by Jeff Pollard
“You guys ready to go to the Moon?” Kingsley asks. “Roger Hawthorne, we're GO for Tycho.”
“Looking good Pegasus,” Josh Yerino, CAPCOM, says in Mission Control in Hawthorne. Marilyn Lovell sits in the VIP area behind the control room along with Hannah and little Griffin as well as Jim and Marilyn's children and grand-children.
“Pitchover,” K says on the radio. Then the signal drops out and all camera views are replaced with blank blue screens.
“We have lost comms. Trying to reacquire.”
“What just happened?” Marilyn asks, very worried.
“They just lost the signal is all,” Hannah replies.
“What does that mean though, Jim said they wouldn't go into radio blackout anymore.”
“They had this problem on the last mission too,” Hannah says. “Something wrong with their dish, and when they pitch over it's not pointing the right way anymore. And they lost signal while they were doing pitchover, so I think it's just a dish problem, probably nothing to worry about.”
“Okay,” Marilyn says, uneasy. A screen on the wall shows the live coverage of the three ongoing lunar missions. The ULA Boeing Lunar Lander just cleared the north rim of Tycho Crater and is beginning its descent into the crater. A caption reads: “Contact Lost With Pegasus.” The Armstrong, piloted by Dexter Houston, sets down successfully inside Tycho Crater.
“What's the situation?” Mission Director Greenwood demands.
“Still trying to reacquire.”
“Looks like we still don't have this dish problem figured out,” Greenwood says to the exasperated Comms team.
“Pegasus, Hawthorne, do you read? Pegasus, Hawthorne, do you read?” Yerino's voice echoes through control as he repeats the call to the Pegasus for several minutes to no avail.
“This is bad,” Marilyn Lovell says.
“It's gonna be fine, they'll land and then adjust the dish and it'll be fine,” Hannah tries to reassure her.
“I always knew it would end like this,” Marilyn says.
“One minute to expected landing,” Guidance says.
“Pegasus, Hawthorne, do you read?” Yerino repeats.
“Where's daddy?” Griffin asks Hannah.
“I told you not to call him that,” Hannah replies quietly. Griffin, dismayed, turns the volume up on his tablet tuned to the livestream coverage.
“The expected time for Pegasus 3 to land has come and gone with no contact,” the livestream announcer says. “They're putting on calm faces in Mission Control in Hawthorne, but this is clearly a major flaw of some kind. It may very well just be a problem with communications, but if it's more serious, the crew of Pegasus 3 is on their own.”
Hank Collins, the prominent blogger, approaches and kneels in front of Griffin and Hannah. “How's it going little man?” Hank asks Griffin. Griffin ignores him, staring at his tablet.
“Wouldn't it be ironic,” the livestream announcer says, “if Jim Lovell made it all this way, lived through Apollo 13, only to be killed by someone who worshiped him as a hero when he was a kid.” Marilyn Lovell overhears the remark. Hannah takes the tablet away from Griffin and turns it off.
“Give it back!” Griffin shouts.
“I told you to keep the sound off,” Hannah replies. “I'll give the tablet back if you're good for a while.”
“Nobody calls them tablets anymore, mom.”
“Kids huh?” Hank says to Hannah, trying to get his foot in the door any way he can.
“I'm not going to talk to you, and neither is Marilyn, okay, just go along and do your speculating and write your crap, but you're not getting anything from us,” Hannah says.
“Oh, I didn't realize I'm just a stupid speculating dick, sorry, didn't realize,” Hank says. “Oh by the way, remember when I said China was going to land on Shenzhou 19 ahead of both ULA and SpacEx? Remember that? Yeah, I called that one.”
“A broken clock is right twice a day,” Hannah replies.
“Did you come up with that, that's pretty clever,” Hank replies sarcastically.
“Landing plus two minutes,” Guidance says.
“You don't look too worried about your daddy,” Hank says to Griffin.
“He's not my daddy,” Griffin says. “Mom says I'm not supposed to call him that.”
“Don't talk to my son,” Hannah says to Hank. “Get out of here.”
“I have credentials to be in here,” Hank replies, flashing a lanyard at Hannah.
“You know why? Because Kingsley likes to keep you under his thumb.”
“You think I don't know why he brought me in? He told me to treat Caroline nicer. He didn't say anything about you though, just Caroline.”
“You're an asshole,” Hannah replies.
“I'm just explaining the facts as I understand them,” Hank replies. “So why do you not seem worried about Kingsley?” Hank asks Griffin.
“They're fine. He's always in control,” Griffin replies.
“Is that so?”
“Yeah, the problems they have, those are just because of the hackers and bad people,” Griffin says.
“Hackers?”
“Yeah, there's hackers that try to break his stuff, that's why the radio doesn't work,” Griffin replies.
“Okay that's enough, get on out of here before I tell security you're harassing Griffin,” Hannah says.
“Alright, I'm going,” Hank says.
“Can I have it back now?” Griffin asks. Hannah stares at him with wide eyes.
“That's landing plus ten minutes,” Guidance says in Mission Control.
“Would you take over, I'm starting to lose my voice,” Josh says to Sylvia.
“Pegasus 3, Hawthorne, do you read?” Sylvia calls on the radio.
“I should just record your voice and loop it so you don't have to keep saying it,” Josh says.
“Check your six,” Sylvia says to Josh. Yerino turns around and finds Hank Collins approaching. Hank holds up his lanyard preemptively to shut down anyone trying to tell him to get out.
“We don't know anything,” Josh says to Hank. “They've probably landed safely and we're just waiting on them to get the dish righted and then these screens will all change suddenly and we'll see them landed safely. That's what's going on, we're not worried.”
“Yeah, I can read the talking points e-mail put out by the PR department just fine, but thanks for reading it to me,” Hank says.
“So what do you want to know other than that? I'm not going to speculate about anything. We're just waiting for the signal to come back. So what do you want?” Yerino says coldly.
“Do you think the radio troubles are related to the hacker problem?” Hank asks. Yerino freezes, having in no way anticipated that this would be asked. He gulps, takes a deep breath. Before he can answer, he's interrupted.
“Take over will ya,” Sylvia says, passing the headset back to Yerino.
“Pegasus, Hawthorne, do you read,” Yerino resumes his radio duties and Sylvia stands up, she towers over the diminutive Collins.
“We're not going to speculate on anything,” Sylvia says.
“Do you think the radio problems are related to hacking?” Hank asks.
“Hacking?” Sylvia asks.
“Yes, hacking,” Hank replies.
“You mean like in The Matrix?” Sylvia asks.
“So there's no hacking problem?”
“Not that I know of.”
“No security breach? No Russian hackers trying to steal plans? Nothing like that?” Hank asks.
“Not that I know of, and nor would I, you should talk to IT about stuff like that. I'm an astronaut, not a cyber-security expert,” Sylvia says.
“Alright,” Hank says and quickly leaves.
“Pegasus, Hawthorne, do you read?” Yerino calls. “You think he knows?”
“He must know something, and the way you blanched, that clearly told him he was on to something.”
&n
bsp; “What, and you saved the day?” Yerino asks.
“Didn't I?”
“How do you think those IT guys are going to do when a reporter starts asking them questions? You think they'll have a good poker face?”
“Shit,” Sylvia mutters.
“You might want to give them a heads up,” Josh says. “Or stuff them in a closet.”
Chapter 31
The waning gibbous Earth hovers suspended mid-way up the sky. Fixed, the Earth stays in the exact spot in the lunar sky. A time-lapse would show the Earth go through its phases, from fully dark new Earth to fully illuminated full Earth and back in about a month, all the while staying fixed in the sky, save for slight librations that would be rather imperceptible, at least at this latitude (at higher latitudes the slight librations can cause the Earth to rise and set).
Tim Bowe looks up at the Earth from the platform on the back of the Pegasus. Hearing nothing but his own breathing, he manually adjusts the dish. The job of an astronaut rarely involves a task this simple: point the dish at the Earth. But the dish is again jammed and Tim needs to first unjam it.
He stands only a few meters above the lunar surface on the Pegasus porch, wearing his pressure suit, not the Moon-walk EVA suit. The stark white landscape is harsh on the eyes, brighter than the brightest white snow on Earth. He tries to stay focused on his task. A flash of movement catches his eye, startling him. Tim turns and looks out over the lunar landscape and sees something moving towards him, with some lunar dust kicked up behind it.
“There's a robot coming our way,” Bowe says. It's the Wally rover, coming to the landing site to serve as their rover during the mission. The Wally approaches and parks about ten meters away from the lander. The ghostly robot's head pitches up, focusing on Tim. Back in Mission Control they've probably just gotten their first confirmation that the Pegasus indeed landed safely. One of the cameras on Wally's movable head flicks its lens cap on and off, winking. Tim laughs, throws Wally a salute and goes back to unjamming the dish.
Once unjammed, he simply points the dish at the Earth.
“How's that?” Bowe asks.
“Nothing,” K replies on the radio. Bowe looks back up at the Earth, then adjusts the dish a little to the right. “There we go,” K says. And with that Tim heads back to the airlock.
When Tim gets back into the cabin, Kingsley is busy communicating with Mission Control as they update each other. Caroline pulls up the livestream once more which flashes to breaking news that Pegasus 3 has touched down safely and showing several video feeds from both Wally and the exterior Pegasus cameras. The split-screen also shows the ULA team suited up and preparing to egress from their Boeing Lunar Lander. The Pegasus 3 crew is just starting to take off their pressure suits, one in a series of steps they must take before they can walk on the Moon.
Jim Lovell stands up easily, taking off his pressure suit and laughing to himself about how easy it is to stand and move around in lunar gravity.
“You know, you should start a lunar retirement home,” Lovell says to Kingsley.
“I was thinking Mars,” K replies.
“Forty percent gravity? I don't know, this sixteen percent feels pretty good,” Lovell replies.
Within a few minutes, the Luna 100 crew is climbing outside one at a time. Soon there are four on the lunar surface, near the base of the mile-high central peak of Tycho Crater. The crew erects a NASA flag, then an American flag, then Richard Branson erects a U.K. Flag, and then Dexter Houston erects a ULA flag. Each Moonwalker stands in front of their respective flags and salutes for the cameras.
Watching on the livestream, Kingsley scoffs at the Luna 100 crew.
“What?” Caroline asks.
“Come all this way, and the first thing they do is put up a bunch of flags to go with their footprints. Bunch of jackasses,” K says. “Anywhere they look around they'll be the first humans to ever see that thing up close. They're standing in a hundred million year old crater that was made in the crust of a four billion year old planetoid. But they're not looking at rocks, they're not looking for samples, they're staring at flags they brought with them.”
“Did we bring flags?” Lovell asks.
“Nope,” K says.
“Well, it would have been nice to salute old glory,” Lovell says.
“I know we're all anxious to get out there,” Tim says. “But I think we should eat first. I know I'll be starving by the end of a six hour EVA if I don't eat now.”
The crew of Pegasus 3 stands together, arranged around the livestream view of Luna 100, eating rehydrated dinner out of several plastic pouches.
“These are so much better than what we used to have,” Lovell says. On TV, they are unpacking a rover that was folded into the side of the Armstrong. After eating, they take turns in the corner bathroom and then begin the process of suiting up.
“It's so much nicer peeing in one-sixth gravity than in zero-g,” Caroline says. “No suction devices, it's much nicer.”
Tim and Kingsley help Lovell in first. They open the back port on the backpack and then hold Lovell by the arms as he raises up his feet and sticks them through the hole and down into the legs that are dangling out the back of the ship. Kingsley grabs two of the cargo bags they brought onboard earlier and places them in a small airlock next to the backpack ports. Soon all four of them undock their backpacks and stand up on the Pegasus's back porch. Kingsley opens the exterior door to the small cargo airlock and extracts the cargo bags. He drops one off the side of the porch and they all watch it take its leisurely time falling to the ground.
“So who goes first?” Lovell asks, looking at Kingsley.
“Me? You kidding? Jim, it's all you,” K replies.
“I'm just a passenger,” Jim replies. Wally's head rotates back and forth between K and Jim like he's watching a tennis match. The unofficial fifth member of the crew is in a closet back in Hawthorne. His task right now is to document the first steps as the Wally feed is the primary video broadcast. More people are watching Kingsley and Jim argue about who goes first than watched the most recent Super Bowl.
“How about we all go together,” Caroline suggests.
“There's only two ladders,” Bowe replies.
“We can jump,” K says.
“Entire Moon mission is lost when they all twist their ankles and get stuck outside,” Caroline says.
“You saw the bag, we can do that,” K says. They stand at the edge of the platform, holding hands. K counts down. The four of them step off at the same time and it would be a matter of great debate who actually touched down first. Whoever was first was the 19th person to walk on the Moon and last was 22nd. These are important facts that must be sorted out so we can have a proper list on Wikipedia.
They land together, needing no more than to slightly bend their knees to cushion the impact.
Kingsley had spent months trying to think of something clever to say, but before Kingsley can get out his prepared line, Jim Lovell says, “I made it Fred-O,” referring to Fred Haise, his Lunar Module Pilot who was supposed to accompany him down to the surface of the Moon on Apollo 13 before fate intervened. Fred had died just a few years earlier. K knows better than to try to top that, and quickly forgets his line. The four of them hop away from the lander in all directions, surveying the site with wonder.
“You can't see very far,” Caroline says.
“The Moon's a lot smaller than the Earth, so the curvature of its surface is more obvious. On Earth the horizon is about twenty kilometers away. Here it's more like two.”
“I actually feel like I'm standing on the top of a sphere,” Caroline replies.
“If life were to arise on a small world, they wouldn't have needed to figure out that their world wasn't flat, they'd know instinctively that it was a sphere,” K replies.
“Alright you two, get to work,” Bowe says as he picks up one of the storage bags from the lunar dust.
After a quick survey of
the landing site, the four of them hop onto Wally and fasten their seat belts. Tim then drives Wally at rather high speed toward the Surveyor 7 probe, which landed near the rim of Tycho Crater back in 1968 and has been sitting there ever since. Wally has never driven so fast. With the delay that teleoperators experience, they have to be cautious. But with an ace pilot physically at the controls (a joystick, not a wheel), they don't need such caution. It's only a seven kilometer drive to Surveyor 7, but with the low gravity making every bump seem like a ramp, it would still take nearly 40 minutes to reach it on a non-stop trip. But this is not a non-stop trip. With three passengers, that's a lot of eyes searching for remarkable rocks and interestingly colored dirt. The Commander quickly tires of the frequent stops as he watches the clock. Mission rules dictate that their distance from the lander never exceeds the distance they can traverse on foot in the time it takes for their oxygen reserves to be depleted. In other words, they're not allowed to go so far that if the rover broke down they would be unable to walk, skip, or hop back to safety before running out of oxygen. This is one reason why a large pressurized rover is one of the most important pieces of equipment coming soon to the Moon to enable long range and long duration exploration, giving the astronauts the ability to travel great distances without ever being more than a minute or two away from a pressurized habitat.
As the frequent stops continue, the oxygen reserves deplete and eat into the amount of time they will be able to stay seven kilometers from home at Surveyor 7. They're into hour three by the time they reach Surveyor. The little probe looks a bit like a short, wide tripod. The three legs support an aluminum skeleton holding many instruments. A single mast extends straight up and has a pair of angled solar panels that look like a feeble roof. Surveyor 7 was the last of the Surveyor probes, landing on the Moon in January of 1968.