2016 Young Explorer's Adventure Guide

by Maggie Allen

  One of the big highlights of Lunar Camp was a day trip to the Apollo 11 landing site. It was now under a protective bubble, attached to a rather large visitor complex, within which one could walk around. The trip was a big deal because for the first time during their stay, the students would wear space suits and travel in small lunar buggies. This first excursion was to teach the campers about lunar history, but it was also an introduction to the fieldwork they would be doing later during their stay at Lunar Camp. Though larger pressurized transports could take you lots of places on the Moon, there were places where smaller vehicles were more practical.

  Bee shivered with excitement as she and the others in her group were coached on how to properly don their space suits. She’d never been out on the lunar surface with only a pressure suit to protect her from the harsh lunar environment before. And she would get to see the spot where humans first touched down on another world. Even Bee couldn’t be cynical about that.

  Both counselors inspected the pressurized seals at the neck and wrists of every camper’s suit before lunar buggy assignments were given out. Unsurprisingly, Bee was with Mike and Etienne. She was sure Mike had asked Etienne specifically if they could ride together, probably so they could talk about some sort of geologic minutia. But even the prospect of having to listen to several hours of that couldn’t dim Bee’s excitement.

  Bee gripped the handles on the passenger seat of the buggy as they bumped over the rough lunar terrain. Though she was safely belted in, and years of buggies journeying from Lunar Camp to the Apollo 11 site had worn a wide swath through the lunar dust, the whole thing still felt precarious. Mike reached up from the back seat to poke her in an attempt to gauge her reaction. She twisted her head as far as the helmet would allow and gave him a big thumbs-up. Satisfied that she was enjoying herself, he relaxed back into his seat and engaged Etienne in a steady stream of chatter over the radio intercom.

  The Apollo 11 complex rose out of the lunar horizon far faster than it would have on Earth, which Bee found faintly disorienting. A large building with a visible airlock held the museum and learning center and attached to it was a clear walkway that connected to the protective bubble over the site where people first landed on the Moon. Though anything historic within the bubble was safely covered with a protective surface or roped off, because the dome over the landing site was clear, one had the illusion, or rather the full experience, of seeing the Moon as the original astronauts might have done all those years ago.

  It took what felt like ages to Bee for everyone to go through the airlock, park their vehicles, and doff their suits. But finally, the campers were free to explore. Bee headed off alone wanting some time to herself; something she hadn’t had much of since she’d been at camp. She made her way to the remains of Apollo 11 and stood in front of it, taking it in.

  There was the half of the landing module that had been left behind. And there was the American flag, wired to look like it was waving in the wind even on the airless surface of the Moon. Though now, of course, because it was under a dome that contained a breathable environment, it looked even more stiff and unnatural. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s backpacks, along with other mementos they’d left behind, including a tiny gold olive branch pin, were preserved in the lunar dirt where they’d been carefully placed hundreds of years ago.

  What those men had done was what she wanted to do. To land on a strange new world and see things that had never before been seen with human eyes. They had landed on what was essentially a barren wasteland. But if Bee closed her eyes, she could picture stepping out onto a planet covered with strange and wonderful new vegetation for her to study. Someday.

  “Hey, what’s that?” Mike pointed toward the bottom of the large groove, or rille, that ran parallel to the track they were using to return to Lunar Camp. The channel beside them wasn’t especially deep; it sloped fairly gently off to their right.

  “What’s what?” Etienne asked glancing over to the right, trying to see what Mike was pointing at. He pulled the rover over and paused so they could gaze down into the rille.

  “I saw a patch of rock that looks a lot like the one where I found those KREEP rocks at home. Right over there.” Mike pointed.

  “KREEP?” asked Bee before she could stop herself. It was going to be a long drive back. She might as well participate in the conversation.

  “Yeah, KREEP. It’s an acronym for potassium, rare earth elements, and phosphorus. Don’t you pay any attention in lunar mineralogy?” Mike asked.

  Bee couldn’t see him, but she was sure he was rolling his eyes at her in exasperation. Her lack of an immediate response made Mike and Etienne both break out in laughter.

  “Ah, the silence of the guilty,” Etienne chuckled.

  Mike gave her a poke in the shoulder. “The K in KREEP is because the atomic symbol for potassium…”

  “Is K, I know. I’m not totally ignorant,” she said in a slightly haughty tone, which made Etienne laugh again. Bee glared at him through her helmet faceplate.

  “It’s okay, Iowa, I know you’re a science whiz. But you should really consider the fact that you could learn something from all these lunar science classes you’re being forced to take. Something you can apply to your study of plants.”

  “Like what?” Bee asked stiffly. She wasn’t quite ready to unbend yet.

  “Like—”

  “Hey guys, I really think they are the same type of rocks,” Mike excitedly broke in. He was leaning as far out of the buggy as his restraints would let him. “I used the magnification function on my suit and it’s a really similar outcropping. Do you think we could go take a look?”

  Etienne examined the rille. “Sure, it’s not too steep here, I don’t think it would be a problem. But this rille has probably been combed over by other campers lots of times before. Do you really think it’s like the one at home?”

  “The rocks look pretty dusted over. I don’t think they’ve been disturbed by humans. Please Etienne? This could be a big deal.”

  “Why is it such a big deal?” Bee asked.

  “Usually KREEP rocks are only found in the Ocean of Storms and Sea of Rains. Plato isn’t too far north of the Sea of Rains,” Etienne explained. “So the rocks Mike found at home aren’t so unusual. But finding similar rocks here in the Sea of Tranquility would be. So, let’s take a closer look.”

  Etienne radioed Merja to tell her what they were doing and also followed protocol by radioing their location and their delay back to the camp itself. Then he pressed a key on the rover dashboard and pulled up the specs on the store of extra oxygen canisters on board. After he’d verified that their supply was adequate, he had Mike and Bee check the levels of the cans they were wearing.

  “Looks like everything checks out. Let’s go!” With that, Etienne turned the buggy down toward the rille and gently accelerated. They picked up speed and neatly glided down the slope. Mike directed them toward the outcropping he’d spotted. Etienne stopped the buggy nearby and all three of them got out to take a closer look.

  Mike crouched gingerly, his suit making him appear stiff as an old man. He gently brushed the dust off the dark gray rocks with a gloved hand, careful not to snag his suit or damage the rocks.

  “Looks like mostly basalts. Pretty typical for this area.” Etienne commented.

  “Yes, but look!” Mike bounced a few steps over. He bent over and picked up a rock that to Bee’s eyes looked exactly the same, though perhaps lighter in color. “Breccia.”

  “Yep. Looks like. KREEP can be in either basalt or breccia. Why don’t we take a bunch of samples back? Maybe we can try to date them and figure out if these samples are unusual for this region. Hey, Iowa, can you grab the sample-taking equipment from the buggy?”

  “Sure.” Rolling her eyes a bit at the use of her nickname, Bee hopped her way over to the buggy and pulled a grappling stick and some sample bags from the compartment that Etienne had indicated. As light as the items were, they set her slightly off balance and s
he found herself banging backwards into the buggy, ending up sitting down on the lunar surface.

  “You okay, Iowa?” Etienne called out.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. That might have actually hurt on Earth.” In the Moon’s one sixth gravity though, the fall had been almost gentle. She pulled herself up and grabbed the equipment again and hopped back over to where Mike and Etienne were standing.

  “Turn around and let me check out your suit.” Etienne said.

  “I’m really fine,” she said, her pride slightly wounded even though no one had laughed at her. She knew falls weren’t uncommon when you weren’t totally used to the local gravity or wearing a bulky suit. But Bee dutifully let him examine her suit for tears. He tapped on her oxygen tank. “Can you check your display again?”

  Bee tapped a few buttons. “It’s fine. At sixty-five percent.”

  Etienne frowned at that. “Hmm. That’s a little low, but still within parameters. Keep an eye on it for me and tell me what it says in five minutes.”

  “Okay.”

  Assured that she was all right, Etienne shifted his attention back to Mike, who was cramming as many rocks as he could into the sample bags.

  “Whoa, I think we have enough, kid!”

  Etienne grabbed the fullest bag from Mike. When Mike bent to lift the others, Bee caught Etienne shaking his head slightly in amusement. She couldn’t help but smile too, as she remembered the giant duffle of rocks with which Mike had come to Lunar Camp.

  Mike hopped happily back to the rover, the other two bags of rocks clutched in his arms. He moved as easily as you might expect from someone who had been born on the Moon.

  After the rocks were loaded, Bee, Etienne and Mike strapped themselves back into the buggy.

  “Oxygen level report, Iowa?”

  “Fifty-five percent.”

  “Did you say fifty-five percent?” he asked, his voice a little sharper than before. “Are you sure?” Etienne leaned over so he could see her sensor results for himself.

  “Is it okay?” Bee asked, realizing that Etienne seemed to be worried about her oxygen levels.

  “It’s fine.” Etienne reassuringly smiled at her. “Please keep an eye on it and let me know if it goes down again. We can swap it out with one of the spares. That’s why we have them.”

  Etienne headed the rover back up the rille. It slipped and slid a little in the lunar dust as it made its way up the side, but they were soon back on the track to Lunar Camp. Bee couldn’t help but notice that Etienne was pushing the buggy faster than he had on the way out.

  She looked down. Her oxygen was down by another couple of percent. Probably nothing to worry about. Fifty percent of a can of oxygen should last her six hours. That was more than enough, even if it went down faster than it should. She closed the sensor results and resolved not to look at it for a little while.

  Watching the scenery go by, Bee also couldn’t help but notice that they were totally alone. All the other campers and counselors were far ahead of them. She shivered slightly, this time not out of excitement, but at the realization of how isolated they were here. They were a few hours from Lunar Camp by buggy. A faster transport might be able to come and meet them, but it would take a while to reach them. Still, Etienne said it would be fine, so she was sure it would be fine. Bee sneaked a look down at her oxygen sensor and then gasped. Two percent. How could it be so low already?

  “Etienne?”

  “Iowa?”

  “It’s down to two percent.”

  Immediately, he pulled the vehicle over and hopped out.

  “Don’t worry, Iowa, we’re going to fix this.” Grabbing a bottle of oxygen from the storage compartment, he instructed her to unbuckle her safety harness and turn around so he could access the back of her suit. She could feel him pushing buttons and imagined what he was doing. First, he’d have to make sure the oxygen reservoir was filled, and then he’d have to remove the old can. Click. That was the new can going in.

  Etienne hopped back in and she refastened her seatbelt.

  “That bottle of O2 was probably just faulty. But just keep an eye on it and keep reporting the numbers to me if they drop, okay?”

  Etienne clicked his radio connection on. “Lunar Camp, this is Etienne Cooper on Rover 5. We have a potential emergency.”

  Bee watched Etienne’s face closely as he calmly explained the situation. She didn’t know how he could sound so cool and collected. Did things like this go wrong on the Moon often, so he was just used to it? She wasn’t sure she could ever get used to this. If she explored other planets someday, they would have to be ones with air.

  “We copy. An emergency vehicle is being dispatched now,” came the immediate reply from Lunar Camp. “We will supply an updated ETA when we get closer to your location. Just keep your vehicle on the track back to Camp.”

  “Roger.” Etienne clicked the radio off and looked over at Bee. “It’s probably unnecessary, but better safe than sorry, okay?”

  “Okay.” Bee knew he was trying to be reassuring, but she still felt miserable. Her excitement at being out on the lunar surface was definitely gone. All she wanted now was to be on Earth and to feel the rich, wet soil between her toes. Everything here was dust. There was nothing alive out here. Not like at home. Bee forced herself to stop imagining her farm. Tears were starting to well up in her eyes and she had no way to reach them to wipe them away.

  The lunar scenery was whizzing by. Bee could tell Etienne was going as fast as he could, which worried her. She had a new can of oxygen, but clearly he was still concerned if there was an emergency vehicle meeting them and he was still pushing the buggy so fast.

  Bee sneaked a look down at her oxygen sensor. “It’s at eighty percent.”

  Etienne cursed and then winced. “Sorry.”

  He pulled the buggy over again and this time had Bee get out so he could inspect her suit. Bee could sense he didn’t want to waste time, but he did a quick and thorough inspection anyway.

  “I don’t see any obvious leaks. It might be a problem in the mechanics of the suit. It’s draining the oxygen too fast or something. I’ve never seen this happen before.” He sighed and moved his hand up as if to run it through his hair and then dropped it again when he realized the helmet was in his way. “All right, everyone back in.”

  As soon as they were all secured, Etienne gripped the steering wheel and floored it. “Keep reporting the numbers to me, Iowa,” he said grimly. “Just stay calm and breathe as slowly and normally as you can.”

  Twice more they stopped so Etienne could change Bee’s oxygen canisters, though each time they waited until nearly every possible breath was used up. After the final spare started reading frighteningly low, Etienne radioed Lunar Camp for the position of the emergency vehicle.

  “We have you on the GPS; we are approximately twenty minutes from you if we both drive at maximum speed,” a female voice replied.

  “Roger. Copy. We are currently driving at max speed.” Etienne clicked off the intercom and glanced at Mike and Bee. “Okay, kids, here’s what we’re going to do. And we need to do it quickly. I’m going to stop again. Mike, I need you to hop out too this time. You know how to change oxygen canisters on a suit?”

  “Of course. I’ve lived here my whole life.”

  “Great. When we stop, I want you to make sure that both my and Iowa’s O2 reservoirs are filled and then I want you to swap our cans.”

  “But—” Bee started to protest.

  “It’s fine, Iowa. Let me worry about it, okay?”

  “Okay.” Bee didn’t know what else to do but agree.

  “Report?”

  “Three percent.” It was hard for Bee to keep the fear out of her voice. She was scared for herself and she was scared for Etienne. And she felt guilty. He was putting her life before his. She wasn’t sure she deserved it, with how she’d acted toward him all summer. All because of a stupid nickname that seemed very unimportant right now.

  “Okay, let’s do this.” Etien
ne said, forced cheer in his voice. “Oh, and Mike? I assume you already know how to drive one of these things?”

  “Yep.” Mike eyes were huge as he answered.

  “Then I’m going to have you take over the wheel so I can focus on conserving oxygen.”

  “No problem.”

  “One more thing, Mike.”

  “Yeah?”

  “We need to go as fast as we can. Which means we need to lighten up the buggy.”

  “The rocks?”

  “Yeah. We’ll come back for them, I promise.”

  “That’s okay. It’s more important that…” he paused, clearly not wanting to finish his thought. Bee knew if Mike was willing to chuck his precious rocks without a protest that the situation really was serious. That plus the fact that the lunar native was scared was perhaps more unnerving than anything else.

  “It’s all right, Mike. We’re all going to be fine.” Etienne reassured him. “I’m going to pull over now. Let’s make this quick.”

  Etienne pulled over and everyone jumped out. Mike threw the bags of rocks and the other field equipment out and then bounced as fast as he could to where Etienne and Bee were standing. In just a few minutes, he had their oxygen cans swapped. The three of them got back in the vehicle, this time with Mike in the driver’s seat. After a slight adjustment to compensate for his lack of height, they were off again.

  “Mike, I want you to keep in radio contact with the rescue vehicle. Iowa and I are going to stop talking to save as much oxygen as we can and keep our breathing nice and shallow.” He reached forward and gave Bee’s shoulder what seemed meant as a reassuring tap. “And when we get back, Iowa, I’ll finish what I was going to tell you before. About how the Moon can help you to learn more about plants. That’s a promise.”

  Bee turned as far as she could in her suit to look at him, and though he was putting up a good front, she could tell there was worry in his eyes. “Okay.”

  “Just okay? Not going to argue about how pointless the Moon is? Or to tell me to just call you Bee?”