The Eye With Which The Universe Beholds Itself (Apollo Quartet)

by Ian Sales

  There is no hope of rescue on this mission.

  1999

  I see we got a regular hero visiting, says the man in the docking adaptor. The nametag on his constant wear garment reads Parazynski. It is not a name Elliott knows, but then he has been out of the Astronaut Corps for nearly two decades.

  Parazynski puts out a hand and grasps the hatch coaming just behind him. His other hand he raises in a salute. Welcome aboard, sir, he says; and this time his voice has the deference due to a person of Elliott’s rank and achievements.

  A second astronaut appears in the module through the hatch behind Parazynski, a woman. Her dark hair floats about her head like a sable nimbus.

  We got us the first man on Mars here, Parazynski tells her, his gaze still on Elliott.

  The only man on Mars, Elliott corrects. He is trying to keep the tone light, but there is a bite to Parazynski’s words and Elliott wonders what he has done to deserve it.

  Yeah, damn shame we never went back, Parazynski replies.

  Could it be envy? It has been many years since Elliott was a member of NASA and he does not know what narrative has been written internally about his missions, past and present. Ares 9 may have been a one-off, he wants to say; but Americans have visited other stars, there is even an inhabited base on an exoplanet orbiting one.

  Elliott knows this because that is where he is going.

  Parazynski spins about and pushes himself through the hatch, bringing himself to a halt by his fellow astronaut. She has one foot to the floor and one hand to the ceiling—according to Elliott’s orientation, that is. Elliott can now see her name tag: it reads Weber. Another name unfamiliar to him.

  Elliott follows Parazynski and Weber from the docking adaptor and into the module, a long cylinder walled, floored and roofed with lockers and screens and loops of wires. A tied bundle of cables and a slowly undulating fabric duct run along one corner and then dive down and through the hatch at the far end. Weber leads them into another docking adaptor, and as he joins her, Elliott looks up, sees an open hatch and, through it, what appears to be the interior of a Lunar Module. They are hundreds of thousand of miles from the Moon, and no one has been on the lunar surface for almost thirty years. He is about to ask, when Weber arrows down through a hatch in the floor, closely followed by Parazynski. Elliott pulls himself across to the hatch in the floor, then with a yank of both arms propels himself into the module below—

  —and suffers a moment of vertigo as what was a vertical shaft full of clutter abruptly becomes a horizontal tunnel. Weber and Parazysnki have already disappeared through another hatch at the far end, and Elliott wonders how extensive this space station is. True, it has been in place now for fifteen years, and has been added to on a regular basis…

  He is surprised the space station does not smell; all those years and its interior looks tired and battered, with its snaking wires and hoses and far too many broken consoles, strips of duct tape and pieces of cardboard. But there is no odour at all, and he belatedly realises the air he is breathing is constantly on the move. Perhaps in some niche, where a pool of still air has gathered, some strange smell specific to freefall living might be found.

  Through the hatch and this is the largest and untidiest module yet. The far end is sealed; it is the end of the line. There is a low table covered in velcro strips and double-sided duct-tape on the “floor” in amongst equipment Elliotn cannot identify.

  I guess, Parazynski says, you can tell us what brings you here.

  Elliott reaches for something to halt himself, and puts a hand to a rail running along one wall. Once he is stationary, he says, The Robert H Goddard is taking me to Earth Two.

  You must be a real important guy.

  No, I have a real important job to do.

  And they picked you because?

  Elliott does not answer but looks about him and wonders why there is no window in this module. Do they not want to look out? He remembers a famous photograph of the Earth rising above the lunar horizon, taken by the crew of Apollo 8, Christmas 1968. A blue marble, so small and fragile, and the greatest distance from which the planet had ever been seen at that time. The Earth in that photo would be approximately the same size as the Earth seen from Space Station Freedom.

  You’re USAF, right? asks Parazynski.

  Elliott nods, then watches as Weber consults a wristwatch and then porpoises about and launches herself at the open hatch. She swims from view.

  Parazynski continues, You ever been to Area 51?

  Again, Elliott nods, but cautiously. He has visited Groom Lake Air Force Base several times in his capacity as commander of the Air Force Flight Test Center at Edwards AFB. He has even seen some of the classified aircraft projects being developed and tested at Area 51.

  Parazynski says, That’s where the Serpos were invented, right?

  A part of Area 51, yes, Elliott replies, called S4. But I don’t have clearance for there.

  Is it true, Parazynski asks, the Rocks use technology reverse-engineered from some flying saucer shot down in New Mexico in 1947?

  Rocks? he asks.

  The Goddard, the Webb and the Paine—the Rocks.

  Elliott knows for a cold hard fact the secret Serpo engine which allows the “Rocks” to travel faster than the speed of light has nothing to do with any flying saucer, but he is not about to reveal it.

  That’s classified, he says.

  He has heard of the crash at Roswell, New Mexico, and knows of the part it plays in UFO lore, but he’s always believed it was a weather balloon. But if USAF wants to use that myth to hide a bigger secret, the true origin of the Serpo engine… It’s typical of the creative use of misinformation with which the US military protects its most closely-guarded secrets.

  Someone appears in the hatch and, grateful for the interruption, Elliott turns to watch them enter the module. It is another member of the space station’s crew. He is wearing a communications cap and his nametag reads Young. He is older than Parazynski and Weber, but still a decade or so short of Elliott’s own fifty-eight years. The man’s mouth is a tight line, his face expressionless.

  You going on the Goddard? he asks.

  Yeah, replies Elliott.

  It’s not due to depart for three weeks, Young says.

  Elliott tells him, This is urgent. They should be prepping now.

  Young scowls. They don’t tell us shit, he complains. I guess you can’t either?

  Elliott shrugs. Classified, he says. You know how it is.

  Yeah, says Young. Fuck.

  1980

  After twenty days, Elliott smells a little ripe, as does the interior of his spacesuit. Three times now, he has undressed and given himself a sponge bath. And each time, it has taken an effort of will to struggle back into his A7LB. He would sooner wear a CWG, of course, and shower regularly, as he did aboard the flyby spacecraft. But the MM’s cabin is only 235 cubic feet and he has to spend seventy days cooped up in it and all he has is a sponge, recycled water and a bar of soap. He has to wear his spacesuit constantly because the walls of the Mars Module are so thin a micrometeorite could easily pierce them. The five layers of his spacesuit also provide a better shield against radiation than the thin cotton of a Constant Wear Garment.

  If not for the freefall, these past weeks—his first Christmas and New Year alone; and so far from another human being—would have been unbearable. He at least has the full volume of the cabin in which to move around. He misses Walker’s presence, though it’s been good to get some real solitude after one hundred days in the flyby spacecraft. They’d never have made it if they were just amiable strangers—no, they’re best buds, a true team. All the same, he’s not looking forward to the 537 days of the return journey…

  The mission planners have given him plenty of science to occupy him, but his tools are necessarily limited and he’s only done as tasked in a desperate attempt to stave off cabin fever. It hasn’t really worked. Instead, he has spent hours staring out the commander’s window
at Mars, a rusty globe smeared with umber lines and shadows, growing larger and larger each day. He can see surface features now, Valles Marineris a cicatrix stitched across the planet’s face, Mons Olympus so high its peak pokes out the atmosphere, the Tharsis Bulge… and the blurred swirls of a vast dust storm drifting across Chryse Planitia.

  He and Walker talk every day, and together they check each system again and again and again. His course is programmed into the MGC, the numbers put together by much smarter guys back in Houston than the two of them. He trusts them, he has no choice, there is no way he can manually fly this spacecraft across millions of miles of space and hit his target. Periodically, he checks his IMU and feeds the figures to Walker, who passes them onto Houston. And sometimes they come back with updates he has to input on the DSKY. And every day, minute by minute, hour by hour, Mars draws closer, expands in the windows, its baleful presence gradually, inescapably, blotting out the heavens.

  It’s an astonishing act of faith, he belatedly realises, to imagine this mission will succeed, that he will spend nine days on the Martian surface, and then return safely to the Earth.

  Yet his conviction is unshakeable. Nothing will go wrong because the engineering is up to the job. He’s heard the stories, he knows how the space programme used to be run—Gus Grissom’s “Do good work”, and then the lemon and the Apollo 1 fire; even Alan Shepard’s crack about “built by the lowest bidder”… But he knows how they built Ares 9, he was involved in the design, he visited the suppliers, he saw the parts being made, inspected them, ensured they met specification, and worked precisely as designed; and if he had not been confident in the hardware, Elliott would never have accepted the mission. Not even to be the first man on Mars.

  Or so he told Judy.

  The days pass and the photo of his wife on the control panel keeps him company as the Red Planet swells in the windows until it fills his entire view. Once a week, he speaks to Judy, his S-Band signal relayed through the flyby spacecraft. She asks him how he is, he assures her he is fine, not mentioning he grows weaker with each day he spends in freefall and he worries he may not be strong enough to move about on the Martian surface. She tells him neighbourhood gossip, but he doesn’t recognise the names, or recalls them only dimly, and their house in Nassau Bay seems like a distant memory and only Judy, kept fresh by the photograph, is clear in his memory—so much so she comes to represent home, Earth, the life he left behind and to which he is determined to return.

  Now he’s hurtling towards a curved plain of russets and ochres and reddish-browns, and soon he’s so close all hint of curvature has gone. After one last report to Walker, he positions himself at the commander’s station, attaches the waist restraints, and waits for the Mission Timer to hit 31234315, when the DSKY will tell him the MGC is running the descent program.

  As the MM skims across the top of Mars’ atmosphere, he has one hand to the thrust/translation controller and the other to the attitude controller, but he’s not flying this craft. He looks down on the planet, and he’s spent so long training for this he’s used to the montages from the simulator, but now the landscape of Mars is written so emphatically across its face he can pick out major features and it all seems perversely unreal. The three Tharsis Montes: Arsia, Pavonis and Ascraeus; and now Noctis Labyrinthus, Hesperia Planum… It amuses him the Latin names sound so scientific, but translated into English they describe a fantasy land: Peacock Mountain, the Labyrinth of the Night, the Lands to the West…

  The MM begins to vibrate and rattle as its heatshield hits wisps of Martian air. The atmosphere here is only fourteen miles deep and less than one percent as dense as Earth’s. It’s not enough to slow him from his interplanetary dash—but the designers have that covered. There’s a rocket engine in the heatshield and it fires on schedule, dropping the MM through the Sound Barrier, and he’s briefly amused at the thought of a sonic boom rolling unheard across the lifeless hills of Lunae Planum.

  He watches the altimeter and rate of descent meter. It’s a rough ride and his wasted muscles are making it hard to cope. The heatshield ablates as he hurtles across the Martian sky. He can see an orange glow from below, but is that the Martian surface or the heatshield burning? And now a white fireball envelopes the MM. This spacecraft was not designed for atmospheric entry, not even an atmosphere as thin as Mars’. It’s two hundred and fifty times thinner than Earth, but it’s still air, it’s not a vaccum, and this flimsy thing was originally built to land on the airless Moon.

  At least he’s not experiencing the crushing Gs of an Earth re-entry. After thirty days in freefall with no exercise, it’s a real strain, and his legs are aching, he’s feeling a little light-headed, but he knows it feels much worse than it is so he rides it out—

  Now the MM is in freefall, dropping towards the Martian surface. The spacecraft shudders as the heatshield is discarded. The MM is still flying descent stage first, so all he can see in the window is dark sky. A moment later, the spacecraft rocks as the drogue chutes are released. The MM jerks from side to side as the chutes open, there is a moment of vertiginous stability as the spacecraft falls for more than 15,000 feet, and then the drogue chutes are gone, work done, and he hears a loud bang as the mortars fire and the main chutes deploy.

  The MM drops toward the surface with the chutes reefed for several long seconds, then the reef lines are cut and the chutes open to their full extent. The sudden deceleration is worse than he expected, his knees buckle and he has to lock them to avoid falling, and he swears as his forearm slides from the arm-rest and bangs against the control panel. The MM abruptly pitches upright, and the Martian landscape pivots into view.

  He gasps, he can’t help himself. He’s looking down on a vast desert, reds and umbers and pale browns, from horizon to horizon. It looked so unearthly from orbit, but now, a thousand feet above the surface, it could be Earth, some unvisited corner where dunes creep across the land while sand vortices dance from crest to crest, a landscape punctuated by rocks and hills and ridges. But he knows no one has ever set foot here—he can feel it, a sense of solitude, of desolation, which rises from the Martian soil, is written in the red sand, in the jagged and crumbled escarpments and cliffs.

  He thinks, This is it; I’m going to land on Mars, I’m going to be the first man to walk on another planet, I’m in the goddamned history books for sure.

  If only Judy could see him now, could feel the same anticipation, the same excitement, the same heightened awareness he now feels, could recognise that this moment defines him, that a palpable sense of purpose stretches from this moment, from his heart, both back and forth in time. She’d forgive him for accepting the mission, of course she’d forgive him. He’d told her he was coming back. Again and again, he’d told her he was coming back. Not even one hundred and fifty million miles could keep him from her.

  He looks up from the DSKY at the photograph of his wife on the control panel. He will be on Mars for the next nine days, he can talk to Walker, who will be swinging by within one hundred miles of the planet, but Earth is on the other side of the Sun, so there’s going to be a long delay on any conversation with Houston. He knows there’s been important guests in the MCC throughout the mission, and the viewing gallery will probably be packed with press and VIPs during the nine days of his stay on the surface. Judy will be there, of course. He’s looking forward to speaking to her before his first scheduled EVA.

  The DPS fires its final burn, and moments later the contact light shines, telling him there’s five feet to go, so he braces himself for the landing. The DPS cuts off and the MM drops and hits the surface of Mars with more force than he’d expected. He stumbles and bangs against the control panel, adding another bruise to the ones he’s gathered already.

  A profound silence fills the MM. He thinks, by God, I did it. I’m on Mars, goddamnit.

  He speaks, but his mouth is too dry and all he can make is an unintelligible sound. He tries again, remembering he is speaking to posterity. Houston will not hear his wo
rds for thirteen and a half minutes, but this is all part of the script:

  Houston, he says, this is Cydonia Base, Discovery has landed.

  1999

  Before it was captured and bent to NASA’s needs, the Robert H Goddard was a Near Earth Asteroid named 1862 Apollo. Peering through the docking windows as the LM Taxi approaches the spacecraft, Elliott sees a grey potato-shaped rock, details unnaturally sharp in the vacuum, smooth and lightly dimpled, just over a mile in length. As the rock rotates beneath him, three white cylinders, resembling the lower stages of rockets on spidery legs and arranged in a triangular formation, roll into view. Two Apollo Command Modules and a single Lunar Module lacking its descent stage are docked to an adaptor on the top of one cylinder; a single Command Module occupies the docking adaptor of another. An area of 1862 Apollo’s surface alongside the silo-like modules has been smoothed flat and laid with metal decking. Secured to this decking are three long tubes, which Elliott identifies as launch vehicles in some sort of casing, though he’s not sure what type—from the size Atlas Vs, perhaps. He wonders how they managed to get them up into space and out here to the Lagrangian point.

  Now that he is closer, Elliott sees the habitation modules have been adapted from S-IVB stages, cylinders forty-eight feet in height and twenty-two feet in diameter. He is surprised: this is old tech. The Ares 9 flyby spacecraft was based on the same hardware, as was the simulator—later known as Skylab and the first station out here at L5. And even back then, the designs were old and their use for Ares 9 more a matter of what was do-able than what was best. He remembers Walker, his CMP on Ares 9, saying they’d flown to the Red Planet as much on political desperation as on Aerozine 50.

  Doesn’t look like much, does she? says Weber. But she’ll take you ninety trillion miles in a couple of weeks.

  Where’s the Serpo engine? Elliott asks.

  Other side of the rock, with the nuclear reactor.