Dmitry put his teacup down. “The Chinese actually have photographs of the device, so we’ll be second.” A frown appeared on the man’s face.
“No, Dima, I meant dynamic, not static. Whatever is up there, it was inert when they arrived, but now it’s active. Whatever it’s doing, we’ll be the first to know.”
“Perhaps,” Dmitry responded, a look of contemplation on his face. “There is no knowing what we will find up there. This is uncharted history, my old friend, and it feels good to be taking point on it.”
Vlad smiled. His old boss and friend had become more sentimental and fond of the old Soviet days when the empire ruled supreme and their armed military might had the west cowering. Those days had long ago passed, and the Federation found itself struggling to keep pace with the US-China GDP race that had been going on for most of the last few decades.
“Dangerous moves we make. If they find out about our little game, there could be serious consequences,” Vlad said.
“Maybe the designers of that device up there,” Dmitry said, nodding toward the faint outline of the crescent moon as it rose in the eastern sky, “wanted to test our planet’s resolve in such matters. We are all nuclear powers, armed to the teeth with global destruction. Maybe this is only our first test as a species, a way to see if we’re worthy of say . . . greater enlightenment.”
“Are we?” Vlad asked.
“We are, but I’m not sure about the Chinese or Americans.” Dmitry chuckled and resumed drinking his tea.
“Speaking of which, have we any news from the spat between the two?”
“It appears the Americans have countered, but the actual details weren’t even cleared at my level. It seems our security forces feel we have an intelligence leak somewhere, and they are compartmentalizing all sensitive data for now. What little I heard came from Oleg at Strategic Air Command. Bah! It is too late now for delicacies. Time to hit with the hammer before we become irrelevant.”
“Speak for yourself, old timer. I plan on seeing the next century if our medical advances keep pace. Now what is with the leak? I thought we had our plans air tight,” Vlad asked.
“We picked up some chatter from a top level state diplomat in France who seemed privy to our plans before we executed them.”
“What plans?”
“The removal of the Americans from the Gordust,” Dmitry said, reaching for a mint in his inner coat pocket and offering one to Vlad, who accepted.
“Nyet, you can’t be serious.”
“I’m afraid I am. So here we are, none the wiser, and that is also part of the reason why we delayed the launch. We wanted to know who could pass this information along. We are being monitored.”
“Of course we are,” Vlad said, motioning for Irina to bring the tablets to his table. “We are always being monitored. What else is new?”
“Ah, Irina, is it?” Dmitry asked, noticing the shorter than normal skirt and the long, slender legs that she displayed.
“Yes, Secretary Osnokov,” Irina said, placing the portable tablets in front of each man and dropping off a set of folders with a red security band around them. “Will there be anything else, Vladimir?” she asked, twirling a small strand of hair with her index finger and tucking it behind her ear, the motion bordering on flirtation.
Vlad noticed the slight raise of Dmitry’s right brow, not visible to Irina as he gave Vlad a rather interesting look. “No, we’ll monitor the launch from here. We have the radios and phones, so if we need anything, we’ll ring you.”
“Very well,” she said, nodding to Vlad and smiling at Dmitry before departing.
“I see . . .” Dmitry said.
“Don’t start, please. I’ve suffered enough. What can I say? I am a weak man.”
“We all are, Vlad. We all are.”
The men watched as the powerful rocket was fueled, and within an hour, the large digital countdown timer, over five meters tall near the launch pad, reached triple zeros, and the dark Siberian forest was illuminated with the bright glow of the rocket’s exhaust. Data from the command center was wired directly to the men’s tablets, showing thrust force, time after liftoff, flight trajectory, and relative speed.
Within a few minutes, the entire base was returned to its normal illumination of the large pale electrical lamps as the Energia X swung across the horizon and out of sight. The Russians were going to the moon.
Chapter 12
Space Station
NASA Space Center
Houston, Texas
In the near future, Day 24
The news had been less than ideal. Rock sat at the conference table in the room next to their working lab, looking at the daily report Mr. Smith had given him that morning. The engineers in Pasadena and his own mission team were told to speed up the process for the first manned lunar mission in over half a century.
The Russians had launched what appeared to be a lunar reconnaissance satellite to the moon. It was even now supposed to be entering lunar orbit after the three day journey. This was a major setback for the Americans in the race to reach the alien object. For two days, they figuratively held their collective breaths, wondering if the HUMINT reports were wrong and that this mission actually had cosmonauts on board. The daily report indicated they did not—it was only a robotic probe designed to gather data on the device and its signals, including photographic details. That would be interesting.
“Well, at least they haven’t reached it first,” Jack said from across the table, drinking on his morning coffee.
“Damn Ruskies,” Tom said. A frown appearing on his face as it usually did when referring to their adversary. “They are the only ones with astronauts in space. It won’t take them long to get there. They’ve already done half the work and are way ahead of us on this.”
“I’m not one to always agree with Tom,” Marge said, and at this, Tom smiled, “but he’s right. That’s why we have to leap frog and go straight there with Craig and Julie. What do you think is holding the Russians back?”
Most of his team looked at him, though Rock noticed Lisa was intent on reviewing something in her report. “I’m not so sure I’d trust this data. What if this lunar recon bird that they sent up is actually a supply module? It could contain extra oxygen, fuel, even food supplies for their space station. You guys were on it last. How long can it sustain six cosmonauts?”
Julie and Craig had joined them this morning and were seated at the table along with Jeff Wheeler, their electrical engineer. Julie spoke first. “The station has four personnel pods, though they could support eight if they hot bunk it.” This referred to the practice of two crewmembers sharing one bed or sleeping device. On the space station, the beds were more like vertical hammocks that secured the cosmonaut against a padded bulkhead wall during sleep.
“Yeah, and the science labs could hold a lot of material or equipment if they jettisoned their current scientific experiments,” Craig added. Julie cringed at that, her displeasure more than visible.
“You had several going, didn’t you, Julie?” Marge asked.
“Yes. Two of them involved animal subjects, mice and ants.”
“You probably got plenty of them critters orbiting our planet by now, Jules,” Tom said.
“Jesus, Tom, show some compassion,” Marge said, giving Tom a glare, and she wasn’t the only one. Lisa looked up from her papers to give Tom a similar disapproving look.
“What? I’m just saying. I know them, and they were sure to jettison anything that hindered their mission, right, Rock?” Tom looked at Rock, almost pleading for some support.
“Don’t you take his side, Richard.” Lisa gave Rock a stern look.
“I’m not taking anyone’s side. Let’s move on. I want to know if that station could handle, what”—Rock looked down and thumbed through his notes—“six cosmonauts in the space allocated?”
“Mr. Crandon,” Craig began, “I think Julie will agree with me when I say that the Russian Gordust is like a huge recreation vehicle compa
red to anything we’ve had or even seen. The construction required over thirty launches of their medium and heavy lift rockets, and the payloads were intense when it came to weight and volume. They put a lot of effort into creating a top notch station. Now I’ve never been to the Euro, ah, international space station, but I can tell you that the Gordust is more than spacious, very strong structurally, and more than able to provide adequate life support for eight or more cosmonauts.”
Julie nodded. “The décor is practical, nothing luxurious, but its functionality is beyond question. They can, and will, pull this off.”
“So why haven’t they just done it already, then?” Jack asked.
There was silence for a moment while they all contemplated the question. If the station could be boosted to the moon, what were they waiting for?
“Navigation,” Lisa said. The looks around the table varied from confusion to understanding. “The RV has no steering wheel, get it?”
“Wait, that’s right. They have a solid platform but no way of guiding it yet,” Marge said.
Mrs. Brown starting writing furiously. “Do you have to do that?” Tom asked, annoyance in his voice.
Mr. Smith frowned. This was one of those rarer times when Rock’s team was blessed with the presence of both security officials. Usually, Mr. Smith roved between the three teams at NASA headquarters while Mrs. Brown seemed to be assigned specially for the mission team.
Jeff and his engineers were on the near wing working the equipment while across the building the academia and scientists were analyzing the signals and data from the alien device. Rock had reason on more than one occasion to visit Jeff and his team down the hall, and he noticed a “suit,” as Tom called them, assigned to the equipment team. It seemed all three groups had security personal assigned to them with Mr. Smith managing the effort.
“I’m just taking notes,” Mrs. Brown said, never looking up from her writing.
“Is it true the president sees all your notes?” Jack asked.
“It’s not important what information is passed on. What is important is that we find a way to get to the moon with a manned craft quicker than the Russians or the Chinese. Personally, I wouldn’t share this information with you—need to know—but I’ve been overruled. So you have the latest intel on our adversaries, and you’re tasked with using it to assist you in formulating and tweaking your plan, nothing more,” Mr. Smith said.
Rock knew the president personally overrode the NSA’s objections, but decided gloating or goading his handler would accomplish nothing. “All right, people, what does this mean for our mission? How does this affect the parameters of our launch?”
“Well, it gives us a bit more time,” Marge said.
“And we know what they’re waiting on,” Jack added.
“So if Lisa’s right, they would need some sort of navigation or control pod to add to their station.” Rock looked at his team. “Their current station doesn’t allow them forward viewing, so until that is fixed, they are stuck in orbit. Low or high, it doesn’t matter.”
“Why do they need to see anything?” Mrs. Brown paused her note-taking to ask. “Why not fly this thing sideways? Would it matter?”
“Yeah, why not use those side portholes to line up their lunar approach and insert into orbit using a fixed view finder that way? I’m sure they could bring one up from planet-side easily enough,” Jack asked.
“Impossible,” Jeff chimed in, his rare voice being heard among the group. “The entire station is structured along those two primary load bearing I-beams, right, Craig? Julie?” he asked the astronauts, pausing long enough to see them nod. “So any rockets capable of providing enough thrust to exit the earth’s orbit would have to be larger than normal vectoring motors, and I’m pretty sure the only place to mount them would be along the x-axis, horizontally.”
Craig jumped in. “Exactly. The shorter y-axis beams are only used for providing cross structure strength. They would not bear a load very well, and I’m not sure they could support a sustained rocket burn.”
Mr. Smith looked annoyed. “What does this all mean in layman’s terms?” He always reverted to that phrase when confronted with what was commonly thought of as techno-babble, Rock thought.
“It means, Mr. Smith,” Marge interjected, “that the Russian space station can only travel to the moon front first or rear first. Not sideways. They still need a steering wheel.” Marge smiled to Lisa, and Rock was surprised to see the gesture returned. Were the two actually working together better? That would be a most welcome development, Rock thought to himself.
“I still don’t see why they need to see visually,” Mrs. Brown said, resuming her note-taking while asking the question.
“Because the insertion window for lunar orbit is relatively narrow,” Lisa said. “Less than one degree, if my calculations are correct.”
“They are,” Marge said, again uncharacteristically friendly to Lisa.
“So if they are out of alignment by even half a degree, then they could be flung past the moon and end up either sailing off into intra-solar space or worse, be directed inward toward the sun. With very limited fuel, there would be no escaping that gravity well,” Lisa said.
“Either that, or end up auguring into the lunar surface,” Jack said.
“Then it would be adios, muchachos, to borrow a line.” Tom chuckled.
“Why not just put cameras on the front and be done with it?” Mrs. Brown asked, again pressing her questions seemingly in support of her report.
“Because they don’t know what took out the Chinese equipment,” Marge followed up. “Neither do we, so if their camera system goes down, they would be flying blind.”
Tom leaned forward for emphasis. “They could fly that bad boy old school with just an HUD on the forward viewport like we did the Apollo missions. As long as they have the HUD calibrated, there is no need for cameras.”
“And if the HUD goes down?” Mr. Smith asked.
“They use an overlay on the glass, measured from the pilot’s seat. No electronics required,” Tom answered.
“You getting all this?” Mr. Smith asked Mrs. Brown.
“I have it. I’ll compile it and send it to headquarters within the hour,” she responded.
“So what do you think the Russians are doing?” Jeff asked.
“Getting ready to place a steering wheel on their station,” Rock answered.
*****
Gordust Space Station
Low Earth Orbit
In the near future, Day 25
Yuri watched as the remains of the mice were jettisoned along with several boxes of American instruments and equipment. One would have thought that Olga had some kind of compassion within her soul, but she was ready to jettison the mammals into space alive. Yuri had to insist as senior commander that she euthanize them first. Luckily they still had a fair amount of ether that the American female astronaut had used to knock the mice unconscious when handling them. Olga dumped most of the ether into an absorbent rag inside their cage and sealed it. The creatures fell asleep and passed within minutes. The ants weren’t so lucky.
Better if the woman had taken them back to earth with her, but they had to keep up pretenses and maintain the façade that they were going to continue with her science projects until a return of an American crewmember. That also gave the diplomats earth-side some cover since they could maintain that by monitoring the American experiments, they were still technically abiding by the terms of the station’s joint use agreement. Yuri was sure that wasn’t going to fly anymore.
He moved over to the port window, watching as Gregori and Nikolai were attaching the space rocket to the long support beam. He was the only person certified to operate the long central robotic arm that was similar to what the old U.S. space shuttle had, except more than twice as long, and it had three times the strength in its hydraulic motors. The last couple of days, Yuri had used the arm to bring the personnel pods into the inner rails, making room for the large rockets.
This had brought another set of issues as the living pods were equipped with radiative fins to disperse heat. Despite the fact that space was neither hot nor cold, a common misunderstanding by most, their main issue was radiating heat away from the station, especially when they were on the sun’s side of the earth. Pulling the pods closer to the station made it harder to radiate excess heat, and Yuri had already noticed a slight increase in the overall average internal temperature range. It increased by nearly half a degree Celsius. It would get worse by another quarter of a degree when the four cosmonauts were primarily inside the craft as their cumulative body heat added to the overall temperature of the station.
“If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you were going to shed a tear for those rodents,” Olga said, a note of condescension in her voice.
“It was the humane thing to do, Olya. Don’t start with me today. We have work to do.”
“I tested the internal radio system. You’re cleared to use the open mike on the arm console instead of the handheld,” she said.
“Good, molodyets,” he said, smiling now. “I’ll need both hands to manipulate the arm on the front side. It’s bad enough to be working blind, but to have to use a hand for push to talk, that would be unacceptable,” Yuri said, relieved that she had wired the frequency into his robotic console.
“Every nail has its hammer,” Olga shot back, using an old Siberian saying from the early twentieth century, floating by Yuri and allowing him access to the robotic console. She would allow him to check it. “Veri no proveri, trust but verify, was an even older Russian saying. Yuri would triple check the radio and make sure it was working properly, obeying his voice commands, before utilizing it with his comrades working right next to the arm.
The Americans will never see this coming, Yuri thought, quickly dismissing the melancholy from the earlier activities. Time to look forward . . . literally. Yuri smiled.
Lunar Discovery: Let the Space Race Begin Page 10
