She kept her eyes on Chad in the distance. He was holding a long tool, alternately digging and working at the handcart, paying attention to Lunokhod and the soil around it. Has he retrieved the rock? She was able to move faster as she adapted, mimicking the gait she’d watched him use to move across the surface, willing him to keep his back turned.
She moved with purpose. Moscow had given orders. She was there to make sure he carried them out.
“FLIGHT, we’re seeing odd data from Svetlana’s EMU.” The puzzlement in TELMU’s voice was reflected on his face as he turned to look across the consoles at Gene Kranz. “Without her heart rate it’s hard to tell, but it looks like she’s moving around or something, breathing more, using more oxygen.” His voice tailed off.
Gene’s response was crisp. “Anything out of limits?”
The specific question got him back on secure ground. “No, FLIGHT, the suit is fine, all well within norms.”
Gene pictured her in the LM, alone. She should be just standing there. What was she up to?
“CAPCOM, have the interpreter check in with the cosmonaut.”
Kaz gave quick instructions, waiting for a gap in Chad’s geology reporting, and the Russian language request went up.
“Svetlana, Houston. How are you doing?”
Svetlana abruptly stopped walking. Hearing Russian out here, unexpectedly, it felt like she’d been caught.
Why are they asking? Maybe they were seeing something in her suit data and she just needed to give them a reason for it.
“Normalna. I’ve been moving my arms and legs around to keep from falling asleep.”
Kaz and the interpreter glanced at TELMU, who shrugged and nodded his head.
“Copy, thanks. The event with Moscow Mission Control will be in about an hour.”
She made herself sound bored. “Gatova, spasiba.” I’m ready, thanks.
She’d kept her eye on Chad during the exchange, but he’d been preoccupied with lifting a new sample and was still facing away. She started moving again and picked up the pace.
To Chelomei, it sounded like Houston was somehow okay with the cosmonaut being outside. Can they not see her? He watched the Lunokhod camera image as she began moving again.
He checked one of the timers at the front of the room; the orbiting capsule would be on the Earth side of the Moon for another 30 minutes. If he called now, that astronaut, the Pursuit pilot, would hear. He did the math. There’d be a half hour or so after Pursuit went behind the Moon when he could call. That was an ace up his sleeve, to be played if he needed it.
Patience, he told himself. But he hadn’t gotten this far by being a patient man.
“There are many small crystalline rocks in this sample, an admixture of basaltic and anorthositic, up to maybe an inch across, maximum. Color and morphology appear to confirm they are largely made of the same material as the regolith.” Chad continued his description as he tipped the collector on the rake into a bag.
“Copy, Chad,” Kaz said in a monotone.
No wonder, Chad thought. Geology is fucking boring.
As he sealed the sample bag, he paused to look around at where he was. He turned his head deliberately, left and then right, like a male lion. Top of the food chain. He peered out onto the flat, gray-brown terrain and the perfect blackness of the lunar sky above. No one else had ever been here, in all of history, to see this. The power of that, the realization that it was only him, felt like a hit of narcotic. Victory running through his veins.
He twisted his neck inside the helmet, turning to look at the Earth. Of all those losers, only he had made it here.
Then he saw movement.
Another moonwalker, 50 feet away, coming towards him.
What the? How did she get outside? He ran the recent conversation with Houston back in his mind. They thought she was still in Bulldog!
He took a breath and opened his mouth to challenge her, but stopped. Secrets were good.
He raised both hands waist-high, palms up. What are you doing?
She continued towards him, raising one finger to her visor. The sign for silence.
He reached up and rotated the gold visor off his face, squinting hard against the glare. She watched, and did the same. Now they could read each other’s facial expressions.
She gestured with her chin at Lunokhod and pantomimed scooping something solid up with her hand. She raised her eyebrows.
He stared at her, his face impassive. No reason to make it easy for her.
She held his gaze for a moment, and then looked away towards the rover, her lips tight with frustration. She reached past him to grab the tongs from the handcart, and walked towards Lunokhod, trying to read the disturbed soil and tracks. His footprints were all over, but the underlying wheel tracks showed where it had recently driven forward and backed up again.