Chapter One Thousand Seven Hundred Thirty-Nine
9th August 1966
Piombino, Italy
Kat had talked briefly with Maria about the broadcast of Zella on International News, the story in Krakow briefly eclipsing Lunar exploration. Maria was understandably worried about Zella, who had given her a real scare this time. Apparently, Emil and Maria had been notified of Zella’s death only to learn that it was a case of mistaken identity. As it was his nature to do the right thing as opposed to what was safe or expedient. Emil had returned the body of the girl who had died to her family as opposed to getting on the first available transport out of Poland, which would have been the sensible thing. According to Maria, he’d had a hair-raising experience dealing with armed men who were not happy about what had happened but had thanked him for what he had done anyway. Maria was also worried about how the expectations on Zella were going to markedly increase after this. As in, Zella had broken a big story and Maria figured that her employers at ARD were going to expect her to continue doing that in the future. If all that wasn’t enough, there was an event in Verdun next week that Maria and Emil were supposed to be preparing to leave for and they had not done anything yet because of this whole mess.
Kat was just thankful that someone else was leading a complicated life for a change. When the Summer Holiday came around this year, all she had wanted to do was get out of Berlin and she didn’t care about where. Fortunately, Cosimo de’ Medici had offered to let her family use the house had he had in the ancient port city of Piombino. Though that included members of Cosimo’s family residing on the ground floor and listening devices in every room, which had been exactly what Kat had been expecting.
Every day they took trips to the beach or went somewhere of cultural importance. Except for the trip into Florence which had turned out to be a mistake due to the incredibly hot weather the rest of it had gone well. Even Tatiana was enjoying herself despite her determination not to. The only dispute so far had come from Malcolm and Marie. Only Kat’s children could squabble over something like one being dyslexic while the other was something of a bibliophile.
In transit, nearing Lunar orbit
It was said that von Braun had wanted the Lunar Lander and Command Module to be one unit, but weight and fuel considerations had ended that plan. It was also rumored that their rivals in NASA had reached the same conclusions at about the same time. So, there were had needed to be two units and an entire field of technology had needed to be developed as to how to launch the two craft and link them up once they were in space.
When the actual landing happened next year, the capsule was to link up with the Lunar Lander Module. Because this was a dress rehearsal of sorts, they had included a similar module that lacked the ability to land but was filled with cameras, radar, and other surveying equipment. The Lunar Reconnaissance Module. Doctor Kita Ayano was the Mission Specialist and she had been given the task of operating it with the assistance of the rest of the crew. That included the painstaking task of turning it on. The gyroscopically stabilized Nikon/Zeiss cameras were particularly finicky and beaming the pictures back to Earth via relay satellites had not been done to the extent that they would be attempting, especially when they went around the dark side of the Moon. Captain Brown said that they were going to see things personally that no one ever had before, it was something that they all should be excited about.
“If it isn’t the media darling” Ayano said as Ben pulled himself into the Recon Module. The Press had glommed onto the fact that he was the youngest member of the crew, an Ace Pilot over Korea and was romantically linked with Kiki. Black Knight goes to the Dark Side of the Moon one headline had read. The result was that Ben was receiving dozens of interview requests.
“They will forget about me soon enough” Ben said as he peered out one of the small windows. It was odd that they couldn’t see their destination though Mission Control said that they were on course and schedule. The Earth though, that was a different story, Ben had found that he could look at that for hours. From this distance it looked like a blue marble. “What I hope is that this will cause my University back home to take my application to get into the Doctoral Program for Astronomy seriously.”
That caused Ayano to start laughing. He had grown used to the cynical Mission Specialist over the previous days, but this was the first time that he had heard her laugh.
“Hirsch” Ayano said in a somewhat exasperated tone, “You get back home alive after this and you can name your price, not just to your University but the entire German Empire as well.”
That was something that Ben had not thought of.
“Is that what you are intending to do?” Ben asked.
“I intend to cash this experience in for everything it is worth” Ayano replied, “And if you think that those other three aren’t planning on doing the same thing you are kidding yourself.”
She gestured towards the tunnel that led to the Command Module.