Five more evolutions and the Earth still throws its unforgiving silver gaze down upon the Moon, as the Moon itself had once looked down upon the Earth. They’ve tried further back in time, as Kendall proposed, selecting decision nodes they remembered from the newspapers of their youth.
To no avail.
Peterson stalks the corridor which stretches the length of Falcon Base—as much as he can stalk in Velcro slippers and one-sixth gravity. Frustration sweeps through him, and he swings out an arm at the nearest locker, relishing the impact of his fist on the metal. In the gym, he pushes himself until his arms and legs burn, until even the weak lunar gravity seems to drag heavily on his aching muscles.
Needing the wide-open monochrome vistas of the surface, he goes EVA. He walks along the edge of the Apennine Front—it’s more of a jog, bouncing from side to side, sliding one foot forward and then the other—and doesn’t stop until he is past the last of the tyre tracks made by Apollo 15’s LRV. Falcon Base, the garden of descent stages on the Sea of Rains, both are lost to view, hidden behind a soft feminine shoulder of the mountains. He is in a desert, leached of life and colour, and not even the star-speckled blackness above can offer anything but emptiness within and without.
He turns back while he has enough air in the PLSS to return.
Scott makes no comment, just vacuums the grey dust from the spacesuit in tight-lipped silence.
On his next watch, Peterson sits at his desk and gazes at McKay at the radio. Neither has spoken. They came on duty, relieving Alden and Fulton, and silently took their places; and they have said nothing since. It occurs to Peterson that he is as isolated within Falcon Base as he is out on Mare Imbrium. But it is not the solitude of EVA which draws him, it is the sense of safety he feels when wrapped in his spacesuit’s nurturing cocoon. No matter which way he looks—to the west, across the Palus Putredinus; or north towards the LMs on the Sea of Rains—whichever direction, his view is framed by the LEVA of his helmet. He cannot fully engage with the lunar landscape because he is forever shielded from it. His fingers will never feel in situ the fine cordite dust of the regolith; his face will never experience the pure beat of the sun’s rays. Though he lives here, Peterson will never be of the Moon.
His reverie is cut short by a rhythmic rip-rip-rip from the chamber below. Peterson has grown to hate that noise. It is as irritating as McKay endlessly clicking the end of his pen. But unlike McKay’s pen, he cannot demand it cease.
Kendall’s head appears in the hatch from below. He halts once his shoulders are above floor-level, scowls at Peterson, and then pulls the rest of his body into the command centre. He crosses to Peterson, walking like a man much stouter.
I think I can do it, he says, still with that scowl on his face.
Peterson remembers no promises from their last conversation. He recalls only bluster and excuses. When Kendall first arrived at Falcon Base, Peterson mistook his arrogance for assurance, but after two years of the man he knows now that the scientist operates the Bell as much on guesswork as he does using the scientific method.
I can get us further, says Kendall, it’s going to take more watts so we’ll need to power down some of the base.
It’s almost Pavlovian the way Peterson responds to Kendalclass="underline" his beard, his air of petulant intellectualism, his unfitness for the space programme, his very presence here. Every time the man opens his mouth, Peterson finds himself fighting a rising tide of anger. It is happening now.
Like what? demands Peterson. You think there’s systems here we don’t need and you can just switch off? The air you breathe, the water you drink, the food you eat, the light you see by, the heat that stops you freezing to death—we need power for all of it. If we power down the monitoring equipment, maybe turn off a few lights, we’re going to save maybe a handful of watts, but that thing of yours out in the rille drinks goddamned kilowatts.
I need more power, Kendall insists mulishly.
Then you magic up some goddamned power, Peterson replies, and you use that.
Although his watch is not over, Peterson pushes past the scientist and crosses to the hatch in the command centre’s floor. He steps onto the first rung of the ladder, grabs the coaming, and swings himself down into the suiting up area below. As he walks along the corridor towards his room, the noise of his slippers rip-rip-rip-ripping from the carpet fuels his rage. He stops as vertigo swoops through him and sets the corridor rolling. Putting a hand to the wall, and reassured by the touch of plastic against his palm, he sucks in a deep breath. Air fills his lungs and his panic begins to ebb. He feels thick-headed, his anger gone as swiftly as it came—but what remains is smothered, wrapped about by a blanket. He reaches up and drags a hand back along the side of his head, and the pressure of his palm against his skull, the friction of the heel of his hand, brings him back into himself.
After he has slowed his breathing, Peterson continues on his way to his bunk. Passing the wardroom, he hears an abrupt clatter. He stops. The next scheduled meal-time is not for hours. They all decided long before to eat their rations in front of each other. Mutual suspicion is their best defence against temptation.
Peterson slides open the door and steps into the room.
There are two tables in the wardroom—one to the left and one to the right. Each table sits three to a side on benches. Behind each table are store cupboards and a microwave. Sitting to Peterson’s left, his back to the door, is First Lieutenant Ed Neubeck, USAF. He is bent over a metal bowl, a spoon halfway to his mouth. His shoulders are hunched; he does not move.
Peterson stares at the back of Neubeck’s head, at his unkempt hair. The rage returns. It is not Neubeck’s stealing of food that angers him, it is that the man has let himself go. He is unshaven, and his hair has grown to his collar and is unwashed and uncombed.
The hand holding the spoon begins to shake.
What the hell is this? demands Peterson.
Neubeck puts down his spoon. It strikes his bowl with a brittle clang. He says nothing.
Stepping further into the wardroom, Peterson puts a hand to Neubeck’s shoulder and hauls back. The man turns boneless beneath his grip, seems to both fold and straighten.
If you steal food then you don’t get to goddamn eat at meal-times, Peterson says.
His hand is still on Neubeck’s shoulder, and he pulls it away as if he has inadvertently grabbed something unclean or dead. He feels an urgent need to wipe his palm but resists.
I was hungry, Neubeck mumbles.
Until this moment, Neubeck has seemed to orbit Peterson’s world rather than dwell within it. Their paths cross only at meal-times—and even then, the nine of them might as well be in separate rooms. They do not talk to each other; they do not meet each other’s gaze. Outside the wardroom, they are on different watches—and they do not rotate because they are comfortable with their watch partners.
This is the first time he has taken a good look at Neubeck in weeks. Perhaps longer. He remembers the resentment he’d harboured when Neubeck was first assigned to Falcon Base. The man is a gifted pilot but lacks discipline. It says so in his record. He should never have been invited to join the astronaut corps. He is lazy, he makes mistakes; and he relies on his aw-shucks country-boy charm to evade their consequences.
I see you in here again for the next two days, says Peterson, and you get nothing for a week.
Hey, I gotta eat, protests Neubeck. You cain’t give me no food for two whole days.
Peterson feels himself enveloped, the enclosing air-bladder of an A7LB about him, his view constricted by helmet and LEVA. The whisper of fans fills his ears. He is here but in a world of his own. He cannot be touched and nothing can touch him. He reaches out and puts a hand to the back of Neubeck’s head. It is not his palm and fingers which touches the man’s greasy hair, but a glove’s. He forces Neubeck’s head forward and down with a sudden savage thrust. The man’s face hits the bowl before him. Neubeck yells, the bowl tips and in slow motion spills its contents to one side on the table-top.