172 Hours on the Moon Read online

Mia didn’t respond. She was staring up at the rocket. Today is the start of a new era, she thought. The Mia the world has known is going to leave Earth now. And when I come back, everything will be different.

  And she was more right about that than she knew.

  An elevator brought them level with the top of the rocket. Mia, Midori, and Antoine waited in the jetway between the capsule and the fixed service structure while the adults were seated and secured into their seats first. Then the teens followed. Mia was strapped in right next to Midori. The capsule was tipped at a ninety-degree angle, so they were lying on their backs as they sat in their seats. It was a strange feeling, like there wasn’t any up or down anymore. Glowing buttons and screens and instruments with numbers flashing surrounded her on all sides. She lay there listening to voices crackling over her headphones as the astronauts spoke to the tower.

  They were told there were fifteen minutes left until launch.

  “How are you guys doing?” she heard a voice ask over the intercom. It was Caitlin. “Status?”

  “Everything okay,” Antoine replied.

  “Everything okay,” Midori repeated.

  “Everything okay,” Mia said.

  “Good.”

  “Twelve minutes to launch.”

  “There’s no turning back now.” Mia wasn’t sure who had said that. She didn’t recognize the voice.

  “Five minutes to launch.”

  Caitlin was studying the gauges and meters on the computer in front of her and reporting the readings to ground control.

  “Two minutes to launch.”

  “Ceres, you’re still clear for launch.”

  “One minute to launch.”

  “Still clear for launch. Will all departments confirm status?”

  The different heads of the various ground control departments could be heard over the intercom as they gave their ready signals:

  “TELMU, okay.”

  “Guidance officer, okay.”

  “FIDO, okay.”

  “EECOM, okay.”

  “GNC, okay.”

  “Flight surgeon, okay.”

  “CAPCOM, okay.”

  “Fifty seconds.”

  Commander Nadolski was pressing the buttons in front of him quickly and with complete focus.

  “Thirty seconds.”

  “Fifteen seconds.”

  “Twelve seconds.”

  “Ten.”

  Antoine turned toward Mia and looked at her.

  “Nine, eight, seven.”

  He held the eye contact. A nice, warm look.

  “Six.”

  That may have been the exact moment she fell in love with him.

  “Five, four — ignition sequence!”

  “Three.” He smiled at her from inside his helmet.

  “Two, one —”

  “We have liftoff!”

  The pressure thrust them against their seatbacks. Antoine’s smile turned into a grimace, and an overwhelming, rumbling sound filled the cockpit. The massive rocket engines pushed them up into the sky with incomprehensible force, until they came through the cloud layer, moving faster and faster. They had trained for this part of the expedition countless times. They had been given an introduction to all the systems and knew what all the sounds meant, what was happening from second to second. Everything was the way it was supposed to be. Still, a fierce wave of fear gripped her. She clenched the armrest and closed her eyes.

  Please let me come back again, she thought.

  * * *

  The residents of Parson’s Nursing Home were some of the millions of people worldwide who were following the launch during these exact seconds. All the old people who were well enough to sit upright were gathered in the TV lounge. The volume was turned up as high as it would go so the hard of hearing could follow, so when the countdown reached zero and the rocket engines blasted off it made the floor vibrate.

  The nurses and aides clapped their hands, and some of the old folks cheered. Mr. Himmelfarb was looking anxiously at his shoes. Ceres lifted off the platform at Kennedy Space Center. He closed his eyes and tried to shut out all the noises.

  The whole capsule shook as if it would fall apart at any moment. Mia thought she screamed, but there was too much noise to know for sure. She tried to turn her head to the side to look for Midori, but the pressure was too great — she couldn’t move.

  Then she heard a bang. She startled in fear for an instant.

  “First rocket stage disconnected,” she heard Nadolski say. “We’re proceeding.”

  “Good to hear, Ceres. Good luck and God be with you!”

  There was no point in resisting the force of the rocket. All they could do was let their bodies follow the ship’s movements. And just as she came to accept all the head-pounding shaking, it became completely still.

  Now she was able to see out the little window on her right side. All she could see was black, black nothingness.

  Caitlin loosened her safety harness and turned to Mia, Midori, and Antoine. She fished a ballpoint pen out of the pocket next to her chair and held it up in front of them. Then she let it go. The pen bobbed slowly, weightlessly away from her.

  Mia raised her right arm, gave the pen a careful shove, and watched it spin away toward Midori.

  They were in space.

  2

  THE SKY

  SEA OF TRANQUILITY

  They had been cooped up for almost four days. Weightlessness was no longer a problem. In the beginning it had been hard to adjust to the new conditions, to make sure nothing was floating around in the command module and that all the guidelines for consuming food and beverages were being followed. Now they could move around effortlessly. The difference between up and down was no longer important; without gravity there was nothing to signal to your body if it was standing up or lying down.

  Mia had been worried that this loss of reference points would make her feel sick, but it hadn’t done that at all. Luckily. Not only would NASA officials have refused to let her go if they thought she would develop space sickness, but any potential vomiting in an environment where irreplaceable instruments covered every single available surface and there was no way to keep floating fluids in check would have had — to put it mildly — unpleasant consequences. The vomit would have floated around freely, sticky and slow, and they would have had to try to collect it with their fingers, bit by bit, before it got all over everything and everyone, creating an intolerable odor — and worst of all, threatened to potentially make the rest of the crew sick.

  At night they hooked themselves into their bunks and slept standing up. They took up less space that way than if they slept lying down. During the day they squeezed into the little control room and watched while Commander Nadolski, Caitlin, Wilson, and Stanton did their calculations and inspections, made adjustments, and talked to NASA’s ground control over the radio. It was one meaningless message after another:

  “Houston, Ceres here. We’re switching to 34/5, CR IN PX.”

  “Received, Ceres, switching to 34/5, CR IN PX. All clear to drain the DMV nozzle.”

  “Received. DMV nozzle drained, parallel symenology implemented. TVI is 74.56.”

  “54-5. Received. Would you read off the OTY readings for us?”

  “Sure. One second. OTY is 54-5, 54-5, 54-5, 89-7, 89-8 …”

  It had been exciting to listen to in the beginning, trying to guess what it all meant. But now the incessant chatter back and forth over the crackly lines had just become irritating. Mia did her best to block out the sounds.

  The windows were fogged up. The breath of eight people was creating condensation in the capsule, and Mia had to wipe the glass at regular intervals to be able to see out. Not that there was much to see. The stars that had so engrossed and transfixed her the day before were starting to bore her. They weren’t changing; nothing was changing. How incredibly strange to feel completely still, even though she knew she was actually traveling over thirty thousand miles per hour.

  Th
e first few hours after they’d left Kennedy Space Center had been the best. She had squeezed in around the biggest window with Midori, Antoine, and Caitlin and watched Earth as the space capsule orbited it. The sight had been indescribable. Not only had she been able to see the shape of Earth with total clarity, as if it were an enormous beach ball, she’d also seen whole countries — yes, almost whole continents. Italy really did look like a boot, and Caitlin had pointed out forest fires in Portugal to them. The smoke stretched over the terrain like white lines. It was weird to think that seven billion people lived on Earth, and yet it was impossible to see any buildings at all. Not one of the big cities was visible. It just looked deserted, the whole thing.

  But Caitlin had known what she was thinking.

  “It looks different at night,” she’d said. “You won’t see the lights where the people live until then. And how much of this planet is uninhabited.”

  It hit Mia right then that she still hadn’t read the letter Sander wrote to her in New York more than three months ago. Those first several days in Houston were so busy she’d forgotten about everything other than the training. She had remembered to bring it with her when they left Houston, but then she had stuck it in her closet. In all the hubbub she didn’t remember whether she’d brought it with her or not. But she had, hadn’t she? She quickly looked through the small bag of private items she’d been allowed to take with her, but didn’t find it. She wanted to dump everything out to make sure the letter wasn’t hiding in with her journals and other things, but she knew that was impossible. Everything would bob around out of control and it would be complicated to get it all back again. It wouldn’t be a particularly popular maneuver with the crew, either.

  Resigned, she just had to accept that the letter from her brother was probably back in Florida. Maybe it was just nonsense, but for all she knew, it could be really clever. Sander might not be like all the other kids his age, but sometimes when she least expected it he’d surprise her with a sudden burst of inspiration. But the letter would just have to sit there for a couple more weeks. Unread.

  Antoine was reclining behind Mia and dozing off. Nadolski and Caitlin were bent over a stack of papers, mumbling quietly to each other as they continuously made notes in black notebooks. Aldrich Coleman, the oldest person on board, was sitting with his head in his hands, looking out the window. He was a strong, fifty-nine-year-old man with a short beard and not much hair. It looked like he was even more bored than Mia, and that could well be the case. He didn’t have anything to do at the moment, either. His job wouldn’t start until after they had landed on the moon and gotten into the moon base. It would be his responsibility to make sure the base was functioning and that everyone followed the rules. But until then, he was just a passenger.

  Midori was sitting just to Mia’s left, reading a book. Mia tapped her lightly on the shoulder.

  “What are you reading?” Mia asked, hoping to start a conversation to pass the time.

  Midori lowered her book, turned it around, and looked at the cover, as if she wasn’t actually entirely sure what she was reading.

  “Robinson Crusoe,” she answered. “Do you know it?”

  “I know the story, anyway.”

  “Have you ever thought about what it would be like if you wound up on a desert island someday? Or what it would be like if all the people in the whole world disappeared, and you were the only one left, and the one thing you could rely on was yourself? Don’t you ever think about stuff like that? That maybe you’ll never get to see another person again?” Midori didn’t wait for a response before adding, “I think about stuff like that all the time.”

  Caitlin came over to them and squeezed in next to Mia.

  “How are you guys doing?”

  Mia shrugged. “Okay.”

  “You see that screen over there?” Caitlin asked, pointing to a small video screen showing a glowing number 122. The girls nodded. “That means we’re one hundred twenty-two minutes away from disconnecting with Ceres. And that, ladies, means that we’re going in for our landing on the moon. So unless you have other, better plans, I suggest you start putting on your suits and moving your things over into the lunar lander.”

  She gave them a big, friendly smile as she said the last sentence, but neither Mia nor Midori noticed. They were already waking up Antoine and starting to wriggle their way back through the spaceship to where their airtight spacesuits were stored.

  The next hour passed with tremendous speed. The suits were put on, tubes hooked up, and valves closed. Caitlin led them back through the spaceship to the oval hatch, gripped the large wheel in the middle, and spun it around. The hatch opened.

  “Go on in. Be careful not to bump into anything. Sit down in the seats at the very back and buckle yourselves in.” Caitlin disappeared for a second and showed up again with the others. One by one they pulled themselves over into the lunar lander: Midori, Antoine, Caitlin, Mia, Stanton, Wilson, and Coleman. Only Nadolski was left in Ceres, confirming final details with Earth.

  “Okay, Houston, everything is ready for separation here. LOWP is set at 6658. Ceres will proceed in its preset orbit until we reconnect again in one hundred seventy-two hours. I’m moving over into lunar lander Demeter now.”

  “Received, Ceres. Good luck.”

  “This is Ceres. Over and out from here.”

  And then Nadolski entered the lunar lander. Mia was surprised to see that the screen back in Ceres — which had read 122 last time she’d looked — now showed just one minute remaining. Nadolski closed the steel hatch and turned the wheel firmly until it was sealed. He turned to the other seven who were crammed into the microscopic capsule.

  “Hope none of you are afraid of close encounters.” He laughed. “You look like sardines in a can.”

  Caitlin put on her headphones and the microphone. “Houston, Demeter. Ready to disconnect.”

  “Received, Demeter.”

  “We’ll disconnect in five, four, three, two, one.” She flipped a switch, and a quiet clunk was heard. “Disconnection successful,” she reported.

  “Okay, Demeter. You’re all clear to descend.”

  Caitlin addressed her passengers. “Okay, everyone, this is it. We’re ready to begin our descent and landing on the moon. We’ll be landing in fifty-five minutes. As you all know, I’m the pilot aboard the lunar lander, and Commander Nadolski will be assisting me along the way. That means I must now ask the rest of you to be completely quiet until I tell you it’s all right to talk again. We’re going to need our full concentration. Is that understood?”

  “Yes,” Mia and Antoine responded in unison.

  Caitlin did not look satisfied. “I ask again: Is that understood?”

  This time no one responded.

  “Good. Then we’ll begin.”

  The fifty-five minutes that followed were more like a dream than anything else. It was as if they were all holding their breath. With the exception of muffled conversation between Caitlin and Nadolski and regular reports from the control center in Houston, there was complete silence on board.

  Then, the view changed. From just being black nothingness, Mia could now see the gray surface of the moon through the one window. Every minute that went by, the contours became clearer and clearer. She saw mountains and valleys, hills, and crevices.

  And then, as the lander rolled over onto its side, she saw the most exceptional sight she had ever seen: her very first Earthrise.

  As the blue planet slowly emerged over the moon’s horizon, suddenly she realized how far away from home they really were.

  Caitlin turned to the three teenagers.

  “Well, time to find your smiles! We’re hooking up the cameras and will be transmitting live back to Earth from now on until we land.” Nadolski flipped a couple of switches, and two video cameras switched on. “Wave at the folks back home,” he said.

  But none of them waved. They were way too busy watching what was going on outside.

  “You’re clear for l
anding,” the control center in Houston announced.

  “Landing in two minutes, thirty seconds,” Nadolski reported back to ground control.

  “Rotate three degrees down,” Caitlin commanded, and Nadolski carried out the order.

  “Two minutes to landing.”

  Mia could see the surface very clearly now, and she thought she’d never seen anything so lifeless. Everything was just gray. Gray, gray ash, absolutely no sign of life.

  “One minute!”

  Midori grabbed hold of her, holding her tight. Antoine seemed glued to the window.

  “Oh my God,” he exclaimed. “It’s amazing!”

  Caitlin stared at him sternly. “Antoine, quiet! Otherwise you’ll have to walk from here!”

  “Thirty seconds,” Nadolski reported.

  “Two and a half forward, drive a little to the left.”

  “Fifteen seconds, kicking up a little dust.”

  You could have heard a pin drop.

  “Ten seconds.”

  You could have heard grass grow.

  “Five seconds.”

  You could have heard God thinking.

  “Contact. Engine off. Contact light on.”

  Caitlin was standing, facing Mia and Midori as she proudly announced to Mission Control in Houston and the millions of people who were guaranteed to be watching the live broadcast: “Houston, Demeter has landed in the Sea of Tranquility.”

  Mia looked out the window.

  They had arrived.

  ALDRIN

  Captain Nadolski opened the hatch. He had checked each of their suits and made sure their helmets were properly secured. Coleman vented the air out of Demeter. Then Nadolski turned the big wheel and opened the hatch to the vacuum.

  “Let’s hope the moon shows us its most hospitable side” was the last thing Nadolski said before he turned around and climbed backward out the hatch.

  Caitlin was the next one out. She struggled a little to find the ladder with her feet before she finally felt the step and climbed out. As soon as she had both feet on the ground, she aimed a video camera back up at the open hatch to film everything that happened.