Yeoh shook his head. “Only fission reactors, like the ones we currently have in operation, produce harmful by-products. A fusion reactor wouldn’t produce such highly radioactive wastes. If Houston confirms my theory, then I don’t see any reason why the team shouldn’t go out to the fissure.”
“Fusion. Impressive,” Zell said, turning to Donovan and Soong. “It sounds to me like we ought to lace up our boots and get out there as soon as possible.”
Wilson’s face clouded. “Wait. Could this residual EM energy knock out the life supports in our space suits as it did the power on the Pigeon?”
“Unlikely,” Yeoh replied. “The life-support hardware is designed to be well protected from all kinds of radiation. I believe the shielding in the suits will hold.”
Donovan’s face burst into a grin. “So what’re we waiting for?”
Wilson held up a hand. “Just a sec, Donovan. I want to confirm all this with Houston—no offense, Dr. Yeoh.”
Yeoh shrugged. “None taken.”
“So what do we do in the meantime?” Soong wondered.
Benny cleared his throat. “Well, we’re go for an EVA to check out the ascent engine.”
Wilson raised an eyebrow at him. “When did you talk to Houston?”
“About an hour ago, sir. They were asking for you, but I figured you could use a little more rest. They told me to have you contact them to confirm the order.”
Wilson smiled at Benny. “Thanks for the added shut-eye. Okay then. Benny, Yeoh, suit up. I’ll contact Houston and tell them we’re ready.”
“Well, folks,” Benny said over the VOX, “we’ve got a pretty good picture of where we’re at.”
Inside the Copernicus, Wilson clicked his mike button. “Tell me good news, Benny.”
“Would if I had any, sir. Basically, I’d start checking for real estate, because we’re gonna be stuck up here for a long time.”
Those remaining in the lander—Wilson, Donovan, Zell, and Soong—glanced at one another with apprehension. By now they all knew of Benny’s fatalistic flair for the dramatic, but they could also sense a seriousness in his proclamation. Yeoh, accompanying Benny outside the ship, was also silent. That couldn’t be good.
“Say again, Benny,” John Dieckman asked from Mission Control. “Is the ascent engine repairable?”
“The ascent engine’s smashed, Houston,” said Benny. “Repeat: She will not fly. We must’ve come down a helluva lot harder than it felt. Right now you couldn’t use it to roast a marshmallow.”
“Can you jerry-rig something?” Wilson asked. “Even just to get us back in orbit?”
“I’m not sure, Colonel,” Yeoh replied. “We should take some photographs of the engine and send them to Mission Control. Perhaps they might see a way to repair it that we cannot.”
Wilson was quiet a moment, his coal-black eyes seething in thought and frustration. All the engines he repaired with his father flashed across his memory in an instant. He knew even with extensive damage, an engine could be repaired. Of course, that was how things were on Earth, when parts were usually only a ten-minute drive away at the local garage. They didn’t have that luxury now.
Wilson looked up at Donovan. “I should be out there. I can fix an engine blindfolded.”
Donovan shook his head. “You know you can’t go out there in your condition.”
“I know,” Wilson muttered. “It’s just that—”
“They’ve got the situation well in hand,” Zell said. “If they need you, you can relay information from in here. But you’re no good to anyone hobbling about the Moon.”
“Frank,” Deke said over the VOX, “let’s get a look at some pictures before you start doing anything drastic. We’ve got a lot of good folks down here who know that engine inside and out.”
“Don’t sweat it, Colonel,” Benny added. “We’ll rig up the helmet cameras when we come out next. That way we can send them real-time video and still photos. You can guide us every step of the way. Think of it like operating by remote control.”
“Understood, Houston,” Wilson replied. “In the meantime, we’d like to prep the archeology team to go EVA to the fissure, if you agree with Dr. Yeoh’s assessment that there is no harmful radiation at the fissure. Over.”
“Roger that,” Deke replied. “We concur with Dr. Yeoh and recommend that you suit up and get ready to depressurize the cabin. This way you can kill two birds with one stone by sending the scientists out and bringing Benny and Yeoh back in for a rest period.”
“We copy, Houston,” Wilson said. “We’ll reestablish contact once we’re ready. Copernicus out.”
Wilson paused a moment and silenced the live feed.
“I know you’re not used to sitting on the sidelines,” Zell said, “but we don’t choose the moments that define us. Just how we face them.”
“Remind me to have that sewn onto a pillow when we get back,” Wilson muttered.
“My mother already did,” Zell said with a grin. “It’s sitting in my parlor.”
“You’ve got twelve hours of oxygen in your suits,” Wilson told the archeology team. “Beyond that, you’re surviving on bad breath and good luck. To be on the safe side, I’d like you back here in ten hours. No heroics.” Wilson was quiet a moment. “How much intel can you bring back in ten hours?”
Donovan thought it over. “Not as much as we anticipated, but maybe enough to tell us what we came to find out.”
Wilson smiled. “Then you’d better get moving.”
June 28
3:35 p.m., Houston Time
5 days, 9 hours, 20 minutes, Mission Elapsed Time
As strange an experience as walking on the Moon had been, nothing had prepared Donovan for riding across its rugged surface in the Mark II moon rover. The Mark II was a significant improvement over the rovers that had been used on the last three Apollo missions. While it had the same amenities as its predecessor—a navigational computer, communications system, and cargo space for tools, rock samples, and maps—the Mark II was larger, capable of carrying four astronauts easily, and had an average speed of twenty-five miles per hour—considerably faster than the original rover’s average of five to seven miles per hour.
Riding across the Moon would be disorienting to anyone, but it didn’t help matters that Zell had insisted on driving to, in his words, “give the buggy a proper shakedown.” Like many men of his wealth and stature, Zell had amassed an impressive collection of classic automobiles; unlike his peers, he didn’t merely take them out to show off at auto shows on fine spring days, ever paranoid about scratching a fender. Instead, Zell drove one of his classic cars each day he was home in England, taking each hairpin turn on every winding English road as if his life depended on it. But Zell was far from a dangerous driver. He simply wanted to see just how far he could push those engines. This jaunt across the Ocean of Storms proved no different, except that in one-sixth gravity Donovan was doing all he could to keep himself from flying out of the rover.
Donovan sat on the rover’s back bench next to some of the team’s equipment. Soong sat in the passenger seat next to Zell. Occasionally her voice would fill Donovan’s headset as she read off course adjustments from the onboard navigational computer. The computer was uplinked to the unmanned Chinese orbiter, which was acting as the backup Global Positioning System while the computers on the Tai-Ping remained inoperable. Donovan had little to do except hold on to his seat and watch the grayish-tan features of the Ocean of Storms unfurl before him as they cruised across the Moon at slightly more than twenty-five miles per hour.
Donovan knew he was no poet. He didn’t have the words to describe the unearthly sights he was witnessing. Yet he felt the need to try to put into words what he was seeing and feeling. Most of his initial thoughts were about sensations—the feel of the buggy as Zell drove it across the most level part of the area he could find, the sound of Soong’s voice in his headset, the crispness of the pressurized air against his face inside his helmet. Turning slightly
in his seat, he could make out the rover’s thick treads cutting their way through the Moon’s fine, powdery surface. Though he couldn’t hear anything in the vacuum of space, he imagined stones almost as old as the universe itself crunching under the buggy’s wheels. Alongside them to the right, a debris field filled with boulders more than waist-high would’ve piqued the interest of any geologist worth his salt, most especially Donovan’s father. Each interesting specimen they passed reminded him of an opportunity Hunter Donovan had missed. Looking out to the vista before him, he could imagine his father beside one of those rocks in a bulky Apollo-era space suit, hammer in hand, happily chipping off a piece of history.
Before them in the distance, a line of pockmarked hills and mountains beckoned with outcroppings of the Moon’s mantle exposed by the impact of meteorites a million years old. He knew his father could’ve reached any of those peaks, moon rover or not. Despite what those NASA doctors had said, despite what Cal Walker had said, he knew his father’s heart would’ve never given out. His heart only gave out when he lost the will to live.
In the end the only thing that ever gives out in people is their will. If they lose that, they lose everything.
Moose’s will hadn’t given out. Neither had Yuen’s. Even with the dire news about the damage to the ascent engine, Donovan could sense no loss of will in the others either.
So why the hell do I feel so full of dread?
For a moment Donovan wondered if he had finally lost his will. The deaths of the others, coupled with the crippled ascent engine, had made him cynical about the outcome of the mission. He wasn’t afraid of death. That wasn’t it. He simply wondered if his own will would give out before he had a chance to discover what they had come here to find. What concerned him most was the possibility that the challenges of excavation would prove so insurmountable that he would just give up. If he feared one thing in life, it was the inability to complete a task, to be—in the end—of no use.
“Well,” Zell said as he slowed the rover to a halt. “I believe we have arrived at our destination.”
Donovan and Soong looked out across the desolate sun-bright landscape. The only feature breaking up the chaotic terrain of rocks and impact craters and hills before them was a remarkably straight black trench stretching across almost their entire field of vision like the parted lips of a long-dead god.
June 28
4:47 p.m., Houston Time
5 days, 10 hours, 32 minutes, Mission Elapsed Time
As Donovan was contemplating the odd sensation of riding across the surface of the Moon, Benny was crawling around underneath the Copernicus, trying to photograph the ascent engine. He shook his head and snickered to himself, thinking how the video and pictures wouldn’t do Mission Control much good in any event. The engine had come down on a small outcropping of rock and was thus severely damaged in many places.
“Jesus Christ, is this damn thing shot!”
Yeoh winced as Benny’s outburst crackled in his headset. “Please,” he pleaded. “I’m right next to you. No reason to shout.”
“Sorry, Bruce,” Benny said as he crawled out from underneath the LEM. “I just don’t see how we’re going to get off this rock. The nozzle on the ascent engine is twisted up like cheap aluminum. From where I’m sitting, we’re stuck here.”
“Perhaps it isn’t as hopeless as it seems. Mission Control might be able—”
“Might be able to what, Bruce? FedEx us a new ascent engine?”
After completing their photographic survey of the engine, Yeoh and Benny climbed up the ladder of the Copernicus and repressurized the cabin. As they pulled themselves out of their space suits, they looked around the inside of the lander, now coated in a fairly thick layer of dust. Try as they might, they had no way of preventing the grime from their space suits from entering the cabin. As they packed their suits away inside a locker, Wilson signaled Mission Control and uplinked the still photographs they had taken.
“I’d give us a couple of hours to study the video and the photos, Copernicus,” Dieckman signaled from Houston. “By that time the engineers should be able to send you a preliminary outline for the repairs.”
“You sound pretty confident, Deke,” Wilson said.
“It’s like you’ve always said, Frank: there’s no engine not worth fixing.”
“Especially not this one,” Benny added.
“We’d like you to begin reviewing the schematics, looking for alternate solutions,” Deke explained. “You might see something we could overlook.”
“Roger that,” Wilson replied. “One more thing, Houston.”
“What’s that, Copernicus?”
Wilson glanced at Yeoh and Benny. “We’re all wondering how things are going with Taiwan.”
Deke sighed. “I’ve been told I’m no longer supposed to discuss any topics not related to the mission over an unsecured channel.”
“C’mon, Deke!” prodded Benny.
“The most I can tell you right now is that both the US and Chinese fleets are at this moment converging off the coast of Eluanbi. All traffic in and out of the region has been blocked. They’ve openly stated that they are prepared to take Taiwan by force, if necessary.”
Benny stared at the others, shaking his head. “Jeez, and here I thought you were just sunshine and roses, Deke.”
“Don’t kill the messenger, boys,” Deke muttered. “You asked for it. Houston out.”
There was a silence in the cabin; then Yeoh spoke.
“My fiancée is in Oluanpi. She was visiting her mother when all this started.”
“Your fiancée?” said Benny. “I didn’t know you were engaged. When’s the wedding?”
“September,” said Yeoh. “At least, it was supposed to be.”
“Setting aside my bitching for a second, Bruce, I promise we’re getting you off this rock and to the church on time, if it kills us.”
Yeoh smiled thinly. “An interesting choice of words, Benny.”
Standing at the edge of the abyss, the archeology team thought that the fissure looked remarkably smoother than it had appeared in orbital photos, which was surprising since seemingly smooth celestial features, like the rings of Saturn, were usually rougher upon closer inspection. Standing more or less at the dead center of the fissure and looking down its length in either direction, they could discern no imperfection in its shape. In truth, the only thing that blurred its sharp edges at all was the amount of ejecta that had piled up around the fissure shortly after the initial blast. Beyond that—and the slight curvature of the Moon itself—the fissure seemed to be a perfect rectangle.
Donovan stood on top of a mound of ejecta and peered over the side. Darkness, complete and total, like nothing he had ever seen. Somewhere down there were the smashed remains of the Pigeon—and likely not too far from that debris field were the answers to all their questions. Dimly, a line from Nietzsche flashed across his consciousness: “And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.”
Zell joined Donovan at the edge of the fissure, carrying the last of their equipment. He smiled and glanced over, hands on his knees. “Kind of makes you want to spit, doesn’t it?”
“Would you care to try, Dr. Zell?” Soong asked with a laugh.
“No thanks,” Zell replied. “You know what they say about curiosity.”
“So,” Donovan wondered, “are we set?”
“I signaled the Copernicus as you were preparing the winch,” Soong informed them. “They’re going to maintain radio silence but will keep an open channel in case we want to contact them. So we’re free to proceed.”
“Free to proceed,” Donovan repeated with a chuckle. “Like we’ve got much choice at this point.”
“Not getting second thoughts, are you?” Soong wondered aloud.
Donovan glanced toward the fissure again. “No, but I think I better go first in case I do.”
“Certainly,” Zell said with a broad gesture toward the fissure. “Your chariot awaits.”
Their chariot was a collapsible mesh basket, no bigger than an elevator car, resting at the edge of the chasm. It was attached to an extensor arm they had fastened to the back of the rover. They had already locked down the rover and had attached the cable to the ring at the top of the basket. Though the setup might have looked frail to some, the team knew the cable and the basket were capable of holding up to two thousand pounds. Donovan began putting the lights and other necessary equipment into the basket as Zell got behind the controls of the winch.
Donovan climbed in and clamped his suit to the basket. “Don’t miss me.”
“We won’t,” Soong said. “Just remember to send the basket back up when you’re down.”
With a thumbs-up signal from Donovan, Zell lifted the basket from the edge of the ravine. He pressed another switch and swung the basket out over the edge and then released the brake. The basket slowly drifted out of their field of vision, Donovan’s helmet the last thing they saw.
For a time Donovan decided not to use his suit lights to look around him. He knew he needed to conserve them for as long as possible. He was surprised that ambient sunlight from the surface was drifting down into the fissure, since at the top it appeared that no light could penetrate the gloom. Five minutes into his slow descent he was immersed in an all-consuming darkness. The total absence of light was disturbing, reminding him of nights as a child when he was scared of the dark or worse: Edgar Allan Poe stories about being buried alive. He flicked on his helmet lights. Nothing. The darkness seemed to eat luminescence. He could see no farther out than the edge of the basket. He tapped another button on the control pad mounted to his chest plate to activate the lights on his wrists. Still nothing. What the walls of this ravine looked like would remain a mystery.
Donovan flicked off his wrist lights and dimmed the helmet lights to half power, comforted by the idea that if he could see himself he would know that he was still alive. The minutes passed by endlessly. Five more minutes. Ten. He tried to imagine what he must look like—a frail tiny insignificant being needing a complex suit to survive in this environment, needing lights to comfort him, needing the grip of a basket’s rail to remind himself that he exists. And all around, blackness. Nothingness.
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