Space: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  Against the possibility that he might have to issue an alert, he spent his time reviewing the data on radiation; the present thinking of the world’s experts was summarized in The Rem Table (Roentgen Equivalent in Man), from which sample lines read:

  100-150 Rems Vomiting, nausea but no serious disability.

  340-420 Rems All personnel sick. 20% deaths within 2 weeks.

  500-620 Rems All personnel very sick. 50% deaths within 1 month. Survivors incapacitated about 6 months.

  690-930 Rems Immediate severe vomiting, nausea. Up to 100% fatalities …

  6,200 Rems Total incapacitation almost immediately. All personnel dead.

  These data, of course, referred to ‘an unprotected white male,’ and the dosage could be dramatically reduced by various kinds of protection: 560 Rems striking an unprotected human drop to 400 if he wears his astronaut’s suit; to 128 if he can get back inside the lunar module; to 26 if he makes it to the command module, with its solid sides and ablative shield; and to an inconsequential 7 if he stands behind the stone wall inside a well-constructed house.

  When Cottage had digested both sets of figures he concluded: That’s why they keep people like me on watch. Early warning. If the man’s caught unprotected, he’s dead. If we can get him back inside that command module, he survives.

  In the fading darkness, while he waited for the blazing appearance of the Sun, he thought of himself as an ancient Aztec priest on the highest altar at Tenochtitlán waiting in darkness for the return of the life-giver, and he thought: They knew what they were doing. They knew where the power came from.

  When light filled the room Cottage walked nervously about, stopping now and then to study the remarkable series of photographs taken on 23 February 1956 showing several stages of the greatest solar flare ever recorded. It would have generated, Cottage estimated, a total dose of more than 2,000 Rems as measured on the Moon.

  Now came the Sun, this all-powerful agency, this source of light and heat and life and continuance which most men accepted so casually and understood so poorly. Sam, unusually captivated by the power of his star, stared at it naked-eyed as it rose orange-red, and paid his tribute:

  What a powerhouse! I still don’t believe it. During all the billions of years you’ve been in existence you’ve thrown into space six million tons of matter every second. And you can go on doing it for another ten billion years without using up even 1/100th of 1% of your mass. Please, please restrain yourself for three more days.

  While Cottage was pleading for days of grace, Hickory Lee from Houston was trying to awaken his two astronauts with a persistent ‘Luna, Houston. Luna, Houston.’ And when he succeeded he warned them not to skip breakfast; then he confirmed schedules as they opened the hatch on the lunar module and lowered their ladder.

  Randy Claggett’s style was to be irreverent about everything: marriage, fatherhood, test-piloting or engaging Russian MiGs in Korea, but when he felt his heavy boot touch the surface of the Moon and realized that he was standing on a portion of the universe which no one on Earth would ever see, not even with the most powerful telescope, he was overcome with the solemnity of the moment:

  LUNA: Nothing could prepare you for this moment. The photographs weren’t even close. This is … it’s staggering. An endless landscape of craters and boulders.

  HOUSTON: And not a dark side at all?

  LUNA: The Sun shines brilliantly, but it’s sure dark in spirit.

  As soon as Paul Linley joined him on the surface, a curious transformation occurred: up to now Claggett had been the skilled test pilot in command, but here among the rocks of a wildly unfamiliar terrain, the geologist assumed control, and he reminded Clagget that their first responsibility was to collect rocks immediately, lest they have to take off in a hurry. Placing the scientific instruments and doing the systematic sample collecting could come later.

  Only when the emergency bags were filled with rock samples and stowed aboard did the two men proceed to perform an act which seemed miraculous when it was flashed by means of the orbiting satellites to television watchers back on Earth: at an opening in the base of the lunar module they opened a flap, activated a series of devices, and stood back as a most bizarre creation started to emerge like a chrysalis about to become a butterfly. It looked much like a frail shopping cart that had been run over in some truck accident, compacted and twisted, but as it came into sunlight, its various parts, which were spring-loaded, began to unfold of themselves: four wheels mysteriously appeared, a steering handle, a tonneau with seats. Like a child’s toy unfolding at Christmas, a complete Moon rover materialized, with batteries strong enough to move it about for three days or eighty miles, ‘whichever comes first,’ as Claggett reported to Houston.

  When the rover stood clear, the astronauts did not leap into it for a gambol across the Moon; in fact, they ignored it as they went about the serious business of unloading and positioning the complex of scientific instruments which would make this journey fruitful for the next ten years. In each of the preceding Apollo missions, men had placed on the Moon devices which were expected to send messages to Earth for up to a year, but they had been so beautifully constructed, with so many sophisticated by-passes if things went wrong, that all of them were still functioning long after their predicted death. ‘Sometimes we do things right,’ Claggett said as he emplaced the instrument which would measure the force of the solar wind.

  ‘You seem to have the wires crossed,’ Hickory Lee cautioned from Houston. ‘Red to red.’

  ‘I had it ass-backwards,’ Claggett said, and Lee had to remind him: ‘We’re working with an open mike.’ Prior to every flight, NASA officials had warned Claggett that since what he said would be heard by millions or even billions of people around the world, he must censor his ebullient speech, and this he promised to do, but occasionally a test-pilot phrase crept in and NASA shuddered, for the men in charge knew that every vulgarism would bring thousands of protests and even questions in Congress: ‘How could you men who stood closer to heaven than men have ever stood before use such language?’ And Mott, listening to the exchange, knew exactly what Claggett would reply: ‘Senator, it was a serious moment. Houston was right. I was about to muck up the whole experiment because I did have the wires ass-backwards.’

  When the eight separate scientific devices were placed and the antenna which would relay their findings were oriented so that the satellites could intercept their transmissions, the two men were ready to send test signals.

  HOUSTON: We read you loud and clear.

  LUNA: Voltages in order?

  HOUSTON: Could not be better.

  LUNA: We’re going to rest fifteen minutes.

  HOUSTON: You earned it.

  LUNA: Then we start on Expedition One. Seven miles to the reticulated crater.

  HOUSTON: Roger. Are you checking your dosimeters?

  LUNA: Regular.

  The astronauts gave this much-used word its Mexican pronunciation reg-u-larrrr, with heavy accent on the last syllable, which made it a fine-sounding statement: not good, not bad, nothing out of the way, just regularrrr. If someone had asked Claggett what kind of test pilot he had been at Pax River, he would have said, ‘Regularrrr,’ flipping his right palm face-up, face-down. ‘Nothing special. Regularrrr.’

  After their rest, taken to avoid perspiration or heavy breathing which might consume too much oxygen, the two men climbed into the rover with Dr. Linley at the controls, for the machine was his responsibility, and as the rover pulled away, Houston received a remarkable message:

  LUNA: Linley speaking. Please someone inform my uncle Dr. Gawain Butler, who would not allow me to drive his used Plymouth, that I am now chauffering a jalopy with a sticker price of ten million clams.

  HOUSTON: Obey all traffic signs.

  Each trip had been constructed with almost every minute accounted for; the men would work incessantly, searching for specific things that would illuminate the history of this other side. The distances to be traveled ha
d been carefully studied, for a basic consideration had to be the point of safe return, that point so far removed from the module that if the rover broke down completely, the astronauts could still hike back, taking into account exhaustion and oxygen supply. On previous flights six miles out had been the limit, but Claggett and Linley were in such superb physical shape, and their traveling gear had been so improved, that seven miles was being authorized.

  This carried them to one of the most interesting small craters on this side, one whose flat central section was so reticulated like a mud flat in August that the astronauts had named it the Giraffe Crater. When they climbed a small mound at its edge Linley gasped with pleasure, and informed Houston that it was even more exciting than they had supposed when studying photographs.

  LUNA: Magnificent. We have a whole new world here.

  HOUSTON: Better change that to Moon.

  LUNA: Corrected. We’re going down on foot to collect samples.

  HOUSTON: Too steep for the rover?

  LUNA: We think so.

  HOUSTON: Roger. We’ll follow you with the television camera.

  LUNA: We’re going left. To get those rocks that look yellowish.

  It was truly miraculous. The two astronauts left the rover and descended gingerly into the crater, but as they went, technicians in Houston sent electronic commands to the television camera mounted on the side of the rover, and obediently it followed the progress of the men. Its electrical impulses were dispatched by a special antenna on the rover to one of the waiting satellites, which reflected them to collecting stations at Honeysuckle in Australia and Goldstone in California, where they were transformed into television pictures for commercial stations. And the linkage was so perfect that operators in Houston were able to point the camera and activate it rather more meticulously than a man could have done had he stayed in the flimsy rover.

  At the Sun Study Center in Boulder, Sam Cottage turned the cranks which moved his solarscope into position, brought the hydrogen-alpha filter into the optics in order to obtain the most sensitive view of activity on the Sun, and waited for the great star to lose its redness so he could get a clear look at its face, and when he did so he saw that Region 419 had reached the precise spot from which it could create the maximum danger. It had edged across the mid-line at which it would have stood closest to the Moon but still remained close enough to deliver a powerful shot, and it had entered the ultra-dangerous western hemisphere from which extra-powerful discharges were possible.

  With every minute successfully negotiated, the possibility of danger diminished, and Sam was pleased to see that 419 remained quiescent; however, for his morning summary he did consult his charts to make an estimate of the size of the region, and was surprised at his figure: ‘Region 419 is now 63 times larger than the entire surface of the Earth.’

  Before filing his report he looked back to verify the astonishing size of this disturbance, and as he did so he saw the area expand significantly: ‘Jesus, what’s happening?’

  He reached backward for his telephone, but his attention became riveted on that distant battleground where primordial forces had reached a point of tension that could no longer be sustained. With one mighty surge, Region 419 exploded in titanic fury. It was no longer simply a threatening active region; it was one of the most violent explosions of the past two hundred years.

  ‘Oh Jesus!’ Cottage gasped, and while he fumbled for the phone, figures and delimitations galloped through his head: Sun to Moon, less than 93,000,000 miles. What we see now happened 8.33 minutes ago. But radiation travels at speed of light, so it’s already hit the Moon. Oh Jesus, those poor men! Rems—5,000, maybe 6,000 total dose? And in the brief seconds it took for him to pick up the phone, two thoughts flashed across his mind: What else might have happened during the eight minutes it took that flash to reach here? and God, God, please protect those men.

  He spread the alarm, but by the time his superiors could alert NASA, two other observatories and three amateurs in the Houston area had already reported that a gigantic solar proton event was under way.

  HOUSTON: Luna, Altair, do you read me?

  ALTAIR: I read.

  HOUSTON: Why doesn’t Luna answer? Altair, can you see Luna at this point?

  ALTAIR: Negative.

  LUNA (breaking in): I read you, Houston.

  HOUSTON: There seems to have been an event on the Sun. Have you checked your dosimeters?

  LUNA: Uh-oh!

  HOUSTON: We read your telemetry as very high.

  LUNA: So do we. Dosimeter is saturated.

  ALTAIR: Confirm. Very high.

  HOUSTON: We now have confirmation from different sources. Major solar event. Classification 4-bright, X9 in x-ray flux.

  LUNA: What probable duration?

  HOUSTON: Cannot predict. Wait. Human Ecology says two days, three days.

  LUNA (Claggett speaking): I think we may have a problem.

  HOUSTON: The drill is clear. Return to lunar module. Lift off soonest. Make rendezvous soonest.

  LUNA: We do not have data and time for lift-off. We do not have data and time for rendezvous.

  HOUSTON: Our computers will crank up and feed you. What is your ETA back at lunar module?

  LUNA: Distance, seven miles; top speed, seven miles. Yield, one hour.

  HOUSTON: How long to button up?

  ALTAIR: Am I to drop to rendezvous orbit?

  HOUSTON: Stand by, Altair. We’ll handle your problems later.

  ALTAIR: Roger. Wilco.

  HOUSTON: Repeat, how long button up, Luna?

  LUNA: Abandonin’ gear, twenty minutes.

  HOUSTON: Abandon all gear. Luna, there is no panic, but speed essential.

  LUNA: Who’s panickin’? We’re climbin’ out of a crater, rough goin’.

  HOUSTON: Manufacturer assures rover can make top speed eleven miles per hour.

  LUNA: And if we break down? What top speed walkin’?

  HOUSTON: Roger. Maintain safe speed.

  LUNA: We’ll try nine.

  HOUSTON: We’re informed nine was tested strenuously. Proved safe.

  LUNA: We’ll try nine.

  Now the Sun reminded Earthlings of its terrible power, for it poured forth atomic particles and radiation at an appalling rate, sending them coursing through planetary space and bombarding every object they encountered. Wave after wave of solar-flare particles and high-energy radiation attacked the Earth, but most of this was rejected by our protective atmosphere; however, enough did penetrate to create bizarre disturbances.

  … In northern New York a power company found its protective current breakers activated by huge fluxes of electrical power coursing along its lines, coming from no detectable source to disrupt entire cities.

  … An Air Force general, trying vainly to communicate with a base one thousand miles away, realized that the entire American defense system was impotent: ‘If Russia wanted to attack us at a moment of total confusion, this would be it.’ Then he smiled wanly. ‘Of course, their system will be as messed up as ours.’

  … Taxi drivers in Boston, listening to the radios connecting them with their home offices, received instructions directing them to addresses in Kansas City.

  … A world-famous pigeon race between Ames, Iowa, and Chicago launched 1,127 birds, with a likelihood from past experiences that more than a thousand would promptly find their way home. But since all magnetic fields were in chaos, only four made it, bedraggled, confused and six hours late.

  … People in Florida reported seeing the aurora borealis for the first time in their lives, and in northern Vermont the display was so brilliant that people could read by it.

  … And in Houston the knowing men in charge of Apollo 18 assembled quietly, aware of how powerless they were. The mission controller and Dr. Feldman looked at the dosimeter reports and shuddered. More than 5,000 Rems were striking the Moon. Very calmly the controller said, ‘Give me the bottom line.’

  Dr. Feldman ticked off on his fingers: ‘Highe
st reading we’ve had is 5,830 Rems,’ and a NASA scientist said, ‘Absolutely fatal,’ but Feldman continued his recital: ‘If, and I repeat if, 5,830 strike a naked man, he’s dead. But our men have the finest suits ever devised. Enormous protection. Plus their own clothes. Plus the most important aspect of all. It isn’t radiation that might kill them. It’s the outward flow of protons from the Sun. And they will not reach the Moon for another fifty minutes.’ He ticked off his last two points: ‘We rush our men into their Moon lander, where they find more protection. Then we rocket them aloft to the orbiter with its heavy shield.’

  Throwing both hands in the air, he shouted, ‘We can save those men!’

  The controller summoned his three CapComs and said, ‘No fluctuation in voice. No hysteria at this end.’ To the hundreds gathering, he conveyed the same message: ‘I want all ideas and I want them quick. But only the CapComs are to speak with the astronauts.’

  Turning to the chief astronomers, he asked, ‘Could this have been predicted?’

  ‘No,’ they said. ‘Closing months of a quiet cycle. It should not have happened.’

  The controller wanted to say, ‘Well, it did. Six thousand Rems.’ But he knew he must betray neither anxiety or irritation. ‘Now it’s our job to get them home safe.’

  By the time Claggett and Linley reached their rover and turned it around, they no longer bothered with their dosimeters, because once the reading passed the 1,000-Rem mark, any further data were irrelevant. They were in trouble and they knew it, but they did have a chance if they did everything right.

  For nearly an hour their rover crawled back toward the waiting lunar module, itself attacked by the solar outpouring, and the two men wanted to talk about their predicament but could think of nothing sensible to say. So they took refuge in trivialities: ‘Men have absorbed large doses of this stuff, haven’t they, Linley?’ and the scientist replied, ‘Every day, in dentist’s offices,’ and Claggett asked, ‘Do those lead blankets they throw over you do any good?’ and Linley said, ‘We could profit from a couple right now.’