172 Hours on the Moon Read online

  Come to think of it, it was almost as if he had quietly moved in and slowly but surely taken over her room, pushing her out of it. She stood there by the window wondering if maybe, ultimately, it was Noël’s fault she couldn’t sleep anymore. But she rejected the idea right away.

  It wasn’t him. It was something else. A person she had thought was out of her life for good.

  This was about Antoine.

  And in a way she had known that all along. But why? It didn’t make any sense. They had broken up more than a year ago, and she wasn’t in love with him anymore. She’d gotten over that ages ago, and she hoped that by now he had, too. They’d given it an honest go, but it just hadn’t worked out for them. Shit happens. And then you move on.

  She wasn’t sure she’d succeeded in doing that yet. Noël was snoring behind her in the bed, a sort of rasping, slow snore that would drive anyone crazy if it went on for long.

  The rain picked up, as did the noise from Noël. Simone shuffled across the floor, sitting down on the low armchair by the stereo. There was an old wine crate next to it with her records in it. Simone had always liked the warm, clear sound vinyl albums made when she played them on the record player her father had given her. She flipped through her albums, most of which had also come from her father, and absentmindedly let her hand select one from the wine crate as she turned on the record player. And when she realized which record she’d randomly grabbed, she felt almost sad.

  It was Cannonball Adderley’s jazz album Somethin’ Else, which had been a gift from Antoine. For a second she wasn’t sure if she wanted to play it after all, but finally she decided to put it on.

  The piano and drums started cautiously, hesitantly, as if they were sneaking around, before an angry wind player got involved for a brief instant. That disappeared and it was quiet again for a few beats, and then there was a brief pause, a musical moment for contemplation. And then it came: The muted trumpet sounded like the saddest instrument in the world, and here it was on this very record. Les feuilles morts, the dead leaves. It was as if summer was gone and fall was hobbling across the countryside, meeting winter halfway.

  The music seeped out of the speakers and settled like a soft coating on the walls without waking Noël, and Simone sank back into her chair, found a pack of smokes on the floor next to her, lit a cigarette, and closed her eyes. It was the most beautiful record of them all, and she remembered the day Antoine had given it to her. They’d been to the theater on rue Laplace to see an old French movie called À bout de souffle, and that was exactly how they both felt — breathless — like they’d discovered something totally new.

  Weird to think about how great they were together then. And how it didn’t last that long.

  It had been worse for him, poor guy. After they broke up she had discovered him standing on the Eiffel Tower, up on the first observation deck, by those big coin-operated telescopes. She knew how he’d pointed one of them at her apartment building. Later that night she had snuck out and gone over to the tower, taken the stairs up, and found the telescope, untouched since he’d left it. She put a euro in and saw, not surprisingly, that she was looking right into her own room. She made the same trip a few times later on, too, just to confirm her suspicions that he was down there every night. Every time she climbed up to the telescope, it was pointed right at her room.

  One day, several months later, when she decided to check out the telescope again, it was pointed in a totally different direction. Of course, that could mean that someone else had been using it in the meantime, but without really knowing why, she took it as a sign that he’d found other things to kill his time with. And now, now when she almost wished he were standing out there in the rain watching her again, she knew he was gone. He’d sent her a text message right before he left for New York. It was the only thing she’d heard from him since they broke up.

  Hi Simone. I’m going to the moon

  in July. That’s totally the truth. Hope

  you’re doing well. See you on the dark

  side of the moon.

  And now he was up there somewhere, far, far away. She had of course heard about the contest and the spaceflight, like everyone else. She’d toyed with entering herself. But she never did. She figured her chances were so minuscule it wasn’t even worth trying. But he had done it. Which was strange to think about.

  What was he doing right now?

  Who was he with up there? She thought she remembered hearing that the other two winners were girls. Had she seen pictures of them? So much had been written about them online since their names had been announced. And Le Figaro, the paper, had been reporting from the United States almost every day. But, no, she couldn’t picture the girls.

  Maybe she ought to get in touch with him when he got back? Or would it seem like she was just doing that because he was now, like, world famous? No, he would understand, she thought. She would call him. As soon as she heard he was back in Paris.

  She made her way back to bed and pulled the sheet up. Noël had sprawled out since she got up, and she had to push him over a little. He grunted softly when she touched him, and rolled over onto his side with a humph. Eventually, she fell back to sleep — but it was a nightmare sleep that comes fully loaded with dreams so real that you’re willing to swear they actually happened.

  She was trapped in a dark corridor. It was hard to breathe. Someone was after her. She couldn’t see anyone, but she heard the sounds they were making, someone or something approaching step-by-step. And from somewhere far away she thought she heard Antoine yell her name. And then something else. She strained to make out what it was. But it was like his voice was underwater, as if there was nothing for the sound to travel through. Something was coming closer and closer to her. He yelled again, and she thought she heard what he said this time. The figure came closer, closer, closer. Something rushed past her hand. Antoine yelled again and she heard it clearly. Get out of there! he yelled. Just then the corridor was lit by floodlights, and Simone was staring straight into …

  She woke with a start, sweating and cold. Breathless.

  It was later that morning when she heard the bad news. The moon mission was in crisis.

  Antoine …

  Simone and Noël sat frozen in front of the TV all morning and afternoon, while the live news broadcasts did their best to shed some light on what had happened out there. Experts espoused complicated theories, and the White House held the first of many press conferences, led by a president who couldn’t offer anything other than a hope that it would all work out. No one knew for sure, and all they could provide was guesswork, graphic models, and predictions of what might happen. But no matter what, all the conclusions were the same: Unless the teens and the astronauts could get back on their own, there was nothing anyone could do.

  Noël, who knew Antoine was Simone’s ex-boyfriend and was one of the three teenagers, had been equally absorbed in the live coverage, but now he was starting to reach his limit. He was getting tired of the whole thing. They just kept playing the same footage over and over with little or nothing new to add. None of the attempts to reestablish contact with DARLAH resulted in anything, and there wasn’t much else to do but wait.

  “Why don’t we do something else for a little while, Simone? I don’t know how much more of this I can listen to. Wouldn’t it be better if we got out and went for a walk? Maybe we could catch a movie or something? It’s a shame to waste the whole day, don’t you think?”

  Simone kept her eyes on the screen for a full minute before she finally turned to look at him. Something she’d been thinking for a long time now was finally clear to her.

  “Noël,” she said, “it’s over. I think it would be best if you went back home to your own place now.”

  CONTACT

  The lunar rovers were not an inspiring sight. They were constructed without a body to make them as light as possible, and Antoine eyed the vehicles with a certain amount of skepticism. Nadolski, for his part, knew the rovers would s
uffice; they had certainly gotten the astronauts from Apollo 15 and Apollo 16 where they needed to go.

  Antoine stood next to the LRV waiting for Nadolski to finish up some calculations. With his space helmet on, and that enormous suit, it was impossible to tell him apart from the fully grown commander. They both looked like experienced astronauts as they strolled around the vehicles. But inside Antoine’s suit, there was no fully grown man. There was a French seventeen-year-old who had just met the most beautiful girl in the world. His previous life in Paris with Simone felt like a hundred years ago now. He suddenly realized he was having trouble picturing his friends. He’d already forgotten the shortest route between the Clemenceau Métro station and Lafayette, a route he previously could have walked blindfolded. Everything he used to be seemed to be disappearing, slowly but surely, from his consciousness. And it all was being replaced by the only thing that still meant anything: making it back home. Making it back home with Mia.

  “Are you ready?” Nadolski said over the intercom, interrupting Antoine’s train of thought. “If so, you can take the rover on the left there.”

  As if he were sleepwalking, Antoine shuffled over to the other rover and sat down behind the wheel.

  “Stay right behind me and holler if you have any trouble,” ordered Nadolski. “Steer clear of boulders and craters. We’re heading north!”

  And with that, they departed soundlessly over the gray plains, leaving DARLAH 2 behind them. Only the vibrations from the seat indicated that the vehicles were being pushed forward by engines. Antoine couldn’t help but feel sort of spooked by the whole experience.

  They made good headway, though the LRVs moved barely more than ten miles per hour. Because of the lower gravity, which made the rovers almost float above the ground, the speed felt much faster. As if he were at sea, Antoine was slowly rocked from side to side as the wheels rolled over the uneven terrain. Motion sickness was starting to kick in.

  Minutes later, Nadolski floored it, forcing his rover up a gentle incline. Antoine turned just as they reached the top. He caught one last glimpse of the base where Mia was before they rolled down the other side.

  How long had they been driving?

  Nadolski wasn’t sure, but it felt like it certainly must have been long enough. He had been checking the map constantly along the way. Maybe the rovers were just moving more slowly than he thought. After all, they had been sitting around unused for forty years. But on the other hand, it’s not like they had been exposed to air or water, so strictly speaking they ought to be in the same condition they were in before.

  At first he chose to ignore the nagging feeling and proceeded across the terrain, through the deep valley of the crater. But the feeling didn’t let up, and that sense of doubt finally forced him to check his watch. He raised his hand to signal to Antoine that they should stop.

  Nadolski studied the watch that was built into his suit. What the f —? Yeah, they should definitely be there by now. They should at least have spotted the area Coleman had shown him on the map before they left. He waved Antoine over.

  “What does your watch say?” he asked.

  “We’ve been driving for almost fifty minutes,” Antoine told him. “Is something wrong?”

  “We went too far,” Nadolski declared.

  “Too far?”

  “Or the wrong way, I don’t know. Something’s not right.”

  “What?” Antoine asked, his voice full of uncertainty.

  Nadolski wasn’t quite sure how to respond. “We’re, uh … we’re having a few problems with the map. But it’ll work out. Nothing to be afraid of.”

  “Are you trying to reassure me or yourself?” Antoine responded, trying to laugh nonchalantly. He couldn’t quite pull it off.

  Nadolski pretended not to hear and went back to concentrating on the map. That Antoine was standing there waiting for him to say which way they should go made it even harder for him to stay focused. He had trained for this mission for years, and he knew there wasn’t anything Antoine could do. It was up to Nadolski to get them out of this mess.

  But that didn’t change this impossible fact: He wasn’t able to spot any similarities between what he was seeing on the map and what he was supposed to be seeing on the moon.

  “Antoine, do you see a hill anywhere near us, maybe two hundred feet high or so?”

  Antoine gazed around at the surrounding no-man’s-land. “No.”

  “Well. We’ve been driving for fifty minutes, you said?” Nadolski asked. Antoine nodded. “Right. Let’s see. … If we figure our average speed was about nine or ten miles per hour … that would mean that we’ve come about eight miles, plus or minus, right?”

  “That sounds about right.”

  “Okay, here’s what we’ll do: We’ll turn around and head back the same way we came for about fifteen minutes, then stop and get our bearings from there. We probably just drove right past the entrance. The whole thing is belowground, after all.”

  They walked back to the LRVs and turned them on, did U-turns, and followed their wheel tracks back the same way they had come.

  At that moment Caitlin was sitting with Coleman in the red glow from the emergency power system in DARLAH 2’s kitchen. Mia and Midori had been sent back to their room with the instructions to get a few hours of sleep. Coleman was doing his best to boil some water for the freeze-dried coffee he had found in the storeroom in module one. There was something about the smell of coffee that made everything feel safe. As if the fear he had felt when he realized that Demeter was unusable was somehow diminished by the scent of freeze-dried coffee. It must be because the scent reminded him of Earth. And that café on the corner of Second Avenue and Seventy-Ninth Street, where he always ate breakfast in the morning whenever he was back home in New York City. They would make it back home again. They would be rescued. They had to be.

  His thoughts turned to Nadolski and Antoine. They would reach DARLAH 1 soon. With a little luck, Nadolski would be able to quickly activate the power station and start on his return trip without any more … problems. And after he and Caitlin reestablished contact with Earth, Coleman knew what he would do. He would invite everyone into the kitchen, and they would all enjoy sipping warm cups of coffee together. The kids, too. You were never really too young to learn to drink coffee.

  He noted that the water was boiling and poured it from the kettle into two cups that he carried over to the table. Caitlin took one of the bags and emptied the contents into her cup. Coleman passed her a spoon, and she stirred it around absentmindedly a couple of times before she took a sip.

  “Oh my God, Coleman, even the coffee tastes old.”

  He felt a pang of irritation at her remark. What the hell is wrong with that woman? Is she starting to complain about petty things now, too? If you only knew what you are facing, Caitlin Hall. Believe me, old coffee is the least of your problems.

  “Well, the antibiotics and morphine down in the infirmary are, too,” he responded coolly. “I don’t suppose you would complain about it if you had to use them.”

  Caitlin set her cup on the table and pushed it away as if to emphasize her point. Then she added, “I know this is all old hat to you, Coleman. I’m sure you’ve known about DARLAH 1 and DARLAH 2 for years. If you know anything more than the rest of us about this power outage or the communications failure, you should just say so — now.”

  Coleman tried to chuckle for the sake of appearances but didn’t quite manage to pull it off.

  “There’s nothing to know, Caitlin. We have problems here. We’re trying to solve them as a team. That’s it.”

  “I don’t like your style, Coleman. I don’t like it at all. You good old boys, with all your loyalty and your honor. If you know something about the shit we’re standing in right now, Coleman … if you’re trying to keep something secret …”

  “Caitlin, I can’t. Maybe I’ve read a few reports that aren’t available to the public, caught wind of a few rumors here and there, but that’s not going to
help us now.”

  “Rumors about what?”

  Coleman took his time sipping his coffee. “In a nutshell? Rumors that we’re not the first astronauts to encounter inexplicable problems on the moon.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I can’t tell you any more than that. I don’t want to. It can’t do any good; it’ll just make you worry more. For all we know, they’re already planning a rescue mission.”

  Caitlin trained her eyes on him. She saw the same passivity as always, the same secretive half smile. “You believe that, Coleman?”

  “No, Caitlin.” Coleman put his head in his hands. “They think we’re dead, don’t you get that?”

  She shook her head. “You’re wrong. They would never assume that. They would make every effort … not to mention that you know it’s a public relations nightmare if they don’t …”

  Coleman tuned out Caitlin’s false hope. He knew that behind closed doors, the mission — and everyone on it — was presumed dead until NASA had some sort of confirmation otherwise.

  Because behind closed doors, they knew what had happened here in the past.

  The momentary, almost credible feeling that he’d had when he smelled the coffee that everything would work out was suddenly gone.

  Nadolski followed the wheel tracks as closely as possible, but he still didn’t recognize anything. He actually couldn’t even remember having just driven through this same area a few minutes before. He was just about to check the map again when he heard swearing over his headphones. It was Antoine.