“Roger that.” Tony’s reply was brief. “I’m on it.”
Stetson eased Hui from Xu’s shoulders and dragged her onto the lift. He then gently pushed Xu away and closed the gate. It was clear from looking at Xu that the doctor understood, though he was starting to look worried.
Knowing that the man would not hear him, Stetson nonetheless said, “I’ll be back.”
With the push of a button, the lift moved upward toward the Altair’s airlock. Stetson took that brief moment to look back toward the man they’d left on the surface. He was lying there, unmoving—a silent testament to the frailty of man.
Stetson, with a scant few seconds available for self-reflection, thought to himself, For all this hardware and technology, it all still comes down to this. People. With all our frailties and weaknesses, we still come and do the hard things. Let’s see those damned robotic probes do this! Thank God for our manned program.
The lift jolted and abruptly stopped.
Stetson was startled out of his introspection. He quickly pressed the start button. Nothing happened. The lift didn’t budge. He pressed the stop button and then the start button. Nothing.
“Come on! Does nothing work on this damn ship!” Bill slapped the wall of the lift in frustration. “Tony! The lift stopped. We’re almost to the top, perhaps eight feet from the platform. I messed with the buttons and nothing happens. It’s stuck.”
“Can you get the captain to the platform? Do I need to suit up and come help?”
“There’s no time for that. I’ll have to figure something out. Stand by.” He looked around him on the platform and didn’t immediately see any way to get the elevator working again. The eight feet between him and the platform that led to the airlock wouldn’t have been a huge problem if it had just been him stuck. He could easily jump up, grasp the platform’s ledge, and then pull himself up. But it wasn’t himself he was trying to save. It was the unconscious and likely suffocating Captain Hui that he was trying to save, and she was, at this point, no different than a three-hundred-and-fifty-pound sandbag.
“Tony, I’m going to try to hoist Hui up on the platform. In one-sixth gravity, she won’t really weigh all that much, maybe sixty pounds, but it’ll be a bulky sixty pounds to push up. Here goes.”
Stetson leaned forward and pulled Hui upright. He lifted her apparently lifeless body over his shoulder and maneuvered himself toward the side of the elevator closest to the platform above. He then took a deep breath and shoved. As he was lifting, his right foot slipped suddenly backward, causing him to lose his balance. He and Hui’s body wavered and slipped to one side, running into the wire wall of the elevator and then tumbling to its floor.
“That didn’t work so well,” Stetson muttered under his breath.
Without any more hesitation, he grabbed Hui and tried again. This time neither foot slipped and Hui’s upper body did land on the platform. But it didn’t stay there. As Stetson shifted his hands to push on her lower body, she slipped off and fell back on top of Stetson, once again causing him to lose his footing and fall backward into the wire wall.
“There’s got to be a better way. I need a rope or something.”
“A rope? We’ve got a rope. It’s with the surface-exploration kit that we’re throwing overboard. I can get it in the airlock in just a few minutes. Leave her on the platform and come on up. I’ll cycle the airlock so you can come in and get it.”
“I don’t see another way.” Stetson was already lowering Hui gently to the elevator floor. “On my way.”
Looking like a comic-book character, Stetson bent his knees and sprang upward toward the platform in a maneuver that would have been simply impossible to achieve under normal gravity conditions. The upper two-thirds of his body landed on the platform and bounced almost a foot in the air. He had to quickly reach out and grab one of the crisscrossed diagonal beams on the walkway next to where he landed to keep from falling back down to the elevator.
“I feel like the Michelin Man. Somebody’s got to invent a better damned spacesuit!”
Stetson pulled himself up and walked quickly toward the closed airlock door. Just as he arrived, the door opened slightly, and he saw a cloud of dust poof outward around the edges. Tony had vented the airlock so Stetson could quickly get the tether he needed to save Captain Hui. He reached down, grabbed the tether, and started back toward the stuck elevator.
“Bill, I just lost communication with Dr. Xu. He just lost power in his suit while we were talking. I bet that probably means that the injured pilot has lost power also.”
“Great. Just great. Thanks for telling me. We’ve got to move faster.”
While talking, Stetson maneuvered himself back to the upper portion of the platform and clipped one end of the tether to a support strut. He tossed the other end down onto the elevator platform next to Hui’s body. Taking a pose that would appear very awkward on the live television feed from the external cameras, Stetson dropped onto his stomach with his legs dangling in the open space above the elevator platform. He then lowered himself back down. It was not graceful, but it worked.
He quickly secured the tether to Hui’s suit and attached it to where he thought its Chinese equivalent tether would be designed to attach. Though he was tempted to peer again through the visor to assess Hui’s condition, he did not. There was simply no time.
He again hoisted himself up from the elevator and onto the platform. This time, he was not so ungainly. Once there, he looped the tether around a nearby strut to provide some mechanical advantage, and began to pull. It was not the smoothest of ascents—Hui’s body dangled to and fro and even banged into the sides of the elevator cage as it rose toward the open top and to within Stetson’s reach. Once she was just below the platform, he secured the tether.
Since she was now tied into position, he didn’t have to worry about dropping her, and he could concentrate on grabbing her suit in the right place to hoist her up and to safety. After a few unsuccessful attempts, he was able to get her up and on the platform with him. He was out of breath.
He disconnected her from the tether and carried her to the airlock. Once she was inside, propped against the inner door like a rag doll, he quickly backed out and closed the outer door. He then said into his radio, “Tony. She’s in the airlock. Get her inside as quickly as you can.”
“Roger.”
Stetson grabbed the tether and moved quickly to the ladder that led to the ground. Looking down and wondering how he and Dr. Xu were going to get the pilot up to the top deck, he again cursed the engineers who designed the lander with the crew compartment so far off the ground, this time with the microphone off. “Jackasses.”
By the time Stetson reached Dr. Xu and the motionless pilot, they had been without power for about twenty minutes.
Tony’s voice coming through the radio startled him. “Bill, I believe the captain is going to be okay. I put her on oxygen the minute I could get to her, and her color is starting to return. It was close. She’s still out cold, though.”
“That’s good news, Tony. I wish we could tell her friend here. Let’s hope we are as lucky with these two. I don’t know how long she was without power, but it can’t have been very long or she would have been dead.”
Not wasting any time, Stetson had been working with the doctor in pulling Ming Feng up from the lunar surface and placing his bulky spacesuit arms over their shoulders. He looked over at the Chinese doctor and saw from the look on his face through the suit’s visor that he was ready to go.
Hearing only his breathing, Stetson and Dr. Xu walked across the dimly lit lunar surface toward the Altair lander. The walk seemed to be taking a long time to Stetson; he could only imagine how long it seemed to the doctor. Finally, they reached the base of the lander.
“Tony. I’m trying to tell the doctor to take the end of the tether and to start climbing the ladder. But without a radio, I’m not sure how to explain it.”
“Bill! Touch your faceplates and scream!”
&
nbsp; “Think that’ll work?”
“Try it.”
“Okay.” Bill faced the Chinese astronaut and leaned his faceshield over until they touched. At first Dr. Xu started to back away, but Stetson shouted as they came into contact, and the man paused. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes, but barely.”
“Damn, Tony, it works.”
“How about that.”
“Listen!” Bill shouted again. “Take this up the ladder! Then I’ll attach the other end to him. Once on top, loop it over a strut and start pulling while I push him up from underneath. Understand?”
“Understand! Will do!” was Xu’s reply.
Moments later, Dr. Xu, holding the tether in one hand, began climbing. The first five feet went smoothly, but then he abruptly stopped. After pausing, he resumed his ascent, but at a slower and more clumsy-appearing gait.
“Tony, can you see him? What is going on?”
“He looks to be confused as best I can tell, Bill,” Tony said.
“He stopped being much help and has become real damn clumsy.”
“His extremities must be getting very cold, Bill. He probably has to watch his hands and feet on each and every step since he isn’t getting any feedback from them. One misstep near the top and we may lose him.” Bill was beginning to be glad he had brought Anthony Chow, M.D. along.
Dr. Xu was moving very slowly at this point. He was only slightly more than halfway up and Stetson was starting to doubt that he could make it. Stetson looked around, trying to come up with plan B.
“He’s taking too long,” said Stetson.
Painfully slowly, the doctor climbed to within the last few rungs of the ladder from the top. He swayed, and Stetson steeled himself for what seemed inevitable—a twenty-foot fall to the lunar surface. The swaying stopped and the doctor reached for the next rung. Finally, he made it to the top and the relative safety of the platform, upon which he collapsed. Miraculously, he did not drop the tether.
Stetson paused, not sure of what he should do next. Without the Chinese doctor pulling while he pushed, it would be impossible to get the unconscious pilot to the top of the ladder.
The tether moved, slowly at first, and then it rapidly became taut. Looking up, Stetson was surprised to see Tony Chow’s faceplate looking down at him. Chow gave him the thumbs-up sign.
“Bill, let’s get your guy up here, and then one of us can go through the airlock with him. If you’re ready, then let’s get this done.” Tony’s voice sounded fresh, enthusiastic, and very, very good.
Stetson grabbed and lifted the limp pilot’s body as Tony pulled it from above using the rope. Slowly they lifted him up to the platform that surrounded the habitat.
Once on top, they carried the two Chinese to the ship’s airlock and stuffed them inside. The airlock was designed to hold two fully suited astronauts who were standing under their own power. Getting two limp bodies upright and into a room that was only slightly larger than a broom closet with a third astronaut was quite a challenge.
As he waited for the airlock to cycle and his turn to enter, Stetson looked out over the lunar surface toward the boulders that obscured the damaged Chinese lander. It is so beautiful, he thought.
At first Stetson thought his eyes were playing tricks on him, but he soon realized that the motion in the distance was real. The shape of another spacesuited human was now clearly visible as it walked toward the American lander.
“What the…?” Stetson said. “Tony, I think the fourth taikonaut has decided to join us. He’s walking toward us now.”
“I wonder what took him so long. Does he look like he’ll need help? He’s bound to be out of power like these guys.”
“Don’t know,” Stetson said. “I can’t tell. He doesn’t look like he needs help. When you get inside, give him a shout.”
Another five minutes went by before Stetson heard anything from Chow. In the meantime, the Chinese taikonaut had gotten much closer. From what Stetson could tell, he didn’t look like he was going to need any help.
“Bill. I’m in. I’ve got three unconscious Chinese in here. They are all breathing, but it’s too early to tell if there has been any brain damage. But everywhere I step, there’s people.”
“Good work, Tony.” This drew a smile from Stetson and was really the first good news he’d had in an hour or two. “That’s a good problem to have. There’ll soon be two more of us in there. Hopefully, we will be able to stand under our own power.”
“That’s a good thing. It’s getting pretty crowded in here,” Chow replied.
“Hey, how’d you know we could touch helmets and talk like that?” Bill asked Chow.
“I read it in a science fiction novel once when I was a kid. Have Spacesuit Will Travel or something like that.”
“I’ll be damned.”
“Well, if you are, it’ll be standing room only.”
Stetson figured it must be very crowded at maximum capacity inside the Altair now. The simple fact of the matter being that the Altair’s ascent stage was designed to hold four people under very Spartan conditions. To sleep, the astronauts would string hammocks and sleep two on each side with one directly above another. There was not enough room to have four cots on the floor. For getting back into space, it was assumed that the four astronauts would be standing. Six standing astronauts would be a tight fit, but doable. Having one or more of their number lying on the ground could make things complicated. Having three on the floor was something he hadn’t planned on.
“Agreed, Tony,” Stetson replied. “That’s a good problem to have. I’m just glad that we’ll be coming home with all of them.”
Stetson walked to the ladder and looked down as taikonaut number four approached. The Chinese astronaut looked briefly upward and began to climb the ladder toward Stetson.
A few minutes later, Bill Stetson and Chinese Political Officer Zhi Feng cycled through the airlock and into the Altair.
Chapter 25
Everybody except the injured pilot seemed to have strong vitals. Bill rummaged through some of the last-minute supplies that had been stored aboard the Orion and then transferred into the Altair after launch. The key supplies were replacement power packs for the Chinese spacesuits. Bill pulled them from a storage bin Velcroed to the rear wall and started to examine how to install them. The Chinese engineer, the only conscious member of the Harmony crew at the moment, saw what Bill had and moved carefully around his limp crewmates strewn about to get a closer look.
“I can do this.” He looked at Bill and held out a hand to take the power cells. “Do you have a regular screwdriver?”
“I have two.” Bill handed the man half of the cargo and reached in a sleeve pocket for a screwdriver. Both of the men had removed their helmets and gloves but were still in their suits.
“Why do we need these? There is air in here.” The Chinese taikonaut seemed confused and a bit more than concerned to Bill. But Stetson was going to cut the man some slack since he had been practically left for dead for several days now.
“We’re all too heavy. This ship’s engines are a precursor to the ones that Altair will eventually have. This one just wasn’t ready for a big, bulky sample-return mission. We’re gonna have to go outside and remove some exterior panels in order to be light enough to get us all up to lunar orbit.” Bill pointed at two of the panels that would have to go. The two panels alone were three hundred kilograms.
“I see. China was not the only country with technical constraints.”
“More like political.” Bill shrugged. “The on-again, off-again, on-again nature of politics and the American space program left Altair as the last vehicle to be finished, and at a third of the originally planned budget.”
“Ha, the American might is not so great after all.” Bill didn’t know how to respond to the man, so he didn’t.
“We’ve got to get these suits back up and running.” He nodded to the suits and started to work. Stetson wasn’t sure that he liked the man’s attitude
and wasn’t all that happy about talking with him at the moment.
“Mission control, we’re all suited up and ready to begin the exterior skin modifications.” Tony scanned the interior of the ship and made certain that all of the passengers had their suits sealed off. Three were still unconscious, so he had to check them each himself. Bill had recruited the coherent engineer fellow to go outside and do the work on the spacecraft. Tony wasn’t sure if Bill didn’t like leaving the Chinese inside all by themselves with them locked outside or if he just thought that the doctor in the bunch should stay inside with his patients.
“Roger that, Mercy I. Pipe Bill through, and we’ll walk him through the mods.”
“The line is open, Houston.”
“Roger that, Mercy I. Begin decompressing the cabin.”
Tony stood with his back against the wall, leaning a bit to take the weight off as he cycled the interior-pressure vents. He was tired. It had taken him and Bill and Zhi nearly two hours to cycle all of their superfluous supplies and whatnot out to the lunar surface. Now there was deconstruction work to be done. Sure, all six of them could stand inside the vehicle, very closely. Very. Closely. But they were still too heavy to get off the surface. The mission had been planned to take four American astronauts to the lunar surface and back on a shoestring budget and a very compressed schedule. This version of the Altair was only a limited prototype and not the final design of the vehicle that would fly on future flights, if there were any. The politics of the Constellation program to send Americans back to the Moon had been quite a battle. The program had used a majority of NASA’s budget since 2011.
The Apollo-era program had about the same amount of money, sixteen or so billion dollars per year, between the mid-1960s and early 1970s. Extrapolating the Apollo budget to modern-day dollars, taking into account inflation, would be about one hundred and two billion dollars per year. So, it was clear that the NASA budget was about six to seven times underfunded. It was ridiculous how low the funding for the American space program had become while any number of entitlement programs were running at hundreds of billions of dollars per year with no public debate on shutting them down. And, to top all that off, the robotic-probe planetary scientists had a powerful lobby on Capitol Hill literally able to force NASA to use up about a quarter of its budget for unmanned probes to the outer planets, comets, asteroids, and other places like Pluto. The science return on those missions versus the science return on manned missions was often the subject of heated debate.
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