6 March 1986
Moonbase Outpost
Expedition 8
Day 4
“And so, the alien comes back down a day later and they show him the peace plan, and they’re all proud of it. And the alien, big ol’ fella. He takes one look at this thing and he just bursts out laughing at the guys. And he’s like, ‘No, no, you misunderstood me. A small talent for war. We wanted you to be good warriors. We breed races to fight other aliens.’”
“Oh, man.”
“Yeah, and so they go back to their ships and blow us all to hell and start again.”
“That’s wild.”
“Yeah, I think they were trying to do it like ‘To Serve Man’ from the original series. Didn’t quite land, but I like that they tried.”
“Well, no one does it like Rod Serling.”
“You got that right.”
“Are you two always like this when you’re in spacesuits?” she asked.
“Not much else to do while you’re waiting for the door,” John said.
The red light at the back of the room changed to green and Bob turned the valves that opened the door.
“Moonbase, Houston. Looks like the lock is cycled. You’re go for egress,” came the friendly voice from Earth.
“Hey, are we on VOX?” John asked.
“No, we’re not on VOX,” Bob replied.
John turned a knob on his chest pack. His tone went from conversational to aviation formal, “Houston, Team Bravo, we’re egressing now.”
Bob Wilson and John Valentine had one priority on this spacewalk, the care and safety of NASA’s most precious cargo to date.
From the back of the airlock, Barbara Morgan watched the hatch swing open as she prepared for the biggest lesson of her life.
When the Teacher In Space program had been announced a few years ago, the astronaut corps generally welcomed the concept. The future would require so-called average people to be able to make the journey to orbit and back. Space travel could not forever remain available only to the titans of the aviation, engineering, and scientific fields.
The goal of NASA in the 1980s was expansion and that meant expansion on all fronts, including personnel. On the old Apollos, they’d managed to bring a few genuine scientists along for the ride. Today, it was a teacher from Montana at the lunar south pole. Give it a few more years and a few more rockets and one day they would have an artist on Mars, or a novelist orbiting Io.
“Just keep out the damned lawyers,” had been the quote Bob Wilson had given to the press.
Jeremy and Judy were already out on the ridge. The telescope that was set up was more for show than anything else, but it was a nice little stage prop and lightweight enough that it was worth the trouble.
As Bob climbed into the driver’s side hatch of the open air rover, John went to the passenger side and helped Barbara into the seat. They all knew that she was more than capable of handling herself in a spacesuit, but NASA was not going to take any chances on her safety and Houston was monitoring their movements on the rover’s interior cameras.
“Okay, Houston, we’ve got Barbara strapped in. How’s our clock?” Bob said. He put the rover in gear and began to drive away, kicking up a small fountain of moon dust in their wake.
“Bravo Team, Houston, you’ve got thirty-five minutes to air time. We’ve got several million fourth-graders that will be watching, so let’s not keep them waiting. You don’t want to ruin recess.”
“Roger that,” Bob said, smirking under his visor.
“If only it was just fourth-graders,” Barbara muttered.
She would be live in schools across the country, on every grade level. The lesson plan was fairly juvenile, but every school with a TV and a power outlet wanted to be a part of this.
“Judy, everything okay at the ridge?” Bob asked.
“Still setting up, but so far so good,” was the reply.
“Jeremy, did you remember the ignition keys for the camera?” Bob asked.
“Shut up,” Jeremy said.
“Ignition keys?” Barbara asked.
“Rover training. Two years ago. Jeremy was what, six months into the program. We’re out in California driving the rover prototype. We come back from lunch and it’s Jeremy’s turn behind the wheel. Before he gets in, Bob asks him if he has the ignition key. That he was supposed to grab it before we went to lunch. Jeremy just flips out, starts looking for it frantically. One of the techs came over and told him, ‘that’s not how it works.’ We all just burst out laughing,” John said.
“Not funny, you guys,” said Jeremy over the radio.
“Oh it was damned funny,” Bob replied.
“Looked for those keys for twenty minutes!” Jeremy said.
“Hey, my first week in survival training back in ’78, they stuck a damn lizard in my sleeping bag,” Bob said.
“Did you flip out too?” Jeremy asked.
“Nah, we cuddled. Cute little guy. I still see him sometimes on the weekends, when my wife is out of town. I don’t wanna get into it over the radio,” Bob said.
Judy’s laugh came over the comms, “Houston, I’m gonna set up the camera.”
“Roger that, Judy. We’re ready to receive.”
Ahead, Bob and John were driving up to the crest of the ridge where Judy and Jeremy were setting up. Their white suits popped against the dim grey of the lunar surface. They could see Jeremy turning the telescope towards the sky. Judy was hunched over a crate a few yards away. The ground was littered with their footprints. Bob brought the rover came to a stop.
“We’re seeing a picture here,” came the word from Houston.
“Hang on, let me get it down on the tripod here.”
Jeremy turned and brought the camera around.
“Alpha, um, we’ve got a problem here. We just lost picture, over,” said Houston.
Jeremy turned and semi-consciously looked up at the Earth over the horizon, “Uh, Houston, this is Alpha, say again please.”
“Alpha, we’ve had a problem. We’ve lost your image from the camera.”
“Well, uh, we had it a second ago, right?” What did you see?”
“Yeah, Jeremy, we had a shot of the surface and we could see you pan around, then it went full bright and now we’re at full black. Can you confirm the alignment?”
“Yeah, you should be seeing Judy and the scope and the ridge. You’re not getting anything?”
“That’s a negative, Alpha Team.”
“The flash,” Judy said. Her tone suddenly stricken.
“What?” Jeremy asked.
“It must have pointed at the sun. That was the full bright. It fried the camera,” Judy said.
“Oh, hell. She’s right,” John said as the rover door opened.
“Okay, well, let’s not panic. Where’s the backup?” Bob said.
“On the workbench back in the geo lab,” Jeremy said.
“What the hell is it doing there?” Bob asked.
“Getting ready to be put into the mounting on Rover 2 once we’re done here,” Judy said.
“Well, we’re not done here yet,” Bob said.
“We gotta go back and get it,” Judy said.
“Well, this is gonna be fun. How long ‘til airtime, Houston?”
“Twenty six minutes, Bravo Team,” Houston said.
“Oh crap,” John said.
“Barbara, hop out, this is your stop. Jeremy, Judy, keep an eye on her 'til we get back.”
“You’re going for the camera?” Jeremy asked.
“What else can we do?” John said.
“You’re gonna cut it tight,” Jeremy said.
“You got another option, I’m all ears.”
“Go, go, go,” Judy said.
“We’re gone,” Bob said. The rover kicked up a lovely parabola of dust that curled in a fantastic half-circle as it went through a full turn, heading back down the ridge to the base below.
“Bravo Team, be advised. You’re not authorized to break safety parameters.”
“It’s eight minutes to get there, eight back and that airlock isn’t speedy, Houston,” Bob said.
“Bravo Team…”
“The show must go on, Houston,” Bob said. He gunned the throttle and the rover gave a bit of a bounce.
“Watch out, Bob,” John said.
“Oh please, this thing is barely doing twelve. Take this gear off me and I could keep pace with a good pair of PF Flyers. I’m gonna pop the governor on this puppydog.”
“Bob…” John said.
“Relax. We’re already on the Moon.”
Five minutes later, Bob hit the brakes and skidded to a stop thirty feet from the airlock.
“Go, John,” Bob said. He gave a pat and gently pushed his pilot out of the rover door.
John bounced off the surface like a surprised frog and bunny hopped to the airlock entrance.
As the airlock cycled, John called to Jeremy on the radio, “You said the workbench in the geo lab?”
“Yeah. The backup. Make sure the damn lens cap is on.”
“Will do.”
When the pressure equalized, John Valentine lumbered through the logistics module and the sleeping quarters. He tried not to touch anything. The parts of his suit that were dusty would already be causing a problem. One reason why he didn’t bother taking off the helmet. At this point, the base’s air would already be slightly compromised with lunar dust. Fortunately, by the time they all got back, the filters would have had time to clear it out.
He saw the small, compact television camera sitting, just as Jeremy had said, right on top of the geo lab workbench. John grabbed the device with both hands, spun on his booted heel and made his way back to the airlock. With thick-gloved fingers, he activated the controls to evacuate the chamber. A few minutes later, he turned the valve once again and the door opened to the lunar surface.
Bounding out of the airlock with the camera slung under an arm, John Valentine lumbered over and climbed back into the rover.
“You forgot to shut the outer door,” Bob said, offering a hand to help him inside.
“Oh no. Let’s hope we don’t get robbed. Hit it,” John said.
“Hitting it,” Bob said and sped away.
At a breakneck speed of 11mph, the rover ran over the tracks it had just made, arriving as fast as possible back at the ridgeline.
“A minute thirty to air,” Houston said.
“I’ve got it. I’ve got it,” John said. He climbed down from the rover and made for the empty tripod.
“We haven’t had a chance to do a color test on this yet,” Jeremy said.
“Perfect, let’s do one,” Bob said.
John and Jeremy mounted the unit and carefully aimed the camera forward. When the alignment was perfect, Jeremy pulled the lens cap away.
Over the radio, Houston gave the final call.
“We’re live in three, two…”
John pointed at Barbara, and she spoke to millions of children, a quarter-million miles away.
18 March 1986
Vehicle Assembly Building
Kennedy Space Center
28° 35′ 10.61″ N 80° 39′ 4.61″ W
He had stepped outside to try and catch a glimpse of the comet, but the light just wasn’t right. They said this particular trip wouldn’t be great for viewing. Something about the position of the comet relative to the Sun and the Earth. It was disappointing. He knew he wouldn’t live another eighty-six years to see it again.
His daughter might. She was only seven, and still bursting with energy every time she got a chance to talk about space and comets and the television lesson from Miss Barbara on the Moon. It had been the highlight of her 2nd-grade year.
Now, with Spring Break in full swing, Lucille had taken little Stacy to Disney World. While they rode the teacups, he had been here at Kennedy, trying to turn a military spacecraft into a civilian one.
He began to long for the strained annoyance of “It’s a Small World After All.”
The sun was setting and he walked back in. Lucille had been warned that this was their vacation, not his and he didn’t expect her to call and make a fuss. She’d been married to Hank Patterson, Hadden Aerospace Engineer since 1975. She knew what the life was and she’d always been fine managing a house and a daughter in his absence.
Not that it eased his guilt.
Star Wars was dead. It had been useless to argue otherwise. Surely a few Redwoods had fallen in the printing of white papers that showed that Dan Rather’s scenario was ludicrous, lucky, or impossible to duplicate, but it wouldn’t matter, it was dead. And the way he knew it was dead was because they said so on the nightly news. No amount of shouting, in ink or microphones would make a difference.
Now, there were some decisions to be made.
Quietly, he’d made inquiries about some of the other parts of SDI that were not under his purview. It looked like NASA was going to have some new hardware. Either that or the Museum of the Air Force was going to become a very popular tourist attraction.
Someone else’s problem.
“Mr. Patterson, they’re ready for us again.”
He turned, nodded, and walked back inside. This was going to be a long, hot Florida summer and he wasn’t looking forward to working here to convert
Shadow into something else.
Sitting at the conference table again, he reached down to check his briefcase and found a couple of the other folders that he’d had his staff prepare. The concepts were a little comical and he thumbed through them as the meeting reconvened.
There was the X-Wing plan. That called for strapping lasers (which hadn’t yet been designed) on to
Shadow’s wings and use her to destroy Soviet satellites. Ironically, that plan had been shot down. If it had been approved, they were going to tell the public it was a rig to shoot down incoming meteors. It would have been fun to see if anyone believed that.
Another plan involved actually rigging a Clipper chassis to deflect incoming meteors. That involved converting the nose section from its docking ring to a giant clamp, then gutting the fuselage and replacing it with a fuel tank, at which point they’d launch and use the ship as a giant thruster to push an incoming rock off course.
It would have to be a very particular meteor, but hey, the study had been fun for an engineering class from San Diego State.
Then there was the conga-line plan. That was in case the Moonbase suffered some kind of malfunction and NASA wanted to abandon it in favor of a low-cost Earth orbiting station. That plan involved launching all remaining Clippers into low Earth orbit, docking them together nose to tail and letting astronauts use the interior space as an orbiting lab. They’d keep one or two Clippers out of the conga-line for transport. It would be a horribly wasteful plan, only to be used in the face of desperation or sheer stupidity.
His favorite of the Hail Mary plans was for a single seat flight to Mars. That one had been fun for the engineering group. Hadden’s people had developed a scheme for a Mars flyby with one lone astronaut at the helm. The Clipper would be outfitted for a life support system that could sustain a single occupant for fifteen months. With a nuke strapped to their butt and all the freeze-dried ice cream they could eat, the single astronaut would spend more than a year in isolation for a chance to fly over the night-side of Mars in an encounter that would last a few hours.
He didn’t expect that plan to get much traction either.
The general consensus was that they’d go with one of two options. First was to use
Shadow as a bus. Have it fly back and forth from Skydock in LEO to lunar orbit and back again. This would allow NASA to attach the Zeus engine in a more rigid fashion and would avoid the Zeus having to fly alone or have it dock with every Clipper that came up from the surface. The upsides were pretty simple, not the least of which was the ability to pack more than a typical number of astronauts aboard. The modifications would mean more cargo and more personnel. The retrofitting could be completed quickly and wouldn’t take a lot of new parts. From what he’d heard today, it felt like the room was behind the plan.
At the bottom of the pile, he found the folder for the New Olympus option. He leafed through it.
New Olympus was a plan to convert
Shadow into a lunar-orbiting space station. The Olympus station had done a lot in terms of support for the old Apollo flights, but it was locked into an almost equatorial orbit, making it useless in providing any aid for a base at the South Pole.
Shadow could be outfitted with some new systems and injected into a frozen orbit that would give excellent coverage to Moonbase and to expeditions that would soon be heading into the craters around the pole. The ship would serve as an orbiting base for the Eagle lunar shuttles that ferried crews down to the surface. Much as Skydock served as an outlet for Zeus motors and incoming Clippers, New Olympus could serve Clippers and Eagles. A long-term space station would be more of a retrofit. It involved putting on more docking ports and possibly one of the Canadarms that had become so useful for Earth-orbiting flights, but it could be worth the trouble.
Officially, Hadden had asked him to back the bus plan, but in his heart of hearts, he’d rather see his girl become a space station than a Greyhound.
The gathered officials were gathering to lay out the agenda for tomorrow’s meeting. He was mostly here to provide information and serve as Hadden’s voice and ears.
In the morning, someone would undoubtedly ask him what they should do with
Shadow. He looked forward to sleeping on it.
) constitutionally unable to not point out the flaws in the video 
