Ascent by Jed Mercurio

by Ascent (com v4. 0)

  The Block D stage strikes the surface, throwing up a plume of dust that falls in centrifugal lines of ejecta. A new crater has formed. He gives it the widow’s name.

  Firing at full thrust, the Block E opposes the LK’s descent, but the craft continues its long parabola toward the ground. The Planeta readout counts down: 1,500 metres, 1,400, 1,300… He must slow the descent. He pitches the lander back, standing on its engine.

  The lava plain broadens and becomes more foreshortened. It holds its position in the upper viewport. He knows he can make it. The Block E arrests the lander’s vertical velocity. The altimeter readout maintains 500 metres.

  Yefgenii slows the craft’s forward velocity with thrusters. The forces balance. He throttles back the Block E to 850 kg thrust, balancing the lander’s weight in lunar gravity. The LK hangs in a hover some 500 metres above the surface, on the perimeter of the Eastern Sea. A crest of hills arcs to either side of him. Ahead, boulders cover the plain. His fuel gauge estimates he has a minute’s worth remaining.

  Now he must pitch the LK forward again, and it begins to advance over the terrain ahead. The low rush of the engine whispers through the craft. He glimpses boulders ahead separating into an open field of dark gray basalt scarred by numerous craters. With his right hand he holds one control stick in its forward pitch. The ground scrolls through the lower viewport, that now points almost straight down. He is hanging off the straps and braces, his weight tipped forward, the ground sweeping under him.

  A fuel alarm sounds. If the computer was operational, it would call an abort, but he presses on. The fuel restriction stipulated by the flight plan is reserved for the ascent from the surface and orbital rendezvous with the LOK. There can be no rendezvous.

  The LK slips into its final descent, the altimeter counting down to 300 metres, 200, 100… A stray thought visits him for an instant, the realization that because he cannot reach the Near Side he’ll never see the earthrise, he’ll never see the blue Earth again.

  The shadow of the LK tracks toward him, slithering over the boulders and into the open ground of his target area. He sees shadows of the spindly legs of the LPU landing gear shortening as he pitches the LK back to the vertical, and then growing like vines over the ground below as he descends.

  The engine fires up dust. A cloud swells and swirls around the LPU, blotting out his view of the surface. He flicks his gaze to his instruments, those that are operational, watching that the craft is level and sinking with graceful steadiness toward the surface. A wire sensor dangles below the footpads of the LPU. It brushes the surface and a blue contact light blinks on his control panel, and he shuts down the engine at once.

  He falls. The craft drops 3 metres under one-sixth gravity and strikes the surface with a bang that shudders every strut and panel. He hears the vehicle creak as it starts to angle over. For a moment he fears that a footpad hangs over a crater, or that the ground is subsiding, so that the lander will topple over, but then the motion ceases and the craft settles, listing only a few degrees to starboard.

  Silence surrounds the LK. The dust settles back to the surface in sheets. No wind tosses it back and forth or carries it into the distance. No rains will wash it away. The footpads of the lander will never rust. The cosmonaut’s body will never decompose.

  The craft carries an immediate postlanding checklist that, according to the flight plan, must be hurried through in under a minute to determine whether the cosmonaut is safe to stay or must ignite the ascent engine at once. Yefgenii disregards the checklist. There is no option but to stay. The LOK’s orbit is decaying so fast it can only be a matter of hours before it crashes into the lunar surface. There is nowhere else in the universe left for him to go.

  HE SLEEPS. The stillness cradles him. He cannot even be certain that he remembers his mother’s touch. He searches for moments in which her arms cradled him, or her fingers caressed his cheek, but he can’t find them. He recalls a night terror, then her soft voice calming him; he begged her not to leave him alone in the dark, so she slept nearby. He sees her there in the gloom, her outline changing shape as she turns, perhaps asleep or just pretending for his benefit. He remembers that her presence gave him the strength to face the darkness, to face terror and loneliness, but his eyes cannot penetrate the gloom, he cannot see her, only her outline changing shape as she turns.

  When he wakes, he is tired. He remains as tired as he was when he fell asleep. The fans hum. He lifts his head from the narrow mesh hammock and sees that some of the instrument lights have gone out. The batteries are draining down. The lander is running out of power.

  He peers at the blinds covering the viewports. When he moves to them, he senses the strange effect of low gravity, like walking in a dream. He lifts the blinds. It is not a dream.

  The eerie terrain of the Eastern Sea stretches to the horizon. In the distance, long escarpments slope up from the plain into blunt hills that curve in gray bands one behind the other. Above them the sky is dense, black and empty. He is in a land of extreme contrast but no colour. The surface gleams, the sky is matte black, and the Sun blazes with no mediating atmosphere to diffuse, refract or blur its radiance.

  He’s slept in his suit and boots. He replaces his bubble helmet and then mounts the outer shell on the metal collar, a Moon helmet bearing three eyeshades and two protective visors to deflect the Sun’s unfiltered ultraviolet and infrared radiation. He lifts on the backpack and connects its oxygen and water hoses and plugs in its electricity cables, then dons his gloves and locks.

  His movements are slow and final. Stowed in the LK is an eleven-page checklist of items to be accounted for prior to a lunar EVA. He pays it no attention. He takes with him only two items: the flag and the camera.

  In depressurizing the cabin, he feels the Krechet Moonsuit swell and stiffen. His weak tired limbs lock into rigid poles. Where the suit presses into his flank, he feels the enduring pain of the sunburn.

  He releases the locks one by one and then turns the levers. The hatch moves under a light touch. It swings open and in the oval doorframe appears the flat gray blanket of lunar regolith. He steps forward. He senses his body lift and fall in altered motion. He is light, his downstep is slow, the gravity is one-sixth of Earth’s.

  The lander casts a long shadow in lunar postmeridian. The surface is unspoiled. The pattern of dust scattered by his landing remains unaltered. Not a single particle has been jogged by wind, not a streak blanked by rain. Here nature does not obliterate the old to prepare a fresh canvas for the new. Any wake left on the lunar seas will never flatten, because no water exists here.

  When he remembers Earth, it is its water — the blue and white of oceans, clouds and ice caps — that colours his memory. Water supports life, but rain and snow ablate the signatures of living things. This waterless place will preserve the signature of his landing longer than man will exist, long after nations have toppled and the empires of the Soviet Union and the United States have become as extinct as those of Rome and Greece and their artifacts are buried deep as the Minoans’.

  Yefgenii takes the next step, and this one brings him to the top of the ladder. There is the flag to plant, a commemorative photograph to be taken. Afterwards, he can find much to explore in the time that remains. In the lander he can survive for days before the oxygen supply runs out. By days he means Earth days. Daylight in this place won’t vanish until the Sun drops below the horizon and the terminator crosses the Eastern Sea; at that phase of the lunar cycle, the Moon will be a waxing crescent as viewed from Earth, and the crew of Apollo 11 will have begun their voyage to the Sea of Tranquillity. By then he will have perished here on the invisible obverse side of the Moon, alone and unknown for eternity, in a paper-thin metal box the size of a couple of telephone booths.

  As an alternative, he considers setting out on foot for the Near Side, but the backpack contains only enough oxygen for 1.5 hours. He won’t even cross the Eastern Sea. He’ll never see Earth again, though this strikes him in these circumstance
s as not a good enough reason not to try, if only to be granted one more look at the blue-and-white face of home.

  Perhaps over the next hill stands a bar, and the others will be waiting for him there, Gnido, Kiriya and Skomorokhov, Bondarenko and Komarov, Grissom and Gagarin. They will toast one another. Grissom, had he lived, would have been the first American to attempt a landing — so they’ll drink together, and talk of what might have been. Or perhaps it will be a quiet place, a farm bathed in golden sunlight, and his mother will chase him as he runs through the cornfield, and this time, as she lifts him into the air, laughing, he’ll be granted a vision of her face.

  Taking a grip on the handhold, he makes a half turn. Now his back faces the exterior. Yefgenii Yeremin peers down into the ground shimmering between his knees, at the foot of the ladder. He dangles his boot down and feels for the next rung. One more lies below it, then the surface itself.

  The print he leaves will remain, it is predicted, for four million years, till a spattering of meteorites obliterates the last stroke of man’s signature in the universe. It won’t be written in the sky but scratched in the dust of a cold dead satellite.

  He pauses. He occupies the zenith of his life, the life of the man known, and unknown, as Ivan the Terrible. When he takes the step, nothing will survive to drive him on. The great moment will have come and gone, and all that will remain will be a thing to be endured. Without goal or purpose, even the one and a half hours will be too much and therefore will be as tragic as the senescent decades of an ordinary life. The footprint he makes will mark the limit of his ascent, as it will of his nation, and of his civilization.

  Yefgenii gazes into the cabin. He scans the lights and gauges of the failing instrumentation; they are going out one by one, as if the stars, Sun, Moon and Earth are dimming one by one, as the planet of Shakespeare, da Vinci, Newton and Einstein will one day fade out; and then he blinks, they are all gone, the lights, and he is descending.

  Acknowledgments

  Dr. Buzz Aldrin, USAF (retd.)

  Mr. Neil A. Armstrong

  Dr. Matthew N. Dugas

  Dr. James R. Hansen

  Flt. Lt. Jad Reece, CFS RAF

  Capt. Walter M. Schirra, USN (retd.)

  Bibliography

  Cernan, Eugene. The Last Man on the Moon: Astronaut Eugene Cernan and America’s Race in Space. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999.

  Chaikin, Andrew. A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts. New York: Viking, 1994.

  Collins, Michael. Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut’s Journeys. new ed. New York: Cooper Square Press, 2001.

  Davis, Larry. F-86 Sabre in Action. Carrollton, TX: Squadron/Signal, 1992.

  Dorr, Robert F; Jon Lake; and Warren Thompson. Korean War Aces. Botley, England: Osprey, 1995.

  Encyclopedia Astronautica at www.astronautix.com.

  Hansen, James R. First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005.

  Jackson, Robert. The Red Falcons: The Soviet Air Force in Action, 1919–1969. Brighton, England: Clifton Books, 1970.

  Light, Michael. Full Moon. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999; London: Jonathan Cape, 2001.

  Lovell, Jim, and Jeffrey Kluger. Apollo 13. reissue of Lost Moon. New York: Pocket Books, 1995.

  Polak, Tomas, with Christopher Shores. Stalin’s Falcons: The Aces of the Red Star. London: Grub Street, 1998.

  Schefter, James. The Race: The Definitive Story of America’s Battle to Beat Russia to the Moon. London: Arrow, 2000.

  Scott, David, and Alexei Leonov. Two Sides of the Moon: Our Story of the Cold War Space Race. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004.

  Slayton, Donald K., with Michael Cassutt. Deke!: U.S. Manned Space, From Mercury to the Shuttle. New York: Forge, 1994.

  Stapfer, Hans-Heiri. MiG-15 in Action. Carrollton, TX: Squadron/Signal, 1991.

  Umbreit, Andreas. Spitsbergen, Svalbard, Franz Josef Land, Jan Mayen. 3rd ed. Chalfont St. Peter, England: Bradt Travel Guides, 2005.

  Zhang, Xiaoming. Red Wings over the Yalu: China, the Soviet Union, and the Air War in Korea. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2002.

  Afterword

  Although a work of fiction, Ascent is partly inspired by actual events, and I have endeavored to be accurate in their descriptions; however, on occasions I have chosen to depart from verifiable historical fact. Some such departures, but not all, are mentioned below.

  The 221st IAP (Istrebitel’nyi Aviatsonnyi Polk) is a fictional squadron. Following Glasnost, the presence of VVS (Voenno-Vozdushnye Sily Krasnoi Armii) units in Korea has been officially confirmed. According to Soviet reports, the two leading aces of the conflict were Yefgenii Pepelyaev (twenty-three kills) and Nikolai Sutyagin (twenty-one kills). However, these figures are disputed. See Dorr and Zhang for details.

  Yefgenii Yeremin’s Korean War encounters with Neil Armstrong, John Glenn, Gus Grissom and Wally Schirra are fictionalized. Neil Armstrong flew seventy-eight missions in U.S. Navy VF-51. John Glenn flew sixty-three missions with Marine Fighter Squadron 311 and twenty-seven missions as an exchange pilot with the U.S. Air Force. Wally Schirra served with the USAF National Guard, the 154th Fighter Bomber Squadron of the 136th Fighter Bomber Wing. Gus Grissom flew one hundred missions with the 334th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron. Buzz Aldrin flew sixty-six combat missions with the 16th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron.

  At the time of the contact with the USS Essex, Ensign Armstrong was no longer serving in Korea. See Hansen for details.

  The claim that Mikhail Averin shot down George A. Davis is controversial. For more details, see Zhang.

  The Soviet Air Force operated a base at Nagurskoye. Various other airfields existed on Franz Josef Land during the Cold War. See Umbreit for details.

  Soviet Air Defenses shot down a CIA-operated U-2 Spy Plane over Sverdlovsk on May Day 1960, capturing its pilot, Gary Powers. Accounts of the incident are highly contradictory.

  The idea that the United States spent millions of dollars developing a space pen while the Soviets used pencils encapsulates the contrast between the two programs; however, the story is considered apocryphal. For more details, visit www.truthorfiction.com.

  The engine fault in the N-1 rocket was not detected till later. Hence the N-1 exploded on its launchpad at Baikonur on July 3, 1969, during an unmanned test, ending the Soviet Union’s chances of launching a manned lunar mission before the end of the decade.

  The stars Menkent and Nunki were used as datum stars by Apollo 11 in Earth orbit. See Collins for details.

  The accident that befalls Voskhodyeniye has many similarities to the Apollo 13 “problem.” See Lovell and Chaikin for details.

  Yefgenii Yeremin’s cislunar EVA is inspired by the Gemini 9 EVA. See Cernan for details.

  Had he not perished in the Apollo 1 fire, Gus Grissom would have been the first man to walk on the Moon (other events permitting). See Slayton for details.

  The secrecy surrounding the Soviet system probably encouraged the myths about undisclosed spaceflights. Since Glasnost, the journals of high-ranking space officials have been revealed, and none of those myths have been supported. For a definitive article on “phantom astronauts,” visit Encyclopedia Astronautica at www.astronautix.com.

  Ascent is a work of fiction, dedicated to the people who did these things for real.

  About the Author

  Jed Mercurio trained as a doctor and joined the Royal Air Force while at medical school. He received extensive flight training before resigning his commission to practice medicine. While a resident in internal medicine, he wrote a groundbreaking medical drama, Cardiac Arrest, for the BBC. His first novel, Bodies, published in 2002, was chosen by the Guardian as one of the top five debuts of the year. He adapted that novel into an award-winning drama series for the BBC, and he is currently developing an American version for U.S. television. He lives outside London.

  Publishing History

  Ascent

  Copyright © Jed Mercurio 2007


  Originally published in a somewhat different form in Japan as Gurotesku by Bungeishunjua Ltd., in 2003

  First published in Great Britain in 2007 by Jonathan Cape

  Vintage Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW1V 2SA

  www.vintage-books.co.uk

  The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009

  ISBN 9780099468523

  Interior illustrations from the graphic novel Ascent, by Jed Mercurio and Wesley Robins, published by Vintage in 2011. ISBN-10 0224090798