There was a haze of dust all around the craft, billowing up, obscuring his view, adhering to the window in great ocher streaks.
“Thirty seconds.”
“Any forward drift?”
“You’re okay. Hundred up. Down at three and a half.”
The haze was all around him. And now he could see dust flying away from him in all directions, scouring over the surface. The streaks confused his perception of his motion, the way fog blowing across a runway could sometimes. But he could see a big rock, sticking up through the haze, and he focused on that.
“Sixty feet. Down two. Two forward. Two forward. Good.”
He clicked the descent toggle, killing the speed, until Challenger was floating toward Mars as slow as a feather.
“Fifty feet. Thirty. Down two and a half. We’re kicking up a lot of dust.”
I can see that, damn it. The MEM was drifting backwards, and Gershon couldn’t tell why. And going backwards was bad, because he couldn’t see where he was going. He pulsed the hand controls.
“Twenty.”
Well, he’d killed the backward motion, but a sideways drift had crept in. Fuck. He was pissed with himself. He wasn’t flying his bird smoothly at all.
“Four degrees forward. Three forward. Drifting left a little. Faint shadow.”
The shadow closed up, and dust billowed, so he couldn’t see the ground anymore. He struggled to get the MEM vertical.
He kept falling, blind.
“Four forward. Three forward. Down a half. Drifting left.”
Gershon felt a soft bump.
“Contact light,” Stone said. “Contact light, by God!”
For one second, Gershon stared at Stone.
Then he killed the descent engine, fast.
The vibration that had accompanied the engine firing, all the way down through the powered descent, faded at last. He should have cut it as soon as the contact light came up; if the engine kept firing too close to the surface the back pressure from its own exhaust could blow it up…
Challenger fell the last five feet, and impacted on Mars with a firm thud. Gershon felt the landing in his knees, and every piece of gear in the cabin rattled.
“Shit,” he said.
Stone started to rattle through the post-touchdown checklist. “Engine stop. ACA out of detent.”
“Out of detent.”
“Mode control both auto. Descent engine command override off. Engine arm off…”
They got through the T plus one checkpoint, their first stay/no-stay decision.
And then they had the ship buttoned up tight, and it looked like they could stay for a while.
Out of Gershon’s window there was a flat, close horizon. He could see dunes, and dust, and little rocks littering the surface. Nothing was moving, anywhere. Without buildings, or people or trees, it was hard to tell the scale of things. The sky was yellow-brown, the sun small and yellow and low. The light coming in the window was a mix of pink and brown, and he could see how it reflected off his visor, and off the flesh of his own cheeks.
Martian light, on his face.
He saw Stone grin, behind his faceplate. “Houston, this is Mangala Valles. Challenger has landed on Mars.” Gershon could hear the confident elation in his voice.
Gershon and Stone and York shook hands, and slapped each other on the back, and threw mock punches at each other’s helmets.
Gershon said, “Houston, can you pass on my regards to Columbia Aviation. This old Edsel has brought us down. JK, you are one steely-eyed missile man.”
He checked his station. He had fourteen seconds of landing fuel left. Well, the hell with it. Fourteen seconds is a long time. Armstrong himself only had about twenty seconds left, and nobody beefed about that.
Anyhow, it’s going to be a long time before anyone comes back, to better what I did today.
Thursday, March 21, 1985
PATRICK AIR FORCE BASE
Joe Muldoon squinted down as the plane from Houston came in on its approach to Patrick.
Although it was still hours to sunup, there was a steady stream of corporate planes descending on Patrick Air Force Base and Orlando Airport. And every road on the peninsula looked like a ribbon of light, locked up. He felt a knot of anxiety gather in his gut. Maybe he’d left it too late to get to the launch.
But he couldn’t have gotten away any earlier. He hadn’t had any sleep that night, and not much the night before. The logistics of the launch — the press stuff, and ensuring the NASA control centers were talking to each other, and handling a lot of last-minute crap to do with VIP passes and TV sites and such — all of it just went on and on, ballooning in complexity and detail.
Hell, was he going to have to listen to the launch on the radio of some hired car in bumper-to-bumper traffic?
The stewardess offered him a drink before landing. He refused, as he had before. Time enough for that later.
When the plane got into Patrick he hurried off. A young guy in a suit was waiting for him, holding up a hand-lettered card with his name on it.
“Mr. Muldoon?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m from KSC. We have a chopper waiting for you. This way, sir.”
“Thank Christ for that.”
Muldoon had a bag to collect from the plane. He hesitated for less than one second. To hell with it; he’d buy a clean shirt when he needed it.
He walked briskly across the tarmac with the aide. The young guy said, “We’re laying on copters to bring in key people who might get stuck in traffic.” He seemed rushed, almost awe-struck, just about in control. Muldoon guessed the poor guy had been doing this ferrying all night.
“That bad, huh?”
“Hell, yes, sir. All the roads into Merritt Island are jammed. It’s like a parking lot out there. I’ve never seen anything like it, sir.”
Muldoon eyed him in the gathering dawn light. The kid was not more than twenty-two. So, aged about six in 1969. He doesn’t remember. He really hadn’t seen anything like it before.
Muldoon felt old, trapped, gravity-bound. Just as he’d felt after the splashdown in ’69. His work on Ares was nearly done, and the depression he’d been fighting off for all these years, using that huge goal to distract himself, was seeping back.
His one landing was long ago, and he’d never walk across that snowlike surface again.
They walked more quickly, toward the waiting chopper.
MANNED SPACECRAFT OPERATIONS BUILDING, COCOA BEACH
There was a smart military knock on her door.
She rolled on her side and switched on her bedside light — 4:15 A.M.
“Wake-up call. The night’s been clear, and the weather’s expected to be good…”
“Thanks, Fred.”
Fred Haise was right on schedule. The first time recorded on the Ares checklist was 0415.
The clock starts ticking here. And it won’t stop for eighteen months.
She pushed back the covers and climbed out. She rearranged the sheets, smoothing them out. She wasn’t going to be back there for a while, and she didn’t want to leave behind a mess.
She switched on the TV. She found herself staring at a still of her own face, while a commentator talked about the launch-day crowds gathering around the Cape. She clicked the thing off.
She took her time over showering. She relished the sting of water against her skin, the way the lather ran away down her body to the drain. She turned the shower on cold and stood there shivering for long seconds, feeling the blood rise in her capillaries. Showering in microgravity wasn’t going to be so easy; she had the feeling that she wouldn’t feel so clean as this again until she got back to Earth.