There were still twenty-seven minutes of accelerated flight to go when it hit him that once the engines were shut down, the panel would become weightless. Could it do any damage? he wondered. Not much. It was too light for that, too light even to break glass. Nah, not a chance… What were the flies up to? He followed them with his gaze as they zoomed and buzzed and circled and chased each other around the outside of the blister before landing on the back of the fuse panel. That’s when he lost track of them.
He took a reading of the two JO ships on the radarscope: both were on course. The face of the Moon now loomed so large on the front screen that it took up half of it. He recalled how during a series of selenographic exercises in the Tycho Crater, Boerst, with the help of a portable theodolite… Dammit, what a pro that guy was! Pirx kept an eye out for Luna Base on the outer slope of Archimedes. It was camouflaged so well among the rocks that it was almost invisible from high altitude, all except for the smooth surface of the landing strip with its approach lights—when in the night zone, that is, and not, as presently, when it was illuminated by the Sun. At the moment the Base was straddling the crater’s shadow line, the contrast with the blinding lunar surface being so intense that it overpowered the weaker approach lights.
The Moon looked as if untrodden by human foot. Long shadows stretched all the way from the Lunar Alps to the Sea of Rains. He recalled, too, how on his first trip there—they were just passengers then—Bullpen had called on him to verify whether stars of the seventh magnitude were visible from the Moon, and how, dumb as he was, he had tackled the problem with the greatest of enthusiasm. He had clean forgotten, the dope, that no stars were visible from the Moon by day because of the solar glare reflected by the lunar surface. It was a long time before Bullpen stopped ribbing him on account of those stars.
The Moon’s disk continued to swell, gradually crowding out the remaining darkened portion of the screen.
“That’s funny—I don’t hear any more buzzing.” He glanced sideways and flinched.
One of the flies was sitting and cleaning its wings on the exposed side of the panel, while the other fly was busy courting it. A few millimeters away, its copper terminal gleaming below the spot where the insulation ended, was the nearest cable. All four cables were exposed, about as thick in diameter as a pencil, and all in the 1,000-volt range, with a contact clearance of 7 millimeters. It was just by accident that he knew it was 7. Once, as an exercise, they had torn down the entire circuitry system, and when he, Pirx, couldn’t come up with the exact clearance, his instructor had read him off the riot act.
In the meantime, the one fly took time off from its wooing and started venturing out along the live terminal. A harmless enough thing to do—unless, of course, it suddenly got an urge to hop over to the next one, and, judging by the way it sat there, humming, at the very end of the terminal, that’s precisely what it intended to do. As if it didn’t have room enough in the cabin! Now, thought Pirx, what would happen if it put its front paws on the one wire and kept its hind feet on the other…? Well, so what if it did. In the worst case it might cause a short circuit. But then—a fly?! Would a fly be big enough to do that? But even if it were, nothing much could happen; there would be a momentary blowout, the circuit breaker would switch off the current, the fly would be electrocuted, and the power would be restored—and good-bye fly! As if in a trance, he kept his eyes fixed on the high-tension box, secretly cherishing the hope that the fly would think better of it. A short circuit was nothing serious, a glitch, but who knows what else might happen…
Only eight more minutes of gradual deceleration until touchdown. He was still staring at the dial when there was a flash—and the lights went out. It was a momentary blackout, lasting no more than a fraction of a second. The fly! he thought, and waited with bated breath for the circuit breaker to flip the power back on. It did.
The lights stayed on for a while—dimmer and more orangish-brown than white—before the fuse blew a second time. A total blackout. Then the power came on again. Off again. On again. And so it went, back and forth, with the lights burning at only half their normal amperage. What was wrong? During the brief but regular intervals of light, he managed, with considerable squinting and straining of the eyes, to pinpoint the trouble: the insect was trapped between two of the wires, a charred sliver of a corpse that continued to act as a conductor.
Pirx was far from being in a state of panic. True, his nerves were a trifle frayed, but then, when had he ever been completely relaxed since the launch count? The clock was barely legible. Fortunately, the instrument panel operated on its own lighting system, as did the radarscope. And there was just enough juice being supplied to keep the backup circuits from being tripped, but not quite enough to light the cabin.
Only four minutes left until engine cutoff. Well, that was one load off his mind—the thrust terminator was programmed to shut down the engine automatically. Suddenly an icy chill ran down his spine. How could the kill-switch work if the circuit was shorted?
For a second he couldn’t recollect whether they operated on the same circuit, whether these were the main fuses for the rocket’s entire power supply. Of course—they had to be. But what about the reactor? Surely the reactor must have had its own power network…
The reactor, yes, but not the automatic switch. He knew because he had set it himself. Okay, so now all he had to do was to shut off the power. Or maybe he should just sit back and give it a chance to work on its own.
The engineers had thought of everything-everything except what to do when a fly gets into your cabin, a fuse panel comes undamped, and you wind up with such a screwy short circuit!
Meanwhile the lights kept shorting out. Something had to be done about it. But what?
Simple. All he had to do was to flip the master switch located in the floor behind his seat. That would shut off all the main power circuits and trip the emergency system. Then all his worries would be over. Hm, he thought, not bad the way these buckets are rigged.
He wondered if Boerst would have been as quick on his feet. Probably, if not quicker… Yikes, only two minutes left! Not enough time for the maneuver! He sat up: he had clean forgotten about the others.
He closed his eyes in a moment of concentration.
“AMU-27 squadron leader Terraluna, calling JO-2 ditto JO-2. Reporting short circuit in control room. Will be necessary for me to postpone lunar insertion maneuver for temporary equatorial orbit—uh—indefinitely. Proceed to execute maneuver at previously designated time. Over.”
“JO-2 ditto to squadron leader Terraluna. Will commence joint lunar insertion maneuver for temporary equatorial orbit. You are nineteen minutes away from lunar landing. Good luck. Good luck. Out.”
Pirx hardly heard a word because in the meantime he had disconnected the radiophone cable, the air hose, and another small cable—his straps were already undone. No sooner had he made it to his feet than the kill-switch flashed a ruby-red. The cabin sprang briefly out of the dark, only to be plunged back into an orangish-brown blur. The engine cutoff had failed. The red signal light kept staring at him from out of the dark, imploringly. A buzzer sounded: the warning signal. The automatic terminator was inoperative. Fighting to keep his balance, Pirx jumped behind the contour couch.
The master switch was housed in a cassette inserted in the floor. The cassette turned out to be locked. Natch! He tried yanking on the lid; it wouldn’t give. The key. Where was the key?
There was no key. He tried forcing the lid again. No luck.
He sprang to his feet and stared blindly into the forward screens, where, its surface no longer silver but an alpine-snow white, there now loomed a gigantic Moon. Craters came into view, their long, serrated shadows creeping stealthily along the surface. The radar altimeter could be heard clicking steadily away. How long had it been operating? he wondered. Little green digits flashed in the dark, and he read off his present altitude: 21,000 kilometers.
The lights never stopped blinking as the circuit breaker continued to kick on and off. But now it was no longer pitch-dark when they went out; now the cabin’s interior was flooded with moonlight, an eerie, luminous glare that paled only imperceptibly beside the dim, soporific lighting inside the cabin.
The ship was now flying a perfectly straight course, gaining velocity as the residual acceleration reached 0.2g and the Moon’s gravitational pull increased. What to do? What to do?! He rushed back to the cassette and kicked it with his foot. The metal casing refused to budge.
Hold everything! My Gawd, how could he have been so stupid! All he had to do was to find a way to reach the other side of the blister. And there was a way! By the exit, at the point where the blister narrowed tunnellike to form a funnel ending with the air lock, there was a special lever painted a bright enamel red, beneath a plate that read for control systems emergency only. One switch of the lever was all that was needed to raise the glass cocoon a meter off the ground, leaving just enough clearance underneath. Once on the other side, all he had to do was to clear the lines, and with a piece of insulation…
He was at the handle in less than no time.
You moron! he thought, and he grabbed the metal handle and yanked until his shoulder joint cracked. The lever, its metal rod glistening with oil, was fully extended, but the blister hadn’t wiggled an inch. He stood staring at the glass bubble in stunned bewilderment, at the video screens ablaze with moonlight, at the blinking light overhead… He jerked on the lever again, even though it was out as far as it would go. Nothing.
The key! The key to the cassette! He fell flat on the floor and searched under the seat. There was nothing to be seen except the cribsheet.
The lights blinked; the circuit breaker switched. Now when the lights dimmed, the moonlight cast everything in a stark, skeleton-bone white.
It’s all over, he thought. Should he fire the ejection rocket and bail out in the encapsulated seat? No, it wouldn’t work; without any atmospheric drag, the parachute wouldn’t brake. “Help!”—he wanted to yell, but there was no one to whom he could call in distress: he was all alone. What to do?! There just had to be a way out!
He scrambled back to the emergency lever and almost tore his arm out of his socket, now so frantic he wanted to cry. It was all so dumb… Where was the key? And why the malfunction in the emergency lever? The altimeter. At one sweeping glance, he read off the displays: 9,500 kilometers. The saw-toothed ridge of Timocharis now stood out against the luminous background in sharp relief. He even had visions of where his ship was about to drill a hole in the pumice-covered rock. A loud crash, a blinding explosion, and…
During a brief interval of light, his frantically shifting gaze fell on the set of four copper wires. The little black speck spanning the cables—all that was left of the incinerated fly—was clearly discernible, even from a distance. Sticking out his neck and shoulder like a soccer goalie about to make a flying save, Pirx lunged forward with all his weight, and was almost knocked unconscious by the force of the collision. He bounced off the blister’s glass wall like an inflated inner tube and crumpled to the floor. The outer shell did not so much as jiggle. Struggling to his feet, panting, with a bleeding mouth, he got ready to make another flying lunge at the glass wall.
That’s when he happened to glance down.
The manual override. Designed to give rapid, full-thrust acceleration in the l0g range. Operated by direct mechanical control and capable of providing an emergency thrust lasting less than a second in duration.
But the greater the rate of acceleration, he suddenly realized, the faster his descent to the lunar surface. Or would it be? No, it would do just the opposite—it would have a braking effect! But wouldn’t the reaction be too short to act as a brake? The braking had to be continuous. So much for the override. Or was it?
He made a dive for the control stick, grabbing it on his way down, and pulled for all he was worth. Without the contour couch to cushion his impact, he could have sworn all his bones had been fractured when he hit the deck. Another pull on the stick, another powerful lurch. This time he landed on his head, and if it hadn’t been for his helmet’s foam-rubber liner, his skull would have been shattered.
The fuse panel started sizzling, the blinking suddenly stopped, and a soft and steady electric light lit up the cabin interior.
The two bursts of acceleration, fired in quick succession by manual control, had been enough to dislodge the minute sliver of carbon from between the wires, thus eliminating the short circuit once and for all. With the salty taste of blood in his mouth, Pirx made a diving leap for the couch, but instead of landing in it, sailed high up over the back and rammed his head into the ceiling, the blow softened only somewhat by his helmet.
Just as he was getting set to leap into the air, the now activated kill-switch cut off the rocket, and the last trace of gravitation disappeared. Propelled by its own momentum, the spacecraft was falling straight toward the rocky ruins of Timocharis.
He bounced off the ceiling, spit, and the bloody saliva floated next to him in a galaxy of silver-red bubbles. Frantically he twisted and turned and stretched out his arm toward the couch. For added momentum he emptied his pockets and threw their contents to the back of him, the force of which propelled him downward, gradually and gently. His fingers, now so taut that his tendons threatened to snap, at first barely scraped the nickel-plated tubing before getting a firm grip on the frame. He didn’t let go. Like an acrobat doing a handstand on parallel bars, he tucked in his head and pulled himself into an upright position, grabbed hold of the seat belt, and lowered himself down on it, at the same time wrapping the belt around his trunk. Not stopping to buckle the belt, he stuck the loose end between his teeth; it held. Now for the control levers and the braking pedals!
The altimeter showed 1,800 kilometers to lunar surface. Would he be able to brake in time? Impossible—not at a velocity of 45 kilometers per second. He would have to pull out of the nose dive by describing a steep turn. There was no other way.
Firing his pitch rockets, he accelerated to 2g, 3g, 4g. Not enough! Not nearly enough!
As he applied full thrust for the pullout recovery, the lunar surface, shimmering quicksilverlike on the video screen, and so like a permanent fixture until now, began to quiver and slowly subside, his contour couch squeaking under the increasing pressure of his body. The ship was going into a steep arc directly over the lunar surface, an arc with a radius large enough to compensate for the tremendous velocity. The control stick was pushed to the limit. Pressed against the spongy backrest, with his space suit not connected to the air compressor, he could feel the air being squeezed out of his lungs and his ribs being bent inward. He began seeing gray spots and waited for the blackout, his eyes riveted to the radar altimeter, which kept grinding out one set of digits after another: 990… 900… 840… 760…
He knew he was at maximum thrust, but he kept exerting pressure on the handgrip nonetheless. He was performing the tightest possible loop, yet kept on losing altitude as the digital values continued to drop—albeit at a slower rate—and he continued to find himself on the descending arm of the steep arc. Despite a paralysis of the head and eyeballs, he kept his eyes trained on the trajectometer.
As always when a space vehicle approached the danger zone of a celestial body, the trajectometer displayed not only the ship’s flight curve—along with its projected course, faintly indicated by a pulsating line—but also the convex profile of the Moon, over which the maneuver was being executed.
At one point the flight curve and lunar curve seemed to converge. But did they intersect? That was the question.
Intersect—no, though the peak of the curve definitely formed a tangent. So there was no way of predicting whether he would simply skim over the lunar surface—or slam right into it. The trajectometer operated with a margin of error of 7 to 8 kilometers, and Pirx could only guess whether his flight curve ran 3 kilometers above the boulders—or below.