172 Hours on the Moon Read online

  The point is, your father and I realized that you would probably benefit from a little time to yourself, without the three of us interfering all the time, so you can get a sense of what it feels like to stand on your own two feet. So we’re taking Sander to Los Angeles for a while. As you know, Uncle Harald lives there and we’ll be staying at his place. I think it’ll be nice for all of us—a vacation for us and some time for you to relax. And you’ll need that with all that’s ahead of you. We didn’t want to say anything to you until we’d left, in case you felt guilty and asked us not to go. I’m sure you understand. But you need to know that if we’re thinking about this wrong and you really did want us to be here with you, all you have to do is call and we’ll come back right away.

  In the meantime I hope we can talk a little on the phone sometimes and that we can hear how you’re doing. That would mean a huge amount to Sander, especially. He says hi. So does Lion, of course. You know how it is.

  Finally I just want to say this: Dad and I and Sander are all incredibly proud of you, Mia, and love you so very much. Take care of yourself, don’t wear yourself out, get to know the other kids who are going, and call us if anything comes up. I let Commander Nadolski know about this and asked him to keep an extra eye on you. Not that you need it, but … all the same. You’re going to have an amazing, really amazing, trip.

  We’ll be back in plenty of time for the launch.

  Hugs,

  Mom

  TAKEOFF

  Mr. Himmelfarb was sitting on the edge of his bed, peering down at two brown leather shoes. That meant it was morning and he had to get up. Or it could mean it was nighttime and someone would be in soon to put him to bed. He looked out the window. The palm tree outside divided the sunlight into seven sharp rays that all hit him in the middle of his face. Was it at night that it was light out? Or was that during the day? It was best to wait for someone to come in and tell him what to do. It was hard for him to know how long he waited, but at some point one of the people dressed in white came into his room.

  “There, I’m back,” she said. “That didn’t take so long, did it?” She gestured that she was ready to go. “Are you ready?”

  He mumbled a response to her. He was ready. He was ready every day. Because every day was the same.

  “If we hurry, we can catch the president’s speech. Tomorrow’s the big day, Oleg. They’re going to the moon!” And with those words, she took him by the hand and led him down the white corridors, into the nursing home’s TV lounge.

  He had already forgotten how he reacted to seeing the drawings of the moon base, but there was something familiar about the rocket behind the formally dressed man standing in the TV lounge. Every time he tried to concentrate, it eluded him. How they had gotten that enormous rocket into the lounge without having to destroy the ceiling, he had no idea. They had certainly gone all out.

  All the employees at the nursing home knew that Mr. Himmelfarb had been a custodian at the Goldstone Deep Space observatory, but no one knew precisely what he had done there or what he had seen over the years. Mr. Himmelfarb had been a very quiet and private man for his whole life, a man who stuck to his confidentiality agreement as if it were holy writ. Not even his now-deceased wife or his kids, who never visited him, had ever been told all the details of what his job had actually entailed.

  When he first moved into the nursing home, his children had made sure to come see him once a week. But after his condition advanced, he became increasingly withdrawn from them, and at some point he finally stopped talking for good. And when he eventually no longer recognized them or even acknowledged their presence, they stopped coming altogether. The last thing Mr. Himmelfarb managed to think before he strolled into the deep valley of forgetfulness was how much he missed his kids and how glad he was that soon he wouldn’t realize that they almost never visited him anymore. And that he loved them more than anything on Earth.

  GOOD-BYE

  July 16 had arrived. A couple of weeks beforehand they had moved from Houston to Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where the launch would take place. Kennedy Space Center was enormous, even bigger than the space center in Houston. It was located on Merritt Island, with Cape Canaveral Air Force Station as its closest neighbor. From her bedroom window, Mia could look out over the Atlantic and follow the waves as they slowly broke and washed over the beach down below. And if she leaned out the window and looked to the left, she could just barely catch a glimpse of the launchpad, where the almost hundred-meter-tall rocket was standing ready.

  There were fewer than twenty-four hours left now. In only sixteen hours she would be out there. And the rocket would take off from Earth with her aboard. At a speed of eleven kilometers per second, they would leave Earth’s atmosphere and be gone from everyone she knew.

  She was in her room watching some American comedy on TV, but she wasn’t laughing. She had done what her mother had asked in the letter and called once a week to tell them how she was doing. And like her mother had suggested, it had been good for Mia to have some time to herself, and the distance improved her relationship with her parents. For the first time in years they had long conversations, and the only difference was that now they took place by phone between Florida and L.A. They had talked about nearly everything — the expedition, the uncertainty about her band back home, and about Midori and Antoine.

  There had been quite a bit about Antoine, especially in the last week. She hadn’t noticed it herself, but she had a tendency to bring him up pretty much no matter what topic they were discussing. Antoine said something about that yesterday. Or Antoine is good at that. Mia also made sure she talked to Sander each time she called, but he didn’t always say that much. Sometimes it was impossible to get him to make a sound. But that didn’t bother her. She knew he was sitting there holding the phone, listening to her voice, and if he was too quiet she would just decide to tell him about the little details of her day instead.

  Every once in a while she would go down to the lobby to check her e-mail or see if her friends were online, but the time difference between Norway and Florida meant they were never online at the same time, and the few e-mails that came just wished her good luck and didn’t give her any information about the stuff she was wondering about: how the band was doing and what was going on back home these days. She never replied to the e-mails. So in the end she just wound up staying in her room, pulling a chair up to the window with the view out over Cape Kennedy, listening to the Talking Heads, and trying to write lyrics that were even better. Often she wrote only a few lines, which she would then scribble over and give up on, but she convinced herself that at least she was on her way, that this was just the beginning, and she would come back from the moon with lyrics that were really, really good.

  She, Midori, and Antoine had been drilling with the crew the whole time. They went through all the maneuvers hundreds of times, crammed to memorize all the details, and practiced in simulators. She trained with the others in a big swimming pool to simulate what moving around on the moon would be like. She had forced herself to read the three manuals from cover to cover twice. She was ready to go. All that was left now was the wait. And dread.

  She looked at the clock. It was almost like it was moving backward or had stopped altogether. As soon as they were in their places in the rocket, everything would be easier. Then it would be too late to back out, too late to turn back.

  But there were still sixteen hours to go.

  The countdown had begun.

  16:14:32.

  16:14:31.

  16:14:30.

  She tried to focus on the TV show, force herself not to look at the clock. The plot of this show was the same as always. Three or four people arguing about some trivial thing or other in a living room with a sofa in the middle. And about every ten seconds there would be a prerecorded, canned salvo of laughter from the audience so that at least there was some indication that the whole thing was supposed to be funny. For a while she thought about calling Silje to s
ay good-bye, but she quickly rejected the idea. The last thing she needed was bad news, and talking to Silje or any of the other band members was almost definitely guaranteed not to improve her mood.

  Mia looked at the clock again: 16:03:22.

  Only eleven minutes had passed since the last time she’d checked. Time was a sticky, sleepy snail.

  She put her headphones over her ears and quickly browsed through her computer files to the folder of demos the band had recorded at Leonora’s house. She tried singing along to a couple of the songs to freshen up her memory, but it didn’t go well. It was like they weren’t her songs anymore. The music sounded foreign, as if it had been recorded in a completely different era. She turned it off in the middle of the song they had been the most satisfied with and browsed through the rest of the folders. Ultimately she found her way back to the Talking Heads. Unlike her own band’s music, they didn’t feel foreign to her. Just the opposite. Every time she listened to them lately, she felt like she understood them better and better. She put on one of her favorites, the song “Life During Wartime”: “This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco, This ain’t no fooling around.”

  She had to concentrate now, had to be ready. She had to be prepared, push all thoughts of her family and friends out of her mind. The moon, she thought. Focus on the moon.

  If you do well up there, you’ll be able to spend the rest of your life doing exactly what you want.

  She had the volume up to max, and the music was roaring in her ears. Maybe that’s why she didn’t hear the knock on the door. She suddenly looked up and saw Antoine and Midori smiling at her from the doorway.

  “Everyone at Kennedy Space Center can hear you.” Midori laughed.

  Had she been singing out loud and not realized it? Mia was embarrassed and tore off her headphones.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “I’m sure no one minds. Anyway, it’s great to hear you singing. It’s so quiet around this place, it makes me paranoid.”

  “What are you listening to?” Antoine asked in his stereotypically French accent. To what eez eet zat you are listening?

  “Talking Heads.”

  Antoine and Midori looked at each other. Neither of them was familiar with the group.

  “Is that your band?” Midori asked.

  Mia shook her head. She’d told them that she played in a band at home, but they hadn’t heard any of her recordings.

  “But you have some of your stuff on here? Your band’s?”

  Midori walked right over to the bed and picked up the headphones. She put them on her head. “Let’s hear it, then.”

  Mia found their best song and pressed play. Midori was quiet while she waited for the music to start. Antoine moved closer, watching the two girls in anticipation.

  “Wow, that is really cool,” Midori said, tapping out the beat with her foot.

  “You think?” Mia replied.

  Midori started doing dance moves. “Are you guys going to put out an album or what?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You have to!” Midori shouted, dancing her way toward the bathroom. “You’ll sell millions. At least.”

  “Let me hear,” Antoine pleaded, moving over to intercept Midori. She handed him the headphones, and soon he, too, was moving to the music. He was stiff and it was comical to watch, but the sight still made Mia incredibly happy. The doubts she’d just been feeling were suddenly gone. Of course their songs were good. Of course her lyrics and her voice were a big part of that. They could be big international stars.

  And in that instant she became more determined than ever that when she got home to Norway, she would take the band to new heights. They’d be the best band in the country.

  Midori and Antoine hung out in Mia’s room all evening. Mia liked it, having them here with her. There was something safe about them, Antoine and Midori. They didn’t need anything from her.

  “Are your parents coming to the launch tomorrow?” Antoine asked.

  “I guess so. I don’t know. I actually haven’t talked to them about it.”

  “How weird,” Midori said.

  “Well, they’re weird.” Mia laughed. “Are yours coming, Antoine?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Antoine said.

  She actually knew that from before. Antoine’s parents had been there every single day. They were the real nosy type. Mia thought NASA might be starting to get sick of them. But, of course they were nice enough people.

  Midori’s parents had also been at Kennedy Space Center every day since the training had moved to Florida. They were quieter, probably because they didn’t speak very much English, so she hadn’t really talked to them. The only time had been after the first and only press conference that had been held at the base. Media crews from all over the world had been there. Every single TV station and newspaper had interviewed them. Mia had left most of the talking to Antoine and Midori, and thankfully the crew had dealt with the hard questions. Mia’s main contribution had been saying that she was looking forward to trying to walk on the moon with almost no gravity.

  “Are you dreading it?” Midori asked.

  Mia paused. “I’m not really sure. Are you?”

  “I think so. How about you, Antoine?”

  Antoine nodded his head slowly a few times. “Yes. A lot.”

  “Look at it this way,” Mia began. “We go. We hang out for a little while. We come back again. That’s all it is. The only difference is we’re going a little farther than usual.”

  “And we’re traveling on a rocket that will burn off twenty tons of fuel the first second instead of by car.”

  “And we’ve been training for months about everything that can go wrong.”

  “Nothing’s going to go wrong,” Mia said, with no clue as to where all her sudden self-confidence was coming from.

  “Are you sure?” Midori asked.

  “I promise. I’ll take care of you,” Mia promised her.

  “And what about me?” Antoine protested, annoyed. “Who’s going to take care of me, huh?”

  Mia laughed. “You have to take care of yourself. Besides, aren’t you the oldest? You actually ought to be taking care of the two of us.”

  “True, true,” he said, seeming pleased by the idea.

  Mia looked at the clock. 12:32:56.

  Time had started moving again. It was time to get some sleep.

  “Mia?”

  “Yeah, Midori?”

  “Could I sleep here with you?”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep down there in my room all by myself. Not tonight. Please?” Midori pleaded.

  Mia nodded. “Okay.”

  “Hey!” Antoine protested. “Well, then I’m sleeping here, too. I’m not going to toss and turn alone in my room while you guys are sleeping in peace.”

  “Okay, fine.” Mia laughed. “Go get your mattresses and then you can sleep here. But no funny business, you got it? And Antoine, you wait in the hall while we’re changing, and you keep under your own covers all night. Agreed?”

  He smiled and pretended he was disappointed. “Agreed.”

  “Good, get going, then. I’m going to bed in fifteen minutes. And it’s going to be quiet as a grave in here then.”

  Family and friends arrived for the launch the next day. Mia saw Antoine’s and Midori’s parents standing behind the fence at the launch center, waving. The astronauts’ families were there, too: wives, children. But no Mom. No Dad. No Sander. She stood there by the truck for a few minutes looking for them, but they didn’t show up. Then they were told it was time, and she climbed up onto the back of the truck.

  That’s when she spotted them, and realized they’d been there the whole time, almost hidden in the background, so she wouldn’t be embarrassed by them. For a brief moment she knew she really loved them after all. They waved to her with their hands held high. And Sander was standing between them, with Lion in his hand, its head whipping from side to side as he w
aved.

  Mia climbed on the truck and it rolled away from the people waving, carrying the crew toward the launchpad. The enormous Saturn V rocket grew even taller as they approached. It looked like it was poking a hole in the sky.

  As the truck parked next to the rocket and disappeared into its shadow, she realized for the first time just exactly how big it was. It was like a ship — more like a giant aircraft carrier — standing on end.

  It was almost hard to grasp. Only the uppermost section of the rocket was the actual spaceship. Only the little capsule located right above the top black stripe. The rest was just fuel. Explosive fuel. The capsule was an almost identical copy of the one they’d used the first time, in 1969. But then there had been only three people on board. The new capsule was twice as big, because now there were eight people. It was going to be crowded, and they were going to spend four days in it.

  “Are you ready?” Antoine asked, glancing over at her. He looked like an adult, standing there in his full spacesuit with his helmet under his arm. “It’s going to go fine,” he told her, and smiled.