Voyage Read Free

was to continue on, up to cutoff of the MS-II’s main engines. On to orbit.
    ‘Ares, you are go at five plus thirty, with ECO eight plus thirty-four.’
    Ares had reached Mach 15, at an altitude of eighty miles. And still the engines burned; still they climbed upwards. Earth’s gravity well was
deep
.
    ‘Eight minutes. Ares, Houston, you are go at eight.’
    ‘Looking good,’ Stone said.
    The residual engine noise and vibration died, suddenly. The recoil was powerful. York was thrown forward again, and bounced back in her canvas restraints.
    ‘ECO!’ Stone called.
    Engine cutoff; the MS-II stage was spent.
    … And this time, the weight didn’t come back. It was like taking a fast car over a bump in the road, and never coming back down again.
    ‘Standing by for MS-II sep.’
    There was another muffled bang, a soft jolt.
    John Young said, ‘Roger, we confirm the sep, Ares.’
    ‘Uh, we are one zero one point four by one zero three point six.’
    ‘Roger, we copy, one zero one point four by one zero three point six …’
    The parameters of an almost perfect circular orbit about the Earth, a hundred miles high.
    Phil Stone’s voice was as level as Young’s.
Just another day at the office
. But now, the stack he commanded was moving at five miles per second.
    York gazed at the glistening curvature of Earth, the crumpled skin of ocean, the clouds layered on like whipped cream.
    I’m in orbit. My God
. She felt a huge relief that she was still alive, that she had survived that immense expenditure of energy.
    Above her head, the little cosmonaut was floating, his chain slack and coiling up.
Sunday, July 20, 1969
Tranquillity Base
    Joe Muldoon peered through the Lunar Module’s triangular window.
    Muldoon was fascinated by the play of light and color on the lunar surface. If he looked straight ahead, to the west, away from the rising sun, the flat landscape reflected back the light in a shimmering golden brown sheen. But to either side there was a softer tan. And if he leaned forward to look off to the side, away from the line of the sun, the surface looked a dull ash gray, as if he was looking through a polarizing filter.
    Even the light here wasn’t Earth-like.
    Outside, Armstrong was moving about with what looked like ease, bouncing across the beach-like lunar surface like a balloon. His white suit gleamed in the sunlight, the brightest object on the surface of the Moon, but his lower legs and light blue overshoes were already stained dark gray by dust. Muldoon couldn’t see Armstrong’s face, behind his reflective golden sun-visor.
    He checked the time. It was fourteen minutes after the commander’s egress.
    ‘Neil, are you ready for me to come out?’
    Armstrong called back. ‘Yes. Just stand by a second. First let me move the LEC over the edge for you.’
    Armstrong floated about the LM, pushing aside the LEC, the crude rope-and-pulley Lunar Equipment Conveyor which Muldoon had been using to pass equipment down to his commander on the surface.
    Muldoon turned around in the evacuated cabin and got to his knees. He crawled backwards, out through the LM’s small hatch, and over the porch, the platform which bridged to the egress ladder fixed to the LM’s front leg. The pressurized suit seemed to resist every movement, as if he were enclosed in a form-fitting balloon; he even had trouble closing his gloved fingers around the porch’s handles.
    Armstrong guided him out. ‘Okay, you saw what difficulties I was having. I’ll try to watch your PLSS from underneath here. Your PLSS looks like it’s clearing okay. The shoes are about to come over the sill … Okay, now drop your PLSS down. There you go, you’re clear and spidery, you’re good. About an inch of clearance on top of your PLSS.’
    When he got to the ladder’s top rung, Muldoon took hold of the handrails and pulled himself upright. He could see the small TV camera, sitting on its stowage tray hinged out from the LM, which Armstrong had deployed