There was a pause.
“Okay, 18, we see that, thanks.”
A frown creased the Honeysuckle technician’s forehead. She’d been half listening to the earlier Houston conversation about a comm problem, but hadn’t realized the crew couldn’t talk to Earth.
“Holy dooley!” she muttered.
“18, Houston, the LM extraction maneuver start time will be 3 plus 55 plus 27, separation time 10 minutes later.”
Michael glanced at the timer, double-clicked his mic button and sent all zeroes, to acknowledge. “Maneuver starts in 90 seconds, Chad.”
Chad nodded, carefully wiping out his suit with biocide.
The demands of the task helped Michael focus; he needed to physically separate Pursuit, flip it around and mate it with the lunar lander, still housed inside the S-IVB rocket, and then extract the lander. It was a delicate sequence he’d practiced thousands of times, but never like this. He pantomimed his upcoming hand movements on the controls, deliberately ignoring Luke’s feet floating next to him and the cosmonaut—Svetlana—occasionally bumping into his shoulder.
“Apollo 18, we see the S-IVB maneuver is complete. You have a GO for T&D.”
Transposition and docking. Time to put all that training to work. Michael reached forward and pushed the Launch Vehicle Separation button.
Bang! The sound of pyrotechnics rang through the ship as long lengths of explosive cord cut the metal structure joining them to the rocket. Michael felt Sveltlana turning in alarm. “It’s okay,” he said, giving her a reassuring thumbs-up. Do Russians even know what that means?
Chad was watching through his overhead window. Bits of metal and cover panels were drifting slowly clear. “Looks like a clean separation.”
“Okay, here we go.” Michael tipped back on his joystick and Pursuit responded, smoothly turning through a half circle to align for docking. The curve of the world rotated into view as he worked to center the Lunar Module in his window. The ship that Luke had named Bulldog. He pushed the thought out of his head.
“Moving in now.” He pushed forward on the other joystick, and Pursuit’s small thrusters fired in response, small pops of noise filling the cabin like someone was tapping on the hull with a hammer.
“18, Houston, as soon as you can we’d like you to deploy the high-gain. We expect that will resolve our comm problem.”
Now that Pursuit was clear of the rocket, there was room to pivot out the large four-dish antenna.
“Roger, in work.” Chad reached forward and threw the switches as Michael stared intently out his overhead window, maneuvering Pursuit closer to the docking target. Small pieces of debris and ice tumbled slowly across his view.
“Lots of small bits in the way, but Bulldog looks clean,” Michael reported. The top of the Lunar Module protruded from the rocket body, harshly lit in the direct dawn sunlight.
No answer from Houston. Chad rechecked the antenna deploy indications.
“Switching the high-gain antenna to REACQ,” he said, and flipped the switch down to force the antenna into reacquisition, making it search automatically for the radio signal from Earth.
“Almost there, Chad.” Michael spoke intently, focused on hitting the target dead center. He stared unblinkingly out his window, making tiny adjustments with his hand controllers as Bulldog filled the field of view.
There was a metallic scraping sound, and they felt a small, sudden deceleration into their seat straps. Luke and Svetlana’s suited forms bumped forward in the cockpit.
“Capture, Houston!” Michael reported with satisfaction.
Three small latches on the tip of Pursuit’s docking probe slid into place and clicked inside Bulldog’s docking mechanism, the indicators on the panel going from barber pole to gray. The two ships were mechanically attached.
Michael exhaled in quiet relief. He threw the switch to retract the docking probe, to pull in and solidly lock the ships together. They could hear the low grinding of gears. All that remained was to release Bulldog from the rocket body, and for Michael to back away and slide it out. Houston could then fire the thrusters on the rocket and move it safely clear.
“Apollo 18, we show a successful docking. Nicely done. Please give us a voice check.” No hint in the CAPCOM’s tone that this voice check was critical.
Chad glanced quickly at Michael, took a deep breath and pressed his comm trigger. “Houston, Apollo 18, how do you hear?”
The relief in the CAPCOM’s voice was palpable in their headsets. “We have you loud and clear now, 18! How us?”