Ian Sales: The Eye with Which the Universe Beholds Itself

A7LBthe spacesuit worn by Apollo astronauts

AFBAir Force Base

AGCApollo Guidance Computer

APSAscent Propulsion System

CDRCommander

CMCommand Module

CMPCommand Module Pilot

COASCrewman Optical Alignment Sight

CSMCommand/Service Module

CWGConstant Wear Garment

DACData Acquisition Camera

DPSDescent Propulsion System

DSKYDisplay and Keyboard for the AGC and LGC

EOIEarth Orbit Insertion

EVAExtra Vehicular Activity

FDAIFlight Director Attitude Indicator

IVIntra-vehicular

LCGLiquid Cooling Garment

LEOLow Earth Orbit

LGCLuna Guidance Computer

LOSLoss Of Signal

MCCMission Control Centre

MEVAMars Excursion Visor Assembly

MGCMars Guidance Computer

MMMars Module

MOIMars Orbit Insertion

NSANational Security Agency

OWSOrbital Workshop

PLSSPersonal Life Support System

PNGSPrimary Navigation and Guidance Section

PPKPersonal Preference Kit

POTUSPresident of the United States

RCSReaction Control System

SPSService Propulsion System

TOITransfer Orbit Insertion

USAFUnited States Air Force

USNUnited States Navy

VHFVery High Frequency

VOXVoice Operated eXchange (switch)

This time, when he returns home he knows she will have left him for good. Her decision weighs on him still, even as the J-2 engine ceases its muted roaring and the force pressing him into his seat abruptly vanishes. She has threatened to leave him before, many times; and she came so very close when he returned from Mars. Somehow they have stayed together. The fight four nights ago was the worst for a long time—she’d been in the right and he’d known it, which only made him argue all the more fiercely. After Mars, she had told him never again would she sit at home worried and afraid, putting on a brave face for the press, living a lie that consumed her, that consumed her from within like acid—

But he could not refuse this mission.

Someone bumps his elbow, and his attention returns to the here and now. His hands have lifted from the arms of his seat, and he can no longer feel the pull of the Earth. To his left, the mission commander, Carl J Springer, ex-USN, stares fixedly at the control panel from within the polycarbonate bowl of his helmet. In the right-hand seat, the systems engineer, Anna Gibson, has a gloved hand up to a switch beside a line of three thumb-wheels. He should know the function of the switch, but his training was rushed and it has been a long time since he last flew in space. It is only when Gibson says, Gimbals off, that he remembers the panel’s purpose. He does not know this Apollo spacecraft as well as he once did; but it’s not like it really matters—

Brigadier General Bradley Emerson Elliott, USAF, is the most senior officer aboard this spacecraft but he occupies the centre seat because he has the least senior role in its crew. He is the navigator.

Elliott is also a passenger on this flight. And he is going on a journey much further than his two crewmates.

Much, much further.

But, like his crewmates, he has tasks to perform. Springer and Gibson have already begun the Post-Orbit Insertion Checks on page 2-11 of the Launch Checklist—first the SPS Gimbal Motors, then a line of six switches for the abort system and emergency detection system from auto to off, disabling the various pyros on the spacecraft, making safe the systems they will not need for the rest of the flight. Elliott must do his bit, so he punches Verb 06 Noun 62 into the guidance computer DSKY to perform the first of these:

HA 100.8, Hp 96.4, RVI 25490, he tells Mission Control.

Capcom acknowledges his figures.

We got pitch up to horizontal, says Springer.

APS firing for orb rate, adds Gibson.

Houston, we are configured for orbit, Springer confirms.

The three of them work their way through the Launch Checklist, step by step, reconfiguring the spacecraft from its launch settings, readying it for its stay in orbit.

Once they have finished their tasks, Springer says, still gazing up at the control panel: Anna, you want to take your helmet and gloves off?

Cabin pressure looks good, replies Gibson; Sure.

There is a moment of silence. Gibson then adds, You the one got the helmet stowage bags, Carl.

Now that it is permitted, Elliott unlocks and removes his gloves, then reaches up to his helmet locking ring. He lifts the helmet from his head, and is briefly fazed by its lack of weight. He holds his breath a moment, and then breathes in cautiously through his nose. The cabin air is cold and stings his sinuses. He smells hot metal and plastic, the odour of electronics hard at work, some oil, cleaning fluids, and the rubber and sweat stink rising from the neck of his spacesuit.

He sits, strapped into his seat, his arms thickly padded in the many layers of the A7LB and pressing against those of his neighbours, and watches his upturned helmet float in the air before him. He looks away from its transparent curves, his eyes refocus… and the momentary fuzziness prompts a claustrophobia which seems to shrink his spacesuit until it presses uncomfortably upon every square inch of his body. He is hemmed in, confined, imprisoned . His world too is close, too close, and defined solely by what he sees: grey and grey panels, filled with switches and dials and readouts, and the great white presences of his two crewmates to either side. Over there, a small window lit with the nacreous blue of the Earth below, a blueness perverse in its unearthliness, is further proof, if the freefall isn’t enough, that this is no simulation.

Elliott wants to feel excitement at being in space again, the sense of adventure he felt the first time he made orbit back in the 1970s. He wants that adrenalin high, the one that grips his heart in a vice, sharpens his vision to a knife-edge, and drains him of all emotion; and he wants to feel calm, collected, brimful of the “Right Stuff”, professional, laconic, a goddamn astronaut .

He needs to feel many things, but the journey he is about to take fills him with numb dread. Such a distance, beyond imagining. And he once travelled one hundred and fifty million miles to Mars, and more back. At the time, that number seemed beyond comprehension.

But: fifteen light-years.

88,120,000,000,000 miles.

Approximately.

He can barely say it: eighty-eight trillion miles.

He sits, strapped into his seat, as the Apollo CSM and its S-IVB fly about the Earth, one orbit every ninety-five minutes, and he knows that soon the J-2 will relight and put them on their transfer orbit to L5 and the space station located there. And he’s reminded of those final orbits before his Mars Orbit Insertion burn twenty years ago, in a spacecraft of a much earlier generation than this one—