“Any questions?” he asked.
Kaz raised his hand. “Flight, could I have a word with you and the crew after debrief is done?”
Gene made eye contact with each of his console engineers. No question marks on any of the faces. “Sure, I think that’s now. Thanks. Everyone else, you’re cleared to go.” The room emptied like a class dismissed, leaving only Tom, Luke and Michael, the prime crew, and Chad, the backup commander. They and Gene Kranz all looked at Kaz expectantly as he walked to the blackboard at the front of the room and picked up a piece of chalk.
“You all know that the Russians just landed a rover on the Moon, right?” Kaz said. “Well, they’re about to launch a thing called Almaz, a space station designed exclusively for spying, like MOL was supposed to be.” He turned and wrote “ALMAZ” in block letters.
“According to our best intel, Almaz’s camera will be powerful enough to easily see things down to the size of a small car.” He let the national security implications of that sink in for a few seconds. They were all military men, including Gene, who’d flown fighters in Korea. They knew of the secret testing going on out of sight at remote airfields like Edwards in California and Area 51 in Nevada.
“Our sources say it looks like they’ll be ready to launch Almaz in early April, unmanned. Once they’ve made sure it’s fully operational, they’ll send cosmonauts up on a Soyuz to crew it, and then they’ll start taking pictures.” Kaz paused to let that sink in before drawing the line to their own mission.
“The Joint Chiefs, with the approval of the president, want to use Apollo 18 to take a close look at Almaz in Earth orbit before the Soviet crew gets there. The Air Force just let NASA know on Friday, and I’ve been sent down here to brief you ASAP.”
Tom said, “Wait—are we still going to the Moon?” He sounded rattled.
“Yes.” Kaz turned to the chalkboard and drew a large circle. “Earth,” he said, pointing. Then he drew a shape that looked like an off-kilter hula hoop surrounding it. He pointed at the spot where the hoop’s curve was highest.
“The Soviets are launching Almaz from here, in Baikonur, fifty-two degrees north of the equator.” He traced the curve with his finger, showing where it descended behind the globe and reappeared in the south. “Apollo 18 has to match that orbit, so after launch, you’ll need to steer up the Florida coast.”
“Can’t do it,” Gene said immediately. “If we don’t launch the Saturn V straight east out of Canaveral, we don’t get the added speed of the Earth’s spin, Kaz. Eighteen’s too heavy. We’re just making it as it is.”
“Agreed.” Kaz quickly sketched the Saturn V rocket, Apollo Com-mand Module and Lunar Module, stacked for launch. “To lighten the load, we need to take everything off the mission that isn’t absolutely needed.”
He drew an X on the LM. “That means no experiments on this mission and minimal time for Bulldog on the lunar surface.” Another X on Bulldog’s exterior. “We won’t be carrying a rover.” Kaz looked at each of them, then drew Xs on the Command Module and the rocket. “Bare minimum gear in Pursuit, and a stripped-down Saturn V too. We’ll need to be creative, and Washington is looking to you for more ideas. Our best estimates show we can just make it.”
Michael said, “Let me get this straight. We launch up the east coast, and instead of heading to the Moon, we stay in Earth orbit long enough to go find this”—he glanced at the blackboard—“Almaz.” He looked back at Kaz. “We hang around taking pictures or whatever, and then we’re GO for TLI?” Trans-Lunar Injection—firing the rocket motor that accelerated them to escape velocity out of Earth orbit, headed for the Moon.
“That’s right,” Kaz confirmed.
Luke Hemming spoke, his voice incredulous. “With no experiments to run and no rover, what are Tom and I doing on the Moon?”
“I was just about to get to that,” Kaz said. “With the added time and fuel needed to intercept Almaz, they’ve stripped your time on the Moon to deal with only the highest military priorities. And those just changed.”
“Christ!” Tom muttered, thinking of the new pressure his crew was going to be under for the next three months, made even more intense by the inevitable new layers of secrecy.
“The Soviets landed their rover in a crater called Le Monnier, on the edge of Mare Serenitatis.” Kaz drew a second circle to represent the Moon, and two smaller circles to the upper right, labeling them “Ser-eni-tatis” and “Le Monnier.” “It’s about a hundred miles north of where Apollo 17 landed—and it’s not where the Soviets said they were going to land. The DoD wants you to go find out why the Russians are there.”