Now he must pitch the LK forward again, and it begins to advance over the terrain ahead. The low rush of the engine whispers through the craft. He glimpses boulders ahead separating into an open field of dark gray basalt scarred by numerous craters. With his right hand he holds one control stick in its forward pitch. The ground scrolls through the lower viewport, that now points almost straight down. He is hanging off the straps and braces, his weight tipped forward, the ground sweeping under him.
A fuel alarm sounds. If the computer was operational, it would call an abort, but he presses on. The fuel restriction stipulated by the flight plan is reserved for the ascent from the surface and orbital rendezvous with the LOK. There can be no rendezvous.
The LK slips into its final descent, the altimeter counting down to 300 metres, 200, 100… A stray thought visits him for an instant, the realization that because he cannot reach the Near Side he’ll never see the earthrise, he’ll never see the blue Earth again.
The shadow of the LK tracks toward him, slithering over the boulders and into the open ground of his target area. He sees shadows of the spindly legs of the LPU landing gear shortening as he pitches the LK back to the vertical, and then growing like vines over the ground below as he descends.
The engine fires up dust. A cloud swells and swirls around the LPU, blotting out his view of the surface. He flicks his gaze to his instruments, those that are operational, watching that the craft is level and sinking with graceful steadiness toward the surface. A wire sensor dangles below the footpads of the LPU. It brushes the surface and a blue contact light blinks on his control panel, and he shuts down the engine at once.
He falls. The craft drops 3 metres under one-sixth gravity and strikes the surface with a bang that shudders every strut and panel. He hears the vehicle creak as it starts to angle over. For a moment he fears that a footpad hangs over a crater, or that the ground is subsiding, so that the lander will topple over, but then the motion ceases and the craft settles, listing only a few degrees to starboard.
Silence surrounds the LK. The dust settles back to the surface in sheets. No wind tosses it back and forth or carries it into the distance. No rains will wash it away. The footpads of the lander will never rust. The cosmonaut’s body will never decompose.
The craft carries an immediate postlanding checklist that, according to the flight plan, must be hurried through in under a minute to determine whether the cosmonaut is safe to stay or must ignite the ascent engine at once. Yefgenii disregards the checklist. There is no option but to stay. The LOK’s orbit is decaying so fast it can only be a matter of hours before it crashes into the lunar surface. There is nowhere else in the universe left for him to go.
HE SLEEPS. The stillness cradles him. He cannot even be certain that he remembers his mother’s touch. He searches for moments in which her arms cradled him, or her fingers caressed his cheek, but he can’t find them. He recalls a night terror, then her soft voice calming him; he begged her not to leave him alone in the dark, so she slept nearby. He sees her there in the gloom, her outline changing shape as she turns, perhaps asleep or just pretending for his benefit. He remembers that her presence gave him the strength to face the darkness, to face terror and loneliness, but his eyes cannot penetrate the gloom, he cannot see her, only her outline changing shape as she turns.
When he wakes, he is tired. He remains as tired as he was when he fell asleep. The fans hum. He lifts his head from the narrow mesh hammock and sees that some of the instrument lights have gone out. The batteries are draining down. The lander is running out of power.
He peers at the blinds covering the viewports. When he moves to them, he senses the strange effect of low gravity, like walking in a dream. He lifts the blinds. It is not a dream.
The eerie terrain of the Eastern Sea stretches to the horizon. In the distance, long escarpments slope up from the plain into blunt hills that curve in gray bands one behind the other. Above them the sky is dense, black and empty. He is in a land of extreme contrast but no colour. The surface gleams, the sky is matte black, and the Sun blazes with no mediating atmosphere to diffuse, refract or blur its radiance.
He’s slept in his suit and boots. He replaces his bubble helmet and then mounts the outer shell on the metal collar, a Moon helmet bearing three eyeshades and two protective visors to deflect the Sun’s unfiltered ultraviolet and infrared radiation. He lifts on the backpack and connects its oxygen and water hoses and plugs in its electricity cables, then dons his gloves and locks.
His movements are slow and final. Stowed in the LK is an eleven-page checklist of items to be accounted for prior to a lunar EVA. He pays it no attention. He takes with him only two items: the flag and the camera.
In depressurizing the cabin, he feels the Krechet Moonsuit swell and stiffen. His weak tired limbs lock into rigid poles. Where the suit presses into his flank, he feels the enduring pain of the sunburn.
He releases the locks one by one and then turns the levers. The hatch moves under a light touch. It swings open and in the oval doorframe appears the flat gray blanket of lunar regolith. He steps forward. He senses his body lift and fall in altered motion. He is light, his downstep is slow, the gravity is one-sixth of Earth’s.
The lander casts a long shadow in lunar postmeridian. The surface is unspoiled. The pattern of dust scattered by his landing remains unaltered. Not a single particle has been jogged by wind, not a streak blanked by rain. Here nature does not obliterate the old to prepare a fresh canvas for the new. Any wake left on the lunar seas will never flatten, because no water exists here.
When he remembers Earth, it is its water — the blue and white of oceans, clouds and ice caps — that colours his memory. Water supports life, but rain and snow ablate the signatures of living things. This waterless place will preserve the signature of his landing longer than man will exist, long after nations have toppled and the empires of the Soviet Union and the United States have become as extinct as those of Rome and Greece and their artifacts are buried deep as the Minoans’.
Yefgenii takes the next step, and this one brings him to the top of the ladder. There is the flag to plant, a commemorative photograph to be taken. Afterwards, he can find much to explore in the time that remains. In the lander he can survive for days before the oxygen supply runs out. By days he means Earth days. Daylight in this place won’t vanish until the Sun drops below the horizon and the terminator crosses the Eastern Sea; at that phase of the lunar cycle, the Moon will be a waxing crescent as viewed from Earth, and the crew of Apollo 11 will have begun their voyage to the Sea of Tranquillity. By then he will have perished here on the invisible obverse side of the Moon, alone and unknown for eternity, in a paper-thin metal box the size of a couple of telephone booths.
As an alternative, he considers setting out on foot for the Near Side, but the backpack contains only enough oxygen for 1.5 hours. He won’t even cross the Eastern Sea. He’ll never see Earth again, though this strikes him in these circumstances as not a good enough reason not to try, if only to be granted one more look at the blue-and-white face of home.
Perhaps over the next hill stands a bar, and the others will be waiting for him there, Gnido, Kiriya and Skomorokhov, Bondarenko and Komarov, Grissom and Gagarin. They will toast one another. Grissom, had he lived, would have been the first American to attempt a landing — so they’ll drink together, and talk of what might have been. Or perhaps it will be a quiet place, a farm bathed in golden sunlight, and his mother will chase him as he runs through the cornfield, and this time, as she lifts him into the air, laughing, he’ll be granted a vision of her face.