by Homer Hickam
A rolling wave of voices seemed to rise up from the old chamber. The new acting vice president of the United States braced herself against it.
THE CHALLENGER SCENARIO
Taurus-Littrow
Jack and Penny staggered across the dusty, boulder-strewn valley, dragging the priceless dirt from Shorty, two boxes of equipment, and two oxygen bottles in a web of straps, following the old tracks of the Rover back to the Challenger Lem. It was not easy going, especially for Penny. Jack, appreciative that she hadn’t blamed him for losing the Rover, stopped long enough to screw several sheet-metal screws from the toolbox into the bottom of her boots for traction. That helped but she was already exhausted.
It took three hours to reach the Lem. Beside one of its landing pads Penny dropped to her knees and then rolled over on her back and just sucked air. Jack checked her readouts and turned on her emergency oxygen supply. All the oxygen he had brought was buried with the Rover. The two bottles Penny had with her was all there was. He used one to refill her backpack.
He checked in with Houston. “Do you understand what you need to do, Jack?” Sam asked.
“Yeah, sure,” he replied grimly. Jack had studied the plan and gave it about a one in ten trillion chance of working. Still, it was all there was to do. He dropped to his knees, and then crawled under the Lem platform, working his way underneath until he could see the descent engine oxidizer tank. He put his helmet against it and whacked it with the handle of a wrench. The tank rang hollowly, as he’d expected. In the intervening decades the oxidizer surely had evaporated through minute leaks. He put his shoulder to the tank and pushed it and was surprised to hear a sloshing sound. He did the same with the fuel tank. More sloshing. “What do you know?” he muttered. “Houston, there’s liquid in both tanks. I can’t tell how much.”
Sam came back immediately. “Outstanding, Jack. Our records show Challenger made a quick descent. The descent stage should have at least half its fuel left.”
“Okay, now what?”
“Start the wiring harness immediately.”
Jack crawled out from underneath and picked up the toolkit and the other aluminum box Penny had brought with her. He placed them on top of the Lem and then used the ladder that went up one of the legs to climb up on it. The platform, constructed of sheets of bonded aluminum, gave a little under his weight but held. He searched out the electronic port used to command the descent engine. He found it scorched, no doubt from the ascent engine when the crew module had blasted off, but it seemed intact. He studied the plug Virgil had constructed and inserted it into the port, careful to line up the tiny pins. Then he used duct tape to hold it in place. He got out the circuit tester. “Joy,” he said. “The plug works.”
“Wonderful, Jack,” Sam immediately responded.
Jack kept working according to the procedures Penny had brought with her, setting up the rest of the rig, ending up with the restraint straps.
“You have ten minutes to launch,” Sam called, his voice calm, almost nonchalant.
Jack went back down the ladder and helped Penny to her feet. “Let’s go,” he said without preamble. There was no time for anything else. She was panting. He suspected her scrubber was giving out, the carbon dioxide in her helmet rising.
He led her across the platform and strapped her to the deck. Then he did the same for himself and his precious sample bag of dirt. “We’re ready, Sam,” he called.
“Stand by,” Sam answered.
Columbia
Virgil sat in the cockpit but he was not piloting Columbia. She was being flown from Houston. He was in reserve, in case communication was lost. Fuel cell number two had finally crapped out. Only number one still worked. If it failed... well, it simply couldn’t fail.
Virgil braced himself for what was about to happen next. Big Dog was the propulsive unit of choice this time. Mission Control had seen what it could do and they wanted it. Sam had agreed but expressed worry to Virgil about its remaining propellant. Virgil’s best estimate indicated only a few minutes firing time.
Virgil heard Starbuck’s voice. “I’ve got my commsat in position, Sam.”
“Thanks, Starbuck,” Tate answered. Virgil knew Starbuck’s part was critical to the success of the pickup. He had never met either Sam Tate or Starbuck, knew next to nothing about them, but now his life and the two lives far below him depended on what they did next.
“All right, boys and girls,” he heard Sam say. “Let’s begin the final countdown at my mark.”
“I’m ready, Sam,” Starbuck said.
“Mark.”
“Godspeed, Jack and Penny,” Virgil muttered, gripping the seat.
Challenger Base Stage
Penny was trying to reach across the base stage to touch Jack but he was too far away. He looked at her. “You okay?”
“I can’t seem to get my breath.”
He knew why. Her scrubber was gone. Carbon dioxide was nearly to a deadly level. “Just relax.”
“Jack, I have to know. Was there a chance for us?”
“More than a chance. Stop talking, High Eagle. Breathe easy.”
“I’m sorry about Kate, Jack. I never told you that. You loved her so much and to have her taken away like that...”
He looked straight ahead, at the stars. This was what Kate had wanted. Humankind, back on the moon. “Just breathe, Penny. I’ve done what I needed to do for Kate. She can rest now and so can I.”
SMC
“Go!” Sam stabbed the return button on his console. The signal he sent flashed across the Armstrong Sea from Houston, struck the transceiver attached to the Lem, and continued down the wiring harness into the plug to the engine.
Challenger
Jack felt the vibration of valves that had been shut for a quarter of a century opening beneath him. Oxidizer and fuel were surging into the combustion chamber. The stars were suddenly washed out from a burst of flame that licked around the platform, met in a plume of orange and scarlet above him. Then the hot gases were swept aside and the stars lunged at him. The Lem was taking off like a scalded cat. The wind gushed out of Jack’s mouth from the kick of the engine. He turned his head and for an instant saw the Taurus-Littrow Valley and the surrounding hills, and then they were gone. Then he turned to see Penny lying in her straps, trembling from the engine vibration. Some color in the corner of his eye caught his attention. It was earth, a distant blue island in the sky.
Farside Control
Starbuck’s Farside comm satellite picked up the truncated Lem when it was a mile high, still accelerating. It was displayed on Starbuck’s virtual panel. “Got it in my sights, Sam!” he cried at Tate’s prod. “Challenger ’s flying straight and true.”
SMC
Sam crisply acknowledged Starbuck, then received the FIDO’s trajectory analysis. The Challenger ’s ascent engine was going to take the Lem into a high, extremely eccentric orbit around the moon. Columbia had a chance to catch it.
Sam ordered Big Dog punched up, firewalled to the max. Then it was shut down. The Lem engine had also stopped, out of propellant. Sam sweated out the call from Columbia. If the Crays knew what they were doing, somewhere high above the moon, about thirty miles out, the two lines describing Columbia ’s and the Lem’s trajectories would intersect. Then it was up to Virgil.
Columbia
Virgil climbed out of the cockpit and took up station at the aft ports, activating the RMS arm. A small white speck floated up out of the darkness. “I see it!” he whooped.
Columbia shook as if in response to his call. It was Houston firing the OMS, making an orbit adjustment. The white speck grew. The Lem was falling but so was Columbia at the same rate. At least that was the plan. Virgil could only hope the Houston computers had made the correct calculation.
Gradually, the lunar surface growing nearer by the moment, the shuttle slid underneath the Lem, her payload bay like a huge catcher’s mitt. Virgil maneuvered the arm, reaching toward the Lem.
“Come on, darlin
’,” Virgil crooned, cajoling the odd-looking contraption to come nearer. It was turned so all he could see was its base, the silent nozzle of its rocket engine, and its legs sticking out as if on a frozen insect.
The Lem stayed tantalizingly just out of reach. There was no grappling fixture on Challenger ’s truncated base so all Virgil could do was jam the arm’s end effector between the Lem’s side and one of the landing legs. He stretched the arm out. If he merely bumped the Lem, he would send it tumbling out of reach. He only had one chance. He hauled the arm back, bending it at its elbow, and then slammed the stick forward. The arm pushed out at maximum velocity, struck the Lem, pushed the end effector past one of the legs. It jammed and held.
Virgil watched the strain gauge numbers on the arm’s monitor go off the scale, then subside. Torrents of sweat flew off his face, collecting in sparkling beads around his head like a halo. He waved them away, gingerly moved the arm’s joystick to slowly pull the Challenger into the cargo bay.
“Got ’em, Houston,” he said when he saw the top of the Lem. There, strapped down, were Jack and Penny. One of them waved. The other one was motionless. “Houston, I’ve got two passengers!” Virgil crowed. “Rock me on out of here!”
One and a quarter second later Big Dog fired, just enough to circularize Columbia and all her cargo into a stable lunar orbit.
Virgil waited anxiously at the airlock. By the time it opened, Penny had started to regain her color. She crawled out first, dressed only in her coolant suit. Virgil hugged her and then helped Jack out of the airlock. He saw the worry on his face. “She’s had a rough time,” he said, nodding toward Penny. Then he hugged Virgil. “Thanks, old son. You saved our lives.”
“Aw, twarn’t nuthin’,” Virgil said, hugging his boss back. Then he helped Jack secure Penny in a sleeping bag and strap an oxygen mask on her.
Houston was calling and so was the SAREX. Virgil answered Houston. Jack went to the SAREX. The message was from the men and women of MEC.
DID YOU GET IT?
ON BOARD THIRTY KILOGRAMS OF THE FINEST DIRT ON THE MOON.
The laptop paused, clicking.
AND DID YOU FIND WHAT YOU WERE REALLY LOOKING FOR?
Jack stared at the screen. Had he?
YES.
Jack looked at Penny, gulping oxygen but asleep, and then turned the SAREX off.
INBOUND
Out ride the sons of Terra,
Far drives the thundering jet,
Up leaps the race of Earthmen,
Out, far, and onward yet—
We pray for one last landing,
On the globe that gave us birth,
Let us rest our eyes on fleecy skies
And the cool, green hills of Earth.
—Robert Heinlein, The Green Hills of Earth
BED OF AIR
SMC
Sam wanted to get Columbia the hell out of lunar orbit and on her way back but his controllers gave him two pieces of bad news: (1) Fuel cell number one, the only functioning source of electrical power on the shuttle, was failing, and (2) Big Dog had pretty much shot its wad, the remaining propellant not sufficient to get the shuttle back into earth transit. Sam created two tiger teams—one to work on the fuel cell problem, the other on the earth transit situation.
The answer for earth transit came back to him within an hour. He went into the back room, where the leader of the team awaited him with a diagram of Columbia ’s propulsions systems on a Vu Graph. Her finger shaking nervously, she traced the systems, then replaced the transparency with another, this one filled with equations. “This is it, Sam,” she said. “We’ve done the math. If the Big Dog engine and the OMS jets fire at the same time, and if we keep Big Dog powered up until it runs out of fuel, we think that will be enough to get Columbia up to escape velocity.”
Sam peered at the equations. They looked credible. “What’s the downside?”
The team lead adjusted her glasses, looked around the room for help, but when no one spoke up, she plowed on. “It might not leave enough OMS propellant to slow Columbia when she gets back to earth. Depending on how she hits the atmosphere, she’ll either burn up or bounce off it, keep going into an orbit around the sun. We’d never get her back.”
The room was deathly quiet, all eyes on Sam. He rocked back and forth in his chair, his chin in the palm of his hand. “Do it,” he said finally. “We’ll worry about slowing her down later. We’ve got some time for that.”
The room immediately emptied. Sam saw Shirley, picking up her notebooks and pens. He had all but forgotten she was there. “What’s new from Washington?” he asked her.
“WET got voted down.” She clutched her things to her chest. “My boss—my ex-boss has resigned.” She glanced at the ceiling. “What are their odds, Sam? I mean really.”
Sam gave Shirley his best Clint Eastwood squint. “I ain’t gonna lose ’em, Shirley. I’m gonna get ’em home.”
Columbia
Jack received Houston’s solution and got to work on it. Two hours and two lunar orbits later, he’d plugged in all the parameters. He helped Penny up from the middeck, gently strapped her into the mission specialist’s seat. She was pale, confused, but Jack had checked her blood pressure, breathing, and heart rate, and her vital signs looked good. Virgil joined him in the cockpit. Columbia would be behind the moon, out of contact with earth, when the engines were to be fired. Jack waited until the onboard computers gave him the go-ahead and fired both the Big Dog and the OMS. Columbia vibrated from the combined propulsion of the two rocket systems. It had been estimated that Big Dog would have enough propellant to fire for thirty seconds. It managed nearly a minute. The OMS kept going until the computers turned it off. Columbia came bursting around the rim of the moon and flew on, into what Penny had named the Armstrong Sea.
“We’re inbound, America!” Jack announced.
“America here, Columbia,” Sam responded, taking Jack’s lead on his call sign. “Come on home!”
“I like that call sign,” Jack replied. He had heard cheering, pandemonium, in Mission Control, and was caught up in their apparent joy. “Let’s go with that. You’re America, the country of our birth, home of the brave, land of the free.”
Sam came back. “You know, Jack, I guess a lot of people across the country will wonder why we haven’t always called ourselves that. America it is from now on.” He paused. “Got some information from Huntsville. Stand by.”
Jack waited. “Huntsville thinks it may have a solution to your fuel cell problem, Jack. The tether can provide power if you’ll reel it out as soon as Columbia enters the magnetic field of the earth. We’ll let you know when you get there.”
Jack was familiar with past shuttle tether experiments. One of them had generated so much power, it had burned the tether in two. The ATESS tether experiment on board was beefed up to avoid that, the electrical current generated flowing into electron accelerators in the cargo bay. Jack listened to all of Huntsville’s plan, pronounced it sound. He admired its raw seat-of-the-pants engineering and then explained it to Virgil. Someone would need to go into the bay and attach a cord from the accelerators to the power pallet. “My turn, boss,” Virgil volunteered.
Using the last of the suit oxygen, Virgil successfully accomplished the relatively simple EVA, plugging the cord into the power pallet. Then he came back inside and unreeled the ATESS tether, stabilizing it a mile from the shuttle.
Jack watched the electrical power distribution system numbers. A surge of new power began to come in from the power pallet. There was so much power through the tether, Jack decided to power down the remaining fuel cell, hold it for emergency use only. Columbia sailed on, bright and warm. Since it was not known how the tether might react to the constant barbecue turn, the ship was stabilized, her black-tile belly toward the sun.
By the end of the first day of earth transit, Penny felt well enough to eat something. Within a few more hours she felt normal. Virgil was exhausted, had taken a sleeping pill, gone to sleep i
n the middeck, secure in his sleeping bag. Paco was with him. For the first time since their walk on the moon, Penny and Jack were alone, their panorama only stars, both the moon and the earth out of view. Penny snuggled in his arms in the cockpit, and they kissed, long and tenderly. “I still love you anyway,” she said, teasingly.
“I still love you anyway too,” he said, teasing back.
She put her hand on his chin, ran it over the scar, down his neck. He shuddered as she kissed the scar, her hands roaming along his shoulders, along his back, to his hips. He unstrapped them both, taking her with him as he pushed out into the clear air of the flight deck. He began to undress her but she couldn’t wait. She pulled off her shirt, chucked her shorts away. While she was stripping, he was too. She admired his readiness, reached out, put her hands around his back, pulled him to her. She tucked her feet inside some footloops, and welcomed him inside her. When she arched her back in a spasm of pure pleasure, her long black hair sprayed into a zero g ebony blossom.
One hundred thousand miles above both earth and moon, a man and a woman, naked to the universe, clung to one another, no bed possibly softer than their cushion of molecules of air.
PANIC IN THE STREETS?
The White House
Vanderheld made his way through the dark, empty hall to the Oval Office. Sykes’s office was empty, stripped. He’d turned himself in to the attorney general upon his return from Iraq. In the outer waiting room, only Secret Service agents waited. Vanderheld went inside. The President of the United States was waiting for him. He sat in a high-back swivel chair, its back to the door. The President didn’t bother to turn around.