“Copy, Will. Easy there, big fella,” Ryan called out, as he adjusted trim once more.
“Up throttle in five, four, three, two, one-one hundred percent throttle. Burn it, Will, burn it!”
Mendenhall reached over and turned the small red knob that sent the fuel injector to full power as it shot the mixture of hydrogen and oxygen into the mixing hub of the combustion chamber.
Below, on the crew deck, everyone felt the shakes and shimmies of Altair as she neared the lunar surface. They all had their eyes closed and were listening intently to the orders Ryan was calling out. Sarah was glad Altair was shaking so violently because it covered up her own internal shaking. She was terrified beyond belief.
“Five hundred feet and slowing to a hundred feet a minute,” Will called out.
“Stand by to power down to fifty percent thrust.”
“Roger,” Mendenhall said. He tried to swallow but found his throat didn’t work.
“Throttle down,” Ryan called.
Will turned the throttle knob. The shaking and loud noises ceased almost immediately. No one onboard knew if that was good or not.
“Throttle set to fifty percent thrust, two minutes of fuel, altitude at three hundred feet.”
Ryan turned his throttle to the aft OHM’s jets and brought Altair level once more after she had drifted.
“Shackleton Crater at three miles.” Ryan breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the rim of the giant crater close up for the first time.
Suddenly a warning chime started and three red lights started blinking.
“Goddamn it!” Ryan said between clenched teeth. He started hitting the hand-controlled throttle on the left side of his upright chair. “I have a continuous thrust coming from the aft OHM’s jet. It’s pushing us over!”
Mendenhall watched wide-eyed as Ryan tried freeing the stuck thruster. “Damn it, it’s not here. It’s the shutoff valve that’s stuck open. We’re not only losing our correct attitude, we’re burning our fuel too damn fast. We have to compensate for the roll.”
“One minute of fuel, fifty feet to impact,” Will announced as calmly as he could, not wanting to add to what Jason had to deal with.
“Firing starboard OHMs,” Ryan said, more to himself than to the crew.
The roll ceased and Ryan was making the correction, but the fuel warning bells started sounding and the computer started voicing its opinion rather loudly.
“Pull up, pull up. Obstacle detected in flight path. Pull up, pull up.”
“Shut that damn thing up. I hate its voice!” Ryan said, as he adjusted trim for the last time.
Mendenhall switched the audio warning off. He knew Ryan was thinking about the nice voice of Europa, the supercomputer back home.
“Thirty feet, twenty feet, ten feet!” Will called out.
“Main engine to seventy-five percent thrust,” Ryan said, as he eyed the patch of lunar surface below. He knew he had neither the time nor the fuel to maneuver to another spot if he saw they were coming down onto a patch of large rocks.
“That’s it. Fuel is exhausted,” Mendenhall said. He reached out and braced himself for a hard landing.
Ryan clenched his teeth as he felt the main engine sputter once and then stop just as three of four landing pads hit the surface of the Moon. He cringed as Altair went motionless, balancing first on three and then on only two landing gear. The giant Altair teetered, nearly rolling over, and then her momentum shifted and she fell back, her round shape behaving like a teetering beer can. Then all four landing gear came in contact with the soft surface of the Moon. Her hydraulic struts impacted and retracted into themselves, and then expanded once more as the gas was released, easing Altair into stillness.
Throughout the ship, there wasn’t a sound other than the ticking of the cooling engine bell far below the main crew cabin.
Ryan looked over at Will, who was staring out of the large triangular windows at the crater two miles away. His eyelids didn’t blink and his hand was turning white from his powerful grip on the handle above his head.
“That was different,” Ryan said, and started breathing again.
Mendenhall finally blinked his eyes and slowly looked at Jason.
“Thank you,” was all he said.
The small Navy pilot smiled and patted Will on the back.
“Your visor’s a little fogged up.”
“I don’t know how that can be. You have to breathe for it to do that.”
Ryan hit his VOX and waited until he was sure of his voice.
“Welcome to the Moon,” he said.
The president sat in the White House Situation Room sixty feet below the ground floor of the mansion. He sat quietly and listened to the conference call from the Cape and Houston. Hugh Evans was speaking at the moment, and the president realized for the first time that he was drifting even as Evans was doling out the first good news in days, outside of the fact that Jack Collins and his minimal ground forces had achieved success in Ecuador.
“In essence, even though telemetry and communications with Altair and Falcon 1 are down, we have established that Altair is safely on the lunar surface. Unfortunately, we have also confirmed through satellite imagery that the catastrophic debris strike on Falcon did in fact take the lives of the mission commander and the Altair pilot. The loss of Colonel Kendal and pilot Dugan is a very severe setback to the potential success of the mission.”
The president sat up and leaned toward the table, his eyes roaming over his national security staff, who were being kept in the dark on the most important matters of this and all the missions to the Moon. The people with knowledge of the president’s actions could be counted on one hand.
“Flight Director Evans,” the president started slowly. “We can assume that someone has taken control of the mission. Do you have protocol that dictates who that someone is?”
“We have only one conclusion at this time. We believe Lieutenant Sarah McIntire, U.S. Army, is in command, since she is the senior officer onboard Altair.”
“And it’s my understanding the landing had to have been achieved by Navy Lieutenant Ryan, backup pilot for Altair?”
“Correct, sir. We have verified the safe landing since the retasking of the Hubble Space Telescope four hours ago.”
“Mr. Evans, thank you for your time. Before you go, do you have any contingencies for reestablishing contact with the lunar team or Falcon 1?”
“We are trying to bounce signals off various satellites, but there has been no luck thus far. We do have several other plans, but they require the lunar excursion team to use their own initiative as far as acting on them goes. They could reestablish communications through several sources on the lunar surface. As of right now, we are planning for Dark Star 3 to continue on mission until its conclusion.”
“Thank you, Mr. Evans. Please stay near the phone.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. President.”
The president leaned back in his chair and looked from face to face. The Situation Room was crowded with stars and men in rolled up shirtsleeves. Not one of them save for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Maxwell Caulfield, and the president knew the real truth of what was happening. The vice president was officially under FBI investigation for incriminating cell phone calls to the now disgraced and on the run Samuel Rawlins, so the president had officially handed over all NASA and Space Command duties to Caulfield for the duration of the lunar emergency.
“Gentlemen, that will be all for now. General Caulfield, will you stay behind please?”
As the council shuffled out of the late night meeting, General Caulfield moved from his seat at the far end of the large table to a seat closer to the president. He saw the commander in chief reach down and place a small laptop on the table. Caulfield immediately suspected that the little bald man with the tired look and thick glasses was on the other end of the monitor.