Back to the Moon-ARC

settled to the surface. The Altair was on the Moon, and neither Chow nor Stetson said a word for at least thirty seconds.

“We’re here.” Chow exhaled and relaxed just a little.

“Right. Touchdown,” Stetson replied. “We don’t have much time. Let’s go through checkout, and I’ll get ready to get out of here and over to the Harmony—if we’re in the right place. I never did see the ship as we were coming in.”

“Houston, this is Mercy I. We’re on the Moon.” Stetson knew that history was being made, and he was being very careful in his choice of words. “We don’t yet see Harmony, but I am preparing an EVA to find them.”

“Mercy I, this is mission control. Good luck. You’ve got some very happy people back home who want to see you and your passengers get back home safe and sound.”

“Roger that.” Stetson reached forward and turned off the microphone. “Now that the perfunctory remarks are concluded, let’s run through the checklist and make sure we don’t screw anything up that will keep us from going home. See if you can contact Harmony on the radio again.”

Chow adjusted some settings on the ship’s transmitter and spoke into it. “This is Mercy I. Captain Hui, are you there? Can you hear me? Please respond.”

The speaker remained silent. Chow repeated the message while gazing out the window at the lunar landscape. After another thirty seconds, he repeated it again.

“Bill, if they’re still with us, then they’re not able to respond for some reason. Their batteries and fuel cells must be totally out of power.”

“I was afraid of that. According to what we saw when we flew over, we should be only about a thousand feet from them. Their ship should be just over there. Right?” Stetson said while pointing out the window toward an outcropping of rocks about one hundred and fifty feet away. “I guess I’ll just have to go out there and find them.”

For the next thirty minutes, Chow helped Bill Stetson check out his spacesuit. As during Apollo, spacesuits were custom designed to fit each astronaut. Each connection had to be secure and airtight; there was no room for error in the unforgiving lunar environment.

“Okay. I think I’m ready to go.” Bill tapped a gloved hand against his sun shield, pushing it up and locking it out of the way. He certainly wouldn’t be needing it. “Any issues with the airlock?” Unlike the Orion, from which the in- flight EVA had to commence, the living space in the Altair lander did not have to vent to vacuum for each EVA. Instead, the lander was equipped with an airlock.

“It’s clear. Nothing but green lights on the panel.”

With that, Stetson finished making the last suit connection and walked over to the airlock’s inner door. It was barely large enough for him to enter fully encumbered, but he managed. Once inside, he closed the inner door and began preparations for opening the outer door—into the vacuum of space that was the Moon’s natural environment.

“Alright,” Stetson said as the door opened. “Tony, I’m on my way. While I’m gone, go ahead and start piling up the stuff we’re throwing overboard. Just don’t put any in the airlock yet. We may need to get our guests into the lander quickly, and I don’t want any crap in the way. After we cycle them in, we can off-load. We’ll assess their conditions, and then we’ll do the mods to the skin of the ship.”

“Sure thing. Good luck.”

“Thanks.”

With that, Stetson stepped out of the airlock. He had been totally ready for the outer door to open, but when it had, he reacted with a startle reflex. He carefully walked over to the door and peered out. But stepping out, on the other hand, was a whole different thing. As eager as was to step on the Moon, he felt a sense of hesitation, like looking down at a swimming pool below from the high dive and swallowing the butterflies in order to just dive in.

“Damn. What were those stupid-ass engineers at NASA thinking when they put the crew compartment on top of this monster?” Stetson said, forgetting that the live microphone was recording his words for posterity.

He was reminded by the voice of mission control. “Bill, is there a problem?”

Realizing what he’d just said into an open microphone, including the “damn” part, he replied, “No, there’s no problem. Sorry about the chatter. I’m just looking out the door and down at the ground—the view surprised me is all.”

But that was not what Bill Stetson was thinking. He was standing on the exit platform in front of the airlock and looking twenty feet straight down to the ground. I told those jackasses that putting the crew compartment on top was a stupid idea, and they wouldn’t listen. Falling twenty feet to the ground on Earth could kill you instantly. Falling twenty feet to the ground on the Moon in one-sixth of Earth’s gravity would break bones, and, since you’re three days from a hospital, it could still kill you. Dead would be dead. Stupid jackasses.

Stetson moved across the platform to the elevator that would take him down to the surface. To call it an elevator was actually an undeserved flattery. It was more of a moving cage that would take astronauts from the crew compartment to the ground and back again. Though there was a ladder, the lander designers had realized the risks of a clumsy astronaut wearing a spacesuit attempting to use one on the Moon.

Stetson entered the elevator, closed the gate, and pushed the down button. With a clank, the elevator began to move slowly downward. After a painfully slow few minutes, which to Stetson seemed like an hour, he reached the surface.

A few minutes later, Bill Stetson became the first American to walk on the Moon since Gene Cernan. He tried not to think about the external cameras on the Altair recording his every move. He didn’t make any pithy comments for posterity, nor did he think he needed to say anything. He was focused on his rescue mission.

He headed toward the boulders and, hopefully, the crew of the Harmony.

The boulders were farther away than they appeared. Without the usual reference points of houses, trees, or even clouds, it was very difficult to determine how far away an object on the Moon really was. The fact that it was nighttime further complicated gauging the distance.