“You can expect that you’ll have some company later this afternoon,” Karl Henize told me. On the surface, Dave and Jim suited up for their final moon walk before they began preparations to lift off and rejoin me. We all had a busy day ahead—even if everything went according to plan. If not, it would be even busier.
My orbital path had drifted during my three days alone, so that I no longer passed over Hadley plain. I fired the engine for eighteen seconds to get back over the landing site. “It looks like a beautiful burn,” Karl remarked, adding that he was also watching the television images of Dave and Jim exploring Hadley Rille. “Save a copy for me,” I requested. I wanted to see it all when I got back to Earth. I glided over the landing site, noticing how much the sun angle had changed in the three days since they landed. The plain was almost in shadow when we arrived. Now the sun was much higher: the plain would be growing warmer.
The scientists following the SIM bay experiments were delighted with the data rolling in. But the equipment was slowly failing. The booms still extended, but began to stick when I retracted them, forcing me to pulse them in short bursts to come in all the way. A sensor in the panoramic camera also acted up, resulting in fewer good images, and the laser didn’t fire as frequently as it should. For new and untried equipment, it had all worked magnificently, but it couldn’t last forever.
Karl told me some exciting news from the scientists in Houston. The laser had measured the height of the mountains, and the X-ray data showed what the mountains were made of. The scientists had already compared the data. It seemed the highest mountains contained the lightest materials such as aluminum. Lighter elements rise in molten lava, so these results strongly suggested that the moon had once been largely a ball of hot lava. It looked like we had just made a major discovery about how the moon formed. Not only that, but it also meant that, unlike Earth, the moon had probably not changed much since it cooled. “It gets rather exciting when the data starts adding up like that,” Karl added. “Lots of things are beginning to fall into place, and what a mission, that’s all we can say!”
I was delighted we had solved a major mystery. To me, that discovery alone was worth the cost of our flight. But now it was time for some more piloting. Back in the lunar module, Dave and Jim prepared to lift off. Ed Mitchell, the lunar module expert, was back as CapCom for this critical time. He read up a blizzard of numbers to me, telling me where and when I would need to rendezvous with my moving target. But then I lost his signal. I thought he was done. For twenty minutes he tried to raise me on the radio while, oblivious, I continued to prepare the spacecraft. With less than one minute to go before I slid around the moon and out of radio contact, Ed and I could finally talk again, and I hurriedly wrote down the last important numbers.
Dave Scott, alongside Neil Armstrong, had made the first-ever docking in the space program on his Gemini 8 mission back in 1966. Dave had refined the technique testing the first lunar module on Apollo 9. Now, around the moon, we’d use those proven techniques to dance a complex orbital ballet to find each other and link up once again. Instead of gradually catching up with each other after a few orbits, we would attempt a direct rendezvous. Falcon would launch, and bam, I’d snag them right away.
We’re all set,” Dave called from the lunar surface. “Ready to give us some warm chow? I tell you, cold tomato soup isn’t too good.” I guess he was fed up with the unheated food they had to eat in the Falcon, and was ready for the home comforts of Endeavour.
“You’re go for liftoff,” Ed radioed to Dave. “I assume you’ve taken your explorer hats off and put on your pilot hats?”
“Yes, sir, we sure have.” Dave responded. “We’re ready to do some flying.”
Back in mission control, Joe Allen paraphrased some poetry by science-fiction writer Robert Heinlein. “We’re ready for you to come back again to the homes of men, on the cool green hills of Earth.” That sounded good to me, too.
On Hadley plain, Falcon’s engine lit, hurling Dave and Jim’s spacecraft upward. They quickly pitched over and zipped along the rille on the curving path needed to reach me.
As they rose, I turned on the cassette player. We were an all–air force crew, so I figured it would be fun to play the air force anthem to mission control to provide a stirring background. Bad move.
Perhaps it was related to the earlier communication problems and mission control was playing it safe, but my radio signal was not only heard on Earth. For some reason, mission control also patched it through to the Falcon. Dave and Jim, intently focused on their checklists, now had distracting music in their ears. The ground didn’t tell me—perhaps they didn’t realize what they had done themselves until later.
Had something gone wrong with Falcon at that moment, the music could have been a dangerous diversion. Fortunately, everything went to plan, and Dave and Jim zipped into an orbit below and behind me. I’d trained extensively to catch them if Falcon lurched into some other wilder orbit. But I never needed to. I soon had a good radar lock on them. Guided by Ed Mitchell back on Earth, Dave and I flew our spacecraft ever closer, mirroring each other’s moves. “You got your lights on, Jim?” I radioed, watching for Falcon’s flashing tracking light.
I looked through the sextant and the telescope to try and find them, but sunlight in the scopes made it hard to see anything. Finally, in the corner of my eye, I spotted a flash of light in the telescope. I manually drove the instruments over to that point, and there it was—a very bright light. “I’ve got your lights now, Dave,” I told them. Soon afterward, on the far side of the moon, Dave spotted Endeavour, a dim star in the distance.
“Oh, you’re shining in the sunlight now. Boy, is that pretty!” I called as we grew ever closer. “I believe I can even make out the shape.”
As Falcon steadily rose to meet me, Dave and Jim gave Endeavour an extensive look-over, while I photographed them in turn. Falcon had left its descent stage on the surface of the moon and was now much smaller than when I had last seen it. The lunar module appeared fragile before, but now it looked like I could reach out and crumple it with my fist. Glinting in the sunlight, it was painfully bright to look at.
Falcon was so light, a pulse of their thrusters rattled them around. So it was easier for me to dock using Endeavour. I slowly slid toward them, so gently that we barely touched. Then, with a touch of my thrusters, I pushed forward into a hard dock.
The rendezvous and docking had been fast, and perfect. “Good show, Endeavour,” Dave radioed to me. “Welcome home,” I replied. That might seem like an odd choice of words—after all, we were still a quarter of a million miles from Earth. But Endeavour had become my home, and Dave and Jim were returning from a great adventure. “The Falcon is back on its roost and going to sleep,” Dave added with a poetic flourish.
I’d kept our home clean and tidy for them. But now, as I opened the hatches between the spacecraft I saw two grimy faces. Their spacesuits were dirty, and I could smell the moon dust in the air. It was a new, peculiar odor to me, dry and gunpowdery. I kept the hatch closed as much as possible while we began to transfer equipment, hoping the floating dust would not spread. I was mostly successful, but the creep of dust was unavoidable. Dave and Jim floated long sample tubes of lunar dirt and boxes of moon rocks through the hatch, which I stowed inside Endeavour under the couches. Mindful of the new rules after the Soyuz 11 depressurization tragedy, we kept our spacesuits on.