“I'm telling you now,” said McCrary mildly. “We're also going to have to get another expedition together for a trip to the Procellarum for more KREEP.”
“With exactly what?” demanded Peter. “Our last rocket disappeared in a blaze of glory.”
Horst held up his hand. “I bet I know. A big plate surrounded by a ton of MoonCan-derived Al-Mg-LOX rockets.”
“It's a pleasure to work with such intelligent people,” said McCrary. “There's a bit more that you need to know.”
***
“He's insane, you know,” said Horst to Peter as they left the Chamber. “And so is Lee. I think that cracked skull has scrambled things.”
Peter peered up to the older man. “But you said you could do everything he asked.”
“I did. I can also run around on all fours and bark at the Earth,” he said. “That doesn't make it any less crazy.”
A Moondog approached them and passed to one side, intent on some unknown task.
“Well, the die is cast. Especially this stuff for the Expedition. I can't imagine…the mind boggles.”
“Makes The Tank seem fiddlin', doesn't it? Want to trade places with Donovan?” asked Horst.
“No freaking way,” said Peter. “Better the devil you know.”
***
Travis was tickled to be picked as the pilot for the prospecting trip. He lorded it over Bubba. “You're stuck here, doing the same stuff day after day, and I'm finally off dozer duty now that my genius has been recognized.”
“That and the constant videogames you've been playing,” retorted Bubba.
“It's those games, I've been told, that caused them to approach me in the first place,” said Travis with an air of injured innocence. He struck a pose, nose held high, eyes focused in the distance.
“Either that or you're the most expendable,” said Bubba cruelly. “Better bring me back a bauble.”
“How about a bit of the South Pole?” asked Travis, maliciously.
“Do that, I'll sew it in your drawze, and all your kids will come out with three heads,” growled Bubba. “Now, I've gotta git back to Thor.”
“Dude, you practically live in there. When are you going to get a social life?”
Bubba looked up at the ceiling, lips quivering slightly. “About thirteen hundred days from now.” He smiled enigmatically, and refused to answer Travis' questions.
***
Peter found himself in a situation he did not expect to recur—Launch Director for the expedition to the Oceanus Procellarum.
“Remember, you must call us from no closer than one hundred kilometers to shut off the lasers, or you will land as little molten drops of aluminum all over the place.”
“Got it, got it,” said Travis. “I am on procedure 12-3, T minus three hours, at the indefinite hold. What's left?”
“Understand, pilot. Hold please,” said Peter. He turned to McCrary. “Are you sure about this? He's never flown before.”
“He has, you know. Thousands of times.”
“But that's in a video game!” said Peter. “It's totally different when you're in a vehicle.”
“And he's got a current private pilot's license from the US Government. He might sound like a hotshot but, frankly, I need someone that crazy to fly this insane dinner plate. Now settle down and resume the countdown.”
Travis looked around at his craft from the small windows in the cockpit. There wasn't much to see, so he toggled the panoramic cameras mounted all around the central spike rising above the pilot's dais. Twenty-four engines removed from spare MoonCans and attached to the one-third-meter thick central deck provided both thrust and trim, while deep bins all around the disk were designed to hold all the varied minerals from the KREEP terranes. Everything from potassium (K) to rare earth elements (REE), to phosphorus (P), along with the vital thorium, was there for the taking in the terranes. Two selenologists were crammed in the cockpit with him. Small, autonomous, battery-powered dozers completed the payload for the flight. With luck, they should be able to find a good vein of thorium and leave one of the dozers to mine it so a second trip won't last as long on the still-dangerous surface of the Moon.
Countdown proceeded until the built-in hold at the T minus five-minute mark.
“I gotta take a leak,” said Travis.
“Go ahead and go. In the suit,” replied Peter.
Bubba joined the circuit. “Well, I guess you're a wetback now.”
Tradition satisfied, Peter conducted a poll of the controllers. He smiled at the new Controller, Lori, who was running the new section—Laser--since the last launch.
“Lasers,” said Peter.
“Laser power off. Confirm targeting computers are off and all lasers are cold,” said Lori.
“Thank God,” said Travis under his breath. His biggest fear was the gigawatt lasers mistaking him for a big rock and blasting him, like they've been blasting debris for months now.
“Commander,” said Peter. McCrary was far more engaged this time than the last launch. Not only was this one manned, but it was absolutely vital that it work the first time.
“Commander is go. Launch Lunar Disco,” McCrary said. He wondered, as he did every time he participated in a launch, if this was the one that would explode or crash or kill a friend.
“Launch commit is go. We will come out of the pre-planned five-minute hold at UTC sixteen twenty-seven exactly. From five minutes down to T minus fifteen seconds, controllers will call an abort with 'abort-abort-abort'. In the case of an abort, all controllers will safe their stations and recycle to the T minus five-minute position. From T minus fifteen seconds, controllers will not abort, and the final commit unlock will be governed by the Launch Director.” Peter continued with the launch briefing.
“We are at T minus five minutes and counting.” Throughout the Collins, people paused what they were doing and found a monitor to watch the launch.
“T minus four minutes. Active radar still shows clear skies out to the horizon.”
“Hope it's clear all the way to the Procellarum,” said Travis.
Peter bit down on a retort. He wasn't out on the disc, risking his life to get a plate full of rocks, so he let Travis have some leeway on protocol.
“T minus three minutes. Range!”
“Range is go,” said Ashley.
“T minus two minutes. LOX tanks are completing the pressurization sequences now. Navigation!”
“Nav is go. Optical trackers have lock on Sirius and Procyon, vehicle solution compares to computed to five zeros.”
“T minus ninety seconds. LOX flow to the vehicle terminated and the umbilicals are detaching. Vehicle!”
“Vehicle is go. All umbilicals confirmed detached, footpad hold-downs are green for release.” The controller held up his right fist, thumb extended.”
Peter wiped his face with his hands, watching the chronometer and a screen full of controller inputs. So far, everything was green.
“T minus forty-five. Range?”
“Go”
“Tracking?”
“Go.”
“Laser?”
“Go.”
“Vehicle?”
“Go.”
“Pilot?”
“Go.”
“LD, Go. Command?”
“Command is go. Launch Disco,” said McCrary.
“T minus fifteen. Vehicle is on internal power. Ten. Nine, eight, PhosLOX ignite, six, Al-Mag ignition, three, two, one, footpads released.
“Lunar Disco has cleared the launch pad!”
***
Travis was amazed at the level of violence in this most ungainly of vehicles. “Clock has started, and Disco has cleared the tower,” he transmitted.
“There's no tower,” said one of the selenologists. Travis groaned. One of those by-the-book types; no imagination, no poetry in his soul.
“Tradition, man! Tradition,” he called behind him.
His eyes never left the control panel. “Right down the groove,�
� he transmitted. “Staging coming up.”
There was no true staging in the sense of the earliest launches from Earth. At launch, all twenty-four engines were needed to get the Lunar Disco off the ground; only six were necessary to keep the big plate flying. During the flight, pairs of engines would throttle back and shut down in a preprogrammed sequence.
“Staging commencing. Thrust decreasing.” In groups of four, the LOX feed into the engine was brought down to an absolute minimum, and the aluminum-magnesium powder feed was reduced until there was nothing but a feeble flame in the combustion chambers of twenty of the twenty-four engines. Four continued to furiously burn powder in a feed of liquid oxygen, producing a near-explosion of hot gas and, therefore, thrust.
“You will be leaving our horizon in thirty seconds, Disco. Tracking shows you right in the groove. Godspeed, Disco.”
“Roger. Will see you in a week.”
Peter waited until the carrier wave from the craft disappeared into the crackle of space. He looked over at Tracking, and the man there shook his head.
“Lunar Disco has passed beyond local tracking. Switching to Earth tracking.”
On the monitor screens, an infrared camera atop Mauna Kea showed a shaky image with a white-hot plume slowly crossing the disc of the Moon.
“Image acquired,” said Peter. “Navigation?”
“Position confirmed. Vehicle on track to limits of image resolution.”
Peter reminded himself that meant anywhere to within a several kilometers. One pixel in this image was the equivalent of two kilometers square.
“Continue tracking.” Peter looked down at his timeline, then at the chronometer on the monitor. At one thousand kilometers away from the Collins, and a ground-track speed of some one hundred kilometers per minute at peak, it was going to be some fifteen minutes until the vehicle landed.
“Vehicle will rotate to a leg-forward position in seven minutes,” announced Peter. The numbers crawled slowly upward.
“Turnaround, thirty seconds,” said Peter. The plume on the image from Earth showed no change.
“Turnaround,” he announced. There was no way to tell, of course. The plume would look the same if it was streaming straight behind the vehicle, or if it was billowing around it. Peter just had to trust that Travis would be following the checklist.
***
Rulebook, as Travis had christened of the one selenologists with him, suddenly bent over in his seat. Travis chuckled as he watched the chronometer. When the numbers hit zero, he punched the switch, but two engines were already firing, flipping the Disco head over heels. An answering blast stopped nearly all of the turnaround rotation, with small aluminum 'sparkler' rockets trimming out the remaining rotation.
“Pilot,” said the other selenologist, a warning in his voice.
“Get a bag, hold it over the barf valve, and trigger it before he drowns,” said Travis. “I'm a little busy.”
Then he remembered. These two were in the group that insisted on leaving right after The Event. He remembered Bubba walking them out to the Sandy. He was about to say something cutting, then remembered that he was going to be stuck with these two for a week until they could return. There was a small pressure-tight cabin on the Disco, but that was designed only for emergencies—they were expected to live in their suits for the entire expedition.
“Better hurry up, we're going into the landing sequence shortly and I'm going to need some input from one of you.”
Five minutes later, all twenty-four engines were thrusting at ten percent, ready to throttle up as the surface grew nearer. Travis, veteran of a thousand iterations of Lunar Lander, was almost instinctually aware of the correct landing sequence. He also knew that if he looked out of the windows, he would jam on the throttle at too high of an altitude, eventually wobbling them down to a crunching landing, but they would be so low on LOX that they would never get home.
Travis was suddenly aware of the extreme burden of command. It was one thing to risk your own life. He had these two others that he had to get to the Procellarum and back.
“Thrust ramping up in twenty seconds,” he called. “We're going to go up to one point five Earth Gs, so be ready for it.”
He marveled at the control the computer had of the engines. A strange shimmy caught his attention just as the indicator on engine eighteen turned red. Exactly opposite the disk from eighteen, number six engine throttled down and shut itself off.
“Come on, baby, don't do the N-1 on me,” he muttered. The N-1, Russia's version of the United States Saturn V moon rocket, had a staggering thirty ICBM rocket engines on it, distressingly similar to the Disco. It never launched without blowing up, usually after its computer shut off a series of engines. It had been Travis's major fear about flying the Disco.
But, as luck would have it, Engine 18 was the only anomaly during the flight. He took over control at fifty meters, and flew the Disco for thirty-seven seconds at the direction of the selenologists before he grounded it and hit the master switch, sending the engines through a pre-programmed shutdown sequence.
He triggered the switch that launched aluminum sparkler rockets high and far across the lunar surface. Three rockets, arranged in a trefoil pattern, would be easily visible from Earth and represented a safe arrival.
Travis was pleased. “Everyone out, last stop, Oceanus Procellarum!”
###
Contrary to what seemed reasonable, mining operations were always carried out in the Lunar night, primarily to limit radiation exposure from the sun. Earthshine, many times brighter than the full moon on Earth, gave more than enough light for human sight.
Travis had dragooned one of the selenologists into helping him stretch a tarp over a thin aluminum frame. The scientist's name completely escaped Travis. He called him Reformed, because he turned his attitude around from that first infamous Magical Mystery Tour to OTV Sandy on the first day of The Event. Reformed became one of the most enthusiastic of the scientists who were trapped after The Event.
Satisfied, he motioned Reformed to pick up one end of the frame while he picked up the other and headed towards the Disco.
“Pardon me for asking, Pilot Nadler,” said Reformed.
“Just call me Travis,” he said.
“Travis. Sure, we're carrying a tent to put over the Disco, but I can't help but wonder why. There can't possibly be enough insulation in these cloth sides to keep the ship warm!”
“Take a look at the cloth,” he said, as he maneuvered one of the legs away from some engine cabling.
“White. So?”
“The inside, I mean.”
Reformed ducked his head under and craned his head to look at the underside of the tent. “Silvered.”
“Uh-huh,” said Travis, digging into one of the many compartments on Disco.
Reformed waited a moment, then realized that he was supposed to figure out the puzzle. “Silver. Reflective. Reflect heat back onto the Disco? But there are so many ways to lose the infrared! What about a heat source? Burn an engine for a week? We don't have the LOX for that.” He kept muttering, while Travis applied a wrench to the upright armored cylinder in the center of the Disco.
“What's that?” asked Reformed.
“Radiothermionic generator,” said Travis. “It's how we get electricity this week. Radioactive actinide waste is cooking away, vitrified and sealed in these glass modules. Each one gets up to around seven hundred Celsius. The core is surrounded by Peltier elements, turning the heat into electricity. The efficiency is terrible, but the cost is right, and the fuel is churned out by Mighty Thor on demand.
The waste heat is reflected off the top of the tent and keeps the Disco nice and warm. Besides, we have to sleep somewhere, right? We put our fiberglass foundational pads on the ground under this tent, sleep like babies, and the suit batteries don't need as much charge to keep them at a good level.
The scientist shook his head in wonder. “You engineer types,” he began.
“Naw, this was a M
oondog cobble-up,” said Travis. “Look up Bubba Cranston when we get back, if you dare. He'll talk your ear off about this and about a dozen other brainstorms he has.”
“Bubba…is there more than one?” asked Reformed.
“Oh, yeah, that's right, the Tour. You're not still sore at him, are you?”
Reformed laughed. “No, no. Not at all. Oh, I am sure there are some that still dislike him, but I saw the error of my ways as soon as I saw Sandy. Are you done with me? There's some rocks I have to pick up.”
“Have at it,” said Travis, waving at the landscape all around them. “Just be careful picking up any 'hot' ones. The radiation will kill us all in a few days.”
Reformed promised he would Geiger all of the rocks, and bunny-hopped away, already thinking about how to maximize production on this trip.
***
The return flight of the Disco was also successful, and the round trip between the Sea of Crises and the mining site out on the Oceanus Procellarum was one that Travis was doomed to fly several more times, as the need for thorium and specialized KREEP material continued unabated. Once, Travis flew out and back three times in a single light as he ferried a solar-powered smelter out to the mining site. That trip was hugely successful, as Travis was able to return with at least two tons of concentrated ore, saving the equivalent of three round trips.
The trips were successful, but they were hardly uneventful. On nearly every flight, he lost rocket engines as they fell prey to fouling. Unlike nearly every other rocket engine, the ones for the MoonCans were designed to be use a powdered metal, a mixture of aluminum and magnesium, burned in a stream of liquid oxygen. The exhaust was exceptionally hot oxygen gas, and the glowing, but still solid, particles of magnesium oxide and aluminum oxide. Injectors fouled with buildup of these refractory oxides, or the highly reactive oxygen gas ate through cracks in the linings of the exhaust nozzles to the vulnerable metal underneath.
The most dangerous times were during takeoff from the Procellarum, loaded to maximum mass, and headed back to the Collins. The Collins could talk with Earth, but the Disco's radio could not talk to Earth. They could see him on infrared, poorly, so they would know if he went down, but if he had a problem with a MoonCan engine, he was on his own.
Come In, Collins (Riddled Space Book 2) Page 22
