She looked at the bolt cutters in her hand. Quickly she walked out of sight of the windows and dug in hard with her heel in an area of kicked-up soil to make a small trench. She dropped the cutters in and kicked loose dirt over top, stomping repeatedly across the area to camouflage it. She stepped back to look; just tracks in the dust, the same as those all around the lander. She glanced back at the ladder; Chad still hadn’t descended.
She walked to the front of Lunokhod and bent to look closely at the area Chad had been studying. She traced the antenna wires carefully, seeing nothing disturbed or dangling. She stepped back and did one full circuit, checking the side power cables and wheels for damage, seeing none. He hadn’t had that long; she’d hurried down the ladder when she’d spotted him by the rover, and had stopped him in the act.
She saw a scoop lying next to Lunokhod, and she grabbed it and walked back towards Bulldog, satisfied for now. But she’d have to remain vigilant. He’d try again, no doubt.
She weighed what she could do. Having watched him fly and land the LM, she was certain she couldn’t operate it herself, even with verbal instruction from Houston. If he died, she died.
Was protecting Lunokhod worth her life? She was a soldier, and had sworn fealty to the Soviet Air Forces. Her childhood heroines, Lydia Litvyak and Yekaterina Budanova, both Great Patriotic War fighter aces, had died in battle. How is this any different? She looked around at the barren landscape and the low, rolling hills, the empty desolation. But to die here? They’d already retrieved the rock Moscow was interested in. Lunokhod had been exploring for three months already. What would my death accomplish?
He had come back outside and was stowing equipment. She scanned his spacesuit. Maybe she could damage his life-support backpack, which would force him to hurry inside the lander and connect to its umbilicals. Shooting the backpack might work, but it just as well might cut a vital line or rupture a pressure tank, or pass through and kill him instantly.
She looked up at the lander itself, seeking a vulnerability to exploit that would hasten their departure. But what? The legs and lower section had all been built just for landing and were here to stay; only the upper section would take off, and all its antennas and cables were far out of reach.
She thought back to the design of her own Yastreb spacesuit, which had an emergency oxygen tank to provide extra reserves in case the suit developed a leak. The American suit must have one too. Their engineers would have needed a solution to the same problem. But how to start a survivable leak in his suit? She looked at the scoop in her hand. Where could she find a sharp edge?
A Russian voice broke into her thoughts. “Major Gromova, Houston, we see you with the scoop and would like you to pass that to Major Miller to stow, please. And then we have some more actions, as requested, when you’re ready.”
“Ponyala, minutichkoo.” Understood, just a minute.
He’d turned to face her, reaching a hand out for the scoop. She inspected the hoses on his chest as she passed it to him; they were a jumble of covered connectors. No way he’d let her get close enough to disconnect anything. She stepped back and told the interpreter to go ahead.
She was on the Moon with a man who had much to hide and who still had time to do damage.
50
Mission Control, Houston
Kaz rested his forehead in his left hand, his elbow propped on the console. He’d found that rubbing the outer edge of his left eye socket with the tip of his thumb helped ease the burning in his fake eye. He blinked several times to clear the grittiness; it had been a long day. They just needed to get the moonwalk cleaned up, the crew inside and the hatch closed. Then they could all take a break. Crew included.
He opened both eyes wide, like he was stretching them, and refocused, running his finger down the checklist items. There were only a few left.
“Chad, we just need you now to reposition the TV camera to a launch observation location, and then we should be good for the two of you to head inside.”
“Copy, Kaz.”
Chad turned, walked the length of the snaking white cable out to the TV camera and picked up its tripod. He backed up slowly until the cable was nearly taut, to give maximum clearance from the rocket blast. Looking down the lens at the LM and Lunokhod, he had a thought. He took several paces sideways, the cable dragging across the dust, ascribing an arc around Bulldog. He set the tripod down again and rechecked.
“Houston, that look okay to you?”
Kaz had been watching the camera bouncing wildly with the reposition. Now Bulldog was centered and Lunokhod was no longer in the frame, out of sight. No matter the suspicions swirling around Chad, the man was sharp.