“Hmm. Well, Mrs. Stetson, whatever shall we do to keep ourselves occupied while the kids are away?”
Inching her way still closer to the husband she was about to lose for a month, the man who was about to be separated from her by a quarter of a million miles, she replied, “We’ll think of something.”
“Mission control, this is Stetson.” He leaned in and kissed his wife softly but quickly. “We are go for launch.”
Chapter 16
The three-day trip to the Moon passed quickly. Gesling observed that simply looking out the windows as the Earth diminished in size and the Moon grew ever larger was enough to keep most of the passengers mesmerized for hours at a time. Mealtime continued to be a mixture of eating and playing, though the personal aerial acrobatics had lost some of its luster after the initial thrill of their weightless experience had worn off.
Gesling also noted that, true to form, Mbanta did hit on both Bridget Wells and Maquita Singer. Wells was obviously offended and now did everything in her power to keep away from the Sudanese millionaire. Singer, who also refused Mr. Mbanta’s advances, acted like nothing at all had happened. She chatted with him no differently than she did any other passenger. Mbanta also acted as if nothing had happened and even seemed somewhat puzzled by Wells’s avoiding him. Gesling chalked that one up to the two being from radically different cultures. Mbanta was born to wealth and privilege and considered casual sex to be nothing more significant than a dinner date. Wells, on the other hand, had much more conservative moral views and wouldn’t dream of having a casual relationship with anyone, let alone someone she hardly knew, and especially since she was married.
They were only about an hour away from passing within one hundred miles of the lunar surface as they began the looped trajectory that would take them behind the Moon to their closest view of ten miles up and then back around and toward the Earth. Gesling left the pilot’s seat, pushing off from it like a swimmer in a competition, and floated back to be among the passengers.
“You’d better get your cameras ready. We’re going to be passing close to the surface, and you are going to be able to get some awesome pictures. Bridget, keep the telescope running continuously.”
“Roger that, Paul,” Wells responded. “I’m not going to waste my precious few minutes looking at the Moon through a viewfinder. The telescope is on auto as planned. I’m going to be looking out the window.”
“I’ll get copies of pictures from Dreamscape’s sensors,” Dr. Graves added.
To Gesling’s surprise, the other passengers also decided to forgo taking pictures. They appeared to prefer savoring the moment.
“Sounds good to me. I’ll be up front.” Gesling pushed off and floated his way back to the command chair. Unfortunately, his sightseeing opportunities would be limited. He had to monitor the close-approach trajectory and make sure that they were where they were supposed to be. There wasn’t much he could do if the ship was off course, but he might be able to do enough to avert catastrophe if he was paying attention and something did go wrong.
Gesling settled into his chair and affixed his earpiece in place. It was time for him to check in with the ground crew. After activating the voice link, he began speaking, “Rob? Are you on console? This is Paul.”
The 1.3-second delay in hearing a response from home was short, but nonetheless maddening. Radio travels at the speed of light, and at the Earth-Moon distance it took 1.3 seconds for Gesling’s voice to reach the ground and another 1.3 seconds for the return signal to get back to the Moon and Gesling’s earpiece. It was enough of a delay for Gesling to consider it truly annoying.
“Got ya, Paul. Thanks for checking in. You’re right on time.” The response came from Rob Anderson, Gesling’s longtime friend and colleague, who would be working console for fully one-third of the Dreamscape’s mission to the Moon.
“Control, you should see it. The Moon is an incredible place. We’re coming up on our closest approach, and then we’ll be in radio blackout. Anything in the telemetry that I should know about before then?” Gesling was starting to feel like a tourist, and he wasn’t afraid to voice his own excitement at being this close to the Moon.
“Paul, the telemetry is clear. You should be fine for the time you’ll be behind the Moon. We do have a request. Keep the radio on while you’re out of line-of-sight. We got a request from some scientists in New York to look at how sharply the carrier signal cuts off as you pass behind the Moon—something about a theory that the Moon has a low-pressure atmosphere and that how the signal drops out will either confirm or disprove their theory. You know Gary. He’s always eager to help out—especially if he gets some kind of credit for doing so.”
“I’m sure there were dollar signs in his eyes,” Gesling responded. “Sure thing. I’ll turn up the squelch in my headset so I don’t get blasted by the static.”
“Enjoy the show,” Anderson said.
“Right,” Gesling said. “I intend to. Dreamscape out.”
With that, Gesling settled back in his chair and took in the magnificent vista that was before him. He could clearly see the mountains and plains, as well as the craters and maria that made up the desolate lunar landscape.
“Nice view,” he said to himself. “And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you on the good Earth.” Paul muttered to himself the words of Frank Borman. He laughed. Hell, it was August.
Twenty minutes later, Gesling again rose from the command chair and pushed off to “swim” with the passengers. All five were looking out the windows, watching the surface of the Moon pass beneath them in stunned silence. Gesling didn’t want to interrupt their ogling, but he did need to apprise them of their pending passage behind the Moon and the fact that they would soon be out of radio contact with the Earth.
“Ahem.” Gesling cleared his throat to get their attention. “If I may interrupt you for just a moment, I need to tell you something.”
Surprisingly, all five of the tourist astronauts looked away from the windows to hear what he had to say.
“We’re about to fly behind the Moon. Since radio can’t go through the Moon, we’ll temporarily lose contact with ground control. So, if you need to send a message home or are expecting any messages, you’ll have to wait until we regain radio contact.”
They had been briefed about this before, of course, and, after hearing what he had to say, they one by one looked back out of the windows. Seeing this, Gesling decided it was time for him to do the same.
Moments later, the quietness, for Gesling at least, was interrupted by the sound of static from his earpiece.
“Shit!” said Gesling, realizing that he’d forgotten to turn up the squelch to mute the static resulting from the interrupted communications signal as the Dreamscape went behind the Moon. As his finger went to make the adjustment, he heard something in the static.
“Mumble mumble STATIC mumble STATIC Emergency! Please help! Mumble mumble mumble” came to his ear as he sat in stunned disbelief. Were they getting some weird bounce of radio signals off of Jupiter or something? Impossible. That would require a receiver antenna the size of the one in Arecibo, Puerto Rico.
Paul quickly looked around to see if one of passengers was calling him or playing some sort of obvious practical joke. They were all still intently looking at the Moon and totally unaware of what he’d just heard in his earpiece.
“Mumble STATIC SOS! This is the crew of the Chinese exploration ship Harmony calling for help! We’ve crashed and are mumble mumble STATIC STATIC mumble mumble mumble…” Gesling quickly came out of his surprised shock and sent the audio he was receiving to the main speakers so all aboard Dreamscape could hear and hopefully catch some of the words he was missing. He also made sure the data recorders were still functioning so there would be a record of what was happening.