Ian Sales - Adrift on the Sea of Rains

Peterson stands at the commander’s position in the ALM and gazes out at the lunar surface. Etched across the window is the LPD, reticulations and markings graded in feet, as if life on the Moon can be subjected to measurement. And then he thinks: the days and months of isolation, the miles he has ranged across Mare Imbrium and the foothills of the Apennines. He has counted every moment and every footstep, and though he cannot remember their number, he has indeed measured his exile here.

That ends now.

Fifty feet away stand eight figures in white spacesuits dusted with dark grey. As he watches, one figure bounces slowly up a couple of feet and then back down. Another, feet wide, one arm out from his side, raises a hand to his golden visor in a salute. Peterson is reminded of a photograph from the old Apollo days, and he wonders if that picture led him to his current situation. He tries to remember, but the memory has long since been lost: what did he think back then? That he too wanted to visit that dead world, to stand in that gray sand beneath that black sky?

For the past two years, he has done just that on a daily basis.

That ends now.

It is time to go. Everything has been checked and checked again. Alden and Peterson have spent hours entering data into the PGNS and AGS. Alden has also provided him with a cue card for the flight. He has aligned the ALM’s inertial guidance platform using Polaris as a referent. Though the ALM’s guidance computer has a program for the flight, Program 12, Powered Ascent, he cannot use it as it controls the APS and he will be flying with the DPS. There is, unsurprisingly, no program to use the Descent Propulsion System for an ascent. For the seven and a half minutes he is in flight, he must rely on the accumulated velocity, altitude rate and altitude displayed on the DSKY, and he must fly by hand so they match the figures Alden has written on the cue card.

This is it, I guess, he says.

He has pressurised the ALM’s cabin and he is wearing his helmet and gloves. He has attached the waist restraints, but he knows they are unnecessary. Though he has never experienced an ascent from the lunar surface—this will be his first—he has heard they are as smooth and gentle as an elevator ride.

Master Arm on, he says, flicking the switch.

He flicks down DES PRPLNT ISOL VLV to FIRE, followed by he PRESS — DES START. If they have not recharged the helium pressurisation system for the DPS correctly, they will all die here on the Moon.

One month it took them to decant sufficient fuel from the LM Trucks’ descent stages and fill the cylindrical tanks in the ALM in which he now stands. Two tanks of fuel and two of oxidizer, each holding 67.3 cubic feet of salvaged Aerozine 50 and dinitrogen tetroxide. One month, and so many setbacks. One month, and Fulton will be forever scarred on one arm where some Aerozine 50 spilled and burned him.

I’ve got a light on tank one, he says; tank two is good.

Scott is acting as capcom for this launch. He says, We’re ready when you are.

Peterson holds out his gloved hands, palms down and fingers splayed. He is an excellent pilot, but he is not the best of them at Falcon Base. That would be Neubeck, but Peterson was not going to let that slacker fly this mission. It has been a long time since Peterson flew anything—not just the two years trapped here on the Moon, but even before that he had time only to keep up his hours. This ascent will be the most difficult flight he has ever flown, and he wonders if he is up to it.

If he is not, his men will die. He cannot allow that to happen.

Master Arm off, he says. Engine Arm to Descent.

He sets the manual throttle control to one hundred percent and puts one gloved hand about the Thrust/Translation Hand Controller. He sets the PGNS to Program 99. The index finger of his other hand hovers over the MANUAL ENGINE ON button.

It occurs to him this is Armstrong’s historic moment in reverse: Peterson is making history by leaving the Moon. He should say something suitable, but his mind is a blank. After two years, he is finally heading home. A sudden knot of pain forms in his chest, and he closes his eyes and tries to ignore the sharp and jagged thing that has replaced his heart. But is this ache prompted by his destination, and the certainty of loss it signifies; or is it for his departure and the men he leaves behind? He refuses to see his mission as abandoning them. He is doing what every good commander should, he is going to save them.

I’m coming back for you, he says.

We know, says Scott. Godspeed.

Peterson presses the MANUAL ENGINE ON button.

Aerozine 50 and dinitrogen tetroxide rush toward one another and explode. Dust blows out from beneath the ALM, spreading out in a horizontal circle. Peterson enters Noun 94 on the DSKY. Numbers appear on the display: accumulated velocity, altitude rate and computed altitude. They slowly increment as the ALM rises from the lunar surface. The altitude tape-meter and altitude rate tape-meter both begin to climb. He focuses on the cross-pointer, gently twitching the Thrust/Translation Hand Controller and the Attitude Controller this way and that to keep the ALM on course and the numbers on the DSKY slowly climbing towards the targets written on the cue card.

This is real flying, this is not watching the instruments as his LMP calls out altitude and fuel levels. There is no CSM in orbit to downlink flightpath data to his PGNS. He is flying this spacecraft by feel .

It’s not the smoothest flight he has ever flown. At 480 feet, he begins the pitch-over until he is now flying over the lunar landscape, craters and rilles and the undulating folds of lunar mountains rolling past him. He does not let his concentration lapse; he must focus. He is beginning to sweat now. The ALM’s shadow runs like a spider across the gunpowder grey below him.

When the numbers on the DSKY reach the targets on the cue card, he knows he has made it. He throttles back the DPS engine to zero percent. The ALM is now in lunar orbit, but Peterson is not finished yet. He inputs Noun 85, and now the DSKY displays the residual velocity errors on all three axes. Using the RCS, he must fly until it shows “all balls”.

When each line shows only zeroes, he radios Falcon Base: Ready for CSI.

Alden’s numbers have got him this far, Peterson trusts the man’s calculations for Coelliptic Sequence Initiation are just as accurate. He enters P32 on the DSKY. This program will use the RCS to put him into an orbit with a perilune of forty-five nautical miles. He is too low at present for TEI.

He punches Verb 06 Noun 11 on the DSKY, and says, Tig is 000:09:35.00

9:35 confirm, replies Scott.

Moments later, the view through the window before him shifts as the ALM’s Reaction Control System fires and alters the spacecraft’s orbit. The ALM pitches up, and the Moon seems to swing beneath him. Now he can see the curve of its horizon, and beyond it black space sprayed with stars. The Earth slowly rises above the lunar landscape, blessing his flight with its light, and he marvels at the blue marble with which they once again share the heavens.

He is going home.

After setting the oxygen control to DIRECT O 2, he unlocks and lifts his helmet from his head. The interior of the ALM is chill, as cold as space, as cold as death, and his breath steams before his face. He sets abort stage to fire, and something shudders beneath his feet. He peers out the commander’s window, and soon the descent stage floats into view—an abbreviated platform, its underside a collection of tanks and pipes and boxes, and in their centre the blackened engine bell of the DPS. He watches it tumble and shrink as it falls back to the Moon’s surface. That sight, more than the view of the lunar surface from so high, brings home to him exactly what he has done, exactly where he is. There is no going back. He cannot land this spacecraft; all he can do is make the Trans Earth Injection and hope he makes it.