Salvador Mercer - Lunar Discovery

“I don’t think; I just want full access to whatever’s up there if I’m responsible for the lives of two of our own. Besides, you said it yourself, you have a hundred experts looking at it right now. What harm is there in a couple of my folks reviewing it?”

“Over a hundred,” Mrs. Brown interjected.

Smith took the time to look at each team member in turn, pausing long and hard to look at Tom.

“What? It won’t be me. I want nothing to do with no signals from little green men.” Tom shrugged his shoulders and held his hands palms up out to his side.

Smith paid him no more attention and turned to Rock. “Fine, I’ll release the complete data stream on one of our secure laptops that you can check out from Mrs. Brown. When not working on it, the computer must be returned to us for safekeeping. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” Rock said, nodding his head and watching as the two security handlers left the room.

“You know they’re just in the hallway, not like they’d leave us alone for any great length of time,” Jack said.

Marge looked at Rock, her face conveying surprise and a hint of a smile. “I can’t believe they agreed to your request so easily. It took Jack and me nearly a week to even get them to give us a small sample.”

“That’s because they’re afraid Rock will call his girlfriend if they object and she’d just give him what he wants,” Tom said, his tone serious.

“You mean the president?” Lisa asked.

“Oh yeah, she has a crush on ole Rock here. Seen it from day one.” Tom smiled now.

“I should have known,” Lisa replied. “Sally would smack you good for saying that.”

Tom held his hands up again, conveying the idea of surrender. Rock looked around at his team and then thought for a second before speaking. “Find out what our astronauts are going to face up there, Marge. I don’t want to get caught again with my pants down.”

The group nodded, and everyone started to get up and leave. Rock could just hear Tom’s comment to Lisa as they left. “Now that’s something I didn’t want to visualize.” Rock suppressed a smile as he heard stifled laughter coming from his team.

People’s Republic Space Command

Beijing, China

In the near future, Day 46

Hun didn’t know if he would see Chang again. After two days with no results, Hun woke on the third day to the news that his chief engineer had been relieved of duty. Lin and Chon were both unusually somber and not very talkative. A military engineer had been assigned to work with Chang’s replacement, a very old engineer by the name of Wu.

Wu spent most of his time pouring over the schematic of the lander Chang and his team had built. Hun checked in with the old man every two hours, and each time he had the same thing to report—still working on the problem.

The only good news was that there was no sign of General Wang. It didn’t take long before rumor had it that the general had been called to the State Council to report. By early afternoon, the radar track of the Russian space station was being broadcast on one of the smaller monitors while the main monitor continued to display a somewhat clear, if not boring, image of astronaut Hen Sing as he meditated. On more than one occasion, the health and wellness technician broadcast a signal to Sing just to get a response even though his vital signs could be seen on one of the smaller accessory data terminals.

“Why does he do that?” Lin asked, looking at the smaller bank of screens across Hun’s console. Hun had asked for Lin and Chon to pull up chairs at his workstation to discuss their latest update.

“Forget Sing and his sleeping, I’m surprised the military is allowing us to watch the Russian track,” Chon said, looking at the main array of screens at the front of the room in mission control. “It’s interesting that they are taking a retrograde orbit. Any idea why?”

Hun shook his head and looked at the monitor showing the Russian craft as it was approaching, prepared to enter lunar orbit in about twelve hours, circling in a retrograde path across the equatorial band of the moon from east to west instead of the standard west to east configuration that most spacecraft took when orbiting an object.

“It will make it more difficult to land with that orbit,” Lin said, also watching the radar track update every few seconds.

“The Russians won’t mind. They sent up enough fuel to descend to the surface and return more than one time, even in a more costly retrograde orbit.” Hun sighed, remembering the latest news casts that were filtered into his country. It was technically illegal to be listening to Russian broadcasts and Hun didn’t speak the language, but the English version from Vladivostok was clear enough, even if it wasn’t meant for Chinese ears.

“You listened, too?” Chon whispered at Hun.

“Who doesn’t, especially now?” Hun responded.

“That doesn’t explain their choice of orbits,” Lin said. “Why do something that is more difficult if it isn’t necessary?”

Hun thought for a moment and again rubbed the stubble on his head. He immediately noticed the slight grins coming from his rapidly reducing mission crew. “What?”

“You should have kept some hair up there,” Chon said. Lin wouldn’t dare tell her boss something that direct, but Chon and Hun went way back.

“Yes, I often wonder if I rubbed all my hair away or if I cut it. It’s been so long, I can’t remember. No matter,” Hun said, shifting subjects, “if the Russians are taking the hard way, you can be sure they have a pretty good reason. In the meantime, Lin, get a projected track on their craft and plot just how close it will be to our orbiter. I’d hate to have something happen up there now.”

Lin immediately returned to her console, and Chon adjusted his seat for better comfort. It looked like he was going to stay awhile. “You don’t really think they could get that close to our Crimson Glory , do you?”

“No, of course not,” Hun said. Space was vast, and there were only three objects in orbit above the moon at that time, unlike tens of thousands of objects whizzing around the earth. It was relatively sparse, and the likelihood of any near miss was on par with one’s lottery chances. “I do, however, think the Russians may purposely route their orbiter near ours in order to take readings of our systems, or to even observe what we are doing.”

“That would give them a very short window to observe. The rate of closure would be phenomenal between the two,” Chon said.

“They only need a few milliseconds to have their scanners pick up whatever we are transmitting, as well as to take a thermal reading of the Crimson Glory and the moon’s surface near the object. They’ll be able to tell if Sing is on the surface or still in orbit.”

“You think they would do something to our craft?”

Hun raised an eye at his technician. “I don’t know, but I wouldn’t put it past them considering the stakes. Probably they won’t once they realize we are stuck in orbit.”

“They won’t know that for sure, will they?”

“Not for sure. The dark side of the moon is never visible to our earth-based scanners, but every two hours their unmanned orbital reconnaissance probe is taking pictures and reading data feeds from every conceivable source as it passes the alien device. They would know if we had landed as it would take much longer than two hours to get there and return to orbit. No, Chon, I think they will speculate, quite accurately if I may add, that we have not been to the surface, and then they will act accordingly.”

Lin returned then, looking excited. “The Army already plotted the Russian track, sir, but they left something off that I found interesting.”