“Bill? Do you hear me?” He could hear his wife biting back the tears.
“Terry? I hear you, gorgeous!” Bill paused long enough to swallow the lump in his throat. “Sally and Neil there, too?”
“We’re here, Daddy. We love you!”
“I love you, too, kiddos. Listen to me now. Things have gotten away from me up here, and it doesn’t look like I’m gonna be coming home. It was worth it, though, because we saved four lives.” Bill gulped and wasn’t certain what his tear ducts would do in microgravity.
“No, Daddy! You have to come home,” Sally cried.
“Baby, you’ve got to be there for your mother and your little brother. You have to promise me to keep him out of trouble. And you have to promise me to always be great and do your best, just like you always have.”
“I promise, Daddy.” Sally sobbed deeply. “No, Daddy. I love you!”
“I love you, too.” Bill really wasn’t sure what to say, but this was his last time to ever leave his son with any man-to-man wisdom. He didn’t have any, but he wished he did. “Neil.”
“Dad.”
“You know your mother took a lot of coercing to get her to name you after Neil Armstrong, but in the end she caved.”
“I know, Dad. You’ve told me that story before.” The boy kept his voice strong and held up like a little man.
“Well, son, I want you to promise me to be as great as your namesake. Can you do that for me?” Bill was beginning to learn that tears just balled up in the corner of your eyes in no gravity.
“No, Dad. I won’t,” his son told him.
“Now, don’t give me any sass, son.”
“I don’t want to be as great as the first man to walk on the Moon. I want to be as great as you, Dad!” Neil said through sobs.
“I love you, son.” What can I say to that? Bill thought. He had to pause for a second or two as he almost lost control of himself. He managed to hold back from breaking down completely. “You will be the man of the house now. You take care of your mother and your sister, you hear me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now, kids, I love you both. I love you more than anything in the universe, and I hate that this is how things turned out. I’m not going to say goodbye, because I’ll always be right there with you, looking out for you. I’ll always be a part of everything you are and everything you do. I will always be there. I love you.”
“Daddy!”
“Now let me have a private word with your mother, please.” Bill wished he could just hold them one more time. See their faces and laugh with them just once more. He couldn’t even stand having to tell them goodbye. He was pretty certain that those were the last words he’d ever say to his children. He hoped they were good enough.
“Bill?”
“Terry, honey. You are and have always been the absolute love of my life,” he started but really didn’t know what else to say. It was the truth that he felt in his heart, so that is what he decided to go with. “I’m so sorry that I’m not going to be there to help with the kids and to grow old with you.”
“Bill, you are the love of my life, too. Oh God, Bill, what have you gone and done? I’m trying to be strong, but—”
“You go ahead and cry if you need to, baby.”
“Bill…”
“Hey, listen, you remember that time we were down at the Cape and had that little convertible rental car.” Bill wasn’t sure where he was going with this, but he wanted to be happy with his wife just one more time. He wanted to relive a happy memory with her just once more.
“Yeah, the Ford Mustang. It was red.”
“Yeah, that was it. I remember telling you that I was gonna go to the Moon then, and do you remember what you told me?” Bill bit at his lower lip to steady it from quivering.
“Yes, I do.”
“What did you tell me?”
“I said, Bill Stetson, if you’re gonna go running off into space, you better have the decency to be here in nine months when I have your baby!” That had been nearly fifteen years ago. And he had been there for the delivery, for both of them.
“Took me a long time to get to the Moon, huh?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, I just want you to remember how happy we were that day and how much in love we were. I still love you that much right this second. More.”
“Me, too, Bill. Oh God, I’m going to miss you.”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
Stetson’s conversation wasn’t extremely long. Only a few minutes, actually. Just a few short minutes later he was back on the line with Chow. There wasn’t much to talk about, but he felt like talking to somebody.
“We’ll be entering the uppermost part of the atmosphere in about fifteen minutes, Bill. The computer is running the show, and, well, I just wanted to say thanks for picking me to go to the Moon with you.”
“Tony, you’re welcome. Let’s not drag this out, shall we? Give the ship your full attention and get these people home.”
“But, Bill,” Chow replied, close to crying.
“Tony, you did your best.”
“If we could’ve just got the damned cabin to depressurize.” Tony slapped his hand against the couch’s armrest. “Damned computer. Back in the Apollo days, they’d probably have been able to manually blow the hatch or something.”
“Naw, I think after the Grissom incident that they actually took off the explosive bolt—wait a minute!” Bill stopped midsentence. “Tony, get Houston on the line and get that pistol out and make sure it has a round in it!”
“Bill?”
“Not much time, Tony! Do it! And tell them to keep my wife and kids there.”
“You got it!”
“That might just work, Bill!” mission control replied. “Give us a minute to determine the safest place to implement the plan.”
“Go ahead, but we don’t have a whole bunch of minutes left,” Bill said. “Tony, I want you practicing putting your glove on and off while Houston is figuring this out. If you need help, get Hui to back you up.”
“Bill?”
“Well, you can’t fire the pistol with your suit gloves on. If you need Hui standing by with them to help you get them on quickly, then do so,” Bill explained.
“Oh, I see.” Where the engineers back at NASA hadn’t figured out the problem, Bill just might have. Another reason that he had been the right man for the job all along. “But, Bill, it will take a few minutes for the cabin to depressurize, so I’ll be in no danger.”
“I still want you sealed up as quickly as possible, just in case. And have the putty standing by.”
“Roger that.” Tony slipped the seal ring on his right glove and twisted it. It took him a few seconds, but it came off fairly easily. Getting it back on took him almost a minute and a half. It almost startled him when mission control chimed in.
“Mercy I, mission control.”
“Go ahead, Houston.”
“We’ve done a quick analysis and believe that this is a workable plan. The best location to create a leak will be as far into the nose as possible, just to the right of the docking-ring hatch. It is likely that the boundary-layer plasma will not damage the ship critically if there is a structural-integrity breach there. The plasma should flow past any damage up there.”
“Alright, then—let’s do it.” Tony slipped his glove off again and handed it to Hui. “Hang on to this for me, please.”
“I’ve got it.” Hui nodded to him.
“Bill, are you clear of the nose out there?”
“Roger that, Tony. I’m still hanging out with my old pal the solar panel.” Bill paused, slightly wondering if his need to use levity in the current situation was his subconscious helping him deal with the fact that he was teetering on the edge of dying. He shook that nonsense from his mind. “Good luck.”