Edward M. Lerner - Moonstruck
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2024-12-23
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- Prologue
PROLOGUE
"T minus five minutes, and holding."
It wasn't even ten in the morning, but the day was already hot. Kyle Gustafson squirted another dollop of
sunscreen into his palm, then rubbed his hands together. Smearing it over his face and neck, he
grimaced: he reeked of coconut oil. He made a mental note to avoid all open flames until he showered.
Kyle had a Scottish-American mother and a Swedish-American father, a combination that Dad called
industrial-strength WASP. He didn't belong below the forty-fifth parallel, let alone outside beneath Cape
Canaveral's summer, subtropical sun—but he never missed an opportunity to witness a launch. His job
helped: who better than the presidential science advisor to escort visiting foreign dignitaries to Kennedy
Space Center?
"You could wear a hat, my friend."
I look really stupid in hats, Kyle thought. Turning toward his Russian counterpart, he suppressed that
answer as impolitic. Instead, he changed the subject. "Sorry for the delay, Sergei. The hold is built into
the schedule to allow time for responding to minor glitches."
"T minus five minutes, and holding."
His guest said nothing. Sergei Denisovich Arbatov was tall, wiry, and tanned. He'd been born and raised
in the Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula once popularly called the Russian Riviera. That nickname had
gone out of vogue when the USSR self-destructed, and an independent Ukraine had made it clear that
ethnic Russians were no longer welcome. In 1992, Sergei had moved his family to Moscow, where he'd
moved up rapidly in the new, democratic government. It wasn't clear to Kyle how Sergei avoided the
Muscovite's traditional pallor—unless it was by finagling trips to Florida.
"T minus five minutes, and counting."
The single-word change in the announcement made Kyle's pulse race. Across the plain from their
vantage point at the VIP launch viewing area, Atlantis shimmered through the rising waves of heated air.
The shuttle on Launch Pad 39B stood 184 feet tall, the dartlike body of the orbiter dwarfed by the solid
rocket boosters and external fuel tank to which it was attached. All but the tank were white; the
expendable metal tank, once also painted white, was now left its natural rust color to reduce takeoff
weight by 750 pounds.
"T minus four minutes, thirty seconds, and counting."
Kyle continued his standard briefing. "The gross weight of the shuttle at launch is about 4.5 million
pounds, Sergei. Impressive, don't you think?"
"Apollo/Saturn V weighed a half again more." The gray-haired Russian smiled sadly. "We never made it
to the moon, and you Americans have forgotten how. I don't know who disappoints me more."
Kyle had been thirteen the night of the first moon landing. Afterward, he'd lain awake all night,
scheming how he, too, would sometime, somehow, make a giant leap for mankind. The idealist in him
still shared Arbatov's regrets. Many days, only that boy's dream sustained Kyle through Washington's
game-playing and inanity. Someday, he told himself, he would make it happen.
Someday seemed never to get closer.
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- Prologue
"T minus four minutes, and counting."
Nervously, Kyle ran his fingers through hair once flame-red. Age had banked the fire with ashes, for a
net effect beginning to approach salmon. Too late, he remembered the sunscreen that coated his hands.
"We'll go back, Sergei," he answered softly, speaking really to himself. "Men will walk again on the
moon. Will visit other worlds, too." He shook off the sudden gloom. "First, though, we've got a satellite
to launch."
"T minus three minutes, ten seconds, and counting." Loudspeakers all around them blared the
announcement.
The Earth's atmosphere is effectively opaque to gamma radiation. In 1991, to begin a whole new era in
astronomy, Atlantis had delivered the Gamma Ray Observatory to low Earth orbit. After years of
spectacular success, the GRO had had one too many gyroscopes fail. NASA had deorbited it in 2000, in
a spectacular but controlled Pacific Ocean crash.
Now another Atlantis crew was ready to deploy GRO's replacement. Major Les Griffiths, the mission
commander, had proposed that the mission badges on the crew's flight suits read, "Your full-spectrum
delivery service." The suggestion was rejected as too flippant. A mere three missions into the post-
Columbia resumption of shuttle flights, American nerves remained raw.
"Da." Arbatov turned to the distant shuttle. He sounded skeptical. "Then let us watch."
The remaining minutes passed with glacial slowness. Finally, a brilliant spark flashed beneath Atlantis.
Golden flames lashed at 300,000 gallons of water in the giant heat/sound-suppression trench beside the
launch pad, hiding the shuttle in a sudden cloud of steam. Kyle's heart, as always, skipped a beat,
anxious for the top of the shuttle to emerge from the fog. A wall of sound more felt than heard washed
over them. Faster than he could ever believe possible, no matter how often he saw it, the shuttle shot
skyward on a column of fire and smoke. Chase planes in pursuit, it angled eastward and headed out over
the ocean. The sound receded to a rumble as he shaded his eyes to watch.
"Kyle!"
The American reluctantly returned his attention to his guest. Arbatov still stared at the disappearing
spacecraft, one of the mission-frequency portable radios that Kyle's position had allowed him to
commandeer pressed tightly to his ear. Kyle's own radio, turned off, hung from his wrist.
"Nyet, nyet, nyet!" shouted the Russian.
The presidential advisor snapped on his own radio. "Roger that," said the pilot. "Abort order
acknowledged." The hypercalm, hypercrisp words made Kyle's blood run cold.
A speck atop a distant flame, the shuttle continued its climb. The far-off flame suddenly dimmed; the
three main engines had been extinguished. What the hell was happening? "Shutdown sequence
complete. Pressure in the ET"—external tank—"still rising. Jettisoning tank and SRBs." Unseen
explosive bolts severed the manned orbiter from the external tank; freed from the massive orbiter, the
tank and its still-attached, nonextinguishable, solid-fuel rocket boosters quickly shot clear. The manned
orbiter coasted after them, for the moment, on momentum.
Clutching their radios, Kyle and his guest leaned together for reassurance. "Pressure still increasing."
Light glinted mockingly off the sun-tracking Astronaut Memorial, the granite monolith engraved with
the names of astronauts killed in the line of duty. It seemed all too likely that the list was about to grow
by five more names.
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- Prologue
"Pressure nearing critical." He recognized the voice from Mission Control. "Report status."
What pressure? In the ET? Was it about to blow? Two Sea-Air Rescue choppers thundered overhead as
he did a quick calculation. The ET must still contain at least 250,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen!
"Beginning OMS burn."
The distant speck regrew a flame—had the orbital-maneuvering-system engines ever been fired before
inside the atmosphere?—and began banking toward the coast. Unaided by SRBs, its main engines
unusable without the ET, the orbiter seemed to lumber. Seemed mortally wounded. "Suggest my escorts
make tracks."
"Pressure at critical. Crit plus ten. Crit plus twenty. Twenty-three. Twenty-four."
An enormous fireball blossomed above the escaping orbiter. From miles away, Kyle saw the craft
stagger as the shock wave struck. "Tell Beth that I love her." The distant flame pinwheeled as Atlantis
began to tumble. Moments later, the roar and the shock wave of the blast reached the Cape, whipping
Kyle and Sergei with a sudden gale of sand and grit. The distant spark extinguished as safety circuits
shut down the tumbling craft's rocket engines.
The orbiter began its long plunge to the sea, with both chase planes diving futilely after it.
Like its mythical namesake, the orbiter Atlantis slipped beneath the silent and uncaring waves to meet its
fate.
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Contents
Framed
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- Chapter 1
GIFT HORSE
CHAPTER 1
Without warning, the Toyota pickup swerved in front of Kyle. He tapped his brakes lightly—this near
the I-66 exit to the Beltway, such maneuvers were hardly unexpected—and gave a pro forma honk. The
yahoo in the pickup responded with the traditional one-fingered salute. The truck's rear bumper bore the
message: Have comments about my driving? Email: biteme@whogivesashit.org.
Such is the state of discourse in the nation's capital.
Sighing, Kyle turned up his radio for the semihourly news summary. There was no preview of this
morning's hearing. That was fine with him: he'd never learned to speak in sound bites. If the session
made tomorrow's Washington Post, his testimony might rate a full paragraph of synopsis.
The good news was today's topic wasn't the Atlantis.
Reliving the disaster in his dreams was hard enough; the science advisor's presence had also become de
rigueur for every anti-NASA representative or senator who wanted to use the disaster to justify ending
the manned space program. Challenger, Columbia, and now Atlantis . . . after three shuttle catastrophes,
they spoke for much of the country. By comparison, today's session about technology for improved
enforcement of the Clean Air Act would be positively benign.
As traffic crept forward, he tried to use the time to further prepare for the senatorial grilling. He knew
the types of questions his boss would have posed to ready him: What would he volunteer in his opening
statement? What information needed to be metered out in digestible chunks? Whose home district had a
contractor who'd want to bid on the program? Who was likely to leave the session early for other
hearings? All the wrong questions, of course, when Kyle wanted to talk about remote-sensing
technology and computing loads. There was too little science in the job of presidential science advisor.
In any event, he had to swing by his basement cranny in the OEOB for last-minute instructions. He
turned off his radio, which was in any event unable to compete with the bass booming from the sport-ute
in the next lane.
The Old Executive Office Building was as far as Kyle got that day—or the next one. About the time he'd
traded witticisms with the driver of the Toyota pickup, the emissaries of the Galactic Commonwealth
had announced their imminent arrival on Earth by interrupting the TV broadcast of A.M. America.
* * *
The White House situation room held the humidity and stench of too many occupants. Men and women
alike had lost their jackets; abandoned neckties were strewn about like oversized, Technicolor Christmas
tinsel. Notepad computers vied for desk space with pizza boxes, burger wrappers, and soda cans.
In clusters of two and three, the crisis team muttered in urgent consultation. A few junior staffers sat
exiled in the corners, glued to the TV monitors. Everything was being taped, but everyone wanted to see
the aliens' broadcasts live. Watching a new message, even if it differed not a whit from the last twenty,
provided momentary diversion from the many uncertainties.
Neither Kyle's PalmPilot nor the remaining pizza had wisdom to offer. He looked up at the entry of Britt
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- Chapter 1
Arledge, White House chief of staff and Kyle's boss and mentor. The President's senior aide could have
been a poster child for patricians: tall and trim, with chiseled features, icy blue eyes, a furrowed brow,
and a full head of silver hair. Within the politico's exterior sat a brilliant, if wholly unscientific, mind.
Arledge's forte was recognizing other people's strengths, and building the right team for tackling any
problem.
Kyle wondered whether his boss's legendary insight extended to the Galactics.
"So what have we got?"
He parted a path for them through the crowded room to the whiteboard where he'd already summarized
the data. The list was short. "Not much, but what we do have is amazing.
"The moon now has its own satellite, and it's two-plus miles across. Not one observatory saw it
approaching. Once the broadcasts started and people looked for it, though, there it was."
Arledge had raised an eyebrow at the object's size. The NASA-led international space station, two orders
of magnitude smaller, was still only half built. "But they can see it now."
Kyle nodded. "It's big enough even for decently equipped amateur astronomers to spot." Far better views
would be available once STSI, the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, finished computer
enhancement of various images. Too bad the supersensitive instruments on the Hubble Space Telescope
would be struck blind if it looked so close to the moon. "To no one's great surprise, it doesn't look like
anything we've ever seen. Or ever built. The way that it simply appeared suggests teleportation or
subspace tunneling or some other mode of travel whose underlying physics we can't begin to
understand."
"What else?"
"You've seen the broadcasts, obviously." At Britt's shrug, Kyle continued. "That's a pretty alien-looking
alien. Also, White Sands, Wallops, Jodrell Bank, and Arecibo all confirm direct receipt from the moon
of the signal that keeps preempting network broadcasts. Overriding network satellite feed, to be precise.
"So far, that's it. I suspect we'll know a lot more soon."
"Commercial," called one of the exiles.
At the burst of typing that announced redirection of the signal, everyone turned forward to the projection
screen. A famous pitchman vanished from the display almost so quickly as to be subliminal (it was
enough to make Kyle think of Jell-O), to be replaced with the increasingly familiar visage of the
Galactic spokesman. No one could read the expression on the alien's face, not that anyone knew that the
aliens provided such visual cues, but Kyle found himself liking the creature. What wonderful wit and
whimsy to present their announcements only during the commercial breaks.
"Greetings to the people of Earth," began his(?) message. "I am H'ffl. As the ambassador of the Galactic
Commonwealth to your planet, the beautiful world of which we were made aware by your many radio
transmissions, I am pleased to announce the arrival of our embassy expedition. We come in peace and
fellowship."
Kyle studied the alien's image as familiar words repeated. The creature was vaguely centaurian in
appearance: six-limbed, with four legs and two arms; one-headed; bilaterally symmetric.
Any resemblance to humans or horses stopped there. His skin was lizardlike: faintly greenish, hairless,
and scaled. The legs ended in three-sectioned hooves; the arms in three-fingered claws better suited to
fighting than to making or manipulating tools. A wholly unhorselike tail—long, muscular, and
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- Chapter 1
bifurcated, with both halves prehensile—appeared to provide counterbalance to the elongated torso. The
head had four pairs of eyes, with a vertical pair set every ninety degrees for 360-degree stereoscopic
vision. A motionless mouth and three vertically colinear nostrils appeared directly in the torso. The best
guess was that H'ffl both spoke and heard through tympanic membranes atop the head.
"Our starship has assumed orbit around your moon. Two days from today, at noon Eastern Standard
Time, a landing craft will arrive at Reagan National Airport in Washington, DC."
* * *
The control-tower radar at Reagan National tracked the spacecraft from well off the Atlantic coast to
touchdown. The blip was enormous: the "landing craft" was larger than an Air Force C-5 cargo carrier.
(That heavy-lift air transport had been dubbed the "Galaxy" . . . How ironic, Kyle thought.) Fighters
scrambled from Andrews AFB reported a lifting-body configuration: a flattened lower surface in lieu of
wings. The turbulence behind the spacecraft, visible to weather radars, suggested powered descent.
The spacecraft swooped into sight, following the twists of the Potomac River as agilely as a radio-
controlled model plane. The Air Force officer to Kyle's right scowled. "What's the matter, Colonel?
You'd rather they fly over the city?"
"I'd rather that their ship wasn't so maneuverable."
Comparing capabilities? Kyle recalled the enormity of the mother ship in lunar orbit, and stifled a laugh.
Civil air traffic had been diverted to Dulles International; the Galactic vessel shot arrowlike to the center
of the deserted field, settling onto the X of two intersecting runways. A mighty cheer arose from the
throng that nothing short of martial law might have kept away. The shouts faded into an awkward hush
as thousands realized that nothing was happening.
Kyle hurried to the tower elevator, descending to join the coterie of welcoming dignitaries. They were
already boarding the limos that would drive them to the Galactics' vessel. He wound up in the last car,
between a deputy undersecretary of state and an aide to the national security advisor. The woman from
Foggy Bottom studied papers from her briefcase.
Stepping from the car, Kyle obtained some new data: the concrete beneath the landing legs of the
spacecraft was broken. That thing was heavy. The shout of greeting must have drowned out the report of
the runway cracking.
The welcoming party formed two concentric arcs facing the spacecraft, heavy hitters up front, aides and
adjutants in back. Kyle took a spot in the second tier, vaguely pleased with his position: his craning at
the ship was less obtrusive this way.
Away from the crowd, only the creaks and groans of the ship cooling down from the heat of reentry
broke the silence. The sun beat down unmercifully. Kyle tried to memorize details of the ship—shape
and proportion, aerodynamic control surfaces, view ports, thrusters and main engines, antennae—even
though photographers around the airport and in helicopters overhead were busily capturing everything
with telephoto lenses. Sensors hastily installed in the limos were measuring and recording any radiation
from the ship.
His overriding impression was one of age, that this ship had been around for a while. Why? After a
moment's thought, he focused his attention on the skin of the ship. Under the cloudless noon sky, not a
bit of surface glinted. He wasn't close enough to be sure, but the shadowed underbelly of the ship
seemed finely pitted. How many years of solar wind had it withstood? How many collisions with the
tenuous matter of the interstellar void? Beside him, the diplomats were absorbed in their own
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- Chapter 1
unanswered, perhaps unanswerable, questions.
And then, at long last, with soundless ease, a wide ramp began its descent from the underside of the
alien ship.
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Contents
Framed
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