“Actually it’s a little bit more than a theory,” Seaborne replied. “We believe the incident occurred in three stages. First they used a source of immense power to open a fissure in the Moon’s surface. Next they sent an electromagnetic pulse through that fissure to interrupt our way of life.”
“Why would they do that?” Gonzalez asked.
“Well,” Seaborne continued, “we believe they were trying to get our attention. The EM pulse worked on the same principle as the old emergency broadcast system. In the days of the Cold War, the government established the system to be able to break into every broadcast at once in order to get vital information out. These beings, whoever they are, decided to do basically the same thing. Here, let me show you.”
Seaborne’s assistant punched some more keys on his laptop, bringing up a graph on the screen.
“Moments after the power was restored around the globe, we began receiving a stream of binary numbers, on every frequency, in repeating patterns, for exactly twenty-four hours. Whoever sent this wanted everyone in the world—not radio astronomers at Arecibo, not government agencies—but everyone to pick up their heads and take notice. Once we broke down those numbers, we found this.”
The wall display blinked over to an image that read, “3.04 S, 23.42 W.”
“Latitude and longitude,” Admiral Peter Reynolds offered from the far end of the table.
Seaborne smiled. “That’s exactly what it is. The latitude and longitude of the Ocean of Storms.”
“For what purpose?” Secretary Martin asked.
“Landing coordinates,” Seaborne explained. “What we received was not a warning, not an attack. It was an invitation. As to our response to that invitation, I turn you over to John Dieckman, director of manned spaceflight at NASA. Deke?”
Dieckman stepped up and scanned the room, pushing his sandy-brown hair from his forehead. Youthful looking despite nearing his forty-fifth birthday, his well-trained former test pilot’s body was only now beginning to develop a middle-aged paunch.
“Gentlemen, ladies, we at NASA believe that the quickest and best solution is to send a team to the Moon to investigate the signal, its source, and whatever else may be waiting there.”
Aaron Stein glanced at him over the rims of his glasses. “And how do you propose to do that, Mr. Dieckman? From what I understand, the Phoenix program is still years away from a translunar flight.”
“That’s not quite true, Mr. Stein,” Dieckman explained. “We have tested the command module in Earth orbit, and it has successfully docked with the ISS—”
“I’ve had enough of this,” General Gonzalez grumbled, bristling at the idea. “I don’t know about any of you, but I’m not prepared to sacrifice American lives so that NASA can get a budget increase.”
“That’s not the idea,” Dieckman replied. “A hands-on analysis is the only way to ensure that we get an accurate picture of what’s happening up there. We’ve done it before. Six times, actually. And we believe that, given the right timetable and the necessary funds, we can do it again quickly and efficiently with Phoenix.”
Gonzalez remained unconvinced. “Who’s paying the bills for this? The military? With respect, Madam President, I do not believe it would be wise to take money out of the defense budget for some kind of science fiction circus. Especially when we could be looking at some sort of . . . interstellar Armageddon!”
“And what exactly are we supposed to do, General?” McKenna demanded. “Wait for them to show up over our cities? Wait until they try something else, something far worse than an EM pulse?”
There were those in the room who had secretly harbored Gonzalez’s fears. Now that he had displayed the courage to voice them, they quickly joined the fray. Those who disagreed spoke up even louder, and soon the room was afire with angry voices all trying to outshout one another. Dieckman looked around nervously as the meeting descended into chaos.
The President quieted the room by raising her hand. Her gaze swept over each of them before she spoke again.
“It’s highly unlikely that after more than two million years there are any hostile forces on the Moon planning on taking over the Earth.” She almost scoffed at the idea. “What’s more likely is what SETI has suggested, that this was an automated signal intended to get our attention, nothing more.” The President glanced around the room again. Each pair of eyes met hers, and they read the sincerity in them. “We stand on the threshold of a remarkable event in human history, the chance to leave our own world and make contact with those from another. To dismiss this extraordinary opportunity would be sheer stupidity. Future generations would remember us as fools, cowards who opted not to answer the call to incredible discovery”—she glanced at Gonzalez—“no matter what the risks.”
She paused again, knowing full well that she had their attention. “‘There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to great fortune,’” she said, quoting Shakespeare. “‘Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.’ We are going to the Moon, ladies and gentlemen.” She turned to Dieckman. “It’s up to your people to get us there.”
Chapter 2
December 25
Johnson Space Center
Houston, Texas
9:21 a.m.
Some present they’ve given me, John Dieckman thought as he stared at the miniature Christmas tree on the filing cabinet in his office.
Everyone had heard what the President said. They were going to the Moon. In six months. But there was only one catch: no one presently at NASA had ever been involved with a moon shot.
Dieckman laughed, shaking his head. Despite all the big talk he had spouted at the Pentagon meeting, he knew Phoenix was nowhere near where it needed to be for them to attempt another landing. In truth, NASA was a pale reflection of its former self. Back in the glory days of the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Apollo missions were pulling off miracles day in and day out. Six perfect lunar landings and one aborted mission, though thankfully the crew of Apollo 13 managed to return to Earth safely. Other than the probes sent to the outer planets and the Kuiper Belt, no one had been involved in any deep-space work since that time. This generation of NASA scientists and engineers seemed to consider the Moon to be a deep-space project, especially if it involved sending astronauts. And it was really no surprise that they did—no human being had left the confines of near-Earth orbit since Richard Nixon was president.
When a new series of manned lunar missions had initially been proposed back in 2004, the plan had been to slowly phase out the reusable but tragically unreliable shuttle fleet in favor of Apollo-style one-shot capsules, with the goal of reaching the Moon sometime in the next decade. The money was reallocated from existing NASA programs to the Phoenix project. The only problem was Phoenix was coming in painfully over budget and woefully behind schedule. At this point they had a working command capsule but no landing module or booster heavy enough to propel them to the Moon. In essence, they had built the seats to their little buggy to the stars but had no engine or any way to get out of the thing.
Before the shuttles had been decommissioned in July 2011, there had been lots of manned missions, plenty of them. Manned missions to launch or repair communications and spy satellites. Manned missions to adjust orbiting telescopes. Manned missions to the aging International Space Station, once considered a stepping-stone to deep-space exploration—a return to the Moon, a manned mission to Mars. Dreams of another generation, funded by a less pragmatic America.
But in the last two years there had been only three manned missions, each to test the fledgling Phoenix program in low Earth orbit. On two of the missions, the first and the third, the capsule had performed admirably. The second flight almost didn’t count as a mission. Fifteen minutes after achieving orbit, one of the capsule’s retro-rockets began misfiring and the mission had to be aborted. Only luck prevented the crew from being killed. A congressional investigation was held. It took NASA another six months to
get the clearance—and money—to fly again.
The joke around NASA these days is that if not for military spy satellites, they would have less of a budget than the Park Service—any one Park Service in the country, that is. Everyone knew the arguments made by every skinflint legislator and administration who had diminished their budget: What’s the benefit of going into space? What does it get us? Where’s the bottom-line profit? And then there were the accidents over the years that helped cement those concerns. Apollo 1. Challenger. Columbia. All the lost probes. NASA can’t get anything right with the money they have, the politicians barked—why should we give them any more? Never mind the fact that one can’t build a better mousetrap without initial capital. From the political point of view, it was all no profit, no results, no funds.
Which left NASA officials with one fundamental problem: how to get to the Moon in a six-month time frame with the pittance they’d been allotted.
Oh the President promised more money, sure, Dieckman thought as he slumped in his chair, but how much of that’s actually going to get to us? The military’s going to be clamoring for more funds now with the Chinese fleet conducting military exercises off of Taiwan. Deke scratched out some rough figures for the mission on a legal pad and laughed. There’s no way they’re going to give us this.
But first things first. They needed to figure out how to get to the Moon in six months. Many of the younger engineers and designers with no living memory of Apollo were intimidated by the idea of sending astronauts across the translunar expanse. A number of wild ideas had already come across Deke’s desk. The wildest of all was the one that involved building a giant orbiting magnet to yank the object out of the Moon. More practical ones involved unmanned landers with computer-guided robots on the ground that could dig out the object and analyze it there. But Deke knew that having people on the Moon was the best—and fastest—way of excavating the object. That was the only way to ensure getting to the Moon as quickly as the President wanted.
Deke clicked his pen absentmindedly as he looked out the windows behind his desk. Yeah, it could work—using Apollo as a guide.
With Phoenix 3, NASA had already shown that the capsules were capable of docking with another ship—in that case the International Space Station. The plan had been to continue to aid the Europeans and the Russians in supplying the station for the next couple of years while Phoenix’s lander got off the drawing board. Now they would need to move it from the research-and-development phase to launch capability in just six months.
But even so, the capsule only needs to be reconfigured for the new mission using Apollo’s design specs as an initial blueprint. We might even be able to do it on our budget—provided we freeze all projects currently in development. And we could practically guarantee the President that it would work. If only we had a few guys left from Apollo to help us with the modifications of the original design.
Deke stood up and stretched, jerking his tie down and his top collar button open in one motion. He glanced over at the models on his desk of the old Apollo command and lunar modules.
We’d need to send a bigger team, not just three men. That wouldn’t be a problem with the capsule—modern computers take up a hell of a lot less space than what went into Apollo. We could put more guys into it easy. But we’d have to build a bigger lander . . . Actually the lander might have to be pretty huge, especially if the President wants us to bring the object or pieces of it back for analysis. A landing crew of at least three, maybe four. That would mean a much bigger booster. The weight’s the issue . . . Those old Apollo vets were always worried about weight.
Wait a minute. Isn’t old Cal Walker still alive? Deke remembered seeing him at the space center recently, at a party or something. Christ, he’s got to be pretty old by now—eighty if not eighty-five. But the old bastard was still sharp as a tack, rattling off all the reasons why the lunar module had to be so light, how they had to get rid of the seats in the original design, shrink the windows . . .
I bet old Cal would love to sink his teeth into this, he thought with a grin, provided he still has any.
Deke picked up the phone and punched in his assistant’s extension. “Mattie, can you come in here for a minute?”
A second later Dieckman’s dedicated assistant, Mattie Kendricks, entered his office. Mattie, fresh out of Caltech, was the brightest assistant anyone could ask for—organized, intelligent, disciplined, in love with NASA and manned space exploration. Dieckman had no doubt that she would be sitting in his office chair one day.
“Yes, Mr. Dieckman?”
“Has the Astronaut Office come back with a list of teams for prime and backup crews for the mission?”
She handed an envelope labeled “Top Secret” across his desk. “It arrived just as you called.”
“Good, good,” he said, feeling the weight of the packet. “Seems they’ve given me enough options with the few astronauts we have.”
“It sure feels heavy.”
“Mattie, I want you to get Cal Walker on the phone. He was one of Wernher von Braun’s assistants while they were working on Apollo. His number should still be in our files. I think he’s in New York now doing some consulting for some big biotech firm.”
“I’ve got his number right here,” she said, handing him a small sheet of notepaper. “The company’s Technical Genetics Incorporated.”
“Old Cal’s working for TGI? The biggest biotech company in the country? You’re kidding.”
“Nope. I thought you might want to give him a call.”
He grinned at the number. “Always one step ahead of me, aren’t you?”
She smiled and shrugged as she began to leave the office. “It’s a gift.”
“Oh and Mattie—”
“Yes?”
“Have the people down in the computer lab run a search for American archeologists. Have them cross-reference the names for experience and age. I don’t want anyone younger than thirty or older than fifty. And then narrow down the candidates by marital status. I don’t want any married candidates.”
“You’re not planning to send archeologists to the Moon, are you?”
“I’m not sure. It might be easier to train someone to be an astronaut than it is to train them to be an archeologist.” He glanced at his Apollo models. “And what we’ll need are experienced archeologists. God only knows what we’ll find up there.”
“I’ll get right on it.”
Deke winced. “Sorry to have to call you in here on Christmas Day and all.”
“Not a problem,” she said with an honest smile warming her face. “The Moon definitely outweighs mistletoe.”
News about the pulse’s source broke early and all over on Christmas Day. Though Dieckman was unaware of it at the time, the initial report had come out of California late Christmas Eve while he was flying back down to Texas. Amateur astronomers had reported seeing debris on the Moon’s surface shortly before the effects of the EMP were felt worldwide. People quickly put two and two together after that. By Christmas morning, these reports had been confirmed by astronomers at professional observatories all over the world, many of whom were of the firm opinion that the EM pulse had originated from a recently opened fissure on the Moon’s Ocean of Storms. At this point the major networks and twenty-four-hour cable news stations jumped all over the story, giving it almost equal time with reports about the death and devastation the EMP had caused. Expert after expert was carted into news studios across the globe, each ready to speculate on what might have caused such a fissure and such an explosive burst of electromagnetic energy to come spewing from the Moon.
It didn’t take long for the public at large to begin to believe that an intelligence had been at work behind the EMP. It took even less time for them to suspect that this devastating burst of energy might be the precursor to an extraterrestrial invasion. Governments around the world initially remained silent on the issue. This in turn only fueled more speculation about the pulse’s origin, especially after many go
vernments sent out representatives to claim—on the condition of anonymity—that it had indeed emanated from a recently exposed fissure on the Moon.
The talking heads went wild with the news. Now some people not only believed that the signal was a precursor to an alien invasion but also that the aliens were using the Moon as a strategic staging point. Others argued that the EMP couldn’t have originated from the Moon, that the Apollo astronauts had never reported any such electromagnetic activity. Contrary opinions argued that this meant that the source of the pulse had not been on the Moon in the late 1960s and early 1970s. A few believed that this conclusively proved that men had never walked on the Moon at all. Old grainy footage of the Moon landings was played on an almost continual loop. The effects of the pulse were broadcast over and over: the shots of windows being blown in before cameras worldwide blacked out; the image of a passenger jet lying in the middle of a busy Hong Kong street; the scenes of snarled traffic jams around Rome, London, Berlin, and other cities; the clips of people being pulled from car wrecks and subways and elevators in New York City.
By Christmas afternoon, the politicians had gotten into the act. All around the world reports were coming in that the major powers had placed their armed forces on full alert. An emergency session of the United Nations Security Council was called. Presidents and prime ministers, premiers and dictators addressed their nations, calling for—or ordering—calm. The prime minister of the United Kingdom asked for the public’s patience as experts analyzed the data. The President of Russia read a statement from the Kremlin, noting that the country’s forces were on the highest alert. The prime minister of Japan reported that national scientists were working around the clock to understand the source and meaning of the pulse. The President of France demanded that any response be channeled through the United Nations and noted that her government would not be involved in any preemptive attack, even if the signal proved to be coming from an alien source. Notably absent were the leaders of the United States and China, who dispatched representatives to address the howling press corps. Chinese warships continued their maneuvers near the coast of Taiwan; their American counterparts remained stationed off Japan and South Korea.
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