The Chance of a Lifetime (2/2)

[pushingrobot]

(continued)

Eli planned his next move. He would have to resist the urge to leap from the lander; on the Mun, who knows were a simple jump might carry him. He would take one small, quick step out of the lander and let his momentum carry him forward. Eli shifted into a squatting position--his back still hurt horribly--and in one movement he was out of the lander, staring down at the rocky surface below his unsupported feet. It was one of the strangest experiences of his life: He felt like he was watching a slowed-down video of a man falling. The ground was creeping upward at a impossible pace. Yet his arms and legs were moving as fast as ever, flailing as he began tumbling head over heels. He had't stabilized himself properly as he left the pod; at this rate he was going to hit the Mun head first, and even in low gravity it would be a very bad thing. Eli finally remembered his zero-g training and began swinging his arms in circles and moving his legs in a bicycling motion. It must have looked utterly absurd, but the manoeuvre worked; he just had time to get his feet back underneath him when he hit the surface with a thud.

Another pain seared across his back, but he had done it.

He was on the Mun.

There was no time for self-congratulation. He was squatting in the pool of light left by a flood lamp on the side of the lander. Turning around, he could immediately see damage; two of the landing legs had snapped, and several more had become cracked, bent or twisted by the impact. One of the engine nozzles had apparently smashed against the rock, it was rather lopsided and had a deep fissure in the bell. Luckily, the ascent stage seemed completely undamaged, but he would have to stabilize the lander before attempting takeoff. He opened the toolkit mounted on the side of the lander and secured the cracked legs with a roll of always-useful duct tape. The rock on which the lander was composed of distinct layers, and a but of hammering and chiseling with a crowbar left Eli with slabs which he carefully piled under the damaged legs and engine for support. With any luck, it would support him and the ascent stage when the time came.

Now that the immediate crisis was over, he could finally move on to his real mission. He looked around, hoping to see the walls of the crater in which he had landed, but sunlight was obscured by the tall rim and his suit's headlamps were far too weak to penetrate the intervening kilometers. He cast his gaze a bit closer to the ground, looking for the rover which had been sent to the Mun a week prior; if everything had gone to plan, he should be less than a kilometer from it. After a few minutes of growing concern, he finally spotted it in a slight depression a fair distance away, the whites and grays of the rover blending exceptionally well with the surrounding terrain.

After packing up some tools and supplies, Eli began his hike to the rover. With luck, he'd reach it by the time the orbiter passed overhead again and he could finally check in with the crew. It wasn't going to be an easy walk. He had practiced moving around in a room back at the training center, suspended from a counterweight that helped simulate the Mun's gravity. At first Eli tried bounding across the room in great leaps, but that left him sliding, tumbling and dragged along by his gear; the counterweight eliminated most of his traction, and his heavy spacesuit had just as much inertia in any gravity. With practice, he learned the shuffle-hop technique, using quick motions of his feet to steer and brake more than support. He likened it to moving while sitting in a heavy, rolling chair.

After twenty minutes of this awkward dance, Eli finally reached the depression that contained the rover. The rock around it was scorched from the rover's braking rockets. The back of the rover was full of cylinders--the beacons he would be placing around the rim of the crater. Command wanted this crater surveyed for a possible colony site, and the engineers had told him these cylinders could test the rock beneath the crater and also monitor Mun quakes and meteor impacts. Eli climbed up the side ladder and edged his way along the cargo. The rover was supposed to be the pinnacle of comfort, with a pressurized, climate-controlled cabin and spacesuits built in to the airlock so he could pop in and out easily and cleanly. A complex suspension system and large, knobby wheels would let the rover traverse almost any terrain, and a large robotic arm could load and unload cargo with ease. Unfortunately, *that* rover was notoriously behind schedule and over budget, so the one Eli was standing on was a vastly inferior prototype. He climbed the ladder to the emergency escape hatch (the only working entrance), dropped down right onto the startup clipboard (which had apparently come loose during landing), and began operating the controls through his thick environment gloves (the prototype rover wasn't pressurized).

If his back had been hurting at the start of the mission, it was nothing compared to now. Sixteen hours of bumping and shaking in the rover, digging it out whenever it got stuck in loose soil and uneven rocks, climbing in and out of the escape hatch, and hauling beacons which were tremendously heavy even in the Mun's gravity had taken their toll. The first time Eli found himself on the left side of the rover, he noticed someone had stenciled the name 'Charlie' on the side. He wasn't sure if the rover had been given that name or if it was some technician's way of immortalizing himself, but Eli jumped at the opportunity to anthropomorphize the vehicle; it was much easier to take out his aggressions on a 'person' than an inanimate object.

The thrill of being on the Mun had worn off quickly as well. For the first ten hours, he had been working in total darkness. When sunrise finally began to slip light over the crater's rim, the view scarcely improved. The black basalt in the crater was hardly any brighter in sunlight than starlight, and the whole landscape looked just as hellish as it had from orbit. Rolling hills of black rock covered in dark gray dust stretched to the edge of the crater.

And the dust! It stuck to everything and etched away at everything it touched, like millions of tiny knives. Eli's suit was covered, his helmet was scratched, and the rover was absolutely filled with the foul stuff. Every time he entered he seemed to leave another layer behind, and the vibration of the rover turned the cabin into an endless dust storm.

The only interruption to the miserable monotony came in the form of meteor impacts. The Mun seemed to be passing through a small cloud of them; every half hour or so, Eli felt the ground shake as a rock or a shower of pebbles fell into the crater. At first, he followed procedure and climbed into the shielded bubble beneath the rover each time he felt a shudder. As the hours wore on and his backache got worse and worse, Eli gave it up as a bad job--a hit from one of those rocks would kill him instantly, shielding or not, and in any case there was never any warning before an impact.

And now here he was. The beacons were finally in place, and he was sitting in a dark, dusty cabin, staring at a harsh sun. He gazed at the stars overhead; he wished he could see Kerbin. This crater had been specifically chosen for its size and position; it afforded a wide view of the sky, yet blocked light from the planet. It was an ideal site for telescopes and radio arrays--but not for homesick astronauts.

The only thing Eli had been looking forward to--other than getting off the barren rock--was the chance to drive to the edge of the crater, fly his maneuvering pack up to the rim, and gaze back at his home world. Previous Mun astronauts had told him how sublime the sight was, and how enormous and how dazzling the planet seemed seemed as it floated on the barren Munar horizon.

But that was now impossible. When the beacons had activated, Command notified him that a pair were in the wrong positions--they had apparently been mislabeled prior to launch. The last-minute switch had used up all the rover's reserve power and left him barely enough time to return to the lander.

Even that would be cutting it close. 'Charlie' wasn't going any further. The rover's batteries were completely dead, and the maneuvering thrusters could only rotate the vehicle. For a mad second he considered firing the final, reserve pair of retro rockets, but as miserable as the night had been, he wasn't quite ready to end it with fiery death. There was nothing for it; the orbiter was getting low on CO2 filters and would soon leave, with or without him. Eli stood, feeling another spasm in his back, grabbed the precious maneuvering pack he had hauled to the rover hours earlier, and hoisted himself out of the cabin one last time.

But as Eli trudged painfully back to the lander, he counted his blessings. He was now among the handful of men who had left footprints on the Mun. He would be hailed as a hero, and his name would be immortalized in plaques and history books. And while he had no desire to ever return, his life-long dream--his father's dream--had finally come true.

Edited August 6, 2012 by pushingrobot

[Kaufman]

Very well done! I actually felt like I could see myself down in that crater with Eli.

[Gojira]

Same here, Kaufman.

This is a very well done story.

[Elven_sword]

Hot damn this was good. Have you ever considered writing for a living?