Back to the Moon-ARC (31 page)

Needless to say, the Altair, being the last of the vehicles to be constructed in the project, was built on a fraction of the planned budget. It was slimmed down, and every corner that could have been cut on its design and construction
was
cut. The engine was smaller, the frame bulkier, than it should have been, and the fuel tanks were smaller. There was very little margin left for extra weight with four occupants. With six, they were way overweight, and even throwing everything overboard was a couple hundred kilograms short, with no margin for error. The engineers back at NASA had figured out a work-around, but that meant some major modifications to the vehicle’s exterior structure.

Tony could faintly hear some whirring, more like buzzing noises, vibrating through the structure of the ship and into his helmet that was propped against the wall. His guess was that it was from the cordless power tools being used outside. It took another hour for the engineers at Johnson Space Center to talk Bill and Zhi through which bolts to remove. Where to pry at a panel. When and where to hit something with a hammer. And then all of a sudden a large screwdriver blade poked through the wall from the outside. Tony listened, only half paying attention, and nearly dozed off at one point, but the vibration of a saw blade cutting through a metal panel fastener startled him to attention. Then all of a sudden he heard Bill.

“There, Zhi. Hold it there.” Then there was a pause. “Step out of the way and hold on to something.”

“Okay, Tony,” the engineer at Houston said. “Very carefully, hold on to the pilot-station panel and kick the skin panel with the bottom of your boot.”

“Uh, roger that, Houston.” Tony carefully found himself a handhold. He didn’t want to bounce out with the panel and go flying onto the surface some twenty or more feet below. Once he assured himself he was secure, he prepared to kick. “Kicking in three, two, one.”
Clank.
The vibration of the kick resounded through the structure of the cabin.

“It didn’t come free,” Bill pointed out.

“We expected that, Bill,” Houston responded. “Our models show it will take a minimum of three kicks. Tony, when you’re ready, kick it again.”

“Roger that,” Tony replied and steadied himself again. “Kicking in three, two, one.” This time the panel surprised Tony and the engineers at Houston since it let go and sailed out across the lunar surface quietly until it skidded to a stop somewhere out there in the darkness.
 

“Great, Tony!” Stetson exclaimed.

“Houston, it came free,” Tony acknowledged. There was some chatter behind the engineer’s voice that sounded almost like bickering. “Either your models were wrong, or I can kick harder than you guys thought.”

“Good job,
Mercy I
. Be alert that the guys down here have made several wisecracks about always knowing that you were stubborn as a mule, but they didn’t realize you could kick like one, too.”

“Copy that, Houston,” Tony said with a bit of an unenthusiastic laugh.

“Get ready to repeat that process,” Stetson instructed.

“Roger that, Bill.”

“We are go for second panel removal,” Houston said.
 

“No rest for the wicked, hey, boys?” Tony added.

“Let’s get to work, Zhi.” Stetson didn’t waste time in moving on to the second panel. “Maybe this one will be easier since we’ve got experience now.”
 

It wasn’t.

It took a total of five hours and thirteen minutes for Stetson and Chow and Zhi to completely prepare the Altair for its return to space. For the first two and a half hours, Tony, Bill, and Zhi had tossed supplies out of the airlock. The remainder of the time was pulling the exterior panels. Only moments after the first panel came off, both Hui and Dr. Xu regained consciousness and were able to help. Once they were all six back inside the Altair, it was still crowded but at least now they had an entire wall out, so the view was fantastic. Well, it would have been fantastic had it been daytime and they could have seen anything. Actually, the view was extremely limited and very low light, but it was still the Moon. So, as far as the astronauts were concerned, the view was fantastic. It didn’t hurt that they could just see the Earth on the horizon shimmering blue and white and begging them to come home.
 

At least at this point any extra baggage could just be tossed through the open hole in the ship. They were careful to cover the edges of any rough pieces of metal with special tape that they had brought along for just that purpose. Dr. Xu and Hui made themselves busy covering the opening rough spots very carefully. It would have been very bad to tear a suit on a jagged edge during the three-hour ascent to the Orion capsule in orbit.

“Houston, this is
Mercy I
. We just chucked the last of the ballast overboard, and we’re almost through the prelaunch checklist. Have you uploaded the ascent trajectory yet?” Chow was the one speaking to ground control while Stetson continued locking things down for the ride to space. They had added some extra strapping in order to tie themselves to the wall panels during ascent. Nobody at Houston liked this part of the mission, but it had to be done.

“
Mercy I,
this is Houston. Yes, the trajectory was just uploaded. If you go on time, you’ll be on an optimized return to Orion for the trip home. Medical wants to know your assessment of your passengers’ conditions.”

“Well,” Chow began, “Captain Hui is in good spirits and seems fine. Dr. Xu is also okay. He’s been at the pilot’s side since he awoke. The pilot is still out cold. They said he’s been that way for days. And the engineer, Zhi, he’s, well, he’s here. He hasn’t said much since he came aboard, even when he was helping Bill with the modifications.”

Chow turned to face Captain Hui and said, “Captain, are you and your people ready to go home?”

“Absolutely.” Hui smiled.

“Houston, her smile said it all. We’ll be ready at T minus zero.”

Before returning to his own business, Chow looked at Zhi one more time. Zhi looked back; his gaze was more of a stare than polite eye contact. Chow thought,
Geez, you’d think he didn’t want to be rescued. Why’d he help us if he doesn’t want to go home? I’ve seen that look before. He must be in shock or, worse, experiencing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
 

An hour and fifteen minutes later, the six-person crew of the Altair was ready to leave the Moon. Unlike when Gene Cernan had departed those many years before, there were no lofty words or promises of a peaceful return. There was simply the business of getting ready to launch and the perfunctory exchanges with the control center back home.

The countdown clock counted backward toward zero as five of the six astronauts stood side by side, with Hui and Xu sharing handholds intended for use by only one astronaut during this phase of the mission. The fallen pilot, Ming Feng, was propped against one wall, and both Captain Hui and Dr. Xu had to stand against him, wedging him in place. He was strapped against the handholds. There was simply no room to stand elsewhere. Zhi Feng stood against one wall, motionless and still quiet.

“
Mercy I
, the clock is ticking,” Houston announced.

“Alright, everybody brace for lift-off!” Stetson ordered his crewman and passengers. “Tony, we’ve got a green light on the thruster-pump valve.”

“Roger that, TPV is go.”

“Here it comes!” Stetson held fast and did his best to scan the screens and the occupants of the little ship as the burn kicked in. It was clear that they all felt the initial lunge. The Altair’s main engine ignited, and they rose from the surface quickly at first. Due to the jolt, everyone in the cabin had to readjust their footing to keep from falling.
 

“Houston, this is Bill. Present velocity is one point eight kilometers per second and increasing.” Bill did his best to hold on and keep up with the instruments.
 

“Roger that,
Mercy I
.”

“Approaching two point four kilometers per second!” Bill shouted as they reached the lunar escape velocity. Moving rapidly, the Altair rose to rejoin the now-empty Orion in lunar orbit.
 

“Did you feel that?” Tony asked Bill.

“Yes, I did!” Bill reached up and tapped the attitude-control algorithm screen, bringing it to the front. The thrusters started firing rapidly, and the ship started rocking back and forth.
 

“Ahhh!” Hui shouted as she lost her handhold and slipped. “I’m falling!”
 

“Tony! Grab her!” Bill shouted. But Tony couldn’t react fast enough to do anything. Fortunately for Hui, her tether pulled taut and stopped her from falling farther than just an arm’s length outside into the lunar night. But she was dangling against the already rocking ship and throwing off the center of mass for the control algorithms to adjust correctly. Tony and Xu did their best to pull her back up and steady her.
 

“Houston! We’ve got rapid bang-bang corrections going on, forcing us to precess and rock like mad. Any suggestions?”
 

“We’re working on it,
Mercy I
, but it might take longer than it will take to get up to the Orion. Are the manual controls an option?”

“Roger that!” Bill replied.
Are the manual controls an option hell!
“Manual systems online. Pilot taking over in three, two, one!” Bill took the controls and fought against the rocking and bucking ship.
Bang, bang! Bang, bang, Bang, bang!
went the manual corrections he initiated through the joystick. For several moments it seemed as though Bill wouldn’t be able to overcome the wild ride that the computer had generated for them. But finally he got the ship settled down enough that he could control it completely.

“Houston, I’m gonna have to fly her up to Orion. There are orange and red lights popping up nonstop on my screens.”

“Roger that,
Mercy I
. Good luck.”

“Did we do something to the ship that we shouldn’t have?” Tony asked.

“Sure we did, but it didn’t cause this. We’ve got either some software or electronics issues going on here,” Bill said.
 

It was a long three hours of constant course correction and slipping and holding on and slipping again all the way up to the Orion. But Bill knew that he was just the man for the job. He had hours and hours of training time on this vehicle. Granted he’d never simulated flying it with holes in the sides and six passengers aboard, but he was the most experienced at flying the ship.
 

After the second time that Hui had been tossed sideways and nearly out of the ship, she managed to use her tether to lash her left arm to a handhold.
 

It was a
long
three hours.

The rendezvous with the Orion capsule went exactly as planned. The crew then transferred from the Altair to the capsule that would return them home.

Stetson surveyed the five-person crew that he would be responsible for bringing home. They were alive, but tired and dirty. This was the first time he noticed the stench coming from the open suits worn by the Chinese. They’d been living in their suits for days, and they reeked of body odor, urine, and fecal matter. They’d been able to vent the worst of the mess from their suits while the air in their lander had been kept warm by the makeshift Bunsen burner, but when the air got unbearably cold, they’d just “vented” into their suits.

Everyone’s suits, except for Anthony Chow’s, were covered with a layer of lunar dust, turning their previously pristine white appearance to dark gray.

“What a mess,” Stetson told them as he surveyed the situation. “Okay. We all need to shed these suits and bag them quickly.” He didn’t want to offend the Chinese, who might not be aware of just how bad they really smelled, so he decided to use a plausible sounding, and totally accurate, alternate reason for asking them to remove their suits.

“You’re all covered with lunar dust. We can’t risk letting the dust get into Orion’s systems, so we need to get them sealed up as soon as possible. Please strip them off and secure them as best you can against the aft wall.” Lunar dust was formed from eons of meteorite impacts, and each piece was more like a multi-spiked ball than its well-weathered Earthly cousins. It stuck to everything, and letting much get into the Orion’s cabin simply posed too great a risk to its electronic systems.

The first to enter the Orion was Bill Stetson. After checking the ship’s onboard systems, he went back into the Altair and scanned the rest of his crew. He cycled them in and then pressurized the cabin. They each began getting out of their suits.

“Captain Hui, we brought one change of clothes for you and each member of your crew. This is one case where knowing a little about each of you ahead of time came in handy. Here are packages with your names on them. They contain the clothing and a few other items your people thought you would need. Also, there are antiseptic wipes available.”

Hui smiled and then replied, “I am not by nature a very modest person, Captain Stetson, but I understand the indelicate situation in which we find ourselves, and I will, of course, efficiently work the problem.” With that, she and the rest proceeded to strip. They then placed the filthy suits in garment bags, sealed them, and stowed them as best they could.

Hui looked like a different person without her bulky spacesuit and dressed in a fresh flight suit. Chow had changed into his flight suit, and both Xu and Zhi were clad in clean undergarments provided. They’d also managed to get Ming into his fresh flight suit. Each of them had bathed with the wipes as best they could.
 

“Gentlemen and lady, welcome aboard the Orion.”

Stetson helped Dr. Xu transfer the limp body of Ming Feng into one of the four chairs anchored to the floor of the capsule that would return them home. The chairs were arranged two on each side, one above the other with an aluminum deck below each of the top two seats. Open space separated each pair of seats, allowing movement between them.