Defenders of Destiny, book one, the Discovery of Astrolaris

by Brenton Barwick

  Chapter Eight

  Fake Moon Landings?

  Thomas slammed the control stick all the way forward and the 747 almost instantly disappeared. The lights of the city dwindled to a speck and became another small point of light with all the other points of light from cities scattered across the northern hemisphere. As the earth seemed to recede, they saw the sun appear on one side of the screen with the entire outline of the earth on the other. The western United States was still shrouded in darkness, but they could see the first rays of the sun reaching the eastern seaboard and shimmering on the North Atlantic. They could see over the North Pole and, still bathed in daylight, all the way from northwestern Russia, Scandinavia, Britain, Iceland, Greenland, and the edge of Northwest Africa.

  The amazing splendor of the blue ocean, the deep green near the equator and the beautiful sand color of the deserts in Africa overlaid with swirls and wisps of clouds here and there was truly astonishing. The earth continued to rapidly shrink until Dad released the control stick from his death-grip. His hand shook a little as he exhaled with his whole body.

  The earth was now down near the bottom of the screen. Joseph pointed up at the ceiling. “Look at the moon; it looks as big as the earth.”

  Sophia’s heart palpitated wildly, like an untamed animal trapped in a cage, trying to escape. She continued his thought: “If the moon is one third the size of the earth and it appears as big as the earth…”

  “Then that must mean we are two thirds the way to the moon!” Joseph exclaimed.

  Dad twisted the control stick ever so slightly and the robot rotated until the earth had moved to the center of the screen. It was so clear and so beautiful that it seemed they were standing outside on the hull of the ship.

  They sat in stunned silence, gazing at the earth for a few minutes.

  Sophia could feel the pounding of her heart begin to slow down, but the rush of adrenaline still hadn’t worn off yet. Other than the near death experience, I think I could get used to this, she thought.

  Suddenly, Sharianna thought: maybe I’m still in trouble, now that we’re not dead. She turned to Mom. “I love you too.” Turning back to Dad, “And you too Daddy, I’m sorry.”

  Thomas looked at Sharianna. He could see tears in her eyes. He hadn’t been called daddy for several years. “It’s okay princess. Maybe we can learn to fly before we walk.”

  “Wow! What do you think those pilots and the flight at-tendant are saying right now?” mused Joseph. “Uh… tower… we had a near miss with a…uh, giant man, uh, robot-thing that shot out into space.”

  Sharianna started laughing through her tears, followed by Mom and Dad.

  “Not if they want to keep their jobs,” laughed Dad.

  “I’ll bet they don’t think it’s funny. I hope they don’t need too much counseling after tonight,” Mom commented, a little bit more seriously.

  Percy could sense the wild swings of emotion, from exhilara-tion to stark fear then relief, elation, awe and finally, laughter. He looked up at Joseph with a quick bark and a wag of his tail.

  “That’s right, boy, we’re still alive,” comforted Joseph, as he reached down and rubbed him behind the ears. “I guess we won’t need these,” concluded Joseph, as he released his cargo strap seatbelt. “The artificial gravity must be able to compen-sate for G-force. It was really strange to accelerate so fast without any sense of motion. Almost like watching a movie.”

  “Yeah, a movie that could kill you,” replied Sharianna.

  “Dad was in total control the whole time. Weren’t you Dad?” asserted Joseph.

  “Yeah…” Dad agreed slowly, without a hint of conviction. He slowly twisted the control stick the other way, and the moon came back into view.

  “Dad?”

  “Yes?”

  “You know that old movie where they faked the lunar landing…”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, didn’t they leave the bottom part of the lunar lander there?” asked Joseph.

  “They left a flag too!” Sharianna added with excitement, knowing what Joseph was leading up to.

  “And the moon buggy they rode in,” continued Joseph.

  Dad raised his eyebrows and looked back at Sophia.

  “On our first trip? And that one accidental?” But she could not disguise the note of excitement that found its way into her words.

  “Ah ha! You’re my witnesses; Mom has turned into an adventurer!”

  “Maybe you could use a little more flight experience before you try to land in our yard; I don’t want you to smash our house. And besides, we are already two thirds the way there, right?” She looked at Joseph with these last words and he smiled from ear to ear. Looking back at Thomas, she quoted her favorite Christmas show: “George lassos the moon!”

  Dad slowly pushed forward on the control stick; soon the moon appeared to be getting larger. “Look out man-in-the-moon, here we come.” He pushed on the stick a little more.

  “Is that a cloud?” asked Sharianna.

  “There are no clouds in space,” declared Joseph.

  Immediately, they heard a sound like hail pounding on the hull of the ship. Dad pulled back on the stick.

  Floating all around them, they saw small rocks ranging in size from basketballs down to particles of dust.

  “Some of them are sparkly,” observed Sharianna. “What are they made of?”

  “Joseph, you’re our rock expert,” acknowledged Mom.

  “A lot are made of iron, mica and other minerals but I think most are just rocks.”

  “Hey, I remember hearing something about how lucky the moon missions were that they didn’t encounter any severe solar wind from sun flares or asteroid storms. If they had, they probably would have been destroyed,” concluded Dad.

  “How can there be wind or storms in space, if there is no air?” questioned Joseph.

  “I think the wind refers to the small particles and radiation that are thrown out by the sun, especially during solar flare-ups,” Thomas replied. “The storms refer to debris trails left by comets.”

  “Some of those asteroids look pretty big; do you think they can damage the ship?” asked Mom, nervously.

  “I doubt it…” began Dad.

  Joseph interrupted: “It crashed in the desert making a great big crater but there was still not a scratch or dent on it; I’ll bet that was one powerful impact!”

  “I guess you’re right,” conceded Mom.

  “Can we take one of the shiny ones home?” asked Sharianna.

  The thought excited Joseph. “Dad, do you think you could grab one with the robot’s hand?”

  “I don’t know, but it would be fun to try,” he answered.

  “That sparkly one, over there,” directed Sharianna.

  Dad was having a hard time capturing the rock because the controls were very sensitive and every time he touched the asteroid, it would float away. They flew all around it several times and had to chase it each time it was bumped.

  Finally, Joseph said: “Let me have a try, Dad.” He used both hands and made a cage with the fingers around the asteroid, then slowly closed one hand until it gently gripped the coveted rock.

  “Yeah!” cried Sharianna, as everyone clapped.

  “Now what?” Dad asked.

  “Put it in the cargo bay,” suggested Sharianna.

  “Haven’t you seen the space movies?” demanded Joseph. “When they open the door to space, everything goes flying out. We would lose our air, and everything else in the cargo bay.”

  “Well, just hold onto it until we get back home,” she retorted.

  “It’s worth a try,” agreed Mom.

  “Since I’m already in the chair, can I pilot the robot to the moon?” requested Joseph.

  Sharianna was quick to interject: “Hey, I’ve been in the chair the whole time and I haven’t had the chance to fly it.”

  Dad intervened, “You can both have a turn, but then I will take over
when we get closer to the moon.”

  “Be careful, I want to see the moon, I don’t want to make our own crater,” cautioned Mom.

  “You’ve both had your opportunity to pilot the ship; I think I’ll take over the controls now,” said Dad, as they approached the moon.

  “It’s my turn to be copilot,” insisted Joseph, while motioning to Sharianna to vacate her seat.

  “I think it is Mom’s turn,” suggested Thomas, as he motioned for Sophia to sit down in Sharianna’s chair.

  “Okay, but it doesn’t really matter to me.” Sophia sat down in the captain’s chair. As she looked at all the controls, she suddenly felt an inward craving to pilot the robot. She suppressed the desire: “Maybe I’ll fly it on the return trip.”

  Joseph walked around the control chairs and down the steps to the seating below. From this vantage point, it felt like he was right out in space without any ship at all, because he was surrounded on both sides and the top by the curved view screen.

  Sharianna joined him. “Wow, this looks even cooler than when you are in the captain’s chair,” she observed. “Kind of like the Soarin’ Over California ride at Disneyland.”

  “Except it’s real,” added Joseph.

  “I think we’ll go around the back side of the moon, and then gradually approach the front. I think that will eliminate the risk of crashing straight into it,” explained Dad, as he glanced at Mom.

  “Okay,” she agreed.

  As they approached the moon, they could see the remarkably varied terrain, from mountains, hills and craters to smooth plains.

  “Wow, it’s amazing,” exclaimed Joseph, from his seat down in front.

  “It is so barren,” observed Sharianna.

  As they came around into the shadow of the moon they looked beyond, into the expanse of space, to see the most unexpected and spectacular sight they could imagine.

  “Look at all those stars,” exclaimed Sharianna.

  With the moon blocking the light from the sun and no atmosphere to obscure the view, they could see millions of stars, brighter than they had ever seen them before.

  “It’s beautiful,” whispered Mom.

  Dad had slowed the robot down so that they would not overshoot the moon. As they slowly came around the moon, they saw the Earth rise up majestically from the horizon.

  “It’s a small world, after all,” sang out Mom, in her soft, melodious voice. “It really is small, isn’t it?”

  They made a slow descent and began to realize the enormity of their search. They flew low over the mountains, craters and huge plains.

  “That is a lot of area to search. Does anyone know where the moon missions landed?” asked Dad.

  “If I had my computer, I could google it.”

  “Maybe we should bring it next time,” proposed Dad.

  “I doubt you could connect to the internet way out here,” countered Mom.

  “I guess you’re right,” agreed Joseph.

  “But we only have to search half of the moon because we know they did not land on the dark side,” Sharianna smiled smugly. “And they did not land in the Polar Regions.”

  “That still leaves an area probably as big as North America,” concluded Dad thoughtfully.

  They flew back and forth across the moon for hours search-ing for the lander.

  “Maybe the moon landings really were fake,” speculated Joseph.

  Dad tried to remember a Nova show he had seen recently about the moon landings but he couldn’t remember the details. Thomas and Joseph were likely Nova’s biggest fans; they had probably watched nearly every show they had ever filmed. They also consumed the National Geographic movies and magazines.

  “Hey, didn’t they land on a large flat plain?” remembered Mom, who watched some of the Nova programs with them. “I’ll bet that they chose the smoothest spot they could find. Let’s go back out to space so that we can see the flattest looking place.”

  As they flew back out to space and looked at the moon from that vantage point, they noticed a very large level plain.

  “Let’s use a grid type of search pattern, that way we won’t keep flying over the same area,” suggested Joseph.

  “Good idea, son.”

  After a couple more hours searching the plain, Sharianna said: “I don’t know if it reflects the actual lunar landing, but I think that when we took our picture at the planetarium there were mountains or hills in the background of the display.”

  “Okay, we’ll limit our search to a few miles from the edge of the plain,” responded Dad.

  “Maybe it was fake.” Sharianna added her doubt to Joseph’s.

  “Don’t be too fast to disbelieve something just because you can’t prove it,” suggested Dad.

  “But what if we can’t find it?” she persisted.

  Dad explained: “Imagine, if you were on the beach and you had a diamond and you dropped it. Someone comes along and you tell them there is a diamond in the sand. Would it still be there even if they could not find it?”

  “Yes.”

  “What if they did not believe that it was there, does that diminish the reality of it being there?”

  “No.”

  “Remember, a person’s inability to verify the existence of something in no way disproves the reality of its existence.”