The MM drops toward the surface with the chutes reefed for several long seconds, then the reef lines are cut and the chutes open to their full extent. The sudden deceleration is worse than he expected, his knees buckle and he has to lock them to avoid falling, and he swears as his forearm slides from the arm-rest and bangs against the control panel. The MM abruptly pitches upright, and the Martian landscape pivots into view.
He gasps, he can’t help himself. He’s looking down on a vast desert, reds and umbers and pale browns, from horizon to horizon. It looked so unearthly from orbit, but now, a thousand feet above the surface, it could be Earth, some unvisited corner where dunes creep across the land while sand vortices dance from crest to crest, a landscape punctuated by rocks and hills and ridges. But he knows no one has ever set foot here—he can feel it, a sense of solitude, of desolation, which rises from the Martian soil, is written in the red sand, in the jagged and crumbled escarpments and cliffs.
He thinks, This is it; I’m going to land on Mars, I’m going to be the first man to walk on another planet, I’m in the goddamned history books for sure.
If only Judy could see him now, could feel the same anticipation, the same excitement, the same heightened awareness he now feels, could recognise that this moment defines him, that a palpable sense of purpose stretches from this moment, from his heart, both back and forth in time. She’d forgive him for accepting the mission, of course she’d forgive him. He’d told her he was coming back. Again and again, he’d told her he was coming back. Not even one hundred and fifty million miles could keep him from her.
He looks up from the DSKY at the photograph of his wife on the control panel. He will be on Mars for the next nine days, he can talk to Walker, who will be swinging by within one hundred miles of the planet, but Earth is on the other side of the Sun, so there’s going to be a long delay on any conversation with Houston. He knows there’s been important guests in the MCC throughout the mission, and the viewing gallery will probably be packed with press and VIPs during the nine days of his stay on the surface. Judy will be there, of course. He’s looking forward to speaking to her before his first scheduled EVA.
The DPS fires its final burn, and moments later the contact light shines, telling him there’s five feet to go, so he braces himself for the landing. The DPS cuts off and the MM drops and hits the surface of Mars with more force than he’d expected. He stumbles and bangs against the control panel, adding another bruise to the ones he’s gathered already.
A profound silence fills the MM. He thinks, by God, I did it. I’m on Mars, goddamnit.
He speaks, but his mouth is too dry and all he can make is an unintelligible sound. He tries again, remembering he is speaking to posterity. Houston will not hear his words for thirteen and a half minutes, but this is all part of the script:
Houston, he says, this is Cydonia Base, Discovery has landed.
1999
Before it was captured and bent to NASA’s needs, the Robert H Goddard was a Near Earth Asteroid named 1862 Apollo. Peering through the docking windows as the LM Taxi approaches the spacecraft, Elliott sees a grey potato-shaped rock, details unnaturally sharp in the vacuum, smooth and lightly dimpled, just over a mile in length. As the rock rotates beneath him, three white cylinders, resembling the lower stages of rockets on spidery legs and arranged in a triangular formation, roll into view. Two Apollo Command Modules and a single Lunar Module lacking its descent stage are docked to an adaptor on the top of one cylinder; a single Command Module occupies the docking adaptor of another. An area of 1862 Apollo’s surface alongside the silo-like modules has been smoothed flat and laid with metal decking. Secured to this decking are three long tubes, which Elliott identifies as launch vehicles in some sort of casing, though he’s not sure what type—from the size Atlas Vs, perhaps. He wonders how they managed to get them up into space and out here to the Lagrangian point.
Now that he is closer, Elliott sees the habitation modules have been adapted from S-IVB stages, cylinders forty-eight feet in height and twenty-two feet in diameter. He is surprised: this is old tech. The Ares 9 flyby spacecraft was based on the same hardware, as was the simulator—later known as Skylab and the first station out here at L5. And even back then, the designs were old and their use for Ares 9 more a matter of what was do-able than what was best. He remembers Walker, his CMP on Ares 9, saying they’d flown to the Red Planet as much on political desperation as on Aerozine 50.
Doesn’t look like much, does she? says Weber. But she’ll take you ninety trillion miles in a couple of weeks.
Where’s the Serpo engine? Elliott asks.
Other side of the rock, with the nuclear reactor.
Weber returns her attention to the FDAI and altimeter on the control panel.
They are both in spacesuits, helmets and gloves on. It is procedure when flying a LM Taxi. Elliott spent seventy days in his Mars Module, an uprated LM, and pretty much all of that in his A7LB, so none of this is unfamiliar. True, he had the MM to himself, but here his left arm is inches from Weber’s right and he has barely enough room to stretch.
You’ve flown on her, Elliott asks Weber, to Earth Two?
She shakes her head. No, I’m NASA. It’s you guys who fly the Rocks.
Us? Elliott doesn’t follow.
USAF. We’re strictly passengers, and I’ve never been assigned to Phaeton Base.
The LM Taxi drops toward the asteroid, then an abrupt shift in his frame of reference hits Elliott and he now sees himself approaching a grey and powdery vertical cliff. The LM Taxi shoots “upward” and he notices Weber is peering up through the docking windows in the roof. Ahead, or above, it no longer matters which, he can see the Goddard’s hab modules, like some strange minimalist chemical plant. This is all automatic, computerised, though Weber has still moved the COAS to its mount on the docking window frame and set the panel switch from off to ovhd. She keeps her hands on the thrust/translation controller and attitude controller as the docking adaptor drifts nearer. The two tee-crosses, one on the LM Taxi, one on the docking adaptor, gradually line up as the LGC fires tiny corrective bursts from the RCS until, with a thunk, the probe on the Goddard’s hatch thumps into the LM Taxi’s drogue, and the capture latches engage with a confident crunch.
Once Weber has confirmed the docking tunnel is pressurised, she unfastens her waist restraints and kicks herself upward to the hatch. Moments later, she swings it wide, revealing a man in a blue CWG framed in the hatchway.
Welcome aboard, sir, the man says. With one hand to the coaming to hold him steady, he salutes.
Major William Finley? asks Elliott
It cannot be anyone else. The golden oak leaf on his collar gives the man’s rank and Finley, the commanding officer, is the only major on the Robert H Goddard. Finley also has a Space Command shield on one shoulder.
Sir, acknowledges Finley. He pushes himself back, and gestures for Elliott to join him.
I have to head straight back, Weber says. She gives a tight smile. Good luck, she adds; and then pulls herself down to the commander’s position and sets about refastening her waist restraints.
Elliott unlocks and then lifts off his helmet. He breathes in through his nose, but the LM Taxi’s cabin is odourless. After removing his gloves and dumping them in the upturned bowl of his helmet, he disconnects his spacesuit from the spacecraft’s environmental system, and unclips his waist restraints.