SPACE

The three astronauts went to bed early on the night of April 22, 1973. On April 23, they were wakened for breakfast at 0400, and Deke Slayton, with five other NASA officials, was surprised when Major Randy Claggett lifted his glass of orange juice and toasted: "To William Shakespeare, whose birthday we celebrate with a mighty bang." Claggett, the ex-football hero, profane, tough and make-believe illiterate, was always full of surprises.

Slayton helped the three dress and accompanied them to Complex 39, where a score of searchlights played on the waiting rocket and nearly 1,000,000 spectators gathered in the predawn to watch the flight.

Despite NASA's unhappiness with the inaccurate description "expedition to the dark side of the moon," that had become the popular designation, and more than 3000 newsmen and-women waited in and around the grandstand erected on the far side of the protective lagoons, five miles distant. Automatic cameras, emplaced in bunkers around the complex, would ensure excellent shots of the historic moment.

By elevator, the astronauts rode 340 feet into the air, walked across a bridge to the White Room and, with hardly a pause, proceeded directly to the command module Altair. Without ceremony, Flight Commander Claggett eased himself into the left-hand seat, and while he adjusted his bulky suit, Dr. Paul Linley awaited his turn, assuring Slayton, who had picked him for this flight, that he would surely bring back rock samples that would answer some of the questions about the moon's structure and, perhaps, its origin. Linley, a civilian geologist from the University of New Mexico, would be the first scientist--and the first black man--to walk on the moon. He slipped into the right-hand seat, after which Command Module Pilot John Pope eased himself into the one in the middle.

When the men were finally in place, strapped flat on their backs to the seats especially molded to their forms, the critical moment of the countdown arrived. At 00-00-00, there was a blinding flash of fire and the ground trembled as 28,000 gallons of water per second gushed forth to quench the flames and another 17,000 gallons protected the skin of the machine. From that deluge, the rocket began to rise.

Inside the capsule, the three astronauts barely felt the lift-off. Linley, who had not flown before, said, "Instruments say we're off," and Pope, busy with check sheets, tapped the geologist on the arm and nodded.

At that moment, when it was assured that Apollo 18 would be successfully airborne, control passed from Cape Canaveral, whose engineers had done their job, to Houston, where Mission Control had hundreds of experts prepared to feed information and instructions into the system:

Houston: All systems go.

Apollo: We're getting ready for jettison.

In less than three minutes, the huge stage one had discharged its obligation, lifting the entire burden of 6,300,000 pounds eight miles straight up. So Claggett watched as automatic switches--he had more than 600 above and about him--blew stage one away, allowing it to fall harmlessly into the Atlantic some miles offshore. With satisfaction, Pope noted that all events so far had adhered to his schedule.

The first moments of flight were extremely gentle, no more than a g and a half developing, but when Claggett ignited the five powerful engines of stage two, the rocket seemed to leap upward from an altitude of a mere eight miles to a majestic 112 and to a velocity of more than 15,000 miles an hour. The flight was on its way.

Then Claggett jettisoned stage two, with its five massive engines, and Apollo 18 was powered by only the single strong engine in stage three, the one that would be burned once to insert the vehicle into orbit around Earth and once more to thrust Apollo into its course to the moon, after which it, too, would be discarded. But, of course, the system as a whole would still have the smaller engines in the modules, and after stage three had been jettisoned, about three hours into the flight, those smaller rockets would take control until the landing capsule returned to Earth.

Now it would be a slow, methodical, totally supervised trip that Apollo would engage in for the next 60 hours. Claggett would play country music on his tape machine, Pope the symphonies of Beethoven when it came his turn. Linley monitored communications with Houston and took note of the N.C.A.A. basketball scores. On the second night, to coincide with prime-time television in the States, Linley activated the Altair's television camera and relayed to Earth a 50-minute program depicting life aboard the spacecraft.

The next day, as the moon loomed ahead, enormous in their small windows, they could identify areas where the earlier Apollos had landed, and they felt momentary remorse that they were not headed for any of the sites they had memorized as beginning astronauts. But when they swung around the edge of the moon and saw for the first time the strange and marvelous mountains awaiting them, they gasped with delight.

Flight plan called for them to make many orbits of the moon before actually descending, and in that waiting period, they talked with Hickory Lee in Houston:

Houston: Could you see any signs of previous landings?

Apollo: None. And we really searched.

Houston: That's hard to believe. When you drop to lower orbit, of course. . . .

Apollo: Our landing spot is in darkness now, but what we can see of the lighted area looks reassuring. Totally different from the Earth side. Many, many more craters.

Houston: We want you to make four sunlight passes.

Apollo: You can be sure we want to.

Houston: Any glitches?

Apollo: None whatever. Fingers crossed, but this has been a perfect mission so far.

There was a glitch. High in the clear air of the Rockies, astronomer Sam Cottage monitored the sun at the Sun Study Center in Boulder, Colorado, on the morning after lift-off and saw with interest that a sunspot big enough to see with the naked eye might be developing. His summary that day informed the world and the NASA scientists:

Region 419 produced several sub-flares. New spots are appearing in white light. Region exhibiting mixed polarities. Geomagnetic field likely to remain unsettled. Region likely to produce moderate flares.

•

But on the next day, as the astronauts were preparing their approach to the moon, Region 419 subsided dramatically.

However, Cottage could not sleep, and during the hours when Claggett and Linley were preparing their descent to the moon, he was alone in his workroom, reviewing the data. The more mathematics he applied to what was before him, the more apparent it became that if his theories were correct, Region 419 must soon erupt as a major flare.

He had nothing to work on except his correlations, but in the morning he carried them to the manager and said, "Statistically, everything would balance out if Four-nineteen did go bang."

"We're not gypsies telling fortunes."

"All right, disregard my figures. What do you think?"

"It's a troublesome region, but damn it, we don't have enough here to warrant an alert." And none was issued.

But on April 26, as the two astronauts were making their final preparations for a descent to the moon, Sam Cottage did not leave his watching post for lunch. A routine event was occurring on the sun that, though it involved no specific danger, did produce a period of maximum risk to the two men who would be walking on the moon. Region 419 was moving from the eastern half of the sun's visible surface to the western, and that made it triply threatening. First, because of solar rotation, the paths followed by energetic atomic particles thrown out by the sun are curved, so that those originating on the western half are more directly channeled toward Earth and the moon. Second, the travel time for deadly particles originating on the western half is much shorter than those coming from the eastern. Third, solar-flare particles reaching Earth or the moon from the western side are more energetic than those from the east.

The most threatening single position for a flare is 20 to 45 degrees west of the sun's central meridian, and that was the ominous area into which Region 419 now entered.

About the time that Sam Cottage was monitoring Region 419, Claggett and Linley were slipping through the chute that carried them into Landing Module Luna. After they had satisfied themselves that everything was in readiness, they signaled Pope that he could cast them loose, but he was so busy verifying the check lists that governed his solitary command of the capsule that he asked for more time: "I've got three more pages. I want this place to be locked up when you pull away."

"We want it, too," Claggett said over the intercom. "Something to come home to."

At the conclusion of his meticulous checking, Pope cried, "Randy, it's everything go. Contact Houston." So the word was given; the computers aloft and their mates in Houston concurred; and the Luna broke away to start its descent.

As the sun began to illuminate regions farther and farther into the hemisphere, Claggett and Linley could see a moon far different from the Earth side they had once studied so assiduously. Here there were no vast seas, no multitude of smooth-centered craters, no rills leading out in tantalizing patterns. This was a brutish moon composed of great mountain ranges, valleys perilously deep. The Earth side had been known for 20,000 years and mapped for 300. Grammar school children could make themselves familiar with their own side, but only scientists studying the Russian and American photographs could say that they knew much about Luna's chosen landing spot.

Skillfully, Claggett brought the lander right down the middle of the corridor--enough sun to throw shadows that identified every hillock--and as the long, delicate probes that dangled from the bottom of the landing pads reached down to touch the moon and alert the astronauts to turn off their power, lest they fly too hard onto the rocky soil, the final conversation with Houston took place:

Luna: Everything as ordered. God, this is different.

Houston: We read perfection. Soon now.

Luna: No signals from the probes. Could they be malfunctioning?

Houston: You're still well above the probe level. All's well.

Luna: [Claggett speaking] Too busy to talk now. Drifting to left. Too much.

Luna: [Linley speaking] No strain. Straighten up: dead ahead, I see it.

Luna: [Claggett speaking] I can't see a damned thing. We're tilted.

Luna: [Linley speaking] You are tilted. Left. Five degrees.

Luna: [Claggett speaking] I thought I was. There, that's better. Houston, I see now. All is copacetic.

Luna: [Linley speaking] Perfect landing.

Houston: Great job.

As gently as if he had been parking a large car at a supermarket, Claggett had brought the Luna to rest at the extreme far edge of the sun's rays. Ahead lay darkness, soon to be dazzling sunlight; behind lay the areas that had been bathed in sunlight but would later pass (continued on page 136) Space(continued from page 92) into the terrible cold and darkness of space, where no atmosphere reflected light.

Luna: We've had a close look through the windows. Same, only different.

Houston: You must get some shut-eye.

Luna: We want some.

Houston: All systems shut down?

Luna: All secured.

Houston: We'll waken you in seven hours. Egress in nine.

Luna: That's what we came for.

•

So eager was Sam Cottage to see what his sun was going to offer the morning of April 27 that he unlimbered his heliograph an hour before dawn, then spent his time nervously waiting for the great red disk to appear over the flatlands to the east. For about an hour after sunrise, it would be fruitless to take photographs, for the sun would be so low in the east that a camera would be unable to penetrate effectively the extreme thickness of atmosphere. Even so, he studied the sun through its blanket of haze to see whether or not any conspicuous event had happened overnight.

Against the possibility that he might have to issue an alert, he spent his time reviewing the data on radiation in The Rem [roentgen equivalent in man] Table.

When light filled the room, Cottage walked nervously about, stopping now and then to study the remarkable series of photographs taken in July 1959 showing several stages of one of the greatest solar flares ever recorded--a wild, tempestuous blotch. The flare would have generated. Cottage estimated, a total dose of something like 1000 rems as measured on the moon. More than enough to kill.

•

Randy Claggett's style was to be irreverent about everything--marriage, fatherhood, test piloting, engaging Russian Migs in Korea--but when he felt his heavy boot touch the surface of the moon and realized that he was standing on a portion of the universe that no one on Earth would ever see, not even with the most powerful telescope, he was overcome with the solemnity of the moment:

Luna: Nothing could prepare you for this moment. The photographs weren't even close. This is . . . it's staggering. An endless landscape of craters and boulders.

Houston: And not a dark side at all?

Luna: The sun shines brilliantly, but it's sure dark in spirit.

As soon as Linley joined him on the surface, a curious transformation occurred: Up till then, Claggett had been the skilled test pilot in command, but here among the rocks of a wildly unfamiliar terrain, the geologist assumed control, and he reminded Claggett that their first responsibility was to collect rocks immediately, lest they have to take off in a hurry. Placing the scientific instruments and doing the systematic sample collecting could come later.

Only when the emergency bags had been filled with rock samples and stowed aboard did the two men proceed to what seemed a miracle when it was flashed by means of the orbiting satellites to television watchers back on Earth: At an opening in the base of the lunar module, they opened a flap, activated a series of devices and stood back as a most bizarre creation started to emerge, like a chrysalis about to become a butterfly. It looked much like a frail shopping cart that had been run over in some truck accident, compacted and twisted, but as it came into sunlight, its various parts, which were spring-loaded, began to unfold of themselves: Four wheels mysteriously appeared, a steering handle, a tonneau with seats. Like a child's toy unfolding at Christmas, a complete moon rover materialized, with batteries strong enough to move it about for three days or 80 miles--whichever came first.

When the rover stood clear, the astronauts did not leap into it for a gambol across the moon; in fact, they ignored it as they went about the serious business of unloading and positioning the complex of scientific instruments that would make this journey fruitful for the next ten years. In each of the preceding Apollo missions, men had placed on the moon devices that were expected to send messages to Earth for up to a year, but those devices had been so beautifully constructed and with so many sophisticated bypasses if things went wrong that all of them still functioned long after their predicted death. "Sometimes we do things right," Claggett said as he em-placed the instrument that would measure the force of the solar wind.

"You seem to have the wires crossed," Hickory Lee cautioned from Houston. "Red to red."

"I had it ass backward," Claggett said, and Lee had to remind him, "We're working with an open mike."

When the eight scientific devices were placed and the antennas that would relay their findings were oriented so that the satellites could intercept their transmissions, the two men were ready to send test signals.

Houston: We read you loud and clear.

Luna: Voltages in order?

Houston: Could not be better.

Luna: We're going to rest fifteen minutes.'

Houston: You earned it.

Luna: Then we start on Expedition One. Seven miles to the reticulated crater.

Houston: Roger. Are you checking your dosimeters?

Luna: Regular.

After their rest, taken to avoid perspiration or heavy breathing that might consume too much oxygen, the two men climbed into the rover, with Linley at the controls:

Luna: Linley speaking. Please, someone, inform my uncle Dr. Gawain Butler, who would not allow me to drive his used Plymouth, that I am now chauffeuring a jalopy with a sticker price of ten million clams.

Houston: Obey all traffic signs.

This carried them to an interesting small crater, one whose flat central section was so reticulated, like a mud flat in August, that the astronauts had given it the name "the Giraffe Crater." When they climbed a small mound at its edge, Linley gasped with pleasure and informed Houston that it was even more exciting than they had supposed when studying photographs.

Luna: Magnificent. We have a whole new world here.

Houston: Better change that to moon.

Luna: Corrected. We're going down on foot to collect samples.

Houston: Too steep for the rover?

Luna: We think so.

Houston: Roger. We'll follow you with the television camera.

Luna: We're going left. To get those rocks that look yellowish.

It was truly miraculous. The two astronauts left the rover and descended gingerly into the crater, but as they went, technicians in Houston sent electronic commands to the television camera mounted on the side of the rover, and obediently, it followed the progress of the men. Its electrical impulses were (continued on page 173)Space(continued from page 136) dispatched by a special antenna on the rover to one of the waiting satellites, which reflected them to collecting stations at Honeysuckle in Australia and at Goldstone in California, where they were transformed into television pictures for commercial stations. And the linkage was so perfect that operators in Houston were able to point the camera and activate it more meticulously than a man could have done had he stayed in the flimsy rover.

•

At the Sun Study Center in Boulder, Sam Cottage turned the cranks that moved his heliograph into position, brought the hydrogen-alpha filter into the optics in order to obtain the most sensitive view of activity on the sun and waited for the great star to lose its redness so he could get a clear look at its face. When he did so, he saw that Region 419 had reached the precise spot from which it could create the maximum danger. But it remained quiescent. Sam consulted his charts to make an estimate of the size of the region and was surprised at his figure: Region 419 was now 63 times larger than the entire surface of Earth.

Before filing his report, he looked back to verify the astonishing size of the disturbance, and as he did so, he saw the area expand significantly. "Jesus, what's happening?"

He reached backward for his telephone but never found it, for his attention was riveted on that distant battleground on which primordial forces had reach a point of tension that could no longer be sustained. With one mighty surge, Region 419 exploded in titanic fury. It was no longer simply a threatening active region; it was one of the most violent explosions of the past 200 years.

"Oh, Jesus!" Cottage gasped, and while he fumbled for the phone, figures and delimitations galloped through his head: "Sun to moon, less than ninety-three-million miles. What we see now happened eight-point-thirty-three minutes ago. But radiation travels at speed of light, so it's already hit the moon. Oh, Jesus, those poor men! Rems? Five thousand, maybe six thousand total dose." And in the brief seconds it took for him to find the phone, two thoughts flashed across his mind: "What else might have happened during the eight minutes it took that flash to reach here?" and "God, God, please protect those men."

He spread the alarm, but by the time his superiors could alert NASA, two other observatories and three amateurs in the Houston area had already reported that a gigantic solar proton event was under way.

•

Houston: Luna, Altair, do you read me?

Altair: I read.

Houston: Why doesn't Luna answer? Altair, can you see Luna at this point

Altair: Negative.

Luna: [Breaking in] I read you, Houston.

Houston: There seems to have been an event on the sun. Have you checked your dosimeters?

Luna: Oh, oh!

Houston: We read your telemetry as very high.

Luna: So do we. Dosimeter is saturated.

Altair: Confirm. Very high.

Houston: We now have confirmation from different sources. Major solar event. Classification four-bright way over X-12 in X-ray flux.

Luna: What probable duration?

Houston: Cannot predict. Wait. Human Ecology says two days, three days.

Luna: [Claggett speaking] I think we may have a problem.

Houston: The drill is clear. Return to lunar module. Lift off soonest. Make rendezvous soonest.

Luna: We do not have data and time for lift-off. We do not have data and time for rendezvous.

Houston: Our computers will crank up and feed you. What is your E.T.A. back at lunar module?

Luna: Distance, seven miles; top speed, seven miles. Yield, one hour.

Houston: How long to button up?

Luna: Abandonin' gear, twenty minutes.

Houston: Abandon all gear. Luna, there is no panic, but speed essential.

Luna: Who's panickin'? We're climbin' out of a crater, rough goin'.

Houston: Manufacturer assures rover can make top speed eleven miles per hour.

Luna: And if we break down? What top speed walkin'?

Houston: Roger. Maintain safe speed.

Luna: We'll try nine.

Houston: We're informed nine was tested strenuously. Proved safe.

Luna: We'll try nine.

•

Now the sun reminded Earthlings of its terrible power, for it poured forth atomic particles and radiation at an appalling rate, sending them coursing through planetary space and bombarding every object they encountered. Wave after wave of solar-flare particles and high-energy radiation attacked Earth, but most of them were rejected by our protective atmosphere; however, enough did penetrate to create bizarre disturbances.

• In Northern New York, a power company found its protective current breakers activated by huge fluxes of electrical power coursing along its lines, coming from no detectable source to disrupt entire cities.

• An Air Force general, trying vainly to communicate with a base 1000 miles away, realized that the entire American defense system was impotent: "It Russia wanted to attack us at a moment of total confusion, this would be it." Then he smiled wanly: "Of course, their system would be as messed up as ours."

• A world-famous pigeon race between Ames, Iowa, and Chicago launched 1127 birds, with a likelihood, from past experiences, that more than 1000 would promptly find their way home. But since all magnetic fields were in chaos, only four made it, bedraggled, confused and six hours late.

In Houston, the knowing men in charge of Apollo 18 assembled quietly, aware of how powerless they were. The mission controller and Dr. Feldman, NASA's expert on radiation, looked at the dosimeter reports and shuddered. More than 5000 rems were striking the moon. Very calmly, the controller said, "Give me the bottom line."

Dr. Feldman ticked off on his fingers, "Highest reading we've had is five thousand eight hundred thirty rems," and a NASA scientist said, "Absolutely fatal," but Feldman continued his recital: "If, and I repeat if, five thousand eight hundred thirty strike a naked man, he's dead. But our men have the finest suits ever devised. Enormous protection. Plus their own clothes. Plus the most important aspect of all. It isn't radiation that might kill them. It's the outward flow of protons from the sun. And they will not reach the moon for another eleven minutes." He ticked off his last two points: "We rush our men into their moon lander, where they find more protection. Then we rocket them aloft to the orbiter, with its heavy shield."

Throwing both hands in the air, he shouted, "We can save those men!"

The controller summoned his three capsule commanders and said, "No fluctuation in voice. No hysteria at this end." To the hundreds gathering, he conveyed the same message: "I want all ideas and I want them quick. But only the CapComs are to speak with the astronauts."

Turning to the chief astronomers, he asked, "Could this have been predicted?"

"No," they said. "Closing months of a quiet cycle. It should not have happened."

The controller wanted to say, "Well, it did. Six thousand rems." But he knew he must betray neither anxiety nor irritation: "Now it's our job to get them home safe."

•

By the time Claggett and Linley had reached their rover and turned it around, they no longer bothered with their dosimeters, because once the reading passed the 1000-rem mark, any further data was irrelevant. They were in deep trouble and they knew it, but they did have a chance if they did everything right.

For nearly an hour, their rover crawled back toward the waiting lunar module, itself attacked by the solar outpouring, and the two men wanted to talk about their predicament but could think of nothing sensible to say. So they took refuge in trivialities: "Men have absorbed large doses of this stuff, haven't they, Linley?" The scientist replied, "Every day, in dentists' offices," and Claggett asked, "Do those lead blankets they throw over you do any good?" Linley said, "We could profit from a couple right now."

And then Houston heard raucous laughter coming from Luna. It was Linley: "Hey, Claggett! Did you see those medicals they threw at us last week? Said that a man with black skin had a better chance of repelling radiation than one with white skin. Hot diggity! At last it pays to be black."

Then Claggett's voice: "Move over, brother, so I can sit in your shadow."

•

Alone in the Altair, John Pope carefully shuffled his summary sheets until he came to one bearing the elegant printing he had learned at Annapolis-- RADIATION PRECAUTIONS--and when he had memorized his instructions to himself, he took down the massive volume of additional advice and went through each line, so that by the time his two companions reached their module, lie would be as prepared as any man could be. Like them, he felt no sense of panic, only the added responsibility of doing the right thing in an emergency.

Houston: Altair, have you cranked in the data we sent?

Altair: Affirmative.

Houston: You have the drill on turning the C.M. around so the ablative shield faces the sun?

Altair: Affirmative.

Houston: Execute immediately rendezvous has been established.

Altair: Will do.

Houston: What is your dosimeter reading now?

Altair: As before.

Houston: Excellent . . . your reading is much lower than Luna's. You're going to be all right.

Altair: All ready for rendezvous. Get them up here.

The CapCom, up to that point, had been one of the older astronauts, a man with a stable, reassuring voice, but the NASA command felt that it would be advisable to use in this critical situation someone with whom the men upstairs were especially familiar, and Hickory Lee took over:

HOUSTON: This is Hickory. All readings are good. [That was a lie; the dosimeter readings were terrifying. But it was not a lie; the prospects for an orderly rendezvous still existed.]

Luna: Good to hear that Tennessee voice. We can see the module. E.T.A. fifteen minutes.

Houston: I will read lift-off data as soon as you're inside. You don't have a pad available now, do you?

Luna: Negative. Pads not a high priority aboard this bone rattler.

Luna: Linley here. We have terrific rock samples. Will salvage.

Houston: Appreciated, but if transfer takes even one extra minute, abandon.

Luna: We will not abandon.

Houston: Neither would I. What's that? Who? [A pause] Luna, Dr. Feldman is here.

Houston: [Lee speaking again] Dr. Feldman asks, "Dr. Linley, do you feel nauseated?"

Luna: Affirmative.

Houston: Imperative you swallow spit.

Luna: Fresh out of spit. Send orange juice.

Houston: [Lee speaking] Dr. Feldman says, "Dr. Linley, keep your mouth moist."

Luna: Mouth! Be moist!

Mission Control in Houston had received, in the past hour, a flood of additional men rushing to emergency posts, each determined to get the two astronauts into the slightly better environment of the lunar module and headed for rendezvous with Altair. But when they saw the shocking data from the dosimeters, they could not be sanguine; this was going to be a tough ride, a very tough ride.

Houston: Park the rover close to the module.

Luna: Roger.

Houston: Inform me the moment Claggett steps into the module. I will start reading data for check. Nothing is to be done without full check.

Luna: I have always been one of the world's most careful checkers. Call me Chicken Claggett.

Houston: Give me the word.

As soon as Linley stopped the rover, Claggett dashed for the module, climbed in and started taking down the instructions Hickory Lee was transmitting. Since NASA could not wait for an ideal lift-off time, when Altair would be in maximum position to achieve rendezvous, schedules had to be improvised for second best, and when Linley saw that his commander would be occupied for some minutes, he welcomed the opportunity to return to the rover to rescue the precious cargo he had collected at the reticulated crater. He had been sent to the moon to collect rocks and he proposed to deliver them, but as he heaved aboard the second batch, he seemed to tremble and reach for a handhold that was not there.

Luna: I think Dr. Linley has fainted.

Houston: Inside the module or out?

Luna: Halfway in.

Houston: Drag him in, secure all and lift off immediately.

Luna: I have only partial data. He's in. You can do wonders in one-sixth gravity.

Houston: Lift off immediately.

Luna: I am using runway oh three nine. Ain't a hell of a lot of traffic on it.

Houston: Have you completed your check? And Linley's?

Luna: Shipshape.

Houston: It's go.

Luna: You ready up there, Altair?

Altair: Three orbits should do it.

Luna: Here we come.

And then, as Pope watched and the world listened, Randy Claggett. working alone, lifted the lunar module off the surface of the moon and brought it 600 feet into space.

Houston: All readings correct. One hell of a job, Randy.

Luna: I feel faint.

Houston: Not now, Randy. Not now. You dare not.

Luna: I....

Houston: Listen, Randy. Hickory here. Hold the controls very tight.

LUNA: It's no good, Houston. I....

Houston: Colonel Claggett, hold tight. You must not let go. You must not let go.

Luna: [A long silence]

•

John Pope stared at the module through his sextant, saw it waver, turn on its side, skid through space and descend toward the moon with fatal speed.

Houston: Hold on, Randy. You must not let go. Randy, you must not let go. Randy. . . .

Altair: Luna has crashed.

Houston: Location?

Altair: East of landing. Mountains.

Houston: Damage?

Altair: Obliterated.

Houston: This is Hickory. Altair, climb to orbit.

Altair: Negative. I must stay low to check.

Houston: I'm talking with Dr. Feldman. He asks, "Is your voice sort of drying up?"

Altair: Obliterated. My God, they were obliterated.

Houston: Hickory here. Altair, you must ascend to orbit. You are wasting fuel.

Altair: I will not leave until I see where they are.

Houston: You've already told us. East of landing. Mountains.

Altair: I will not leave them.

Houston: I think he's turned off his mike. John, John, this is Hickory.

It's imperative that you proceed to orbit and prepare to ignite engine. John, John, this is Hickory.

•

For two orbits, John Pope flew alone through the intense radiation being poured out by the errant sun, and each time he headed directly toward the sun, he realized the heavy dosage he must be absorbing, for his dosimeter was running wild; but when he slipped behind the moon, putting that heavy body between himself and the sun, he knew that he was reasonably safe from the extreme radiation.

On each pass, he stared for as long as he could at the site of the crash, and though he was at an altitude from which not much could be seen clearly, it was nevertheless obvious that the astronauts' suits had been ripped by the crash and that death must have been more or less instantaneous.

How different death is here. No worms to eat the body: no moisture to corrupt. A thousand years from now, there they'll be: the first, the only. When wanderers come from the other galaxies, there our two will be. immaculate, unburied, waiting for the resurrection, all parts intact.

In hurried consultations, NASA agreed that they would explain those two orbits of silence as a radio blackout caused by the sun flare, which had now reached catastrophic proportions. Astronomers all across the world were focused on it, and scores of photographs were showing television viewers just how titanic the explosion had been, so that John Pope's temporary silence would not be construed as anything untoward. Without discernible agitation, Houston asked all its stations to try to make direct contact with Pope, and a welter of international voices sped toward the drifting Altair. Pope listened dully.

•

Altair: Luna crash confirmed. They bought the ranch.

Houston: Any possibility of survivors?

Altair: Negative. Luna completely fractured.

Houston: Hickory speaking. John, we want you to go immediately to orbit.

Altair: Roger. Wilco.

Houston: John, during the blackout we calculated every mile of your way home. It looks good.

Altair: I'm ready.

Houston: It will be obligatory for you to get some sleep. Will you need sedatives?

Altair: Negative. Negative.

Houston: Can you stay alert for the next six hours?

Altair: Affirmative. Six days if we have to.

Houston: Six days you'll be in a feather bed. Now, John. Do you read me clear?

Altair: Affirmative.

Houston: And you understand the burn sequence?

Altair: Affirmative. Repeat, my mind is clear. I comprehend.

Houston: You're going to have to do everything just right. Exactly on the times we give.

Altair: I intend to.

Houston: And if there is anything you do not understand. . . .

Altair: Lay off, Hickory. I intend to get this bucket safely home. You take it easy. I'll take it easy.

Houston: God bless you, Moonshiner. Bring it down.

Altair: I intend to.

As methodically as if he were in the 17th hour of a familiar simulation, Pope ran through his check lists, took note of his fuel supplies and of when the firings were to be made to correct his course so that he would enter Earth's domain correctly. When all was secure, so far as he could control, he said quietly to Houston: "I think it's go all the way," and at the signal, he fired the rockets that inserted him into the orbit that would carry him the 238,850 miles back to the safety of the Pacific Ocean.

He now faced some 80 hours of loneliness, and from the left-hand seat, the capsule seemed enormous: he was surprised that anyone had ever felt it to he cramped. Aware that he had been motionless for a long time while Claggett and Linley had been active on the moon, he began to worry about his legs, and for two hours, he banged away on the newly provided Exer-Genie, which produced a real sweat.

He then turned on his tape, listening to Beethoven's joyous Seventh, but, remembering how Claggett had objected to what he called spaghetti music, he found it distasteful. Instead, he routed out some of Claggett's tapes and listened to hillbillies singing D-I-V-O-R-C-E, which not even his longing to see Claggett again could make palatable. When CapCom Ed Cater came on from Houston to ask if he wanted to hear the news, he said, curtly, "No!" so Cater said that Dr. Feldman wished to ask a few questions.

Altair: Put him on.

Houston: Dr. Feldman asks, "Are you experiencing any dizziness?"

Altair: Negative.

Houston: "Any excessive dryness in the throat? Any spots in the eyes?"

Altair: Negative.

Houston: "Any blood in the urine?"

Altair: Who looks?

Houston: Feldman says, "I do. And I want you to. Report as soon as you check."

Altair: Will comply.

Houston: This is Hickory. You're doing just fine. But we want you to sleep regularly, John. We want you to listen to the news.

Altair: Hey, knock it off. I'm not depressed. There's nothing wrong with me.

Houston: For sure there isn't, John. But you ate nothing yesterday.

Altair: I was vomiting.

Houston: You refused to listen to the news. You cut Cater off.

Altair: I would like to talk with Cater. I always like to talk with Cater.

Houston: Cater here. We're not kidding, John. Thirty-six hours from now, you have three men's work to do. When you give me the word, I want to go over four special check lists with you.

Altair: You mean one-man emergency re-entry?

Houston: It could be a little tricky, you know.

Altair: I figured that out a year ago. I have it programed on my papers.

Houston: You really are a straight arrow. But we can't just let you drift along up there for all these hours . . . well . . . alone.

Altair: Plans called for me to be alone over the moon for about this length of time.

Houston: Roger, but things were different then.

Altair: They sure were. Excuse me.

•

It seemed as if the entire nation and much of the rest of the world were watching as John Pope prepared to bring his Altair back to Earth. Prayers were said and cartoonists hailed his solitary effort; television provided meaningful analyses of his situation, and various older astronauts appeared on the tube to share their estimates of what the real danger points would be. All agreed that a practiced hand like John Pope, who had tested scores of experimental planes and engaged the enemy in combat over Korea, was not likely to panic at the necessity of doing three men's work. The highlight of the return trip came on the last full day, when Hickory Lee was serving as CapCom:

Houston: Altair, our double-domers have come up with something everyone here thinks has merit.

Altair: I'm listening.

Houston: They think it would be good for the nation--and for you, too--if you turned on your television camera and let the people see what you're doing.

Altair: I wouldn't want to leave the controls and move around.

Houston: No, no! Fixed locus. [A long pause] It was our unanimous opinion. . . .

Altair: You suggesting this to keep my mind occupied?

Houston: Yes, I recommended it. Strongly.

Altair: What could I say on television?

Houston: You have a thousand things to say. Read your emergency notes. Let them see.

Altair: The hours pass very slowly. They are very heavy. [His voice sounded weak and hollow]

Houston: That was our guess. Altair, set up the camera. Make some notes. Get your ideas under control and in forty minutes we go.

Altair: Roger.

•

At nine o'clock on the night of April 30, prior to the time when Pope would make an important course correction, he turned on the television. The camera did not reveal his full face, but it did display most of the capsule, especially the welter of switches and devices that confronted him.

He could not bring himself to use the pronoun I, so he fell naturally into the we, and that produced a riveting effect: "We are bringing this great spacecraft back to Earth after an abbreviated visit to the other side of the moon." It was clear to everyone who saw the missing seats whom he meant by we.

"Dr. Linley should be in the right-hand seat, over there. And our commander, Randy Claggett, would be riding in the middle seat. He brought us to the moon. It was my job to bring us back."

Then came the most dramatic segment: "When we lifted off from Cape Canaveral, our spacecraft--this one and the one going down to the moon itself-- weighed seventeen tons empty. We carried thirty-five tons of fuel just for those two little machines. We had to know where forty miles of electrical wire ran, in and out. We had to memorize how twenty-nine different systems worked, what every one of them did and how to repair each of them. Look: we had six hundred eighty-nine separate switches to flick off and on. We had fifty engines to speed us through space. And we had, I believe, more than four thousand pages of instructions we had to memorize, more or less. No one, I'm sure, could memorize that much."

Although it was not looking at his features, the camera gave an excellent portrait of an astronaut: smallish; slim; shirt sleeves; short hair; strong, firmly set jaw that flexed now and then, showing muscles; small hands that moved masterfully; a sense of competence, a startling command of detail: "I have a diagram here of the spacecraft as it was when we started out on what will be a two-hundred-hour voyage. Here it is, three hundred sixty-three feet in the air. In the first two minutes, we threw away the entire stage one. Stage two was finished after eight minutes, and down it went. Stage three, which sent us off on our way to the moon, lasted for about two hours; then we got rid of it. The lunar module had two parts, one we left on the moon on purpose. The other was supposed to rejoin us, but, as you know, it didn't. If it had, we would've dropped it, too.

"So that leaves us only these two small parts. One is the service module, which carries all the things that keep us going, and tomorrow, we'll throw that away. That'll leave this little portion I'm sitting in, and we'll fly it down through the atmosphere backward to fight off the heat. It will be twenty-five thousand degrees outside tomorrow, but we won't even feel it in here.

"And then, a drogue parachute will open, a little one, and it will pull out a bigger one, and we'll land west of Hawaii like a sea gull coming home at the end of the day, and ships will be waiting there to greet us."

He then turned and looked directly into the camera. "Mankind was born of matter that accreted in space. We've seen dramatically these past few days how things far oft in space can affect us deeply. We were meant to be in space, to wrestle with it, to probe its secrets."

He turned back to his console with its 689 separate switches and he let the camera run, ignoring it as he went about his work, and after a while on Earth, they stopped transmitting.

When the time came for his stripped-down craft to plunge into the atmosphere at the tremendous speed generated by a return from outer space, it would have to hit that semisolid layer upon which all life on Earth depends at exactly the right angle. Pope checked the approach once more: "No steeper than seven-point-three degrees or we burn up. No shallower than five-point-five degrees or we bounce off. This means hitting a corridor twenty-seven miles in diameter at the end of two hundred thirty-eight thousand miles at a speed of better than twenty-four thousand mph. Let's hope our computer's working."

With about 90 minutes before scheduled splashdown, he consulted his computer and fired rockets briefly to make the final small correction in his orbit. When the computer confirmed that his capsule had responded correctly, he activated explosive devices that blew off the service module--blew it right off into space, where it would burn up as it entered the atmosphere. That left him without any support system, any large supply of fuel, any of the instruments he would require for extended flight. He was alone and almost powerless in a speeding vehicle heading for near destruction.

He had rockets left for one lifesaving maneuver: He could turn the capsule around so that it flew backward, presenting the big curved end with the ablative material to the incredible heat.

Houston: Lee here. You never looked better, Moonshiner.

Altair: Things going so well I've got my fingers crossed.

Houston: This is your day, Moonshiner. Bring her down.

Altair: I intend to.

With quiet confidence, he slammed into the atmosphere, and even though he had been warned many times that it would be tougher than Gemini, he could scarcely believe it when it happened. Great flames engulfed the capsule, wiping out the sky. Huge chunks of incandescent material, 25,000 degrees hot, roared past his window, reveling in the oxygen they were finding for their flames. More colors than a child has in a crayon box flashed past; at one break in the tremendous fireworks he caught a glimpse of his trail, and he calculated that it must be flaming behind him for 500 miles.

It was impossible to tell Houston of the great fire. The heat was so intense that all radio communication was blacked out: it was the flaming entry that astronauts had to make alone, and the flakes of ablated material became so thick that he felt sure that everything was going to burn up. but the interior temperature did not rise one degree.

The flames stopped. He could feel the gs slacking off as the capsule was braked, and when he activated the drogue parachute, he felt with satisfaction and, almost, joy its first sharp grip.

U.S.S. Tulagi: We have you in sight, Altair. Three good chutes.

Altair: Quite a reception committee you arranged. All the Roman candles.

U.S.S. Tulagi: Looks like you're going to splash down about six tenths of a nautical mile away. Perfect landing.

Altair: That's what I intended.

"Randy Claggett's heavy boot touched the moon's surface at a spot no one on Earth would ever see."

"Houston: Abandon all gear, Luna. Return to module. No panic, but speed essential."