solder follow. “I can’t do it. I mean, it’s not like running an old antenna wire up to your roof and wrapping aluminum foil around it and hoping for the best.”
Sarah free-floated and nodded for Maggio to start his calculations for detachment of the LEM from Falcon 1.
“Twenty-one minutes until separation. We’re out of time anyway, Will. I was thinking about all the junk we have on the Moon. Can we salvage a dish antenna just for short-range communications with Falcon , so we can get rendezvous data and telemetry for our liftoff?”
Mendenhall looked at Sarah and smiled. “That’s an awfully optimistic outlook. Liftoff?”
“I guess I picked up bad habits from Jack. You know, always planning for the right outcome, just in case by a fluke it happens that way.”
“Yeah, that’s not a bad way to do things. Why I remember-”
Sarah watched as Will’s words trailed off to nothing as he was struck by a thought.
“What is it?” she asked.
“The Beatles,” Mendenhall said. “They all have not only long-range telemetry installed but a high-gain antenna for remote purposes.” He looked up at Sarah. “As a matter of fact, their communications may be better than our own, since they don’t have the human touch to operate them. They have to do it all by computer. I think we can use one of them to communicate-maybe not with Houston, but Falcon 1 shouldn’t be a problem.”
“See what happens when you pull back and think about things?” Sarah said, as she squeezed Will’s shoulder.
“Yeah, now why don’t you go and see if you can pass the same confidence on to Ryan.”
Sarah smiled back at Will. “You know what Jason has to do on a continual basis?”
“What’s that?”
“He has to remind himself that he’s the best pilot in the world. If he doesn’t do that on a regular basis, he crashes in his head. My money’s on him when the chips are down.”
“Okay, I’ll buy that, but maybe you’d better remind him that those chips you’re betting are not the house’s money.”
“I think he knows that, Will.”
Twenty minutes later Maggio was the only living soul inside of the command module, Falcon 1. The rest of the mission’s crew were strapped into their seats on the lower deck of Altair, the only exceptions being Mendenhall and Ryan. They were strapped into an upright position on the command deck, both of them poised over the fly-by- wire maneuvering controls of the very much experimental Altair . No one had ever landed anything this size on the Moon and Ryan knew all their lives were riding on his skills as a fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants pilot. He looked over at Will and shook his head.
“Uh, do you want me to give one of those emotional ‘Win one for the Gipper’ speeches?”
“Maybe a prayer would be more appropriate,” Ryan shot back with a smile.
“Coming up on insertion point in five-ready to separate,” Maggio said from his command seat eighty-five feet away.
Ryan closed his eyes and reached for the VOX at his side.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please place your seats and tables in the upright-” Ryan cut the small joke short and lowered his head. Ryan not finishing a joke worried Will far more than anything he had seen from Jason.
“Ah, hell, just remember where all your emergency exits are located and where the life rafts are located under your seats. Release time in one minute-stand by.”
Mendenhall smiled and nodded. Seeing Ryan not give in to the panic he was feeling was far more comforting than seeing him go silent.
“What are you nodding your head for? You look like one of those dashboard bobble-heads.”
Mendenhall’s face dropped and he glared at Ryan-sometimes quiet from the man was better than the cocky version.
“Okay, Maggio, don’t let in any strangers while we’re out. The number for the restaurant we’ll be at is on the table and don’t let the kids stay up past ten.”
“Roger, Altair, the house will be here when you return. Good luck,” Maggio said. He swallowed the lump in his throat and raised the plastic cover on the release switch that would electrically unscrew the lead that held the two spacecraft together. “Separation in five, four, three, two, one,” he said. He pushed the button and was satisfied when it went from a soft blue to a blinking red. He heard the electric motor engage as it automatically unscrewed with a loud whine. Then there was a pop as the two ships came apart. The snapping of the communication systems came as shock, because it was far louder than the simulations back at the Johnson Space Center. It was so loud that everyone, including the seven Green Berets, thought something else had gone wrong.
Maggio knew it was only his imagination, but he could swear he felt Falcon 1 become noticeably lighter without Altair riding nose to nose with her. He closed his eyes and hit his transmit switch, even though he knew none of the lunar excursion team could hear him.
“Godspeed. Come back home soon.”
Inside the command deck, the absence of the feeling of motion was at first disorienting to both Ryan and his copilot Mendenhall. Altair separated cleanly from Falcon and seemed to be drifting backward, but Ryan knew their forward momentum was still well in excess of 25,000 miles per hour.
“Will, open fuel pressure valves one and two,” Ryan said calmly.
Mendenhall’s eyes widened.
“Right there in front of you, buddy. Just like in our practice runs.”
Mendenhall remembered. He took a deep breath and threw the two blue-colored switches until the lights flashed green.
“We have green on fuel pressure valves one and two.”
Everyone onboard the craft heard the fuel as it rushed through the metal fuel lines.
A young sergeant looked at Sarah. Through her clear visor Sarah winked and the sergeant seemed to relax.
“You’ve flown with the lieutenant before?” he asked.
“Not now, Sergeant,” the Green Beret master sergeant said.
“No, it’s okay, Sarge,” Sarah said, smiling at the two men. “Yes, I’ve flown with Jason three times in various aircraft.”
“All good outcomes, I assume,” the young sergeant said, relief etching his voice.
Sarah couldn’t help it. She just couldn’t let it slip by without comment, as she knew Carl and Jack relished opportunities like this with their younger charges.
“As a matter of fact, the first time was in a Black Hawk. Jason slammed the helicopter into a large rock and knocked our landing gear off. The second time was in a seaplane. We cracked up on a river in the Canadian wilderness. And the third time was two days later when he crashed a brand-new Sikorsky into a forest. We burst into flames upside down and forty feet off the ground.”
The men lining the lower deck of Altair stared at Sarah as if she were joking. She raised her left eyebrow to let them know she was dead serious. She decided to stop toying with the guys.
“He’s the best pilot I’ve ever seen.”
Up on the command deck Ryan flexed his fingers and placed them gingerly on the handles that controlled the jets that the OHM used for maneuvering and for flight. He looked at his attitude gauges.
“Stand by for retro burn and trim maneuver,” he said easily and confidently. Ryan knew he had time and space for mistakes up here, but once close to the surface, the mission became a little more unforgiving.
Will watched as Jason pulled slightly back on the right control and twisted the handle at the same time. He heard the satisfying sound of the OHM’s jet popping loudly as it threw Altair on its back. Ryan hit the left handle to stop the turn maneuver. He checked his navigation and saw that he had fifteen seconds to start the main engine before they bypassed their first option for slowing the craft down enough to get her into the upper reaches of the Moon’s gravity. “Will, I need a ten-second burn on the main engine. Remember, all you have to do is hit the main engine start switch. The computer will do the rest.”
