Both men suddenly looked slightly unfocused, and she realized they were listening to Houston. Michael handed her Luke’s headset, and she slipped it back on, immediately hearing English chatter followed by the interpreter’s Russian.
“Svetlana, please confirm you can hear clearly.”
“Da, slushayu.” What’s up now?
She heard the CAPCOM’s voice, and then the interpreter’s.
“Chad, Michael, Svetlana, we’re going to run through changes to tomorrow’s timeline with serial translation, as all three of you will be involved. Let us know if you have any questions as we go. It’s going to take a while, but I think we can get it in well before the LOI burn.”
Chad’s mind was racing on a parallel track, and he glanced out the window to confirm what his wristwatch had told him. Moscow was in sight, and would be listening to the crew’s transmissions. He needed to clarify something.
“Hey, Kaz, just a thought, no need to translate, but in case the cosmonaut has a question, is Moscow on the phone as part of this briefing?”
Kaz waved a finger at the translator to not repeat in Russian. “No, we decided there’s no need to let them listen in to our internal operations.”
“Roger, makes sense, thanks.” I’m going to have to repeat the key info. “We’re ready to copy.”
Kaz’s voice. “Okay, great. I’m in the Lunar Surface Checklist, page 2-5. Chad, you’ll be doing all the LMP actions here, with the interpreter ready for anything that only Svetlana can reach on her side of the cockpit.” Kaz methodically read out the changes page by page, the interpreter repeating the gist in Russian, Chad and Michael penciling them in as he went.
“Kaz, confirm Bulldog undock time is 08:43?” Chad said. It was important for Moscow to know when they could call. Michael, in Pursuit, would be orbiting overhead every two hours; while he was behind the Moon, with his transmissions from Earth blocked, only Bulldog would hear Moscow.
“That’s right, Chad, 08:43 central, Mission Elapsed Time of 97:12.”
“Copy, thanks.” They continued amending the checklist.
In TsUP, it was suppertime, but no one was eating. Chelomei was listening intently to the tone of the crew’s responses and the translation by his interpreter, gathering information, trying to gauge the situation.
He nodded slowly as he heard Commander Miller clarify the time. That is for us. Good boy. He watched as the flight director wrote the undock time on the mission schedule sheet they had built. His trajectory team had already roughly calculated the orbiting ship’s periods of communications blockage behind the Moon; they’d refine it once the decelerating burn was complete.
He thought ahead. There was key information he needed to get to the cosmonaut. And he needed to use the clergyman to apply pressure to the astronaut. But he had to be sure of the Americans’ plan.
Glancing at the clock, he tried to will the voice in his ear to tell him what he needed to know. Not being able to hear what Houston was reading up to the crew was frustrating.
He heard Miller speak again, and then the translation came. “Copy, Kaz, I’ll read back expected touchdown time and location.”
This is it! He leaned over the console and grabbed a piece of paper and pen to ensure he copied down the key information as it was translated.
“Bulldog landing 11:17 Central, 99:45:40 MET, location 25.47 North, 30.56 East, next to a straight rille near the southeast rim of Le Monnier Crater.”
Chelomei read the words and numbers he had written down, then pulled his notebook out of his breast pocket and quickly flipped the pages with his thumb, looking for what the technicians in Simferopol had told him over the phone. He found his page of notes and held it next to the sheet on the console.
He cross-checked the numbers. The location was identical.
The Americans were going to land Apollo 18 right beside the Lunokhod rover.
Excellent.
Pursuit’s rocket engine was twice as big as it needed to be. The design had been decided well before anyone at NASA knew for sure how much thrust they’d need, and by then it was too expensive to change. But extra margin was a good thing, because if the engine failed, the crew died. It was one throw of the dice. One solitary engine to slow the spaceship into orbit around the Moon and, a few days later, to get them going fast enough again to escape for Earth.
The engine’s name was beyond mundane—the Service Propulsion System. But the SPS was about to fire, and the crew was on their own.
Svetlana was staring out the window at the surface of the Moon rolling past them, 50 miles below. The Sun was setting, and she held up her hand to block it as they raced into the darkness of the Moon’s shadow. The low Sun angles exaggerated the shadows of the ridges and craters, making the strange sight even more bizarre.