Angry Moon

Chapter 36b

     “Engine cut off in ten seconds,” said Benny, staring at the readout on the console in front of him.

     Around him, the others were strapped into their seats. They'd been up and moving around for the past couple of hours while the small manoeuvring engines pushed the shuttle on, but for some reason the ground controllers wanted them all sitting down and strapped in when the engines were cut off. Eddie had no idea why. He would have thought that the turning off of the engines meant a lessening of the danger, not an increase, but he would have been pleased to admit that rocket engines were one of the few things he knew almost nothing about. He noticed that the others were all tensing up and he felt himself tensing up as well, even though he had no idea what he was supposed to be afraid of.

     “Three, two, one...” said Benny. The faint noise and vibration that had filled the shuttle abruptly stopped, along with the very small force that had been pushing them all back against their seats. “Engine cut off successfully accomplished,” said the Swede. “We will now be coasting for forty five hours twenty minutes until we begin the deceleration burn.”

     “Are we on course?” asked Paul as Eddie reached down and turned off the mass dampener.

     “You're looking good, Lunar Rescue Two,” said George from the intercom speaker. “Course and speed are in the pipe. We'll keep an eye on you and tell you if you have to make a course correction later.”

     “Please God we don't,” said Paul earnestly.

     “I don't get it,” said Eddie. “Why are you so afraid of the engines?”

     “Because we installed the pipework ourselves,” said Benny. “In four days, and none of us are even remotely qualified to do any such thing.”

     “And even when the experts do it,” said Paul, “they don’t fire it up until they've spent weeks going over it again and again, looking for mistakes. Bad welds, microfractures, that kind of thing.”

     “And it’s when you turn it on and off that these things tend to reveal themselves,” said Benny. “That's when it’s all under the most stress.”

     “When we tow the moon, we're going to be turning the engines on and off again every few minutes for several hours!” said Eddie.

     “Please don't remind us,” said Paul, and Eddie could have sworn there was actual fear in his voice. Good God, he thought. What have I gotten myself into?

      Paul turned back to the monitor screen on the console in front of him, where George Jefferson's face was looking out at him. “How's the weather?” he asked.

     “Looking good,” George replied. ‘The Sun’s calm and peaceful. No solar flares, and no sign of any developing. I think you have every chance of getting there and back without incident.”

     Paul nodded, and Eddie relaxed as well.,The shuttles, European and Chinese both, had never been designed to leave the protection of the Earth’s magnetic field and so were vulnerable to radiation, especially radiation from the sun. If a large solar flare were to erupt while the shuttle was away from the Earth, the shuttle might well arrive at the moon with only corpses aboard. So long as the sun remained calm, though, they would only receive the equivalent of a whole body CT scan over the entire duration of their mission. Even so, though, Benny was turning the shuttle to put the fuel tanks between them and the sun, to reduce their exposure as much as possible.

     As a consequence, the moon was directly ahead of them in the cockpit window. A featureless dull grey sphere now almost reduced to its normal size as it continued to recede from the Earth. It was slowing down, crawling through space, as if pausing to catch its breath after its mad dash past the Earth and gathering its strength ready for its next devastating plunge, bringing more chaos and destruction. More floods, more earthquakes. More tsunamis. Unless they could stop it and drag it back into its proper orbit. Eddie felt himself beginning to tremble as he contemplated the magnitude of what they were on their way to attempt and what the consequences of failure might be.