Back to the Moon-ARC

“Okay. Mark, I want you to call the FBI and let them know what happened. Helen, you need to first make sure this bug is cleaned out of our systems and then bring them back up online. From this point forward, we will work only from the backup files. They are the only ones we know aren’t tainted.

“David, before we use them, I want you to double-check the files from the backup server to make sure they are accurate, and then get them to those who need them. Just tell the engineers that some data was corrupted and they’ll be okay working from the backup files. Please, please, please do not tell anyone else about the leak. And we will fully cooperate with any official investigation. Let’s move out, people.”

Chapter 9

One week later, the Altair lunar lander was being prepared to take off from the surface of the Moon. Poised on the barren and scorched lunar surface was a robotic emissary from Earth, lifeless, peopleless, but controlled by people back on Earth.

Chow was once again sitting in the same conference room at the Johnson Space Center facing down his own demons from the dream, which had recurred four out of the last seven nights. The team’s sense of optimism was palpable. So far, all lunar-surface operations had gone flawlessly, and their confidence in the lander was growing daily. All that remained for it to do was lift from the surface of the Moon into low lunar orbit. There it would rendezvous with the Orion for the trip back to Earth.

Taller than a three-story house, the massive Altair would eventually be the home away from home for four astronauts who would be two hundred forty thousand miles and at least three days’ travel from the nearest park, coffee shop, or hospital. Built for functionality and not comfort, many would question it being considered a home away from anywhere. But to the astronauts who were going to live in her, she was a beauty, a masterpiece.

Perched atop the Altair was the ascent stage. The entire lander would not make the return journey into space, as that would require too much fuel. Newton’s First Law, force equals mass times acceleration, governed everything regarding rocket propulsion. To get something, the mass of the rocket and its passengers, moving, meant accelerating it. And that acceleration required a hefty force. The greater the mass, the greater the force required to get the acceleration. The lander, which at the time consisted mainly of empty propellant tanks that were depleted during the landing, was simply too massive to lift back into space. Too much fuel would have been required to get the acceleration needed to escape the gravitational pull of the Moon. Instead, a small portion of the lander, the ascent stage, would be lofted by a single modified Pratt & Whitney RL-10B engine. That engine produced just under twenty-five thousand pounds of thrust.

Had Chow and his colleagues been in the lander at that moment, they would have been standing shoulder to shoulder, anxiously awaiting engine ignition. Not only was there not enough room for chairs in the stage, but also the chairs would have mass. And, again, from Newton’s First Law, any increase in the mass of an object to be moved would require a commensurately greater force. Standing was a small price to pay for being among the first people to walk on the Moon in half a century.

Chow arrived well before the scheduled liftoff, wanting to have plenty of time to look over the mission briefings and to be part of the camaraderie that inevitably came with being where the action was. And the action was, most certainly, right there.

Above the conference room’s wall monitors were two clocks. The first showed mission elapsed time, begun at the moment of liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The second was a countdown clock, now set to count down to the moment when the Altair’s ascent stage engine lit—it was stopped at twenty minutes and had been stopped there for more than an hour. It was a scheduled hold in the countdown and did not indicate any serious problems.

Chow saw Menendez was there, busily scanning engineering data and mostly ignoring his presence just like she had during the landing. He noticed she occasionally looked up from the screen and scanned the room before returning to her busyness.

Bill Stetson appeared in the doorway. He looked around the room and seemed relieved when he caught Chow’s eye. Dodging various people milling about, Stetson made his way over across the conference room.

“Tony, I came to get you and Helen. I’d like for you to be with me in the control room for ascent.”

“Is there something wrong?”

“No, I just think it would be a good thing for my team to be with me. We’ve also got a better view. Charles is already there.” Stetson grinned. He was totally correct. Mission control was outfitted with an entire wall of huge flat screens showing in high definition what was happening on the Moon—both the inside Altair and outside looking back at the lunar lander.

“Get your stuff together while I go get Helen. We’re coming off hold in about fifteen minutes, and I need to get back. This is my pee break.” Stetson slapped Chow on the shoulder.

While Chow picked up his laptop and other belongings, he noticed Stetson talking with Menendez and her enthusiastic response—packing her things fast enough to meet Chow at the door as they left for mission control.

Nine hundred miles to the northeast in Lexington, Kentucky, Gary Childers was also watching events unfold on the Moon. In his typical fashion, he was also multitasking, reviewing various financial reports, answering e-mails and wondering when he might be able to sell tickets for a moonwalk. After all, flying around the Moon was pretty cool, but not nearly as cool as walking on the Moon. And he knew there would be a very large customer base interested in walking on the Moon if they could get there and back safely. The company’s current projections showed that happening in less than ten years. How much less was the big question.

An exhausted-looking Mark Watson entered his office with a small stack of papers in hand.

“Gary, we’ve looked at the entire database and nothing was changed,” he said, looking over the papers. “They only copied data. We don’t see any sign of tampering.”

“Good.”

“The FBI’s been mostly quiet about what they know, but Helen’s hacker is certain the data went to China. I’m glad he’s on our side.”

Gary Childers was not easily fazed, but the breach in his security certainly came very close to doing so.

“This really pisses me off. I convinced NASA and the DoD to let us have the scramjet designs. We improved them and found a way for the whole thing to work from takeoff through getting Dreamscape into orbit. And now the Chinese steal the plans—making us look like rank