172 Hours on the Moon Read online

  The news didn’t go over well.

  Some cried, including Antoine. Midori was almost inconsolable. Others, like Coleman, had shut down completely. Nadolski, too, was just sitting there staring at the wall. Mia didn’t hold back her emotion and screamed at him, and then at all of the astronauts, insisting that they had no choice but to go out there and rescue them.

  She didn’t fully believe yet that there wasn’t anyone to save.

  The two men under the hatch out there didn’t exist anymore. They were just two bodies, lifeless, doomed to lie in that airless cold until the next mission arrived. The decision to leave them was a hard one to make, but Commander Nadolski didn’t actually have any other choice. Neither DARLAH 2 nor Demeter had a refrigerated storage room. It would fly in the face of every regulation, not to mention good common sense, to bring those two bodies and store them in the warmth for the four days the return trip would take. Who knew what bacteria could spread during that time?

  Mia looked around the solemn room, everyone hunched, heads in hands, hopeless. The red lighting, indicating the emergency power was still active, only increased the dark mood. Just a few hours earlier she had been sure her life was finally going to start, and that Antoine was the one who would put it in motion. Now she was surrounded by people who were supposed to take care of her, and none of them was up to the task. And on top of everything — the silence.

  Only the sound of the fans in the air system could be heard. A regular, low hum.

  Someone finally stood up. Nadolski. He moved to the middle of the room, rubbed his hands over his face.

  “There is absolutely no logical explanation for this. That hatch, like everything else here, had been tested, retested, and tested again.”

  “And when was that?” someone said. Mia didn’t catch who.

  “That’s not the issue,” Coleman said. “Losing the radio signals, even the video signals to Earth, now that’s one thing. That I can understand.”

  “That you can understand?” Nadolski interrupted.

  “I can accept that. It’s happened before. On one of the Apollo missions, for example. What I can’t understand is that the whole generator could be destroyed by natural causes. And that the hatch the engineers opened could close and lock itself shut behind them.”

  “What are you trying to say, Coleman?”

  “I’m not trying to say anything, Nadolski. I just think we should be … careful.”

  Mia turned to look at Antoine. He looked pale, and she took a firm hold of his hand and set it in her lap. Who cared if anyone noticed? None of it mattered anymore.

  “Fine. We’ll be careful. Now listen up. This is the issue: On behalf of myself, the mission, and NASA, I deeply apologize that we find ourselves in this situation. We have just lost two good men, Sam Wilson and Peter Stanton. Their deaths are shocking and incomprehensible, but we can’t cave in and give up because of this. The way things stand now, we need to focus on solutions, not problems. Coleman?”

  “Yes?”

  “We’re still running on emergency backup power. How long will that last?”

  “According to my calculations, twenty-two hours. Twelve hours after that the oxygen generator will stop working.”

  “Okay. We have just over thirty hours to get out of here. That means we’re calling off the mission, effective immediately. I can’t imagine anyone has any objections to that?”

  No response.

  “Good. We don’t know what NASA and ground control think about that, since all communications are down. But we don’t have any choice. We are, as you all understand, on our own. That means the following: Coleman, you’ll get the kids into their suits. After that, take them down to the infirmary in module four. Caitlin, you’re coming out to Demeter with me to prepare for departure. We’ll meet in the infirmary in exactly eight hours. Which is to say three twenty-five a.m. Miami time. Let’s hop to it.”

  Mia stood up and looked at Midori. Was she scared, too?

  “Mia?”

  Someone was talking to her. She tired to figure out where the sound was coming from.

  “Mia, please!”

  She turned from side to side, dazed.

  “Mia, let go!” It was Antoine. He was standing right next to her. She loosened her grip on his hand, which bore obvious red marks from her fingers.

  Coleman led the teens down the corridors, back to their rooms. He did his best to calm them down and explain how much training all the astronauts had been through for situations like this.

  But no matter what he said, it didn’t help in the least.

  Because all three of them saw that there was way more fear in his eyes than there was in their own, and they realized he didn’t believe a word of what he was telling them.

  * * *

  Nadolski led the way outside the base, with Caitlin following right behind him. They could clearly see the lunar lander Demeter a few hundred yards ahead of them. With every step they took, fine dust swirled up around their boots and slowly settled back down onto the surface again.

  For Nadolski this was the most important day of his life. He had built his whole life around the space organization, and now everything he had ever done before was suddenly pushed into the background: the girlfriend he had married twelve years ago, the kids he had had with her, all of it was packed away and suppressed. His only objective now was to get his crewmembers home safely. That was his great mission in life. He would be welcomed as a hero. Not that that was the most important part, but he did want that, didn’t he?

  Yes.

  He had to bring these people back.

  No matter what.

  Demeter was a welcome sight, standing there like a white monument in the gray landscape. Nadolski let Caitlin climb up the ladder first. She was just preparing to open the hatch when she bumped into something with her elbow. And the hatch swung open.

  Oh no, she thought. No. Not this, too.

  “Caitlin?”

  She climbed in and helped Nadolski the last little bit, until he was in, too. She waited a few seconds before doing anything else. Postponing it. Then she grabbed the hatch, pulled it shut, twisted the locking wheel, and let go. She waited a few seconds, it felt like an eternity.

  And the hatch slowly swung open again.

  No no no no no no no.

  She tried again. And again it swung open. Caitlin swore to herself.

  Nadolski thumped her on the shoulder. “Problems?”

  She turned to him. “The hatch is destroyed.” Both of them knew what this meant, but she said it anyway: “We won’t achieve compression.”

  She made one last attempt and then swore again softly as the hatch failed to lock and swung open. The whole lunar lander hungrily opened itself up to space.

  Nadolski dropped down in the pilot’s seat and swore. “Caitlin, tell me: What are the chances that damage like this could occur to these types of hatches?”

  She flung out her arms. “I have no idea. One in billions, I would think. We never even practiced this in the simulator. I’m beginning to —” She cut herself short. “Nothing.”

  “You’re beginning to what?”

  Caitlin hesitated for a long time before responding, “I’m beginning to think we weren’t supposed to come back to the moon.”

  He didn’t respond, thinking hard. He had an idea. It was risky, but it was worth a try.

  “What if we keep our suits on and take off anyway, with the hatch open? If we fill the rear compartments, everyone will have enough oxygen until we reconnect with the spacecraft in orbit.”

  But Caitlin just shook her head. “That won’t work. The hatch is linked to the computer for takeoff. It won’t let us take off until the hatch is sealed.”

  “And we can’t reprogram it? Or override it?”

  “No! I’m sorry, Nadolski. It’s just not possible.” She paused. “It looks like …” She forced the words out in a near-whisper. “We might be stranded.”

  It was as if the word “stranded�
� triggered something in Nadolski. He stood up.

  “Absolutely not! Not as long as I’m the commander. Come on. We have to go back to DARLAH.”

  Mia was sitting in the infirmary with one arm around Antoine and one around Midori when Nadolski and Caitlin returned. She tried to make eye contact with Caitlin to get an idea of what was going on, but Caitlin looked away. Stared at the floor. Nadolski didn’t look at the teens, either. He whispered something to Coleman and motioned to Caitlin to follow him.

  “Coleman, Caitlin, and I have to discuss a few details. The rest of you wait here. And no one leaves this room without my permission, is that completely clear?”

  The teens nodded, even though the order was totally unnecessary: None of them could move.

  The three astronauts came back just a few minutes later and made a brief statement:

  “Take off your suits, hang them up in the equipment room, and meet us in the kitchen in module two. We’re going to be here for a while.”

  DARLAH 1

  They had been told that the lunar lander was unusable.

  Midori had helped Caitlin prepare a simple soup for the six of them who remained, but none of them had much appetite. The now cold soup had remained pretty much untouched. Mia was sitting with her head resting on her hand, drumming her fingers on the edge of the table, and Antoine was sitting across from her staring into space, going over in his mind everything they’d just heard.

  Coleman had been the one to address the group. “Commander Nadolski and I talked. There is a solution. We can’t guarantee that it will work, but the way I see it we don’t have any other choice.” He looked the rest of them straight in the eyes. “It will require hard work from everyone.” He wasn’t quiet for long. It seemed as if he hadn’t quite decided if he should say it or not. But then he said, “There’s another DARLAH base.”

  Ever since Houston, Midori had been wondering why the base they were going to was called DARLAH 2, but she had decided not to ask for fear of sounding stupid. Odds were it was just a number that didn’t mean something significant. Like with cars. They always had numbers and letters, like 340 SL or 240 GTI or whatever. They were all meaningless to her.

  “What I’m about to tell you now is strictly classified, you have to understand that. Not even Commander Nadolski knew about this before now. Under normal circumstances I would have had to ask NASA and military leaders for permission before I said a single word, but because of the situation, I don’t have that option right now. Therefore I can only urge you, in the strongest possible terms, never to mention a word of what I’m going to tell you to anyone. If you do, the government will fully and completely deny everything, and you will be considered an enemy of the state. You’d be refused entrance into the United States, and all doors will be closed to you. None of us would be able to guarantee your safety.”

  Mia was uncertain for a moment. Maybe she ought to step out of the room? Was this essentially a death threat from the U.S. government? She pictured existence as number one enemy of the United States, a life in hiding, always on the move, in constant fear that at any time someone might show up at her doorstep, ready to finish her off. But what choice did she have? It’s not like she had anywhere to go.

  “DARLAH 1 is a military installation that NASA built for the U.S. Air Force in 1974. It’s a hundred feet below the surface, about seven miles from here. It was built at the same time as DARLAH 2’s module three. The installation contains six nuclear missiles, each with an explosive force equivalent to fifty megatons of TNT. If that number doesn’t mean much to you, I can tell you that’s equivalent to three thousand times stronger than the bomb used on Hiroshima. The missiles were installed by the Nixon administration during the Cold War and were meant to be one final defense if war broke out between the United States and the U.S.S.R. In other words, if the war extended into space. People believed back then that that might happen.”

  Coleman paused and inhaled. Believed back then that that might happen. What was he thinking, saying that? He’d been practicing this explanation for a long time, and he was really trying not to talk too fast, which would clue everyone into the fact that he had just memorized this whole thing. Because not everything he was saying was true. The information about the missiles was certainly true, but neither they nor anything else at DARLAH 1 had been built to protect them against the Soviets. The installation and the missiles were installed to annihilate the entire moon if that became necessary. As a final solution.

  But he wasn’t about to say anything about that now.

  “DARLAH 1 also contains an evacuation pod,” he continued, “a minivessel created as a means to get off the moon and back to Earth if anything should go wrong. Unfortunately for us, the pod only has room for three people, which was the number of astronauts people thought it was feasible to have living up here permanently. That rules out our using it. Besides, there is some uncertainty about whether or not it is still in working condition.”

  Midori wondered why, in that case, Coleman originally hadn’t seemed uncertain about the “working condition” of the rest of this stupid base.

  “And now for the last and most important item,” he went on, finally getting to the point. “DARLAH 1 is primarily a power station, and both the missile base and the evacuation pod are merely additional equipment. A high-voltage line is supposed to run directly from DARLAH 1 to DARLAH 2, an emergency cable in the event that DARLAH 2 should end up in the situation we find ourselves in now. Thus we need to send a team over to DARLAH 1 to activate the power station. Then we can get the power back up and hopefully also radio communications so that we can call for help. But I ask all of you to be prepared for the fact that we might be up here for a long time.”

  Mia asked the obvious question on the teens’ minds. “What do you mean by a long time?”

  “Possibly months, maybe close to a year. Until NASA can send up a rescue team.”

  Mia listened anxiously to what Coleman was saying, and those final sentences settled like stones in the pit of her stomach. No one was coming to get them. Not for a year. She thought of everything she would lose, that she would never get to see for the foreseeable future: the woods, the ocean, beaches, streets, cities, cars, people. … She thought of her friends, who would go on with their lives without her. The band, concerts she wouldn’t get to be part of. And after the battery in her iPod ran out, and that would be soon, it might be a whole year before she heard any music again at all. That thought was unbearable, and actually made her feel worse than the thought that she might never make it home again.

  She ran her hand through Antoine’s hair. At least he’s here, she thought. And Midori. And Caitlin. That was a start. And maybe, just maybe, things would be fine, if the promises that they really would be rescued held. At least she’d get out of a couple of years of school.

  You had to look on the bright side.

  But looking on the bright side has a nasty habit of leading to disappointments.

  The six of them were still sitting in the kitchen a couple of hours later when Nadolski was ready to select who would join him on the expedition to DARLAH 1.

  “Unfortunately there are limited options at this point,” he began. “I … well, I hope you understand how difficult it is to say this, but … we need Caitlin and Coleman here at DARLAH 2. Once I activate the power station, they’ll have to work together to immediately reestablish contact with NASA to apprise the agency of our situation. This is our most pressing need, and for one of them to come with me will cost precious minutes during which we could be receiving advice from Houston. That means …” He closed his eyes and let that sink in. “That means that I have to ask one of you three to come.” He looked at the three teens. “It’s not an ideal situation. None of you should be asked to do something like this. My God, none of you should be in this situation in the first place. But I think everyone will agree that the problem here requires drastic measures. And it would be simply reckless of me to go alone, with just one rover, in case
something should happen —”

  Antoine suddenly stood up. “I’ll go.”

  Mia instinctively grabbed his shirt and pulled him back down into his chair. “What are you doing?” she whispered urgently, feeling her throat tighten. “That’s out of the question.”

  Antoine looked at her gently. “But, Mia, don’t you remember what Coleman said? We’re all going to have to work hard. This will be my contribution. I have to go. You know that.”

  Nadolski studied the French boy carefully. It seemed as if he understood the situation. He’d said he was scared. But they all were, and what the boy said was true.

  “Thanks, Antoine. Thank you.” Nadolski turned to Coleman. “Coleman, you’ll be in charge of the group while we’re gone. Caitlin, make sure everyone has food and water. And you should all get a little sleep, four hours each until we return. Coleman and Caitlin will sleep in shifts. Antoine Devereux, report to the rovers in module four in forty-five minutes.”

  The meeting was adjourned.

  SIMONE

  The sun had not yet fully risen over Paris when the rain woke up the seventeen-year-old girl. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been asleep, but it was still predawn outside and she felt like crap, the way she always did when she woke up after just a couple of hours of sleep. It was a feeling she had grown accustomed to lately. It had been like this for more than two weeks, but she had no idea why. She went to bed early, ate healthy foods, and exercised three times a week. She went for long walks through the city with Noël and drank tea half an hour before bedtime. Nothing helped. If anything, her sleep problems had gotten worse.

  She rubbed her eyes, aching from the lack of sleep, and dragged herself out of bed.

  “Awake again?” she heard a sleepy voice ask. She turned toward Noël, who was lying in her bed, and nodded silently before turning her attention to the window. It had been raining for four days straight, and soon the park over by the Eiffel Tower was going to be one big puddle.

  She and Noël had been together for a little over a year now, and things were still going well between them. She thought so, anyway. He’d been here for more than a month now, living in her room, eating dinner with her parents. Every day. Being with her. Every day. All the time. His clothes hung in her closet or lay strewn over her floor; his books, too. And the glasses he was always bringing up from the kitchen but never took back down again. In the evenings he would sit in her chair and watch her TV, with the remote control in his hands.