Salvador Mercer - Lunar Discovery

“If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you were going to shed a tear for those rodents,” Olga said, a note of condescension in her voice.

“It was the humane thing to do, Olya. Don’t start with me today. We have work to do.”

“I tested the internal radio system. You’re cleared to use the open mike on the arm console instead of the handheld,” she said.

“Good, molodyets ,” he said, smiling now. “I’ll need both hands to manipulate the arm on the front side. It’s bad enough to be working blind, but to have to use a hand for push to talk, that would be unacceptable,” Yuri said, relieved that she had wired the frequency into his robotic console.

“Every nail has its hammer,” Olga shot back, using an old Siberian saying from the early twentieth century, floating by Yuri and allowing him access to the robotic console. She would allow him to check it. “ Veri no proveri , trust but verify, was an even older Russian saying. Yuri would triple check the radio and make sure it was working properly, obeying his voice commands, before utilizing it with his comrades working right next to the arm.

The Americans will never see this coming , Yuri thought, quickly dismissing the melancholy from the earlier activities. Time to look forward… literally. Yuri smiled.

People’s Republic Space Command

Outside of Beijing, China

In the near future, Day 20

The connection dropped without warning, and Hun looked at several other monitors in the room. Most were still displaying properly, but a select few were showing only static.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

Lin looked at her readout and then checked the back of the monitor. “No idea, sir, the connection terminated. Maybe at the source. Our systems look fine from here.”

“Chon, you’re our signals tech. Can you look into this?” Hun asked.

Chon nodded and then headed over to the communications room to check the servers and verify that all their local equipment was working properly. The link with their chief engineer, Chang, at the rocket construction site had been lost in midstream. Hun had a very bad feeling about this.

“Want me to ask the general’s office?” Lin asked, looking at the doorway that led to the militarized part of the office complex.

“No, send a priority report coded ‘unusual,’ letting them know we have a disruption, but I want to keep this low key on our end.”

Lin nodded and then walked over to her desk, sitting down and starting the unusual occurrence report that would be sent to the general’s office. Hun would follow protocol, but he wasn’t about to raise any eyebrows with the event and he had been hearing rumors. Not every soldier was so quiet when it came to clandestine operations, and bits and pieces were heard since they worked with each other in close proximity. Let the general figure it out. He had a job to do.

It took less than half an hour before Chon returned, and Lin had sent her report within ten minutes. “All servers appear to be working just fine,” Chon said.

“I’ll add this to the report as an addendum and update,” Lin said, returning to her desk.

“So what now?” Chon asked.

“If we can reestablish communications, then we’ll get confirmation that they’ve finished the lander and we’re ready to launch,” Hun said.

“What about the docking idea and two rockets?” Chon asked.

“I was saving that part for last, after Chong finished his report. The general shot that idea down and has decided to abort any plans for a lunar orbiter or reconnaissance mission. We’re to prepare for a direct manned landing.” Hun looked at Chon.

Lin walked back over, hearing the last line Hun said. “Can we do that?”

“We don’t have a choice,” Hun said, rubbing the stubble on his head. He remembered years ago when he had a full head of hair, but now, just stubble. It was better this way, kept out the grey strands.

“We have no astronauts,” Lin replied, undeterred. “Who will they send?”

“My guess would be military types. Perhaps pilots or ship commanders?” Chon speculated.

Lin punched in some commands on her laptop. The written schematics Chang had transmitted were clearly readable, and the lone command chair indicated the general’s new plan. Chang was taking orders directly from the military and working with Hun’s group on the logistics after the fact. Not a wise way to conduct business , thought Hun, but it kept the military in charge . “Looks like a mission of only one astronaut.”

Chon looked pale. “That sounds more like suicide than a mission.”

“Yes, but there will be no lack of volunteers, and the level of automation that’s in this schematic clearly shows they won’t need someone who is familiar with piloting anything, much less a spaceship,” Lin said.

Hun knew she was right. “Yes, it looks like our Long Reach rocket just doesn’t have the boost necessary to carry much more than a few tons to the moon. This entire schematic looks cramped. Less than three square meters of habitable space. That is claustrophobic for anyone, much less someone flying a quarter million miles to the moon. Did we get the entire file before the connection was lost?”

“Yes, sir,” Lin said, moving her laptop so he could see it better, and Chon looked over her shoulder at the display. “The systems check out. They used my numbers for minimal life support as well as proper systems integration of all critical components. They even placed a couple of systems on double redundancy, but not all of them.”

“Which ones did they leave out?” Chon asked, looking at Lin.

Lin grabbed her notes, leaving the laptop so all could still view the interior schematic of the lunar lander. “Every RF scanner sensor as well as the cooling system and the navigation computer.”

“Is that wise?” Chon asked.

“Of course not,” Hun said, “but they are following our recommendations, don’t you see?”

“No, boss, how so?” Chon asked, a bit more informal with Hun than Lin since they had a much longer history together. Considering the culture, this was significant.

“We’ve submitted a detailed list of all critical systems in order to accomplish the mission. The scanners were at the bottom of the list; we can pick up those RF signals from here. The nav computer was higher up, but it had a caveat. If the module had a piloting facet to it, then the navigation computer was less critical. We can relay telemetry data directly to the craft using our ground-based radar as long as the communications systems were triple redundant.”

“They made those double only,” Lin said, looking at her notes to confirm what she already knew.

“What about the cooling system? That seems more than critical to me,” Chon asked.

“You know, they don’t have more than minimal radiation shielding either,” Lin added.

Hun scratched the stubble on his chin now, the extremely short goatee matching the stubble on his head. “Let me think for a second.” His two team members waited patiently, looking over the schematic and the data on the lander. There were several questions they wanted to ask Chang, but that would have to wait.

“What is this?” Hun asked, pointing to the top of the drawing on Lin’s laptop.

Lin peered closer, squinting. “That looks like a return vehicle.”

“The entire lander is supposed to return, isn’t it?” Chon asked.

“Yes,” Hun said. “This looks like a secondary return vehicle, except much smaller.”

Now it was Chon’s turn to look closer at the schematic. “Can you zoom in on that top array?” he asked Lin.

Lin moved the laptop and scrolled to the percent bar, enlarging the drawing by fifty percent, and then moved the screen to the top half of the lander.