As he walked down the hall, he picked up snippets of conversation.
“…enough fuel for ascent if we remove another fifty kilograms, but…”
“We’ve never done an aerocapture! If we’d funded that flight experiment…”
“Shit! The lander can’t do that! Look, here are the specs and I…”
Stetson smiled. These were good people. The best. They would figure it out. Stetson had flown combat missions, three shuttle missions, and two Orion flights to the space station. He knew what the hardware could do, and he knew the engineers would catch up with him eventually. Or so he hoped.…
The first thing Stetson noticed when he walked into the briefing room was the presence of the four Chinese. They were standing together in the corner, conferring among themselves with their NASA liaison and translator standing a few feet away, looking anxious. Although Stetson didn’t know any of them, he could immediately tell that one of the men—they were all men—was not an engineer. He was the tallest of the bunch, and he stood slightly back from the other three, apparently listening but really watching everyone else in the room. His eyes caught Stetson’s as Bill entered the room, and then they quickly darted back to the conversation of the other three.
He’s either a manager or a political officer or a spy, thought Stetson. And he didn’t really care for any of the possibilities.
The conference room was long and broad, with windows that looked out at the distant launch towers at which both the pencil-like Ares I and the much larger Ares V were poised for takeoff. A simulated cherry table shaped into an ellipse sat in the middle of the room, equipped with individual power, network, and optical-fiber links at regular intervals to allow those in attendance to remain connected.
“Bill! Come on up here. We need to get started.” It was the voice of NASA’s Chief Engineer, Tom Rowan. Rowan, the man ultimately responsible for all the technical aspects of the mission, looked like he hadn’t slept in days. His close-cropped hair was somehow matted to his head, and his clothes had that “day old with sweat” look. He also looked about ten years older than his forty-six years.
“Tom, good to see you.” Stetson slapped him on the shoulder and shook his hand.
“You, too. You need to meet our Chinese counterparts. They flew in last night. That’s also when we got their best data regarding the crash site. But we still don’t know why they crashed. That’s one of the items they are supposed to tell us this morning. I’ve got your coffee for you. Let’s get this show on the road.”
With that, Rowan convened the meeting, with more than two dozen people in the room scurrying for chairs and the four Chinese taking seats directly across from Stetson. After the introductions and obligatory handshakes, the Chinese lead designer, General Xiang Li, took the microphone.
Xiang, not looking a day over thirty-five but probably at least ten years older than that, gazed around the room, pausing briefly as he glanced at “the manager” from his group before moving on.
“Thank you for what you are doing. My country is deeply appreciative. I believe our engineers communicated to yours all that we know about the crash. The Harmony appeared to be in perfect health as it left lunar orbit and began its descent. And then something went horribly wrong. We believed the crew to be lost until your Dreamscape heard their distress call.
“We’re still looking at the engineering data that was being transmitted to Earth autonomously by the spacecraft up until the point at which contact was lost. It’s beginning to look like there was some sort of malfunction with its attitude-control system. The ship was beginning to rock back and forth, and it was building to a point at which the attitude-control thrusters would no longer have been able to compensate. We believe they, in fact, failed—causing the crash. We do not know why.”
“What about communications? Did you hear from the crew?” one of the American engineers asked.
“At first, yes. We learned that the crew survived the crash and that the ship’s hull was not breached. After only a few minutes, the link failed, and we heard nothing more. Until, of course, the Dreamscape made contact.”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone? Not just about the crash, but about the mission? The launch? Why did you keep it a secret?” A female NASA engineer that Bill didn’t know by name asked the question that was on everyone’s mind.
Xiang started to speak, but after he caught the eye of “the manager,” he paused instead. Then he said reluctantly, “That was a decision made at the highest levels, and I am not at liberty to discuss it. Please let us remain focused on the technical issues—and the rescue of our taikonauts.”
Stetson observed the nonverbal exchange between Xiang and what he now presumed was a Chinese political officer, and he didn’t like it. He briefly fantasized about walking over to “the manager” and punching him out. At the moment, that would have to remain a fantasy…at the moment.
A flurry of questions followed. Most of them were about the status of the remaining supplies the stranded astronauts might have in their possession and how many days they could survive before rescue.
“Excuse me! Excuse me!” The voice calling out was from one of the few nonengineering members of the flight-support team, Karen Williamson. Karen, who looked much like a suburban soccer mom, was the NASA psychiatrist. In her early forties, she’d worked with several crews on the International Space Station and spent time in Moscow studying the Russian cosmonauts.
“Uh, excuse me, EXCUSE ME!” After getting everyone’s attention, she asked, “Did anyone tell the crew that a rescue attempt was being made? I mean, they are two hundred and fifty thousand miles away from home, facing—at least in their minds—certain death. Did anyone try to tell them that they shouldn’t give up hope?”
Silence. In the room, all they could hear was the gentle hum of the air-conditioning system.
“From the lack of response, I’d guess the answer is no.” She frowned at everyone in the room a bit dramatically. “I think someone needs to tell them that we’re going to try a rescue. Otherwise they might just decide to not prolong what they believe is inevitable…”
The implications of her words began to sink in to those assembled.
“Damn. That didn’t occur to me.” Stetson was the first to respond. He turned to Xiang and added, “You said you tried to talk to them and failed, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Well, Dreamscape managed to do it. Why is that?” Stetson asked.
“I’ve thought about that. There are two reasons. Based on the fact that their radio transmission wasn’t heard until the Dreamscape was in the radio quiet of lunar farside, we think they were using their low-power radio designed for talking to the crew from the lander during EVA. The system doesn’t have the power for us to pick up all the way back on Earth, but it did have the ability to reach the Dreamscape as it passed. And, most significantly, they are near the limb—they may barely be on the nearside after all. Direct radio communication to the Earth may be possible even without some sort of orbital relay.”
“I see.” Stetson said. “They were probably listening to Dreamscape as she chattered with Earth during her approach. Once the ship was cut off from any radio signals from home, they were able to get through. But if they are that close to the limb, they might hear something if we had a powerful enough transmission.”