Voyage - Stephen Baxter

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believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish …’

      My God, Muldoon thought. Nixon hates Kennedy; everyone knows that. Muldoon wondered what calculations – PR, political, even geopolitical – lay behind Nixon letting old JFK back into the limelight now, today of all days.

      It was hard to concentrate on Kennedy’s words.

      Fifty feet from him the LM looked like a gaunt spider, twenty feet tall, resting there in the glaring sunlight. The Eagle was complex and delicate, a filmy construct of gold leaf and aluminum, the symmetry of the ascent stage spoiled by the bulbous fuel tank to the right. The craft bristled with antennae, docking targets, and reaction control thruster assemblies. He saw how dust had splashed up over the skirt of the descent stage’s engine, and the gold leaf which coated it. In the sunlight the LM looked fragile. And so it was, he knew, just a taut bubble of aluminum, shaved to the minimum weight by Grumman engineers. But here, on this small, static, delicate world, the LM didn’t seem at all out of place.

      I want to tell you now how nervous I was that day, gentlemen. I wasn’t sure if I was right to ask that august body for such huge sums of money, indeed for a transformation of our national economy. But now that goal is accomplished, thanks to the courage of you, Neil and Joe, and so many of your colleagues, and the dedication of many skilled people all across our great county, in NASA and its contractor allies … Muldoon glanced uneasily at the mute TV camera on its tripod. He said ‘the goal is accomplished.’ He knew that on a hot July evening in Houston it was around ten forty. He wondered how many moonwalk parties would already be breaking up.

      Maybe it really was just about footprints and flags after all.

      But, back in Clear Lake, Jill would still be watching – wouldn’t she?

      … Apollo has energized the American spirit, after a difficult decade at home and abroad. Now that we have reached the Moon, I believe we must not let our collective will dissipate. I believe we must look further. Here, at this moment of Apollo’s triumph, I would like to set my country a new challenge: to go further and farther than most of us have dreamed – to continue the building of our great ships, and to fly them onwards to Mars.

      Mars?

      The clipped voice was an insect whisper in his headset, remote and meaningless.

      Maybe it was true what they whispered: that the bullets Kennedy had survived in Texas six years ago had damaged more than his body …

      Standing silently, he saw now that the land curved, gently but noticeably, all the way to the horizon, and in every direction from him. It was a little like standing at the summit of a huge, gentle hill. He could actually see that he and Armstrong were two people standing on a ball floating in space. It was vertiginous, a kind of science-fiction feeling, something he’d never experienced on Earth.

       … This will certainly be the most arduous journey since the great explorers set sail to map our own planet over three centuries ago: it is a journey which will take a new generation of heroes to a place so far away that the Earth itself will be diminished to a point of light, indistinguishable from the stars themselves … We will go to Mars because it is the most likely abode of life beyond our Earth. And we will make that world into a second Earth, and so secure the survival of humankind as a species for the indefinite future …

      The Earth, floating above him, was huge, a ball, blue and complex; it was much more obviously a three-dimensional world than the Moon ever looked from home. He was aware of the sun, fat and low, its light slanting across this desolate place. Suddenly he got a sense of perspective of the distance he’d traveled, to come here: so far that the trinity of lights that had always dominated human awareness – Earth, Moon and sun – had moved around him in a complex dance, to these new relative positions in his sensorium.

      And yet his sense of detachment was all but gone. He was as locked to Earth as if this was all just another sim at JSC. I guess you don’t throw off four billion years of evolution in a week.

      He found himself wondering about his own future.

      All his life, someone – some outside agency – had directed him toward goals. It had started with his father, and later – what a place to remember such a thing! – summer camp, where winning teams got turkey, and losers got beans. Then there had been the Academy, and the Air Force, and NASA …

      He’d always been driven by a strong sense of purpose, a purpose that had brought him far – all the way to the Moon itself.

      But now, his greatest goal was achieved.

      He remembered how his mood had taken a dip, after returning from his Gemini flight. How tough was this new return going to be for him?

      Kennedy had finished speaking. There was a silence that stretched awkwardly; Muldoon wondered if he should say something.

      Armstrong said, ‘We’re honored to talk to you, sir.’

      Thank you very much. I’m grateful to President Nixon for his hospitality toward me today, and I’ll ask him to pass on my very best regards when he sees you on the Hornet on Thursday.

      Muldoon steeled himself to speak. ‘I look forward to that very much, sir.’

      Then, following Armstrong’s lead, he raised his gloved hand in salute, and turned away from the camera.

      He felt perplexed, troubled. It was as if Earth, above, was working on him already, its huge gravity pushing down on him.

      He would have to find a new goal, that was all.

      What, he mused, if Kennedy’s fantastic Mars vision came to reality? Now, that would be a project to work on.

      Maybe he could join that new program. Maybe he could be the first man to walk on three worlds. That would be one hell of a goal to work toward: fifteen, twenty more years of direction, of shape to his life …

      But to do that, he knew, he’d have to get out from under all the PR hoopla that was going to follow the splashdown.

      For him, he suspected, returning to Earth was going to be harder than journeying to the Moon ever was.

      He loped away from the TV camera, back toward the glittering, toy-like LM.

       Saturday, October 4, 1969 Nuclear Rocket Development Station, Jackass Flats, Nevada

      A smell of burning came on the breeze off the desert, and mixed with the test rig’s faint stench of oil and paint The scents were unearthly, as if York had been transported away from Nevada.

      I read somewhere that moondust smells like this, she thought. Of burning, of ash, an autumn scent.

      In 1969, Natalie York was twenty-one years old.

      In Ben Priest’s Corvette they’d made the ninety-mile journey from Vegas to Jackass Flats in under an hour.

      At the Flats, Mike Conlig was there to meet them and wave them through security. This late in the evening, the site was deserted save for a handful of security guys. When the three of them – York, Priest, and Petey, Priest’s son – climbed out of Ben’s Corvette, York noticed how the car was coated with dust, and popped as it cooled.

      Nevada was huge, empty, its topography complex and folded, cupped by misshapen hills. The sun was hanging over the western horizon, fat and red, and the day’s heat was leaching quickly out of the air. The ground was all but barren. York recognized salt-resistant shadscale and creosote bushes clinging here and there, and the occasional pocket of sagebrush. Good place to test out a nuclear rocket, York thought. But – my God – what soul-crushing desolation.

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