Adrift on the Sea of Rains (Apollo Quartet1)

by Ian Sales

  I’m coming back for you, he says.

  We know, says Scott. Godspeed.

  Peterson presses the MANUAL ENGINE ON button.

  Aerozine 50 and dinitrogen tetroxide rush toward one another and explode. Dust blows out from beneath the ALM, spreading out in a horizontal circle. Peterson enters Noun 94 on the DSKY. Numbers appear on the display: accumulated velocity, altitude rate and computed altitude. They slowly increment as the ALM rises from the lunar surface. The altitude tape-meter and altitude rate tape-meter both begin to climb. He focuses on the cross-pointer, gently twitching the Thrust/Translation Hand Controller and the Attitude Controller this way and that to keep the ALM on course and the numbers on the DSKY slowly climbing towards the targets written on the cue card.

  This is real flying, this is not watching the instruments as his LMP calls out altitude and fuel levels. There is no CSM in orbit to downlink flightpath data to his PGNS. He is flying this spacecraft by feel.

  It’s not the smoothest flight he has ever flown. At 480 feet, he begins the pitch-over until he is now flying over the lunar landscape, craters and rilles and the undulating folds of lunar mountains rolling past him. He does not let his concentration lapse; he must focus. He is beginning to sweat now. The ALM’s shadow runs like a spider across the gunpowder grey below him.

  When the numbers on the DSKY reach the targets on the cue card, he knows he has made it. He throttles back the DPS engine to zero percent. The ALM is now in lunar orbit, but Peterson is not finished yet. He inputs Noun 85, and now the DSKY displays the residual velocity errors on all three axes. Using the RCS, he must fly until it shows “all balls”.

  When each line shows only zeroes, he radios Falcon Base: Ready for CSI.

  Alden’s numbers have got him this far, Peterson trusts the man’s calculations for Coelliptic Sequence Initiation are just as accurate. He enters P32 on the DSKY. This program will use the RCS to put him into an orbit with a perilune of forty-five nautical miles. He is too low at present for TEI.

  He punches Verb 06 Noun 11 on the DSKY, and says, Tig is 000:09:35.00

  9:35 confirm, replies Scott.

  Moments later, the view through the window before him shifts as the ALM’s Reaction Control System fires and alters the spacecraft’s orbit. The ALM pitches up, and the Moon seems to swing beneath him. Now he can see the curve of its horizon, and beyond it black space sprayed with stars. The Earth slowly rises above the lunar landscape, blessing his flight with its light, and he marvels at the blue marble with which they once again share the heavens.

  He is going home.

  After setting the oxygen control to DIRECT O2, he unlocks and lifts his helmet from his head. The interior of the ALM is chill, as cold as space, as cold as death, and his breath steams before his face. He sets abort stage to fire, and something shudders beneath his feet. He peers out the commander’s window, and soon the descent stage floats into view—an abbreviated platform, its underside a collection of tanks and pipes and boxes, and in their centre the blackened engine bell of the DPS. He watches it tumble and shrink as it falls back to the Moon’s surface. That sight, more than the view of the lunar surface from so high, brings home to him exactly what he has done, exactly where he is. There is no going back. He cannot land this spacecraft; all he can do is make the Trans Earth Injection and hope he makes it.

  He abruptly remembers a plan to re-purpose a Lunar Module as an orbiting lunar laboratory, a two-man space station. Someone had shown him the file, though he forgets who. One of the NASA pencil-necks. Peterson could stay in orbit, just like that LM Lab, but he has only sufficient consumables for the three-day trip to LEO. And what would he study?

  The gradual death of his men at Falcon Base?

  He has been watching that for the past twelve months.

  He radios Falcon Base and asks for Alden to take the mike. I guess I’m ready for TEI, he tells him. No point in staying up here for much longer.

  The ALM’s PGNS is not up to the job of firing the TEI burn, and so Alden has programmed the base’s computer to make the necessary calculations.

  What do you have on the telescope? Alden asks.

  Star 37, replied Peterson, and reads off the trunnion angles.

  Now Verb 02 and read me off… Noun 47… Noun 48… Noun 81…

  There is a long minute of silence. Peterson hears the creak and pop of the ALM as sunlight washes across it. That skin is paper-thin, it will be no protection in cislunar space. He will have to wear his spacesuit for the entire trip and hope no micrometeoroid holes the hull.

  You got me those numbers yet? he asks Falcon Base.

  Coming up, Scott replies. Your orbit is not nominal, Alden has to rejig some of his calculations.

  I got up here goddamn it, Peterson says. To him it is achievement enough. No, it is a great achievement, success against all odds. He will not be criticised. He adds: We knew it was going to be best-guess, that was all we could do.

  Now he is apologising. He shuts his mouth, his anger transferred from Scott to himself.

  Okay, says Scott; Alden’s back.

  Alden’s voice comes on the VHF: Tig is… 003:05:25.00. Burn time is 03:43. You need a delta-Vt of 3046.8 fps.

  Got it, replies Peterson. He has scrawled the numbers on the back of the cue card. Going into LOS now, he tells Falcon Base. See you when I come back round the other side.

  There is no way he can check Alden’s figures, he has to trust them. And he does. It is Alden’s numbers which got him into orbit—even if it was not entirely nominal—and he trusts the man to give him the necessary time of ignition and burn time for LEO. A target eight thousand miles across one quarter of a million miles away. A fraction of a degree wrong and he’ll miss it completely…

  Soon enough, the ALM swings back around and Peterson can talk once again to Falcon Base. The Mission Timer on the instrument panel is counting up to three hours five minutes and twenty-five seconds.

  Master Arm on, he tells Falcon Base. Engine Arm to Ascent.

  He watches the timer, his finger poised over the MANUAL ENGINE ON button.

  He knows enough about the ALM to know that the APS is not as powerful as a CSM’s Service Propulsion System. Even at one hundred percent—and that is the APS’s only setting—it will need to fire for longer to give him the necessary Δv for TEI. Even though the ALM weighs around a sixth of a CSM.

  The Mission Timer flicks to 0030520… 0030521… 0030522..

  The moment it displays 0030525, he pushes the manual engine on button. For one heart-stopping second, nothing seems to happen. He turns to look back over his shoulder at the cylindrical bulk of the APS in the centre of the cabin, as if doing so would trigger ignition. But already he can feel a rumble in his boots. He returns his gaze to the window before him and the Moon is drifting away, its surface features shrinking and blurring, the grey beach of its surface losing texture and contour.

  And the Mission Timer shows 0030908, so he turns off the APS.

  And there: finished. He feels the cessation of thrust. A sudden stillness, an immediate silence, though the roar of the APS had been little more than a faint hum transmitted through the floor of the spacecraft. He turns his attention to the ECS tape-meter for cabin pressure. Has the force of the burn ruptured the delicate cabin walls? Happily, it does not appear to have done so.

  Goodbye, he tells Falcon Base. Be well, be patient.

  It’s been an honour, sir, says Scott. And he sounds like he really means it.

  That whooping klaxon meant the DEW Line was about to be breached: there were Soviet bombers over northern Canada and it was Peterson’s job to get up there—fast—and see that US and Canadian territoriality wasn’t invaded. The YJ93s of his North American F-108D Rapier were spooling up now, kickstarted by the aux power cart, and they lit with a roar as the JP-6 ignited; and their thunder filled the hangar, bouncing off the solid concrete walls and roof like the joyous roar of a perfect storm. The lights and indicators on Peterson’s instrument panel t
old him all his systems were green, and then his “wizzo”, his weapon systems officer, said, Check, I got it; and that meant the wizzo’s data viewer and radar-TV had been updated with the mission profile by SAGE, NORAD’s vast and powerful computer, from the Sector Direction Center at Syracuse AFB; and the wizzo added, Says here they got Tupolev Tu-22M Backfires and those new Mach 3 bombers, the Sukhoi T-4 Blowtorch. But Peterson was busy confirming the autopilot data fed from SAGE; and then he gave the crew chief a thumbs up, and lowered the canopy. He was sealed in now, snug in his cockpit, the stick between his legs, everything reading green, the thunder of the YJ93s muffled to a distant rumble. The moment the “go” signal came through, he advanced the throttles and released the brakes, and the Rapier began to roll forwards, emerging from the alert barn into flat grey light and a sea of early morning mist hazing the berms of the dispersal area. Minutes later he was lined up at the end of the runway, watching his instruments as he waited for the word, and he twisted his head and saw his wingman lined up alongside him, and he felt a keenness he’d never experienced on training sorties, like he was the edge of a sharp blade and he knew in his heart he’d be doing some cutting of flesh today. He grinned inside his oxygen mask, gave the other pilot a thumbs up, and then readied his hands on stick and throttles. It was up to Peterson to get this bird in the air, then SAGE would take over and fly it to the intercept and, once there, lock onto the targets, arm and release the AIM-47 missiles the F-108D carried—should the situation warrant it. The signal came, Peterson pushed the throttles forward, released the brakes, and the F-108D began to roll forward, the acceleration pushing him back into his ejection seat, the turbojets bellowing like the gods of thunder and lightning, and he called out, Rotate, and gently brought the stick back. The aircraft’s nose lifted, the front wheels were off the ground, he felt the F-108D unstick itself from the earth, then they roared over the base fence and he hauled back on the stick, lit the afterburner, and they rocketed skyward. It seemed like in no time at all they were at their operating altitude and powering north and before long they were past the Mid-Canada Line and fast approaching the DEW Line where it marched across the frozen north of the country, and he saw something up ahead, a smear of contrail miles long across the blue-white arctic sky, and he knew it had to be one of the Soviet bombers, so he asked his wizzo if it was go or no-go. The wizzo told him he had it on his scope, it was one of the T-4s, doing Mach 2, and it was over the line, in Canadian territory, a legitimate target. There was nothing coming through from the Sector Direction Center, but Peterson didn’t care, he was in the zone, he was focused, and the rest of the world had fallen away, left behind in their supersonic dash north—he saw only a world of whiteness, a distant haze of brightness and in it the white-hot dot that was the sun, and his thoughts turned to the craft in which he sat, the weapons it carried, the purpose of those weapons, and his role in the defence of his homeland. So he armed one of his AIM-47 missiles, put his thumb over the “kill” button on the stick and waited for the lock-on tone; and his wizzo protested but he ignored him, and the reticule on the Projected Display flashed, so he pressed with his thumb—gently, as if it were a hunting rifle’s trigger and not simply a button which triggered an electric signal and so fired actuators which pushed hydraulic rams. He heard with satisfaction the grinding of the bay doors opening, the thud of missile release, and then a line of smoke hurtled ahead of the interceptor, writing a death sentence across the heavens. He was on intercept at Mach 3, so given enough time and sky he could have caught the Blowtorch, but the AIM-47 could do it so much faster… And so it did: he saw the impact, the sudden blossoming of flame on the T-4’s flank, the enemy bomber shedding shattered panels which spun mirror-bright in the sun as they fell, the curving smoke trails of debris as the aircraft broke apart; and his wizzo said, Jesus Christ, you sure as shit should’nt’ve done that. He was right, of course, and back at the base the colonel chewed him a new one though they both knew it was a righteous kill, but relations were hair-trigger and neither side wanted to give the other provocation; even so, they could only spin Peterson’s kill as a victory of sorts and he got a Commendation Medal, but he knew his days in TAC were numbered, someone upstairs was going to make damn sure of that. Later, the Soviets shot down a USAFE Convair F-106 Delta Dart out of Lindsey Air Station at Wiesbaden—Peterson himself had flown the Six before his wing was upgraded to the Rapier—and that sparked off a wave of incidents, culminating in an exchange of gunfire at Checkpoint Charlie, during which a US MP shot and killed a Grepo, and so the Soviets walked away from the SALT II talks and overnight Brezhnev’s rhetoric turned hawkish.

  Imprisoned in his ALM as it rockets toward freedom—though not, it seems, toward Freedom—Peterson has plenty of time to reflect. He reports in to Falcon Base at regular intervals; the voices of McKay, Curtis, Fulton, all their voices, translated into the same sing-song aviator speak on the radio. When he is not talking to them, there is little else to do but think. The ALM is not built for comfort, it is not built for interplanetary journeys. It has only enough room for four men standing upright. Peterson, already familiar with its cramped interior, now knows it intimately—the function of every switch and readout and valve, what is stowed where, the electronics hidden within the featureless boxes affixed to the walls. Only the micro-gravity makes it bearable. He floats in his spacesuit, without helmet and gloves, his breath chill, blind to the relentless grey of the cabin walls.

  He spends his days hovering over the drum of the APS, his feet to the rear of the cabin, watching the Earth through the docking window. His destination corkscrews across the heavens as the ALM rotates in “barbecue mode”. Moment by moment, the Earth circles into view, larger than the moment before, and his heart grows stronger and beats more powerfully with each mile he draws nearer. He thinks about the good Earth and his house in Lompoc, his blonde wife Leigh and his young boy Mikey. Perhaps some version of Leigh and Mikey live on this Earth; perhaps even a version of himself does too. Right now, however, he is not capable of considering the consequences of that.

  He remembers sitting in his backyard, beside the pool, a cold beer in his hand and a barbecue sizzling. He recalls looking up at the cloudless blue sky, seeing a spectral Moon and knowing he would soon be there on its surface. Now he approaches an Earth he believed he had lost forever, and he marvels at its jewel-like brightness in the dark and vasty deep. He feels a visceral connection to the blue planet, though it may well be a world as strange to him as the Moon. Intellectually, he knows it is not the Earth he lost, it is not the Earth of his dreams and desires; but neither can it be a truly alien world.

  As the ALM speeds closer, so time seems to compact. The hours pass through him and are lost. He performs his housekeeping tasks like an automaton, with no memory of his actions afterward. The Pre-Advisory Data for the mid-course correction he enters on the DSKY as though he were nothing but a conduit for Alden’s numbers. Always that blue beacon beckons. His senses seem to pour out of him and through the docking window into cislunar space. His aspirations speed on ahead of the ALM, and he imagines a hero’s welcome, a loving reunion, a revitalised career, a real life again. Perhaps this Earth has no Bell—in which case, the Wunderwaffe is not a curse, but a prize beyond compare.

  Whenever the astronauts in Falcon Base speak to Peterson, they cannot hide their excitement. He feels their eagerness as he hurtles between two planets at twenty-four thousand miles per hour. As the ALM draws ever nearer, he senses emotions stronger still stirring within, beneath deep and placid waters. His heart beats faster, the chill within the ALM bites at his exposed flesh more sharply. It takes an effort of will to prevent his hands from shaking. He can no longer bear to float motionless in the centre of the cabin: it is far too passive. So he pulls himself down to the commander’s position, fastens the waist-restraints and with the RCS pitches the ALM up so he now faces forward. With one gloved hand on the the Thrust/Translation Hand Controller and the other on the Attitude Controller, he surrenders to the
illusion he is flying the spacecraft toward the Earth. Though the ALM is far too frail to survive atmospheric re-entry, he pictures himself piloting the spacecraft to the ground, bringing it to a gentle touchdown on the parking lot at the MCC. And then he remembers he left the descent stage in lunar orbit…

  At the correct time, Earth captures the ALM and pulls it from its interplanetary flightpath to swing about its massy presence. Blue, smeared with white clouds, fills the spacecraft’s two windows. Peterson can see the shapes of the continents, the sere desert, the green of agriculture and the sprawling hatchwork of conurbations. Everything looks as he expected it, as he imagined it, as he had dreamed of it. He fires the EOI burn to put him in Low Earth Orbit above the space station, and waits for it to catch up with the ALM. Using the RCS, he rotates the ALM until the windows face the ground, and he spends the time waiting for the space station gazing in wonder at the Earth’s surface.

  He can see the space station now below him, stark against the Earth, cut by shadows. In shape, it is something like a cross, with a shaft and four arms at right angles to each other. Some of the modules are white, some are green. He frowns.

  As he draws closer, he can make out writing on one of the modules. He cannot read it. He blinks. Perhaps this Earth is too far removed from his own, perhaps they have entirely different writing systems. But no, he can make it out clearly now:

  Mир

  He recognises it. Cyrillic! This is not Freedom, nor any version of it. It is a Soviet space station. An unreasoning anger fills him. The Soviets have won the war. He tries to picture a world dominated by the Reds, all starkly functional buildings and interminable queues of poorly-dressed people. Does the US still exist? Or is it now the United Socialist States of America? How many needed to die for his nation to relinquish its freedom? This is not the world he knows, nor any world he wants to know. The wonder he had felt on approach has gone, replaced by sour hate-fuelled rage.