The Accidental Explorer

by George Deeb

  “Confirmed. Landing gear zero seven zero percent extension plus zero two five percent cant.” replied the computer.

  9

  Touch Down

  “Zero point one larn. Begin flare maneuver. Phase 1. Designated bottom thrusters.” stated the main computer.

  The time had come to redirect the ship's momentum. There was no atmosphere to take advantage of, so the ship's lifting surfaces would be useless for this. All they had were the thrusters that had been kept in reserve for this maneuver. If it was done successfully, the ship would move in an arcing path that would change from heading directly toward the edge of the moon to traveling in a declining path parallel to the surface.

  It was now up to Munen to follow the direction of the ship's computer. It had to be his hand that input the final corrections. Califas was more than capable of handling the landing, but he wanted there to be no doubt as to who's control the ship was under at the time of contact with the surface, so that there would be no doubt as to who's actions were responsible for whatever happened. On his display screen was the diagram showing all the bottom thrusters. The designated ones he was to use were flashing. Munen poked at the display screen with his fingertips, quickly touching the control points, and the lower forward, mid, and aft thruster pairs fired. The force applied by the thrusters on the bottom of the ship acted on its forward motion, and the path changed from a straight line to the desired arc, with the nose of the ship still pointing at the surface. 'Vectors.' Munen thought to himself, as he felt the ship changing direction. 'It's all in the vectors.'

  Their surface facing point of view was now useless to them. Because of their relative speed and proximity to the surface, and their lateral motion in the same direction the top of the ship was facing, the three dimensional image of the moon's surface became a blur.

  “Designated bottom thrusters expended.” stated the computer.

  There were three main force vectors acting on their path of travel – their initial momentum towards the moon, the reaction to the thrusters just fired, and the pull of gravity from the aligned planet and moon. The second force was now influencing the first and third.

  “Initiate phase 2. Rotate pitch thirteen arcleesons nose up surface relative. Designated forward lower and aft upper thrusters.” stated the main computer.

  Munen touched the control screen again, and the lower front and the upper rear thrusters fired. The ship began moving around its pitch axis. The downward pointing nose began moving up.

  “Terminate thrusters now.” said the computer.

  Munen's fingers moved while the computer was still giving the instructions. The ship rotated through level to the moon's surface, then continued until the nose was slightly high relative to the surface of the moon. The three dimensional depiction now displayed a more normal approach to landing view, and they could better judge the closure rate with the ground as it came closer.

  The adjustment took less than three fracins, and the ship stabilized in attitude. That was it. That was all they could do. They couldn't take the chance of firing any thrusters again. Now it was a matter of physics and luck – and waiting – but not for long.

  “Plus one three arcleesons surface relative attitude.” said the computer. “Altitude zero point zero eight larn. Descent rate zero point zero zero six larn per fracin.”

  'Huh!' thought Munen, surprised at the accuracy of the adjustment. 'I can do this as well as Califas.'

  It was only a matter of fracins now. Thirteen arcleesons nose up pitch was just what was needed, but the descent rate was a little too fast. Five thousandths of a larn per fracin was the optimum rate, but the crude thruster control, and possibility of thruster failure meant they had to accept the compromise. Three thrusters had already failed during their maneuvers – it would be too much risk to try an adjustment now. The ship should tolerate the hard landing that was coming, and do so without damage – if nothing else went wrong.

  “CONTACT IMMINENT.” yelled Munen over the comm. It wasn't necessary. The crew had been monitoring the procedure in their pods. Munen, Califas, and Plessa had their eyes locked on the three dimensional image in front of them, watching the ground get closer. There was nothing else they could do. With no atmosphere, there would be no pitch or roll adjustments they could make. They were just passive observers now.

  “Contact in four fracins.” said the computer. “Three fracins... Two fracins... One fracin...”

  Chapter 2

  Operation 361

  The Beginning

  August 4, 1981, 1500 hours

  Staff office in the West wing

  The White House

  1

  Ransen Ramsdel looked around the office, and did what a man of his training always did – he checked for surveillance equipment. He didn't really expect to find any, but better safe than sorry. This was just an auxiliary office used by many staffers who performed various jobs throughout the White House. It did have one thing going for it that was necessary to this meeting – thick, sound deadening walls and doors. Still, you couldn't be too cautious with something like this – not in the present geopolitical climate. Ramsdel and the other man in the room occupied themselves with smalltalk, while waiting for the third member of the meeting to show up.

  Ramsdel had been a member of the SAD for five years. He had worked his way up the company ladder to Special Agent status and, until recently, had expected to continue rising in the organization. But if anyone looked at his classified employment record, they would see one other item appended to his status of 'Special' – stamped in large red letters at the top of each page were the words 'NON-INDICATED'. Non-indicated meant that he had been assigned a unique and out of the ordinary assignment. No one – not even the Oversight Committees of the Senate or the House of Representatives, could require him to explain what his assignment was. It was in fact a violation of federal law for them to officially inquire. Once designated, and assigned a mission, a Non-Indicated agent didn't even have to report to the CIA hierarchy. The designation of 'Non-Indicated' was only given to an agent who had accepted an assignment that was so dangerous, or so politically volatile that their physical or vocational survival was not likely. Very few people accepted such an assignment. Ramsdel was only aware of three other agents so designated in the whole history of the SAD – their official records no longer accessible to anyone except the President and the Director of the CIA. And now he was number four, which meant that if he failed in his mission he would either be at the end of his career – or the end of his life.

  SAD - the Special Activities Division of the CIA - was unknown to the average American citizen, which was partly by design, and mostly by luck. its existence was well documented public knowledge, but you had to have a reason to look for it to know about it. It wasn't advertised or promoted publicly. It was outside the scope of most people's every day lives, and that put it outside the sphere of their awareness. The SAD was the division of the CIA that handled Covert and “Special” activities. It was a very broad mandate, which allowed a lot of wiggle room in the limits of its authorization. As long as the SAD had a Presidential Finding issued by the President of the United States, it could acquire the financial backing it needed to carry out the mission. A Presidential Finding was what Ramsdel was here to get.

  Ramsdel carried a soft, tan colored, leather brief case, in which there were three copies of a seven page typed document, a portable micro-cassette player, a ball point pen and mechanical pencil, and a few personal items – only what was necessary to accomplish the job at hand. This assignment was something he never would have conceived himself. It was completely outside his personal realm of thought. It was conceived by those unknown analysts in the agency, whose job it was to look ahead in time and predict possible world events – to predict economic and political conditions before they happened – to predict the rise and fall of nations, and wars not yet started - and they were very good at their jobs. The few times he was aware of that their opinion had been ignored
by political policy makers, had ended in the country being embroiled in military actions that had cost thousands of American lives, and a very large part of the country's wealth. This had also caused some of the best of these analysts to severe their ties with the agency – after all, what good was it to do your best work just to be ignored but then proven correct. That was a formula for great frustration, and most people could only handle that so many times before it began to affect their mental and physical health.

  Ramsdel didn't know how many of these analysts the agency had – that was classified of course, as were their identities. He knew something about how they worked though. Each had a field of expertise, and made predictions and observations within that field. Then their reports were gathered and compiled and analyzed by another group of specialists whose job was to find the coincidental threads among them. With enough of these threads, projections of the future could be deduced. Finally, this was condensed into a report that was then supplied to the appropriate decision makers in the intelligence community or the government.

  The history of the CIA's success could be mapped by the times these analysts were in and out of favor by the federal bureaucrats. When intelligence organization haters were in power, and funding was cut, these analysts were usually some of the first to go since most were independent contractors. Failures in the agency's effectiveness soon followed. When a strong political leader was in office, funding was restored, and agency manning was rebuilt – with the agency's level of success increasing almost in direct proportion. It was ironic that the U.S. Congress, whose job it was to provide stability and security for the country, often was the cause of putting it at greater risk.

  Ramsdel remembered clearly the meeting in his superior's office five months ago. He was handed a single sheet of paper describing the concept and goals of the project, and the risks involved, and asked simply if he wanted the assignment. He had one day to decide. He thought about it for a solid twenty-four hours, unable to sleep that night. It was the strangest thing he had ever heard of. He thought about the usual career pros and cons, and the technological challenges involved. He tried to imagine how he would accomplish it, and realized he didn't have a clue. He knew nothing about this type of thing. Hell, the world knew nothing about this type of thing, give or take a few arcane scientists. But from the moment he began to think about it, it was all he could think about. He also realized that accepting this assignment would also effectively end his present career path, and place him in a completely separate category. He would be creating a new governmental organization in which he only answered to himself, one other person in the CIA, and two people in the military – one of which was in the room with him at that moment. An organization that only four people in the world would be in control of – and two of them were inactive backups, who were there in case of emergency. It was in effect a two man operation. The decisions would be theirs, and good, patriotic Americans could die because of them. He had been on missions where people died – people he knew, and liked. Some had died within a few feet of him, his own life being spared only by a quirk of fate and a badly aimed bullet. But dying on this mission would be the stuff of nightmares – and he would be one of the men deciding to send some very brave people possibly to that nightmarish death.

  2

  Lt. Col. Robert Farber-Chatwell, USAF, worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency. The DIA's function is to be aware of, and prevent any strategic surprises – in short to know the enemy and what they are up to. The DIA's information, analysis, and conclusions are supplied to military heads, and defense planners. These people then decide where and how far up the command structure to delivery this information. The DIA's job is made a lot harder by departmental political infighting, corrupt politicians, megalomaniac bureaucrats, and constant budget cuts, to name a few of the detrimental factors directly affecting the effectiveness of the organization. But the DIA is not just made up of a bunch of analysts and information pushers hunched over long tables covered with maps and reams of statistics. They deploy to battle zones alongside the military warriors, and work in the field with inter-agency counterparts.

  Farber-Chatwell walked with an almost imperceptible limp, caused by a wound he received during his military service in Vietnam. He had taught himself to ignore it, physically and mentally, and never spoke of it – not because of some kind of macho attitude, but because too many of his friends and comrades had suffered much more severe injuries. Many hadn't come back home. Farber-Chatwell considered it selfish and disrespectful – even an insult – to their memories to acknowledge his own minor injury. He knew who the real heroes were – and he didn't consider himself to be one of them.

  The Purple Heart had been awarded to him and the other wounded men who had fought alongside him. His presently sat at the bottom of his sock drawer, also intentionally ignored. Farber-Chatwell would have given the medal back, but his now ex-wife threatened him with dire legal action and physical harm if he did. She maintained that the medal was not only a reflection of his bravery and patriotism, but also of what she had put up with as a military wife. She had waited for him to return home safely, and get back on his feet, before she left him. To her that medal was as much a reflection of her honor as it was his. She told him in the foulest language he had ever heard her use that he would regret it if he ever tried to return it, and then she went to his Base Commander's office and told him that if he ever allowed Farber-Chatwell to return it she would take legal action against him, the base, and the U.S. Government. Before she drove away from Farber-Chatwell and the on-base housing she had lived in for over eleven years, she had made it very clear to every living person there that the medal was awarded to her just as much as it was to him.

  When Farber-Chatwell was again fit for unrestricted duty, he accepted an assignment to the Defense Intelligence Agency, and over time had gained a reputation as the Go-to person for impossible jobs. Most intelligence operatives didn't get personal with lead, steel and gun powder, but Farber-Chatwell was a field agent in the truest sense of the phrase. His job was to go on operations behind enemy lines, to gather first hand intelligence. Sometimes he had been very skilled at his job, and other times had just been very lucky - and he knew it. He had a knack for recognizing the unseen possibilities others overlooked. It was the Director of the DIA and the Secretary of Defense who had jointly offered him this assignment. He was in fact the only candidate that they felt was qualified for the job. It was an impossible assignment to begin with, and the odds of success – and survival - were extremely low.

  3

  When the door to the room opened, both men turned, and stood upright at attention – a reflex action for Farber-Chatwell, but one Ramsdel performed only for people he respected. The last member of their party, Ronald Wilson Reagan, the fortieth president of the United States entered the room.

  “Sit down gentlemen,” said Reagan, as he went to the biggest and most comfortable chair in the room, “and let's get this done. I've got a lot on my mind right now, and too little time on my hands. I can give you twenty minutes.”

  “Thank you for agreeing to meet with us, Mr. President.” said Farber-Chatwell.

  “The only reason I agreed to this meeting was the high recommendation of your bosses. They seem to think very highly of you.”

  “Won't take any more of your time than necessary.” said Ramsdel.

  He took a folder marked 'SECRET – MPO' in bold red lettering from his briefcase, and handed it to the President. In the folder was a twenty-seven page brief, with each page titled 'Operation 361'.

  “The first ten pages explain everything sir. The rest is just cost analysis and possible logistics details.”

  They sat silently while the President read the mission outline. The expression on his face changed as he read, from surprise, to astonishment, to anger, and through all of them again. When he was done, President Reagan looked up at the men in front of him, his eyebrows raised in incredulity of what he had read. He also had a little
doubt about the sanity of the two men he was looking at.

  “Are you serious?” he bellowed, beginning to wonder if this was some kind of joke his senior staff had thought up – many of them did have a strange sense of humor.

  “Yes sir.” said Ramsdel.

  The President looked at Farber-Chatwell for confirmation. He nodded his head in the affirmative.

  “If I understand this correctly, this is more like a group suicide than a mission.” said the President, his voice slightly angry and growing louder. “Potentially and VERY LIKELY a suicide mission. Is that correct? This has never been done before, and according to your own report, is beyond the limits of our present capabilities. Who the hell are you going to get to go on this thing? You are effectively asking me to send people to their deaths – as an experiment!”

  “We already have personnel, Mr. President,” said Farber-Chatwell in a controlled and level voice. “willing to go now. All of them well aware of the mission risk profile. But as I point out in our proposed time-line, the actual mission wouldn't take place for at least another ten years. It will take us that long to prepare, work out the specifics, and take advantage of any new technology that comes along. Possibly even longer. Choosing the volunteers will be one of the last things we do.” He waited for a response from the President, but didn't get one.