Gabdul rehearsed the movements briefly, nodded to himself, positioned the hand controller to the side and pushed the command button. After six seconds he released, and they all stared at the monitor, waiting for the image to refresh.
The dark rock was now centered in the field of view. After the navigator nodded to him, Gabdul drove straight ahead, then checked the image again. He repeated the maneuver three times, until the rock was in perfect position at the bottom of the high-mounted navigation camera screen, then sent the command to switch to the lower panoramic cameras.
The team was used to the long pause between each command and the return image. It was part of their regular rhythm, a time to discuss what they were seeing, like dissecting the magic trick before the magician pulled the rabbit out of the hat. They hashed over why the rock was a different color than the surrounding regolith. Perhaps it had been dropped there somehow.
The assistant navigator laughed. “Maybe it’s an alien turd!” The group chuckled, and then the new view appeared.
The two lower cameras, set apart like human eyes, gave a stereoscopic sense of depth. Looking closely, the navigator rejudged the distance and gave another command. Gabdul carefully moved the joystick, and Lunokhod rolled forward another meter and a half.
When the image updated, the navigator grunted, “Perfect!” He sat back, his job complete.
The science team swung into action. They recorded the imagery from the cameras onto videotape, and captured the data flowing down from the photometers on paper strip charts. So far no surprises: a rock, like many others.
Next, they sent commands to the RIFMA-M X-ray spectrometer, mounted low, like an insect’s mandibles, under Lunokhod’s front end. Its door pivoted open, uncovering small samples of radioactive tungsten and zirconium that unleashed an invisible cone of alpha and beta particles onto the Moon’s surface. The focused spotlight excited mineral elements in the rock, causing each atom to release fluorescent X-rays. The return sensor sent these complex electronic signals across the void to the team in Simferopol, who saw them as distinct frequency lines on an oscilloscope. They ran a hard copy of the data so they could look closely at the rock’s unique signature. They saw mostly magnesium, aluminum, silicon, some others—the proportions were a bit odd, but it was similar enough to other rocks.
Gabdul shrugged. “How about the magnetometer?” he asked, and got the thumbs-up.
At his command, a long, spindly pole that stuck out the top of Lunokhod slowly pivoted down until it was just a few inches above the rock, the small cross-shaped device on its end detecting the strength and direction of any local magnetic field. Again, none of the readings were out of the ordinary.
The lead scientist rubbed her hands together, readying for the next test. She truly loved this. It was the ultimate fieldwork, learning about a piece of the Moon that no human eyes had ever seen before today, the kind of pure exploration she’d been fantasizing about ever since she began her geology studies at Moscow University. So many papers were going to be written about what her team was discovering, and she would be co-author on them all. She’d get to attend international conferences, maybe even travel to America.
She kept her voice calm, as expected by the team. “Let’s see what the Geiger counter can show us.”
She watched as the heavy Geiger counter pivoted into position above the rock. We couldn’t have done this on Venus, she thought. Only the Moon’s one-sixth gravity allowed the weight of the sensor to be supported by such a delicate pole.
They maneuvered it incrementally closer, until she called, “That’s enough! Let’s power it up.”
Her technician sent the command, all eyes fixed on the gauge as they waited the 10 seconds for a return signal.
Nothing. No radioactivity.
She frowned. “That’s wrong. There’s guaranteed to be background radiation at least. Send the command again.”
This time the signal got through. The needle jumped to near full scale on the gauge. Her eyes widened. “Bozha moy!” she exclaimed. A rush of excitement coursed through her whole body. “It’s radioactive!”
12
Ellington Field, Houston
“Is my hysterical palm tree ready?”
The ops desk clerk looked up at Tom Hoffman’s grinning face. As a fighter pilot, Tom had long held helicopters in low-level contempt. To him, only the fact that he was going to walk on the Moon, and in order to do that he needed to practice landings in this backup training machine, made becoming a part-time helo pilot tolerable.
“Sure is, Tom.” The ops clerk handed him the thick Bell 47G aircraft sign-out book: its daily certification of flight readiness. Tom scanned the completed maintenance actions, saw nothing new and scrawled his signature against the date. Then he retrieved his helmet and gloves from the counter, and stepped out onto the flight ramp at Ellington Field.