Back to the Moon-ARC

While he was waiting, Stetson had time to contemplate the mission and where he was. He decided that no one, other than another astronaut, could even come close to understanding the emotions and feelings that one experienced in a spacesuit traveling through space. God, I was meant for this. Stetson said this to himself, not really to God. My whole life led to this trip, and I love it.

He was shaken from his reverie by Chow’s voice on the speaker. “Bill, I’m ready. Are you?”

“Yes. I’ll start flexing as soon as you cut the power and start the reboot sequence,” Stetson replied.

“Okay. Here we go.”

A few seconds passed, and then Chow’s voice returned. “Now. The power is cycled down and getting ready to restart.”

Stetson didn’t hesitate. With boots still firmly wedged, he used both hands to grasp and twist the stuck array. Trying to move it first clockwise and then counterclockwise, Stetson jimmied the stubborn piece of hardware. He didn’t believe he was getting anywhere, and then, abruptly, he felt a jolt and the whole gimbal began to move. Looking up at the array fan, he could see that it was starting to move under its own power. Moving his hands back from the boom and the gimbal so as to not interfere with its motion, Stetson watched as the array rotated and began again to track the sun.

“Bill, you did it. The board says the array is working, and I think I can see it moving in your helmet camera. Does it look okay to you?” Chow sounded ecstatic.

“Tony, it’s moving. I’m coming back in.” With those words, Stetson began his climb back toward the hatch.

After Stetson reentered the Orion, he repressurized the cabin, and then he and Chow removed their spacesuits. Even though the thermometer showed that the temperature of the cabin was where it should be, Stetson felt cold. He always felt cold after an EVA, and he attributed it to the psychology of having been floating in the endless frigid void of space. He knew he would warm up; it was just a matter of time. Of course, there was also a checklist to be completed after an EVA—it took them close to thirty minutes to complete it.

“Tony, we need to see what we can off-load from Altair. Have you got the latest list from mission control?” Stetson was referring to the fact that the range safety experts would not allow them to remove any items from the Altair or the Orion while the vehicle was on the pad in the days before launch. Having engineers mucking around with the cargo, messing up the mass distribution and balancing, not to mention being around during the final checkout, was just too much for the safety guys. Instead, the engineers in Texas and Alabama had come up with a list of items that could be thrown overboard to reduce the mass of the Altair’s ascent stage so as to allow all six people to get off the surface of the Moon.

Chow, looking at the list as it scrolled across his personal view screen, replied, “Bill, they met the target with about ten kilograms of margin. We can get most of this off the Altair once we land. There’s not much we can do until then. We don’t want to mess with much of it until then—we don’t want some of this to get loose until we’re under gravity.”

“I knew they’d come up with a plan. I’ll look it over myself in a few minutes.”

With that, Stetson and Chow were able to sit back and, for a few hours at least, enjoy their ride.

Chapter 23

The four-person crew of the Chinese ship Harmony huddled together in the near- complete darkness of their ship’s crew cabin. The only light penetrating the blackness came from the LEDs on the instrument panel, showing which of the pitifully few systems were still powered on. Since the crash, the taikonauts had powered down virtually everything except the thermal-control system and, sometimes, the radio, in order to conserve power. The situation had been scary and uncomfortable, but not critical when the sun was in the sky, but now that the fourteen-day night had begun, every milliwatt of power translated directly into a few minutes of life. Power was heat, and in the unbelievably cold lunar night, heat was in short supply.

Harmony’s captain, Hui Tian, surveyed the status of her crew by turning her head to look at each directly. Spacesuit helmets didn’t allow for any peripheral vision, and in order to see something, she had to look at it directly.

To her immediate right was the ship’s physician, Dr. Xu Guan. The relatively tall and gray-haired Xu had weathered the crash fairly well and was fully engaged in keeping everyone functioning. Though his dry sense of humor was greatly appreciated during the flight out, it didn’t do much to boost morale after the crash. But that didn’t stop him from trying. No matter what the situation, Xu seemed to have some pithy comment at the ready. When they last spoke privately, Xu admitted that as a youth he had wanted to be a comedian but his father had disapproved. No doubt his patients back on Earth appreciated his humor more than the crew of the Harmony—at least at the present moment. Xu had propped himself against the wall with Harmony’s pilot, Ming Feng, leaning against him.

Ming had not weathered the crash well at all. In fact, he was failing both physically and mentally at a rapid rate. During their chaotic descent to the surface, when all the alarms had begun to sound, Ming had frozen and Hui had had to take control of the ship from him. If not for her rapid action, they might have all died upon impact— making a fairly sizable crater in the process. Upon impact, Ming was thrown into the control panel and, according to Dr. Xu, had fractured some ribs and perhaps suffered some internal injuries. He was now feverish and semicoherent. That might be fortunate—under the circumstances, Hui thought to herself.

To her left, rummaging again through the remains of one of the ship’s computer consoles, was the Harmony’s engineer and political officer, Zhi Feng. He was not a big man, but his agile frame allowed him to gain access to parts of Harmony that would have been impossible for anyone else. He was also the youngest member of the crew. Hui guessed his age to be not more than thirty-five years. Zhi was at times a gift—he had used his engineering training and creativity to scavenge the parts required to keep the air and power functioning for far longer than she had thought possible. At other times, he was a curse— being the ship’s political officer, he always made everyone feel like they were under a microscope and that any action of which he didn’t approve would be used against them or their families upon the return home. If they returned home. Zhi had gone ballistic when Hui had used the radio to contact the American ship they’d been listening to as it approached the Moon. If it were not for the support she received from Dr. Xu, she suspected he would have smashed the radio rather than let her use it. They depended upon Zhi to keep them alive, but they were also very afraid of him.

Hui shivered in her spacesuit. The power in her suit was still at maximum; Zhi had been able to keep their individual suit batteries fully charged as he drained yet another fuel cell from within Harmony’s lander. To conserve power, however, the temperature in all their suits had