow and out of the 173-degree-Celsius heat, heart tight in my chest.
The massive, quiescent landing engines were facing us now as the rocket dropped below forty-five degrees. White plumes kicked out, just visible past the sides of the ship. In the shadow, the lunar surface was cold and sucked heat out of the soles of my feet, but I stayed put, bearing witness as the rocket continued its inexorable path to the ground. No jets. Had he run out of fuel or was he saving it?
The rocket seemed to reach for the surface. Sharp, quick bursts fired in sequence. Dust swirled up in wild spirals, dropping straight the moment the thrusters stopped. Eugene fired them again, in a single long sustained thrust, spraying dust away from the spacecraft as …
it …
landed. It stopped moving, at rest on its side. Then it rolled, settling with the edge of the damaged landing strut digging into the ground, silent and still.
SIXTEEN
DISASTER ON THE MOON
ARTEMIS BASE, Moon, April 13, 1963—(AP)—Earlier today, a flight from Lunetta to the Artemis Base here on the Moon crashed on landing, contaminating the landing field with Aerozine, the highly toxic propellant used by lunar landers. Though no lives were lost, Mrs. Kenneth T. Wa
rgin, wife of Gov. Wargin (Kansas), suffered a broken arm. This crash was apparently due to the same retro-thruster which stuck on Lunar Shuttle 1063 two years ago. This is the first rocket to the Moon since last month’s failed Sirius IV launch. The resulting explosion of that rocket cast debris over a wide field close to the nation’s capital. Officials at the IAC say that the fact that neither incident resulted in a loss of life is a testament to the systems and training they have implemented. Critics of the program, however, point to the increase in aerospace disasters as a sign that the space program has pushed too hard and too fast. It is only a matter of time, they say, before the IAC loses the passengers with the rocket.
Even on the Moon, with the same recycled air that circulated through the rest of the colony, the sickbay’s filters could not mask the hospital smell of disinfectant and sickness.
My left arm felt unnaturally heavy with the weight of the cast. Ironic that it felt heavier on the Moon than it did on Earth. I sat in one of the plastic chairs that populated the colony. Lightweight, easy to assemble, and generic gray.
Myrtle sat in one next to Eugene’s bed.
He lay on his side, knees drawn up under a thin white sheet. Eugene wet his lips and asked, “So … Does anyone besides me think the ship was sabotaged?”
“That’s a frightening proposition.” I wanted to shout that it had definitely been sabotaged. I had a coded letter to Kenneth burning a hole in the thigh pocket of my trousers until I could get to the teletype machine. “What are you thinking?”
“Besides the thruster? The argon cannister for the egress slide was empty. It wasn’t when we launched.”
I inhaled sharply. “Not just damaged in the crash?”
“Helen said the seal was broken and it had been drained.” The corner of his jaw tensed. “I checked it as part of my prelaunch walk-through.”
The FBI’s restriction to keep the Lindholms in the dark was foolish. But … but Eugene had brought sabotage up on his own. If I didn’t mention Icarus or share classified information that I’d learned from my briefing, then maybe we could still work the problem. “Do you think it’s linked to the rocket that crashed?”
“Yeah … You’re supposed to be the secretary for LCA Frisch?” Eugene rubbed his forehead, as if just the thought of the Lunar Colony Administrator was enough to give him a headache. “I tried to tell him that I wanted to speak to him privately, but with the rest of the staff around it was hard to push.”
“And you should rest.” Myrtle ran her hand over his brow, drawing circles at his temple as Eugene let his hand drop away. “You don’t have to be a hero all the time.”
“There’s an active saboteur on the Moon.”
“We don’t know that.” She pulled her hand away and smoothed the fabric of her trousers as if she were straightening a skirt.
“Drained argon tank. Thruster? Nathaniel was poisoned—”
“That was on Earth.” She stood and walked around the bed to check Eugene’s IV drip.
“Yes, but…” I looked at Eugene on the hospital bed. His face was ashen and tight with discomfort. “I think we can argue that Eugene was also poisoned.”
“It’s food poisoning.” Eugene cut a glance to Myrtle and then back to me.
He wanted me to keep quiet about the fact that someone had very probably poisoned him so that Myrtle wouldn’t worry? We were so far past that, it wasn’t even worth trying. “Food poisoning can be deliberate. The fact that you got sick and no one else did is telling.”
Myrtle moved to the foot of his bed, smoothing the thin blanket over him as she went. “That could have happened in Brazil.”
She wasn’t wrong, and it was the preferable scenario. “So you’re saying I shouldn’t talk to Frisch?”
“I’m saying that…” She sighed. Yanking on an end of the blanket, she made a neat corner and tucked it under the mattress. “I’m saying that I don’t want to suspect the people I live with up here.”
“I don’t want to suspect the people at the IAC, either.”
“That’s just— It’s different for us. For the full-timers, I mean. The trip home for our son’s graduation was the first time we’ve been back on Earth in over a year. There are only about three hundred people on the Moon. We’re too small a community to start suspecting everyone.”
Suspicion and paranoia were never good, and in a group this small, they would be meteorically bad. People would turn on each other. Divide into groups. Things would get personal real fast. “All right. I take your point. So what’s your suggestion?”
“Talk to Frisch. There’s not a lot—” Eugene shifted on the bed, closing his eyes.
I jumped up, too high, and had to catch myself on the ceiling. My cast thunked against the plastic, sending a dull jolt through my arm. Myrtle rounded the end, moving in lunar gravity with grace, and scooped up a bin to hold for Eugene.
He opened his eyes and waved her away. “Cramp.” Straightening out, he said, “At least I’m done with the barfing phase. Be glad when the shitting is—”
“Eugene! You watch your language.”
“Woman, Nicole is a damn pilot. The day I shock her with my language is the day I invent a new word.”
“What about me?”
“You?” He snorted. “You’re supposed to be nice to me on my sickbed.”
“I cleaned your ass. I don’t know what else you want.”
He laughed and it sounded so good. “Here you were complaining about my language.”
Laughing with them, relieved for a moment to have something to laugh at, I said, “I’ll leave you two lovebirds to your ass-wiping. I’ve got an appointment with the LCA.”
“Thanks for that.” Eugene let his head drop back onto the pillow. “See you in church tomorrow?”
I stopped in the doorway, raising an eyebrow. Putting aside all other questions … “Do you honestly think you’ll be out of here?”
“It’s Easter.” He shrugged as best he could, lying on his side with an IV in his arm. Damn pilots. “I’ll be fine.”
“Lord save me from having to wrangle this man.” Myrtle looked at the ceiling. “Lord, give me strength to survive his obstinance and—”
“My obstinance?”
I escaped the crossfire and stepped out into the hall. It was empty and quiet save for the Lindholms’ cheerful argument and the distant whir of the centrifuge room. For a moment, I was alone.
The wave of emotions that I needed to manage rose up, grief and rage and terror pressing against the backs of my eyes and crowding the soft palate of my mouth. Kenneth would have been in a room like that, months ago, and he would have been alone.
I closed my eyes. My hands tightened into fists, nails pressing against the plaster cast. I did not have time for this.
* * *
With a clipboard under my good arm, I bounded through the newest corridor of the Moon Artemis Base in the forward-leaning lunar walk that was the most efficient way of travel. My first couple of hours back on the Moon were always a little awkward as my body recalibrated to the presence of gravity after days without it. You could spot the experienced lunar dwellers by their walk.
I stopped at the entrance to the small tube buried in the regolith that served as the outer office for Lunar Colony Administrator Frisch. Dull gray plastic created a wall for the LCA’s inner office decorated with an outdated calendar on one side and a star chart for a trans-Earth orbit on the other.
Through the translucent plastic sheeting of the “door,” I could hear Curt’s voice. “With respect, sir, I was the pilot.”
“I am aware of that, Lieutenant Frye. However, the IAC’s policies are quite clear.” Frisch was Swiss but had learned English from a Brit so always said things like “Leftenant.” It sounded like an affectation every time. “This is not a permanent state.”
“It is not fair. Carmouche, in particular, was nowhere near the controls.”
“Did she, or did she not, provide you with the calculations for the landing?”
They had grounded all of them. I clenched my teeth and patted the sheeting in what passed for a knock on the Moon.
“Yes?”
I slid the plastic aside. “Sorry to bother you…”
“Ah, Mrs. Wargin.” LCA Frisch hunched over his desk like an anemic stork. His Swiss pallor was even more pronounced on the Moon than it had been on Earth. The man needed to spend more time in the sunlamp room.
Curt was standing in front of his desk, arms crossed, and had that extremely neutral expression of someone who is trying not to scowl. “Oh good. You can back me up. They’re grounding Helen and Mikey. I get needing to do that with me, but for Pete’s sake, it shouldn’t affect anyone else.”
I winced. He wasn’t going to win this argument, and as a rookie, he wouldn’t know that. Frisch was a rule-bound bureaucrat through and through.
“I’m grounded too.” I waved my cast. While I agreed with him, I also needed Curt to go away so that I could talk to Frisch. “It’s not unreasonable for them to want to examine Helen and Mikey’s involvement.”
He took a deep breath as if he were going to yell and then sighed, fingers tightening on his biceps. He did have nice biceps, but I digress.
Frisch nodded. “It is only until after the investigation, which we will conduct as efficaciously as possible.”
Curt stared at the floor, mouth compressed. “So, do we have any active pilots right now?”
“Yes. Of course.” The administrator of the Moon lunar colony swept his dishwater-blond hair back from his high, peaked forehead. “This will put us on a tighter rotation, but nothing unmanageable.”
It’s funny how the brain will draw connections. Eugene was down for the count with the food poisoning. I was out. Curt, Mikey, and Helen were out. Now, there were some pilots already up here, but when they rotated back to Earth in two weeks, that would make us severely short-staffed. In fact, Frisch might have to schedule some of the rookies who had flight as a secondary qualification.
The Relentless Moon Page 15