Back to the Moon-ARC

Chapter 29

The mood in the Orion was morose. With two crewmembers injured, one incapacitated, and another trapped outside the ship, Anthony Chow was in command, and he didn’t like it. At least he wasn’t stranded on the surface of the Moon and left to die, as had been his biggest fear right up until they had actually left the Moon. Now, who knew? The likelihood of the aerocapture maneuver failing was pretty high, but Tony never had any fear of that part of the mission. Besides, he had way too many things going on to let his mind dwell on such negative things.

The Altair was about to be separated from the Orion on schedule, and they were less than two hours away from entering the outer portion of the Earth’s atmosphere. Chow was putting all his faith in those wizard engineers back home in mission control to come up with a magic spell that would save his ship’s captain, his friend. And that magic spell was a tedious one. It had taken him more than fifteen minutes of changing commands, throwing toggles, tapping icons, and physically flipping switches.

“That’s the last breaker. Check!” Tony reported.

“Roger that, Mercy I. Now, we need to do all this in very rapid secession, so make certain Bill is in the safe location and be prepared for rapid depressurization.”

“Roger that.” Tony looked around the cabin and saw that everybody was strapped in or tied off to something. “Bill, are you clear out there?”

“Roger that, Tony. I’m in the predetermined safe spot. It’s just me and my old solar-panel buddy out here. Let’s get on with this.”

“You got it, Captain.” Tony readied himself for typing in a rapid sequence of commands and for tapping toggle icons. “Everybody button up. We start rapid depressurization in ten seconds.” He waited until he got a thumbs-up from Hui and then tapped the first icon. Then he followed the sequence as the engineer at Houston called out the commands.

“That’s the last one, Tony. Now cycle the docking-ring hatch.” The engineer sounded confident that the sequence would work.

“Roger that. Cycling the hatch.” Tony nodded to Hui to hold on and hit the hatch cycle. The icon flashed green for a brief second and then orange. Then it cycled to red and popped up a window explaining that the exterior hatch was depressurized and that they couldn’t open the interior hatch without pressurizing the Altair first.

“Shit.” Tony’s heart sank. “Houston. I hope you have a plan C.”

“Uh, it didn’t work?” The engineer’s voice sounded surprised. “Mercy I, what is the status of the hatch? Our feeds show it as closed.”

“Roger that, Houston.” Tony hung his head as best he could in a spacesuit. “The hatch is closed and locked out.”

“Be advised that the Altair jettison sequence is in place and will continue.”

“Roger that, Houston. The Altair sequence is still green.”

“Sorry, Mercy I. Be advised that at this time there is no plan C.”

“Come on! Can’t you guys come up with something?”

“Sorry, Mercy I. The Altair has to jettison now in order for the proper orbital energy to be achieved following the aerobraking maneuver. We can’t postpone the Altair jettison any further.”

“Listen, Houston. Bill’s outside, thinking God only knows what, and you’re sitting down there giving me a lecture about the physics of aerocapture? I want to know what we can do to help him survive. Can he ride this thing out there? Can he tie down to the nose or something?”

Chow watched as the Altair jettison cycle completed, and he felt a slight shift as the Altair released from dock.

“Tony, I wish there was something we could do. In a few minutes, you’re going to skim the outer part of the Earth’s atmosphere at more than twenty thousand miles per hour. Let me put that another way, the relative wind velocity around the outside of the Orion will be twenty thousand miles per hour. And as you begin to enter the atmosphere, the atmospheric friction will superheat much of the atmosphere around the Orion to many thousands of degrees. There is simply no way an astronaut in a spacesuit can survive that. Even if Bill could find a way to anchor himself to the ship, he would be fried. I want him to come home, too, but there is simply no way we can find a quick fix to make that happen. If we can’t get the cabin to depressurize, we can’t open that hatch.” The voice on the other end of the radio connection was professional, with an appropriate amount of empathy thrown in. The combination angered Chow, who would have responded better to more anger and less sympathy.

Chow struck the control panel with his right fist and turned off the radio. He briefly looked up at the ever-present video camera and then toward Captain Hui.

“Dammit all to hell,” Chow said.

“We have to tell him.” Hui frowned.

“No, we don’t. He knows what it meant when the Altair drifted away and the hatch didn’t cycle.”

“Tony, this is Bill.”

“Bill?”

“You did your best. Now focus on the mission goal.”

“Roger that, Bill.” Tony had tears starting at the corners of his eyes. “It’s been an honor, Captain Stetson.”

“Honor’s all mine. I would like to talk to my wife if that could be arranged.”

“Hang on. Oh, and Bill, be advised that the solar arrays are about to start cycling in, so you might want to steer clear of that.”

“Right.”

Gary Childers was in his Lexington, Kentucky, headquarters building with Paul Gesling and Caroline O’Conner watching the press coverage of the Mercy I’s flight. Like most of the world, they’d been mesmerized by the saga of the rescue mission. They’d been elated when the Chinese crew was found alive, on the edge of their seats when they learned that the crew had almost not survived the hike from their crashed ship to the American lander, and shocked when the broadcast had been abruptly cut off not long after the crew had spoken with the President and Chinese Premier. They were now grieving over the pending death of Mission Commander Stetson.

For what seemed like the thousandth time, the newscaster began to describe the aerocapture maneuver that the Mercy I was about to attempt. “In just under twenty minutes, the Orion’s heat shield will begin to get hot as its friction with the Earth’s atmosphere is used as a brake to both slow the ship and change its flight path so that it can subsequently dock with the International Space Station. Under normal circumstances, the Orion would simply enter directly into the atmosphere, like the Apollo missions, and come straight home to the surface. But these are hardly normal circumstances. The ship, occupied by a crew of six—before the unfortunate absence of Commander Stetson—is simply too heavy for a safe landing here on Earth. Instead of coming directly home, they will be docking at the International Space Station. Once there, the two wounded crew members plus another astronaut can return to the Earth in the Russian Soyuz spacecraft that is docked to the station as a lifeboat. At this time, NASA has not decided how to bring the remaining crew back home to Earth. Neither the U.S. nor the Russians have any ships ready to fly, and it could be months before this situation changes. Back to you, Jane.”

Childers picked up the remote and muted the sound before he had to endure more inane comments from the empty-headed newscaster in the studio.

“Paul, I have an idea. We use the same docking ring that NASA uses, right? Didn’t we standardize on that after we won the space station robotic resupply missions contract back in 2012?”

“Why, now that you mention it”—Gesling leaned forward—“yes, yes, we did. It was too expensive to do anything else. NASA had spent hundreds of millions of dollars developing the docking ring, and it didn’t make sense for us to reinvent the wheel. Though there are some things about the design that really need to be changed.”

“Good, good,” Childers said. “Tell me if I’m wrong about this. There’s nothing that’s keeping us from flying Dreamscape again, right? I mean, the ship is supposed to be able to turn around and fly again in just under two weeks after an orbital flight. Is there anything unique about your trip around the Moon that would make this turnaround time any different?”

“No, not that I am aware of.”

“Good. Go out to Nevada and see to it that the Dreamscape is ready to fly as soon as it is safe. You’re going to the Space Station and bringing home some real God-damned American heroes. We found these people, and now, by God, we’re going to help bring them home.”

Gesling and O’Conner rose from their chairs and began to move toward the door. Gesling, as usual, took the lead just ahead of O’Conner so he could open the door for her.

“Caroline.” Childers stopped her. “Please stay here. After I call our illustrious senator, I suspect I will be not only speaking with the NASA Administrator, but I’ll also be holding a press conference. I need your help to put together the talking points and the not-so-subtle message that Space Excursions is not only about joyrides but also search and rescue. If we pull this off, we’ll have customers beating down our doors for the next quarter of a century!”

Caroline looked momentarily at Gesling, offered him a smile, and then returned to her seat in front of Gary Childers. Gesling paused, left the room, and closed the door.

“Don’t worry.” Childers leaned forward toward Caroline. “He’ll be all right. He’s leading a charmed life, and I suspect that you are making it even more so. Let’s get this plan together so you can get out to Nevada yourself as soon as possible.”

“Yes, sir!”

Bill sat straddle-legged as best he could on the capsule, keeping one hand on the handhold and staring off into space. Earth was filling up a good portion of his field of view now. There was nothing he could do but sit there and contemplate. He contemplated his childhood, his life before NASA, then when he became an astronaut. He thought about his wife and kids. It made him happy to think of them and sad that he might be leaving them to fend for themselves in the world. Then he wondered if he should have done anything different. His final conclusion was no. If he ended up making the ultimate sacrifice, that would be okay with him. His mission had saved several lives and showed everyone that humans could work in the vast emptiness of space. Humanity could now go to the Moon to perform rescue missions. And, eventually, his mission would show that, even though space was a tough place to survive, humanity had what it took to do it. He was certain every other astronaut felt the same. He was pretty sure that even the Chinese taikonauts felt that way or they wouldn’t have taken the risks they did to beat the Americans to the Moon.

Bill was pretty sure that if things went bad, there would be a bit of backlash from the public. There might be that knee-jerk reaction to resist spending more resources on such a risky thing as space travel. But he also knew that everybody wanted to see Captain Kirk. Since before he was born humanity had wanted to explore space. Granted, for the most part, everyone wanted somebody else to do it and somebody else to pay for it. Well, Bill was that somebody else to do it. He had no regrets. He would do it all over again even if it meant that he would end up in exactly the same predicament, or even worse.

“Bill, are you still with us?” Chow said into the radio.

“I’m here. Where else would I be?” Stetson responded, sounding not at all like a man about to die.

“They’ve got your wife and kids on the private line. Do you want to speak with her now?”

“That’s a stupid question. Put them on.”

“Right. Here she is.” Chow changed the setting to channel five, the private line that would allow Stetson and his wife to speak without anyone aboard, in the press, or even in mission control listening. The call would be recorded, but it, like other private-line calls before it, would not be made public without consent of the astronaut. Long ago, NASA had decided that everyone was entitled to private conversations with their loved ones, even astronauts.

Bill Stetson had wanted to go to the Moon since he had been old enough to remember. It was his main goal in life. Well, he had gone to the Moon. In fact, he had done more than go to the Moon. He had gone to the Moon and rescued a ship full of stranded astronauts and done his best to get them home. And, as far as he could tell, it looked like they were going to get home. He sat on the lower half of the Orion space capsule just beneath the solar arrays staring aimlessly the beautiful starry space. He didn’t really wonder about the afterlife, because he felt at one with the universe right then and there. The problem wasn’t fulfilling lifelong dreams and goals. The problem was leaving behind the ones that he loved. And he loved his wife with all his mind, body, soul, and heart. Then there were his two kids. His daughter was fourteen going on twenty-three and looked just like her mother—acted like her, too. And his son was eleven and every bit as bullheaded as his old man. It tore at Bill’s insides thinking of them growing up without him there to see it. He indeed felt he was making the ultimate sacrifice to push humanity into space and was proud of what he had done, but right then and there he just wished he could hug and kiss his family.

“Bill? Do you hear me?” He could hear his wife biting back the tears.

“Terry? I hear you, gorgeous!” Bill paused long enough to swallow the lump in his throat. “Sally and Neil there, too?”

“We’re here, Daddy. We love you!”

“I love you, too, kiddos. Listen to me now. Things have gotten away from me up here, and it doesn’t look like I’m gonna be coming home. It was worth it, though, because we saved four lives.” Bill gulped and wasn’t certain what his tear ducts would do in microgravity.

“No, Daddy! You have to come home,” Sally cried.

“Baby, you’ve got to be there for your mother and your little brother. You have to promise me to keep him out of trouble. And you have to promise me to always be great and do your best, just like you always have.”

“I promise, Daddy.” Sally sobbed deeply. “No, Daddy. I love you!”

“I love you, too.” Bill really wasn’t sure what to say, but this was his last time to ever leave his son with any man-to-man wisdom. He didn’t have any, but he wished he did. “Neil.”

“Dad.”

“You know your mother took a lot of coercing to get her to name you after Neil Armstrong, but in the end she caved.”

“I know, Dad. You’ve told me that story before.” The boy kept his voice strong and held up like a little man.

“Well, son, I want you to promise me to be as great as your namesake. Can you do that for me?” Bill was beginning to learn that tears just balled up in the corner of your eyes in no gravity.

“No, Dad. I won’t,” his son told him.

“Now, don’t give me any sass, son.”

“I don’t want to be as great as the first man to walk on the Moon. I want to be as great as you, Dad!” Neil said through sobs.

“I love you, son.” What can I say to that? Bill thought. He had to pause for a second or two as he almost lost control of himself. He managed to hold back from breaking down completely. “You will be the man of the house now. You take care of your mother and your sister, you hear me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now, kids, I love you both. I love you more than anything in the universe, and I hate that this is how things turned out. I’m not going to say goodbye, because I’ll always be right there with you, looking out for you. I’ll always be a part of everything you are and everything you do. I will always be there. I love you.”

“Daddy!”

“Now let me have a private word with your mother, please.” Bill wished he could just hold them one more time. See their faces and laugh with them just once more. He couldn’t even stand having to tell them goodbye. He was pretty certain that those were the last words he’d ever say to his children. He hoped they were good enough.

“Bill?”

“Terry, honey. You are and have always been the absolute love of my life,” he started but really didn’t know what else to say. It was the truth that he felt in his heart, so that is what he decided to go with. “I’m so sorry that I’m not going to be there to help with the kids and to grow old with you.”

“Bill, you are the love of my life, too. Oh God, Bill, what have you gone and done? I’m trying to be strong, but—”

“You go ahead and cry if you need to, baby.”

“Bill…”

“Hey, listen, you remember that time we were down at the Cape and had that little convertible rental car.” Bill wasn’t sure where he was going with this, but he wanted to be happy with his wife just one more time. He wanted to relive a happy memory with her just once more.

“Yeah, the Ford Mustang. It was red.”

“Yeah, that was it. I remember telling you that I was gonna go to the Moon then, and do you remember what you told me?” Bill bit at his lower lip to steady it from quivering.

“Yes, I do.”

“What did you tell me?”

“I said, Bill Stetson, if you’re gonna go running off into space, you better have the decency to be here in nine months when I have your baby!” That had been nearly fifteen years ago. And he had been there for the delivery, for both of them.

“Took me a long time to get to the Moon, huh?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, I just want you to remember how happy we were that day and how much in love we were. I still love you that much right this second. More.”

“Me, too, Bill. Oh God, I’m going to miss you.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

Stetson’s conversation wasn’t extremely long. Only a few minutes, actually. Just a few short minutes later he was back on the line with Chow. There wasn’t much to talk about, but he felt like talking to somebody.

“We’ll be entering the uppermost part of the atmosphere in about fifteen minutes, Bill. The computer is running the show, and, well, I just wanted to say thanks for picking me to go to the Moon with you.”

“Tony, you’re welcome. Let’s not drag this out, shall we? Give the ship your full attention and get these people home.”

“But, Bill,” Chow replied, close to crying.

“Tony, you did your best.”

“If we could’ve just got the damned cabin to depressurize.” Tony slapped his hand against the couch’s armrest. “Damned computer. Back in the Apollo days, they’d probably have been able to manually blow the hatch or something.”

“Naw, I think after the Grissom incident that they actually took off the explosive bolt—wait a minute!” Bill stopped midsentence. “Tony, get Houston on the line and get that pistol out and make sure it has a round in it!”

“Bill?”

“Not much time, Tony! Do it! And tell them to keep my wife and kids there.”

“You got it!”

“That might just work, Bill!” mission control replied. “Give us a minute to determine the safest place to implement the plan.”

“Go ahead, but we don’t have a whole bunch of minutes left,” Bill said. “Tony, I want you practicing putting your glove on and off while Houston is figuring this out. If you need help, get Hui to back you up.”

“Bill?”

“Well, you can’t fire the pistol with your suit gloves on. If you need Hui standing by with them to help you get them on quickly, then do so,” Bill explained.

“Oh, I see.” Where the engineers back at NASA hadn’t figured out the problem, Bill just might have. Another reason that he had been the right man for the job all along. “But, Bill, it will take a few minutes for the cabin to depressurize, so I’ll be in no danger.”

“I still want you sealed up as quickly as possible, just in case. And have the putty standing by.”

“Roger that.” Tony slipped the seal ring on his right glove and twisted it. It took him a few seconds, but it came off fairly easily. Getting it back on took him almost a minute and a half. It almost startled him when mission control chimed in.

“Mercy I, mission control.”

“Go ahead, Houston.”

“We’ve done a quick analysis and believe that this is a workable plan. The best location to create a leak will be as far into the nose as possible, just to the right of the docking-ring hatch. It is likely that the boundary-layer plasma will not damage the ship critically if there is a structural-integrity breach there. The plasma should flow past any damage up there.”

“Alright, then—let’s do it.” Tony slipped his glove off again and handed it to Hui. “Hang on to this for me, please.”

“I’ve got it.” Hui nodded to him.

“Bill, are you clear of the nose out there?”

“Roger that, Tony. I’m still hanging out with my old pal the solar panel.” Bill paused, slightly wondering if his need to use levity in the current situation was his subconscious helping him deal with the fact that he was teetering on the edge of dying. He shook that nonsense from his mind. “Good luck.”

“Right.” Tony glanced at the countdown clock on the screen, noting that they had less than fifteen minutes until it would start getting bumpy. “Houston, let’s get on with this. Give me the breaker sequence now.”

Tony had both gloves off and started flipping icon toggles on the computer touch screen. He had to have all the right breakers thrown so that the pressurization system wouldn’t just increase the oxygen flow into the cabin to make up for a leak. That took a couple of minutes. Then he was ready.

“Alright, everybody clear!” He scanned the cabin for an all clear from Xu, and then Hui. “Bill, here goes.”

Tony gripped the pistol in his hands. He raised his arms as best he could in his suit and took aim just to the right of the apex of the cone where the docking hatch was located.

“Firing in three, two, one, no shot.” Tony instinctively pulled at the trigger again. “What the…?”

“You didn’t disengage the safety,” Hui pointed out.

“Oh. I see.” Tony used his thumb to push the safety off and then raised the weapon again. “Once more. Firing in three, two, one!”

The pistol fired and tossed an empty casing across the cabin. The casing ricocheted off a couple of panels, making a clinking noise as it did so, and then began a slow-drifting trajectory about the cabin. The bullet, on the other hand, slammed against the interior wall panel a good half meter from where Tony thought he had been aiming. But it didn’t really matter as long as it worked.

“Mercy I, mission control.”

“Go ahead, Houston,” Tony answered.

“We show you’ve sprung a leak and are losing cabin pressure.”

“Hold on, Houston. I’ll check it out.”

“Before you do, put these on.” Hui handed Tony his suit gloves. Tony waved them off, handed her the pistol, and tapped at the control screen. He could have sworn he was hearing a faint hissing sound, but his ears were ringing from the pistol report, so he wasn’t certain.

“We’ve got a red light on the pressure panel. The question is, are we leaking fast enough, Houston?” Tony held his breath while he waited on mission control’s response. It seemed like forever before he got it.

“Hold on, Mercy I. We’re running the numbers now.”

“It’s gonna work,” Tony said to nobody in particular, but everybody heard it.

“Negative, Mercy I. Looks like at your current leakage rate, it will take about twenty minutes before the cabin is empty.” Tony felt his heart sink again.

“What!?”

“It was a good try, Tony. I knew it was risky.”

“Bill, are you still clear?”

“Yes, but why do—?”

Tony grabbed the pistol from Hui unexpectedly, took aim, and fired two quick rounds just to the top and right of the docking-hatch door. The sound of the reports rang like a bell inside the cabin, hurting his ears. He hadn’t balanced himself as well this time, and the pistol firing pushed him hard enough to make him tumble over. Newton’s law of reciprocal force, action and reaction, got him. He quickly grabbed on to a handhold and righted himself. He held the pistol up once more, considering firing it again.

“Tony! Stop it before you endanger the entire mission!” Bill shouted back at him.

“That ought to do it.” Tony thumbed the safety on the pistol and handed it to Hui. “Put that thing away for me, will ya?”

“Yes.” Hui looked nervously at Tony. “I think I should.”

Tony went to check the status panel. He looked at the reentry countdown to see where they stood. There were about nine minutes remaining before things started getting too close for comfort.

“Mercy I, we show an increase in the depressurization. What’s going on?”

“I made two more leaks,” Tony said nonchalantly and half expecting Houston to respond with a “You did what?”—but they didn’t.

“Understood, Mercy I. Be advised that the engineers don’t recommend adding any more.”

“Uh-huh.” Tony sat down and began working his gloves. He watched the countdown clock continue getting closer to the aerocapture. “Bill, I suggest you get to the main hatch and stand by.”

“Well, I’m ahead of you, Tony. I’m already on my way,” Bill said.

“Should we start trying to cycle the hatch?” Hui asked. Tony hadn’t bothered to ask where she had put the pistol. He didn’t care. He didn’t need the thing any longer.

“Good idea. Let me finish with this glove. You got the patch kit ready?”

“Here.” Hui held up the kit.

“Great.” Tony put the hatch on cycle, but the icon went red and didn’t open.

The ship was beginning to have a noticeable vibration. Tony gripped the console to shore himself up.

“Hey, do you guys feel that?”

“What?” Hui gripped the console’s edge with her glove. From the look in her eyes, Tony knew the answer before she said it. “Yes. What is that?”

“I can feel it out here, Tony,” Bill answered. “Ignore it and keep focusing on the job at hand.”

“Roger that, Bill,” Tony replied. Bill was right. They had to focus and get Bill inside the cabin before it was too late.

The ship had penetrated far enough into the exosphere to begin experiencing turbulence. The exosphere of Earth extended out as far as ten thousand kilometers. The Orion was traveling over fifteen kilometers per second. It would take the ship less than ten minutes to travel into the denser portions of the thermosphere, where the real turbulence would start. They had less than five to seven minutes, depending on the computer model used, to get Stetson inside.