For Hui Tian and the rest of the Harmony’s crew, it seemed like an eternity.
Hui was staring expectantly at the radio when the automated message cut off and another voice inserted itself, in English. “Crew of the Harmony, this is Jeff Caldwell of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. We hear you. Is this Ms. Hui? What is your status?”
“This is Hui Tian of the Harmony. We are so very glad to hear your voice. We are cold and very low on power. We have, at most, thirty-six hours remaining before we are entirely dependent upon our spacesuits. One of our crew is injured. The rest of us are okay.”
After a brief lag Caldwell replied. “Understood. Ms. Hui, we are so glad to hear that. A representative of your government is here with us. Unfortunately, we don’t know exactly where, and we are trying to track him down.”
Caldwell’s voice then faded a bit as he was obviously speaking to someone with him and not into the microphone. “I don’t care if you have to personally search every bathroom in the building. Find him. What about the cafeteria? Okay, just go!”
“Ahem.” Caldwell cleared his throat and collected himself before he spoke into the microphone again. “Ms. Hui, there is a rescue mission on its way to the Moon. They know where you are, and they will be landing very close to your location.”
“A rescue mission?” said Hui. She was confused, knowing full well that China did not have another vehicle anywhere close to launch status. The transmission lag was quickly becoming intolerable.
“Yes. A NASA crew launched about two days ago. They are on the way to bring you home.”
Hui and Dr. Xu were visibly relieved. Help was on the way. They might just survive the wreck after all! Hui looked from Dr. Xu to the wounded pilot and then to Zhi Feng. Zhi’s expression was unreadable. It was clearly not the same one of relief that she was experiencing.
Moments later, a voice speaking Mandarin was heard through the radio. It was a voice Hui recognized. It was one of her fellow taikonauts, Gong Zheng. She and Gong had trained together, and she considered him to be a friend.
Gong said, “Hui. This is Gong Zheng. You sound well. Are you okay? You said someone was injured. Who?”
“Pilot Ming Feng was injured during landing. He needs medical attention.” Hui’s voice was firm, but she was very clearly tired.
“I understand,” Gong replied. “How are Dr. Xu and Zhi Feng?”
“They were not injured. But we are all very cold and tired.” She went on to explain their general situation.
After listening intently to the status of the crew, Gong said, “In order to help you, I need to know the status of the ship’s system in detail.” And so began a rather lengthy discussion of virtually every system on the Harmony—working and nonworking.
During the discussion, Hui once again glanced at the faces of her crewmates. Something was clearly bothering Zhi, and she had no idea what it might be. At the moment she needed to focus on keeping them all alive—and preferably warmer.
Chapter 24
“Houston, this is Mercy I. All systems look good for LOI,” Bill Stetson said calmly into the microphone. LOI, Lunar Orbit Insertion, would be the first time the Altair’s engines would fire during the mission. In a few minutes, the modified Aerojet RL-10 rocket engines, burning liquid hydrogen and oxygen, would begin to slow the mated Orion/Altair Mercy I spacecraft so as to allow it to enter orbit around the Moon.
“Copy that, Mercy I. All systems look good on our end. How’s the view up there?”
Stetson looked at Chow and then briefly out the window before replying, “Awesome. But it sure as hell would be a terrible place to spend eternity.”
“Nice place to visit and all that…,” Chow added.
Stetson and Chow had been watching the Moon grow larger, and the Earth grow smaller, with each passing hour. As the Moon now dominated the view from their windows, so did its gravity dominate the little spaceship the astronauts inhabited.
“Couldn’t agree more, Mercy I. Let’s get you guys in orbit and down to the ground for that visit.”
A few minutes later, the engines fired, and the Mercy I began to slow. At first, though Stetson could feel the engines firing and the resulting acceleration, it was not clear that it was having much of an affect. The Moon’s apparent size was still changing—getting larger. Looking at the instruments to confirm that the engines were, in fact, working and slowing the vehicle, Stetson tried to hide his nervousness. He knew the engines were functioning and that they were slowing—but his innate Earth-evolved senses could not tell that anything was happening.
After the burn, the instruments confirmed that they had entered orbit, and Stetson breathed a sigh of relief. Looking out the window, Stetson could finally perceive that they were not going to fly by the Moon and off into deep space; rather, they were clearly circling the gray world for the first time. He thought again about Gene Cernan and his bittersweet departure from the Moon almost fifty years ago.
With that, Stetson and Chow once again had to run through their endless checklists. They were going to leave the Orion parked in lunar orbit while they went to the surface in the Altair. Unlike Apollo, there would not be anyone in the orbiting Orion while they were gone, and Stetson wanted to make certain everything was in perfect working order before he left. He looked at the solar-array status screen and saw that it was still working normally—to his great relief.
“Mercy I, do you copy?” asked one of the controllers in Houston.
Chow replied, “We haven’t gone anywhere. What’s up?”
“According to the orbital-analysis guys, you should be in a good position to see the Harmony in about twelve minutes. Look aft, as you’ll be flying almost directly over it, crossing from eleven o’clock to about four o’clock in your field of view. The sun angle will be favorable, and if you use the terrain imager you should get a good view. If the Lunar Mapper hadn’t failed, we’d have some great pictures of the whole area for you. Unfortunately, all you’ll have before descent are the images you get on the next two passes. You might say hello to the folks on the ground there while you’re at it.”
“Roger that. We’ll make a phone call or two before dropping by.” Bill looked at the surface and squinted, trying to see something, but eyeballs weren’t anywhere near big enough to detect the downed spacecraft at the orbital distance of the Orion/Altair.
The terrain imager, on the other hand, was a different story. It was on the Orion to allow the crew to perform last-minute inspection of the planned landing site with ultrahigh resolution. From lunar-orbital altitude, the terrain imager could capture the license number on the old Lunar Rover—if it had had one, and if the spaceship happened to pass over the Rover during the lunar day. Night imaging was still good, but not as good as what would be possible in full sun.
“Imager is coming online,” Chow said. “Okay. Upload the targeting data and we’ll see what she sees.” Chow then used the touch-screen display to bring up what the terrain imager was viewing. With the imager tracking the ground, and with it set to nearly maximum magnification, the ground whizzed by dizzyingly fast. The onboard processors were able to extract still images from the video, making inspection of any particular spot relatively easy to accomplish.
Bill Stetson had been listening to the exchange in the background while he was checking out his suit for the surface EVA that would begin in just a few hours—once they were on the ground. He pushed off and floated over to Chow, stopping just behind him so that he could easily see the terrain-imager pictures as they came in. He also keyed at the microphone and tuned the digital transmitter across the band the Chinese were using while leaving the homeward-pointing communications links still in place.