172 Hours on the Moon (16 page)

Caitlin refused to believe what she’d heard. “But that’s impossible,” she protested.

“We have five minutes of oxygen left, Caitlin.”

“Are you sure? Try again! Hurry!”

Wilson’s voice became hysterical. “We’ve tried everything! It’s
locked
, goddamn it! Do you hear me?”

Caitlin felt the desperation grip her. “What about the blowtorch?” she asked. “You can cut your way out!”

“That steel is way too thick. You know that.”

“We’re coming out there to get you!”

“There isn’t time. Four minutes.”

“There’s time. There
is
time! If you breathe calmly, as little as you can. Stay completely calm, understood? Nadolski and I are coming!”

“Caitlin?” That was Stanton’s voice.

“Yes?”

“It’s going to take you twenty minutes to suit up and get out here, maybe another few minutes to open the hatch.” Unlike Wilson,
Stanton was completely calm, almost relaxed. “It looks like our tickets were just one-way. I’m sorry about this, Caitlin.
So awfully sorry. But I think it’s best if you guys go home now.”

“Stanton? Stanton? Do you hear me? Stanton? Wilson? Damn it! Respond! Do you hear me?”

They heard her. But there was no point in responding. They slowly climbed back down the ladder again, without saying a word
to each other. They walked back to the generator and sat down side by side. Stanton held Wilson’s hand. They looked at each
other, smiled weakly. Then they put their hands on their helmets, opened the latches, and took them off.

Stanton had just enough time to picture one last thing before the vacuum rendered him unconscious.

He pictured Yvonne, that day she’d bought a new bicycle at the flea market. One of those old bikes with the fat tires. She
had been standing in the garage pumping air into the tires when he got home. A second later she was sitting on it, riding
around him in tight circles repeating that it had only cost her five dollars.

A totally, completely everyday event in the life of any old person.

And yet now it was as distant as could be.

Mr. Himmelfarb was sitting at the dinner table in the nursing home, trembling. His fever had gone up over the last twenty-four
hours. He had cold sweats and was staring vacantly into space, the plate of mashed potatoes untouched in front of him.

The staff seemed to think there was a simple explanation for his attack by the pay phone. Perhaps he was exhausted from believing
that the people on the screen were really in his room with him. But if they could have seen inside his head, if they could
have seen what he had seen, they surely would have handled it differently. They probably would have dropped whatever they
had in their hands and run for their lives, out, away, gone.

But all they did was make sure the TV was taken out of his room and make sure he didn’t wander into the TV lounge with the
other residents. Now there was next to nothing for him to do
other than sit in his chair and stare at the wall. And until recently he would have been perfectly content to do just that.
But something had changed in Himmelfarb’s head. His body was nearing its end — his breathing was more labored, his face looked
haggard, and a steady stream of drool dangled from the corner of his mouth — but that thick, dogged, impenetrable fog in his
brain had burned off somewhat and left him more lucid than ever.

He didn’t like it at all.

Himmelfarb still hadn’t so much as even tasted his food. All he’d done was to move the end of his spoon back and forth through
the potatoes in a pattern that only he was aware of. He was in the process of dying, yes, and yet he understood everything.
This new moon mission had nothing to do with fund-raising or public relations. It had nothing to do with scientific lunar
research.

His mind told him that he had to warn the staff, but it was no use. The words were there, but he couldn’t get them out. They
just came out as gurgling, drooling saliva.

He pictured those poor teenagers who were inside DARLAH now. What would become of them? He didn’t want to think about it.
It wasn’t his problem. It wasn’t his fault, was it? Or was it? He never had told anyone what had happened.

You should have done that forty years ago, Oleg. You’re going to burn in hell for this, you know that
.

There was nothing he could do.

He coughed. Again. He coughed with all his might, and two small drops of blood landed on the tablecloth in front of him without
anyone noticing.

He was going to die now. And he knew it. He coughed again, and more drops of spit landed on the tablecloth.

Now they were looking at him. All of them. Thirty-two eyes stared as he carefully set his spoon down on the tablecloth, pushed
his chair back from the table, stood up, and quietly said, “No one is going to survive.”

The sound of his voice forming the words surprised him most of all. He was talking. He was doing it. There was still time!
Time to say everything, all of it!

After that he took a couple of wobbly steps backward, spun around, lost his balance, and fell.

One of the aides had already stood up when he pushed his chair back from the table, and she almost grabbed him before his
head hit the floor. The last of the senses that was still working in the old man’s body, his vision, was suddenly replaced
by an inky blackness.

Custodian Oleg Himmelfarb was no longer a part of this world.

It wasn’t long before he was removed and the only one left in the dining room was the aide who had tried to catch Mr. Himmelfarb.
The other patients had been moved into the lounge, where they were immediately placed in front of the television. To everyone’s
relief, the Weather Channel was turned on.

The aide had only been working at the facility a few weeks, and this was the first death she had ever witnessed. And yet it
didn’t frighten her, because ultimately it was the most natural thing in the world for the elderly to die. After all, when
you got right down to it, that was why they were here, even though most
of her job had to do with convincing the old people of the opposite.

She stood up to go into the break room. But something stopped her. Something caught her attention from the corner of her eye.

Mr. Himmelfarb’s plate.

It was still full of mashed potatoes.

But in the middle of it she could see that he had written something. Letters, some kind of code, scratched into his food.
She saw the spoon resting next to his plate, still with a bit of potato left on the narrow tip.

She read what he’d written:

6EQUJ5

Just hours before, eight people had been sitting in the living room. Now there were only six, but the silence that surrounded
them seemed colossal. Caitlin had been forced to walk the somber path back from module four, and she had to struggle to keep
her own hysteria at bay.

When she found herself face-to-face with the rest of the mission crew, they all realized right away that something was wrong,
but none of them had thought anyone had died.

The news didn’t go over well.

Some cried, including Antoine. Midori was almost inconsolable. Others, like Coleman, had shut down completely. Nadolski, too,
was just sitting there staring at the wall. Mia didn’t hold back her emotion and screamed at him, and then at all of the
astronauts, insisting that they had no choice but to go out there and rescue them.

She didn’t fully believe yet that there wasn’t anyone to save.

The two men under the hatch out there didn’t exist anymore. They were just two bodies, lifeless, doomed to lie in that airless
cold until the next mission arrived. The decision to leave them was a hard one to make, but Commander Nadolski didn’t actually
have any other choice. Neither DARLAH 2 nor
Demeter
had a refrigerated storage room. It would fly in the face of every regulation, not to mention good common sense, to bring
those two bodies and store them in the warmth for the four days the return trip would take. Who knew what bacteria could spread
during that time?

Mia looked around the solemn room, everyone hunched, heads in hands, hopeless. The red lighting, indicating the emergency
power was still active, only increased the dark mood. Just a few hours earlier she had been sure her life was finally going
to start, and that Antoine was the one who would put it in motion. Now she was surrounded by people who were supposed to take
care of her, and none of them was up to the task. And on top of everything — the silence.

Only the sound of the fans in the air system could be heard. A regular, low hum.

Someone finally stood up. Nadolski. He moved to the middle of the room, rubbed his hands over his face.

“There is absolutely no logical explanation for this. That hatch, like everything else here, had been tested, retested, and
tested again.”

“And when was that?” someone said. Mia didn’t catch who.

“That’s not the issue,” Coleman said. “Losing the radio signals, even the video signals to Earth, now that’s one thing. That
I can understand.”

“That you can
understand
?” Nadolski interrupted.

“I can accept that. It’s happened before. On one of the Apollo missions, for example. What I can’t understand is that the
whole generator could be destroyed by natural causes. And that the hatch the engineers opened could close and lock itself
shut behind them.”

“What are you trying to say, Coleman?”

“I’m not trying to say anything, Nadolski. I just think we should be … careful.”

Mia turned to look at Antoine. He looked pale, and she took a firm hold of his hand and set it in her lap. Who cared if anyone
noticed? None of it mattered anymore.

“Fine. We’ll be careful. Now listen up. This is the issue: On behalf of myself, the mission, and NASA, I deeply apologize
that we find ourselves in this situation. We have just lost two good men, Sam Wilson and Peter Stanton. Their deaths are shocking
and incomprehensible, but we can’t cave in and give up because of this. The way things stand now, we need to focus on solutions,
not problems. Coleman?”

“Yes?”

“We’re still running on emergency backup power. How long will that last?”

“According to my calculations, twenty-two hours. Twelve hours after that the oxygen generator will stop working.”

“Okay. We have just over thirty hours to get out of here. That
means we’re calling off the mission, effective immediately. I can’t imagine anyone has any objections to that?”

No response.

“Good. We don’t know what NASA and ground control think about that, since all communications are down. But we don’t have any
choice. We are, as you all understand, on our own. That means the following: Coleman, you’ll get the kids into their suits.
After that, take them down to the infirmary in module four. Caitlin, you’re coming out to
Demeter
with me to prepare for departure. We’ll meet in the infirmary in exactly eight hours. Which is to say three twenty-five a.m.
Miami time. Let’s hop to it.”

Mia stood up and looked at Midori. Was she scared, too?

“Mia?”

Someone was talking to her. She tired to figure out where the sound was coming from.

“Mia, please!”

She turned from side to side, dazed.

“Mia, let go!” It was Antoine. He was standing right next to her. She loosened her grip on his hand, which bore obvious red
marks from her fingers.

Coleman led the teens down the corridors, back to their rooms. He did his best to calm them down and explain how much training
all the astronauts had been through for situations like this.

But no matter what he said, it didn’t help in the least.

Because all three of them saw that there was way more fear in his eyes than there was in their own, and they realized he didn’t
believe a word of what he was telling them.

* * *

Nadolski led the way outside the base, with Caitlin following right behind him. They could clearly see the lunar lander
Demeter
a few hundred yards ahead of them. With every step they took, fine dust swirled up around their boots and slowly settled
back down onto the surface again.

For Nadolski this was the most important day of his life. He had built his whole life around the space organization, and now
everything he had ever done before was suddenly pushed into the background: the girlfriend he had married twelve years ago,
the kids he had had with her, all of it was packed away and suppressed. His only objective now was to get his crewmembers
home safely. That was his great mission in life. He would be welcomed as a hero. Not that that was the most important part,
but he
did
want that, didn’t he?

Yes.

He had to bring these people back.

No matter what.

Demeter
was a welcome sight, standing there like a white monument in the gray landscape. Nadolski let Caitlin climb up the ladder
first. She was just preparing to open the hatch when she bumped into something with her elbow. And the hatch swung open.

Oh no
, she thought.
No. Not this, too
.

“Caitlin?”

She climbed in and helped Nadolski the last little bit, until he was in, too. She waited a few seconds before doing anything
else. Postponing it. Then she grabbed the hatch, pulled it shut,
twisted the locking wheel, and let go. She waited a few seconds, it felt like an eternity.

And the hatch slowly swung open again.

No no no no no no no
.

She tried again. And again it swung open. Caitlin swore to herself.

Nadolski thumped her on the shoulder. “Problems?”

She turned to him. “The hatch is destroyed.” Both of them knew what this meant, but she said it anyway: “We won’t achieve
compression.”

She made one last attempt and then swore again softly as the hatch failed to lock and swung open. The whole lunar lander hungrily
opened itself up to space.

Nadolski dropped down in the pilot’s seat and swore. “Caitlin, tell me: What are the chances that damage like this could occur
to these types of hatches?”

She flung out her arms. “I have no idea. One in billions, I would think. We never even practiced this in the simulator. I’m
beginning to —” She cut herself short. “Nothing.”

“You’re beginning to what?”

Caitlin hesitated for a long time before responding, “I’m beginning to think we weren’t supposed to come back to the moon.”

He didn’t respond, thinking hard. He had an idea. It was risky, but it was worth a try.

“What if we keep our suits on and take off anyway, with the hatch open? If we fill the rear compartments, everyone will have
enough oxygen until we reconnect with the spacecraft in orbit.”

But Caitlin just shook her head. “That won’t work. The hatch is linked to the computer for takeoff. It won’t let us take off
until the hatch is sealed.”

“And we can’t reprogram it? Or override it?”

“No! I’m sorry, Nadolski. It’s just not possible.” She paused. “It looks like …” She forced the words out in a near-whisper.
“We might be stranded.”

It was as if the word “stranded” triggered something in Nadolski. He stood up.

“Absolutely not! Not as long as I’m the commander. Come on. We have to go back to DARLAH.”

Mia was sitting in the infirmary with one arm around Antoine and one around Midori when Nadolski and Caitlin returned. She
tried to make eye contact with Caitlin to get an idea of what was going on, but Caitlin looked away. Stared at the floor.
Nadolski didn’t look at the teens, either. He whispered something to Coleman and motioned to Caitlin to follow him.

“Coleman, Caitlin, and I have to discuss a few details. The rest of you wait here. And no one leaves this room without my
permission, is that
completely
clear?”

The teens nodded, even though the order was totally unnecessary: None of them could move.

The three astronauts came back just a few minutes later and made a brief statement:

“Take off your suits, hang them up in the equipment room, and meet us in the kitchen in module two. We’re going to be here
for a while.”