‘We’re in the middle of the five-hour station readiness test.’ Mr Sullivan took another biscuit, Strawberry Cream again. ‘All looks okay so far. They’ve decided to stay.’
‘I don’t understand.’
Mr Sullivan paused. ‘It’s a bit complicated. The astronauts had twelve minutes to decide if it was safe to stay on the moon’s surface. The lander might have been damaged, losing air pressure, and a host of other things could have gone wrong. But it looks like all systems go.’
‘Why did they only have twelve minutes?’
‘Because after that Collins would be out of range around the other side of the moon. If they waited any longer, they’d have to wait for him to come into orbit from behind the moon again to contact him. Now they’re going to check everything is working in the spacecraft, have something to eat, then have a sleep before they open the doors and walk on the moon.’
She’d be off shift by then. Even if she could work for twenty-four hours, she knew Mrs Clissold wouldn’t allow it. But there was a television shop in Queanbeyan. She could go there to watch the moon walk, to finally see the moon close up. Because today every telly was going to be on, and looking at one thing only. And she was going to be there too.
‘Coffee, black with one, love!’ She went back to the trolley to pour it out.
Chapter 57
TOMMY
Tommy lay in his bed, Matilda dozing in the armchair, her hand still in his. Had there ever been a night with wonders like this?
He smiled. Of course there had, for him. The nights his daughter and his sons were born; days with Matilda so profoundly happy he could still take each one out now, and cherish them. But today had been the brightest for humanity.
So they had done it. No, he thought, we have done it. We humans, hundreds of thousands of years, working our way from spears and canoes to this. And Jed, sweet Jed, watching the men with their earphones, the lights on the computers, smelling that electric buzz . . .
How incredible that technicians had adapted software, hardware and operating procedures, bringing it all together in one stunning event to take man beyond the Earth, to that hostile environment on the lunar surface where no living creature had survived before.
‘Mr Thompson?’ Anita looked in from the doorway. Matilda sat up blearily.
‘There is a phone message from a Mr Reid.’ Anita looked at the scrap of paper where she had written it down. ‘When Armstrong stepped out onto the moon a card appeared on President Kennedy’s grave in Arlington National Cemetery. It said, “Mr President, the Eagle has landed.” No one saw who put it there. That’s all,’ Anita added.
It was enough. ‘Thank you,’ he whispered.
Did Jed know this? He squeezed Matilda’s hand. It was hard to wait for this afternoon, when he and his wife — and the world — would finally see the surface of the moon they had watched for all humanity’s long life, Sir Cedric: the moon that had watched the Earth long before humanity existed.
It was going to be even harder to wait for this weekend, when he could talk about it with Jed. Matilda shared this because she loved him.
But Jed understood.
Chapter 58
JED
Mrs Clissold took the regular mid-morning trolley around, while Jed attacked the next lot of dirty pans and wiped the tables after the breakfast shift. She was rinsing the Wettexes when Mrs Clissold hurried in, the cups clanking on the trolley, the leftover Iced VoVos and Adora Cream Wafers bouncing on the plate. ‘Horrie!’ she called breathlessly. ‘They’ve brought it forwards!’
‘What’s that, love?’
‘The moon walk! Trust astronauts not to keep to a schedule!’ She shook her head with the air of a woman who knows that a lamb roast goes into the oven and out of it at the exact time it should. ‘They’re too excited to sleep. They’re preparing to go out just before one o’clock.’
‘One o’clock our time? But that means . . .’
She nodded. ‘Yes! Honeysuckle is now Prime for the moon walk! Not Houston!’
‘What, us?’ asked Horrie.
Mrs Clissold nodded.
Jed felt her breath vanish, leaving space for stars and moonbeams racing through her . . .
She would be at Honeysuckle when man first walked on another world after all! And not just that! Honeysuckle would be Prime, with a direct line of sight between the station and the moon. The people at this station would be the first people on Earth to see man walk on soil that was not their own.
‘We need an early lunch sitting.’ Mrs Clissold bustled through the kitchen. ‘Get the shepherd’s pie in the oven now! First sitting will need to eat in half an hour’s time, then a late lunch after the walk for the second sitting. Jed, put the roast on, there’s a love, and get busy with the potatoes. Horrie, we need more milk . . .’
Scrubbing spuds, peeling spuds, peeling carrots, hauling out bags of frozen peas. The first sitting strode in, talking in intense low voices. She longed to have an excuse to join them, to sit and be part of the conversation, or at least to listen in. But there was still the pumpkin to chop and peel and get ready for roasting for the second sitting.
‘Jed, can you take over stirring the custard?’
‘Yes, Mrs Clissold.’
Pots to scrub again. More washing-up . . . Jed looked up at the clock. Twenty minutes to one.
She glanced out the window, at the winter lawns, then up to where the moon sailed, round and pale in the cold sunlight. And she was stuck in the kitchen. She thrust a tea towel into a giant pot to dry it. No point even asking to take the tea trolley around: no one would bother with tea or coffee now, and there was the cream to whip for the jam roly-poly. She had no excuse to get anywhere near the computer room . . .
‘Jed?’
‘Yes, Mrs Clissold?’
‘Off you go, love.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You go up to the computer room. Don’t you go bothering anyone, mind. Just stand there. No one will object. Not today.’ Mrs Clissold’s smile held a universe of kindness. ‘This is what you came for, isn’t it? You’ll see it all from up there.’
See it as it happened, not on the canteen television. Of course soon the rest of the world would see it too, thanks to the camera that Honeysuckle’s own ‘Video Von’ Renouard had added at almost the last minute, so the world could watch what happened today.
‘Thank you,’ said Jed fervently. She ran to the door, still in her apron.
Printers chattered non-stop, as if a tribe of crickets had taken over Honeysuckle Creek. All over the station people were hurrying to finish vital tasks so they could stop to watch.
The VIPs invited to the station today would not arrive in time. All those men in grey suits would miss it all! No car could approach the tracking station now: cars had to stop at the main gate half a kilometre down the road and turn off their engines, in case their electrical systems interfered with the sensitive receiving equipment.
Jed Kelly was going to see what the VIPs could not, all because two astronauts had been too excited to go to sleep.
Nor was she alone. As she approached the computer area she saw administrators, storemen, clerks — even the gardener had abandoned his ride-on mower. They stood well back from the door, as the men at the consoles checked their rows of blinking lights, dials, green oscilloscopes and chart recorders, waiting for the first sign of a picture from the moon.
Jed looked up at the monitor screen. It was still grey fuzz.
Mike Linney in telemetry muttered, ‘Armstrong’s heart rate is up from sixty-seven to a hundred and twelve beats per minute.’
The grey flicker gave way to a fuzzy black-and-white scene of a ladder and handrail — upside down. Armstrong must be out of the door and on the top step of the ladder. He had released the camera shutter! Seconds later ‘Video Von’ Renouard flicked the switch to put the picture the right way up.
The ladder glistened against the black sky of the universe. And I am seeing it first, thought Jed
. Me and all the others in this room. From here the picture would be radioed to Sydney and from there via satellite to America and from there to the rest of the world, watching at home or on giant screens in New York, London or Moscow.
Something vague and big moved on the screen. Neil Armstrong’s leg.
Slowly, slowly, Neil Armstrong climbed down the ladder. His voice sounded eerily close as he said, ‘I’m at the foot of the ladder.’ A voice from the moon! He still sounded almost next to her as he said, ‘The lunar lander’s footpads are only depressed in the surface about one or two inches, although the surface appears to be very fine grained, as you get close to it. It’s almost like a powder.’
Neil Armstrong stopped at the last rung of the ladder. Jed dug her fingernails into her hand. What was wrong? On the screen, Neil Armstrong put one leg down, onto the moon’s surface, then lifted it up again. Jed held her breath. Was he going back into the spacecraft? Was there a leak in his suit? Something dangerous on the moon no instruments had been able to discover?
‘He’s making sure he can get back up,’ the office worker next to her whispered. ‘They weren’t able to test the suits in the moon’s gravity.’
Now, as all in the room watched, Neil Armstrong placed both feet onto the top of the footpad, then stepped down onto the moon dust. He stood there in the alien landscape for a heart-stopping moment, silent, seeming to test the soil with the tip of his boot.
And then words echoed from the moon to Earth, to this hushed and intent room before heading for the world: ‘That’s one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind.’
Chapter 59
JED
The room was silent, each person staring at the fuzzy black-and-white pictures flickering on the closed-circuit screens throughout the operations area.
Neil Armstrong bounced up and down a little, then eased his hold on the landing strut. The moon shone black and silver and grey around him, lit by the low hanging sun. Armstrong’s voice echoed around the room. ‘Yes, the surface is fine and powdery . . .’
He talked. He walked, leaning a little backwards to keep his balance in the moon’s low gravity, then he came out from the shadow of the landing craft into the full glare of the moon’s unfiltered sunlight, unmuted by atmosphere, dust or water vapour. He scooped up the first scrap of moon rock, and put it in a Teflon bag.
They watched. Jed watched. It was as if the whole Earth breathed the same air today. The whole world was watching, or at least all those who could crowd around a television set.
Tommy would be watching too, she knew, though like the rest of the world he would see this minutes later than those in this room, not just because of the time it took to transmit the images, but because the transmission to the public was being deliberately delayed. If tragedy happened up there, the public did not need to see it. Would not see it.
Those in this room would.
But the scene beaming down from the moon was as serene as an unearthly picnic. The picture grew clearer, as the Parkes facility came online, with their larger antennae. Buzz Aldrin emerged, joking he was being very careful not to lock them out of the landing craft.
‘Beautiful view,’ his crackling voice called.
‘Isn’t that something?’ replied Armstrong. ‘Magnificent sight out here.’
‘Magnificent desolation,’ said Buzz Aldrin.
The two astronauts set up the TV camera on a tripod about fifty metres from the landing craft, so that the world could have a better view of it and of both astronauts as they collected more samples and checked the outside of the craft. They placed the United States flag in the moon’s soil.
The world watched as America’s President Nixon spoke: ‘Because of what you have done the heavens have become part of man’s world. As you talk to us from the Sea of Tranquility it inspires us to redouble our efforts to bring peace and tranquility to Earth. For one priceless moment, in the whole history of man, all the people of this Earth are truly one. One in their pride in what you have done. One in our prayers that you will return safely to Earth.’
Jed remembered the words she had overheard a week before in the canteen: that there was less than fifty per cent chance the astronauts could make it off the moon in safety, and that President Nixon had already recorded the speech he’d make if they died in the attempt, this president who spoke of peace and yet was the ultimate commander of the US troops still fighting in Vietnam.
Two hours and thirty-one minutes after Neil Armstrong had first emerged, the astronauts returned to their craft, leaving their rubbish bag behind — the moon’s first pollution, left there so the lander didn’t have to carry its weight too, and placing a small silicon disc on the moon’s surface with messages from the leaders of seventy-three countries.
Her shift was nearly over. ‘What happens now?’ she asked one of the administration staff as they too began to leave through the doorway of the control area.
‘The astronauts put the samples away, check everything. Try to sleep.’
Jed walked slowly back to the canteen. For most of the world the most exciting things had happened: the landing, the moon walk. But for her, suddenly, it mattered most that those extraordinary men, risking their lives in what looked like a small tin box in the vastness of space, got back to their homes.
Home. Home was where your heart was, wasn’t that how the saying went? And her heart was with Tommy and Nicholas and Nancy and Gibber’s Creek.
The astronauts wouldn’t attempt to take off till about four am the next day. It would be three days before they got back to Earth, if they got back to Earth at all.
And suddenly she knew she must be with Tommy when the astronauts returned. Watch it with him, wait for it with him, share it with him. She imagined Tommy’s face when she told him all about it. He’d have heard the astronauts’ words. But she could tell him about the silent focused faces, the tears.
She wanted to tell Nicholas too. Even if Nicholas saw this event as just part of the battle between America and the Soviet Union, he too must realise this was also humanity’s first step to his beloved stars. And if he didn’t, she’d argue with him till he did see this as a beginning. No, not a beginning. Just another stage in humanity’s long journey, but this one, the brightest of them all.
And when Apollo 11 reached Earth safely — as it must, surely it must — she wanted her own people about her, Tommy, Nicholas, Nancy, Scarlett, and the sound of the river muttering between its banks, the murmur of the gum trees, the nattering of sheep.
Her time at Honeysuckle was over.
But this time she couldn’t just vanish. Jed Kelly was no longer the person who would just pick up and go.
‘Mrs Clissold, would it leave you short-handed if I didn’t come in tomorrow? Or gave in my notice?’
Mrs Clissold looked at her shrewdly. ‘You got what you came here for?’
‘I . . . yes. I’d really like to be with my great-grandfather when the astronauts return.’
‘I reckon we can manage, love.’
‘Thank you. I can never thank you enough. Being here these last months, today . . . there’ll never be anything like it, will there? It doesn’t matter about my wages.’ She stopped as Mrs Clissold opened her handbag and held out five dollars. ‘Thank you,’ said Jed.
Mrs Clissold hugged her, smelling of gravy and custard. ‘You look after yourself, you hear?’
Jed hugged her back, awkwardly. She’d had more hugs in the past few months than in her entire lifetime, or what she could remember of it. ‘I will.’
She looked out the window one last time.
The great ‘dish’ antenna had vanished. In its place was its bare concrete platform, surrounded by scrub, not tended gardens. Men in bikies’ leather jackets with ‘Apollo’ embroidered on them heaped firewood into the centre of the platform.
A man in a dark blue suit stood at the edge. He had a black beard, and almost rimless glasses, but she saw immediately that he was Mr Sullivan, older, more muscular, still with the sam
e kind smile. A young woman stood next to him, holding his hand, plump, in slightly formal clothes too. Mr Sullivan was telling her something, gesturing up to the moon rising above the mountains, Sir Cedric saluting the Earth again. A large bikie with a dense black beard near them suddenly stopped gathering wood, as if listening to Mr Sullivan’s words too.
Was Mr Sullivan telling that young woman what had happened here, in this isolated valley? Was this the future? A future with no wars, because after today the people of Earth knew they were one? With jet cars and computer terminals for everyone and great ships journeying to the stars?
She could see nothing but the empty concrete slab, the trees, the well-dressed couple and the bikies.
Mr Sullivan stood silent now, still hand in hand with the young woman, watching the moon rise in the darkening sky. The big bikie called something to his friends. They began to haul the wood away from the antenna platform, to pile it elsewhere, leaving the white concrete bare and still pristinely shrine-like, staring at the sky.
Then they were gone. Mr Sullivan, the woman, the bikies, the future. The giant antenna was back and the clatter of the dishes. And above them, the no-longer-untouched glory of the moon.
Chapter 60
NANCY
Men walked on the moon. Nancy of the Overflow sat in the doctor’s office.
Joseph looked at her with sympathy, concern and, most of all, understanding. ‘It’s just a little spotting. Often happens.’
‘But?’ She tried a grin. ‘There’s a but in your voice.’
‘But bleeding at any stage of pregnancy is of concern. And I’m not an obstetrician.’
‘And I’m not young.’
‘Your blood pressure is a bit high. Not dangerously high, but high enough to be concerned. Any headaches? Dizziness?’
‘No. I’m not going to Sydney, Joseph.’
‘Not even for the sake of your child?’
‘My child is safest here.’
He glanced out the window, his own gaze softening at the sight of the winter-brown hills, the cold glimmer of the river. ‘This place healed us. Gave us back our lives after the camps. But that doesn’t mean that — just for now — you wouldn’t be better off in Sydney.’ He hesitated. ‘There’s something else.’
The Ghost by the Billabong Page 32
