Shanghaied to the Moon Read online

  I hustle into the cage. He pulls the door closed. It clatters like a freight train. The elevator lurches upward so fast my knees nearly buckle. I like that feeling.

  The sound of the breakers fades as the elevator lifts us out of the deep shadow between the tail fins. A light wind blows; the air coming off the sundrenched beach is warmer here.

  The rocket is only a few feet away. On this side, the ocean side, it’s in even worse shape. The salt spray has left pits in the metal. The black stains glisten wetly. The hair rises at the back of my neck.

  “Is this really okay to fly?”

  “I’ve checked this little Roman candle out nozzles to nose cone, kid. She’s sound enough.”

  The elevator stops. A walkway leads to the capsule hatch, which isn’t much bigger than a manhole cover. Can he even fit through that?

  “I’ll take my jacket back now.”

  It’s chilly up here. Goose bumps rise immediately on my arms. He doesn’t put the jacket on, but walks ahead, punches a few commands on the latch plate. The hatch pops open, revealing two reclining flight seats crammed in a hollow ball barely the size of a refrigerator.

  “You first.”

  Halfway across the walkway, I stop. I look through the steel grating under my feet, down the long, rusty body of the rocket to the hard, hard ground, 150 feet below. The failure rate for these things is a bit higher than the rocket Dad went up in.

  “You with me, kid, or what?”

  “Yeah.” I crawl through the tiny hatch.

  I’m going to be in so much trouble!

  6

  MISSION TIME

  T minus 00:06:06

  IT’S super cramped inside the capsule, but warm.

  With one knee resting on each seat back, I try to straighten up. The padding is so spongy it’s hard to balance. Control knobs jab my head. I flop onto my back, sliding my legs under the instrument console at the same time. My toes aim toward the sky, but I can’t see it. A launch shield covers the nose window.

  The bare-bones instrument panel is dark. No power. How long will it take to bring this rocket online from cold shutdown?

  Suddenly, the sunlight from the hatch goes out and I’m sitting in darkness.

  “Hey!” I grope toward a dim halo of light around the hatch. My fingers find the rough canvas of the duffel.

  The old spacer’s voice comes muted. “Pull it in.”

  I pull. He pushes. The thing oozes in on top of me. In the struggle to wrestle it behind the seats, my 3-Vid goggles catch on something. They pop off the belt clip and clatter down behind the seats, just as the bag drops, too. Probably crushed them.

  The jacket next. Down behind the seats.

  The sunlight goes again. His head rams my arm.

  “Scoot over.”

  I wiggle up against the curve of the cold metal wall. He squirms and grunts and twists until he flops into the seat nearest the hatch. He takes a deep breath, then hits a button on the control panel. The rocket shudders awake with a cascade of noises, like a truckload of empty tin cans pouring down through its innards.

  T minus 60 flashes in bold digits on the countdown clock.

  The hatch slams shut. The locks click. Interior lights soak us in red. He reaches across me and pulls the harness into place, snugs it tight. Once his own harness is on, he starts flipping switches. His left elbow jabs me with every move.

  The numbers start dropping—by the second!

  I thought we had at least an hour of pre-flight checks!

  T minus 40.

  This thing is already primed for blastoff.

  T minus 30.

  The fuel pumps grind up to speed, shivering the rocket from nozzles to nose cone.

  T minus 15.

  “Wait a minute! Who are you? Why do you need a midget?”

  3—With a little smile

  2—he puts his thumb over the

  1—ignition button and

  0—presses it.

  The rocket motors erupt.

  The initial jolt hits like a belly flop. The seat pads sigh and absorb me as the crushing, squeezing force of liftoff builds. The padding yields more, bulges around and over me. It’s like sinking into chocolate pudding. My body shakes and quivers in its grip, chafing against the material.

  In a few seconds, we hit maximum acceleration: ten g’s. My weight goes from ninty pounds to nine hundred. Feels like an elephant is doing a slow roll over me. My chest collapses, leaving no room for air. I pull breaths, panting quick and shallow like a frightened chipmunk. My eyes wander out of sync and for a moment, I’m seeing both the old spacer on my right and a wildly vibrating strut on my left. Then blackness floods up to take away all sight.

  I know the max-g boost phase will only last two minutes, but time doesn’t move in ordinary seconds under this kind of stress. I almost wish I’d pass out.

  The rocket bucks. Stage one jettison. Acceleration eases back to a couple g’s. I can see. I can breathe. I can handle six more minutes of this until we make orbit.

  As the near senselessness caused by the boost phase wears off, the scar across my right palm starts to hurt. Figuring it’s squashed in a fold of seat padding, I make a fist to protect the scar. The pain turns searingly hot, as if the rocket exhaust itself is flaring through my clenched fist. It burns like in the dream, but there’s no pulling away. No waking up!

  I was wrong. I won’t make it. I’m going to scream.

  Can’t disgrace myself like that.

  I think of Val in Venus: Inferno Below the Clouds; the steely control, the indifference to danger …

  Another buck.

  Fresh fire seems to flow through my palm.

  I scream.

  The last stage flames out.

  The abrupt release of force kicks me against the harness, knocks my breath away, frees my arms. They swing up, reach the top of their arc. Instead of falling back into my lap, they hang in the air, floating.

  Weightless!

  We’re in orbit. I stare at my palm hanging in the air in front of my nose. The pain is gone, switched off with the rockets, leaving only a lingering pins and needles feeling. Seems impossible that it hurt so much just a moment ago.

  “No more screaming. Understood?”

  Startled, I pull my arms out of the air, too embarrassed to answer him.

  With a gunshot-like pop, the launch shield ejects. A blue-white light whops my eyes, totally knocking me out of myself. The most beautiful view in the universe—Earth from orbit—blooms below us. We’re pointed straight down at the ocean. Intense aquamarine, streaked with wispy clouds, fills the entire view port. Even though we’re moving nearly eighteen thousand miles per hour, there’s no sense of motion. The launch shield falls, winking sunlight as it tumbles toward burn up.

  There’s nothing left of the PLV except this tiny capsule. It isn’t designed for any long duration flying, so he’s got to get us docked to a ship or a space station soon. If we really are going to the Moon, there’ll be a ship, somewhere close along this same orbit.

  He fires a maneuvering thruster. The capsule tilts. The sky all drains to my side of the window, like when you flip one of those toys filled with different-colored sand. The upper atmosphere is pale blue, marbled with clouds. A vibrant band of neon blue marks where the edge of the world meets jet-black space. The shallow arc of the curve tells me we’re in a low orbit.

  An object appears ahead of us, a fiercely bright speck of white at first, quickly gaining in definition, becoming a triangular shape with an elongated nose. It looks like a badly designed paper airplane—body too fat, wings too small and far back—it’s an old-fashioned space shuttle!

  It hangs in orbit like a still life, crisp in every unbelievable detail. We’re coming at it from “above.” A cargo canister the size of our living room and two round propellant tanks crowd the cargo bay. But the cargo doors are gone, ripped away. Big areas on the hull show dull metal where hundreds of heat shield tiles are missing. There are holes in the wings!

>   “It’s—it’s—space junk!”

  “Settle down. I’ve got to concentrate on docking.”

  “We can’t go to the Moon in that!” Only one explanation makes sense. “It’s a decoy, right? Like in Asteroid Run?”

  “Sure, kid. Now shut up.”

  It has to be. Inside that blasted exterior is hidden some secret superduper drive system. And only I can help this guy test it. Except, he didn’t want me. He was waiting for a midget …

  A staccato blast of thrusters wrenches me back to reality.

  Just behind the crew section is a combination docking adapter and air lock. It’s shaped like an upside-down T with a big bulge at the intersection. That’s the airlock chamber. The short legs stick out fore and aft from the air-lock chamber. One connects to the canister in the cargo bay; the other to the interior of the shuttle. The long leg of the T sticks out into space a few feet beyond the cockpit roof. A three-foot-diameter docking ring is on the end. Our target. It’s an unusual arrangement, sticking out like that, but I guess it doesn’t matter when there aren’t any doors … jeez, it’s a mess …

  So is his flying!

  Connecting up with that dock ought to be a routine maneuver. But he’s in trouble. The thrusters are firing so often the capsule sounds like a steam engine at full throttle. He’s breathing almost as fast. The sharp, sour odor of sweat fills the tiny space. His eyes shift from the docking radar to the view port. He jerks the joystick.

  Bad move. Causes us to close in way too fast. The FlightComp flashes a warning. I knew it would. I’ve come to this point in simulations dozens of times—no bull’s-eye for us. He has to pull out and try again.

  But he doesn’t.

  The straps of my harness dig deep on impact. The air rings. The pod bounces off the dock. Sunshine flares inside for a moment. Then darkness. Tumbling. Falling out of orbit. We’ll burn up!

  “Do something!”

  Sun again, lighting up his face. He’s panicked. Locked up tight. I grab for a thruster.

  “NO!” He smacks my hand away, connecting with the same knuckles I banged while watching Asteroid Run. It hurts! But at least I snapped him out of it.

  He taps the keypad. Thrusters start popping off. The tumbling stops. He works the controls slowly, timidly, double-checking each move before triggering a thruster. Tense minutes pass this way until there’s a solid thunk. The lock pins fire into place. He releases the joystick with a great blast of breath, followed by a ragged drag of air to refill his lungs. He sweeps the sheen of sweat from his forehead. Droplets float all around us.

  “That was terrible! Even I can dock better than that!”

  Did he hear me?

  He coaxes a squeeze bottle out of a hip pocket, flips open the top, and pulls out the straw. His hands shake so badly, he almost can’t get the straw between his lips. He sucks, grimacing like a nervous dog.

  I must’ve been crazy, climbing into a rocket with him.

  This is the Counselor’s fault. What was it trying to do to me? When the screen strobed, I felt as if a leash jerked me up short. Like it was trying to control my brain. I had to escape.

  But I don’t have to stick with this guy. I can’t. His flying’s not going to improve the more he drinks.

  He smacks his lips. The color is back in his face. The wide-open panic fades from his eyes. “You think you’re better than me, huh, kid?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That thruster”—he points the squeeze bottle at the one I almost fired—“would have blasted us straight out of orbit. So keep your hands off the controls.”

  “You should, too!”

  He freezes for a second, then twists away, reaching to undo his harness buckle. The hatch cracks open with a gasp. The matching hatch on the docking ring opens. Sour air farts into the capsule.

  With the flick of a finger against a panel edge, he sets his bulk in motion. He floats out of the seat and rotates in one fluid movement. He hooks the collar of his jacket, then corkscrews through the hatch in a headfirst glide into the air lock chamber.

  He flows into the right-angle turn toward the lower deck of the crew section. He sure moves with a lot less trouble than on Earth—almost graceful. Can’t say like a dolphin, not the way he looks, more like one of those manatees.

  I hear a hatch clatter. Then another. Then his voice. “Bring that duffel when you come, kid.”

  My eyes fix on the joystick. It glistens, still moist with his sweat.

  I can fly this thing. Just couldn’t think very well with it tumbling before. I’ll go to Olympus Space Station. Wait for Dad there. Safe from Counselors. Safe from this guy’s flying.

  I undo my harness so I can reach the hatch. I haul on the dock hatch first, but I’m the one who moves instead. My head slams into the rivets around the rim. What am I, the Universe’s punching bag all of a sudden?

  My own fault this time, though. You’ve got to do things different in zero-g. I hook my foot in a harness strap, pull again. The hatch swings closed.

  I settle into the pilot’s seat. Buckle up. Look at the controls. They’re a kaleidoscope of confused colors. In simulators, there’s a mission profile already in the FlightComp. I’m starting from scratch.

  Calm down. Look for function blocks.

  Okay, there’s the FlightComp. I key in for undocking. A few panels come to life.

  Now what?

  The ship-to-ship intercom buzzes. “Cuttin’ out?”

  I jump, but he can’t see that. “Thought I might.”

  Talking tough helps me feel tougher.

  “Checked the thruster reserves yet?”

  It takes a few seconds of searching even to find the fuel gauges. Inside the three small, round dials, the neon red needles rest hard to the left—empty!

  His lousy flying used up all the fuel! Sweat blooms on my face. If I cut loose without fuel, the PLV would fall out of orbit. This tiny capsule isn’t built to withstand reentry. I would’ve burned up.

  Out the window, beyond the razor-straight edge of the shuttle’s tail, beyond the geometrically perfect cone of the engine nozzles, the ragged west coast of Africa is a long, long way down.

  “Toggle back into standby, kid. And don’t forget the duffel.”

  7

  MISSION TIME

  T plus 00:31:07

  THE tunnel leading from the docking ring to the airlock chamber is so narrow even I can’t stand straight in it. Pushing the duffel through the hatch, I drop after it feetfirst. Grabbing a handhold, I stop inside the tunnel to close the capsule hatch, then the hatch on the docking ring. I drift into the airlock chamber, a cylinder twice as roomy as the capsule and reeking of mothballs.

  The smell comes from a space suit lashed to the curving wall. Bulky, old style, and small. For someone under four feet five inches. A dinosaur compared to the suit Dad had, it’s probably been in storage for the last fifty years, like everything else about the old spacer.

  Why isn’t there one for him? That’s not safe, especially in a tub as old as this one. Leaks happen.

  Anchoring my foot in a wall strap, I pull the airlock hatch into the docking tunnel closed. Two other narrow tunnels lead from the air lock, each a little longer than I am tall but both too narrow to stand up in. One goes into the shuttle. The other, sealed off by a closed hatch, connects to the enormous canister in the cargo bay. Through the air lock’s hatch window, the bright blue handle of the canister’s hatch catches my eye. I’m tempted to take a peek. Maybe it’s a habitat or science module. Maybe I could find out what this mission is about. But then again, it could be full of mission support equipment in an airless can. Too risky.

  Turning away from temptation, I snag the strap on the duffel and kick off into the tunnel leading to the crew section of the shuttle. There’s a little backward tug as the duffel strap goes taut, then the bag sails into middeck with me. I’m closing fast on a wall covered with broken lockers. With no way to stop! I smack the wall, rebound into the oncoming duffel, and stop tangled with it
in midair.

  Action and reaction. I’m a living physics experiment!

  One of those uncontrollable moronic grins takes over my face. Pretty quick, though, the look of the place sobers me up.

  Middeck is about fourteen feet wide, ten long fore to aft, and eight tall deck to ceiling. The shower, toilet, and environmental control unit stick into the open space, creating odd angles. It feels roomy after the capsule, but it wouldn’t feel that way with a crew of six living and working here.

  The place shows signs of real heavy use: scratches, scuff marks, stains on everything. The privacy screen that should surround the toilet is missing. Dents and gouges mar the front panel of the environment control unit, like someone used a hammer on it. No wonder the air stinks.

  This just gets worse and worse. After a moment’s hesitation, I seal the air lock behind me. No escape that way.

  The scar cramps as I turn the handle. I’ve over-stressed my hand opening and closing so many hatches. They’re everywhere. Kind of brings home the fact that space is out there. That it has to be kept out.

  “You lost, kid?”

  “Coming.”

  Facing the air lock, in the right ceiling corner along the back wall there’s a small, square opening that leads to flight deck. A ladder is mounted on the wall beneath the opening—ridiculous in zero-g, but needed when on the ground. Of course, this old tub is never going Earthside again, not with all the damage to the outer hull and heat tiles that I saw on approach.

  Leaving the duffel behind, I kick off for the ladder, then yank on a rung. Too much force! I go careening through the opening, slam into the sidewall, and ricochet into the ceiling. I’m headed for a belly flop when the old spacer grabs my shirt. The wild ride ends just inches above the floor.

  “Make every move slow and easy, kid, or you’ll bust something.” He gives my shirt a little twitch that rotates me slowly upright.

  I grab a hand strap in the ceiling. The transfer of momentum twists me helplessly toward the rear of flight deck. The side and back walls should be crammed with electronic equipment, but all the consoles are gone. In the gaping black holes, the multicolored cable harnesses wave slowly in the air currents like the tentacles of sea anemones.