Back to the Moon

by Homer Hickam

  “Good evening, Mr. President. Thank you for seeing me. I’m sorry this worked out the way it did. But there are things you may not know, or understand.”

  “Please,” he said grimly. “There’s nothing you could say that would matter.”

  Vanderheld sat in one of the green wing-back chairs placed in front of the President’s desk. “Nevertheless, I would ask you to carefully listen to me. Without the approval of WET everything I predicted is coming to pass. There’s anxiety in every capitol in the world. In the Middle East there’s panic in the streets, threats of war, rumors of war.”

  The back of the chair wobbled, as if the President was considering turning around. He didn’t. “That much, at least, is true. The Iraqis and Iranians betrayed the treaty almost as soon as I was out of their airspace. With oil about to become obsolete, and their billions no longer at stake, they just decided to go at each other again.” The chair rocked again. “Every mullah, sheik, and tin-pot dictator seems to have gone nuts over this thing, saying we’ve betrayed them. They’re talking about cutting us off from their oil if we don’t renounce fusion. I can’t do that, so I suppose we’re in for some very long, cold winters in this country if fusion doesn’t work.”

  “I fear the country will be ruined.”

  The chair stopped rocking. “This country is going to be fine. You’re a coward, Stuart. A piece of slime. I agreed to see you because you begged for it. If this is all you have to say, get out.”

  Vanderheld sagged. “I’m sick, Mr. President. Cancer. Doctor thinks about two, three months at most.”

  The President turned, narrowed his eyes at the bent old man looking for sympathy. “Good. I hope you rot in hell,” he said. The days of peace, tranquillity, and compassion were over, at least for a while. There was a race to get the gold of the moon. The President, as much as his country, was going to have to be tough and ruthless. He had tried out his new persona, the New Frontier personality of the nation. It felt good, damn good.

  Vanderheld stirred, pulled himself erect. “One thing more. While I’m rotting in hell, Mr. President, I’ll at least be warm. Did you think we in the January Group would leave this to chance? Columbia ’s mission is doomed, has been from the moment it lifted off. There will be no test of the fusion reactor. And do you really think the Middle East leaders are going berserk on their own? Elements of the January Group control them. But you can save yourself and get everything back to normal. Immediately denounce fusion.”

  The President blanched. “I can’t!”

  Vanderheld sneered. “Then you’ve sealed your own fate and that of this country. This is a country that has been too powerful for too long, a shameless country of racism, pollution, out-of-control capitalism, and disregard for the poor and afflicted. Now I can say what I’ve always believed: it will be a great day for the world when this country gets a boot shoved in its face, is made to kneel before the peoples of the world.”

  Edwards shook his head. “You’re a traitor, always have been.”

  Vanderheld shrugged, and walked to the door. “Call me whatever name you like. The historians are the only ones I care about now.” As he went out, he flicked off the light switch, left the President sitting in the dark.

  MET 10 DAYS AND COUNTING . . .

  PENNY’S LOG (3)

  Columbia

  Penny looked up from the pilot’s seat and smiled at Jack as he somersaulted over the back of the commander’s seat and settled in beside her. Paco followed him, trotting along the spongy surface of the cockpit ceiling and curling up on it, purring. Ahead of her was earth, cocked on its side, the North Pole on her right. It would have made an acrobat dizzy, but orientation of things didn’t mean much to Penny anymore. Wherever her feet were, that was down. Everything above her head was up. It was that simple.

  “What are you doing?” Jack asked her.

  “Writing in my log.”

  “Am I in it?”

  She shook her head. “Isn’t it just like a man to think anything a woman writes is about him!”

  Jack shrugged, looked up at Paco, who reached a languid paw out to him. “I figured it was either about me or Paco.”

  Penny sighed, turned back a page in the spiral notebook. “Would you like to hear what I’ve written?”

  Jack settled back. “You bet!”

  “All right, Jack. But don’t laugh or make fun. This is just a first draft.”

  Jack looked stunned. “Me? Laugh or make fun? I’d never do that!”

  She gave him a knowing glance. “How very sensible on your part. Okay. Here goes.” Penny took a breath and began reading:

  “We are on a course for home at last. America called—”

  “America. I like the sound of that.”

  “Jack, don’t interrupt.” She watched him out of the corner of her eye and then continued:

  “America called with the word that only a short burst of OMS would be needed to put us on our final approach for earth. Jack was in the cockpit—”

  “You see? I knew it was about me!”

  “Jack Medaris, I’m going to stop reading if you interrupt me one more time!”

  Jack put a finger to his lips, winked at Paco. “Paco. Be quiet while Penny’s reading.”

  Paco opened his eyes, gave a little meow, and Penny could not help laughing. She wagged her finger at both her boys. “Not another peep!”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “Jack was in the cockpit but the whole thing was done from the ground. I sat with him, and Paco came up too.” She petted the cat’s head. Paco responded with a deep, soulful purr. “The earth is peeking more and more into view. I’ve looked for the moon several times but it seems to have disappeared.”

  “It’s behind us,” Jack said.

  “I know. May I continue? Thank you.

  “Virgil is as happy as I have ever seen him. He is soon going to be with his family and that is all that he needs to know. I heard noises in the middeck earlier in the day and went down to see what was going on and he and Paco were doing zero g gymnastics. I wonder how Paco will do back on earth. I think he’ll miss life on board the shuttle. Not me. I’m ready to let my hair down and have it actually come down.”

  “I like that line,” Jack said.

  “My editor won’t.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, but he won’t. He’ll want me to come up with a more emotional reason than just having my hair go in the right direction.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know, Jack.” Penny sighed. “I guess he’ll want me to bare a little of my soul. That’s something men don’t know much about. But I’ll think of something. Maybe I’ll say I can’t wait to get out of this little aluminum box with two sweaty men who haven’t had a bath in a week and smell like it, and a cat—one Paco Fuzzy-Wuzzy Black and White Creature—who forgets to cover up after himself after he uses his zero g litter box.”

  Paco pinned his ears back at the mention of his name. Penny suspected he knew complaining when he heard it.

  Jack stretched. “Well, I think I’m going to miss old Columbia . She’s been a good old girl.” He patted the console in front of him. “She’s the best damn spacecraft ever built.”

  Penny studied him. “Is that all you’ll miss? This big machine? What about me?”

  “Well, I was kind of figuring you’d still be with me.”

  Jack’s placid expression told her nothing. “That’s news to me,” she said.

  When Jack seemed to suddenly turn mute, as if realizing he’d said more than he meant to say, Penny hummed her deduction that he was fearful of commitment, cleared her throat, and continued reading:

  “Messages have been coming in, both over the normal loops and the SAREX. The one that most touched me was from the chief of the East Coast Council of the Cherokee Nation. I have been made a full member of the tribe and have been asked to address the council in the fall. I’ll be there! America Control has passed along dozens of offers for me to speak. I
was most surprised by the number of pro-space groups! Have I found a new constituency?”

  “I bet there’s more wanna-be astronauts than anybody knows.” Jack grinned.

  She ignored Jack and kept reading. “I continue to monitor the cell culture experiment although any results that I see are now suspect, considering the number of accelerations that have been placed on them. The lamb and frog cell accretions have stopped growing, probably due to the lack of space in the chamber. I still do not know if I have accidentally found a way to grow nerve cells into nerve tissue, but the possibility is definitely there. There is no question, however, that my mistake has generated a lot of interest. It is all so exciting. I look toward earth and hear her sweet call.”

  Penny closed her logbook. “Well?”

  “Well, what?” Jack asked.

  “What did you think of it?”

  “I think it’s amazing how you can put two sentences together, and have them make sense. Like most engineers I never could do that very well.”

  “Maybe I could teach you,” she offered. When he didn’t immediately respond, she added, “Maybe, Jack, there’s a lot of things I could teach you.”

  Jack turned to her, put his hand on her cheek. She nuzzled it against his fingers. “Yes. If you took the time.”

  She held his hand to her cheek. “If you gave me the time.”

  He petted her for a moment and then dropped his hand, went back to studying the earth. “If I could save time in a bottle,” he began, singing the words of the old Jim Croce tune. Penny laughed and joined him, offering him her hand. In a spacecraft perhaps unable to avoid headlong, destructive impact into the dense air of the planet they were hurtling toward, Penny High Eagle and Jack Medaris sang, holding hands, their voices joyfully drowning the pain and hurt that still racked their hearts, of dreams and wishes that might yet come true.

  MET 12 DAYS AND COUNTING . . .

  THE SOYUZ

  Cosmodrome launchpad 12-D, Kazakhstan

  “Let’s go!” Ollie Grant yelled as the deep rumble of the engines igniting far beneath her rattled her barely cushioned seat aboard the Soyuz-Y space capsule. The rocket engines sounded like a gigantic popcorn popper about to overflow.

  Yuri Dubrinski laughed and started a running commentary in Russian with the ground controllers. Ollie laughed with him. Grant had just spent the best few days in her life, absorbing the quick lessons from Dubrinski on piloting the crude little spacecraft, while keeping out of harm’s way. There had been occasional gunfights just outside the housing area of the ugly, bone-dry Cosmodrome, but the vodka and sex had been great!

  At least the Russians were good at getting their rockets off on time, Grant thought, but that was about as much credit as she was going to extend their way. Two nights before, she’d been on her way to the communal shower, a thin towel over her shoulder, when the first gunfire had broken out. She’d thrown herself to the linoleum floor while doors burst open all around her and men and women, some naked, others in various pieces of camouflage uniforms, ran up and down the hall. One of the naked men carried an AK-47 submachine gun, kicked open a door beside her, and ran in, blasting through the window. While Grant crawled back to her room, she heard the sound of breaking glass, the rattle of machine-gun fire, and insane laughter. Her room stank of burned gunpowder and for the rest of the night she heard the whimpering of someone apparently wounded just outside the fence. Dubrinski told her the next day that the Kazakhs had tried to storm the building. It was a form of eviction notice, he’d said. It seemed the Kazakhs had heard the Russians were getting a slug of hard currency for launching Grant into space and they wanted their share. A Russian paratroop battalion was stationed at the Cosmodrome for protection and they liked nothing better than shooting Kazakhs.

  Even that morning she had heard sniping around the perimeter as she took the lift up to the Soyuz-Y. Before the booster was out of sight, Dubrinski told her, Russian airplanes were going to be swooping in to pick up the paratroopers. The Cosmodrome was going to be abandoned. Russia was opening another, far to the north and east.

  Grant felt the g-forces building, an unfamiliar stress during launch. Space shuttle astronauts usually only took three g’s at launch, and then only briefly, but the booster was powering up to give her five g’s, perhaps more as each stage dropped off and new engines fired. She heard the noise of the first stage engines die away, the vibration in the capsule subsiding.

  “Get ready,” Dubrinski said.

  “Get ready for—?” She was going to say what ? but never got the chance. Somebody in the capsule hiding behind her swung a baseball bat as hard as possible into her back. At least that’s how it felt. “Oooomppph!” is what came out of her mouth. The second stage blasted away. The crude switch panel in front of her turned into a shaken blur. Grant gritted her teeth, hung on. She cursed Carl Puckett. What the hell was she doing on board this made-in-Russia Spam can, anyway? Puckett had surprised her with a visit briefly in Baikonour, brought her presents, promises, cajolery. The only part she believed was when he told her she was a patriot for undertaking the mission. Puckett had been fuzzy about the rest, citing secrecy. He’d seemed to have completely forgotten the tale he’d told her once, about the nuclear weapons on board and the homegrown atheist or religious nuts, take your pick. To her credit she hadn’t laughed in his face. She was going for her office and all the astronauts. Whatever was happening aboard Columbia wasn’t right and she was going to stop it.

  A stowage box above her flew open, dumping a heavy flashlight on her head. “Owww!” she yelled at the sudden pain.

  “You are okay?” Dubrinski yelled over the noise of the engines.

  Grant held the flashlight, started to swing at him with it out of frustration and anger, but the g-forces kept her arms pinned. Then, the engines cut off. She lunged against her shoulder harness. “I’m fine.” She gasped, rubbing the welt on her head and slapping his hand away when he reached across with concern.

  “Get ready,” he said again.

  “Oh, jeez!”

  “Third stage ignition, now !” Dubrinski yelled happily.

  “Oooompppph!”

  Moscow

  Carl Puckett was enjoying the serene, cool quiet in the special VIP box overlooking the Tsup, the Russian version of Mission Control located in a deteriorating concrete building in the Moscow suburb of Kaliningrad. He was wearing a fox fur coat down to his ankles, and a sable hat so huge and fuzzy, it looked as if he had three dead animals sitting on his head. Beside him, hanging on his arm, was a blowsy blond woman in a tight red polyester dress, who had been given to him by his new best Russian friends. Her name was Livia and as long as he kept her properly filled with vodka, he had discovered she would do anything for him, however kinky. Puckett had never properly shaken out his kinks, he thought, and Livia was the perfect young lady to help him in that regard. He especially liked it when she wore her schoolgirl uniform with the badges that had Lenin’s face on them.

  On Puckett’s other side stood a huge hulking man named Boris. Boris was wearing a black suit cut from wool cloth as thick as baloney slices. Boris was the other person assigned by Puckett’s new best friends, the ones who had picked him up at the airport and explained the facts of Russian economic life to him, how a man such as Puckett with money could have nearly anything he wanted in Russia, especially if he was properly appreciative of those who gave it to him. Puckett liked his new best friends. They treated him with the respect he had always thought he deserved, especially after he explained how most of his money was safely in a numbered account in Belize. Yes, he’d be appreciative, at the time and amount of his own choosing. A man, especially a rich one, could do well in Russia, he was starting to think. When he looked back at Washington, D.C., and especially at the attorney general, now the vice president, who was after him, Moscow and its young blond women were looking very good indeed. Still, the Man, the former vice president of the United States, had given him a job and he’d built his reputation on doing
whatever job he’d taken. And this was for the January Group after all. Vice presidents came and went but the January Group was forever.

  A patter of applause from below broke his reflective spell. “What’s happened, Boris?”

  “The Soyuz is in space, Carl,” Boris rumbled with a voice that sounded as if the Moscow subway were bottled up inside him.

  “That is very good.”

  “Carulllll,” Livia squealed, “shall we play now?” She swung a big cloth bag out to show him. “I brought my nurse uniform.”

  Puckett gave Boris a look. The huge man’s face was like a bulldog’s, so full of flabby folds, it was hard to tell what he was thinking. “Hold down the fort, Boris?”

  Boris fingered his earpiece. “There is a back room.” He looked down, as if embarrassed. “It has a couch, some chairs... vodka.”

  “Oooooh!” Livia grinned. She said something in Russian that Puckett took to be lascivious to Boris. Boris showed no reaction, only held his arm out to show them the way.

  Space

  “I’m going to kill whoever thought this up when I get back,” Grant snarled, taping a bandage to her forehead. She slapped Dubrinski’s hands away again. “I don’t need your help!”

  Colonel Dubrinski eyed her. “Olivia, I am sorry. But don’t fret. We will rendezvous with Columbia, assess her needs, and escort her back to earth. It will be a glorious mission.”

  Grant shrugged, gave him a smile. God, he’d been good in the sack and she’d needed that, desperately. “You are right, of course, Yuri. We will save the shuttle. And all the world will rejoice.” She sighed, touched her forehead. It still hurt. She allowed herself a little misery and then got busy. This time she was going to make certain Columbia would not survive.

  A CALL FROM SAN ANTONIO

  Columbia

  Jack sat in the cockpit, took Sam’s call. “Jack, there’s somebody down here who’d like to talk to you. He’s not here in Mission Control. He’s actually in San Antonio. He’s been begging and I think it’s the right thing to do.”