Voyage

The two of them tried to plant the pole in the dust. But as hard as they pushed, the flagpole would only go six or eight inches into the ground, and Muldoon worried that the flag would fall over in front of the huge TV audience.

At last they got the pole steady, and backed away.

Muldoon set off on some more locomotion experiments.

He tried a slow-motion jog. His steps took him so high that time seemed to slow during each step. On Earth he would descend sixteen feet in the first second of a fall; here, he would fall only two. So he was suspended in each mid-stride, waiting to come down.

He started to evolve a better way of moving. He bent, and rocked from side to side as he ran. It was more of a lope than a run: push with one foot, shift your weight, land on the other.

He was breathing hard; he heard the hiss of water through the suit’s cooling system, the pipes that curled around his limbs and chest.

He felt buoyant, young. A line from an old novel floated into his mind: We are out of Mother Earth’s leading-strings now …

The capcom’s voice startled him.

‘Tranquillity Base, this is Houston. Could we get both of you on the camera for a minute please?’

Muldoon stumbled to a halt.

Armstrong had been erecting a panel of aluminum foil that he unrolled from a tube; the experiment was designed to trap particles emanating from the sun. ‘Say again, Houston.’

‘Rog. We’d like to get both of you in the field of view of the camera for a minute. Neil and Joe, the President of the United States is in his office now and would like to say a few words to you.’

The President? Goddamn it, I bet Neil knew about this.

He heard Armstrong say formally: ‘That would be an honor.’

‘Go ahead, Mr President. This is Houston. Over.’

Muldoon floated over to Armstrong and faced the TV camera.

Hello, Neil and Joe. I’m talking to you by telephone from the Oval Room at the White House. And this certainly has to be the most historic phone call ever made. I just can’t tell you how proud we all are of what you have achieved. For every American, this has to be the proudest moment of our lives, and for all people all over the world, I am sure they too join with Americans in recognizing what a feat this is. Because of what you have done, the heavens have become part of man’s world …

What Muldoon mostly felt as Nixon rambled on was impatience. He and Armstrong had little enough time here as it was – no more than two and a half hours for their single moonwalk – and every second had been choreographed, in the endless sims back in Houston, and detailed in the little spiral-bound checklists fixed to their cuffs. Nixon’s speech hadn’t been rehearsed in the simulations, though, and Muldoon felt a mounting anxiety as he thought ahead over the tasks they still had to complete. They would have to skip something. He could see them returning to Earth with fewer samples than had been anticipated, and maybe they would have to skip documenting them, and just grab what they could … The scientists wouldn’t be pleased.

He would like to have got a sample of one of those glittering fragments in the crater bottoms, or one of the crystals. There just wouldn’t be time.

Muldoon didn’t really care about the science, if truth be told. But he felt a gnawing anxiety about completing the checklist. Getting through your checklist was the way to get on another flight.

With these thoughts, some of the lightness he’d enjoyed earlier began to dissipate.

… For one priceless moment, in the whole history of man, all the people on this Earth are one. One in their pride in what you have done, and one in our prayers that you will return safely to Earth.

Armstrong responded: ‘Thank you, sir. It’s a great honor and privilege for us to be here, representing not only the United States but men of peace of all nations – and with interest and curiosity, and men with a vision for the future.’

And thank you very much. Now I want to pass you on briefly to a special guest I have here with me in the Oval Office today.

Muldoon thought, A guest? My God. Has he any idea of how much this call is costing?

And then familiar tones – that oddly clipped Bostonian accent – sounded in his headset, and Muldoon felt a response rising within him, a thrill deep and atavistic.

Hello, gentlemen. How are you today? I won’t take up your precious time on the Moon. I just want to quote to you what I said. to Congress, on May 25, 1961 – just eight short years ago …

‘Now is the time to take longer strides – time for a great new American enterprise – time for this nation to take on a clearly leading role in space achievement, which in many ways may hold the key to our future on Earth.

‘I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish …’

My God, Muldoon thought. Nixon hates Kennedy; everyone knows that. Muldoon wondered what calculations – PR, political, even geopolitical – lay behind Nixon letting old JFK back into the limelight now, today of all days.

It was hard to concentrate on Kennedy’s words.

Fifty feet from him the LM looked like a gaunt spider, twenty feet tall, resting there in the glaring sunlight. The Eagle was complex and delicate, a filmy construct of gold leaf and aluminum, the symmetry of the ascent stage spoiled by the bulbous fuel tank to the right. The craft bristled with antennae, docking targets, and reaction control thruster assemblies. He saw how dust had splashed up over the skirt of the descent stage’s engine, and the gold leaf which coated it. In the sunlight the LM looked fragile. And so it was, he knew, just a taut bubble of aluminum, shaved to the minimum weight by Grumman engineers. But here, on this small, static, delicate world, the LM didn’t seem at all out of place.

I want to tell you now how nervous I was that day, gentlemen. I wasn’t sure if I was right to ask that august body for such huge sums of money, indeed for a transformation of our national economy. But now that goal is accomplished, thanks to the courage of you, Neil and Joe, and so many of your colleagues, and the dedication of many skilled people all across our great county, in NASA and its contractor allies … Muldoon glanced uneasily at the mute TV camera on its tripod. He said ‘the goal is accomplished.’ He knew that on a hot July evening in Houston it was around ten forty. He wondered how many moonwalk parties would already be breaking up.

Maybe it really was just about footprints and flags after all.

But, back in Clear Lake, Jill would still be watching – wouldn’t she?

… Apollo has energized the American spirit, after a difficult decade at home and abroad. Now that we have reached the Moon, I believe we must not let our collective will dissipate. I believe we must look further. Here, at this moment of Apollo’s triumph, I would like to set my country a new challenge: to go further and farther than most of us have dreamed – to continue the building of our great ships, and to fly them onwards to Mars.

Mars?

The clipped voice was an insect whisper in his headset, remote and meaningless.

Maybe it was true what they whispered: that the bullets Kennedy had survived in Texas six years ago had damaged more than his body …

Standing silently, he saw now that the land curved, gently but noticeably, all the way to the horizon, and in every direction from him. It was a little like standing at the summit of a huge, gentle hill. He could actually see that he and Armstrong were two people standing on a ball floating in space. It was vertiginous, a kind of science-fiction feeling, something he’d never experienced on Earth.

… This will certainly be the most arduous journey since the great explorers set sail to map our own planet over three centuries ago: it is a journey which will take a new generation of heroes to a place so far away that the Earth itself will be diminished to a point of light, indistinguishable from the stars themselves … We will go to Mars because it is the most likely abode of life beyond our Earth. And we will make that world into a second Earth, and so secure the survival of humankind as a species for the indefinite future …

The Earth, floating above him, was huge, a ball, blue and complex; it was much more obviously a three-dimensional world than the Moon ever looked from home. He was aware of the sun, fat and low, its light slanting across this desolate place. Suddenly he got a sense of perspective of the distance he’d traveled, to come here: so far that the trinity of lights that had always dominated human awareness – Earth, Moon and sun – had moved around him in a complex dance, to these new relative positions in his sensorium.

And yet his sense of detachment was all but gone. He was as locked to Earth as if this was all just another sim at JSC. I guess you don’t throw off four billion years of evolution in a week.

He found himself wondering about his own future.

All his life, someone – some outside agency – had directed him toward goals. It had started with his father, and later – what a place to remember such a thing! – summer camp, where winning teams got turkey, and losers got beans. Then there had been the Academy, and the Air Force, and NASA …

He’d always been driven by a strong sense of purpose, a purpose that had brought him far – all the way to the Moon itself.

But now, his greatest goal was achieved.

He remembered how his mood had taken a dip, after returning from his Gemini flight. How tough was this new return going to be for him?

Kennedy had finished speaking. There was a silence that stretched awkwardly; Muldoon wondered if he should say something.

Armstrong said, ‘We’re honored to talk to you, sir.’