Stephen Baxter - Moonseed

And now Sixt’s Moon-like face loomed briefly in the open hatch, and he nodded gravely, before he slammed the hatch shut.

Once more, Henry was sealed in.

Henry heard a hiss as the short tunnel between Station and Soyuz was evacuated. Then the clamps that held the craft together were released, and a spring connector pushed the Soyuz away. The undocking was a small symphony of thumps, bangs and obscure jolts.

Then the light in the porthole beside him started to change.

He could see the great powder-grey structure of the Station once more, drifting away from him. The Station was lined up so its long axis pointed down towards the centre of the blue Earth, and its big solar panels trailed after it in its orbit. He wondered dimly if the Station’s position had something to do with stability: maybe the orientation was tweaked that way by the Earth’s faint tides, and the solar panels felt the soft breeze of the remnants of the atmosphere, even so high, so that the Station sailed like some immense ship through this silent ocean.

Arkady saw him looking. “When Station is operational we will line it up with the long axis in the direction of flight. That eliminates tidal effects, from our zero-G manufacturing experiments—”

“When it’s operational.”

Arkady smiled sadly.

The checks continued, in English and Russian. Henry could follow maybe half of what was spoken, pick up maybe ten per cent of the sense.

…Roger, Geena, this is Houston. We’re all set here. We’re even ahead of schedule.

“Rog.”

Green lights here. Your attitudes look like they’re on the nose…

The basic Russian systems seemed to have been augmented by American electronics, to handle the extra functions required of the ship on this Moon flight. Arkady mostly worked at the basic Soyuz controls, while Geena tapped on her laptop. They worked pretty smoothly, all things considered, but sometimes they stumbled, and they had to repeat what they were doing in English and Russian.

The Soyuz turned in space, firing its attitude thrusters. Every clattering thruster pulse felt like a punch in the back. Henry could feel the shove of his couch and the hull wall, physically swinging him around.

Now there was another clatter he recognized. “We docked with something.”

“Very good,” said Geena drily. “We just picked up our booster stack, Henry.”

They flew into Earth shadow. When Henry peered through his window he could see fans of crystals spewing out in geometrically perfect straight lines from the attitude thrusters: rocket exhaust, in Moonlight.

Geena said, “The five-minute light is on. We should have the thirty-second light in — ah, five seconds — coming up — two, one, light:

Very good. We got TM confirmation. Timing is perfect, you guys.

“Roger that.”

I’ll count you down to autosequence and you’ll call at five… Confirming, flight directors have been around the horn at Houston and over in Korolyov, and we confirm you are go for TLI. Geena, you are go for TLI.

He asked, “What’s an autosequence?”

“The program for firing the rockets,” Geena said.

“The rockets that will take us to the Moon?”

“You got it,” she murmured.

“Yes.” Arkady’s voice was sombre. “But the ship is smart. It has aligned itself with the horizon and with the stars, and is ready to fire the new engines strapped to it. I am not concerned. The ship is much wiser than we are…”

“Umm,” said Henry. “I just wish they’d had time to test this stuff.”

“You can’t have everything,” murmured Geena. “Henry, this is going to be eyeballs-out.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

Here we go. Countdown to autosequence. We’ve got — ah — ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five —

Geena flipped a switch. “Arm.”

Three, two, one, sequence.

“Got it,” Geena said. “Right in the groove. Green on the attitude. She’s holding like we’re locked in cement.”

“Copy that.”

Here we go. Coming up to the five count.

“Roger.”

Coming up — now — five, four, three, two —

Henry gripped the frame of his chair, and braced his back.

— one —

“Oh, shit.”

Zero.

He heard a low, deep rumble. Henry felt himself fall forward into his straps, as if he was falling into the nose of the cabin. The push was sharp, initially, then settled down to a steady thrust, a little more than Earth-normal gravity. “Eyeballs-out, hell,” he said.

“Didn’t have time to design it out,” Geena shouted back. “Sorry.”

Henry turned and looked out his window.

He was flying over the Pacific night. He could see the light of the engine, a pale orange spot, reflected in the wrinkled Moonlit hide of ocean. Anybody down there, looking up, would be able to see the burn, see the first Moonship in a generation veering off into space.

But already Earth was sliding past his window. He could feel the craft sliding sideways, pushing out of Earth orbit, heading for the Moon.

You’re looking good here. Right down the old centre line.

“Thirty thousand feet per second,” Geena said. “Thirty-three. Thirty-four. Thirty-five…”

After a couple of minutes the thrust shut down, without warning. Henry watched the others, but they didn’t seem concerned. There was a series of metallic bangs.

“Second stage,” Arkady said evenly. “Three, two, one—”

Another jolt from the ship’s nose, eyeballs-out again, a thrust that lasted for two more minutes. Then that died — and the ship flipped over — and a final meaty push in the small of his back.

The computer shut down the engine. The push died in an instant, and Henry felt himself pitch up out of his couch.

So it was done, so quickly. He was moving at more than twenty-four thousand miles an hour, fast enough to coast all the way to the lip of Earth’s gravity well, and then downhill to a rocky Moon. But inside the little descent module, with its homely clatter of vents and fans and generators, there was no sense of speed.

Arkady cut loose from the booster stack. Working the Soyuz’s attitude thrusters with two handheld joysticks, he turned the spacecraft so the windows were pointing back towards the Earth.

The discarded booster stack looked immense, glowing in the unfiltered sunlight. Henry saw it was made up of three fat, squat cylinders, bound together in some kind of rough framework. Geena told him what he was seeing: the upper stages of three American-built boosters called IUSs, which had been docked to the Soyuz’s nose. The final push had come from a Russian engine called a Block-D, strapped to the back of the craft. The Block-D, incidentally, would deliver them to the Moon. The booster stack was dumping exhaust, spewing sheets of sparkling ice particles into space, sheets which spiralled out as the stage turned. It was like some immense lawn sprinkler, Henry thought.

And beyond it, Henry could see the whole Earth, already small enough to fit into the frame of the little window. For the first time he could see the object of his life’s study, not as fragments of landscape, but as a planet, complete and entire, folded over on itself.

From out here, Earth’s dominant colour was blue, the deep, mature blue of the oceans, with clouds laced over them dazzling ice white. Where the land showed, he could make out the bright oranges and browns of the desert, but the softer greens of the temperate zones were washed out to a bluish grey. A world of ocean and desert.

But it was streaked with black. Even from here, the damage done by the Moonseed was visible.

And beyond its edge, only utter darkness.