The crew felt a slight bump as the Copernicus was released from her docking collar. She floated gently away from the Tai-Ping, upside down in the lunar darkness.
“We’re upside down,” said Moose, his voice strained. “Got to flip ’er over. Fire aft thrusters on my mark.”
Benny peered out the window at the surface of the Moon, now growing closer and closer. One crew member dead, he thought. Wilson critically wounded. A crippled ship, no way to get home. He looked at Moose.
“We’re not going to make it.”
Chapter 11
From the moment Moose fired the Copernicus’s descent engine fifty thousand feet above the surface of the Moon, Benny realized they were losing altitude too quickly. He didn’t need any instrumentation to tell him that, nor did he require any atmospheric drag pounding against their hull. In fact, he was grateful for the absence of sound. The soundless vibration tingling his skin was enough for him to know that the descent engine was firing and wasn’t doing a damn thing to slow them down.
The lander was hurtling toward the Moon facedown. From their viewports the crew could see the lunar surface approaching fast. They searched for clues, details, anything that could tell them if they were on target for their landing coordinates. After several moments, as the long braking maneuver continued, the computer began pinging. They were closing in on their first set of landmarks.
“What’s happening?” Donovan demanded.
Below them the crescent of the pockmarked lunar surface began to fill their viewports. The black void of space above the surface slipped out of their field of vision as the Moon grew larger and larger. Craters that had been no more than a thumb’s length from their windows in orbit were suddenly the only features in sight, some of them more than a couple of football fields in length.
Forty-six thousand feet above the surface of the Moon, Moose adjusted the course of the Copernicus so that the ship was on its back and the landing radar was pointed directly at the lunar landscape. The Earth now peeked through one of their windows, an inviting warm blue marble in a sea of deathless black.
“No worries,” Moose muttered as he tried to slow the Copernicus’s descent. “We’re in the pipe.”
“In the pipe, my ass,” Benny groaned as he glanced at the altimeter. “Forty-three thousand feet, forty—we’re burning way too much fuel, Moose.”
Donovan held his breath as the ship continued its descent. He kept his eyes focused on the view of the Earth outside their windows and tried to blot out any image his mind was trying to create of their spindly lander descending on such an unforgiving world.
At forty thousand feet the computer activated the landing radar. At this point they had also expected the computer to automatically adjust its descent trajectory by firing Copernicus’s maneuvering jets, but it was signaling an overload of information, likely a result of their rapid descent. Moose took manual control of the lander and slowed their acceleration as Benny rebooted the computer and took a fresh reading of the radar echoes bouncing back from the Moon’s surface.
“Twenty thousand feet, fifteen thousand. Still coming in too fast. Six minutes’ fuel remaining.”
“That’s a lousy piece of real estate,” Moose muttered impassively.
Zell glanced out to see a field of boulders, some the size of cars, hastily growing in size.
“Seventy-five hundred feet, Moose.”
Halfway through the Copernicus’s powered descent, Moose punched in the command to throttle back the descent engine to half power. The crew found themselves growing lighter as the ship pitched over and moved into position for the final descent. At seventy-five hundred feet, the flat horizon outside their viewports was replaced with a vista of the Ocean of Storms.
“Four thousand feet, Moose. Descending two hundred feet per second. We’re still coming in a little hot.”
“I’m on it.” Moose tapped the controls and kicked up the descent engine a third, slowing their drop to one hundred feet per second.
At fifteen hundred feet, Moose called out, “I need a fix on the site, Benny.”
Benny’s eyes dashed between his instrument panel and the landscape outside, searching for the landmarks he had memorized in so many training sessions. Then, almost unexpectedly, he caught some sunlight glinting off a metallic object.
“I see it! It’s gotta be Apollo 12. Ten miles downrange. Yaw right ten degrees.”
“Roger, go on that yaw,” Moose replied, his voice level. “Continuing descent.”
Benny’s eyes moved from his window back to his instruments. Moose had managed to slow their descent, but the landing sites before them were either strewn with boulders or covered by massive craters. If he were to land the ship on any kind of slope, the Copernicus would likely tip over. Even if by some miracle it didn’t, there wouldn’t be much chance for their ascent engine to be in a position to fire correctly and allow them to reach orbit again.
At four hundred feet, a level field opened up before their eyes. Moose banked the craft to starboard and coasted toward that clear plain.
“Three hundred and fifty feet, Moose; down at six and a half.”
“Shit, there’s a crater,” Moose muttered. “Got to get around it. Fuel?”
“Two minutes remaining.”
As Moose slid the Copernicus past the crater, an alarm sounded. Benny punched a button to shut it off. They didn’t need an alarm to know that every bit of forward thrust would burn up precious fuel. Once they hit ninety seconds left of fuel, they would almost be out of time to land. They needed at least twenty seconds of fuel to abort and reach an escape velocity.
Benny felt his mouth go dry. “One hundred feet. You’re coming in fine.”
Moose continued to slow his descent but suddenly found his chest constricting. He could hardly take a deep breath.
Jesus no Jesus no not now not now—
About three hundred feet in front of the lander, Moose spotted a small hill. He used it as a reference point to guide his descent. He leveled the craft and eased back on the descent engine and watched as his field of vision blurred with what appeared to be a rising fog.
Just a few seconds more please God a few seconds more—
“Picking up some dust, Moose.”
Outside the windows of the Copernicus, dust was now whipping across their viewports. Moose kept his eye on his instruments as he brought the craft level. The ship was drifting slightly to port, but he ignored it, fearing that any correction in their descent would burn up precious fuel.
“Twenty feet.”
“Do it right,” Moose muttered, his voice a whisper. “Do it right.”
A blue light appeared on Benny’s console, indicating that the probes at the end of the lander’s legs had touched the surface of the Moon. “Contact light!”
Moose punched a button to cut the engine. “Shut down.”
Benny hollered with joy as he flicked switches. “Descent engine command override, off. Engine arm, off. Jesus Christ, we made it! Moose, we made it!”
Benny turned and touched Moose’s shoulder. Harnessed into his seat, Moose fell forward only slightly. But it was enough.
A moment passed; then a crackle filled their headsets. “—this is Mission Control, do you read? Over.”
“Repeat, Houston, we have landed in the Ocean of Storms. We’re ascertaining our situation now and will get back to you in a few minutes.” Benny rubbed his unshaven face glumly and cut off the live feed from their mikes. He glanced at Wilson, still unconscious. “They want a sitrep.”
The survivors crouched around their prostrate mission commander as if he were a campfire. Behind them, still slumped in the corner over the controls, was Moose. Benny looked over at his fallen friend, shaking his head. “What happened?” he asked seemingly to no one at all. “What killed him?”
“His heart gave out,” said Zell. “I’m sorry, Benny.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” said Donovan. “After we brought him back on board, he was hurt but he seemed
okay.”
Soong touched Benny’s shoulder. “Yes, but the damage was already done. The exposure caused the water in his body to vaporize, which expanded his venous system and shut down his circulation. He probably had a pulmonary embolism on the way down.”
Yeoh looked solemnly at Moose’s body. “The real miracle is that he held on for as long as he did.”
“He had a job to do,” Benny said, his voice a hoarse whisper.
Donovan looked out of one of the lander’s two tiny windows at the desolate landscape. All around their tiny craft he could see the remnants of their recent flight, the gray lunar dust fanning out all around them in a circle from the blast of their descent engine. Looking southwest out of the corner of the window, he could discern the artifacts of the Apollo 12 mission on the horizon. The sunlight glinted off the legs of the lander and the other metallic objects in the area, though weakly, since they too were covered in a fine dust, likely the result of the constant bombardment of over forty years of micrometeors. He once read that researchers had calculated it would take almost two million years for such bombardments to obliterate Neil Armstrong’s first footstep on the lunar surface. He grimly wondered if it would take as long for their remains to be obliterated by those same bombardments, should they never get off the Moon.
Donovan tried to think optimistically. Just by looking out the window he could tell that Benny and Moose had not only gotten them down safely but not that far off target as well.
The question is, just how far from the fissure are we?
“Okay.” Zell cleared his throat. “So what do we tell them?”
“I don’t think it matters,” Benny mumbled with his head down. “Anything we tell them will give them an excuse to scrap the mission.”
“Do you think they would really do that?” Yeoh asked. “Surely not after all that’s happened.”
Benny glanced at his new friend. “That’s exactly why they’ll do it.”
“I cannot believe they would do that,” Yeoh said, shaking his head. “Surely—”
“Commander Yuen is dead. Commander Mosensen is dead. Colonel Wilson is badly injured. And for all we know the Tai-Ping may be nothing more than a hulk in space,” Soong said as she calmly removed her gloves. “As soon as they learn of what’s transpired, they’ll abort the mission and have us get back up to the Tai-Ping as soon as we can to see if we can repair it. The mission is now a nonissue.”
Donovan stirred from his thoughts and turned from the window. “Do we even know if we’ll be able to take off again? Do we even have enough fuel?”
“Fuel’s not the problem,” Yeoh said. “Something’s wrong with the ascent engine. It could be something as simple as a power coupling shaken loose on impact. Or it could be shot. Either way we can’t leave until we look at it. Either way it won’t be anytime soon.”
“But we can’t stay here forever, Bruce,” Benny added. “We expected to have five people down on the surface, not seven.”
“Six,” Soong said gently, a hand on his arm.
Benny winced and shook his head. “Right. Either way we had planned to have five people down on the Moon for eight days. Now we’ve got more people, and that means less breathable air, less food, less water among us.”
“So how long do you figure we have?” Zell asked.
“Four or five days. Maybe six. I wouldn’t wanna push it either way.”
Donovan’s face brightened. “But that means that we still have time to reach the fissure.”
Benny shot him a look. “Donovan, are you nuts? Forget about the fissure. We’ve gotta figure out how to fix the ascent engine. And even if we do, we don’t know if the damn thing’s strong enough to lift the lot of us into orbit. And then, as if we didn’t have enough fun, we’ve got to see if our bird in orbit is gonna fly again.” He looked over at Moose. “Besides, we’ve got to deal with Moose.”
“Benny,” Donovan said, crouching near him. “I understand all that. Believe me. But Zell and Soong and I are of no use to you fixing this ship. We’ve got to go.”
“Wouldn’t it be a waste of Bai and Moose’s sacrifices for us not to try?” Zell asked. “We only got this far because of them.”
“Mission Control’s never going to buy it,” Yeoh observed.
“Let me talk to them,” Wilson said suddenly.
“Sir,” Benny said as he glanced at his commanding officer, “we didn’t realize you were awake.”
“I’ve been up for a while, Benevisto. You better let me get on the horn.”
“Sir, with all due respect, you’re gonna be the main reason why they’ll want us to abort the mission. You let them know about your condition, and we’ll be blasting off as soon as the ascent engine’s functional.”
Wilson smiled weakly and propped himself up on his elbows. “Then all the more reason for me to plead the case to them.” He glanced at each of their faces. He had seen such faces before, unsure faces, despondent faces, faces that had looked to him as their commanding officer for assurance. “We’ve got a lot of people down there depending on us to figure this mystery out. Lives around the world besides ours are on the line. We have to convince Mission Control that we owe it to them . . . and to Yuen and Mosensen.”
Before Wilson opened up the mike again, Zell did his best to make a splint around the lieutenant colonel’s shattered knee, something more secure than the rush job he had cobbled together on the Tai-Ping. He fastened the splint over Wilson’s space suit, since they would need to depressurize the cabin to get out of the airlock. It stabilized the knee somewhat, though not as much as Zell would have liked. After popping a few tablets of prescription-strength ibuprofen, Wilson signaled Mission Control. John Dieckman was on the VOX, waiting for him. Wilson’s voice was as commanding as always, but everyone inside the cabin could tell that he was struggling. Nevertheless, he reported the situation in detail, excluding nothing except the severity of his condition. Only Zell suspected how badly shattered his knee was. At the end of the sitrep, Wilson firmly stated that he believed the mission could continue in a truncated state once they buried Lieutenant Commander Mosensen.
“We’d like to say you’re a go, Copernicus,” Deke stated. “However, we’re not certain at this juncture that proceeding with the mission would be in the best interests of the crew. Over.”
“Roger, Houston,” Wilson said, masking his disgust admirably. “However, we’re certain that Dr. Yeoh, Benevisto, and I can make the necessary repairs without the assistance of the archeology team. Over.”
“Copy that, Copernicus,” Deke answered. “Again, we reiterate that as we do not know your position in the Ocean of Storms, we do not believe it would be wise to do an EVA without an accurate read on the fissure’s whereabouts. Over.”
Donovan gestured at Wilson to ask if he could get on the line. Wilson nodded, trying to mask how grateful he was to not have to speak for a while. Donovan clicked his mike button. “Houston, this is Donovan. Over.”
“Roger, Doctor. We read you five by five. Over.”
“Houston, Dr. Soong has suggested that we do a preliminary EVA to release the Pigeon to ascertain our locale. Lieutenant Colonel Wilson believes it would be a wise use of our resources. Over.”
“Donovan, this is Cal Walker. You do not have permission to engage in an EVA. Is that understood? Over.”
“Houston,” Donovan said, biting his tongue as he thought of all the people who might be listening, “are we on a live broadcast or private channel?”
He could just about hear the smile in Dieckman’s voice. “Copernicus, nobody here but us rabbits. Over.”
“Walker, now you listen to me, you son of a bitch!” Donovan yelled into his mike.
Zell put a hand over his mike and turned to Benny. “I’m sure that’ll help.”
“We can release the Pigeon when we have to go EVA to bury Mosensen,” Donovan continued. “We’re not that far from the Apollo 12 landing site; we can see it out the frigging window, for God’s sake. Now, are you going
to let us just sit here or are you going to let us do the job we came here to do? Over.”
“Donovan,” Walker cut in, “are you trying to pull some kind of—”
“I’m not trying to pull anything, Walker. What’re you trying to pull?”
“Okay, Donovan. You’ve made your point,” Dieckman interjected. “As you can well understand, Dr. Walker is concerned with the safety of the crew, as are we all—”
“Dr. Walker is trying to cover his own ass.”
There was a momentary silence; then Deke returned. “We just don’t want to lose any more lives up there, Donovan. Over.”
“Fine. But if we can’t get the ascent engine to fire, it won’t matter. And the world will have missed the only opportunity we have to find out the source of the EMP. You don’t want that on your conscience, do you, Deke? I’m certain the President doesn’t. Over.”
“Roger that, Copernicus,” Deke said quietly. “Give us a few minutes down here, and we’ll get back to you.”
With that, Dieckman cut off the live feed to the Moon and popped another antacid, half under the impression that his stomach was trying to burn its way out through his chest. Then he picked up the telephone at the capcom station. “Madam President, did you hear all that?”
“I did, Deke,” the President replied. “It seems to me that Dr. Donovan is right. They’re there, and they might not get back home. We might as well give them their shot.”
“With all due respect, ma’am, the Chinese might not want us to endanger the lives of their surviving crew members.”
“Let me handle the Chinese. I’m sure they’ll see it our way. How are we doing on repairing the orbiter remotely?”
“We think we have a fair shot, ma’am.”
“Give it to me straight.”
“We’ve got a one in five chance of restarting the backup systems from here. It looks like they took a pretty bad hit up there.”
The President looked out the Oval Office window. “You’re not planning on telling them that, are you?”
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