Back to the Moon-ARC

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