In the comms, our collective breaths hissed and popped as we triggered the VOX at different intervals. As long as people were breathing calmly, the voice-activated channels would stay quiet, but I didn’t bet on many of the colonists breathing easily.
Gravity seemed to come from our left as Curt used two thrusters to spin the ship to the correct position. He’d burn through a lot of fuel doing it this way, which made the margins for landing uncomfortably close, but he’d get us down.
Mikey said, “After yaw around, angles: S band pitch, minus 9, yaw plus 18.”
“Copy. Looking good.”
I let out a little breath in relief, but just a little.
“Beta ARM. Altitudes are a little high.” Mikey sounded as if this weren’t any more exciting than a Methodist mumble. “I’m getting a little fluctuation in the AC voltage now.”
“Roger.”
“Might be our meter?”
That would be an easy way to crash a rocket. You wouldn’t even have to damage an engine, just cause the instrumentation to fail. But that was okay, we’d trained to fly with visual only. They knew how to do this.
Helen confirmed. “Stand by … Our position checks downrange show us to be a little long.”
“Compensating.” A moment after Curt spoke, a quick burn kicked our seats against us and stopped.
“Good.” Now I could hear the relief in Mikey’s voice. “We got good lock-on. Altitude lights OUT. DELTA-H is minus 2 900.”
“Artemis Base, are you looking at our DELTA-H?”
“TLS-1093, that’s affirmative. It’s looking good to us.”
Helen said, “6 plus 25, throttle down—”
“Roger. Copy. 6 plus 25.”
I looked down, surreptitiously checking my Omega watch strapped to the outside of my suit. Imelda caught the motion and raised her brows in question. I shook my head at first, then turned off my mic and leaned over to press my helmet against hers. “Tracking the burns. They’re doing great.”
Right on time, we lurched forward as Curt throttled down. We yawed a little, but it felt as if the course held mostly steady.
Mikey said, “AGS and PGNCS look real close.”
“Manual attitude control is good. That thruster came back online.”
No. No. No … don’t trust it. Intermittent engine failure. Sure, maybe that thruster was back online for good or maybe it was going to fail again. I curled my fists inside my gloves and only a good manicure kept me from digging through the tips.
“Six hundred meters. Six hundred meters. Into the AGS, forty-seven degrees.” As Mikey spoke, I turned to look out the starboard window.
The horizon of the Moon filled the starboard side. I reached across the aisle and nudged Aahana. She jumped at my touch. I pointed toward the window and her mouth rounded in astonishment.
“35 degrees. 35 degrees. 230. Coming down to 7.”
The stark beautiful craters and shadows scrolled past. Scale was impossible to tell without an atmosphere to soften the distance. In photos, the Moon always looks gray, but the color fluctuates to include tans and bright whites depending on where you look.
“165 meters, down at—9. Down at 5.”
In the distance, Brannen Crater rolled into view. In the shadow of its rim, an artificial light shone with the presence of humanity—the entry dome at the Marius Hills outpost, where they were building a massive habitat inside a forty-kilometer lava tube.
“We’re pegged on horizontal velocity. 91 meters, down 1.06, 14 forward.”
We were coming in a little fast for my taste, but still within parameters.
“On 1 a minute, .45 down.”
Beyond the windows, our shadow came into view, fluttering over the rocky surface. People gasped in unison, as if we had rehearsed it. Honestly, it didn’t matter how many times I flew home, that first view of shadow made my chest loosen in wonder.
“15.25, down at .76, 6 forward.”
I lifted my arm to point as the first dome of the Artemis Base slid into view, glowing with life on the surface of the Moon. Aahana was already leaning forward against her restraints to see.
The ship kicked sideways, snapping my arm against the side of my seat. We changed vectors again, restraints gouging into my chest so hard it knocked the breath out of me. I wheezed, staring out the window as dust billowed past it.
The ship slammed down. Even through my helmet, metal groaned as the entire ship torqued way out of specifications. Bundles and CPK bags tumbled past in an avalanche accompanied by disembodied yelps of pain. Over it all was the persistent blare of the decompression alarm.
We stopped moving. One-sixth gravity settled us in our couches. “T-touchdown.” Curt swallowed audibly on the microphone. “We have touchdown.”
The depress alarm still sounded. We were in our pressure suits for exactly this reason. It would be all right. We would need to evacuate. Normally, I wouldn’t worry about my luggage, but I had a package to deliver and—
It was gone.
My entire CPK bag was missing. It must have been jarred loose on impact, taking the package of codebooks with it. Well, shit. I shook my head inside my helmet. Worry about that later. Get everyone off the ship first.
Someone was trying not to cry, a disembodied breath catching and failing to stay silent.
My arm ached like fire, but I dragged in breath, trying to project calm. “It’s okay, people. That was rough, but we’re down. Just stay put while they shut down the—”
The rocket lurched violently.
Adrenaline flooded my system. We were down, so why were we still moving? I looked out the window and the horizon tipped sideways. With a scream of metal I could feel through my seat and hear in my teeth, the entire vehicle slowly, slowly canted sideways. In one-sixth gravity, there’s a lot of time to fall.
FIFTEEN
DEATH TOLL REPORTED AT 2,300 AS PAKISTANI FLOODING SPREADS
Special to The National Times
KARACHI, Pakistan, April 13, 1963—The death toll in the Pakistani floods was reported today to be more than 2,300 as the swollen Indus River coursed southward through heavily populated districts. More than 15 million people have been made homeless since the river waters started overflowing their banks in Punjab and Sind Provinces two weeks ago after unseasonably heavy rains. Climatologists warn that more such flooding can be expected due to post-Meteor changes in weather patterns.
We fell ten degrees off vertical and jarred to a halt. Metal ground and we dropped again. Fifteen degrees.
Despite hours spent in sims, I tensed and grabbed for my chair arms, making the pain in my left wrist flare. Everyone was breathing heavily, including me. The oxygen dried my tongue. One-sixth g, after three days without gravity, felt more significant than it had any right to.
The ship swayed, pulsing as if a strong wind were buffeting it. Or as if someone were using reaction thrusters to keep it upright.
“Everyone stay put.” Eugene’s voice cut through the chaos of breath, sounding stronger over the comm than it had for the past two days. He wasn’t piloting the ship, but he was still the mission commander. “Keep the comm lines clear. Frye, give me the command module status report.”
The pause while we waited for Curt’s response almost killed me. The ship kept settling, then rocking back up to vertical. But he answered as calmly as if this were a sim. “We’ve lost a landing strut and I’m compensating with thrusters.”
Mikey took over the report, leaving Curt to concentrate on keeping us upright. “CM pressure reads good … We’ve got a dP/DT alarm in the passenger compartment. Evaluating the loss of pressure rate.”
“Frye, vent the main tanks.” Eugene loosened his shoulder straps. “Do not vent the ATC tanks.”
“Copy.”
When the ship fell the rest of the way over, it would be subjected to lateral stress far outside its design parameters. We would almost certainly rupture the main fuel tanks, which would, in the words of our SimSup back in training, lead to “a bad day
.”
On the starboard side of the ship, Aerozine vented in a plume, freezing instantly as the toxic chemical spewed across the lunar landscape. On the port side, out of my line of sight, the oxidizer would be creating another plume counterbalancing the thrust generated from venting.
That solved one problem. It left another. An experienced pilot could use the thrusters in the nose to keep the ship upright. But with a broken landing strut? When the thruster tanks emptied, the ship would fall over. Someone was going to have to stay aboard and keep it vertical until everyone was off.
“All crew, prep for emergency egress, but stay in your seats.” Eugene reached for the emergency oxygen supply canister stowed beneath his seat. “Helen, patch me into the Big Loop with LGC.”
Of course, Lunar Ground Control wouldn’t be able to hear him from the passenger module.
“Copy. Stand by.” Helen’s voice was as cool as ice.
While we waited, the rattle of breaths started to drop away as the act of prepping for egress focused people and they stopped accidentally triggering their VOX. Or maybe they were like me, filled with adrenaline that had nowhere to go and working very hard on breathing with a closed mouth in order to keep comms clear.
I turned the rotary buckle on my seat restraint and started to work my left shoulder free. The strap caught on my wrist and sent a jolt up through my elbow, directly into my brain.
Tears flooded my eyes. I couldn’t breathe for a moment.
Goddammit. If I had sprained my wrist by pointing like a rookie during landing, I was going to be so pissed. Trying not to flex the wrist, I drew it through with only the throbbing it had been doing since I’d hit it. So foolish.
I almost jumped when Helen cut back in. “LGC, lunar shuttle, Mission Commander Eugene Lindholm is on comm. Go ahead.”
“LGC, Lindholm. Can you get the gantry to us in this position?”
The comms went dead silent as if we had all simultaneously held our breath.
On Earth, we had to land kilometers from Ground Control, to keep the soundwaves from shredding people. In a vacuum, you didn’t have to worry about soundwaves or a transfer of heat, so on the Moon, we touched down by the base.
“Negative.”
Without the gantry … the egress from the shuttle was nearly five stories off the ground.
“Understood. Can you get someone to us with rovers? I’m calling Hatch Jettison Mode V Slide egress.”
Mode V meant we’d be dropping down a five-story inflatable tube threaded with a constant rate rappel line to control our fall. In training, it’s actually fun. On Earth. From a stationary space vehicle mockup.
I reached forward and grabbed the egress cue card from the seatback. Yes, I had trained colonists on how to egress, but cue cards keep you from making mistakes in the moment.
Beneath the lunar surface, dozens of men and women would be scrambling to get us to safety. Back on Earth, after a 1.3-second delay, the entirety of the IAC would be mobilizing to ready to work unexpected problems.
And in his office, my husband would be listening to the squawk box. His team would be setting up their own battle stations, ready with talking points and press releases. I wanted to speak, to let him know that I was all right, and I bit down hard on my tongue.
Instead, I slapped the emergency egress card onto my wrist Velcro. My fingers were clumsy as my gloves stiffened as the cabin pressure bled into vacuum. The suit pressurized to compensate, tightening around my sore arm with painful insistency. That was going to be a helluva bruise.
“Lindholm, a mining team is going out the Dewey dome airlock and will drive around to meet your people. The backroom would like to know how much propellant remains in the thrusters?”
Helen answered, “At current use, we have fifteen minutes of thrust.”
Out of habit, I glanced at my watch and marked the time. For the astronauts, that was plenty. We’d done multiple sims, rappelling down the sides of various classes of ships. We could do an evac in 6.5 minutes.
Our colonists had taken one three-hour class.
“Copy.” Deana didn’t sign off, so the LGC was still listening to everything in the ship.
“All right. Mode V. Mode V. Mode V. Curt, I’m coming up to take control.”
Across the aisle, Myrtle reached for Eugene, as if she could stop him, but drew her hand back without completing the gesture.
The price she paid for being in the astronaut corps with her husband was being willing to accept that he would be on the rocket when it fell over. This wasn’t just about the captain going down with the ship. Eugene was the more experienced pilot in vacuum. The ship would still sway, but the oscillation would be minimal compared to the ride Curt was giving us. None of his instincts had been built in vacuum.
Above me, Eugene was attaching his emergency oxygen supply. “Myrtle, position 1 for hatch jettison. Carmouche, position 2 for slide deployment. Wargin. Position 3 for Sky Genie distribution. All crew, prep for hard vacuum. Do not unplug from the ship’s hardline communications until calle—” His comm cut off. Eugene’s head and shoulders twisted to the side. Ana Teresa put a hand on his back to steady him.
The ship swayed with each pulse of the thruster while Curt fought gravity.
Myrtle dropped down the ladder, heading to the hatch at the base of the passenger compartment. Above us, Helen emerged from the command module. She put her feet on either side of the ladder and slid down it like a double fire pole.
I grabbed my emergency oxygen supply canister with my good hand. My left hurt with a cold, bone-deep ache like ice distorting my arm, but I didn’t have time to baby it. I’d been forced to use my right back in finishing school and it would have to suffice.
“Pyro safing pin removed.” Below us, Myrtle was standing at the airlock, tethered to the top handrail. “Hatch jettison on three. One. Two. Three.” The thump of the pyro bolts firing resonated through the frame of the ship, not quite to the level of sound in the airless cabin. “Hatch clear.”
At the new angle of his body, I could just see Eugene raise his hand to his chest and toggle his mic on. He’d been using manual control of his microphone and not VOX this whole time, to keep the voice activation from being triggered when he retched. When he spoke, his voice sounded strained. “Wargin … Can you take the controls?”
He hadn’t issued it as a command, because he wasn’t just asking me to keep the ship vertical. He was asking me to ride it down when it fell. And he was asking, because if he threw up while trying to keep the ship upright, it would be a Bad Day.
“Yes. Absolutely.” Kenneth would be listening to this. “Who knows, maybe I can lay the ship down on its side.”
“Aft and forward hinge pip pins removed.” At position 2, Helen worked, connected to the ship by the emergency umbilicals beside the airlock. “Slide assembly locked, black on black. Standby inflation.”
Helen pulled the inflation lanyard. Nothing happened. She braced with one hand against the ship and pulled again in a motion like a gardener trying to start a lawn mower.
Was there anything I could do to help her? No. And focusing on things I couldn’t affect could cause me to miss something important on the tasks I was assigned. Tethering the bottled O2 to my suit, I pulled the “green apple” to activate it. As soon as I had green on the oxygen indicator, I disconnected my suit from the ship. Without hardline communications, the ship was eerily silent. Only the sound of my own breath and the fans were audible.
I swung my legs out of my couch and grabbed for the ladder. The angle was tilting off-true, and with pressurized gloves, it was going to be an unpleasant climb. I tightened my left hand on the rail and pulled up.
Inside my arm, alarms went bright red, full alert. Failure state.
I gasped and closed my eyes. This wasn’t a sprain. My arm was broken.
There were not enough curses in the world for this. Even if I wanted to endanger my crewmates by hiding a serious injury, my left arm wouldn’t support my weight for the climb
up to the CM. I crawled back into my couch and plugged into the comms.
“—lide is no Go. The argon tank is drained. From impact?”
“Copy. Switch to Mode V.a. Free rappel.”
On the comm, someone moaned, and I couldn’t blame them. We had trained to keep the rocket vertical with manual inputs. We had trained to egress via a rappel line without the slide. We had trained to have a depress. But this was a lot of failures deep …
And the situation was worse.
“Lindholm, Wargin.” Theoretically, I could pilot, but we didn’t have time to figure out how to get me there. “We have a problem. I think I broke my left arm in the landing.”
“Copy.” He might as well have cursed. In the sound of breath and fans, I could feel him evaluating the other astronaut-pilots on the ship. Myrtle. Helen. Curt. Mikey. The women flew in vacuum but not with this ship. The men knew the rocket, but not vacuum. That left himself. Any wiggle had the potential to slam the person on the rappel line into the side of the ship. “I’ll take the controls.”
On the comms, someone made a sharp intake of breath. No one spoke, but I was willing to lay money on that being Myrtle.
“Frye and Lin, prep for handover and then assist Carmouche at position 2. Myrtle, you’re first down the line to stabilize it. Ana Teresa, assist Wargin with her injury.”
Eugene unplugged and climbed to the CM.
In sims, I’d played the injured crew member more than once to give my crewmates a sense of what it would be like to have to evacuate someone who was incapacitated. I’d be sent down as the first of the astronauts after the colonists. The best thing I could do was to stay out of the way until they were ready for me. I wasn’t going to be moving fast.
Unseen, in the CM above us, Eugene said, “I have the controls.”
Curt’s liturgical response followed. “You have the controls.”
In their spacesuits, my crewmates were distinguishable only by general body type and quality of movement. It was obvious when Curt and Mikey came down the ladder from the CM, because they moved with a surety that the colonists lacked.
Except for the ones who had been up before, like Faustino or Rose Barlow, the colonists had experienced a pressurized IVP suit only once, in a vacuum chamber on Earth.
The Relentless Moon Page 14
