Hun looked around again and then leaned forward. “There were no complications?”
His uncle smiled, continuing to sit back in his chair, his posture relaxed. “You need to calm yourself, Hun. Take a deep breath and relax.” Hun hesitated for a moment before leaning back as well, not exactly content to discuss this matter where they had to speak in a normal tone of voice to be heard. Hun took a deep breath. “Good,” his uncle said. “I think there was a healthy dose of skepticism, but the message was conveyed and received. All is well now.”
Hun took a moment to concentrate on his breathing, taking deeper, slower breaths as he had learned a long time ago in his meditation classes. “Thank you, Uncle, again. Should I know anything else?” Hun started to think that his uncle was right. If their conversation was being monitored, then whispering would only make it more suspect. Hun marveled at the older man’s control and calm in the face of what they had just conspired to do and, indeed, actually did.
“Be sure to eat the soup before it becomes cold,” his uncle said.
Hun smiled and placed his hand on the bag, feeling its warmth. His aunt knew how to cook, and he was at least going to enjoy his lunch today. “I will, Uncle, and thank you.”
Blackjack Rover
Lunar Surface, Marianas Plain
In the near future, Day 48
“Houston, this is Blackjack, over.” Julie keyed her mike as she crested the rim of the crater and looked down into the Mons Crater, thinking she could just see a faint metallic gleam in the distance. The darkness was intense, and she had turned her lights off momentarily so she could regain her visual acuity and see into the darkness.
“Blackjack, this is Houston, go ahead.”
“Blackjack has reached waypoint one, ready to proceed,” she said, flipping her FLIR device on and swinging the joystick around to pan the picture on her display.
“Signal strength shows elevated levels, but within operating parameters for your rover. Advise you do not EVA, repeat do not EVA from this point forward. Do you copy, Blackjack?”
“Blackjack copies. Will stay on board the rover,” Julie said.
“Blackjack, this is Houston, authorization to proceed granted. Be advised there may be company on the ground. Status unknown. You have two hours. Good luck,” the simple reply came back.
“There, you just went past it,” Craig said from his rear-facing seat as he monitored the FLIR on his own screen.
“Yeah, I see it now,” Julie said, panning a bit more and zooming in on the faint false colors of the display. They glowed a pale blue and green, nothing hot enough to show oranges or reds. “It looks quiet down there. What do you think they mean by status unknown? Do you think they mean what I’m thinking?”
“That’s their polite way of saying the Russians more than likely bit the big one down there. You good to go with that, Jules?”
Julie flipped her lights back on and watched as the FLIR colors faded. “Yeah, let’s do this.” She punched the accelerator lever forward, and the rover lurched forward, heading toward the alien device. There was no way to miss it. The signals were so clear and strong that DF or direction finding on it was child’s play. It was transmitting like a beacon in the dark, and the Apollo crew was riding the wave to its source.
Gordust Space Station
Low Moon Orbit
In the near future, Day 48
“There, I found them,” Nikolai said over the intercom system. “Grid 9B.”
Olga moved their own infrared camera to the west and zoomed out to make sure it would cover the entire surface area of grid 9B as Nikolai indicated. “Got it, target acquired.”
“Is that the Americans?” Yuri asked, monitoring their progress across the dark side of the moon.
“I’m pretty sure it is,” Olga said, watching intently. “They seem to really be moving. Thirty, forty kilometers an hour.”
“That’s typical for them. They like their vehicles fast,” Yuri said.
“And their women faster,” Nikolai added, laughing for the first time in over a day.
“You two are so predictable,” Olga said, a frown on her face, easily visible now that they had resealed the ship and took their helmets and gloves off. “They’ll be there within the hour. Do we contact them?”
“We’ve had no orders either way from Moscow, well, Vostochny. I doubt they’d approve, but we need to know. We’ll lose contact in ten more minutes and won’t reacquire till after they arrive, so it’s now or never.”
“Do it,” Olga said.
Yuri keyed his mike. “Nikolai, Viktor, are you both on board?”
“Da, Yuri,” Nikolai said. “Those are our comrades down there. Make it happen.”
“Viktor?” Yuri asked.
“I’m with Nikolai on this,” the man said. “See what you can do.”
Yuri looked at Olga, who nodded and then flipped several switches working the radio frequency scanner. It took nearly ten seconds to bring up the correct frequency. “They’re transmitting in the clear?”
Olga nodded. “Yes, they are on this channel.”
Yuri sighed and looked at the communications console to his left. He hoped he was doing the right thing. “Russian ship Gordust to American lunar crew, do you copy?”
There was a pause for several seconds till Yuri repeated the call. “Gordust to American lunar crew, do you copy?”
“Apollo 21 is a copy for Gordust. This is Commander Julie Monroe. Go with your message.”
The tone of the American concerned Yuri, but what was he to expect? “This is Station Commander Yuri Temshenko, officially requesting aid for our surface crew, over.”
“What kind of aid, Commander Temshenko? We have limited resources down here.”
“Understood, Apollo. Any confirmation of our comrade’s status would be helpful. We have been out of contact for nearly a day. Can you assist?”
“Roger, Gordust, we’ll use this frequency for communications. What’s our window?”
“We have seven more minutes, and then we’ll be in range forty-eight minutes after that.”
“Roger, we are thirty minutes ETA to your crew, so we’ll catch you on the flip side.”
Flip side? Yuri mouthed the words to Olga who just shrugged. “Ah, roger, Apollo, thank you for the assistance. Gordust out.”
“I don’t think she forgave us for kicking her off our station,” Olga said.
“Well, whether she forgave or not, she sure as hell didn’t forget. Let’s hope she’s more forgiving when she reaches our comrades,” Yuri said.
“I hope so,” Olga replied.
Yuri looked at Olga. “I’ll guess we’ll know for sure in about an hour.” Olga nodded and watched as the American rover tore across the lunar landscape, closing in on target, on the device and more importantly, on their crewmembers.
NASA Space Center
Houston, Texas
In the near future, Day 48
Rock leaned back, looking at Marge closely. “You’re sure about this?”
“Well, not sure, but when we discovered the repetition of the four signal codes, it came across to me that no astro-map would be so limited in its scope, so it had to be something else.”
“Why not a mathematical formula?” Rock asked.
“We ran the alien code string by every formula we could find as well as partial ones, and nothing came up. That’s exactly what the NSA had been doing for weeks,” Marge said.