Freeman was suddenly kneeling beside him, reaching out, taking the piece, looking at it himself, watching light glint off the flat, exposed ice surface. “Well, well. Happy birthday, Nick.”
Summer 1977. It was the best of time…. Period. No Dickensian dichotomies at all.
Nick Jensen floated cradled in the arms of his gas-powered astronaut maneuvering unit sixty meters from Apollo 29's CSM, silver and white cone-cylinder-cone hanging above Earth's bright limb. Beautiful day for an EVA. You could look straight down eight hundred kilometers on the brilliant blue Pacific, through thin stratus above the green hills of Hawaii. Not as good a view as the one from higher up. You couldn't really tell it was all one giant shield volcano, just like the bigger one on Mars, but still…
Viking 1. Still laughing about that badly tuned color camera. “Jeez, it looks just like Utah! Wait a minute, let's have a look at the color wheel.…” Red sky at night, sailors' delight.
A red-helmeted head poked out of the command module's open hatch, and Amy Jordan's voice was sharp and distinct in his earphones. “Nick? We should be able to eyeball the Agena any time now.”
“Copy that.” She was a superb engineer, had had a decisive hand in designing the radio-telescope mission, but the media had ignored all that, going on and on and on about having this sweet young thing fly in the cramped confines of an Apollo capsule with two men, about how she'd have to do all her private business right in front of them….
Worth an exasperated sigh, an attempt at explanation: This is business. Important business, and we're all professionals, polite to each other…Order of the Dolphin, my ass…
Smirk, smirk; wink, wink. All business. Right. Sure it is, buddy…
Nick hit the hand controllers, compressed air stuttering behind his back, and did a slow turn. About ten meters away the completed radio telescope floated, a twenty-meter dish they'd brought up disassembled in the CSM's science bay, where a lunar mission would've carried camera packs and one of those little subsatellites. When they'd begun, just a week ago, it had been no more than a collection of wire mesh and cabling and electronic boxes. Now…
A lovely, shining flower of silver and black, floating in low Earth orbit, waiting for its life in space to begin. There. The Agena booster was just a scintilla of light on the edge of vision, out in black night. “I've got it. How far?”
Amy said, “Radar says ten klicks.”
“Okay. Bring her in.” Once they had this thing coupled to the telescope and got it on its way to GEO, they could go home…. Christ, I love being in space, but…two weeks packed into a cabin the size of a compact station wagon interior with two other people, people who smelled a little worse with each passing day…. That sort of thing could wear thin pretty fast.
Another voice in his ears, faintly tinged with a hiss of static, a little echoey from its trip through two ground links and one comsat: “Apollo 29, Mission Control.”
“That you, Jake?”
“Roger.” Jake Burnett was the third-shift capcom, hoping to get up here one of these days. He said, “Be advised the two-man crew of Soyuz L-4 has successfully touched down on the edge of Oceanus Procellarum.”
So, Bykovsky and Leonov on the Moon. “Took 'em long enough.” And it would be a big help. Udall had won reelection, still supported the ongoing program, but the 1980 election would get here sooner or later, and once Apollo 40 flew…
No one knew what would be coming after that.
Burnett said, “Here's hoping. We do need the competition.” You could say things like that now; the press didn't listen to orbital work chit-chat anymore.
“Yeah. Wonder if they know that?”
“Probably better than we do.”
Amy Jordan said, “Guys? Coming up on Agena rendezvous in four minutes. We'd better get onto the business at hand.”
Business. All business.
He said, “Roger. Copy that.” Get to work.
Late spring 1980.
Nick stood on the grass beside Mosquito Inlet not far from the VIP Viewing Stand, just across the big ditch from the Press Site, waiting, sweating a little in the hot Florida sun. Always makes me itch a little bit…. Reporters seldom came for the launches anymore, big countdown clock tallying away for no one sometimes, even when it was a trip to the Moon.
Moon? Ho-hum. Seen one moon, seen 'em all. Let us know when you're ready for Mars. Or, better still, the stars, just like on TV.…
Out in force today though, clogging the press bleachers, forming long, yackety lines by the washroom doors, crowding the wagons of the hot dog vendors they'd let in for the day.
Nick looked at his watch, then across the inlet, up the length of the causeway to the launch site. Above the vehicle there was still a wisp of smoky vapor, but they'd be shutting the pressure bleed and topoff valves in a few minutes, going into the final countdown.
The Saturn 5M was not a pretty vehicle. Not pretty at all. Our future, though. You couldn't even see the core Saturn 5 vehicle, S-ID and S-II stages hidden by four 360-inch segmented-solid strap-on boosters. All you could see was the S-VB poking out the top, a modified S-II stage with five restartable J-2s that had taken the place of the old S-IVB, surmounted by an odd-looking, forty-foot-diameter hammerhead payload shroud.
Could be a big mistake, using the first test vehicle to fly a real mission. An important mission. One of those never-flown field joints springs a leak at altitude, maybe right after max-Q, we'll see a pretty big bang up there.…
Well. At least it was unmanned. It's only money.
Nick looked around again, at the sprinkling of VIPs who'd come to see the thing off. Outgoing President Udall standing with D.C. Senator Jesse Jackson and Vice President Mondale, Udall's designated successor. President come to see his last big space-related decision come to fruition.
Fritz Mondale looking away, hardly interested in what was going on, just knowing he had to show the flag as he steadily slipped in the polls. Primaries not going too well. There's never going to be a President Mondale. Are we in deep shit?
He looked at the slender man at his side. Governor Brown, standing next to Gene Roddenberry, had a pair of binoculars pressed to his eyes, looking intently toward the pad, teeth showing in what looked like a little bit of a grin, or maybe just a glare-squint grimace. Hard to tell with this…very strange dude.
Watching the governor walk around with Linda Ronstadt this morning, he'd tried to listen in. What would I have said, with a little cutie like that in my clutches? Telling her all about the vast resources we'd find out in the Asteroid Belt. How it would postpone the coming world crisis for centuries. Maybe that's what I would've said, too. Right.
So this is, just maybe, the Democratic front-runner, some little ex-seminarian determinedly levering the fat cats' hands off the wheels of power. Political journalists licking their chops. Because, on the other side of the aisle, it was looking to be Ronald Reagan. Battle of the Californians, they said. Or better still, Moonbeam versus Bonzo.
Jesus Christ.
Out on the pad, the vehicle had stopped smoking, thin haze of white frost evaporating away in the sun. Nick said, “Thirty seconds, Governor.”
Brown pulled the binoculars off his face, leaving little red rings where he'd been pressing them in too hard. “Okay, Nick. You promise me this thing's going to work?” Thin grin, sardonic, not a man who said things by accident.
Nick nodded slowly. “Well. ‘Four neins,’ Governor.”
Brown grinned wider, recognizing the reference. “We'll see,” he said, putting the binoculars back to his eyes. “Call me Jerry.”
The loudspeaker said, “T minus ten seconds. Sustainer core ignition…” Out on the pad, a glare of orange light down in the flame trough, a thick boil of greasy black smoke as high-grade jet aviation fuel burned in liquid oxygen. Silence. “…three, two, one…solids…”
A huge burst of white smoke, blowing the black smoke away, clouds forming, yellow fire boiling crazily in their depths.
Loudspe
aker: “Liftoff…”
The Saturn 5M bounded off the pad, then seemed to pause, staggering visibly, Nick's breath trapped in his chest, heart pounding. Oh, God.…It seemed to take hold of itself, straighten visibly, then climb into the sky, climb, trailed by a thick column of gray-white smoke, smoke that seemed to grow organically from the base of the rocket.…
Crackling roar, sound having crossed the intervening three miles, a few brief seconds of familiar F-1 fire, then the hard bump-ROAR of the solids lighting, something almighty powerful beating on his chest, trying to push him backward, sixteen million pounds of thrust from the four strap-on boosters, another seven and a half million from the liquid fuel engines, seven hundred thousand pounds of payload headed for low Earth orbit.
Nick glanced over at the governor. Jerry Brown's head was tipped back, following the Moonbase as it left for its new home not far from Amundsen Crater and the south pole of the Moon. He had Roddenberry by the arm, shaking the producer hard. And he was laughing out loud.
Nick looked back at the Saturn 5M, listened to its diminishing thunder, and thought, Maybe President Brown will want to give that little cutie an asteroid for her birthday. And, just maybe, we can talk him into funding the S-VI nuclear stage we'd like to stick on this thing, calling it the Saturn 5N. Just maybe.
What was it the governor had said? “We'll see…”
In the late summer of 1984, Nick was back on the Moon, walking the dusty plain not far from Lunar Polar Station 1, not quite relishing the job of escorting the VIP. Not quite. But the old man had proven to be an interesting enough character, making the professional astronauts want to like him, despite their irritation with the whole program.
A journalist in space was bad enough, but sending one of these bastards to the Moon? It was an order of magnitude more outrageous than putting that teacher in space aboard Skylab 3, wasting an Apollo Transport flight just to put her up there for two weeks. Now this, wasting a flight to the Moon…
But it happened as President Brown decreed, probably just part of his reelection strategy.
They were setting up at what appeared to be a strategic location, the base down-Sun, a collection of half-buried modules, rovers parked here and there, solar collectors sticking up like silver radar dishes against a dramatic backdrop, the low, rounded hills of a crater ringwall, looking for all the world like some denuded and dead Appalachian range.
And the old man was the most useful member of the EVA team just now. He knew just how to set up the cameras, which connectors to plug in where, how to lay the cables so no one would trip over them, issuing commands in a calm, quiet voice.…
That same reassuring voice of wisdom I've been hearing since I was a kid. And you know that's why Brown picked him. The President's one smart cookie, all right. Dole doesn't have a chance.
It was a smart choice, but we were all against it, especially when we found out who was going. Come on…a man his age up here? But he's pushing seventy! D'you realize what it's like, three fucking days stuffed inside the cabin of a five-man Apollo Transport?
Sure, he'll be all right at Moonbase, but what about the trip?
But the oldest professional astronaut still on flight status is sixty-three now. You want us to can him? No, but…How about you, Nick? Going to be forty-four this fall. When you think we should retire you?
Vision of the upcoming Mars mission crew assignments. Um. Well, I sorta hoped I had a few good years left in me.…
And he'd been okay on the trip up after all. Keeping his hands off the hardware, looking out the window, doing his standups…and suffering not a trace of space sickness, while the flight's other rookie floated in his acceleration couch, retching quietly.…
And, sitting there on the pad, just as T minus thirty seconds was called, he'd chuckled softly and said, “This kinda reminds me of Paris…”
Uh. Paris.
“Sure. I went in with the Airborne. Jumped with them, carrying a goddamn typewriter…”
Then, sitting on the Extended LM's floor, as required, face far below the level of the window while the engine rumbled and we dropped toward touchdown, he'd whipped out a kid's folding cardboard periscope, the kind of thing you could still buy for 98 cents, holding it up so he could see out. That won us over, a kind of guileless astronautical ingenuity, like smuggling a ham sandwich onto the first space flight.…
Now, the old man came bouncing gently over. “You all set?”
“Yes, sir. Just tell me where to stand.”
The old man looked around, quickly, professional, glancing briefly at the camera, then scuffed an “X” in the dust. “On your mark, Nick. Now open your face-shield so the folks at home can see that pretty face.” The old man grinned at him from under his trademark mustache. “And please. Call me Walter…”
The red light came on then, and the old man turned to face the world. “August 14, 1984,” he said. “Good evening. This is Walter Cronkite reporting to you live from the surface of the Moon…”
May 1988.
Nick sat, sort of, in front of the telefax console in the science module, toes tucked into foot restraints, seatbelt across his lap. A little unsteady, hard to keep the mouse cursor positioned on the little white
Breathtaking. Unbelievable. Voyager 3's Io lander had sent back a steady stream of images, almost in real time as it dropped out of orbit, actually passing through the thin, hazy umbrella-plume of an erupting sulfur volcano, taking samples on its way to the surface.
Click-click. On the surface now, looking out across a rolling, low-relief yellow plain. In the distance, the eruption was a faint, almost invisible inverted cone against a featureless black sky.
Click-click. Christ…The camera had panned around, deliberately tilted up by the programmers, looking just where they figured…
Fat, banded Jupiter, a sullen orange crescent lying on its side, sun beyond it a dimmed-out spark. There. That little bit of crud had to be Amalthea, and…
Image of myself out on the surface of that moon, clad in an Apollo moonsuit, bounding across the dusty yellow plains, Jupiter in the sky above me, and the other moons and…
Nick shook his head slowly. Not in my lifetime, anyway. Not until we work out a technology to shield against the ambient radiation. By the time we have that, we'll be thinking about Bussard ramjets and what star we'll be wanting to visit first. I wish…
He smiled to himself. Listen to me, wishing for the stars. Sudden memory of himself as a teenager, a senior in high school, turning on the TV and hearing Frank McGee discuss the significance of Sputnik. And hearing some expert say that, just maybe, some small child, a toddler perhaps, would one day walk on the Moon. Incredible. And, of course, the first man who did walk on the Moon was already an adult, already flying jet aircraft…
He pulled the mouse cursor up to the menu bar and popped open the SELECTION pulldown, clicked on “V-4, G-IV Lander.”
Maybe. Maybe. But no one knew what Jesse Jackson would do if he won the election this fall. Continue the program? Cancel it? Maybe. But then, no one knew what would happen if the Republicans somehow took over either. J. Danforth Quayle? Christ…
He sighed and clicked the EXIT icon, docked the mouse in its little monitor-side pocket, and unhooked from the chair. This is all very nice, but there's work to be done. He floated out through the forward hatch, through the node and into the command module, where Jake Burnett was holding down the fort.
“About time you got up here, pal. I've really got to pee!”
Nick smiled. “Sorry. I keep looking at those damned Voyager photos…”
Jake unhooked himself from the acceleration couch and floated above the control console, essentially filling the window. He grinned and nodded. “You and me both. Wouldn't that be a kick, going to fuck
ing Jupiter?”
“Yeah.”
When he was gone, Nick pulled himself down in the chair, strapped in and relaxed, scanning the CRT screens and LED readouts, making sure God was in his Heaven and all was right with the world. Okay. Then he sat back to stare out the window and day-dream.
Jupiter, for Christ's sake…
But this room, here, now, was filled with soft, ruddy light, light reflected from the surface of a dull red world rolling slowly by below. Okay, coming up on it.…
Valles Marineris slid over the horizon, an enormous gash in the side of Mars, as if some giant rock had struck the planet a glancing blow, cutting it open, threatening to spill its guts into the void, looking for all the world like an unsutured wound.
And in forty-eight hours I'll be down there. Butterflies fluttered briefly, exploring the far reaches of his intestines. Day after tomorrow and we'll be setting down on the north rim of Coprates. Me, Jake, and Amy making the first manned touchdown. Then. Then. Ares carried five additional disposable aeroshields, enough fuel for the lander to set down six times, at six different sites. And each crew member would get one landing, until all eighteen of them had been down.
And me, Mission Commander. Piloting the first lander, climbing down the ladder first.
I guess, he thought, watching the terminator come up, watching a Martian sunset come over the horizon, I better start thinking about what I'm going to say.
Though the late winter and early spring of 1993 had been incredibly wet, what with the Big Snow, then one rainstorm band after another sweeping across the country, west to east, on toward summer the weather stabilized, blue skies dominating the southeast, Florida warming up nicely. And, on a fine, sunny June morning, Nick Jensen stood atop the VAB with his binoculars, watching and waiting.
Sitting on the pad, it didn't look like much after a decade and more of the big 5Ms and Ns, but here it was, the Saturn 5R and its…payload? Well, not quite, but the term did sort of fit the new second stage. Inspecting it through the binoculars, he couldn't help but feel a resurgence of the anger that had boiled in him for the past couple of years.
Year's Best SF 1 Page 24
