“What time do you have, Jack?” Everett asked.
“ Dark Star 3 just entered the Moon’s orbit.”
The men all became silent as Jack walked over and sat down next to the first grave marker. He lay down his weapon and pulled the radio from his belt. As he pushed the transmit button and was about to make the call, he felt the strange vibration once again coming through the earthen floor. Then, as he lowered the radio, he heard the soft humming sound in his ears. When he released the transmit button, the sound and vibration ceased. Finally, too tired to think clearly, Jack made the call to CQ.
All around the dead end, the members of the search team felt the vibrations and internal sound increase, and actually seemed to move closer from what they knew now was the other side of the cave-in.
Everett, Sebastian, and Tram all looked from the wall of rock to their surroundings. They simultaneously concluded that they would get little sleep while they waited for their supplies to arrive.
“Come on, let’s see if there’s a back door to this place,” Everett said. He took one last look back at a very worried Jack Collins and knew exactly what he was thinking as he spoke to the command element outside.
“Sarah will make it, Jack.”
15
After the sudden loss of mission commander Kendal and LEM pilot Dugan, the mood had been somber. Sarah and the other technicians, mainly Will Mendenhall, concentrated on devising a makeshift antenna so the lunar excursion team could stay in communication with Falcon 1 while on the surface. Thus far Will was frustrated by not enough time and too little equipment to work with.
As Falcon 1 made its first pass over the lunar surface, most of the personnel were snapping pictures and taking video, along with long-range photography of the landing site two miles from Shackleton Crater. On their first and only pass the long-range telephoto lens on Falcon took some very detailed photos of the interior of Shackleton. The damage was tremendous, but as Houston had said in their second to last communication, there seemed to be intact structures inside the crater. The photography also picked up what looked like the remains of the ESA LEM Astral, lying on its side heavily damaged. The photos and video showed no survivors. Of Magnificent Dragon, there was no trace.
As the only mission specialist who’d be aboard Altair when they landed, Sarah McIntire was to be the command operative while on the Moon. She took her predicament stoically and knew she had the difficult job of deciding whether to recover the technology if the Chinese excursion team was friendly or destroying the weaponry if they weren’t. As for the mineral, she had already decided it was far too powerful and unstable to recover. She had already briefed the team, soldiers included, on her decision.
Sarah slid into the command module with the final landing data for Ryan to enter into the Altair ’s computer system. Ryan accepted the new coordinates without comment. His mind was strictly on setting the lander down in one piece, never mind landing in a specific area. Sarah could see that the usually boisterous Ryan had been in no mood for anything but self-reflection following his jump in grade to LEM pilot, a position he had so thoroughly failed at back in the Houston simulator. As the third part in a three-part backup plan, he knew none of them was even supposed to be there.
Sarah watched as Ryan took her latest data and eased through the connecting sleeve into Altair. She saw Mendenhall bend over a small workstation, trying to keep his soldering iron and small pieces of circuit board from floating away. The module pilot Maggio was assisting, but was mostly trying to stay out of the lieutenant’s way.
“How’s it going, Will?” she asked, biting her lower lip.
Mendenhall placed his hands on the small workstation table and took a deep breath as he tried to calm himself. Sarah, for her part, held her ground and kept her eyes on the frustrated lieutenant. He finally looked up and shook his head at his friend. She could see him visibly relax.
“Well, for about a ten-second burst, we caught some Russian from somewhere in back of us just a second before orbital insertion. We lost the communication pretty fast, and it was weak to begin with. So I was thinking it was nothing more than weird atmospherics and Maggio and Ryan agreed.” He frowned at Sarah. “In other words, it was nothing I did.” He let the soldering iron float free and allowed the small circuit board he was attempting to solder follow. “I can’t do it. I mean, it’s not like running an old antenna wire up to your roof and wrapping aluminum foil around it and hoping for the best.”
Sarah free-floated and nodded for Maggio to start his calculations for detachment of the LEM from Falcon 1.
“Twenty-one minutes until separation. We’re out of time anyway, Will. I was thinking about all the junk we have on the Moon. Can we salvage a dish antenna just for short-range communications with Falcon , so we can get rendezvous data and telemetry for our liftoff?”
Mendenhall looked at Sarah and smiled. “That’s an awfully optimistic outlook. Liftoff?”
“I guess I picked up bad habits from Jack. You know, always planning for the right outcome, just in case by a fluke it happens that way.”
“Yeah, that’s not a bad way to do things. Why I remember-”
Sarah watched as Will’s words trailed off to nothing as he was struck by a thought.
“What is it?” she asked.
“The Beatles,” Mendenhall said. “They all have not only long-range telemetry installed but a high-gain antenna for remote purposes.” He looked up at Sarah. “As a matter of fact, their communications may be better than our own, since they don’t have the human touch to operate them. They have to do it all by computer. I think we can use one of them to communicate-maybe not with Houston, but Falcon 1 shouldn’t be a problem.”
“See what happens when you pull back and think about things?” Sarah said, as she squeezed Will’s shoulder.
“Yeah, now why don’t you go and see if you can pass the same confidence on to Ryan.”
Sarah smiled back at Will. “You know what Jason has to do on a continual basis?”
“What’s that?”
“He has to remind himself that he’s the best pilot in the world. If he doesn’t do that on a regular basis, he crashes in his head. My money’s on him when the chips are down.”
“Okay, I’ll buy that, but maybe you’d better remind him that those chips you’re betting are not the house’s money.”
“I think he knows that, Will.”
Twenty minutes later Maggio was the only living soul inside of the command module, Falcon 1. The rest of the mission’s crew were strapped into their seats on the lower deck of Altair, the only exceptions being Mendenhall and Ryan. They were strapped into an upright position on the command deck, both of them poised over the fly-by-wire maneuvering controls of the very much experimental Altair . No one had ever landed anything this size on the Moon and Ryan knew all their lives were riding on his skills as a fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants pilot. He looked over at Will and shook his head.
“Uh, do you want me to give one of those emotional ‘Win one for the Gipper’ speeches?”
“Maybe a prayer would be more appropriate,” Ryan shot back with a smile.
“Coming up on insertion point in five-ready to separate,” Maggio said from his command seat eighty-five feet away.
Ryan closed his eyes and reached for the VOX at his side.