Voyage n-1

by Stephen Baxter

  Mike sat in the Trench, the row in front of her, a little to her left. He was hunched over his console, his posture redolent of tension, his hair loose and greasy at his neck. He was bent in some huddled discussion with a colleague from Marshall.

  She remembered all her old doubts about Mike’s temperament — whether he was suited to high-pressure situations like this, involving erratic boosters and manned spacecraft and rapidly unraveling missions…

  She had an impulse to reach out and touch him, to try to reassure or calm him. But she knew that her intrusion wouldn’t be welcomed. Mike was off on some trajectory of his own, as out of her control as had been the Saturn/NERVA stack, guiding itself into space.

  Anyhow, she ought to be concentrating on herself. This assignment was a big moment for her. York was an ascan no more. She was officially on the flight roster, and this capcom posting was her first operational duty: quite a vote of confidence.

  It was much more difficult than she’d expected. The capcom was the only person allowed to speak to the crew. She was the funnel for inputs from all around the MOCR, and beyond; she had to be alert, to think constantly, to filter and integrate all the information she received. Nobody was writing her a script; she had to figure it for herself, in real time.

  So far, she reckoned, she was doing fine. But nobody was noticing her, one way or the other. They wouldn’t until she screwed up.

  I just hope you make the right choices today, Mike. For Christ’s sake, it’s Ben up there…

  Jones and Priest drifted down to sleeping compartments in the equipment bay. Each of them was actually just a six-foot-long shelf with a foot of clearance, big enough to take a body-sized mesh hammock.

  Dana strapped himself into the left couch, in front of the control panel. He knew that being in the couch he’d drawn the most comfortable sleeping berth. But as Command Module Pilot, Dana had to keep his headset on during the night, in case the crew had to be woken by Houston. And even if Houston restricted their chatter, there was always a dull roar of static, which wasn’t going to help him sleep.

  None of that mattered.

  My first night in space. All around him the cabin of the Command Module hummed and glowed, gray and green and warm, a small boy’s dream of the perfect den. A loose page from a checklist came drifting over his head, on some random air current; when he blew toward it, the page crumpled a little and drifted away.

  He turned to the window. Apollo-N was flying over a mountain range. He could see the wrinkles in the land, as if the world were some huge, sculptured toy beneath him; thick clouds lapped against one side of the range, like a turbulent fluid.

  He felt detached from the frustrations and complexities of his life below: the routine, the time-eating training, the press stuff he hated so much, the endless waiting he’d had to endure for this, his first flight. All of the problems seemed flattened, two-dimensional, like the surface of the Earth, and he felt a warm love reach out from him to envelop Mary and the kids, his parents, the whole of the glowing planet of his birth.

  Christ, it’s true. I was born to be up here. None of the rest of it — the engineering, the science, even the prospect of going to Mars — none of it counts, compared to this moment.

  I never want to go back down.

  They’d checked out everything they could, and all the telemetry looked good, and the inertial table was lined up, and the subsystems checked out, and all the backroom guys and the engineers and the contractors with their test rigs were saying, yes, we know what went wrong; and no, we’re confident this mission is going to throw you no more curve balls.

  I’ll tell you how we can achieve zero risk, Donnelly thought. We won’t fly.

  Donnelly stood up and turned to face Bert Seger, who stood behind him in Management Row.

  “Bert, I’m going to recommend we proceed with the mission. All the parameters have fallen into line.”

  Seger, hollow-eyed with jet lag, just nodded.

  It was 4 A.M. The decision was obvious.

  Donnelly sat down. He’d been resting his hands on sheets of his flight plans; when he lifted his hands he found he’d left behind two perfect, wet images of his palms.

  Monday, December 1, 1980

  MOONLAB

  Adam Bleeker was the first of the Moonlab crew to eyeball the approaching Soyuz. “Hey, Phil, Joe. Come see.”

  Stone drifted down to the wardroom’s big picture window.

  Soyuz T-3 was silhouetted sideways-on against the pale brown Moon, which slid liquidly past.

  Soyuz was shaped, Stone supposed, something like a green pepper shaker, a cylinder topped by a squat dome. The cylindrical body was the Instrument-Assembly Module, containing electrical, environmental, propulsion systems. Two matte black solar panels jutted from the flanks of the instrument module, like unfolded wings. A parabolic antenna was held away from the ship, on a light gantry. Stone was able to make out the flat base of the craft; there was a toroidal propellant tank fixed there, surrounding small engine bells. The dome at the top of the pepper shaker was the Descent Module: living quarters for the cosmonauts, and the cabin that would carry them through reentry into Earth’s atmosphere. For Earth-orbit missions the Descent Module would have been capped, Stone knew, by a large, egg-shaped Orbital Module, a work and living area.

  The body of the ship was a light blue-green, an oddly Earthlike color set against the bleak uniformity of the Moon.

  Soyuz looked, frankly, like a piece of shit to Stone. The solar cells were big black squares, crudely tiled onto the panels, and thick wires ran along the edges of the panels; Stone could see fist-sized big blobs of solder where some greasy technician had finished his job crudely.

  The engineering was agricultural. The approaching Soyuz was like something out of a parallel universe, he thought.

  The crew pulled away from the window; there was still work to do before the Soviets arrived.

  Stone went up through the hole in the open mesh floor and climbed the fireman’s pole to the Multiple Docking Adapter at the far end of the hydrogen tank, the main experiment chamber. The adapter had three clusters hanging from its ports. There was the Apollo, which had brought the crew up from Earth, known as Grissom to thousands of schoolkids. Grissom had actually been adapted to carry five men home if need be, with two additional couches stowed in the Command Module’s lower equipment bay. Then there was the Telescope Mount, a small lab module with four wide solar arrays and a battery of science experiments and sensors. The mount had been adapted by Grumman engineers from a leftover LM ascent stage; in a different reality, that LM would have carried the astronauts of Apollo 16 up from the lunar surface.

  The third component fixed to the adapter was a short, squat cylinder called the Soyuz Docking Module, an interface between the incompatible atmospheres and docking kits of Soyuz and Apollo. Viktorenko and Solovyov were going to have to dock with this module, and use it as a kind of airlock to get into Moonlab.

  Stone began putting the docking module through a final checkout. As such assignments went, it wasn’t too frustrating. At least the module was a new piece of kit. People had lived and worked in the rest of Moonlab for the past five years, and it showed.

  When he’d finished, Stone drifted back down to the wardroom. His next job was to run a visual sextant check of the Soviets’ position.

  As he made his observations, Soyuz maneuvered away from the backdrop of the Moon and floated against the stars.

  “Moonlab, this is Komarov. Moonlab—”

  Muldoon replied for Moonlab. “We hear you, Komarov. The VHF link is working fine.” Viktorenko, on Soyuz, had used English; Muldoon replied in halting Russian.

  Muldoon went through a four-way conversation between Moonlab, Soyuz, and the two ground control stations at Houston and Kaliningrad, testing out links and confirming system status.

  Soyuz wheeled around so that it faced Moonlab. “Moonlab, Komarov. We are ready for the final docking maneuver. I will turn on my beacon.”

 
A light began to flash on the spine of Soyuz, easily visible through the picture window.

  “I see you, Komarov.”

  “And I you, Joe. Your elegant Moonlab is difficult to miss. We have our space suits on, all ready for docking. And our bow ties on top, for we are ready for a fine dinner with you.”

  Houston and Kaliningrad both called up “go” for the docking. Soyuz spun slowly on its long axis, rolling through sixty degrees to align correctly with the docking module. The solar arrays made Soyuz look almost birdlike, swooping around the Moon like some unlikely metal swallow.

  Soyuz came in slowly and hesitantly, with many small attitude and angle corrections. At one point the ship even backed off from Moonlab. The Moonlab crew and Houston kept quiet; Stone listened to the soft, tense, dialogue in Russian between Komarov and Kaliningrad.

  Komarov was evidently a pig to fly. Soyuz was a flexible ferry craft, but it was essentially a contemporary of the American Gemini, lacking much of the sophistication and power of Apollo. There was a real lack of precise attitude control and translation instruments, with most of the operations conducted by preprogrammed mission event sequencers.

  In fact, the poor maneuverability of Soyuz had caused some friction during the planning stages of this joint flight. Some on the U.S. side had suggested, half-seriously, that Soyuz should be the “passive” partner — that Apollo should haul the bulk of Moonlab into the docking with the tiny Soyuz…

  Anyhow it looked as if Soyuz was coming in on its final approach. As it neared, bristling with detail, Komarov arced up and out of Stone’s view, and he heard Muldoon calling out in Russian.

  “Five yards… three yards… one…”

  There was a soft clang, a rattle of docking latches.

  “Well-done, Vlad,” Muldoon called. “Good show, tovarich. You came in at just a foot per second.”

  “Indeed. Now Apollo and Soyuz are shaking hands, here in the shadow of the Moon. Yes?”

  The cosmonauts moved into the small docking module and sealed it up. They had to sit out there three hours as the pressure was reduced to match Moonlab’s.

  Stone pulled himself into the tunnel at the core of the Multiple Docking Adapter, close to the entrance to the Soyuz Docking Module. Muldoon and Bleeker were already there, and the little tunnel, packed with instrument boxes and oxygen bottles, was crowded. Stone’s job was to work the small handheld TV camera and relay handshake pictures back to Earth.

  There was a soft tapping. Muldoon opened the hatch.

  Vladimir Viktorenko, beaming broadly, reached out and shook Muldoon’s hand. “My friend. I am very happy to see you.” He came tumbling out of the hatch, squat and exuberant, and gave Muldoon a bear hug. He gave Muldoon a little packet of bread and salt, a traditional Russian greeting. Solovyov followed his commander out. And there were the five of them crowded into the docking adapter’s tunnel, grinning and hugging, always with one eye on the camera.

  Muldoon led them through the clutter of Moonlab toward the wardroom. Viktorenko and Solovyov made the obligatory polite remarks about the bird, but, Stone thought, they were being kind.

  The first task of each new crew up there was to use its Apollo Service Module to tweak Moonlab’s orbit. The Moon’s gravity field was so lumpy that anything left in low lunar orbit would soon fall to the surface. And when he’d first approached ’Lab in Grissom, Stone might have been tempted to let the thing just fall.

  After five years Moonlab’s outside hull was pretty much dinged up, with big fist-sized meteorite holes knocked in the shield. The solar cells, also dented by meteorites, had degraded, and so the power was down to half its peak. Inside, the lights were dim, and jerry-built air ducts ran everywhere to make up for the broken fans. Stone was already sick of half-heated meals, lukewarm coffee, and tepid bathing water.

  And the interior was like someone’s utility room — more like a survival shelter than a laboratory, Stone thought — with every surface scuffed and scarred, every piece of equipment patched up, every wall encrusted with junk. Moonlab was an improvised lash-up anyhow, and the place really hadn’t been designed for growth; and every time a crew had gone up with some new experiment or a replacement article it had just bolted the kit to whatever free hydrogen-tank wall space there was, and left it there forever. After five years, the walls were growing inward, as if coated with a metallic coral. Sometimes you couldn’t even find the pieces of kit you needed, and you had to radio down to previous crews to find out where they’d left stuff.

  The place was kept hygienic — it had to be — but you wouldn’t call it clean. Hell, you had highly trained pilots and scientists up there. They didn’t want to spend their lives on maintenance, for God’s sake; they had work to do. And the result was unpleasant, sometimes.

  Like the black algae that had finally put paid to the shower.

  Even the toilets never seemed to vent properly. And the old bird was a chorus of bangs, wheezes, and rattles when they tried to sleep at night. Some long-duration Moonlab crews had gone home with permanent hearing loss, he’d been told.

  It was much worse than his first flight out there. It was all a kind of hideous, long-drawn-out consequence of Bert Seger’s original decision to redirect this ’Lab from Earth orbit, back in 1973.

  Maybe I shouldn’t be so sniffy about that big tractor out there, the Soyuz. At least the Soviets must feel at home, here, ’Lab’s no worse than a Moscow hotel.

  Still, you could see Moonlab as a kind of huge experiment in space endurance. Moonlab was a Type II spacecraft. Type I you’d never repair; you’d use it once and bring it home to discard, or fix on the ground, like Apollo Type II, like the ’Labs, were supposed to be repairable, but with logistic support from nearby Earth. Type III, the ultimate goal, would be able to survive for years without logistic support. Any Mars mission would have to be aboard a Type III spacecraft, a level of maturity beyond Moonlab.

  Without the long-duration experience of Moonlab and Skylab, the Mars mission would not be conceivable.

  They reached the wardroom, where the plastic table was fixed to the mesh floor, and the crew had rigged up five T-cross seats. They sat at the table, hooking their legs under the bars of the seats, and Stone fixed the TV camera to a strut. Then the performance really began.

  There were flags to swap, including a U.N. flag, which had been carried up by Soyuz and would be returned home by Apollo. Each crew had brought along halves of commemorative aluminum and steel medallions, which Muldoon and Viktorenko joined together. They traded boxes of seeds from their countries: the Americans handed over a hybrid white spruce, and the Soviets Scotch pine, Siberian larch, and Nordmann’s fir.

  It was time for the ritual meal. The Americans were hosts today, so, from the customary plastic bags, the cosmonauts were treated to potato soup, bread, strawberries, and grilled steak. There was much forced bonhomie and laughter in all this. Tomorrow it would be the Russians’ turn, and — as Stone knew, because they’d practiced even this — the menu would be tins containing fish, meat, and potatoes, tubes of soft cheese, dried soup, vegetable puree, and oats; there would be nuts, black bread, dried fruit.

  As he ate, Stone looked dubiously at the TV camera staring at him from above. As space PR stunts went, this one was turning out to be a stinker. Jesus, he thought. I hope nobody I know is tuned in to this.

  Viktorenko said, “Of course, as the philosophers say, the best part of a good dinner is not what you eat, but with whom you eat.” He dug out five metal tubes from a pocket of his coverall. The tubes were labeled: “vodka.” The astronauts made dutiful noises of pleasure, and when they opened the tubes up, they found borscht, which they displayed to the camera. A Soviet joke Ha-ha.

  With the meal cleared away, the telecast should have been finished, so the crews could relax. But Bob Crippen, capcom for the day, called up from Houston. “Moonlab, we have a surprise for you. Go ahead, Mr. President; you’re linked up to Moonlab.”

  Familiar Georgian tones crackled over the air.
“Good evening, gentlemen. Or is it morning where you are? I’m speaking to you from the Oval Office at the White House, and this must be the most remarkable telephone call since John Kennedy spoke to you, Joe, and Neil Armstrong on the surface of the Moon, eleven years ago…”

  The crews sat around the table, staring into the camera, smiles bolted in place.

  Carter made a speech of stunning banality, a ramble that seemed to last forever. Solovyov and Viktorenko looked poleaxed. Carter was duller than Brezhnev.

  Jesus, thought Stone. It wouldn’t be so bad if we didn’t know that Carter was on his way out And that he has always been dead set against the space program.

  Carter went around the table, speaking to each astronaut and cosmonaut in turn. “So, Joe, I believe this is your first flight in eleven years.”

  “Yes, sir, that’s so, my first since the Moon landing. And it’s wonderful to be back.”

  “Do you have any advice for young people who hope to fly on future space missions?”

  Muldoon’s face might have been carved from wood. Stone knew exactly what he was thinking. Yeah. Don’t fuck yourself over by mouthing off against the Agency. “Well, sir, I’d say that the best advice is to decide what you want to do and then never give up until you’ve done it…”

  Well, as long as Carter doesn’t ask if he’s missing his wife, Stone thought, Muldoon will be home clear; everybody in Houston knew that Jill had walked out a couple of months before the launch, but somehow it had been kept out of the press.

  Across the table from Stone, Viktorenko dug out five more “vodka” tubes; wordlessly he passed them around. Stone opened his and sniffed at it. Viktorenko nodded to him, holding his gaze. Yes, this really is vodka. But they will think it is borscht. A double joke!

  Stone drained his tube in one pull and crushed the metal in his fist.

  As the banal speeches and ceremonies went on, the mountains of the Moon, ignored, cast complex shadows over the tabletop.