“Altitude six zero zero,” he said.
Terry Anderson, flight navigator, and youngest of Challenger's crew, gracefully moved his fingers across panels, simultaneously glancing at the space viewport and the increasing mass of moon approaching. He had been a hotshot test pilot not too long ago, and was representative of the new breed of techno-genius happily melded into a superior physique.
"We're leveling, skipper," he said. "Planing at thirty degrees apogee."
Jack Travers, Challenger’s communications officer, was less active, though he frowned as he adjusted his headset; his job was to monitor the unidentified signal, the purpose of Challenger Two’s presence here today. Travers had a conservative, precise disposition; he did not like mysteries, did not share John Mars’ whimsy for wonder. He liked to see facts in black and white and he wanted to know exactly what the hell the signal in Mare Imbrium represented. The gleam of perspiration on his completely bald head denoted his consternation perfectly, and though he matted his scalp dry on a regular basis, the wet sheen never failed to reappear moments later.
"Bogie signal still constant at fifteen MCM," Travers said, unable to hide a twinge of irritation.
Jerry Lindon, the shuttle’s co-pilot, scanned panels to the right and left of the central command board, reading out numbers relating to fuel expenditure, speed and thrust ratios.
"Starboard intake at five degrees over," he said evenly. "I'm shutting it down for ten." Lindon spoke with the vague lazy hint of a southern drawl. Mars had flown with Lindon on several other routine missions; interestingly enough, when things got hot in the cockpit, the drawl disappeared.
Last of Challenger’s crew, Bob Danning, shifted restlessly in his seat behind Mars, watching the other four officers work. His job would become more involved once the unidentified signal was analyzed and catalogued. In actuality, once they reached the location of the anomalous transmission, Danning would assume tacit command of the mission. He was the nominal Lunar Project Leader (LPL), a Defense Intelligence Agent with a Ph.D. in physics and computer engineering. However, his command prerogative had yet to be exercised, simply because he was out of his field of expertise. Not a "real astronaut", he remained quiet for most of the outbound flight, letting the "real" flight crew do their work. Though he was a virtual outsider to the technical end of the flight, he was not treated as such. Bob Danning was one of the few space-worthy feds that the government-wary elite of NASA not only respected, but liked and trusted as well.
Five miles turned into four, then three, then two. The moon turned from a huge silver orb blotting out stars to a mass of white that filled everything in the viewports within seconds.
“On my mark. Altitude one, zero zero,” Mars said. “Mark!”
It was the mile high point and the lunar module altered its trajectory and decreased speed, preparing for a controlled landing into Mare Imbrium.
“Jack, what about those pings?” Mars asked, still monitoring the descent on digital readouts.
“Still there, skipper. Loud and clear. No variation on the sequence,” Travers said. Mars caught the annoyance in the other man’s voice: The unknown. Don’t like it, the tone of voice said without ambiguity. Don’t like it at all.
“Practically yelling come to daddy,” Danning said, watching Travers out of the corner of his eye. It was always fun to try and get a rise out of Travers and no one enjoyed the effort more than Bob Danning, who more or less was reduced to a passenger on this phase of the mission. But Travers was not taking the bait. He continued to listen. Without wonder. Without whimsy. Perpetually annoyed.
The jocular byplay was surprisingly customary during landings, for no other reason than this part of the mission was, technically, the most dangerous. Quips back and forth diffused the unspoken tension without detracting from performance perfection among the crew.
“One hundred and twenty kilometers and closing,” Lindon droned mechanically.
“Let’s hit the floods,” Mars said.
Lindon popped a switch on his board, and hot white light blared out from the module's nosecone, washing the lunar surface in brilliance. Huge upthrusts of moondust appeared ahead - alien dunes rising higher from the surface than any which could be found in the Sahara Desert; products of violent, sub-lunar seismic activity that had started long before life formed on the Earth. Small dust clouds churned in the silent vacuum due to the powerful retro thrusters blasting down on the surface in preparation for the module’s landing.
Anderson leaned into to get a better look from his port window. “Smooth as shit through a goose.”
“Now that’s smooth,” Mars said. “Touchdown in twenty seconds.”
The lunar module uprighted itself, and descended on two powerful support struts. Touchdown was singularly uneventful - an astronaut’s dream. The retrorockets were instantly killed and again, the eternal silence of space prevailed.
The module’s landing officially marked the half-way point in its mission. After it had identified the source of the mysterious signal the LM would lift off an hour later, and return to the Challenger Two orbiting six miles above the surface. Twenty hours later, John Mars and his men would be safely back on Earth. Routine. Back home before the ball game on Saturday; Reds against the Mets, and to hell with the odds that the latter could pull another miracle out of the hat like back in ‘68. There'd be cold beer, too. Even if Mars and his people had to spend 48 hours in mandatory quarantine, cold beer was still going to taste good.
“Well, that's that,” Travers leaned back into his seat, as Mars punched a few buttons that would stabilize the lunar module’s upright position. “Mission Control still can’t identify the signal, but they're sticking to the original theory that some residual Apollo stuff was dumped sub-orbital back in the 70s."
Danning nodded, a tacit assent with the heretofore unanimous consensus. "Apollo 12 landed only a few miles from here. Those guys were kicking up dirt for a thousand yards in all directions. One of them could have lost an antennae beacon that has a battery half-life of fifty years.”
“It's Little Green Men. I feel it,” Anderson said in his most serious voice, his eyes boring into those of Travers.
“Naw, that's just gas. Lay off that Tang concentrate,” Danning grinned. He then glanced at Mars, who took out a cigar and toyed with it with his teeth. “By the way, second hand smoke kills. You know that, skipper?”
“Yep,” Mars said evenly, glancing out at the cold, empty lunar surface. “Let's suit up.”
The cigar was ritualistic and for show only. He would no sooner light up in the fragile environs of the lunar module than he would consider swing dancing in a pit of cobras, yet the cigar came with him on every mission. It was a comfort toy and even had a name – Old Smokey. To chew it, gnaw it, loll it around between his lips and teeth – it was his version of Captain Queeg’s need to handle little steel balls as a matter of routine. Queeg had the Caine, and Mars the Challenger. Balls or cigars, it didn’t matter. Mars maintained to anyone who was curious that it calmed his nerves. The cigar was part of his private routine – a routine that every astronaut in the program rolled eyes at in close quarters.
The old man is superstitious, that’s what it is.
Mars had heard that before. He continued chewing. Damn right the old man is superstitious, he thought. That’s why I’m still alive.
He called it his Good Luck Smoke. When he was on a mission, the Smoke came immediately after landing or just after take-off. Not deliberately ceremonial; just, well, a rule. Like some guys spitting over their shoulder with gratitude, like some guys dropping and doing ten pushups to whatever Gods May Be, whatever angel ensured safe arrivals for astronauts everywhere.
A couple of chews, a sniff or two. A moment of thanks. A symbol.
As his men suited up, Mars continued nibbling Old Smokey, never letting his eyes leave the panorama of the lunar wasteland. His mind began to wander again, but this time the mental ramble was more germane to the mission.
Severa
l questions circled inside his mind over and over again: what if indeed the signal was of non-terrestrial origin? What if it was ... something else?
The mystery, of course, would be resolved in the next twenty minutes, but the thought was titillating. As a fledgling trainee in NASA, John Mars had worked with SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) a government funded research division that shot radio waves into space and scanned the heavens round the clock, looking for aliens. So far, aliens had yet to be found, but Mars' certainty that the universe was filled with life had not been diminished. The odds were overwhelmingly in favor for life to evolve over a hundred million parsecs of space, and twice that many suitable star systems therein. That Man was unique in the infinite cosmos was unacceptable to Mars; if for no other reason because, for god’s sake, there just had to be something better out there. His one and only hope was, once found, the searched-for aliens would be friendly -- or at the very least, not as temperamental as Mankind. Mars suspected that if there was intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, it was probably benign.
Out there. Out here, he thought. There had to be something superior. Something kinder and gentler. There just had to be...
He continued chewing Old Smokey, his thoughts in freefall. Sometimes, he wished he could live forever. Not because death was frightening to him, but because there was still so much to see. The stars. Where, perhaps, there could be found those extraordinary beings Mars dreamed of meeting. Beings filled with compassion, courage and brilliance. Other men would see those stars and perhaps meet those amazing entities on distant worlds. A decade from now, a century, a millennium. Maybe earlier. But he, John Mars, would have to be content with hip-hopping around the immediate solar neighborhood, a frontiersman astronaut, paving the way for a more advanced future.
A space cowboy, really, that's what he was; an anonymous scout to later generations that would call himself and other astronauts of the age, collectively, a noble footnote to the advent of interstellar travel.
Mars clenched Old Smokey and leaned forward for a better view through the LM’s windows. A hundred million pinpoints of light stared back at him. All beckoning. All taunting. All promising, all encompassing. The smile inside abruptly disappeared and he closed his eyes with genuine sadness.
“Take your time, John,” Anderson quipped from behind, snapping Mars back to the reality of the here and now.
He turned around and saw that his crew had already donned their environmental suits and were watching him. “Unless you want to stay here and chew yourself silly on Old Smokey. Ever hear of cancer of the mouth?” Anderson needled.
Mars stood up and shoved the cigar into a pocket. He glanced at a screen, then grinned at Anderson. “I'll outlive you, pal."
His grin abruptly disappeared, as he felt his entire spine freeze. He dismissed it as superstition once again. Those fairies, John thought. Always working overtime.
The Rover, a custom designed lunar dune buggy, was propelled by an electric battery and could achieve a top speed of thirty miles per hour. Ten minutes later, Mars and his men were nestled in the crowded vehicle, rolling toward the source of the mysterious beacon. Mare Imbrium was the second largest crater on the moon; from rim to rim on most every point of the compass, it was ten miles in diameter. Mars had landed the lunar module within the uncluttered, comparatively smooth center of the crater. The mysterious signal was couched near one of the crater walls, less than a mile east. At zero gravity, the walk would have been strenuous, an amalgam of discomfort, concern for oxygen consumption and sluggish progress. With the Rover, it was a quick, albeit cramped jaunt of around five minutes from the module to the cliff-edge.
Next to Mars, Travers looked at his scanner, a blinking, Nintendo-like instrument that perpetually produced grid lines, distance coordinates and bleeping noises.
“One hundred feet and closing,” Travers said.
The Rover came to a halt. Mars got out, reaching for a laser pistol. It was actually a tool, the latest, state of the art standard issue supplement for all shuttle crews. Argon-based, its primary utilization was for vehicle repair or cutting through ore samples. There was no reason to carry the damn things anywhere for this phase of the mission. Yet John Mars now held two of them like weapons.
Travers looked to Lindon, then to Danning and Anderson. Anderson, the joke man of the group, chuckled.
“You expecting bad guys, skipper?”
“Yeah, like Moon Monsters?” Lindon chortled.
Mars didn’t mind the ribbing. Nor did he replace the pistols. The chances were less than nil, of course, that they would encounter anything at all, much less living, and forget extraterrestrial. But John Mars was a superstitious man. Irish through and through, he would say. And it would be a long time before he stopped being a man of war...
“If there are Moon Monsters, guess who’s not going to be eaten?!”
The four men hesitated for only a moment. Then, they, too, reached for laser pistols, following their leader's example.
What the hell, they thought. Never know when you might find some ore to blast.
At one time in his distant pass, he had been known as Jonathan Marzo O’Malley. Lucky Mack, so he was known to friends and enemies alike. In time, he grew tired of the horrendously long O’Malley and the tavern informal Lucky Mack. He chose the name Mars based wholly on one thing only: it was a place in space he dreamed one day of visiting. It was, of course, a wholly unrealistic dream … but it was his, personal, and irrevocable.
Thus, once he joined NASA, John Mars was born. However, there was a good reason his men and superiors had referred to him as Lucky Mack much earlier. John Mars had a sixth sense for things … and while he privately believed his gift to be of a genuinely clairvoyant origin, the world at large chalked it up to the Lucky Irish in him.
Maybe, Mars thought. Maybe …
Mars moved ahead of his men, guided by Travers and his instrumentation. He was getting the odd sensation in the back of his neck – the Lucky Mack Sensation, as it were. The sensation was unfamiliar in recent years, a throwback to a time he preferred to think of as little as possible. Yet it could not be ignored, and in fact, was a kind of emotional divining rod for one thing, and one thing only: disaster.
Something bad this way comes, laddie.
Shut up, Mars snarled at his brain fairy.
It was ridiculous, he knew it, but the sensation persisted, and it bothered him. As a marine, the neck-prickle sensation had saved his life on more than one occasion, predicated on nothing more than a hunch. He had learned to pay its presence some kind of credence. Sure, his rational mind insisted, the paranoia was silly. This was the moon, damn it; a place he’d walked on before. Airless, lifeless, an unconscious ball of decomposing cheese... Still, his senses sharpened another notch up on the survival scale.
Up and down the mountain, and through the running glen, we daren’t go a huntin’, for fear of little men …
For no reason at all, the childhood Irish ditty he’d heard his father taunt him with when he had misbehaved, repeated over and over in his mind. Keeping the brain fairy company, Mars thought.
Keep sharp. It’s probably nothing. Still…
A hundred yards ahead, a small pulsating purple light flickered through a light veneer of moondust. Mars pointed at it and continued forward, indicating for his crew to remain behind while he scouted ahead.
“What the hell is it?” Danning said, watching Mars approach the light source.
Mars tapped the light source with his boot, then bent down to wipe several inches of pulverized soil away. There seemed to be something else just below the light.
He froze.
“Holy shit,” he muttered into his comlink.
“Talk to us, skipper,” Anderson said, his voice now deadpan and joke-free.
“This isn't NASA space junk,” Mars said ominously. And that goddamn prickling sensation in my neck ain't going away, either, he thought with mounting irritation.
And if it ain�
�t moondust, then it must be fairydust.
And yer know what the fairies do when you ‘muss with their dust…’
He stared at the light -- clearly affixed to something metallic underneath it. Something huge.
Not good, another voice inside of Mars began to whisper, a voice forged from training and combat experience. Not good at all. Not good because this was unexpected. The unexpected in space generally proved fatal.
The light began to suddenly blink faster. Mars glanced up toward the group. From somewhere deep below the surface, a low feral growl began, as though some slumbering beast had been awakened and was now angrily protesting the disturbance to its rest.
“Travers, call it out to me,” Mars snapped.
Travers glanced down at his motion sensor.
“Oh, hell. Skipper, I’m getting increased fluctuation in signal readout. From 50 megacycles -- Jesus --”
The earth below Mars began to shake and move. And it began to shake around his men as well. Then -- the metal below Mars began to rise.
Four robotic exploded through the lunar surface, surrounding Mars. Moonrocks from the disturbance rocketed a hundred feet into the lunar sky, unfettered by zero gravity, beginning a million year trajectory into the void. Mars, apparently on top of a huge central trunk from which the legs were joined, fell to his knees, and grabbed onto a metal projection to keep from rolling off. A moment later, the entire body of the superstructure rose above the surface. Mars stared down at his stunned men.
“Fall back -- get out of here!” he yelled into his helmet mike.
He was frightened now, really frightened. The awesome mass of alien metal below him continued to rise, dwarfing all his logic and strength.
“Some kind of machine,” Mars heard himself say sluggishly. He had to talk, to say something. Hearing his own voice was a measure of reality in a universe suddenly gone bug-shit mad.
Mars, The Bringer Of War Page 2
