Luna by Rick Chesler Read Free Book Online

wrong with the ascent engine control program, too!” She knew Dallas didn’t need her to spell out the implications for him. If the ascent stage engine burned too long, as the descent stage just had, they would miss the Command Module and go rocketing off into space without enough fuel to return to either lunar or Earth orbit. They’d die in the LEM when their oxygen ran out, drifting through the eternal vacuum of space in their metal coffin, possibly for years, until they burned up in some distant orbit.
    Dallas bit his lip, a habit he had when in deep concentration. “It’s either that or I land us manually.”
    Caitlin looked him in the eyes. He appeared as competent as ever. He wasn’t panicking, his decision-making was solid. Land us manually. She exhaled deeply. His training had largely been on how to utilize the autopilot function to land, not to actually fly all the way down.
    “For God’s sake, Dallas,” she whispered. She had no more words for the situation. Dallas understood it at least as well, and probably better, than she did.
    “35,000 feet,” Dallas said. They were now the same distance above the moon that commercial airliners flew above Earth.
    Caitlin knew Dallas had been an Air Force test pilot before joining NASA, but still, that was two careers ago. She flashed on the lunar surface pockmarked with craters and scarred by mountains. Their selected landing site was a vast, flat plain—the same one Black Sky had already landed on—but they had veered off course.
    Then Caitlin heard Ray’s voice over the comm channels, urgently discussing something about a descent trajectory with another Controller. The impulse to return to Earth was unbearably strong. The urge to abort was powerful. But if there was one thing Caitlin feared above all else, it was suffocating in this cramped vehicle while she told Ray she loved him over a damn comm unit. No way. I’d rather blow up on lunar impact.
    She spoke rapidly. “If we land, we’ll be able to troubleshoot the ascent stage before we take off again.”
    Dallas nodded immediately, urging the conversation on while eyeing his gauges. “Right, exactly. If we land.”
    “Can you do it?”
    “I think so.”
    “Then let’s go for it.”
    “Switch on the landing radar, please, and call out our altitude at regular intervals.”
    Caitlin smiled as she carried out his command. Dallas was one cool cucumber. She heard the hiss of the attitude thrusters as the spacecraft rolled about its vertical axis, putting them in a normal sitting position with respect to the lunar surface.
    “10,000 feet, we should be in braking phase!” Caitlin said. And then she looked out the window where she now looked down on the world of the moon.
    “Mountain!”
    “I have it on radar.” A mountain top passed below them and to the north, a reminder that they could crash here, just like flying a small airplane on Earth, like the Cessna she owned back home.
    For the next thirty minutes, Dallas carried out the precise order of operations with which the LEM’s autopilot had been painstakingly programmed by a team of engineers. Adjusting the ship’s altitude this way and that, initiating the braking sequence where the main descent engine had to be fired for just the right amount of time to counter the LEM’s rate of descent, all the while monitoring their speed, position and systems status. Even the comm loops remained mostly quiet. There was nothing anybody else could do.
    “1,000 feet,” Caitlin said.
    She peered into the dark depths of a crater, the ground dropping out beneath them until their little capsule whizzed over the crater’s rim and emerged back over flat ground.
    “500 feet!”
    “Landing phase,” Dallas announced. “Fuel?”
    “One minute remaining!”
    Dallas’ hands raced across the controls as he engaged thrusters to adjust their position. They needed to land upright on the LEM’s footpads. To reach the surface in any other position would be