CHAPTER THIRTEEN?—TRUTHS

COLD.

It was about the only thing that he could feel. A deep, resonating numbness that seemed to have wrapped his body in its icy cocoon of unyielding cool. He had not moved much in the three days that he’d been there, alone on the moon. Some of it was fear of what might still be alive and inside the ship waiting on him, but most of it was the fever that kept him down on the cold deck of the Soviet lander, wrapped tightly in the only blanket he could find, a green, hammer and sickle emblazoned on the fabric that was barely an eighth of an inch thick, clothed underneath it with his coveralls and the tubing suit onto help insulate his own body heat and keep him warm.

He’d been fortunate enough to find an aspirin or two inside what he guessed was a first aid kit and had managed to swallow then whole down his extremely sore throat.

The heater had stopped working about twelve or thirteen hours after he’d begun to settle in. He’d tried to fix it, managing to decipher just enough Russian to determine where the main wiring panel to the unit was, only to uncover it and open up a world of wiring so radically different from anything he’d ever seen, he immediately threw aside the notion of any repair and decided to leave the damn thing alone.

The last thing he wanted to do was mess with the wrong wire and end up cutting off the oxygen or, worse yet, activating the ascension mode launch and splattering himself all over the ceiling of the alien ship. Hell, he knew he was going to die anyway…but not like that.

The food was all but gone. A few packs of something remained, and Reese was saving them for when he got really hungry…not like he wasn’t now. The pain from his begging stomach was getting so intense that it was beginning to double him over with clenched teeth. Besides, he knew he had to eat something if he was going to have any hopes of abating his fever…even a little bit…so he could make that one, last EVA.

He’d be damned if he was going to die in this hellish Soviet icebox that seemed to be slowly turning into his coffin every time he opened his eyes and looked around it.

When the time came, he didn’t want to be found by those who might come later…human or alien…balled up in the fetal position on the goddamn floor, he wanted to be in his suit…out there, outside the confines of the ship and onto the surface of the moon, resting eternally on the landscape of the place which he’d given it all up for.

So he ate. Very, very little. And drank what water he could. Most of it was frozen as the temperature gradually dropped in the cabin around him, but he’d managed to salvage a little of it, even going so far as to rip open the plastic bags and suck on the ice, letting the tiny amounts of melted water drip down his scorched throat. As far as the fever went, the medication had helped some, but it was still there, ravaging his mind and body. Throwing the blanket off him, he knew the time was there. It was now or never. Soon the fever would come back full strength once the effects of the aspirin wore off, constantly surging and elevating his body temperature to the boundaries of human survival. Only death came next.

As he stood up, he felt a violent shudder erupt all along the fault lines of his body, almost dropping him in his weakened state to the floor, as he eyed the space suit hanging up on the ladder’s wall not far from him. It took several minutes for him to reach it, and even more to fight through the fever’s veil to get his hands and eyes to coordinate long enough to get him secured inside the suit and the oxygen pack. It seemed like it took him forever, but the captain manage it, grabbing his helmet from the instrument panel and lowering it onto himself and slowly sealing it shut.

Reaching down, he twisted the knob that allowed the fresh oxygen into his suit, as well as the electrical currents that would slowly heat up to keep his shivering body warm beneath. A deep breath later, Reese approached the control console and depressurized the lander cabin. This was it, he knew. No turning back now, you crazy bastard.

Slow, but determined, Reese made his way over to the hatch and grabbed hold of the flywheel, summoning up all his ebbing strength to open it. It took several tries, but he succeeded in loosening the seal and opening the door to the outside.

Lowering himself, the captain grabbed at the M-16 laying close to him and began to slowly back out of the ship as it suddenly began to shimmy and shake, a low, guttural rumbling filling the air around him and causing everything to vibrate with an unseen intensity.

And that’s when the world grew even darker as his helmet light dimmed to nothing, leaving him halfway out the lander. Blind.

 

 

 

* * *

“It’s good to see you again, General Sternenko. How are things in Vilyuysk?”

The big Cossack that was the general looked at the white-haired politician sitting comfortable at his antique desk in a big warm office, watching as the Soviet Premier picked up a steaming mug of coffee and took a long, gulping drink.

“Cold,” the general replied. “Cold and combustible without my constant presence there, Comrade, as I’m sure you already know, or else you would have not have felt the need to PERSONALLY assign me there, yes?”

Brezhnev smiled diabolically at the decorated military officer.

“Such gratitude, Vladimir,” he said, referring to the ma by his first name, something he had not called in years. “Sounds so bitter coming from your mouth. You asked me for a command,” he said as he took another drink and grinned. “So I gave you one.”

Sternenko groaned. “I hardly expected to be shipped out in the middle of Siberia and command a launching facility, my friend. Especially one nobody has used since…” He drifted off, knowing that the Premier already knew well and good what it was he referred to. “Not that I am not happy to see my old friend again, Leonid, but why, if may ask, did you call me here? And with such urgency?”

Brezhnev motioned at the Victorian seat in front of him and the general. “Take a seat, Vladimir. Rest your feet for a while. This may take sometime.”

The big man sat.

“Would you like something to drink?” the Premier asked. “Coffee, hot chocolate?” he offered.“Vodka?”

Sternenko sat back in the chair and waved off his friend’s offer.

“No. I only wish to find out what is going on, Comrade Premier. I doubt you brought me over five thousand kilometers to catch up on old times and offer me a cup of hot chocolate. So…what is it?”

The Premier set his cup down. “The Americans.”

Sternenko ice-blue eyes widened in surprise. “The Americans?” he repeated.

Brezhnev nodded slowly.“Da,” he said.“They find themselves in a…unique situation that only we can get them out of.”

The general looked at him ominously. “What do you mean, Comrade? And why are you smiling like that?” he asked.

“Because, my old friend, we are about to finally experience victory over the Americans. That is why I am smiling.”

Suddenly, the large double doors behind them opened and in walked a lone man. Instinctively, the general reached towards his Makarov as he snapped his head around to see who had indeed, but the shadow there in the Supreme Soviet office was too thick, and he couldn’t see. Sternenko heard a creak in front of him and turned around, startled to see the Premier standing up with his arms out-stretched wide.

“Ah!” he exclaimed.“Misha, I was beginning to worry about you.”

“Misha?” Sternenko inquired with an indignant voice.

Brezhnev smiled at him as the clip-clops of hard-soled shoes came ever closer.

“Mikhail Vorkuta,” he said as the man walked into the light, illuminating his slim suave features in a gray business suit. “Special Agent Mikhail Vorkuta, our man in Washington.”

Vorkuta and Brezhnev embraced and greeted each other happily as the general watched on. Then the new arrival took a seat beside Sternenko and nodded a greeting his way. Sternenko looked at the Premier.

“What the hell is going on here, Leonid?” the general found himself roaring. “Tell me now.”

“Very well,” the Premier conceded. “Misha has just arrived from his usual post in Washington, where his cadre of operatives have been keeping constant surveillance of the vice-director of the CIA ad a few of his close agents and staff. Yesterday I was personally contacted by the American President, requesting my help in rescuing one of his astronauts from the moon.”

Sternenko raised an eyebrow. “Only one?” Where were the other two?”

“I would imagine safely on their way home to Earth, General,” Vorkuta answered him. Sir?” he said to Brezhnev. “If I may?”

“Of course.”

“The Americans sent a mission to the moon to investigate a series of strange lights some astronomer saw near the moon. Apparently, they found something there.”

“What?” asked the general.

Vokuta sighed.

“An alien spaceship. They landed two astronauts upon the surface to investigate and found something else.”

Sternenko guessed.

“Aliens,” he simply said.

“Yes, of course, the spy operative concurred. “But they also discovered two spacecraft of Earth origin, General,” he said as he half-smiled. “Soviet spacecraft.”

The general grew silent, waiting for Vorkuta to finish. He continued.

“An experimental Vostok module and prototype lunar lander.”

Sternenko’s eyes widened even more and the man became visibly upset, his bottom lip quivering.

“Boshe moi,” he whispered. “A prototype lander…Sergei.”

Brezhnev took over. “No, Vladimir,” he said just as huskily.

“I’m afraid not.” Sternenko looked at his friend, and the Premier’s saddened eyes said it before he even had to. “There were no survivors.”

The general swallowed hard and closed his eyes, sitting back in the chair. “Americans lie. You know that.”

Brezhnev shook his head slowly, feeling his friend’s pain. “No, Comrade. Not this time.”

He sniffled and looked at the Premier.

“How? How did my son die, Leonid?”

Silence pervaded the room for a few delicate seconds, before Vorkuta broke the tension by answering the general’s question.

“The crew, General…I’m sorry to say, Sir, but they were…. slaughtered.”

The big Russian’s  blue eyes became fierce as his gaze violently shifted from the Premier to Vorkuta.

“Slaughtered?!” Sternenko jumped out of the chair in a fit of rage and stared down manically at Vorkuta. “What do you mean ‘slaughtered’?”

The spy shrugged in his defense.

“Please, Comrade. Calm yourself. My team and I have been working ‘round the clock to find that very thing out for ourselves but to no avail. Whatever the Americans mean about that, they aren’t telling.”

Brezhnev agreed. “The President wouldn’t even tell me,” he said, feeling slightly jaded. “But from what we have been able to piece together from what little bits of intelligence we have been able to gather, all indications are that your son and his crew met their end at the hands of these aliens the Americans discovered dead in the wreckage.”

He calmly looked at his old ally, one of the many who helped him oust Khrushchev from office all those years ago, a man of unwavering loyalty…a man now ravaged with grief over the death of his only son, lost for so many days, they had believed, in space.

“I brought you here because I need your help. Vlad, The Americans assured me that they have film of the wreckage as proof of its existence…as well as other undisclosed evidence that the President believes will provoke us into helping them with this rescue mission. You know the details of the ship, the mission…and crew. I need you there when they retrieve this evidence to determine its authenticity, as well as the films,” the Premier said as he sighed. “Should it prove false…you have full authorization to terminate our end of the bargain and bring yourself home,” he said as he gazed at his friend.

“And if it proved otherwise, what then?” he said.

Brezhnev smiled warmly. “Then we continue on as planned, and rescue their astronaut for them, discovering for ourselves what happened to our comrades and vessels.”

He watched as Sternenko walked hesitantly back towards his seat and slumped down in it. “Will you do this for me, Comrade? For the Motherland?” He dug deeper at the man’s fractured psyche. “For Sergei?”

Sternenko remained still, staring blankly past Brezhnev at the blinded window beyond him.

“Comrade?”

The old, scarred blue eyes looked up at him, glazed over with pain and hurt. A mighty sigh escaped from the man’s lung’s, making way for an answer.

“Yes,” he said. “I will go.”

“At least, you will finally know the truth, eh?” Brezhnev told him.

Sternenko stood and straightened the winkles from his uniform coat. “I’m afraid, Comrade, I have always known the truth, or least suspected, on many levels of my son’s demise. It has been many months since his launch. But despite what I knew to be true, still I had hope,” he said as he began to walk away. “That perhaps some miracle would let me see my Sergei again.”

Brezhnev nodded, furrowing his heavy brows in sympathy for his friend’s loss.

“Da,” he said in sad agreement.

 

 

 

 

* * *

Scared would probably not be the best way to describe the way he was feeling at the moment. His only source of light just winked out on him, his ass hanging halfway out into the den of a bunch of flesh-eating aliens, total darkness surrounding him. No, Reese thought as he blindly clutched at the hatch, pulling himself back into the lander and just as blindly resealing the hatch behind him as the world around him shook from the low rumbling that was apparently everywhere all at once. Goddamn terrified, would be more like it. Something strange was happening.

He sat down on the deck, leaning against the bulkhead and stared ahead into the nothing, both gloved hands wrapped tightly around the rifle. His heart and mind were racing with each other. Fear had long since taken the place of the fever that had been ravaging his poor body. He knew it was still there, but at the moment, it didn’t seem to faze him.

Reese brought his non-trigger hand up to the light…the defunct light on his helmet, and banged his palm hard against it, hoping to jar the damn thing into working again, only to be disappointed when absolutely nothing happened. Well…at least nothing he had anything to do with.

There was a sudden blue light that lit up everything outside the lander, as the rumbling soon grew louder and more pronounced. He could see from the residuals pouring in through the triangular windows of the lander as he struggled to stand up, walking slowly to the windows and peering out.

Everything outside was painted in its brilliance. For a few good seconds, the captain could fully see outside the lander. He could see the scales of the walls and ceiling; a dead gray here and there that he had not yet stumbled upon; and the ghostly image of the Vostok module that lay a few short feet away from the port side legs of the lander. It was almost like daylight.

Almost.

Standing there at the window, Reese was suddenly plunged into the darkness again as the light shifted, moving away from him like an odd curtain, sweeping along the deck, licking unashamedly at the walls, ceiling…everything…fading from his view almost as quickly as it had arrived, sauntering on down the long corridor away from him, again leaving him at the mercy of the dark-ness and the incessant growling encompassing him.

Damn.

A minute passed. Maybe two. And then the noise that had been an annoying frightening constant in his life for the past ten minutes abruptly silenced itself, and the lander’s console blinked back to life as a bright white splashed onto the pane of the window, catching his brown eyes off guard.

He had light again. Inside his helmet, the captain smiled. He had light again! But his joy soon passed. What the hell had just happened here? It was hard to think through the fever, but it was getting a little easier. The combined efforts of the aspirin and his own adrenaline had done a reasonably good job of dimming it down some, which-thankfully; he thought-made it somewhat easier to think. Somewhat.

Back on Earth, he’d read the newspaper reports about the “UFO sightings” those in the civilian population had experienced, and seemed to remember descriptions of “encounters” that ran a close parallel to what he’d just experienced with the brief power failure.

And just the stray thought of that little tidbit of information entering into his head began to make him wonder. Especially if what just happened was what he was thinking. Could it be possible, he wondered. Could someone have arrived?

Reese turned around, rifle in hand, and faced the closed hatch in the air-less cabin of the Soviet lander. It seemed to make perfect sense, he thought. With flying aircraft, he knew the best way to ensure his own survival in case of a crash was to send out a mayday (if he was able) as he went down. This way, he could be found and subsequently rescued. Could that be what had happened here? Was somebody answering a distress call from a month ago? He walked to the middle of the cabin and stood there, staring at the light as it shone down from his helmet and onto the hatch. The thought was conceivable.

Very conceivable.

This could very well mean that just outside the walls of the alien ship, somewhere nearby was another alien craft. Immediately, his mind switched to the burned-in image of the dead giants, the grays, and the remains of the Russians he and Hollanbach first discovered a couple of days ago when the two of them arrived here.

Another alien craft with more…aliens. Shit.

Now, this is a predicament, he thought. Assuming I’m right, and fresh batches of these things have arrived, I have one of two choices. I can either sit here like a coward and hope and pray that whatever is out there doesn’t open that door and find my sick ass in here, or I can grab my nuts and go on out there, and face this thing like a man.

He laughed. The nuts weren’t up to it.

Option number two is better anyway, Captain, he told himself. Even if you chicken out and decide to hide from…. well, whatever it may be…at least we’ll be out of this cramped up little death box and out where hiding places are aplenty.

And besides, he thought as he drummed his fingers against the stock of theM-16 he was holding…tightly. I’ve got a gun. Another deep breath later, and he had convinced himself. Outside was better no matter how he looked at it, but if he was going to go, he knew that he had to go now. The aspirin wasn’t going to last very much longer, and his strength was rapidly seeping out with every movement he made,

The captain walked towards the hatch and grabbed hold of the flywheel, giving it a good twist after he propped the rifle against the bulkhead out the way.

“Okay, Reese,” he said to himself as he clenched his teeth and strained, feeling his forehead break out in a cold sweat as his arms burned, breaking the seal of the compartment once again, time to go meet the new neighbors.

 

 

 

* * *

She had never seen the ocean so blue. It almost didn’t seem like she was in the same world anymore, she mused, observing a tranquil feeling not often experienced by her. Below her, dolphins crested with breaking waves. Racing the aircraft carrier she stood upon, it cruised at twenty-two knots due east…Mach speed for a ship of such magnitude. She nestled into her borrowed foul-weather jacket a little further as she leaned up against the gray bulkhead, gazing out into the afternoon setting. Unlike Coley and the others, Donna Hollanbach had only been on board for a little over a day, instead of nearly three, but was already lost in the beauty that belonged to the sea. Now she understood why her husband loved being underway. It was not to get away from her like she used to always jokingly suggest before each of his cruises…although she was a bit jealous now that she had experience it for herself. There was o way she could compete with such unbelievable magnificence.

Donna looked past the high-reaching cirrus clouds at the barely visible moon, heading for its exit in the west, wondering where he was at that time. Coley said that in just a few short hours, she’d be witnessing Jon’s splashdown in the Atlantic along with Herndum. The agent told her the circumstances surrounding Reese’s absence, and Donna could see how pained the woman was with a decision she helped to make.

She ultimately blamed herself in the long run, which explained why Coley was working so hard to get this rescue mission with the Russians off the ground…literally.

True, she was saddened by the news that Reese may very well die up there before they had a chance to get back to him, but she was glad…. as much as she hated to admit it to herself…that it was the captain and no her Jonny. There was just too much going on now to not have him there with her. Through the pockets of the jacket, she gently rubbed he still flat stomach, knowing that soon she’d be rubbing a little hump there as the baby got bigger and she headed into the second trimester. A warm smile overcame her features, and soon after she let a laugh…well, actually a giggle…slip through her mouth as the wind caught her black hair and whipped it across her face.

“And what’s so funny?”

Donna turned to see Coley standing nearby, suited in a jacket of her own, looking at her as those auburn tresses she usually kept neat swirl around in a fit of disarray. She was smiling.

“Nothing’s funny,” Donna responded. “I’m just happily anticipating the arrival of my husband,” she sighed, staring out into the water. “Who I have been sorely missing these last few days.”

“I know what you mean’” Coley agreed. “My own man is in an occupation that sometimes keeps him away from me…months at a time. It’s never any fun.”

“No,” the pretty dark haired woman agreed still watching the sky. “It certainly isn’t.”

Both women stood silently for a few moments, enjoying their peaceful surroundings, until the massive ship began to noticeably shift directions. Donna looked at the secret agent. “Is it me…or are we moving?”

“We’re moving,” Coley reassured her. “Changing course to get to the splashdown site a few miles away. That’s part of the reason why I came out here,” she said as she smiled at the astronaut’s wife. “It’s almost time,” Coley took a few steps closer to Donna. “You ready to go get your husband, Mrs. Hollanbach?”

Donna stood up and walked away from the riveted exterior bulkhead, giving one last look to the tranquility before she joined Coley’s side, beginning their walk up to the ship’s bridge.

 

 

 

* * *

Herndum looked over at the commander.

“Okay then,” he said with a relaxed sigh. “DESPERADO is on a direct approach velocity with our reentry window over the Atlantic. One more orbit around Mother Earth and down we go.”

It was like his words had never been spoken…Hollanbach just sat there as he had for the past few minutes, staring blankly at the instrument panel in front of him. The lieutenant reached over and tapped his friend on the shoulder.

“Hey, man! You okay?”

Hollanbach blinked, reaching up to rub his eyes with his fingers, shaking his head.

“Yeah,” he responded. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“You don’t act like it. Something you want to share?”

“No,” he said. “Not really,” he said as he flipped a switch on the console.

“It doesn’t hardly matter now, anyway. How’s our approach velocity?”

Herndum gave him an annoyed glance, then laughed.

“What? What’s so funny?”

“I only told you that we are on a direct approach with the reentry window not two minutes ago. Where were you?”

The commander sat back in the seat. “Sorry. I’m a little preoccupied with what’s happened to us in the past week,” he said with a very heavy sigh. “I just can’t get the image of the Vostok out of my head,” he said as he closed his weary eyes. “It was worse than anything I’d ever seen, man. There was hardly anything left of those poor bastards,” he said as his eyes popped open suddenly. “And I left Reese up there with the possibility of that happening to him.”

He shook his head again.

“I should’ve been the one to stay behind. Not him.”

Herndum grabbed at the silver bag of rations floating freely in the air, and put it into one of the many pouches on his uniform. “If I remember correctly, even if Reese hadn’t volunteered himself, you had a Presidential order to follow that had the same thing in mind. Am I right?” But he gave Hollanbach no time to answer the question. “Of course I am. I was there, I remember. You did the only thing you could have done, Commander.”

“I know, Scotty…but the fuel gauge…”

“Was wrong,” he finished for him. “A tragedy, yeah…but another one of those things that are beyond your control. You can’t dwell on this shit, Jon…believe me, it’s only going to make you crazy.”

“Yeah,” Hollanbach said. Still letting it drive him crazy, anyway. “Yeah, I guess you’re right, Scotty.”

“Damn right I’m right.”

Both astronauts fell quiet, their eyes gradually drifting to the window on their respective sides, and gazing at the beautiful blue of the planet below them. After a few silent moments, Herndum again turned to the commander, a look of concern painted on his usually mischievous face.

“Think the Russians will get to him in time?”

Hollanbach continued looking out the window.

“No,” he said, telling the truth. “But that shouldn’t stop us from trying anyway.”

Herndum gave his friend an odd look, catching on to what he had just said. “What do you mean…us?”

“It means I plan to go with the Russians back to the moon.”

The lieutenant gave him a dubious glance.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Jon. Your body couldn’t handle the strain, and neither could your wife. Not to mention the fact the Reds would never hear of it. They’d call the whole thing off first.”

“I don’t think so, buddy,” Hollanbach countered. “I know how to get to the ship…and I know my way around inside it. If anything…they’ll need me.”

“Donna needs you, Commander. You can tell them how to get there…draw them a map if you have to, but…”

Hollanbach smiled at his friend. “What are you? My conscience?”

“No,” the lieutenant answered quickly. “Of course not. I just don’t see where going back is going to do you any good, physically, emotionally, or otherwise.”

“I left him up there, Scotty. I did! Not you, Coley, the Russians or the President. I did, and I have to be the one to help get him back, no matter the consequences. You don’t know what that’s like…being forced to leave a man behind. Especially like that. ”

The lieutenant exhaled heavily.

“And what about your pregnant wife down there, huh? How do you think she’ll react to your risking your life…again?”

“She’ll understand.”

“I don’t know,” Herndum pushed. “She didn’t the last time.”

And then Hollanbach snapped. “Well I don’t remember asking you for an opinion anyway, Lieutenant. It’s my life to risk…my call to make. And I don’t need any interference from you or anyone else when it comes to that! Is that clear?”

“Yeah,” the lieutenant said angrily. “Crystal. I’ll just sit over here and mind my own business, How’s that?”

“Whatever,” retorted the commander.

Silence soon enveloped them both as the DESPERADO quickly sailed over the subcontinent of India and the teardrop island of Sri Lanka, fast approaching its reentry window less than forty-five minutes away.

AND COUNTING…

 

 

CHAPTER TWELVE?—GUTTED

 

NUMBERS DON’T LIE.

McNeely knew years ago when he walked out the door of MIT with his double major in astrophysics and engineering, and he knew it know, disgusted, hungry and tired, and slamming down the collection of papers chock full of equations long since blurred together into a fuzzy picture of numbers and variables, all determined to work against him, regardless of the consequences that he knew it just wouldn’t work.

“There’s no other way,” he heard somebody behind him say in a low voice. “We either lose one or both of them. But the weight ratio won’t allow us to take both men on as payload and still have a successful launch.”

McNeely turned around and saw that it was Thomerson, one of the men he’d handpicked to work on the solution. The man withdrew a cigarette from his breast pocket and inserted it into his mouth.

“Leave the suits, their air-packs, the tools, the food…all that shit. Detach the spotlights on top of the LEM and chuck some of the other equipment they don’t need and you’re still about a hundred and ninety-two pounds over the limit,” he said.

“The numbers don’t lie. And in this case, gentlemen, they don’t fucking budge a whole lot, either.”

“True,” McNeely heard another add. “And both guys weigh almost the same. Reese is slightly heavier at one- eighty-eight, though.

“This is bullshit, we can’t just leave a man on the moon!” said Dooley. “I mean it’s the goddamn moon, for Christ sake. It’s not like we can go back and pick him up later!”

McNeely sighed as he sat down, waving away the smoke from Thomerson’s Lucky Strike and reaching for his bottle of Coke.

“Well, gentlemen, as Dr. Thomerson was so kind enough to point out to us, the numbers don’t lie, and we’re quickly running out of time to debate the issue,” he said in a tired voice. “We’ve all done the math a hundred times, in our heads, on paper and on the computers.”

“The fuel gurus say the same thing the design specialists at Grumman have been telling us since we found out about this, and not one of us are any closer today than we were yesterday in resolving this problem and coming up with a definitive solution as to who and how many we’re going to be able to bring home,” he said as he looked at the ticking clock on the wall of the small room they had all crowded into. “We’ve got just under ten hours before we’re scheduled to lift off from the moon and wrap up this thing.”

Time, he thought, to shit or get off the pot.

Just then, the door burst open and a young man McNeely didn’t recognize popped his head in the door. “Mr. McNeely?” he asked, having no idea who he was looking for.

“Yes?”

The boy seemed relieved as his eyes latched onto him. “You have a telephone call in the control room, sir. An important one.”

McNeely grunted as he stood, knocking back the last of his soda and leaving the empty bottle on the paper-cluttered table, walking away from it.

“Who is it?” he asked.

“It’s a Miss Coley, sir, calling from Washington, she says it’s very important.”

Rambling towards the door, McNeely suddenly stopped and turned back to face the cadre of engineers behind him.

“Keep working to find a solution,” he said.  And with that, he sharply turned on his heel, mumbled something as he shoved the boy out of his way and ran down the hallway towards the heart of Mission Control, and perhaps, the answer he has been waiting for.

 

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

Hollanbach stood there in the doorway of the compartment he now stared into, his eyes once again seeing things that no other human had ever witnessed before since the first man ran screaming from the condemned Garden of Eden.

“Good God,” he muttered in surprise. “There’s another one.”

Reese was still in his hole, unsuccessfully trying to cut into the claw of the alien. He stopped and took a much-needed breath. “Another what?” he said into his mike.

“Another alien,” the commander answered him. “A giant,” he declared, for lack of a better term.

“Skipper?”

“Yeah?”

“I hate to break you away from the excitement and everything, but I seem to be having a problem here.”

Hollanbach turned back around, shining his light in Reese’s direction. “What is it?”

Inside the wreckage-enclosed cavity, Reese struggled once more to cut into the claw, realizing that all he was probably doing was dulling the scalpel blade. “I keep cutting and cutting into this claw and I’m not even scratching the damn thing,” he said as he sighed. “What do you want to do?”

The commander thought about it. “It’s a key piece of evidence,” he said. “We can’t leave without at least a piece of that thing with us.”

“Well, the blade won’t go through,” the captain said.

 

“But you can saw through the flesh, right?”

“Affirmative,” he said.

“I’ve already gotten a good size chunk of the skin off its forearm.”

Hollanbach turned back around and shone his light into the doorway.

“Then that will just have to be good enough, I guess. Bag up and seal what you’ve collected. I’m going into this compartment to get a better look at this other giant. It looks like its a little different from here, but I can’t really tell…all I can see is its back and what looks to be armor plating on it,” he said as he turned back around. “Okay,” Hollanbach replied, once more facing the opening and taking a long deep breath. “I’m going in.”

The compartment was small, and barely enough room for him to enter into, with the large dead creature sprawled out along its side, in a state of what the commander hoped was death and not rest. Stepping into the space, he felt some- thing roughly give way instantly throwing his light down upon it, looking to see what it was.

Black ice. Very similar to the kind found outside and within the Vostok’s fractured shell of a spacecraft. The ice seemed to be frozen into a trail that crept along the deck towards the still figure of the giant, disappearing under him, which had Hollanbach confused.

“Reese,” he spoke into his twin microphones contained in his helmet. “What color did you say the big creature’s blood was again?”

He heard the captain grunt, obviously still struggling to cut more.

“Blue,” he said. “A deep blue like the ocean. Why?”

Hollanbach maintained a death grip on his weapon, his light projecting back onto the immense frame of the beast not six feet in front of him.

“Just wondering,” the commander said in a hush, as if he were scared to wake the creature with his voice. “Thanks.”

He began to maneuver around the alien, walking hastily to reach the other side. The skin color seemed a bit darker than the one on the bridge and the hair less thick.

This one seemed to be wearing more armor, including a chest plate and bands around his…hands?

The light shone onto a cosmonaut gee-suit, undamaged and draped across the panel (or bench, the commander wasn’t sure what it is), the kind like he and the others wore in their combat fighters that were pressurized and designed to resist the crushing force of the gravity.

But near the big alien the half-eaten carcass of a man, his torso ripped out completely with frozen organs and blood-soaked tissue glistening in his light. The creature must have just begun its feats when the ship crashed, ripping it in half and sucking the entire atmosphere out of it, suffocating it instantly. Its blood- encrusted hands were still around its own throat, the dead black of its pupil less eyes bulging and staring up at the ceiling. He had found the missing cosmonaut. Just not the way he had hoped. Hollanbach could see light coming from behind him, flickering all around the small space. The commander turned to see Reese approaching him. The captain stopped at the doorway, training his light on Hollanbach’s ashen face.

.

“It would seem I’ve found our missing cosmonaut,” he said, pointing in the direction of what he’d found.

“Oh, Christ.” The young astronaut saw the chewed-up Russian. Reese suddenly saw something, an object, in the shadows, propped up against the bulkhead near the giant.

“Hey,” he said, aiming his light towards it and catching a metallic glint. “What the hell is that?”

Both men trained their lights on the discovery, which was a rather long, gnarled and knotted pole of sorts that resembled a tree bark, with various axe- like blades, ragged and mean looking, jutting out and gleaming on either side of it near the top, where a single blade mounted, rising up like a chipped spearhead from the handle.

Hollanbach spoke up. “A weapon?” he said remembering the time as he looked back at his watch. “Shit. We don’t have much time left. Your camera on?”

“Yeah,” he answered the commander. “Been on since we got in here.”

“Good. Get some more footage of,” he pointed to the grizzly portraits of death at their feet. “This, and I’ll take a look at that gee-suit to see if I can get a name.”

“What gee-suit?”

Hollanbach pointed, and Reese saw it. “Oh,” he said. “That one.”

As Reese let the camera film, Hollanbach reached cautiously over and plucked the suit from where it lay, turning its shiny silver cloth around to discover what he was looking for, a name on a patch centered along the chest near the air-tube fixtures. He then folded it up, and stuffed it into a pouch on Reese’s backpack.

“C’mon,” he said to the captain.  “I’ve seen enough. It’s time to get out of here and go home.”

Hollanbach walked over towards and out the doorway as the captain got a few more seconds of footage of the young cosmonaut’s dead face with up- turned eyes of ice, opened moth with black crystalline growing from it, and a tiny sparkle of a gold chain with a charm on it hung around his neck. Reese turned off the camera, and then turned around to join the commander.

“Poor kid,” he said sorrowfully. “You get his name, Skipper?”

“Yeah,” Hollanbach said as he bounced along the alien wreckage, working his way towards the exit. “Sternenko.”

The entire trip back was a solemn and quiet one. Neither Reese nor Hollanbach spoke as the rover churned along the rough patches of the lunar landscape, taking them home to their awaiting LEM, sporadically illuminated by the rover’s bouncing headlights.

Neither of them really needed to talk, having seen the things they had just witnessed there together in the remains of that alien spaceship. They didn’t have to say anything to know that they wouldn’t exactly be looking up at the sky ever the same way again, that innocent sense of childlike wonder instantly getting knocked out of the way by the strongest sense of adult worry. Knowing the truth about what was out there in the universe…what they were in fact

Sharing the space with, the fear of it being that nobody would know for certain if all of space would be enough room for the separate races of species to keep from running into each other ever again. A foolish hope, Reese knew, because of the events that had so recently transpired on the moon, a literal stones throw away from the Earth in comparison to the distances these creatures must have already traveled throughout the galaxy.

He sighed heavily as they approached the dark LEM, thinking that perhaps it might have been better to never know such terror actually existed in the same plane of existence he did. That way when they did arrive on Earth, he wouldn’t have to live knowing what came next.

No. Damn, what the hell was wrong with him? This was no way for a man like him to think. He survived in actual firefights and lived to tell the tale of numerous aerial combat missions, so why would he cower now? Fold in the face of adversity?

He looked at the M-16 sitting beside him. It was better to know, he now thought. That way we can kill as many of those cosmonaut-eating-son-a-bitches as it took to keep them from over-running the planet and dining on the human race like some carefree intergalactic restaurant. He had seen the enemy up close, and knew of one certain thing.

They could die.

However big and nasty and clawed and thick-skinned or hungry they may collectively be, the bastards did die. He gripped the muzzle of the gun and felt a warm feeling run through his veins. And should he ever run into one someday, he thought stubbornly, he’d be sure to put that knowledge to the test.

Suddenly, there was an omnipresent jerking sensation that rattled the captain quite rudely from his thoughts, causing him to grunt aloud with surprise.

“Okay,” he heard Hollanbach say next to him. “We’re here. Now let’s go see about getting our asses home.”

 

 

 

 

* * *

The news, to say the least, was positively devastating.

“DESPERADO. UNFORGIVEN,” Hollanbach said into his microphones. “I want to make sure I’m understanding what you’re saying here.”

But Reese tuned out everything Hollanbach was saying and about to say. He had heard Herndum the first time in his broadcast, telling them that they had no choice but to believe the reading of the fuel gauge and that somebody, he or Hollanbach had to stay behind. Strip the LEM bare and dump a crewmember. Reese thought to himself that he didn’t quite remember that in the checklist for launch preparation in the ascension mode.

“I said, I understand, Lieutenant.” Hollanbach said in a hot tone. “One of us has to remain on the moon.”

Reese looked at him. “I assume that they are making that decision for us, too, or do we get to decide this on our own?”

“Settle down, Reese.”

“Sorry.”

But he wasn’t sorry, dammit. He knew exactly what would happen next. There would be no way in hell anybody would let the Mission Commander stay behind on the moon. The mission commander with a wife and a kid on the way. He shook his head. Christ. He was as good as dead. He looked at the fuel gauge and uttered the nastiest of expletives. The same incident that led him here was, ironically enough, going to be the same incident that kept him here. A faulty fuel gauge.

Hollanbach looked at the captain.

“We still have a four hour wait before any definite decision is made.”

Reese cocked his eyes at him. “Don’t patronize me, Jon. You know as well as I do what they’re going to say.”

He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. It’s my ship. I’m staying with it.”

The captain, feeling a bit weak-kneed, slid down on the floor, pushing his helmet out the way.

“No,” he said. “You’re not.”

“But I’m the commander, Reese,” he blurted. “And it’s my duty to-”

“It’s your duty to go home and help raise that baby your wife is lugging around in hot body of hers,” he said with a sigh. Knowing immediately that his words were true, no matter how badly he wanted to throw Hollanbach out the hatch and make a run for it. “That’s a responsibility you can’t shun, Commander. Mission, crew, honor,” Reese said,

Hollanbach sat down beside him, pondering the thought.

“What about you, Captain?”

Reese laid his head against the bulkhead and closed his brown eyes.

“What about me?”

“Your family,” Hollanbach said simply. “Don’t you have any?”

The captain smiled, chuckling softly. “Yeah,” he answered. “My parents back home in Virginia.”

His voice was soft and relaxed as he spoke, like he was at ease. Surprisingly enough, in all the years he’d thought he knew the man, Hollanbach realized in that moment that he had never heard Reese speak like that.

“I was adopted,” he told him. “My real parents died in the Korean War. I was about three, maybe…when it happened. They weren’t even in the military. Funny thing is, they were just two singers who volunteered their services for the USO to help lighten the burden of our brave boys overseas.” The captain opened his eyes, staring up at the closed hatch of the LEM’s ceiling. It was dark all around them in the cabin, the only light radiating from the control console, bathing them in a ghoulish green. “I don’t even remember what they look like anymore. I have no memories of them at all. I have pictures. But they’re just faces of people I don’t recognize. Not like my adopted parents. With them, I have memories,” he stressed as he closed his tired eyes and smiled again.

“Always have the memories.”

Hollanbach swallowed.

“We’re not going to argue about this, Jon, because all you’ll do is use up your air. I’m staying up here, man. In a way I guess, I’m supposed to.”

“Why do you say that?” the commander wanted to know.

“The fuel gauge,” Reese said. “I ran out of gas on that mountain road, after my fuel read a half-tank. That’s how it all started, Commander. With a damned fuel gauge,” he said as he laughed again, only more sardonically this time. “And sonuvabitch…. that’s how it’s going end.”

Hollanbach was silent a few moments, trying to think.

“What about that girl?” he finally said. “What was her name? The astronomer’s daughter?”

Another smile. Wider and toothier this time. “Angelica,” the captain said without hesitation. “Angelica Sheldon.”

“Yeah,” Hollanbach said recognizing the name. “What about her?”

“We kissed,” he said as he sat quietly for a while, perhaps remembering it in his thoughts. Reliving the moment through his mind’s eye. “For some reason, I knew just by looking at her, that I was in love with her. All the other girls I’d ever had suddenly didn’t exist anymore…and all I wanted was her,” he said.

“Wow,” Hollanbach said. “That’s something.”

“More than something,” the captain whispered. “It’s everything. I’d give it all up to see her again. Her lavish red hair and beautiful body and her voice…Jesus God, her voice. If I could just hear it one more time.”

“Well, it sounds like love.”

Reese opened his eyes. “It could’ve been,” he said. “She made it clear to me in the end, that she felt the same way about me as I did her. She told me more with that one kiss in the airport, that any group of words any writer could ever weave together in a hundred books,” he said has he turned his head and looked at his friend, and fellow astronaut. “You heard what Coley said before we even went to the island. Right then and there, man, she gave us all a chance to back away, to stay home. All I had to do was say the word.”

Hollanbach sighed as he looked at Reese. “But you didn’t, and neither did I.”

“No,” the captain said. “And that’s why I have to be the one to stay.”

The commander was confused.

“I’m not quite sure I follow you, Reese.”

There was a silence there in the lunar module as the captain closed his brown eyes, reaching up and scratching at the hair on the back of his neck.

“Ever since I was a kid, I’ve had a love affair with space,” he began.

As he talked, Hollanbach noticed Reese face lighting up from the gloom they both seemed to be experiencing earlier. He watched as the captain continued on. “The moon, the planets,” he said with heavy breath. “The promise…the undying hope of life elsewhere in the universe, and a chance to discover it,” he said as he almost laughed. “And now that I’ve…we’ve discovered the proof of that right up here on the moon,” he was quiet a few moments, shrugging before he continued on. “Despite the circumstances behind it all, I can’t just leave now. Now that I know.”

The commander dubiously cocked his eyes over at him.

“You’re goddamned crazy. Even after seeing the remains of those cosmonauts, and knowing, hell…seeing what it was that did that to them, you still volunteer to stay behind?”

Reese shrugged again.

“I’m not really volunteering anything, Commander. You know as well as I do that the decision will be made to bring you home and leave me up here. I’m only heading off the inevitable. Besides, it won’t be too bad,” he said as he struggled to stand up. “With the leftover packs from here and those we found in the Russian LEM, as well as the air in the main tanks, I can still survive as much as a week. Week and a couple days. And then-”

“And then you’ll die,” Hollanbach said looking up at him. “Is that really what you want, Captain?” he asked him. “To die up here, alone and in the cold? Away from everyone you know and love?”

“It’s a small price to pay for the expansion of one’s mind.”

Hollanbach stood up and glared at him. “You’re talking about suicide, Reese. Killing yourself.”

Standing by the control console, the captain watched Hollanbach’s reflection in the tiny triangular window of the spacecraft.

“No,” he argued. “I’m talking about saving your life, Jon.” “So you can go back home to Donna and the baby on the way,” he said as he turned around and faced his superior officer. “It’s my fault we’re even up here on his damned mission. If it hadn’t been for my interference, you and I and Scotty…we’d still all be at home on the Cape, waiting for the Apollo 20 launch,” he told him.

After hearing him say that, Hollanbach realized that Reese was right, and fell silent for several minutes afterwards, thinking of the events that were very close to taking place now, events that both men had managed to keep away from for the last two days, opting to concentrate their energies on the mission, instead of worrying about the obstacles afterwards.

It was hardly right of him to even think it, but Hollanbach agreed with the captain, even if he was supposed to go down with his ship, and do the right thing. His place was not here on the moon. Not with a loving and pregnant wife waiting for him at home. And perhaps not ever. He was no coward, and no one would dispute that, but Jon Hollanbach, the man, was not ready to die at the tender age of thirty-five, regardless of what Jon Hollanbach, the American astronaut said out in the open. It shamed him to realize it, but in agreeing with Reese, he had found the excuse he’d been looking for not to go through with his word to stay behind on the moon. He vainly wished that it wasn’t coming to this. It wasn’t right…or fair. But that, it seemed… and in so many circles…was the way of things, of these things, anyway.

With a heavy breath, Hollanbach cast his blue eyes onto the captain, seeing for the first time the young man’s conviction and bravery, set into his own eyes, as he looked back at the commander, meeting his gaze with a seriousness that could be considered frightening.

“You’re crazy if you think I’m letting you do this,” he said.

Reese laughed.

“With all do respect, Commander. You really don’t have a choice,” he said as he turned back around and faced the window. “And you know it.”

And he did.

“You’re an ass,” Hollanbach said to Reese as he began removing rock sample trays from their storage bins, part of the weight alleviation list. “And quite possibly the most stubborn man I’ve known.”

Grabbing a ratchet, Reese began to loosen the bolt on one of the designated panels, giving Hollanbach a sideways glance with a hint of a smile.

“And here I thought you didn’t like me.”

 

 

 

 

* * *

She sat there silently, looking up at the moon’s sleep face, hanging there in the blackness of the late April night. The air was still chilly outside being so high up in the mountains, and she could still see her breath as it crept out of her in cloud form, quickly disappearing from sight as the warmth from within her was consumed by the cool of the night. Dogging her hands a little deeper into her pockets, she watched the older man finally exit from the observatory, closing the steel door behind him and turning around to fish out the keys from his pocket and turn the lock. But her green eyes didn’t linger there for long. In a few seconds time, she was again staring doe-eyed up at the moon, mouth slightly agape and oblivious to the world around her.

Soon, the man was there beside her, his own heavy breath clouding the air, following her intent gaze upwards and slightly smiling as he did so. Harry Sheldon put an arm around his only child.

“Something up there you like, Angel?”

“No, Daddy,” she answered. “Something up there I love.”

 

 

 

 

* * *

The ground around him was littered with discarded lander parts. Shelves, compartment doors, panels, disconnected landing lights and a now defunct radio- relay dish from the rover behind him that had probably saved their lived more times than he could count.

He stood there in the dark, listening to the static background as Hollanbach began counting down the seconds until launch, starting at fifteen, and working his way down.

Reese swallowed hard. Christ, this is it, he thought. This is really happening.

In the three-and-a-half hours that passed since Hollanbach’s last trans- mission verifying Reese’s belief that their Earthling counterparts would reach the same decision as he, they had been extremely busy readying themselves and the ascension module for its release into space. The launch, Reese thought, that would leave him there as the first-ever resident moon man. Not that anyone would ever know about it.

Together, he and the commander had gutted the lander of all non- essential parts, everything Houston had put on a list to help subtract excess weight from the craft that would allow Hollanbach to lift off successfully and begin the return trip home.

They talked as they worked, vaguely realizing that it was the first time in a while that the two of them actually maintained a friendly conversation, barely mentioning what lie ahead for them, reminiscing about the early days when they were both a little younger and a little crazier, still fresh-faced newbies palling around as secondary crew members to Gemini flights…always hoping and striving for their chance at the big beyond.

Neither one ever dreamed of anything like this, Reese knew, long before the commander ever did, that their camaraderie was becoming strained. A lot of it had to do with his meeting Donna and their subsequent marriage, but most had to do with their assignment to the Apollo 20 mission and the addition of fellow aviator Herndum to the crew, as well as Hollanbach’s ranking as mission commander, something he had lobbed for tirelessly. Hollanbach had the strips, so it went to him. Reese felt robbed, gripped even, and wrongfully took it out on the commander, distracting himself from his friend…alienating himself from the team. He burned bridges he shouldn’t have burned before he realized it, but it was already too late.

Maybe that was why he grabbed onto this mission with such ferocity, refusing almost to let go. Not for anybody, Hollanbach, himself…Angelica.

Angelica.

Damn hindsight.

Standing well beyond the blast radius, Reese watched, listening as the commander finished the countdown, seeing the engine ignite, lighting the lunar world up in a flash of brilliant white as the ascension module lifted off from the landing platform, rising quickly up into the lunar sky, the light dwindling as the ship rocketed ever upwards, soon becoming a speck in the sky.

And there he stood, a tear rolling down his warm face, listening to the dead air of the radio, the solitude already setting in, almost as quickly as the silence as the UNFORGIVEN glided further and further away from him and out of range of simple radio communications.

A good thing, although he would never know it, as Hollanbach’s scream pierced the radio waves a few seconds after the liftoff, watching in horror as the fuel gauge rose steadily upwards to indicate full.

 

 

 

CHAPTER ELEVEN?—REESE

 

There was no moon in the sky that night, as the clouds had taken over its territory, filling the unusually warm twilight with flashes of scraggly lightening and the low rumblings of a distant thunder that seemed to shake everything around her like a low-level earth quake.

Riding in the black limousine, Coley looked at Haberlin beside her, his elbow on the car door, looking out at the rain-soaked streets of Washington D.C., his bottom lip puffed out in severe thought as his fingers strummed against the side of his stubble face to the silent tune that seemed to be playing relentlessly in his head. Around them, the atmosphere was quiet, filled the silent trappings of indecision and worry as they both contemplated something neither of them wanted to do, desperately hoping that another could make the cold-hearted decision that lies ahead of them.

On paper, at least, the plan was simple. Contact the Soviets and tell them that they know about a certain failed moon attempt concerning a ragged Vostok rocket and slaughtered cosmonauts. And if everything went according to plan, which it rarely ever did, the Russians would chomp at the bait, demanding to know everything the U.S. did about their missing spacecraft and crew. She would then hit them with the proposal of a joint mission to the moon to rescue the astronaut that got left behind, granting them full access to the alien ship and their own stranded vehicles in return for helping to save a man’s life.

And what if they refused? It was a pretty far-fetched story. If she didn’t know any better, she wouldn’t believe any of it herself either. The Russians were going to want to see something. They would never take the word of their mortal enemies without solid and indisputable proof.

Coley sighed very, very heavily.

On paper, it seemed simple enough. The reality of the situation was an entirely different monster, and it all came down to one thing, politics.

The United States and the Soviet Union were at global odds with each other. Both countries were superpowers in a world still in turmoil and chaotic misunderstanding. If the smaller countries of the world weren’t locked in mortal combat over religious beliefs or boundary quarrels, it was the creeping death of the energy crisis, rising fuel and food prices, and shifting political beliefs that keep them all at each others throats.

Everyone wanted a resolution, but no one was willing to compromise, to budge…the grandest of standoffs. They looked to the superpowers for those resolutions, dispelling their own beliefs to conform to the wisdom of their guidance.

Or rule.

Soviet Russia had become a second Hitler in the free world’s eyes. Offering these torn nations a promise of peace and collective welfare through the teachings of Communism, abolishing all social and business classes. With Communism there would be no “have’s and have not’s”, only the utopia of a perfect society complete with shared wealth and brotherhood. One by one, the Marxist charm of a better tomorrow washed over them after the fall of Berlin’s and Germany’s war-torn promised of very nearly that same brotherhood…if you happened to belong to the master race, as long as you complied with the objection of individuality and gave the State your soul.

One by one, countries fell. America shuddered. Like the war that was going on now in Viet Nam, that had already taken so many American lives, lost in combat so far. It is just another example of the fight…and the ‘cold war’ between Communism and Capitalism.

Politics…it all boiled down to politics in the end. As far as politics and even belief was concerned, the Soviet leader hated America and all it stood for.

Not one certain aspect or solitary belief or practice but the entire country, from citizens to the president. He hated it all.

It had been America that had beaten him to he moon, despite every advance his proud Soviets made in the name of space travel. It was America that beat him, more so it seemed after the war, nearly everywhere he looked from world economy to military superpower status and the mighty nuclear arms race that had quickly enveloped both sides.

Yes, Coley mused, the man and his comrades despised us, probably electing to kill themselves before even admitting to the possibility of aiding their capitalist enemies in any endeavor, ESPECIALLY a multi-million dollar rescue attempt to save another lowly freedom fighter from meeting certain doom and demise on the moon above them all.

Come to think of it, the Reds were such obstinate bastards that she was no longer sure if the news of the Vostok’s discovery would even deter them in the slightest way towards helping their sworn enemy. Perhaps they may even forsake all knowledge of what happened to their failed moon attempt and its crew, just to spite the Americans way of life.

Or not even admit to it at all. The Soviets had long since initiated the use of a secondary secret space program that the world and American government at large knew nothing about, allowing them to incorporate any and all means of desperate measure to try to beat the world to the moon. A space program that more often than not killed the very same cosmonauts they had pinned all their hopes on to stake the hammer and sickle through the cold face of the moon for their own.

Mary Ellen sighed closed her green eyes at the thought of the headaches that soon awaited her. Risky as the whole damn thing was proving itself to be… she knew without a doubt that this was their only shot at bringing their man back home alive. The Russians already had two rockets on launch pads, ready to go, and there was no way she could scramble together another Saturn onto the platform in less than a week’s time. Coley knew she was good, but hardly miraculous.

After stopping at the main gate for identification checks, the limo rolled right on in, driving up the rounding pavement that led into the presidential grounds.

The rain had dwindled down to a light drizzle as they pulled up and parked in front of the White House, which was ablaze with majestic light from the eighteenth century lantern that hung on a chain pendulum within the mansion’s threshold. As she and Haberlin stepped out, Coley could see the lighted water shooting up from the center of the main fountain on the lawn. True… it wasn’t the first time she’d been there, but with her every visit there, the house and grounds never failed to momentarily steal away her breath with its pain- staking planned beauty, It was indeed a monument to the spirit of American leadership.

Rounding the tail-end of the car, she joined up with Haberlin and the two of them began running up to the door of the White House, their special Central Intelligence Agency badges clipped to their jackets bouncing around from the movement. Entering into the column façade, they encountered a fully uniformed General Lockenshire who stood waiting for them, looking as grim as Coley felt, his gray flattop bristling with intensity as he threw a bullet-scarred hand out Haberlin’s way and Coley’s greeting them each with a strong and near-crippling handshake.

“Vice-Director,” he said quite roughly, nodding his head as the man walked by him.

“Agent Coley.”

As he let go of her hand, she rubbed it, realizing that she was lucky to have gotten off so easily. Lockenshire was rumored to have squeezed a Nazi’s head so tightly during the War in a hand-to-hand bout in France that after he’d been shot, he killed the man with his bare hands, caving his skull into his brain.

“Good to see the both of you again. Shame it couldn’t have been under better circumstances.”

The trio began to walk through the opened doors at the mighty estate, with the general taking up the rear.

“The President is waiting for us in his office,” he announced as he closed the big doors behind him.

Haberlin glanced over his shoulder. “How is he?”

From behind them, Lockenshire grunted with a troubled breath of uncertainty. “I’m not sure,” he told them. “With the new charges added to the scandal, he had a bit more on his plate than usual.”

Coley became inquisitive. “What new charges?”

The general grunted again as they walked under the chandelier of the blue- carpeted lobby.

“Obstruction of justice,” he said in a low voice. “Rumor has it the Attorney General and others may step down.”

“Resign?” she asked incredulously.

Lockenshire nodded as they crossed the floor, heading for the hallway that would take them into the west wing of the White House. “But I have to admit one thing,” he told them as they entered into the empty corridor. “He’s holding up considerably well with all he has looking at him.”

Yeah, Coley thought. Not to mention this.

A few more seconds passed, the three of them walking along in complete silence. Reaching the end of the hallway, they stood before a solitary Marine corporal standing guard in his dress blues. He was at rigid attention, his youthful eyes staring blankly ahead of him but seeing all within his range. As they approached him, the Marine ushered up a sharp salute at the sight of the medaled four-star general that quickly returned the courtesy, taking the lead from Haberlin.

“At ease, son,” he said.  “The President is expecting us.”

With a quick jerk, the soldier opened the door, swinging it stealthily on its hinges without a single sound, revealing again to Haberlin and Coley, the familiar sight of the Oval Office, where, at the far edge of the room, the President sat, his back to them, starring out the windows of high-paned glass into the late night in Washington.

They entered the room with a normal, but intimidated pace. After all, they were in the presence of the most politically powerful man in the world. A man, in theory and thankfully not in practice, whose many powers included starting and ending wars with a mere spoken word, sending foreign governments into economic ruin by imposing menacing trade embargoes onto their delicate borders, or even, using his own political influence within the ranks, to oust an undesirable rival from office and secure the place of democracy and freedom for yet another day, except for the Soviet nation and her satellite countries.

And there he was, this man, capable of such things that hardly proved a challenge to even the weakest of his facilities, alone in such a large and desolate dark room with them, accentuated only with his indomitable presence and the seal of his republic and station, strangely spotlighted by the light of a full moon, finally free from the storm clouds and shining brightly. They all entered the room, hearing the general close the door behind him.

“Lock the door,” came the President’s quiet words. They heard him exhale a heavy, burdened breath. “What we’re about to discuss here is an extremely delicate matter, and I don’t wish to be disturbed by nonsense as we do so.”

The general immediately obeyed his commander-in-chief, barring any entry into the office by the simple twist of a latch. Haberlin and Coley stood, watching the slow movement of the high-backed leather chair swivel disconcertingly their way, gradually exposing the face of a man the world has come to know as leader of the planet’s most powerful nation. His was a face of stark reality, despite the inherent celebrity, grim with the visage of worry and doubt he was now forced to entertain, knowing full well the extent of fate’s little twists and turns that had brought them all together in that room, but not yet knowing the extent of the fate he would very soon have to impose.

By habit, Coley smiled as her green eyes met the unseen patriotic blue of the President’s. Acknowledging her presence, the man allowed the tinniest of smiles to corrupt his face before his grimness again displaced him, his features harshly drowned in the heavy black of his own shadow.

He motioned toward the cushioned Victorian-era chairs that sat idly before them. Seats that had probably once held fast the attentions of history’s favorite children as they forged on with new and unexplored paths to the destiny that continued to call them.

Haberlin first, then Coley, respectfully took a seat as the general remained stoic and stone-faced by the door, opting instead for the militaristic pleasure of standing. The President again sighed heavily as he peered through the moonlit darkness of those who sat anxiously across from him.

“Agent Coley,” he said. “And Vice-Director Haberlin. I must admit, I didn’t expect to see the two of you again quite so soon.”

Coley looked on the desk and discovered an opened red folder with files inside, files that included the photographs of the familiar faces and page of detailed analysis of those faces’ lives. Even with jut the moonlight as an illuminant source, she could see that the faces belonged to Hollanbach, Reese and Herndum.

“Our little moon mission has gone a bit awry, I understand,” he said as he clicked on the desk light and picked up Hollanbach’s file and began leafing through it, perching a pair of thin reading glasses on his rather prominent nose as he did so. “And it seems we are confronted with a situation that demands we sacrifice the life of one American astronaut to save another.”

He tossed the papers back down onto the desk and peeked at Coley from over the top of his glasses. “Tragic,” the president said roughly. “In every damn sense of the word it would seem. Are they aware of their situation?”

Coley carefully cleared her throat. “Mr. President,” she began telling him. “The astronauts are, in fact, aware that they have…unfavorable…fuel status. Commander Hollanbach, however, is more inclined to believe that their fuel reading is an electronic failure, caused by the hit the lunar module took from a small meteorite earlier in the mission, and Mission Control is somewhat inclined to believe him.”

The President’s forehead wrinkled in confusion. “What do you mean by ‘somewhat inclined’, Agent Coley?”

She swallowed hard and looked at her chief executive nervously.

“The Commander and Captain Reese both performed a series of evaluations that determined absolutely no telltale signs of a fuel leak or loss, and due to the meteorite impact there was temporary loss of communications between the LEM and the command module as well.”

“But,” he said to her. “You…and the engineers are still not convinced to chance a launch?”

Mary Ellen shook her head. “No,” she said with certainty. “No, sir, I’m afraid we are not. There’s simply no way for our computers to determine the accuracy of the LEM’s fuel status without a direct line of telemetry for them to scrutinize. With this mission taking place on the dark side of the moon, that just isn’t possible.”

“Yes, I believe I read that somewhere in Mr. Haberlin’s official report, as well as the solution that a Mr. McNeely and his crew dreamt up, initiating this emergency meeting tonight.” The President grew silent for a minute, staring down at the files and at Hollanbach’s smiling ace, thinking long and hard before he spoke next. “I also understand that these men, Hollanbach and Reese have discovered the remains of Soviet spacecraft inside the crashed alien ship?”

Haberlin answered him.

“Yes, Sir. The Vostok module was damaged by a massive hull breach, and a Soviet version of our lunar lander, which was detached somehow from the Vostok and sitting upright on its own legs. Captain Reese was able to get inside and determine that the ship is intact and quite operational.”

The President sighed again. “And what is this about the cosmonaut crew? That they were…slaughtered? Inside their own ship?”

Coley nodded. “It seems that whatever damaged the hull of the Vostok managed to get inside, killing two of the crew. The final cosmonaut has yet to be found, but is assumed dead as well.”

“Naturally. Any idea what it was?”

She shrugged. “Both men were completely eviscerated according to Reese, with the majority of their internal organs missing and what appeared to be teeth marks on their bones. But Hollanbach and Reese believe it to be something they haven’t seen yet. The alien bodies they found were too small and fragile to have done anything like what they described.”

He put his head down into his hands.

“Those poor bastards,” he said as he looked back at her. “The Soviet lander, I don’t suppose there would be anyway for the men to extract the fuel from that and use it to refuel their own ship?” he asked.

Coley smiled, sadly shaking her head. “No, sir,” she said almost apologetically. “I’m afraid not. They simply do not have the equipment, and even if they did, I don’t believe it would matter much. After initial fueling, the tanks in both the Soviet’s and ours are sealed shut and pressurized to keep from leaking and from the intensely cold temperatures; the fuel components constantly need to stay in a liquid state. Once that has occurred, the tanks can’t be reopened unless by a rupture or an inert explosion.”

“Damn!” The President momentarily lost his cool, slamming his clenched fist onto the desk and rattling the light. “I don’t want to leave a man up there to die. I can’t,” he said as he shook his head defiantly, jaw set. “I won’t. No matter the cost.”

Coley saw her opportunity…and took it. “With all due respect, Sir, there is simply no possible way to avoid this. We can either save one man and the incredible information he will be bringing back home to us…or, we can lose them both, the Lieutenant as well. It’s highly doubtful he can survive on a three-day voyage home by himself.”

She stopped, gauging his reaction to her words, which only consisted of a grunt of sorts, and the continuation of staring at the files. Coley then looked at Haberlin, who nodded, knowing the resolution she had waiting, and giving his senior operative the permission she needed to bring it out into the open.

“If we got to leave a man on the moon, sir, there is the slight possibility that he will be able to survive long enough for us to mount a joint rescue attempt.”

Upon hearing those last words of her suggestion, the President curiously looked back up at her with almost childish nativity.

“By all means,” he said to her. “Tell me more.”

“For several weeks now,” she started. “Ever since we were in the planning stages of this mission, the Soviets have threatened our processes with the sudden appearance of, not one, but two multistage rockets sitting on opposite launch pads in Baikonur, fueled and prepped for a moon launch, reliable inside sources tell us. These rockets are extremely massive, sir, larger than our Saturn series and more than capable of making it to the moon and back,” she told him. “And perhaps even faster than the going rate of three days.” She took a second to let that sink in.

“Go on,” the President prodded.

“It seems to me, Mr. President, that the Russians would be interested in knowing the current status of their cosmonauts. And I realize the chances of this are near next to zero, but there is the slight possibility they might agree to a joint moon mission with one of our own astronauts on board their vehicle in order to-”

“Now wait just a goddamn minute!”

All eyes turned to see an angry General Lockenshire, standing behind them with his arms crossed in front of his chest.

“With all do respect, Sir, I see where the lady is going with this and I don’t like it. Not even a goddamn little bit.”

Coley tried to speak up in her own defense. “General, please. Just take a minute and hear me out! I-”

He snorted loudly and obnoxiously.

“I don’t care to listen to anymore of this unbelievable bullshit, Agent Coley. Those men are expendable. They know that. You go inviting the Russia’s up to the moon for a field trip and you could very well be handing the whole country to them on a silver platter! Not to mention the planet, once they learned to master the alien technology found up there,” he said as he grunted again. “It’s only a matter of time before they find a way to forge it into weaponry. Is that what you want? To give us up to Brezhnev and his flunkies?”

“No,” she said, feeling the angered lioness within her straining at the chains, trying to break free. She wanted so badly to let go of her restraint, and beat the old fool senseless. But she knew better. She knew she was better, than, that, so she calmed herself. “No,” she said again. “I only want to save a man’s life, General. What is it you want to do? Leave one or all of them up there to die?”

“If that’s what it comes to,” he growled at her. “Then, yes. I’d leave them up there in a goddamn heartbeat, you’d better believe it. Those men are not just American astronauts, Agent Coley. They’re also American soldiers of the highest possible caliber. They have been trained to accept the fact they can die at a moment’s notice to protect the interests of their country,” he said, uncrossing his arms and stabbing at his temple with an extended forefinger. “Their minds are their most powerful weapons, conditioned to deal with situations such as this. They may be astronauts, and it gives me no pleasure to say this openly, but they are without a doubt expendable when compared to the minute possibility of the Communists getting their hands on that alien craft on the moon,” he said as he again crossed his big arms and thrust his square jaw at them. If that makes me a no-account bastard in your eyes,” he seethed. “So be it.”

“I see,” the President said quietly. “And while I can certainly relate to your apprehension of Agent Coley’s plan, General, I’m afraid I’m forced to disagree with you. If it is within my power to save an American citizen’s life, regardless of his training and conditioning to die for this country…then I will exhaust all my powers and privileges until I do. Do you entirely understand my position on this?”

Coley and Haberlin both watched as the general seemed to suddenly deflate, his gruff demeanor giving way to that of an angry, scolded child, not very happy with his father’s decision.

“Yes, sir,” he said reluctantly. “And I apologize.”

The President sighed. “No apology is necessary. No damage has been done…yet. But it does concern me, Agent Coley…how do we save our astronaut and still keep the advanced technology from the Soviets?”

She shook her head.

“I honestly do not know sir, but I’m afraid there isn’t a lot of time to debate the matter. If we are going to do this, we have to do it now, as every minute we delay here, is a minute less of air that our astronauts will have to breathe.”

“Agreed,” he said with a huff. “I realize this is a difficult, if not an impossible question to ask…even for a President, but I have to ask you, Agent Coley, do you have any suggestions as to who should be left behind, and who should return home?”

Coley remained still in her seat, and very quiet as she contemplated her answer, hesitant in voicing her opinion at all, and surprising herself when she did.

“Yes,” she answered him. “Yes, I supposed I have. I’ve thought about it for awhile now, even though I’ve had no desire to do so. And I’ve weighed the options over and over again with every possible configuration I could, but,” she found herself sniffing and caught it. “I simply don’t have the objectivity to make such a life-threatening decision, sir. That’s why I came to you.”

The President nodded gravely.

“I see,” he said as he reaches down and picked up Hollanbach’s file, skimming idly through it. “Commander Jonathan James Hollanbach,” he started. “Mission commander, married and expecting a child in another seven or eight months,” he said as a brief smile crossed his face. “First time father,” he noted as he set Hollanbach’s file down and picked up another.

“Captain Andrew Morgan Reese,” he read. “Lunar lander pilot and decorated war hero. Viet Nam veteran and Purple Heart recipient. An impressive man,” the President said, as he looked a little further down the captain’s bio. “Single, with no dependents claimed by him personally or on his tax forms,” he sighed, as he leafed through Reese’s history a little longer than Hollanbach’s, then he closed the folder and tossed it back onto his desk, right on top of the commander’s, a photograph in stark black-and-white slipping out of the bunch, depicting a smiling Reese in his astronaut gear, posing next to his helmet and a plastic model of the Saturn rocket. Behind him on the wall was an enlarged picture of the Apollo 20 mission patch, its illustration of a cowboy hat resting on the moon’s surface with three bright stars in the field of black that represented space.

Rounding out the bottom of the patch were the bold words “EX TERRA AD LUNA”, written on rippling scrolls of white that translated from Latin as “From Earth to Moon.”

The President let go of a heavy breath, removing his glasses and setting them aside, leaning back in his leather chair and rubbing his forehead aggressively with his fingers.

All eyes there in the Oval Office focused on him, waiting for the man to make his decision. The silence was deafening. He then sat up in his seat, eyeing the red phone resting on his desk at an arm’s length. With a final sigh, he reached for it, dragging it closer to him across the smooth varnish of the cheery wood desk.

“As difficult as is it, the choice is simple enough,” he told them. “Given the commander’s impending fatherhood and marital status, as well as his inherent vitality to the remainder of the mission, it is decided that he will return on the voyage home, with Captain Reese remaining behind on the moon.”

He quickly looked at Coley, then back at the phone.

The President then picked up the phone from its cradle and pushed only one button, instantly sending out an unseen signal traversing across the blue waters of the Atlantic and the sun soaked land masses of the European nations, connecting to a voice behind the Ural Mountains, also known as the Iron Curtain. A voice he’d seldom heard or ever wanted to hear, now praying that the voice would be there, as it should be. The phone clicked as it was picked up on the other en.

“This is the President of the United States,” he spoke into the plastic mouthpiece. His voice was its usual strong and confidant commanding, showing absolutely no evidence of the pain or indecision he was still feeling. Another voice spoke into his ear, but it wasn’t Brehznev’s.

“Please,” he said. “Put the Premier on the line, it’s an emergency.”

 

 

 

 

* * *

The long and shiny black claw slowly retreated into its hiding place inside the beast’s finger with slow and deliberate movement as Reese stopped squeezing.

“Damn,” the young astronaut muttered. “Retractable claws. This just keeps getting better and better,” he said as he looked up at the commander, still frozen in his quick-fire stance, training his rifle onto the dead alien’s head, snapped backwards and twisted at its thick neck.

As Reese stood there, Hollanbach’s light joined his own, illuminating the still prominent muscles of the giant beast’s neck, casting black shadows as they stood up from the strain of holding such weight.

“Ten bucks says this ugly bastard is the one with an appetite for Russian meat,” he said as he heard the commander swallow. “You see anything resembling a weapon near it? A laser gun of some sort, something like that?”

With pleasure, Reese dropped the heavy appendage, watching it fall slowly in the moon’s light gravity, the long strands of black hair on its arm’s side, waving in the airless atmosphere. The captain looked around, hardly able to move around in the confined space he found himself, his light falling upon bits of twisted alien wreckage jutting up from the deck, looking for anything closely resembling what he thought to be a weapon, and finding nothing.

“No,” he said, reporting his findings to Hollanbach. “This thing appears to be unarmed,” he said as he sighed. “Not that it really matters,” he said. “I don’t know what the hell I’m looking for anyway.”

“True,” Hollanbach said in agreement. “You still have the kit on you?”

Reese reached up to his shoulder, feeling the bulge in his pocket that concealed the tissue sample kit they had used earlier to collect specimens of the little gray’s skin, bone, and muscle.

“Yeah,” he answered. “I’ve still got it.”

“Good,” the commander said with a breath. “Go ahead and get some samples from this thing. Skin and hair. And try to clip off some of that claw, too. I think everybody back home would be interested to find out what rips holes in our world’s toughest metal as though it was only butter.”

“No problem,” Reese said. “I’m on it.”

Hollanbach’s breath echoed in his ear. “I want to check out the rest of this place while there’s still time.”  He stepped a little closer to the ledge of the jagged floor and uneasily peered down at the captain and the dead giant impaled right next to him. “You okay down there, partner?”

“I’m good,” the captain said as he slung his rifle around the neck ring of his suit and began to dig out the sampling kit from his shoulder pouch. “I’m pretty sure that Mr. Ugly here won’t be coming back to life. That is a nasty piece of metal poking through his chest,” he said as he laughed. “And if he does, I’ll be more than happy to put a few more there.”

The commander was still cautious. “Just be careful, okay? I’m not wandering off too far, just over to the right a little bit. I thought I saw another compartment over there before we stumbled upon this thing here.”

Reese watched as the commander backed away from his view, leaving him alone in the pit. He then opened the plastic case and plucked out a good size scalpel, patting the dead alien tenderly on its arm as he brought the shiny blade closer to the leathery skin.

“Do me a favor, big fella. Stay dead.”

With a firm grip on his cutting tool, the captain began, sliding the sharp blade across the surface of the blue skin, expecting to feel the crunchy halt of breaking frozen flesh, but was surprised to see a deep gash result instead, as the blade traveled in a smooth line. Reese stopped, a little put off by the lack of blood flowing from the wound. The skin was extremely thick. He stabbed the scalpel further into the cut, twisting and pulling, looking for an end to the thick hide. Still no blood, only the light blue tones of incised flesh. He cursed, realizing that extracting this sample would hardly be as easy as the smaller, and apparently fragile gray’s. Sighing, Reese began to saw his way down.

Hollanbach could hear the captain’s transmitted grunts of effort as he worked.

“How’re you coming, Reese?” he asked.

“A little slow. This skin is pretty tough. I’ve already cut a few inches into it, but with great difficulty and no blood of any kind so far. You ask me, the hide on this fella is thick enough to stop a freight train. Makes me wonder what good a bullet’s gonna do if- There you are!”

Another stroke of the blade and his light uncovered the gleam of a blue, wet looking substance which turned near instantly from a gelatin-like matter into hard ice right before the captain’s very eyes. “This must be its blood,” he told Hollanbach. “Same color as its skin, a dark blue, freezing almost as soon as I expose it to the open, and much quicker than the gray’s blood,” he said as he blinked. “God, it’s so cold out here it’s already crystallizing.”

Hollanbach was fast approaching the opening he had seen earlier in the bulkhead about twenty feet away from him. Aside from the way they came in, it appeared to be the only other way out, ferociously sparking the commander’s curiosity as to what might be within it.

“Right,” he said, listening to Reese’s transmission. “That gelatinous blood may explain the thickness of its skin. Apparently their species is accustomed to the deep cold in some way. Perhaps that’s the environment of their home world,” he said as he heard the captain chuckle.

“Looks like that degree in biology is starting to do you a little good.”

The commander smiled, almost within an arm’s length of the alien threshold.

“Well it would,” he told Reese. “Had I actually gotten the degree. It’s only listed in my files as one of my majors, but for reasons still unknown to me, I ended up earning a degree in Political Science,” he said as he laughed briefly. “And so far that hasn’t come in very handy on this mission.”

Reese cut through the last of the heavy chunk of skin, removing a piece nearly as big as his fist, sliding the now frozen blood-soaked sample into a collection bag, placing it in the pouch on his right leg.

“Give it time,” he said jokingly.  “If we find one of these things still alive, you can talk him out of eating us and vote for you in the next election.”

The commander shook his head, grinning at Reese’s comment.

“Okay, Captain. I seem to be coming up on a doorway of some type. I’m going to stop here at the opening and shine my light in to see what’s inside.”

Reaching down, Reese brought the giant’s hand up again, grabbing a finger and again squeezing to bring a claw back into view.

“Go ahead,” he told Hollanbach. “I finally got the skin and hair sample. I’m going to go ahead and see if I can shave off a little piece or two of this claw,” he said as he put the scalpel down on it. “This shouldn’t take too long. When I’m done with this, I’ll join you up there. Just exercise caution till I get there, eh?”

Hollanbach tightly gripped the rifle, thrusting it out before him, seconds away from the opening, his heart pounding as the light from his helmet dis- appeared from view into the corrupt darkness still ahead of him. The commander swallowed silently.

“No problem,” he replied. “You know me…Caution’s my middle name.”

“Actually,” Reese said as the scalpel blade touched the hard surface of the claw.

“I thought it was James.”

 

 

 

 

* * *

A voice gruff and impersonal sounded from the other end of the telephone. “Hello from Moscow, Mr. President,” said the voice in a thick Russian accent. “How is it that I may help you?”

The President eyed the photo of Reese on his desk. “You’ll forgive me if I skip the formalities, Mr. Brezhnev. I’m afraid the urgency of this matter requires that we waste as little time as possible.”

“Of course, Comrade.” Concern could be heard in the man’s voice now. “What is going on?”

The President reached for his water and downed a quick sip. Inside his chest, he could feel his heart pumping like a runaway locomotive. All eyes in the office were on him as he spoke. “I’ll start at the beginning and tell you what I can,” he said. “About a month ago, one of my top astronomer’s sighted an unusual group of lights in proximity to the moon. Over the course of several minutes, he watched as these lights appeared to drift away from the moon, then suddenly change course, heading directly for the moon itself.

“After careful research and analysis by our people, it was decided that something had impacted on the dark side of the moon’s surface, and a mission was put together to explore such a possibility. A team was sent to the impact site where a large craft was discovered imbedded in the surface,” the President said as he took another sip of water.

“It was an alien ship of mass proportions,” he revealed.

“Incredible,” he heard the Soviet leader say. “Please, Mr. President. Go on.”

He took a deep breath. His armpits were wet from nervousness. “Our astronauts discovered the bodies of several dead aliens beings, generally small in size and of relative frailty. They also discovered two of your spacecrafts inside the belly of the ship. A Vostok module and a lunar lander.”

Nixon paused for effect, listening to the Russian’s heavy breathing on the other end.

“Continue,” the Premier said.

“The crew was dead, Mr. Brezhnev. Murdered.”

The President was slightly startled to hear a laugh. “You don’t expect me to believe this, do you Mr. President? What is this, some sort of game you are playing?” There was anger in his voice now. “I am not amused.”

“I can understand your skepticism, Mr. Brezhnev, but I assure you, this isn’t a game. The crew we found up there had been brutally killed-slaughtered. There wasn’t very much in the way of remains to be-”

“Remains?” the Premier interrupted him. “Boshe moi! What was it that killed them?”

“If we knew for sure, I’d tell you,” the President said. “But I don’t have the time. Due to circumstances beyond our control, we’ve been forced to leave behind one of our astronauts in order to bring the rest of our crew home. That is why I’ve called you on this line. I knew about the rockets you have on the launch pads in Baikonur. The United States needs your help in rescuing one of our own. We simply don’t have the ti-”

“Do you have proof of all these tragedies of my cosmonauts, Mr. President? All this you say, do you have proof?”

The President sighed. “We have film, as I understand it, from the mission commander’s helmet camera. There are also biological samples from the creatures they have encountered. Bu we won’t have those until the astronaut’s splashdown three days from now.”

There was a good amount of silence on the lines as the Premier thought things through. The President was just about to ask him if he was still there when he finally said something. “Very well, Mr. President. The Soviet Union will help you rescue this man. We will use these three days to make final preparations for the launch, while we both wait for your astronaut’s return. In the meantime, I will send an associate of mine to you, to examine this evidence to see if you are speaking the truth, yes?”

“Fine,” the President concurred. “And who might I be expecting?”

“Not important,” the Premier stressed. “I will have the embassy contact you later with the identity of my associate. But when he does arrive, he will need to know everything about this mission, and he will have full authorization by me to terminate this rescue attempt should he see need to. Do we agree?”

There was a quick glance to Coley, who looked at her leader with hopeful eyes.

“Yes,” he said with a breath. “We agree.”

“Good. I will have the embassy call you soon, with the arrangements. Good day, Mr. President.”

“Good day, Mr. Brezhnev. And on behalf of Captain Reese and the people of the United States, I thank you.”

“Da,” the Premier said, smiling as he hung up the phone in his quarters.

The President hung the phone up, and looked at his visitors with less dubious eyes than before.

“It seems we have a mission, Agent Coley.”

“Well,” Coley sighed. “That’s a relief. What does he want in return?”

The President shrugged. “Surprisingly nothing much. Only full disclosure of the mission.”

Lockenshire sat there with them in disbelief. “No mention of the technology they plan to pirate?”

The President shook his head.

“No. Not a word, General.”

“I don’t believe them!” Lockenshire suddenly thundered. “I know the Reds, they’ll hit us with a bombshell at the last minute.”

“It hardly matters,” the President told him. “We’re in it now and besides, we’ll have someone there with the cosmonauts to prevent anything like that from happening.”

Lockenshire shook his head, unconvinced. “I’m sorry, sir. But I don’t think that will be enough. The Soviets are sneaky bastards at best, they could steal something small and bring it home with them, and we’d easily never know.”

That’s when Haberlin spoke up.

“I’m forced to agree with the general, sir. Granted, the Russians are doing us a tremendous favor, helping us to bring Reese home, but it’s our inherent responsibility to safeguard the alien ship from the wrong hands…at any cost, I believe.”

The President leaned back in his chair and looked at Haberlin.

“What are you suggesting then, Vice-Director? We go as far as murder if need be?”

His eyes said it all. “Yes, sir, I do.”

“For Christ sake, Haberlin!!” the leader of the free world exclaimed as he thrust himself into the upright position again. “Have you lost your damn mind?” he said as he took a quick gulp and killed his water. “The whole purpose of this joint mission is to save lives…. not waste them!”

Haberlin was unwavering. “With all due respect, Sir, the secret…the ability of interstellar travel is just sitting up there, waiting to be excavated,” he said with a half-grin. “Wouldn’t you rather Americans possess such technology, instead of taking the chance that in the hands of the Soviet Union, we might find ourselves to be at their mercy?”

The President was getting frustrated. “Of course I would, and you know that!But what you’re suggesting is wrong, on a multitude of levels!”

Coley joined in. “Sir, I’m afraid they’re right.”

He looked at her incredulously.

“You, too?”

She smiled sympathetically. “The only thing we have as an advantage over the Soviets right now is that we, and we alone, know the exact location of the ship. Once this rescue mission takes place, the Russians will know it, too. And while we may be able to stop them from salvaging anything there with us on the moon…we won’t be able to stop them from returning to the site in the future,” she said as he heavily exhaled. “The only way to assure that they don’t is to dispose of the cosmonauts who will be able to lead them there.”

“Good God,” the President muttered, as he looked at her. “It doesn’t even matter what I say does it? You all have already made your minds up.”

Haberlin answered. “In many ways, Mr. President, we really have no choice.”

“You won’t be involved any way, sir,” Coley told him. “It can be made to look like-”

“Not be involved!?” he bellowed. “For the love of God, Agent Coley, I already am involved!”

Angry, the President again leaned back in his seat, closing his tired eyes for a few moments to clear his head. But Haberlin interrupted him.

“They would do the same to us, sir. You know that.”

“No,” he said, opening his eyes and narrowing them at the vice-director. “I don’t. And even if I did, that wouldn’t make right what you’re proposing.”

“Not now. Not ever. It’s un-American, and it goes against every thing I believe in as a God-fearing Christian man.”

“But, sir,” Haberlin continued on. “Your reputation wouldn’t be tarnished in any way. We would-”

“Shut up, Mr. Haberlin. Shut up and get the hell out of my sight,” he growled. “Before I lose my temper completely with you, and have you removed.”

The vice-director sat there, stunned a little and caught a little off guard.

“Begging your pardon, sir, I-”

“Do I need to call in the two Marines outside my door to have you removed? Leave, Mr. Haberlin!”

Haberlin stood up, looked at Coley and then at the President.

“My apologies, sir.”

The President was silent and the vice-director turned around to leave as Lockenshire opened the door and let him out. Coley stood as well. “Perhaps I should go too, sir. I, uh, do have a lot to attend to before Wednesday.”

“I don’t like this, Agent Coley. I’ve a feeling it will end…badly.”

“Trust us, Mr. President. We can make it work.”

He sighed heavily. “Just bring Captain Reese home so that some good will come out of this disaster.”

Coley could see the exhaustion in his face. She swallowed hard and uneasily locked eyes with the man, feeling the intensity of his stare and knowing in hat moment that there was much more at risk than any of them had originally intended. She gulped again, trying to usher up a face of confidence and assurance. As she spoke, she noticed a slight tremble in her voice despite her best efforts to hole it.

“Of course, sir. We’ll bring him home.”

Hearing that, the president weakly smiled and without another word, swiveled around in his chair to again face the dark of the night outside his window, watching the pale reflections of his remaining visitors walk out of the door and leave him alone with his thoughts in what was soon becoming his quickly deteriorating past. Taking a deep breath, he managed to block it all out for a single moment, gazing upwards at the moon that shone upon him. He began to wonder about things, things that seemed so right a minute ago but now seemed like an unavoidable tragedy, like so many other ideas and notions that once held promise in his, as he saw it, ruined legacy of an administration.

Things like what could provoke a man to abandon all he cared for and loved, just to touch the forbidden boundaries of the sky and space, if only for a fleeing moment in time, knowing full well the dangers of such things, and yet still giving in to the desire. Was it anything like the dilemma of being a man in a position where he knew in doing the right thing was not always the good thing?

He wondered about such things, finding his once tense muscles relaxing there in the grand executive chair of the Oval Office, glad the answer would not chase him into the welcoming fog of sleep.

 

 

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CHAPTER NINE?—THE DISCOVERY

The DESPERADO slipped effortlessly into the moon’s shadow like a slick thief, penetrating the darkness as he soared sixty nautical miles above the unseen surface where Herndum desperately hoped Hollanbach and Reese were, safely down with the LEM on the lunar soil, one-hundred percent alive.

“UNFORGIVEN…DESPERADO… do you copy? Over.”

Silence…

Not total silence, but the kind of echoing hush that lingers in your thoughts when you know you are alone. The kind of silence that, despite the noises of the ship working tirelessly to maintain the mission agenda, is enough to make most men in this predicament crazy with fear. Especially once you consider the fact that you were almost one and a quarter light seconds from the next blue-green sphere of breathable air, and the only thing keeping you alive is blind trust in human technology and the thin metal shell of the spacecraft that envelopes him, providing a barrier from the cold and lifeless vacuum of space that waits patiently to claim him outside…

He floated to the telescope on the CM’s starboard side and again peered into it, hoping to see the illumination from the LEM’s landing lights on the stark black below. A vain hope, he knew. The CM was much to high to see anything, and the little bit of light they had down there with them hardly strong enough to escape the hunger of the dark.

“UNFORGIVEN…. DESPERADO… do you copy? Over.”

Herndum waited a few seconds and sighed, looking away from the telescope’s double-eye piece, knowing that it was just a waste of time to even look in the first place. Heading back towards the couch, he scratched at his whiskered face, yawning, again entertaining the possibility that it might be just him making the return trip home, a scenario he had practiced for, sure…but not one he was all willing to go though.

It was a long way home. Over a quarter-million miles, in fact…ah, hit, he really didn’t want to think about it. Hollanbach and Reese weren’t dead, just experiencing some technical difficulty with the radio, he thought, trying to convince himself. Any second now, they’d be lighting up the airwaves with their chipper voices, telling him all about the good scare they had and simultaneously sharing a nervous laugh about it. Then they’d part ways for the time being, as he made tracks over to the near side to rebroadcast the information back to Earth, eagerly awaiting the passing of another half-hour as he traveled back towards them, ready to again engage in conversation with his two friends as they continues their mission below and he, above, until the day came when they would dock their spacecraft together again, rejoining a lonely CM pilot to make the voyage home to Earth.

Or he could look forward to another seventy-three revolutions around the moon, holding his breath and praying to hear b something other than the panicking scream of his own soul.

The hatch to the top of the LEM opened, and Hollanbach again emerged into the desolation of the airless moonscape, tools in hand and ready to get the RRD operational again.

For about a hundred feet all around them, the dusty plain that the LEM set on was covered in the brightness of the upper spotlights, the two below near the landing legs long since dark…cut off now that their mission was over, an in the long run, to help conserve power. The big lights were aimed downwards at an angle, concerned with lighting up the ground directly around them, instead of illuminating the horizon just out of their reach.

“Okay,” the commander said to no one in particular as he began to reach over, grabbing for the broken, metal arm. Let’s see what we have here.”

His helmet light helped to further enlighten the damaged wiring his rubber tipped gloves, however, doing almost nothing to help the commander probe the damage being more of a hindrance than anything else.

“CRAP,” he said out of frustration. “I’m having a hard time getting a good hold on those wires,” he sighed. “These gloves…they’re too bulky to work in,” he said as he leaned upright and glanced below him. “I’m gonna need needle-nosed pliers,” he told Reese. “Doesn’t really look too bad. Splicing these wires together will be the easy part. Reattaching the arm to the LM…That’s the fun part.”

And that was when the idea struck him, more or less like a bolt of lightning in the back of his head.

“Reese,” he began slowly, still thinking out the idea in completion. “I’m not sure, but I think I have an idea…maybe a better way to do this.” The commander floated back down through the hatch and confronted the captain. “What if we took the dish off the rover and spliced it into the LEM? It’s a long-range relay just like the original, only lighter and easier to mount to the hull than waste what’s currently facing us.”

Reese was a little uncertain, though. “I don’t know, Jon,” he said skeptically. “I’m inclined to agree with you…but what if the wiring is different? Just because two things perform the same the job, doesn’t necessarily mean they’re built the same.” He half-smiled. “I’ve taken apart enough radios in my day to know that.”

Hollanbach nodded.

“So have I. But I’m not too sure I can reattach the arm to the LEM without wielding the damn thing back into place. Correct me if I’m wrong, Andy, but I don’t believe an acetylene torch lying around anywhere up here, do you?”

“No,” Reese said. “No, there isn’t.”

“Then what do we have to lose?”

“Well, we could end up killing our only shot at communicating with the CM if we tear the dish off the rover and it doesn’t work,” he told Hollanbach. “Don’t get me wrong, Skipper.” “It’s a helluva idea you came up with…but I think it’s too damn risky.”

Hollanbach agreed.

“It is risky. But we need to transmit more than just conversation back to the CM if we plan on ever getting off this rock. Don’t forget, we’ve got a bogus fuel indicator that needs verifying from Mission Control. We can’t do that from the rover, my friend.”

“Yeah, I know, man. Believe me, I haven’t forgotten.”

“Then it’s settled. I’ll go back up top and examine the wiring while you go outside and check the rover. If they match then we’re a go.”

“And if they don’t?”

Hollanbach grabbed hold a rung, and began pulling himself up towards the opening of the hatch. “That’s not a question I can answer, Captain,” he groaned as he pulled himself vertically. “And I pray I don’t have to.”

Another hour passed before the final bolt was a turn of that ratchet from being tightened completely up against the metal skin of the lunar module. Straining with every ounce of strength he had, Hollanbach slowly began to move the bolt with his tool, silently cursing through gritted teeth as he could begin to feel the handle slip from his grasp, until he was flung from it altogether, sending his upper body snapping back and up through the near weightless environment, colliding backpack first into the bulky spotlight behind him. A loud clang resonated throughout the inside of the LEM, causing Reese to look up quite suddenly, concern for his friend surging past all his other emotions.

“Hollanbach!” he shouted at the legs and feet balanced on rungs above him. “Hollanbach, are you all right?”

“Yeah,” came the immediate reply. “Yeah, I’m just fine…”

He left Reese hanging.

“Just what, Skipper? Hey!” he tapped on Hollanbach’s leg. “Just what?”

Silence filled the LEM for several seconds before the commander could muster up the voice to respond. “You better get out here and take a look at this, Reese,” the skipper said a little shakily. “I’m not too sure I believe my own eyes.”

Reese turned and almost lunged for the hatch that led to the porch, and the lunar night beyond. “Just give me a minute, Jon,” he said between huffs of breath. “I’m on my way.”

As for believing his eyes, Reese could hardly blame the commander for not wanting to believe his; because he wasn’t too sure either that he could trust what he was seeing.

“My God,” Reese whispered. “What is that?”

It wasn’t a question he necessarily expected an answer to.

“I don’t know,” Hollanbach said, still halfway out the hatch at the top of the LEM, leaning against the spotlight he’d banged into a few minutes ago… the same spotlight that now casts its brilliance a thousand or so feet away at a dimly lit behemoth of apparent metal structure, just off the surface of the icy plains which they had set down on.

“But I’ve got a funny feeling that’s what we were sent here to find.”

“Christ, that thing is big.”

“Bigger than big,” Hollanbach countered. “Looks almost as long as a football field.”

The captain walked around, stopping directly beneath the commander and the long beam of light that cut into the dark. “I knew it,” Reese said. “I knew it had to be a piloted craft that crashed up here.”

“Incredible,” the commander muttered.

“Absolutely incredible,” he said as he looked at the captain. “Are you recording this?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said, remembering to reach up onto his helmet and activate the camera attached to its side. “Okay, I’m recording now. Geez. Looks spooky, doesn’t it?”

“Spooky?” Hollanbach questioned the captain’s choice of words. “Downright scary, if you ask me.”

The captain stood there motionless a few minutes, letting the camera record the image before him while his eyes soaked it all in like a long-dry sponge.

It was certainly an alien structure, he thought, no doubt about that. Downed and damaged with a good chunk of hull missing from the…. what appeared to be the mid ship’s section. Nearly half of it was gone. The entrenchment from its skidding crash course was what had unearthed and broken much of the lunar landscape in its path, forming almost a mountain of sorts, the same mountain that he and the commander had originally thought to be part of the Cremona crater, but obviously wasn’t.

Where the light struck it, icy crystals sparkled, lying atop the ridged outer hull that quickly reminded Reese of a centipede’s body. Inside the craft wasn’t visible at all; the light just couldn’t combat the harsh shadows of such a deep and forbidding cavity.

What the captain was really looking for was any evidence of life near it, movement and lights, none of which had accrued or looked remotely likely to happen, anytime soon.

“What now?” Reese asked the commander.

Hollanbach laughed dryly. “We stick to our plan of trying to establish workable contact with Herndum before we go off on an expedition.”

With that, the young astronaut gave one last look at the alien craft reaching up to switch off the camera, he then began bouncing back over to the LEM’s entrance, grabbing hold of the ladder rails and slowly climbing back up to the porch.

As reluctant as they both were to do it, both en decided to kill the landing lights to give their new RRD the power it would need to broadcast up to Herndum, scheduled to pass over into the far side in about five minutes. Both hatches were again sealed and precious oxygen had filled the tiny space, allowing them to breathe without the aid of their backpacks.

“Okay,” Hollanbach announced, as he was switching off the secondary lights, he grinned at the captain. “Hope you’re not scared of the dark.”

Reese looked at him. “Not yet.”

The commander laughed. Hollanbach picked up the headset and placed it on his head. “Man, I hope this thing works.”

“You’re not the only one,” Reese said donning his own headset.

“Believe me, you are not the only one.”

The captain took his place beside Hollanbach at the console, taking in a deep breath and quickly letting it go. “Ready?”

The commander gave him the thumbs-up. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

His gloved hand hovered over the controls, looking for the right switch to flip. “Radio relay dish…” he flipped it. “On.” Instantly, an orange indicator light flickered on, bringing big smiles to both men’s solemn faces.

“Alright!” Reese exclaimed.

“See?” the commander said. “I told you it’d work.”

The captain patted his friend on the back. “And I never doubted you for an instant.”

“Liar,” Hollanbach muttered.

“Oh, you wound me.”

Grinning, Hollanbach looked at his watch. “Herndum should be in the dark now,” the commander said as he scratched at his whiskered chin. “Cross your fingers.”

Reese looked down at his gloved hand, already knowing that it was a near impossibility to do so. “Way ahead of you, Skipper.”

Hollanbach brought the microphone up to his lips and shut his blue eyes.

“DESPERADO…this is the UNFORGIVEN…. How do you copy? Over.”

The seconds ticked by, and still no reply. Hollanbach sighed angrily, deciding to try it again. “DESPERADO…UNFORGIVEN. Do you read me? Over.”

Reese looked down and began counting off in his head. One Mississippi… Two Mississippi…Three Mississippi-

“UNFORGIVEN, this is DESPERADO…” came Herndum’s crackled voice over the wire. “I read you loud and proud. Over.”

Again, both astronauts grinned enormously as the sound of their friends voice filled the air. “Roger that, DESPERADO. We read you five-by-five. Good to hear your voice again.”

“That’s affirmative, Commander. How’s the moon look down there?”

“Well,” Hollanbach began. “You got a minute?”

* * *

CLICK.

Coley turned off the tape and slid the big earphone off her head. “What are we going to do about this fuel gauge, Mr. McNeely?”

He shrugged.

“We can’t confirm or deny a fuel leak of any kind because we don’t have a direct line to the LEM, so in effect, all our computers are worthless.” He loosened his blue-striped tie and rubbed his neck. “Whatever their computer says is all we got to go on.”

She dug out a cigarette and lit it. “And if it’s true? Then what?”

McNeely put his Styrofoam cup down and sighed. “I’ve got a team putting together a few possible solutions as we speak.” Then he shook his head. “I’m afraid this could take awhile.”

“How long of a while?” Coley asked him.

He shrugged again. “How long do we have? You’ve gotta understand something, Agent Coley. I don’t have the, uh, resource to get the job done in a hurry,” he said as he watched her exhale smoke. “So I’m doing the best I can with what I’ve got.”

“Of course,” Coley said understandingly. “But realistically speaking…how long are we talking here? A few minutes? A few hours?”

McNeely cast a doubtful eye her way. “More like a couple of days…realistically speaking.”

“A couple of days?” Coley almost shouted.

“Realistically speaking,” he said again. “It’s not like I have any one team of specialists that I can set aside to allow them to concentrate on the problem here,” he said as he waved his hairy, short-sleeved arm around Mission Control. “You said it yourself, Agent Coley. What you see here is what you get, remember? No outside agencies allowed.”

She winced. “There’s no need to rub it in my face. I’m well aware of what I said and the directive still stands,” she said as she rubbed her pounding forehead. Might I suggest you weed out all the nonsensical personnel and do set them aside to work on a fast solution to this problem.”

“Right,” McNeely said. “Believe it or not, that was my next step,” he said as he picked up his coffee and sipped a bit more. “But in the meantime, your astronauts are standing by, awaiting word on what to do next.”

Coley started walking towards the exit, then stopped, giving McNeely a near-treacherous look. “Inform them to continue on with the mission…to explore the craft and be sure they document everything they see.”

McNeely cleared his throat. “And about their fuel status?”

She sighed.

“Tell them the truth. That we’re working on a solution and that we’ll get back to them as soon as possible,” she said as she turned and twisted the knob and opened the door.

“Where are you going?” McNeely asked her.

“I’ve got a telephone call to make,” she said as she disappeared from the exit, leaving the faint smell of her Chanel Number Five and a dying cigarette in the ashtray, a lingering wisp of smoke making a fading epitaph in the stale air of the room.

* * *

Neither one of them could sleep. The huge alien spacecraft less than a quarter-mile away from them retained a rather presence in both men’s mind, exciting and worrying them, all at the same time.

As it turned out, Sheldon had been considerably wrong in his calculations, marking their original landing sites about five or six miles away from the proposed target area. For Hollanbach and Reese, it was a sheer stroke of luck that landed them right where they were, almost on top of the very thing they came looking for. Reese still surmised that the old man didn’t do too badly considering the outdated material he had to work with. Not too bad at all.

The LEM began to shake and hum with a fearful intensity, causing the captain to jump up, his eyes wide with terror.

“Jesus,” he gasped. “What is that?”

An annoyed grunt came from Hollanbach’s direction. “Just the cooling pump, Reese, Relax and go back to sleep.”

“Yeah right,” the captain retorted. “Like I can drift off to sleep with that thing out there,” he said as he snorted a short laugh. “That’ll happen.”

Hollanbach struggled, turning over in his makeshift hammock, facing his fellow moon walker. “Yeah, I can’t get any zee’s either. That ship out there is playing on my mind, too. And besides,” he grunted as he sat up, rubbing the back of his neck. “This damned neck ring is irritating as hell.”

Reese nodded his agreement. “Yeah,” he said. “They didn’t exactly make these things with comfort in mind.”

The commander grew silent, sighing and looking around the little cabin. Reese wasn’t sure, but he thought he sensed the man, like him, wanting to get out there, and into that alien craft.

He looked at his watch. Herndum was well out of earshot and wouldn’t be back for another thirty minutes. If the commander was willing, they could be suited up and ready by the time the lieutenant was in range to give the word to Houston. Then Reese looked at the commander.

“I don’t know about you, Jon, but I’m not going to sleep until we find out exactly what’s in that ship out there.”

Hollanbach grinned. “Y’know, Reese, that’s what I like about you.”

He was curious. “What’s that, Commander?”

Standing fully upright, Hollanbach yawned and stretched. “You have initiative. Initiative will always take you far in the world.”

Reese stood up as well, taking a moment to glance out of the dark window of their spacecraft. “Uh, in case you haven’t noticed, we aren’t exactly ‘on’ the world anymore.”

The commander kept smiling as he got his gear together. “See?” he said. “It’s working already.”

* * *

McNeely stood with his arms crossed over the front of his white-shirted chest, looking as crisp as the minute he walked in there, the only difference was that he had given up on the formality of a necktie several hours ago, having taken it off and tossing it carelessly onto his console. He stood there staring ahead, watching Herndum’s giant chubby face on the monitor, as he replayed the moon crew’s request.

Coley was where she usually was, right next to the Mission Control director, observing the playing field silently and calling all the shots through McNeely. Below them, the flight surgeon spun around in his chair, vigorously shaking his head, his glasses almost flying from his head.

McNeely bit.

“What seems to be the problem, Doc?”

Immediately the doctor saw that as his cue to leave his station and come bouncing up the steps to the catwalk where McNeely patiently stood.

“I can’t possibly okay a request for another EVA so soon after the last one,” he said in a hushed whisper.“They need their rest…time to recuperate. Both of them are thirty hours with zero sleep and that hardly meets the requirements for two men who want to go gallivanting around on the moon.”

The director scratched at his chin.

“So, what you’re saying is, you want the astronauts to get some decent shut eye before they go on an excursion. Am I right?”

He nodded rapidly. “Four hours…that’s all I ask.”

McNeely looked at Coley. “Well,” he said. “What do you think?”

She leveled her green eyes at the doctor. “I think we’re dealing with two grown men, astronauts at the pinnacle of physical conditioning and mental discipline, and servicemen quite used to going long hours without any rest or food,” she said as she shrugged. “They know their limitations better than we do. If they say they’re up to it, then I’m forced to go with that.”

The doctor gave her an incredulous look. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this.”

Coley, however, remained poker faced. “Believe it, Doctor.”

He looked at McNeely with the same expression. “Are you going to let this happen?”

McNeely shrugged. “I tend to agree with her,” he said. “Besides,” he smiled. “Hollanbach and Reese departed the LEM about thirty minutes ago to investigate that anomaly up there.”

The doctor was aghast. “But that’s…that’s not possible!”

“The Lieutenant…he just said-”

“A courtesy to us, more or less,” McNeely explained. “Anyway, Doc, it ain’t even a NASA mission. All we’re here to do is basically monitor. Our say is nil,” he said as he looked at Coley. “Right?”

She shrugged again. “Technically speaking.”

The doc’s mouth drop open. “This is…an outrage!”

“If anything happens to those men up there…I will not be held responsible!”

“Fine,” McNeely said, watching the flight surgeon storm off. “We’ll call you if we need you,” he said as he and Coley watched as he went to his station, giving each of them one final look of disgust before bellowing out.

“Do whatever you want! What do I know? I’m only a doctor!” releasing an indignant huff as he sat down in his chair.

Grinning, McNeely pulled his mike down to his lips. “DESPERADO, HOUSTON. Do you copy the doc’s transmission?”

On the screen, Herndum was all smiles. “Affirmative, Houston. Doc is okay with the EVA…DESPERADO, out.” The flight surgeon whipped around in his chair, eyes wide, looking at McNeely. The director shrugged, and turned around to face Coley.

“Y’know, Agent Coley…you’re right. Those CIA tactics of yours work.”

Barely able to contain her laughter, Coley turned around and walked away, heading for the door.

* * *

He could see himself, in his mind’s eye, on the television screen. The image was hardly clear or crisp…a snowy picture of black and white movement that depicted a man in an astronaut’s suit, easing himself down the ladder back of the LEM, a few measly feet away from putting his footprints on the surface of the moon.

But it wasn’t dark n this picture, and the whole area was drowned in sun- light in every direction as far as his brown eyes could see, as he stepped down to stand proudly upon the Sea of Rains. Here, there was no secret mission denying him or his compatriots the fame and celebrity they deserved. No haunting wreck of an alien spacecraft scaring him to death, looming on the horizon like a nightmare giving form as he approached it. And the inescapable fact that it was dark all around them (not a pitch black, but reminiscent of a moonless, cloud covered Earth night) only helped to intensify the prickly goose bumps rising on his skin, particularly, the back of his neck, as he and Hollanbach walked along the frozen wastelands of the dark side, the light from their helmets bouncing erratically along the cracked, meteor-pecked ground, weapons tightly clenched in their gloved hands…. locked, loaded and ready to fire a stream of 7.62 millimeter bullets at anything that moved.

Yet…even now, in his proximity to the ship, Reese gave notice to some of the benefits of their dark side touchdown. The stars, for one thing, were plentiful and amazingly brilliant. He could plainly see the lazy strand of milky white that had long since lent a name for the galaxy, arching sporadically across the nighttime sky, connecting the horizons like a cosmic sheet of dot-to- dots.

If he was only allowed a single adjective to describe what he was seeing at that moment, he’d have to go with the word “MIACULOUS,” because there was no doubt in his mind that he and Hollanbach were truly the first of the species to see the heavens with such astonishing clarity-and given that, it was indeed, a miracle.

Because there was no sunlight, the helmets had no visors. In the missions all prior to theirs, the astronauts needed visors coated with a thin film of twenty- four karat gold to keep their eyes from frying in the unabashed waves of the sun’s vicious ultraviolet rays. Without that sort of protection, direct view of the sunlight, however unintentional it may be, gave way to immediate blindness, baking the fragile lens in the human eye to a point of explosion of sorts, not to mention the burns and blisters the intense light would inflict on the exposed flesh of a man’s face. Here in the dark, no such threat existed. Well, except for the unknown possibilities contained within the cold, scary hull of the ship both men steadily neared.

They had made the decision together to walk to the crash site, this first time, and to save the limited power in the rover’s batteries for the return trip, should they find anything salvageable and unique enough to bring back to the lunar lander.

Besides Hollanbach had said to him, this way we’re better prepared for any unannounced visits from survivors within. A thought that induced the images of every alien horror flick Reese had ever seen, all waiting for him inside the dark bowels of the ship ahead.

“Alright,” he heard Hollanbach say. “Looks like we’re close enough to Bertha to get the camera rolling.”

They were now about five hundred feet away from the ship, nicknamed “Bertha” because of its immense size and generally because they needed a quick code to refer to the spacecraft when rebroadcasting back to Earth. Truth be told, it was Herndum’s idea citing that he needed a contribution to the mission other making an obscene number of orbits around the lunar globe and being Hollanbach and Reese’s “communications lackey.” It was all very befitting to the lieutenant’s personality, really.

It took only a few short minutes, in fact-before they found themselves at the foot of the skid wall, chunks of lunar rock and debris that accumulated around Bertha as she chewed into the moon’s surface and slid across on impact.

Hollanbach took his foot and climbed up onto the mound, about four or five feet, and immediately began to slide down the loose granite, nearly falling completely.

Reese jumped over him, dropping his rifle and helping the commander back up to his feet. All he could hear inside his headset was Hollanbach’s heavy breathing.

“You okay?” he asked without hesitation.

“Yeah,” Hollanbach said, struggling to get his breath under control. “Yeah, yeah…I’m fine. That’s some extreme loose footing right there.” He bent downto pick up his gun, righting himself again, this time without the captain’s help. Reese reclaimed his rifle as well. “We’re, uh…” Hollanbach continued. “We’re definitely gonna have to be careful negotiating this mound.”

Reese grinned inside his helmet. “Too bad we can’t get a running start,” he said. “Then we could almost fly over it.”

“Well,” the commander said, sighing. “That is definitely not an option. So we’re just going to have to climb this damn thing, real cautiously.”

“Right,” the captain readily agreed. Reese positioned his rifle, grabbing the sling and draping it around his neck, freeing his hands to help climb up the incline.

“Ready whenever you are, Skipper.”

Hollanbach mimicked the captain’s movements. “Okay,” he said a little shakily. “Let’s do this.”

The mound was very loose, and it took several minutes for them to climb it. At one point, Reese had actually made it to the top, only to stand on top of a small rock and slip back down to the bottom. But both men were determined, and soon enough, they found themselves on the other side, staring their destiny right in its face.

Unslinging his rifle, Reese gripped it tightly, ready for anything as they neared the gaping mouth of Bertha.

“I’ll take the lead,” Hollanbach told him. “You stay behind and cover my six.”

“Sure,” Reese said aloud, all the time wondering who exactly would be covering his.

There were a few sizable chunks of debris lying about as well as pieces of the ship’s metal wires…a trail of disembodied alien technology, all leading up to the wide mouth of the ship’s-

“Jesus, Christ.”

It was Hollanbach, scaring the hell out of him.

“Reese! Reese, c’mere, man, you’ve gotta see this!”

The captain bounced towards him at a slightly faster pace. “What is it? What’s going on?”

And then he saw it. Gray, cold, naked and dead. Two large and unseeing eyes swelled full of black and nearly covering the face and most of the forehead. The body lay there, twisted and broken, its tiny, little mouth a slit on its face where its last breath escaped.

It was an alien. Thin and small, not quite as big as an eight, maybe ten year old Earth child, lying there under a piece of wreckage, dead at Hollanbach’s feet. Their helmet lights shone onto its unearthly form cruelly, but neither man could force himself to look away. They could only stare wide-eyed at the diminished life under them. Feeling their minds unravel at levels no one had ever guessed to exist.

The astronauts remained quiet for a good amount of time, pondering what they now witnessed before them. But time was, in fact, something they did not exactly have an abundance of. And, knowing this, Hollanbach reached over and nudged Reese on the shoulder.

“C’mon, Captain. We’ve got a few good hours left in these air tanks, let’s not waste them standing here looking at a carcass.”

The commander then began to continue on his way, turning around a few dozen feet later to find the captain still standing there in the same spot, transfixed by their discovery.

“Hey, Reese!” Hollanbach hollered at him. “You coming or what?”

The young astronaut slowly looked up at the commander, then back at the dead body.

“Yeah,” he answered solemnly. “I’m coming.”

Then turning away, Reese again made his way over to Hollanbach, who stood watching to make certain the captain wasn’t going to turn back.

“Well,” Hollanbach said. “That answers one question.”

The captain stopped a few feet short of Hollanbach’s position. “Yeah?” he asked. “What question is that?”

“Whether or not we’re alone in the universe,” the commander said simply.

He turned to face forward, with the darkness of the ship’s ripped bowels no more than about twenty to thirty feet ahead of them. Grabbing his rifle tightly, he held it out in front of him and took a leap towards it.

“Now let’s see how many more we can answer,” he said. “Before our air runs out.”

In the thirty-two feet it took them to reach Bertha, Hollanbach and Reese encountered seventeen more little alien bodies, all in the various throes of death’s dance. Some were mangled, bled to death as they attempted to crawl away from their vessel, entrails dragging along them, most however, looked crushed to death, fragments of equipment on top of them, squeezing their life’s breath away. But oddly enough, and it was Reese who first took notice of it, none of the little aliens (or ‘grays’ as Hollanbach quickly began calling them) seemed to have died by asphyxiation alone. Not that he knew the slightest thing alien anatomy, but the grays look extremely humanoid, and of those were what he thought were lungs, he was pressing down on through the chest region, then they were full of some kind of air, because he could feel the resistance as he forced an exhalation.

But he was no doctor, he knew, let alone a xenobiologist, doctors who would be able to specialize in aliens perhaps someday in the future. But for now, he would just have to file it under “M” for ‘mystery’ and continue on.

Soon, they found themselves standing at the opening. Hollanbach looked up…and up…and up a little more, impressed with the enormousness of the thing. The cavity looked to be extremely large.

“Christ Almighty,” the commander found himself whispering. “This thing is big.”

“A little too big,” Reese complained. “We’re not going to have time to explore all of this.”

Hollanbach glanced back at the stream of bodies behind him. “I’m not too sure I’d want to,” he said. “For all I know this thing could be a giant tomb.”

“Gee, thanks, Skipper,” Reese said sarcastically. “That’s just what I wanted to hear.”

Hollanbach chuckled. “C’mon, let’s go see if anybody’s home.”

The captain held out the M-16 in front of him. “Think we should knock first?”

“No,” Hollanbach said stepping in. “I don’t think we’ll be disturbing anyone, and even if we did,” he again looked back at the grays, lying limp in the wreckage.

“I hardly think they’ll pose much of a threat.”

“Better hope not,” Reese warned. “I’ve got a full clip to spray them with.”

But the commander wasn’t hearing him, instead, he was marveling at the multicolored contours of the inside of the ship, beautifully reflecting the light from his helmet like an oyster’s shell, rippling and spreading out.

“This looks like a gridded metal platform we’re walking on here, almost like a catwalk.” Hollanbach continued to look around, shining his light along the wall, watching as the ‘skin’ rippled around various obtrusions in the bulkhead, which seemed sporadic at first, but then solidifying into a singular object further down, which spread along the wall’s remaining surface. “Unbelievable,” he said. “I can hardly believe I’m standing here looking at this.”

“Hey, Skipper,” Reese said from a few feet away. “Looks like the ship is divided into several compartments. Do you see this…skin? Covering the wall?”

“Yeah,” the commander confirmed.

“It disappears near this bend here. Sort of becoming more solid, like scabs almost overlapping each other all the way down as far as I can see. These compartments, they don’t have doors of any kind. And they’re small.” Reese said, poking his head into one.

“I see what you mean about those scabs.” Hollanbach ran his hand along one of the any protruding from the wall. “They’re solid,” he described. “Rough. Almost stone like in appearance, but a deep red.”

“Funny,” Reese said. “I expected to see more bodies in here.”

“Yeah,” Hollanbach agreed. “I did, too. Looks like they all made a run for it, trying to leave the ship.”

“And I don’t understand that, Skipper. A harsh environment like the moon…you’d think they’d stay inside here, try to find shelter within their ship.” He shook his head. “To me, it almost looks like they were…” he said as he paused, searching for the right word, but Hollanbach found it first.

“Escaping.”

“Yeah,” Reese said. “But from what?”

“I don’t know, Captain,” Hollanbach said. “Look at this space. There’s nothing here. It’s all open. And I don’t see anything that could constitute, burn marks from a fire…”

But Reese had disappeared from his sight.

“Reese?”

No response, but off to his right, Hollanbach could see the light from the captain’s helmet, bouncing around in a wide compartment he’d obviously just walked into. “Captain, answer me.”

A few seconds passed, then-

“I’m okay, Jon,” he heard Reese say suddenly, and in what sounded like a childish whisper. “You’re never going to believe this.”

Hollanbach began to walk the short distance to the opening. Like I believe anything that’s happened in the last month and half, he thought.

Reese was insistent. “You have got to see this.”

The commander moved hurriedly into the compartment where Reese stood and positioned himself next to him. They were still on the catwalk, but in front of them, the wall almost disappearing from view, opening, quite suddenly, into a massive area of open space. But he looked ahead, seeing only nothing.

“What is it?” he asked again. “I’m not seeing anything.”

That’s when the captain turned to his right, the helmet light splashing onto the curved rounded metal of a familiar spacecraft, a sphere and a rectangle fused together with a slightly smaller, bug-like craft standing a few delicate feet away.

Hollanbach gasped, as his blue eyes followed the light, revealing a stark red star outlined in gold followed by the four letters that chilled him to the very marrow of his bones.

C.C.C.P.

CHAPTER EIGHT?—THE BLACK

He had gotten two, maybe three hours of sleep since they left the planet Earth in their cosmic dust a few days ago. His morning, noon, and nights all blurring together into a swirling hurricane of round-the clock-insanity, performing system checks and rechecks, course changes and countless other things inherently necessary to keep them on schedule for arrival on the moon, which had quickly grown in their windows from he tiny and non-threatening baseball-size sphere to a sickly white gray scarred wasteland of nothingness, now looming before them, almost taunting the little ship as it pushed ever closer…taunting them with the secrets of what lie in wait for them.

If it had been Apollo 20, they would be gearing up for the first in a series of ten orbits around the moon before actually taking the LEM down and landing in the Sea of Rains and about three clicks from the mountainous Archimedes crater, where they would be leaving a few more geological and scientific devices and spending the next day and a half to two days searching for exotic samples, preferably more of the orange stuff the crew of 17 discovered, as well as testing out the new and improved lunar rover and television cameras to beam images of him and Hollanbach bouncing around in a sixth of the Earth’s gravity back to envious people still on the planet.

If it were Apollo 20…but it wasn’t, and Reese didn’t need to look any further than himself to see that as they completed their first orbit of the moon and speedily roared into the second, they were already in the midst of the next evolution of the mission.

LANDING.

Both he and Hollanbach stood side by side at the control of the lunar module, safely tucked away within the seven layers of their EVA suits, along with the rubber gloves and glass helmets that kept their fleshy components away from the harsh elements of the pressurized atmosphere surrounding them, as final preparations were made to jettison from the CM, part of those preparations being the mile-long checklist the commander and he were going through with Mission Control to verify that they were in fact, ready to get this thing underway.

Reese glanced down at his Timex. In fewer than twenty minutes, they would cross over into the far side. That’s why there was the sense of immediateness to the whole process, trying to get the LEM away from the command module before they plunged into darkness.

Once undocked from Herndum and the CM, he and Hollanbach would be on their own making the actual landing until Herndum’s return about an hour later, where he would turn to the vox and record everything from conversation to data transmission during his thirty-minute trek across the moon’s dark side, beaming it all to Earth once he gets back over to the light.

The captain didn’t like any of it. It was daunting to set down on the near side of the moon, what with all the thousand or so things that could go wrong in the process of getting down there, in constant with Houston to verify any alarms or shorts that had a bad habit in missions past, to raise an ugly head and threaten to put the kibosh on the whole thing.

On the far side, it would be just them, and maybe a little help from the Man Upstairs if they were lucky. So far, everything had gone off without a hitch.

Amazing enough for a spacecraft that had to be taken apart, shipped a few hundred miles on an oil barge, then slapped back together in a week’s time and propped up on a launching pad, ready to go. But the Saturn’s job was done.

It was the LEM that had a continuous bad habit of flashing an “ABORT” light at the most inopportune moment…and it was a long way down.

Behind him, the hatch to the access tube was sealed. Less than fifteen minutes remained before they would be plunged into total blackness and the clock was ticking.

QUICKLY.

“Roger that, Houston,” Hollanbach’s words suddenly broke through the captain’s thoughts as they pumped out the headphones. “The LEM is ready for undocking. Do you copy? Over.”

A slight pause, then…

“That’s a good copy, Commander. We read you in the green for un- docking, although the doc is a bit concerned with the captain’s heart rate.”

Flashing Reese a look of concern, Hollanbach turned and checked him out, clicking off her radio relay switch. “You okay, Reese?”

The captain swallowed uneasily, trying his best to curb his nervousness. “Who, me?” he said as he offered Hollanbach an innocent smile. “I’m good, Skipper,” he said. “No problems.”

This of course, was a bare faced lie. Apollo 20 or not, right about then, his heart would be still be beating like a rapid-fire machine gun up in his throat. Normally, as the LEM pilot, Reese’s job was to stand by, keeping tabs on the monitors and watching rising lunar surface in his window, measuring out their rate of descent.

But this time it would be different. Like all the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions before them, a few new twists were continuously thrown into the mission plan to keep the space program advancing, and to discover what the limits would be.

So far this landing, one of the only things to remain unchanged in lieu of their new mission, Reese would be the one actually to fly the lunar lander, right up to the point of touchdown, about 500 feet up, when the controls would be switched to the awaiting Hollanbach, who would then set them down once he located a suitable landing site near their target area.

Hopefully. But this was a maneuver never before undertaken by Apollo astronauts and this made it risky. Usually, Reese would be the first one to barrel full throttle into such a thing, but something was very different about all of it, he knew, and the ill feeling in the pit of his stomach only intensified the closer they came to the landing. Something he could hide from the commanders prying eyes, but not the infernal bio-med readout device taped to his chest.

Hollanbach again eyed him over.

“Don’t lie to me, Captain. If you aren’t feeling well, you need to tell me. I don’t need you upchucking in your helmet…now or later.”

Reese sighed. Another danger, he knew would be puking in the pressurized helmet of an EVA suit on a space walk or in this case moon walk…a quarantined recipe for death by means of asphyxiation. Not a good way to go in history.

“Hey.” Reese put his gloved hand right on the American flag stitched onto Hollanbach’s shoulder. “I’m cool. Cool as a cucumber. Honest.”

“You’d better be,” the commander muttered in a low voice, reaching for the relay button. “Die on me up here and I’ll kick your ass,” he said as he opened the channel to Mission Control. “Houston, the captain assures me that he’s feeling fine and is up for a lunar landing. If it’s okay with the good doctor, we’d like to go ahead and proceed with the mission, over.”

The two of them stood looking at each other, waiting for a response to come over the headset.

“Uh…Roger that, Commander. Doc is okay with the captain’s status. How copy? Over.”

Hollanbach grinned. “Houston, that is a good copy.” Taking his thumb off the relay switch, the commander again turned to his partner with a bright twinkle in his blue eyes. “You ready, fly boy?”

“Always,” Reese said with a breathy laugh, his hand steady as it wrapped around the control stick.

“Okay, then,” Hollanbach mashed down on the button. “Houston, UNFORGIVEN. What do you say we land this bug on the moon?”

Mission Control was quick to reply.

“Roger that, Commander. You are go for CSM undocking.”

“Thank you, Houston.”

Hollanbach then turned to Reese. “Captain…if you would be so kind?”

“Ah, Jesus,” Reese thought as his finger neared the switch that would set them free. “Here goes nothing.”

“Twenty seconds until LOS,” Hollanbach said into the microphone hovering above the corners of his lips. “Descent engine at ten percent.”

“Roger that, Commander,” replied Mission control.” “Before we lose direct contact, someone here would like to talk with you.”

The astronauts looked quizzically at each other. “This is Agent Coley,” came the soft, but unyielding feminine voice over the wire. “I just want to wish you gentlemen the best of luck and-”

Radio static filled both their ears.

“And what?” Reese wondered aloud.

Hollanbach chuckled. “I guess that’s a mystery for another time, Captain.”

The commander reached over and placed a gloved rubber fingertip on the readout monitor. “Descent engine now operating at forty percent capacity.” He looked nervously at the ABORT/MASTER ALARM indicators, still silent and dark, and sighed a bit shakily. “So far, so good.”

Reese smiled…just as nervously. “That’s the working theory, Skipper.”

The captain fixed his eyes back onto the PGNS monitor or the Primary Guidance Navigation System, the LEM’s brain, that was sing it’s artificial intelligence to fly them down towards their darkened landing site. In about ten minutes, the computer would throttle the engine near its max, to break the LEM out of their current phrase of descent transfer orbit.

“Five seconds ‘til PDI,” Hollanbach warned. “Three…”

PDI, Reese thought. Powered Descent Initiation.

The whole craft was shaking as a dull roar whispered outside the hull. Simulations were one thing, the captain mused.

“Two…”

The real deal? Now that was something else entirely.

“One….”

Christ. He braced himself, using his left hand to grab onto a handhold beside him, his right hand clutched tightly around the manual control stick, for the moment, dead in his hands. But should Hollanbach flick the switch before the low gate…

“Descent engine is at eighty percent burn!” Hollanbach yelled.

Now, the tiny LEM was in a full rattle, nearly equivalent to the brain- shushing movement of the mighty Saturn, only without the g-force.

Reese glanced at the altitude indicator. They were still by the numbers…and the ABORT light remained quiet.

“Ten thousand feet,” Hollanbach counted off. “Throttle up to FTP.”

The captain swallowed hard. Now they were at a fixed throttle, their engine screaming out against their direction of motion to slow them down to a point of almost zero forward velocity in others word, a hover.

Hollanbach looked at him. “We’re about two-hundred miles from the first site.”

“Still a long way from home,” the captain replied.

“Yeah,” Hollanbach agreed. “But not that far away.”

At that moment, neither one of them could see anything but the rushing blackness of space out their tiny triangular windows that would change soon enough.

“Six minutes until pitch over!”

Reese remained quiet, realizing that when those six minutes were over, so was the easiest part of this mission. At seven thousand feet the LEM’s tiny positioning thrusters would angle them at a six-and-a-half degree line of sight, activating the bright spotlights both atop the LEM near the radio antenna and below on the landing gear to help illuminate the ground below them.

“Eighty-five hundred feet,” Hollanbach noted. “Descending at nine feet per second.” The commander’s hand inched its way towards the manual control switch. “Descent engine holding steady at eighty percent.” Hollanbach again glanced Reese’s way. “How’re you doing over there, partner?”

In between the shakes, the captain managed a slight grin.

“Cool,” he said simply. “Cool as a cucumber.”

The command module was eerily quiet. Orbiting at nearly sixty nautical miles above the glowing face of the moon, Herndum sat in the pilot’s seat and readied himself for his third circle around the lunar sphere. He was about a minute away from the dark side, and approaching fast.

“DESPERADO, Houston.”

“Go, Houston.”

“Uhh, the flight surgeon wants to make certain you download and transmit the fellas bio-rhythms along with the rest of the data you’ll be sending to us. He’s still pretty concerned with the captain’s condition. How copy? Over.”

“Roger that, Houston. Tell the doc I’m on top of it.”

Laughter erupts.

“Affirmative, DESPERADO. See you in thirty.”

Herndum watched as he crossed over into the deep of the lunar night, listening to the static in his headset quickly giving way to Hollanbach’s voice.

They were now into the final stages of the high gate, pitched upwards at an “upright window altitude” slightly leaning forward with spotlights blazing, still too high to see anything.

Reese spoke up. “Landing radar confirms we’re about twenty-one thousand feet from the first site.”

Hollanbach’s eyes, however, were firmly glues to the window. “Good God, it’s dark out there.”

And it was.

A horrible choking kind of dark that spread out like a thick ocean of nothing dead below them. As powerful as the lights were, they wouldn’t begin to see anything until near the start of the low gate phrase of the descent… at about one thousand feet above the surface.

“How’s our angle?”

“Six-and-a-half,” Reese verified. “Right on the money.”

He was beginning to get a little queasy in the stomach, fighting to keep his lunch intact. He carefully swallowed the pooling saliva in his mouth.

“How’s our speed?”

The commander looked at the readout. “Still at nine per second. Forty two hundred feet and falling.”

He looked out the window and then back at Reese again. “Sure you wanna do this?”

“Hey,” Reese said. “It’s me.”

“Four thousand,” Hollanbach said. “I’m not kidding, Captain. If you don’t feel up to it-”

“I can handle it, Commander,” the captain cut him off, giving in to the agitation. “Trust me, alright?”

He shook his head. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, Reese.”

“Then what is it?” Silence. “Skipper?”

The mission commander shot him a look with frightened blue eyes, and immediately the young astronaut understood his dilemma. The same beast that was eating away at the walls of his stomach had claimed a small piece of Hollanbach’s soul.

FEAR.

Fear that they would die up here. Fear that what he had left behind would never be seen again. Touched again. Loved again.

The captain put a reassuring hand on his friend’s shoulder. “We’ll make it, man. I promise.”

And that’s when the alarm sounded.

* * *

CHAOS.

It was the only way to describe what Lieutenant Scott Mitchell Herndum was hearing. Complete and utter chaos.

“Skipper,” he hollered. “Skipper! What the hell is going on down there?”

But it was almost as if they couldn’t hear him. No wonder, he thought with all the screaming they’re doing.

“Reese,” he tried again. “Hollanbach?! What the hell? Can anybody hear me?”

Nothing. Just garbled sounds of two very frightened men, and the thump- thump-thump of Herndum’s own panicking heart.

* * *

“What is it?!” Reese screamed. “What the hell is happening?”

In the past few seconds their world had gone from good to bad as the once-silent MASTER ALARM erupted to life, filling the entire cabin with its life-altering red-lights as the captain felt the LEM suddenly shift. Hollanbach had been quick to trip the automatic control of the PGNS, giving Reese the power to fly. Surprisingly, it hardly took any effort to right themselves a mere touch of the stick, and the thrusters pitched perfectly.

Hollanbach punched at the ALARM RESET. “Shit,” he said angrily. “I’m not sure but I think we got hit by something.”

They dropped quickly past the three thousand mark.

“Hit?” Reese inquired. “What? A meteorite?”

“More than likely.” Hollanbach then gave the captain a wide-eyed look of horror. “The radio’s dead.”

Neither of them could hear any sounds from their headsets at all.

““Dammit,” Reese exclaimed. “It must’ve taken out the dish.” The captain sighed. “Well, at least it left us the lights.”

“True,” Hollanbach mused. He checked the readouts. “We’re about a mile and a half from the touchdown site. What’s our altitude?”

“Twenty-five forty-nine and descending. Engine?”

The commander was quick with the answer. “Still nominal at,” he winced to see the reading. “Eighty percent.” Hollanbach looked over the console quickly, relieved to see that no other systems had apparently been damaged. A tiny breath escaped from his mouth. “It looks like we got lucky, Captain.”

Reese looked out the LEM’s window, straining his arching brown eyes to see the faintest outline of moonscape. There was none.

“Well,” he said to the commander in a grimacing voice. “You can say that for sure after we land this thing in one piece.”

* * *

Mission Control was dead quiet for the first time in nearly a week. For the next minute or two, every man in the room sat or stood by his respective console, a look of loss on their individual faces. Above them all stood a solemn McNeely, head down in disbelief, using his watch station to help him stand, because at that point, he didn’t have the strength to do it himself.

He looked up, his eyes watery and sore from the lack of sleep. On the wall-monitor was the grainy image of a worried Herndum, still at the helm of the command module, having just returned from his semicircular arc around the satellite’s far side, and listening in vain for his comrades. It had seemed that Herndum had been able to receive incoming transmissions from the LEM crew, without them hearing his voice for a few minutes, until the entire radio spectrum went dead, a few seconds after Hollanbach surmised they had been hit by a meteorite.

“Houston,” came the lieutenant’s shaky voice. “DESPERADO.”

McNeely slowly stood upright, easing a hand into his pants pocket, while using the other one to reposition the small microphone closer to his lips.

“Go ahead, DESPERADO.”

“Roger, Houston. I was able to verify the activation of the LEM’s landing lights just before the LOS. I still don’t know it they actually landed yet or even if…” He faded off, not wanting to say it.

McNeely understood.

“Roger, Lieutenant. We are assessing the situation at this time. Standby.” He looked at Burgess, the poor kid’s eyes were bugging out from behind his eyeglasses.

“Well?” the young engineer asked. “How bad is it? Is the crew–”

“We lost communication with them Burgess. That’s all.”

He reached for the pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket only to remember that he quit smoking nearly a year ago, and that it wasn’t there. He nervously put his hand back in his pocket. “I’d like to believe they’re still alive and continuing on with the mission.”

Burgess sucked on his own cigarette. “So what do we do now, huh, Mac?” And then quickly answered his own question. “We gotta call Deke, man! Gotta call Deke! He’d….he’d know what to do.”

“Negative!” McNeely bellowed, a bit startled that such bass and power could leap from him like that. “This is a secret mission, Mikey. Secret,” he repeated, with more emphasis on ‘secret’ this time. “This means no additional support in any form. No emergency techs, no Deke Slayton, simple as that.”

“No,” Burgess argues, blowing out a steady stream of gray smoke “It isn’t that simple. Those men up there are astronauts, American astronauts! More than that, they’re human beings. We can’t turn our backs on them like that, Mac. This isn’t the Soviet Union. We don’t do that here.”

By now, McNeely was getting angry. “Nobody’s turning their backs on anyone here, Mike. This is no worse than thirteen. We need to take our time and access the situation before we do anything. Herndum heard Hollanbach say loud and clear, I might add, before the radio went completely dead, that no other systems had been damaged.”

But Burgess still had fire in his belly. “How in the hell would he know?” He smiled somewhat sarcastically. “No disrespect to the commander, Mac, but he’s a fighter pilot at best, not an engineer. Neither Hollanbach nor Reese would know if any damage had been done to the LEM, even if it came up and hit them on their asses!”

McNeely could feel the blood rushing into his face, making him hot.

“They have gauges and-”

“Gauges? They’ve been hit by a freakin’ meteor for God’s sake, Mac! Gauges don’t mean diddly at this point!”

The twitch began in his right eye. By the time he could identify it, it was already too late. In a fit of rage, he brought his hand down, closing it into a fist in a split second, and slamming it hard against the top of his console, so hard that when the coffee mug shattered from the impact of the fall, nobody could hear it because of the intensity of the silence that soon came after. Everyone had turned to see McNeely and Burgess up on the catwalk facing each other, the former looking as though he was about to slam a fist into Burgess.

The young engineer quickly lost all desire to continue his argument. The man who stood before was slightly taller, older, and a good amount of mad. Burgess’s eyes grew wide, mostly with fear, and then McNeely spoke.

“If you have a working solution to the current problem,” he said haltingly, obviously trying really hard to rein in his aggression. “Then feel free to tell me, so I can help possibly save the lives of those men up there. If not, shut up.”

Burgess only stood there, stammering half-words of unproven thought.

“Well?” McNeely growled.

Silence.

The man looked as though he was ready to break down into tears. And then taking a deep breath, shuttering breath, he told McNeely what he already knew.

“I…I don’t…I don’t know.” The words came quietly like a frightened child.

McNeely shut his eyes tightly, grinding his teeth as if he was trying to break them into a million tiny jagged pieces. Then, swiftly turning around and opening his eyes, he caught the gaze of the startled flight surgeon, standing frozen with a steaming cup of coffee in his hands.

“Get in contact with Agent Coley,” he said gravely. “And tell her we have a situation.”

* * *

Hollanbach watched as they neared the one thousand foot mark. “We’re at twelve-hundred feet,” he said to Reese. “Four feet per second.”

A little grin started to spread onto the captain’s lips. “I can see the outline of the landscape!” he said excitedly.

The commander gazed out of the window. Indeed, you could. Not a mile away from them rose the mountainous wall of the Cremona crater. They were nearly on top of the landing site. “A thousand feet,” he heard Reese say.

“Jesus, Jon…look. Look at the ground below us!”

But he was already looking, watching as the white light from their spotters slowly began to illuminate the harshness of the landscape below them. He looked back at the readout. They were still falling pretty fast. “Watch that mountain over there, Reese,” Hollanbach warned.

A rocky ledge had suddenly loomed to the left of them. He watched as the LEM smoothly bypassed it. He grinned. “Good flying, Captain.”

Reese didn’t hear him. He was much too bust looking out the window of the LEM, quickly losing faith that they would be able to set down in a descent patch of plain.

This is a mess, he thought. No other way to describe it. Ahead of them la the four sites Sheldon had hoped would suffice for landing options, but everything looked like shards of broken glass jutting up from the depths, the shine of powerful spotlights sparkling off the ice of the frozen rock.

“Jon,” Reese began. “I don’t think we’re gonna be able to land this thing. Look at the terrain down there. Not exactly optimal conditions for touchdown.”

The LEM dipped under eighty-five.

“Andy. It’s a little late for a change of heart here. We’re landing. We don’t have a choice anymore.”

Reese looked at him. “We can still abort. Escape back up into orbit in the ascension stage.”

Hollanbach grimaced. “I’m not too sure that we can. Look at the fuel gauge.”

The captain did and his eyes grew big. “How did-?”

“It could be an electronic error. We don’t know yet. The only way we’ll know for sure is to land and investigate for ourselves.”

“Where?”

“We still have over a minute of spare fuel time. Look out the windows, Reese.” He did. “Over there about a half mile on the north side of the ridge. On the far side. Do you see it?”

“Yeah. A clear patch just beneath it. Like a valley of sorts.”

Hollanbach grinned. “There’s our landing site.”

“But it’ll take us a good five, six miles from the target site.”

The commander looked at him. “Do you have a better idea?”

Yeah, Reese thought. But it involves time-travel and never getting stranded on a mountain road. “No,” he surrendered. “No, I don’t. I’m switching the flight controls over to you, Commander. We’re leveling out at close to five and a quarter.”

Hollanbach disagreed. “Forget it, Reese. You’re doing a good job of flying this bug…let’s see if you can land it.”

Reese was taken aback. “Hey, man,” he warned. “Don’t tease me.”

The commander quickly grinned. “Shut up and get us over to that valley,” he said. “Before I change my mind.”

* * *

Mary Ellen Coley stepped out of the shower and into the steamy fog that swirled lazily about the entire bathroom. Reaching over to the rack on the tiled wall, she blindly clutched for the towel and quickly brought it to her face to wipe the stubborn shampoo from her eyes. Burying her head into it, she quickly came to the solution that life could not get any better than this.

The door that adjoined the bath to the remainder of the accommodating sized hotel room opened, bringing in a little smidgen of cold air happily lapping at her wet and dripping feet.

“Do you mind?” she asked through the fabrics of the towel. “I’m a little naked here.”

“Not from where I’m standing,” she heard the raspy words say. “You’re a whole lot naked.”

Coley quickly wrapped the towel around the top of her breasts, letting it hang off of her like a little dress. Then, grabbing another towel, she cocooned it in a beehive around her damp hair, smiling.

“Well, hello to you too, General.”

The steam was clearing…rushing from the bath, and she could see him smiling.

“Hello, indeed. You have a telephone call. And it doesn’t sound like your mother.”

Immediately, she began to change back into Agent Coley, leaving the Mary Ellen person behind. She was already bounding towards the stand where the telephone waited for her. Mayson watched as she hurriedly snatched up the receiver and looked at him, her green eyes ablaze with worry.

“Hello?” she said. “This is Special Agent Coley…Yes…Yes…Oh, God…dammit…OK…I’m on my way!” And she quickly threw down the phone on its hook.

“What is it?” Mayson asked.

“It’s the LEM,” she blurted, ripping her clothes off the closet hangers and throwing them onto the unmade bed, with a quick jerk, letting the towel fall from her body onto the floor beneath her, using a similar motion to loosen the one around her head, cascades of wet brown limp hair slapping her back. Grabbing her panties and nearly jumping into them, she reached for the bra and put her arms through.

“Hollanbach and Reese,” she told him, reaching behind her and clasping the bra securely. “We’ve lost contact with them.”

* * *

The UNFORGIVEN hung in the lunar sky, less than one hundred feet above the icy dust of the valley below. A valley about the size of a football field.

“Thirty seconds of fuel remaining,” Hollanbach cautioned. “Ease’er down, Reese. You’re looking good!”

Reese had his eyes looking out the window, looking at the unforgiving landscape that now surrounded him, and he laughed. It was like someone knew, he thought. Naming the LEM the UNFORGIVEN. Destiny had a twisted sense of irony.

“Fifteen seconds, partner! We’re looking good. Real good. Ease over to the right a little bit. Small cluster of rocks over there,” Hollanbach breathed. “Three feet per second, going down to forty-five feet. You’re doing good, kid. Just keep at it!”

But he wasn’t feeling good. He was beginning to sense that maybe they had just signed their death warrants, landing in this condition. They should’ve aborted like he said. They had enough fuel, the gauge was wrong…it had to be wrong, right?

“Twenty feet,” Hollanbach began to smile again. “Alright, Captain. We’re kicking up some dust!”

Icy dust, Reese saw. Reflecting the spotlight’s brilliance like a billion tiny suns coming to life all around them.

“Ten feet.”

He swallowed. This was it. In a moment, it would be over.

“Five.”

Suddenly the big blue light on the console came on.

“Lunar contact,” Hollanbach screamed.

The five-foot wires were touching the icy ground under them. One Mississippi, Reese counted, and then flipped the engine off.

Quietness filled the air inside the LEM as they free floated downwards, now victim of the moon’s slight gravity. And then suddenly the entire module shook and rattled with a bang, as they settled quite hard on the lunar soil. A second or two passed, and the two men stood looking at each other, slowly coming to grips with what had just come to pass.

“I’ll be damned,” Hollanbach said, breaking the silence first. “We did it! We’re on the moon!”

Reese broke out in a celebratory smile of his own, glad that the terror was over.

“Now,” sighed the commander, wasting no time unhooking himself from the station. “Comes the fun part.”

Yeah, Reese said to himself. Finding out what’s waiting for us outside. Or going outside to see if we’ll be spending a little more time than we intended up here. Like, perhaps the rest of our lives, which may not be all that long.

* * *

About thirty minutes after he had placed the call, the flight surgeon was startled by the arrival of the one-woman fury that was Mary Ellen Coley, bursting through the doors of Mission Control like a rogue tornado through the heartland of Kansas.

“Where the hell is McNeely?”

Sitting on the edge of the table that he shared with the coffee machine, McNeely raised a Styrofoam cup to greet the CIA agent. “Evening, Agent Coley,” he said simply enough. “Care for some joe?”

“No,” she declined as she walked over to him, relaxingly garbed in sweater and…as McNeely gladly noted…tight fitting jeans of the crispest blue.

“No, thank you. What I want is to know exactly what the hell is going on with my astronauts and my moon mission!”

He halfheartedly smiled. “I won’t sugarcoat this, Miss Coley. I won’t sugarcoat this at all.” He sighed, only to make her wait a few seconds more as he sipped gingerly at his piping hot coffee. “We honestly don’t know if Hollanbach and Reese are alive or dead at this particular point in the game. We do know the LEM managed to land on the moon, which is a good indication of their status as far as being alive, but without communication or data relay, we don’t know anything for sure.”

Coley was silent for a minute before responding. “How’s the lieutenant holding up?”

McNeely took another sip. “He’s shaken up. Not like anybody else in his situation wouldn’t be,” he quickly added. “If something did happen to Hollanbach and Reese up their…well, let’s just say that’s a hell of a distance for a man to travel back home alone.” She nodded in understanding. And that’s when he hit her with it. “We’d like to call in Deke Slayton, and maybe some of our support teams to help us out on this.”

“No,” she said firmly. “I’m sorry, but that’s not an option.”

“Agent Coley, please, I-”

“No,” she said again, looking at him. “It’s not a question up for debate, Mr. McNeely.” “I realize that those men’s lives hang in the balance, but we can’t involve outside agencies, no matter how pertinent they are or may be to this mission, without the immediate possibility or jeopardizing global security at this point. I’m sorry, but I can’t allow it.”

McNeely flashed her an odd look. “Did you say ‘global security’?”

Damn, she thought. One little slip of the tongue.

“What the hell’s going on here, Agent Coley?! What’s on the moon that would ‘jeopardize’ global security?” McNeely looked evenly at her, his anger reflected in his voice. But he could see it in the narrowness of Coley’s green eyes. A seriousness that meant there was much more going on here than she had originally mentioned.

Much, much more.

“Your voice, mister,” she warned him coolly. “Lower it.”

“No,” he mimicked her. “Not until I have a full understanding of the scenario here. For example, am I being asked to ignore protocol and perhaps kill two American astronauts in the process?”

Leaning against the wall, Coley closed her eyes and let out a heavy breath. She didn’t have to think about it to know that McNeely was right. Not like she wasn’t planning on telling him anyway, she reasoned. Being the top watchdog at Mission Control, that was always a possibility. It was just that she hadn’t planned on telling him so soon, before any actual discoveries were made… She opened her eyes.

“Very well, Mr. McNeely.” She stood up straight, walking over towards the exit, and glancing at him over her shoulder. “Follow me.”

The two of them stood outside the complex, the evening air of late April beginning to cool their exposed skin. Coley took in another drag from her shortening cigarette, blowing out the smoke in a rush and then flicking the dying butt away very unladylike onto the pavement below.

“And that’s the whole story,” she told him. “Beginning, middle,” she said. “But I’m hoping this isn’t the end.”

McNeely leaned up against the concrete of the building and let go of a long relaxing breath that felt like it had been pent-up within him since Coley began talking. Almost as if-after a certain point-he was scared to breathe for fear of missing something she had to say. “Wow,” he said blinking and rubbing his tired eyes. “That is…” he paused, looking through his mental vocabulary list for the right words to describe the revelations just laid upon him. ”Something.”

He looked over at her. “Have you any ideas?”

She laughed. “I’m an intelligence agent, Mr. McNeely,” she told him sardonically. “Not an engineer.”

“No, no,” he chuckled. “I meant about what they’re up there to investigate. Do you have any idea about what might be up there?”

Coley remained quiet, watching as the sun began to set below the far-off horizon, painting the sky with splashed of orange and red. She smiled for a second remembering what her mother had told her about the sunset colors. God’s finger-paint, she had said. God’s finger-paint. Indeed. Then she turned to face him just as a sudden gust of wind blew her hair into a rage of chaos.

“I couldn’t even begin to as surmise a guess,” she told him, catching sight of the rising moon behind them, casting its hauntingly ashen face down at the Earth. “But for their sakes,” she said. “I almost certainly hope it is nothing at all.”

* * *

“Nothing,” Hollanbach said, looking out into the darkness that was only slightly retreated by the intensity of the spotlights shining into it. “Nothing at all.”

He walked back around the LEM along the snowy-like crunching of the frozen lunar soil, his helmet light illuminating wherever he aimed his line of sight, which happened at the moment to be the outer hull of the UNFORGIVEN, probing it over like an outer-space mechanic, looking for any hint of what could be wrong…where the meteor may have struck. But so far, all he saw was the undisrupted angular contours of the-

And there it was, up above him on the arm where the radio dish, or RRD should have been, where it was now hanging precariously over the edge. The light from his helmet sparkling gold from the frayed ends of the exposed wires.

“I found it,” he radioed to Reese, who was still inside the LEM, in full EVA gear no less, running checks on all the computer instrumentation, and looking worriedly at the near empty fuel indicator for the ascension stage.

“The leak?” he asked.

“No. Not the leak.” He stood there, looking up at the damaged dish. “The radio antenna,” he said. “Looks like whatever hit it, clipped it on the metal arm that held it to the LEM. Damn near took it all the way off, too, by the looks of it.”

Reese gulped. “How, uh…. how bad is it?”

“I won’t lie to you, Captain” Hollanbach responded. “It’s bad, but I don’t think it’s unfixable. We should be able to jury-rig something up to get some communication out of this.”

Welcome news, Reese thought, but his brown eyes kept wandering over to the fuel gauge. “So, you didn’t find a leak out there,” he asked again. “No damage to the fuel lines or tank housing?” The commander shook his head inside the space suit.

“Nothing as yet ,” he heard Hollanbach say. “With the exception of the RRD, the LEM is five by five out here. No other damage at all.”

“Well, what gives with this gauge, then?” Reese hollered into the mike. “If there’s no damage, then why is it indicating we have damn near bingo fuel?”

Hollanbach sighed. “Take it easy. It’s probably just like I told you, an electrical glitch. Try tapping the console with something metallic. Could be a loose piece of soldering behind the panel, floating around and rubbing against the connectors. Same thing happened on Fourteen with a faulty ABORT alarm.”

Reese extracted the small metal rod they used to tighten their seals out from his shoulder pouch, tapping lightly at first, on the console surrounding the fuel gauge.

“Nothing,” he told Hollanbach. “It still reads less than a quarter of a tank.”

The commander had reached for the lever to lower the panel down outside the LEM releasing the rover from its storage.

“Tap harder,” he said. “Could be lodged in there really good.”

“Okay,” Reese answered. “Let’s see if this works.”

It was a little difficult, but the captain gripped the rod in his gloved hand a bit tighter and brought it’s blunt end down against the gray metal of the console with slightly more force than the first time. He stepped back when he finished, studying the readout on the gauge. The stubborn, obstinate gauge that continued its torment on Reese’s senses.

“Dammit,” he said in a low voice. “It’s still reading the same. No fucking change.”

Hollanbach eased the rover from the panel, letting it roll off the ramp and onto the lunar ground, listening to the captain’s news and getting a sinking feeling inside his heart.

“Okay, Reese,” the commander said. “Stay calm.”

“I am calm,” he lied. “I’m just beginning to think the universe is enjoying messing with me a little too much.”

“Right,” Hollanbach recalled. “This could still be an electronic problem. We have to stay focused on the mission at hand now that we’re here. Our goal now is to get the RRD operational again so we can relay this information to Herndum and have Houston verify whether or not it’s true. I’m coming around front to the porch now. Grab the tools and get them ready. We’ve got a radio dish to fix.”

“Roger that, Commander,” Reese said as he turned around to begin digging out the gear they’d need to get the job down, letting go of a long winded breath as he so.

Another busted fuel gauge on another cold chunk of lonely gray rock.

He closed his eyes for a moment and sauntered down against the bulkhead of the lander. Whoever is out there in charge of things, he thought. I’d like to go ahead and call for a do over if you don’t mind.

Who knows, he half-grinned. He might be close enough for them to hear him.

CHAPTER SEVEN?— THE NOTE

“Roger, DESPERADO.”

Christopher McNeely walked the three foot distance back to his control station, watching the silhouette of a woman as she entered the area that had only recently become the electronic beehive of motion as they assumed control and monitoring status of the DESPERADO and its crew, well over a hundred miles above them and racing around the earth at beyond breakneck speeds.

It hadn’t been that long ago-only a few days to be exact-that the same woman walked into a tightly packed conference room immediately floored everyone with the revelation that they were about to participate in a top-secret government mission to the moon, one that about a handful of people in the country knew about…and now, them… these twenty five science and engineering geeks collectively known as “MISSION CONTROL.”

Peering past the darkness of the room, McNeely could see the woman carefully make her way towards him. He turned his attention back to the glowing green of his monitors and was pleased that all the numbers were right for the mission. Grabbing the mike to his headset, McNeely moved it to the side and picked up his “World’s Greatest Uncle” mug, bringing it up to his dry lips and wincing in immediate disgust as the unpleasant taste of coffee long-cold and nearly forgotten, bit into his unsuspecting taste buds.

Gagging, he put the mug down on the counter of the switchboard and lightly scratched at the seat of his black trousers, yawning as fatigue began to set in. He then pulled the mike back into place, hovering just off the corner of his mouth to get ready for his next transmission.

“You are go for TLI,” he said to his unseen audience. “Commence burn in one minute.”

“Copy that Houston,” crackled Lieutenant Herndum’s voice as McNeely brought his watch over to the light of the computer screens to count off the passing seconds. “DESPERADO is go for TLI. Stand by.”

“TLI,” a feminine voice said, softly into his ear. “Trans-lunar injection…I take it that my astronauts are right on schedule?”

He didn’t need to turn around. He knew who was standing behind him, watching and listening over his shoulder. “That’s affirmative, Agent Coley,” he said as he used his hand to cover the microphone. “They are. In about forty seconds, they’ll fire the engine of the last stage and use that speed to slingshot around the earth…breaking the planet’s gravitational hold and heading for the moon.”

“Impressive,” she replied, not letting on that she was already well versed in the mechanics of getting to the moon…and back.

“Yes, ma’am,” McNeely agreed with her. “And that’s not even the fun part.”

But just as he was about to elaborate, he could see the second hand tick closer to the minute mark, letting go of the mike to give himself a clear channel of communication.

“DESPERADO,” he said again. “Commence burn.”

There was a slight pause before the lieutenant answered him. “Roger, Houston. Commencing burn for TLI…now.”

Just then, a lot of static filled the air, and McNeely promptly took off his headset rubbing gingerly at his ear.

“Something wrong?” Coley asked him.

He shook his head, placing the headset back on, but leaving the earpiece just off his ringing ear. “No,” he answered. “Just a little radio backlash. Happens sometimes.”

As McNeely took a seat, Coley watched digging a cigarette out of her small purse. “Care for a smoke, Mr. McNeely?”

He waved off the invitation. “No, thanks. I’m trying to quit,” he said as he swiveled around in his chair and looked at her. “Those things will kill you, y’know.”

As she lit up, Coley carelessly shrugged. “A lot of things will kill you,” she said bluntly blowing a stream of smoke from her crimson lips.

Special Agent-In-Charge, Mary Ellen Coley was how she had introduced herself to them and almost instantly, McNeely found himself wondering about her. There was a woman, he reasoned, an insanely beautiful woman at that, telling these msn about some secret mission she was in charge of, recruiting them to work for her…there was a lot about this he didn’t like. The secrecy… the need-to-know only job requirements…Coley, breathing down their necks since the day they all arrived here. It wasn’t very comforting for him to know that while it seemed he still was in charge of his MISSION CONTROL team, operating at a routine rate…Coley was ultimately overseeing the entire mission, from start to finish…and if push came to shove, it was her call, not his. And while she hadn’t pulled that card out of her sleeve yet (it was still early in the game, although they had already disagreed on a few other things, like watch rotation), it stilled pissed off McNeely, although he was doing a hell of a job not showing it.

Besides, he thought, Coley was a top operative with the CIA…the CIA!! The last thing he wanted was to get on their bad side. But it didn’t make him any less steamed. Coley looked at the bald spot on back of McNeely’s head.

“How long before the burn is completed?”

McNeely focused on the screen, and the countdown time that was dwindling away on it. “The burn lasts for a minute,” he told her. “And we still have a little over three-quarters of that to go.”

“Right,” she said, taking a drag from her cig. “And once the burn is over…how long before they retrieve the lunar-lander from the booster housing?”

McNeely shrugged.

“Depends. We usually like to give the boys a little rest time before they dive right into the next wave of things. But we can either wait a few hours, or a few minutes,” he said as he looked over his shoulder. “That’s up to you, ma’am.”

Coley took another hit from the cigarette, and then killed it in an ashtray still sitting on an empty watch station nearby. “First,” she said. “You don’t have to call me ma’am. I hate that. Refer to me as Agent Coley or even Mary Ellen, but never ‘ma’am’, okay?”

He nodded yes.

“Good. And to be honest with you, Mr. McNeely…I don’t really care how you get my men to the moon. As long as you remain on schedule and keep them alive and well, you and I will get along great. Okay?”

“Sure,” he said calmly. “I appreciate that.”

“Well, we have a job to do here…and as long as we can all get along without any egos getting in the way…”

“Right,” he said. “I couldn’t agree more.”

“Great,” Coley flashed him a sweet smile. “Glad we got that straight. As it happens, I’ve got a phone call to make. Anywhere I can get some privacy?”

McNeely motioned upwards at the un-lit vacant room to the catwalk. “Try the press box,” he offered. “Hardly anyone ever goes in there since they brought the coffee machine out here. And besides, he grinned, it’s not like you have the press to worry about.”

“True,” she replied, beginning to walk away.

“Houston,” came Herndum’s transmitted voice over the wire, startling McNeely as he was putting the headphones back over his ear. “This is DESPERADO. We have completed burn for TLI. Earth is in the rear view mirror, and we are coasting.”

The mission controller exhaled a brief chuckle. “Roger that, Lieutenant,” he responded. “You fellas rest easy for a few hours and enjoy the ride. We’ll talk at you again when it’s time to extract the LEM.”

“Affirmative, Houston.”

Even through the electronic regrouping of the lieutenant’s voice, McNeely could hear the tingling excitement.

“DESPERADO, out.”

Taking the headphones off completely and laying them on the counter, McNeely walked towards Burgess, his relief for the control-watch, and reassuringly grabbed him by the shoulder. “Mikey…you have the conn.”

Burgess threw his friend a mock salute. “Aye, aye, cap’n.”

McNeely managed a tired smile as he walked on towards the exit. “Anybody needs me,” he began to inform him. “And I’ll be in cot relief central.”

The time was three-sixteen in the morning…and Christopher McNeely was just coming to the end of a very long, very exhausting seventy-one hour day.

* * *

He looked up at Nicole as she slid out of the bed, running a hand quickly through her dyed blonde locks, standing up and grabbing at the frilly black lace panties that had somehow found their way onto the lampshade. Then spotting the matching bra, she stealthily reached over beside him, and tried to pull it out from under his pillow.

Her heart jumped up into her throat when his hand suddenly slapped itself around her wrist, grabbing tightly and pulling her halfway back down onto the bed.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

She took her free hand and moved the dangling hair from her angry blue eyes, then tried to pry him off of her.

“My hour’s up,” she told him. “When that happens…I leave,” she said as she struggled to free herself. “You’re hurting me, Justin.”

“Sorry,” he said as he let go.

Snatching the bra, she quickly covered her young breasts with it, and just as quickly jumped into the panties, giving him a confused, yet extremely irritated look.

“What the hell is wrong with you, huh?!” she screamed at him. “You don’t do that kind of bullshit with me, you know that.” She bent over and collected the tight sweater and jeans she had arrived in earlier, and balled them up in her arms.

By now, he was sitting up in the bed, longingly looking at her with his own set of blue eyes. “Sorry,” he said again. Then with slow, deliberate movements he reached over to the nightstand and grabbed hold of his wallet, pulling out two twenties and a ten, offering them to her. “Here.”

He watched as she pulled the blue jeans up over the delicious round curve of her firm ass, reaching around with brightly polished red nails, zipping them closed and buttoning them with extreme precision. Then she looked at the money in his hand.

“Keep it,” she said, turning her back to him and putting on her sweater. “I can’t stay any longer, I’ve got another appointment.”

He waved the money at her again. “No,” he said in almost a frightened whisper. “For grabbing you like that…I’m sorry.”

Plopping down on the bed, she leaned over to slip het high-heeled boots on, zipping them up on the side, then standing up, turning herself around to face him. With a fluid movement, the money was suddenly in her hand, quickly folded and tucked neatly into her pocket.

“I’ve known you for what…a year now?”

He nodded his head.

“And you’ve always treated me good. Not like all the other imbeciles I see in this town. So what’s give, Justin…why’d you grab me like that?”

Justin shrugged. “I guess…I guess I didn’t want you to go.”

“Well,” she covered her un-brushed hair with a jewel-covered cowboy hat and walked towards the bathroom door. “I always do. Mind if I use your bathroom?”

“No,” he said with a sigh, leaning back into the pillows behind him. “Go right ahead.”

Scratching at his thick, black sideburns, he closed his eyes and looked away from her as the door closed with a tiny click.

What the hell am I doing? It was a question he asked every time he met with this girl, Nicole, after sixty minutes of sweaty and meaningless sex. The same routine, nearly every weekend, where he would finish the work week, arrive home in his well- sized Washington apartment and dial those seven numbers to the escort service that he had long since memorized, asking each time for the twenty-year old college student who, like a lot of undisclosed girls in her situation, were earning tuition by screwing their way around the nation’s capital. And here he was, the goddamn Vice-Director of the CIA, contributing to the cause.

He lay back a little further and opened his eyes to stare up at the dimly lit ceiling. Again with the guilty feeling, he smiled wickedly with intense pleasure. If only he were able to get a girl like that for free, he mused, rubbing at the baldness atop his black haired crown, without having to pay-

BRRRING!

Aah! He exclaimed as the phone unexpectedly rang beside him. Quickly twisting around in the bed, he reached for it as another shrill ring broke the silence of the night. Jerking it off the hook, he pressed the tan plastic of the receiver against the side of his warm face, trying to swallow as his heart beat within his chest in the clear excess of the second speed limit.

“Hello?” he answered with a short breath.

“Director Haberlin,” said a somewhat feminine voice.

He looked at the clock on the wall, almost three-twenty.

“Yes,” he said. “This is Haberlin. Speak.”

“Mr. Haberlin? I’m sorry to wake you, sir, but you did instruct me to let you know the progress of the mission and…”

“Coley? Is that you?”

“Yes, sir, it is.”

Jesus, he had almost forgotten about her. An eyebrow arched on his forehead. “Are you talking to me on a secure line?”

“Of course, sir.”

“Where are you right now?”

She sighed. “I’m at Mission Control in Houston.”

“Right,” he said, his thoughts becoming a bit clearer. “Mission Control…so they’re on the way, then?”

“About six hours ahead of our original schedule. That’s why I’m calling you, sir,” she added. “They just went into the final stage of departure…trans-lunar injection… and have broken away from Earth’s orbit on the way to the moon.”

Haberlin yawned just as Nicole came out of the bathroom with a bewildered look on her face. “Outstanding,” he told Coley. “I have a meeting with the President first thing this morning. I’ll tell him then.” He carefully watched the girl as she picked her jacket up off the dresser and slid it on…one of those little western numbers, brown leather with fringe. He sat up in the bed and dug into his ear. “Anything else?”

“Not really,” came her response. “After the astronauts rest a few hours, they’ll extract the LEM. That’s about it for now.”

“Good. I trust you’ve got it all under control down there? Anyone giving you a hard time?”

She laughed. “No, sir. I’ve got a leg up on it.”

Haberlin smiled. “Good. Keep me posted, Mary Ellen.”

“Of course, sir.”

Nicole stood eyeing him impatiently by the bathroom door, as he threw sheets off and slid off the edge of the bed. He hung the phone up and stood up, slipping his robe around his naked body.

“Who was that?” his late night visitor inquired. “Girlfriend?”

“No, business associate.”

“What do you mean,” business associate? It’s three-thirty in the fucking morning!”

He silenced her by putting his forefinger against her deep red and pouty lips, giving a look of disapproval. “I’ve told you before young lady,” he said in a gruff whisper. “That’s not for you to worry about. Understand?”

Wide-eyed, she nodded her head, as Haberlin unlocked the door and opened it, ushering her out. “See you next weekend?”

She forced out a seductive smile. “You know the number.”

He gazed at her beautiful body as she turned and walked away.

* * *

The door to the van slammed violently behind her, shaking the whole vehicle with ferocity akin to an earthquake. Without any hesitation, the young blonde molded herself into the cool vinyl of the seat, closing her eyes with a shudder.

“Nickolenya?”

She didn’t respond, instead opting to remain still and quiet in the cold seat.

“Nickolenya?”

Her eyes angrily popped open. “What?”

Directly ahead of her in the passenger seat of the van was the crude shadow of one of her fellow operatives, his bulky form heavily silhouetted against the unnaturalness of one of the city streetlights.

“Did he say anything?” His voice was thick with Cyrillic undertones, something she spent years to completely disguise.

She uttered a heavy, and much agitated sigh. “Nyet,” she said in her native Russian, a little surprised she remembered the language at all.

“Haberlin said nothing at all, Misha. Another waste of my time.” Not to mention my body. Christ, she hated having that grubby bastard bumping into her on a weekly basis. There were so many times she was convinced Mother Russia wasn’t worth any of this bullshit. And most of the information gleaned from that asshole was rarely worth the effort or importance.

“Perhaps,” a chilling voice rang out in a gruff whisper behind her. “Or perhaps not.”

She turned to see another shadowy figure of a man sitting in the rear cavity of the van, fidgeting with the controls of a hi-tech listening device, head- phones wrapped snugly around his head.

“From what I can piece together from this telephone call,” he said in perfect English, the Americans have sent men to the moon.”

Misha was hardly impressed. “Big deal,” he blurted. “The Americans have been going to the moon for years. Fucking cowboys and their goddamn spaceships.”

“That’s true, Misha,” he said as he gently took off his listening gear and put it safely aside, systematically powering down his equipment. “But this time…this time was different.”

“How so?” the blonde asked.

He got up and carefully made his way to the driver’s seat, sitting down with a grunt. “Yesterday, one of our submarines reported to us that a Saturn rocket ship was suddenly launched from the Air Force base on an island in the Caribbean Sea.”

“Caribbean Sea?” she asked. “That’s not possible. They launch everything from that place in Florida… damn, what is it…Cape something…”

“Kennedy, after the president that was killed,” Misha whispered.

“Right, Cape Kennedy.”

The unnamed operative shook his head with a smile on his shaded face.

“But we discovered this little launch complex of theirs a few years ago. The Americans have it on an island about a hundred miles off the coast of Key West. They try to be slick and leave it off their maps, but we’ve known about it for some time now, since the 40s. Since then, we’ve kept a close eye on them, but all they have launched have been military probes and weather satellites. Nothing,” he said, his voice elevating slightly. “Nothing like a Saturn.”

Misha turned in the seat to look at his comrade, his ruddy Slavic features dimly accentuated by the hazy light outside. He scratched at his graying brown hair. “What are you saying, Alexi? The Americans have gone on a secret mission to the moon?”

The girl grew quiet, remembering Haberlin telling his “business associate” on the phone about his plans to meet the President later in the morning, not to mention other key phrases he uttered during the conversation that would support Alexi’s theory. Phrase like MISSION CONTROL…on the way…secure line…Her blue eyes widened with realization.

“Yes, Misha,” Alexi said as he turned the key and brought the van’s engine to life. “That is exactly what I’m saying.”

As the motor warmed up, the three of them sat in the drafty coldness of the van, quietly pondering over the reality of what they may have discovered. Misha broke the silence with a question.

“What now, comrade? What do we do now?”

The lead KGB agent stepped on the brake and brought the van’s shift selector down to DRIVE. “Now,” he said as he eased off the brake, accelerating slowly into the vacant street that was Potomac Avenue.

“Now we go to the Embassy.”

* * *

It was about an hour after sunrise when General Joshua Kent Mayson drove his rental Pontiac into the Lone Star Shack, not a trace of military mindedness about him, except for the close cropped hair atop his head, and the keen pair of steely gray eyes that looked out at the surroundings from behind the opaque of the aviator’s sunglasses parked onto the bridge of his crooked nose. Shutting off the car’s engine, Mayson peeked over his shoulder at his new surroundings and sighed.

“What a HELLHOLE.”

But at least, he thought, it was their hellhole. His and Mary Ellen’s. This was where they had spent their first night together during the late night hours of July 19th, 1969 (or was it the 21st? dammit, he was never sure) screwing each other like a couple of crazed rabbits while America walked on the moon. A broad smile washed over his roughened face, and he laughed. Good memories.

Mayson opened the door and gladly stepped out. Stretched, he took in a generous amount of the Texas early morning fresh air, filling his lungs with it until he was about to burst, slowly exhaling it back out in the form of carbon dioxide, getting a bit of a high from the coolness of the clean air. Slamming the car door shut, he began walking towards the door of the hotel office, the corduroy of his tan pants swish-swish-swishing together as he approached the blue door leading inside.

Opening the door, Mayson winced a little as the bells clanged shrilly, alarming whoever was in the entrance of the general’s arrival. Looking around, Mayson could see no one was there, until an overweight black lady stood up from apparently bending over, surprised to see someone in the office with her, but giving out a wide, heartwarming smile that would make even the loneliest of strangers feel welcome.

“G’mornin’, suh,” she said with a particularly jovial Southern drawl. “How ken ah hep ya?”

The general approached the desk, digging his wallet out from his backside. “I’d like to get a room, please,” he requested with a bit of a smile. “Preferably room 219 if you still have it.”

Janice, as her nametag implied, partially bent over at the waist, scanned the rows of keys hanging under the counter. “Les’ see…219…219…” Finding what she was looking for, Janice grabbed at it, stood up straight and placed the key on the counter. “Here ya go suh. Room number 219,’ she said as she grinned at him. “Y’all be needin’ th’ phone on in there?”

“Affirmative.”

Janice punched the numbers of the cash register and rang up the total amount, raising her eyebrows slightly at the general’s use of the word. “Nineteen dollas’ an’ seventy-two cents, please.”

Mayson chuckled a bit embarrassed. “I’m sorry, miss. I need the room for a week.”

She hit a few more keys, smiling. “Tain’t no problem atall, suh,” she replied, just as nice as she could be. Another total rolled up with ding. “One-hundred an’ six dollas’ and thirteen cents.”

Opening up his wallet, Mayson pulled out six twenties.

“Here you go,” the general said as he handed her the money.

Janice took the cash, popped open the register and handed him his change, receipt and the key. As Mayson, pocketed the items, he looked up at her. “Would it be alright if I were to leave a message up here for someone?”

“Sure thing.”

“Great.” Spotting a piece of paper and a pen on the counter, Mayson quickly jotted down something, folded the paper in half and handed it to the half bewildered hotel clerk. “If a ravishing woman with brown hair comes in here asking for his very room,” he said, dangling the key from the plastic keychain. “Give her that note.”

Janice blinked, putting the note in her shirt pocket. “Sure thing,” she repeated, as the bells clanged together again, and an exiting Mayson walked briskly out of the door.

* * *

Bathed in the light of the full moon above, Mary Ellen Coley stepped out of the Mercury and onto the rough, cracked pavement of the hotel parking lot, instinctively eyeballing her surroundings with a quick once over as she hoisted her purse up onto her shoulder and headed towards the well-lit lobby where a dark-skinned woman watched her every movement from behind the counter. Reaching the door, Coley opened it, and cursed as the clanging bells announcing her arrival elevated to a new plateau the intensity of her dwindling headache.

“Hi,” she said, rubbing her temple as she walked over towards the counter. “I’ll need a room for tonight and the remainder of the week, please,” she said as she placed her pocketbook up on the chipped Formica of the counter and unsnapped it, beginning to search for her wallet. “Room 219 if you have it.”

“Sorry,” came the almost immediate response from the clerk’s lips. “Somebody came an’ got that very room just this mornin’.”

And just as Coley was about to utter a phrase of ejectment, the lady pulled a folded-up slip of paper from her shirt pocket and handed it to her. A slightly confused look began to cloud her face.

“That same good-lookin’ gentleman,” the lady began to explain “He wrote somethin’ down on that there note an’ asked me t’give it t’ya when ya’s came lookin’ for th’ room. She smiled. “I reckon he was expectin’ ya.”

Coley unfolded the paper and looked down at familiar, yet sloppy blue handwritten words that read.

“I’M WAITING.”

The secret agent smiled knowingly and refolded the note, shoving it down into her pocket. “Thanks,” she said.

“Sure thing, honey.”

She watched as Coley nearly ran out of the door, her shadowy figure disappearing into the inky blackness of the night, the bells finally ceasing their ringing, the door closing with a silent puff of air.

* * *

The door swung open and there he stood, blue pajama bottoms with a hexagonal tan print and matching top just hanging on his slouching shoulders and not trying hard to cover up the well-toned torso that had spent many a night running her delicate fingertips over, sometimes playing with the light smattering of graying black hair that was there.

“Ah! What a slight to greet her tired eyes.”

He stood there, ever the slightest touch of happiness to see her barely showing on his stubbled face, tightly clutching the evening paper with one hand, the doorknob with the other.

“Yes?” he asked in a strangely, innocent tone. “Is there something I can do for you?”

A wicked smile pursed her glossy red lips. “I certainly hope so.”

Coley took her purse off her shoulder and flung it into the room, watching with her peril vision as it skidded across the already wrinkled sheets, and landed somewhere on the other side with a dull thud.

Mayson looked over his shoulder at the fallen purse, then back to her.

“Exactly what did you, uh, have in mind?”

She placed both palms on his chest, feeling heat from his strong body. Then she pushed the unsuspecting general backwards, throwing him into the bed. Without taking her greedy eyes off him, she reached blindly for the door and slammed it shut with a loud bang. Mayson sat up; amused with the little game they were playing, leaning on his shoulders.

“What did,” he swallowed. “What did you say your name was?”

Coley shrugged off the navy blue jacket she was wearing and allowed it to fall to the floor.

“I didn’t,” she hissed slowly unbuttoning the white blouse she, for the moment, was wearing. That too, quickly fell to the floor, leaving her standing there in her tight white and rose-laced bra. Kicking off her heels as she slithered over to him, Coley climbed onto the bed with him, a look of hunger rivaling a starving lioness in her eye, as she sat herself on his lap, feeling just how happy he was to see her.

“Christ,” he whispered hoarsely. “I have missed the hell out of you.”

She gave him that secret smile, a slight twanging of the lips near the right corner of her mouth that even though Mayson wasn’t aware of it, she reserved only for him.

“I can’t even begin to tell you how lonely it got on that goddamn island,” he said. “I wished every day that I could just launch that rocket myself so I could get back here to you as fast as I could.”

Mary Ellen slid the shirt off him.

“I missed you, too, General,” she said as she reached down between his legs and suffered him through a gentle squeeze. “It’s been a long…” She squeezed again, licking her lips. “Long, month.”

Letting his head fall onto the bed, Mayson let go of a pent-up moan, straining his eyes to look at her. “Very long,” he agreed.

She turned to make sure the curtains were closed and then re-faced her lover, seductively unclasping her restraining bra with a practiced quick twist, and let her breasts fall freely into view, slinging the bra into the air behind her, not caring where it landed.

“Welcome home, General Mayson,” she purred as she sank down to meet her trembling lips to his. “Welcome home.”

* * *

Reese floated on down through the tube and arrived first into the small space that was the UNFORGIVEN’S cockpit, so to speak…a space hardly bigger than two telephone booths strapped together with the insides ripped out. Promptly balling himself into a free-floating fetal position, Reese “somersaulted” and stood on the Velcro covered patches on the LEM floor, a unique little invention to keep the astronauts in place during the descent to the moon.

Reese stood at the control console and searched for the main power switch, the first in a long line of steps to fully bring the LEM to life. Almost immediately the cabin lights flickered on, followed closely behind by the LCD displays of the instrumentation panels, a welcome green light that instantly began calculating and monitoring their status, as it performed a series of internally- designed warm-up diagnostics.

Suddenly there was a dull thud behind him. Reese turned around to see a copy of the LEM start-up floating back up into the air followed a few seconds later by Hollanbach’s smiling face as it popped out from the access tunnel.

“Howdy, Captain.” The commander floated through the tube and twisted himself around in mid-air to stand upright next to Reese, his Velcro-lined firmly attached to the floor. “Thought you could use a little help in powering this baby up,” he said as he grabbed the escaping manual.

Reese grinned. “That’s real nice of you, Skipper. To what do I owe the honor?”

Hollanbach shrugged. “Nothing to it, Captain. Just gets a little boring up there watching Herndum drive…and besides,” he added quietly. “Scotty’s not the prettiest thing to look at on this trip.”

“UNFORGIVEN, this DESPERADO,” Herndum’s voice rang out into their headphones. “Be advised I can hear everything you say.”

The commander gave a toothy grin. “Roger that, DESPERADO. You should be advised that we don’t care.”

Both men heard the lieutenant laugh over the airwaves, as they continued the process of powering up the lunar lander.

“Christ, man,” Reese suddenly blurted. “I can’t believe it.”

Hollanbach raised a curious eyebrow. “Can’t believe what?”

The youngest of the three astronauts took a moment, and motioned around the cabin. “This. Being inside the LEM…on the way to the moon.” He shook his head as he flipped on a few more switches. “It’s like a dream, y’know? Like I’m just waiting to wake up or something, and discover myself on the bunk at the cape…still waiting for our launch window in the forthcoming year.”

“I know what you mean, Andy,” the mission commander agreed. “Feel kind of like that, too,” he said as he reached up and scratched at his nose. “I’ve only been dreaming about this since I was six years old.”

Reese suddenly looked at Hollanbach, and let a nervous gulp slide down his throat. “What do you think we’re going to find up there?”

The commander fell surprisingly silent, stopped what he was doing for a few moments and starred out the triangular window into space. It had been a question he’d often wondered about himself…what it might be that he and Reese would find in the next day or two. A lot of the thoughts that passed through his head were pictures of super-intelligent beings from another world, broken down on the moon and extremely glad to have help. Other images were hardly as endearing.

“Hard to say, Reese.” Hollanbach lifted his feet up from the Velcro strips and began to bob around beside the captain. “The only thing I can say with certainty is that we will probably encounter something that no human has ever encountered before.” Getting hold of the rung, the commander pulled himself towards the opening of the access tube, giving Reese one last look before he disappeared into it. He could see the growing nervousness and uncertainty on the man’s face. “Whatever it is, Captain, we’ll face it together.”

But Reese remained quiet, frozen in the stillness of a long stare at the console, as Hollanbach grew a little concerned.

“Hey, man? You okay?”

The captain blinked himself out of his trance, and glanced over his shoulder at his commander. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he said as he turned his attention back to the manual and continued on with the job at hand. “I was just thinking.”

“What about?”

“Ah, nothing.”

Hollanbach was quickly beside him, and Reese could readily see the commander didn’t believe him.

“No, really,” he half-chuckled. “It’s nothing.”

Crossing his arms over his chest, Hollanbach floated up into the corner. “You’re thinking about that girl again, aren’t you? What was her name? Sheldon?”

“Angelica,” Reese answered. “And I wasn’t thinking about her,” he said as he reached over and flipped on a row of switches, activating the internal cooling system of the computer. “I was thinking about the landing. I’m not too sure I’m comfortable with it.”

“What? Landing the LEM? C’mon, Reese, you and I have practiced this to the point we could land in our sleep. Besides,” he added. “I’ll be setting this thing down in the dirt when it’s time, not you.”

“Yeah, I know but-”

“But what, Captain? This is simply a routine moon mission. The same thing a dozen or so other guys have done before us, except we’re going to the far side,” Hollanbach sighed. “That’s the only difference…and well, it’s a mission nobody else knows about, but that’s beside the point. There’s nothing,” he stressed the word. “Nothing to be worried or upset about. Nothing even if there were,” he smiled. “That’d be my job, not yours.”

“I don’t know, Jon. I’m starting to get a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach about this.”

Hollanbach made his way back towards the access tunnel. “Well…grab a bag and puke in it. Maybe you’ll feel better,” he joked.

“C’mon, Skipper,” Reese pleaded. “I’m being serious here.”

“And so am I, Reese. The worse thing that could happen is we’ll have to land a few miles off our target area. Worse thing.” He hovered quietly above the captain a few seconds as Reese turned back to his manual, beginning the last phrase of the power up.

“I’ve got to go. You gonna be okay down here?”

The captain nodded. “Yeah. I’ve uh…I’ve only got a few more systems to boot up and I’ll be done.”

“Good,” Hollanbach said. “Houston wants us to run a few tests on the comm array with the CM and I thought we’d go ahead and get that out of the way. Okay with you?”

“Sure,” Reese replied.

“Okay, then. I’ll, uh…be back in a minute,” he said as Reese smiled.

“Take your time.”

As Hollanbach left, Reese went back to initializing the final three subsystems, his mind on the mission, but his heart…the captain sighed heavily, unsuccessfully trying to lie to himself, which was not nearly as easy as it was to lie to Hollanbach, because while he was somewhat concerned with certain elements of the mission to the moon, it was Earth that competed for his attention; Earth, and a certain young redhead who shall remain nameless.

* * *

“Angelica Sheldon.”

A storm of fiery red hair swirled about as she turned her head in the direction of the voice calling her. Almost immediately, an older man surfaced in the doorway to the kitchen, an angry look upon his ruddy face, a milk carton clutched firmly in is left hand.

Sitting there at the dining room table, the pretty young woman offered a tiny smile. “Hi, Daddy.”

His eyes became narrow. “Don’t hi Daddy me, young lady!” A second later the milk carton came crashing down onto the tabletop. “If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times…don’t leave empty cartons in the refrigerator!”

She looked down at the bowl of cereal in front of her and then back at the senior Sheldon.

“Sorry!”

The astronomer only grunted in disgust.

“That word is starting to have too familiar of a ring to it. I’m seriously beginning to wonder about you, girl. Yesterday you left here and forgot to lock the door. Last week, you tried to dry the dirty clothes before washing them, and not long before that-”

“I know, I know,” she interrupted him, holding her hands up in defense. “The incident at the observatory.”

An incident where she somehow managed to lock up the gears on the motor that actually turned the telescope; an extremely costly repair job that took a full month to fix.

“I am still so very sorry about that.”

Harry Sheldon shook his head in disbelief. “I’m getting worried about you, Angel. My mind is starting to ask questions that ordinarily never come into play.”

“Questions?” she asked him. “Like what?”

“Like are you on drugs?”

“What?!” The question ripped her open like a jagged blade. “Are you even serious…asking me that?”

The doctor shook his head. “Angel, listen to me. I know you would never do drugs. I know that, okay? But your behavior of late,” he said as he shrugged, not knowing any other way to put it. “Well, it suggests that you may be upset or nervous about something…. maybe even hiding something.”

“Is this an accusation or something?”

“No…I’m simply trying to understand what it is that’s upsetting you that would affect you like this,” he said as she snorted in anger.

“Well, for starters, my boyfriend is halfway to the moon and I didn’t get as much as a good-bye kiss!”

“He’s not your boyfriend.”

“Yes,” she said, getting up in a huff. “He is.”

He really didn’t come in there looking for an argument but that was exactly what this little confrontation was turning into. Sheldon sighed dejectedly and leaned against the wall.

“Whatever,” he said. “Boyfriend or not, you have no proof that he went to the moon and-”

“I don’t need proof! All you have to do is put the facts together.”

“Regardless, Angelica.”

Truth be told he was getting pretty agitated now with the direction that their talk was headed. Sheldon knew it would be up to him to kill this little conversation. Angel was fit to be tied…not that he really blamed her, in a way… he knew exactly what she was going through a loved one leaving without saying good-bye, but this was different. And as much as he loved her, he couldn’t accept that the traitorous Reese had become the object of her affections. Not after the entire ruckus he had caused him over those damn lights.

“I don’t have the time for this right now, I’m already five minutes late for a meeting with the Board of Trustees about where to get the money to run the observatory for another year…and find a way to pay the university back for shelling out its own money for repairs. He walked out of the dining room and into the hall, opening the closet and extracting a light jacket. “But rest assured, young lady…when I get home later, we will continue this discussion.”

“Be a dear and clean up your room like I asked you a week ago. And if you feel like it, take a look at those old star charts in the den and see what you can make out of the, eh?”

She sighed. “Sure, Daddy.”

The doctor walked over to the door and twisted the knob to open it, but stopped just short of stepping out in the sunlight of the early Colorado morning.

“You, uh…you sure you’ll be alright ‘til I get back?”

His daughter bonded towards her father and wrapped her arms tightly around him, taking him completely by surprise. “I’m just a little nuts now. But I promise it won’t be long before I’m back to my old reliable self,” she said as she planted a kiss on his cheek and smiled at him. “You’ll see.”

Sheldon returned the smile. “Well, I hope so…or else I won’t have anything left if this keeps up.”

Her tone was arduous. “Good-bye, father.”

He chuckled.

“Good-bye, dear. I’ll see you tonight, hmmmm?”

The doctor hurriedly moved on down the steps and made tracks to the decapitated truck, giving his only child one last little wave before hopping in, turning the engine over, and driving off.

Closing the heavy, wooden door, Angelica walked, feet dragging along the carpet, back over to her seat at the table, where she promptly plopped down in the cushioned wooden chair, taking her spoon in hand, bringing some Cheerios up to her waiting mouth.

And then the doorbell rang.

She parted the curtains and stole a shy glance through the window. There, on her porch stood a tall and heavily structured black man dressed in complete Air Force regulate attire. She could see the golden oak leaves reflecting sunlight off his broad shoulders, denoting that he was a major. A Major Taylor if the nametag served him right. A nervous sensation wandered into her spirits as she bit down on her already butchered fingernails, something new to worry about arriving quite suddenly on her doorstep.

Damn, was her initial reaction. She wondered what an officer in the Air Force was doing out there? Clearly, this was related to Reese somehow! She caught her breath. Reese and the moon mission! Something had happened, something terrible and this guy, this hulking mountain of a man, was sent to tell her!

Angelica shut her jade eyes tightly and concentrated on slowing her breathing down. This was not like her. She didn’t freak out like this. She was Angelica Sheldon. Miss Cool, Calm, and Collected. The doorbell chimed again. Ah, God, she didn’t want to open that door!

So, don’t, a tiny voice whispered inside her head. Go into the bathroom and hide and pretend you’re not home. Right, she countered in return. And what if this guy has something to tell me? Or, what if he’s not looking for me…could be he’s looking for Harry Sheldon! Yeah, she reasoned. The important person of the family. I mean, just because this guy shows up out of the blue wearing a military uniform and-

FOR CHRIST SAKE, GIRL, JUST ANSWER THE DOOR!!

The cool air of the early day slipped in and slapped at her slippered feet, giving rise to goose bumps along the back of her neck.

“Hello,” she pleasantly said to the man with a smile. “How can I help you?”

Taylor’s dark eyes pierced her from beneath the shiny beak of his cover. “Angelica Sheldon?”

She gulped. “Yes?”

Taylor reached into his jacket and withdrew a small white envelope and quickly handed it to her.

“A mutual friend of ours, Captain Reese, asked me to see that you get this.”

Angelica took the envelope and examined it; it was addressed to her by name only with nothing else written on it. “What is it?” she asked the major.

The big man shrugged.

“He didn’t tell me. He only asked that I get this to you as soon as I was able.”

“Well, uh…thank you.”

“There is one other thing, Ms. Sheldon.”

Her eyebrows arched upwards with intrigue. “What?”

“That envelope and its contents…whatever they may be…officially don’t exist. I was never here, and you never saw me. Understand?”

“Yes. But, I-” Taylor grabbed her tiny hand and shook it.

“Good-bye, Ms. Sheldon.” He turned and clopped down the steps. “Thanks for your time.”

Ad just as quickly as he had gotten there, the major slid into the jeep and took off down the gravel driveway, followed not five seconds later by the arrival of the good doctor, who immediately brought the truck to a grinding halt, throwing himself out of the vehicle and running up onto the porch where his daughter remained standing, a look of blankness on her delicate face, staring at the envelope she held tightly in her hand.

“What-”, he stopped for a moment, struggling to regain his breath from the short run over. God, he was out of shape! “What was that all about? He passed me up the drive and-”

Her eyes never left the envelope.

“Angel?”

She looked at her father.

“What was that all about?”

“I-I don’t know,” she told him honestly. “All I know is this guy shows up and hands me an envelope,” she said as she held it up.

The doctor snatched at it, reading her name on it, and seeing that it was still sealed, he gave it back to her. “Open it.”

And she did, taking her fingernail and digging under the glued paper to loosen some of it, lifting up an edge, and ripping it the rest of the way. Reaching inside, she withdrew the single piece of paper and unfolded it, her eyes brightening as she read its contends.

“What?” the doctor asked her as a smile grew onto her face “What does it say?”

Without a word, Angelica handed her father the note and briskly walked back into the house, renewed confidence in her stride.

Sheldon opened the note and read.

THE GREEN CHEESE HERE IS AMAZING.

AND THE VIEW AIN’T HALF BAD EITHER.

REESE

A smile growing across his face, the astronomer looked up at the full moon still fighting to stay in the morning sky, refolding the note and placing it in his jacket pocket.

“Sonuvabitch.”

Technorati Tags: moon,dark side of the moon,dark of the moon,apollo 17,apollo 18,1973,moon mission,manned moon mission,scifi,novel,the answer?,don edwards,scifi novel,black ops,adventure,aliens,conspiracy,astronauts,apollo mission,moon landing,fictional moon mission

CHAPTER SIX?—THE LAUNCH

Before he knew it, the final day before the launch was upon him. Tomorrow night, a minute past midnight, he, Hollanbach and Herndum would be strapped atop nearly four-hundred feet of raging rocket, making another effort to break the earth’s gravity on a roaring cascade of flames.

Reese tried to settle down in the hard plastic chair of the barren officer’s mess, which was only a small trailer, sporting a few more conveniences than the massive enlisted mess a few buildings away. It had been another long and hard day-or-night, intense training for the LEM landing on the dark side of the moon, an already dangerous process in theory…more so when you consider they were still without a bona fide landing site for this little excursion they were about to undertake, something that had been gnawing at the captain’s gut ever since their arrival at Camp Paradise.

Walking over to the icebox, Reese was especially thankful to discover an entire tray of ice waiting for him in the freezer, which he didn’t hesitate to empty into a tall glass emblazoned with the “Special Forces” cot on its side. He then went over to the spigot and fixed himself a tall glass of refreshing iced water, easily cooling his parched throat on its journey down to his stomach. The night air was sticky with the obscene humidity of the tropics, not to mention the dizzying heat left over from the day…enough to make him rip off his uniformed coveralls and complete the rest of his training naked. Yet he’d managed to get through it somehow, perhaps the knowledge of it being the last session before the real thing, giving him the gradual motivation to get it over with.

Of course, the landing was not the only thing they had been busting their asses to get a grip on; there were other things as well. Herndum had immersed himself into the world of encrypted communications, forced to relearn everything he’d already become familiar with concerning the “regular” Apollo control panels. There was no way the government was going to take the chance of Soviet interception of the mission signal, learning all about the mystery of the moon from the safety of planet Earth. So the entire communications procedure, start to finish would be coded and deciphered by a new computer system fresh off the drawing board.

The new “EVA” suits, now fifty pounds lighter and slightly easier to move around in, had become a fixture in their everyday training, whether he and Hollanbach sat in the simulator of the command module with Herndum, or alone in the “LEM”, or perhaps testing the helmet cams on various objects along the beach, they spent nearly three hours a day inside them, learning to accustom themselves to the newness of it, until it had become second nature.

Reese moved from the pantry to the dining area, a small but roomy space, filled with a few couches and easy chairs near the exit, a good-size table taking up residence next to where he stood, lined with cushioned fold-up chairs on either side, where he slid one out and promptly took a seat.

An empty shell casting lay carelessly where he was about to set his glass. Picking it up, he slowly twirled it between his forefinger and thumb, to examine the oil-stained ripples of color as the bright lights from the fluorescent bulbs above him playfully reflected from the cool metal of the brass.

Throughout the morning hours, he and Hollanbach had become closely acquainted with a modified version of the semiautomatic assault rifle known as the M-16, something that had become his best friend in Nam…during those times when he found himself in a fire fight on the ground instead of the air.

The weapons, of course, had become a last minute addition to the check- list, outfitted with a substantially wider trigger guard to accommodate their gloved and rubber-tipped digits, as well as a slightly longer and thinner handle to easily grasp. Other than that, their rifle was exactly the same as the standard version so popular now in the military.

The class was really meant for Hollanbach, he knew, who had only been trained with the firing of the near-obsolete M-1 and M-14 species of rifle during his days at Annapolis and the occasional discharge of a .45 sidearm during annual training. Aside from that the commander admittedly had hardly ever fired a weapon in his life.

Herndum, who had been on hand to observe, immediately asked why in the hell they’d need to be packing such serious heat on a…more or less…routine trip to the moon. After all, he quickly pointed out, none of the Apollo astronauts took weapons with them on their moon landings.

Hollanbach had been the one to answer him. “I don’t want to know why,” he said taking up a practice firing stance at the foot of the range. “Because if I did…I wouldn’t be going in the first place.”

And he was right. Despite the near misses with death and the few brushes he’d had with “Charlie” in the jungle. Reese found that underneath his bad-ass, rough-and-tumble exterior, he, too, was frightened of the unknown possibilities of what he and Hollanbach might e walking into. It could literally be anything, and that was what scared him the most…the not knowing. When he walked out the hatch of the LEM up there, it would be muzzle first. NASA protocol be damned.

Reese downed some of the water, relaxing a little more in the uncomfortable chair, setting the casting down on its end with a tiny bang, asking himself the same question he’d been asking since the night he learned about the lights while in the observatory. What was he getting into?

“Well, I’ll be damned.”

There was an awkward silence as Reese finished swallowing the cold water already in his mouth, just before turning his head to see a very large, very angry looking black man, trimmed mustache wrinkled up in a snarl, dressed head to toe in complete aviator’s attire. His big hand gripping the door knob as he slammed shut the only way out of there. The only identifying mark was a shiny gold oak leaf pinned to his flight suit collar.

“You sonuvabitch!” came the low glottal growl from the major’s throat. “I’ve got half a mind to kill you right where you sit.”

Reese nearly choked, a few seconds passing before he recognized the hulking beast of a man looming quite close to him.

“Taylor?” he asked, not too sure if perhaps fatigue was playing with his tired mind. “What,” he sputtered, gasping for more air. “What are you doing here?”

He was immediately sorry he even asked.

“What am I doing here?! What am I doing here?!!” an infuriated Taylor repeated, throwing his flight helmet into the chair next to him. His wide nostrils flared as his lips twitched with rage. “I’ll tell you what I’m doing here, Captain! I’m flying goddamn patrol missions every eight hours around this….,” his eyes rolled as he held his mighty arms up, looking for an accurate enough adjective to use, focusing back on Reese once he had found it. “Godforsaken shithole of an island, all because I was a nice guy and gave you a ride off that mountain a month ago!!”

Twisting the chair around, Reese calmly examined his friend. “Well, ah…,” he cautiously began. “It’s good to see you, too, buddy.”

Still fuming, the major reached down and picked up his helmet, collapsing a second later into the very same chair with a loud grunt, flight gear jangling all around as he made contact.

“Can the bullshit, Reese,” Taylor ordered. “Tell me what the hell you’re doing here,” reaching down, he patted the ,45 strapped to his side. “This time I got a gun…buddy…and I will shoot you.”

The captain swallowed hard and long. “Well in that case, I guess I better spill my guts,” he said as he began his revelation of the lights, the major intently listening as he went on.

“Sonuvabitch,” Taylor said in a raspy whisper as Reese explained everything to him. “I thought that night had something to do with the moon. Something odd,” he said as his eyes widened as he started shaking his head. “Didn’t think it’d be anything like that, man…Damn. This is some straight up Twilight Zone shit right here, Hedgehog.”

His water gone, Reese took the glass back over to the sink and left it upside down in the basin. “Well, now you know, Major. You and about ten other people in the entire world,” he sighed as he took his seat. “The question that remains however is what the hell is up there?”

Taylor looked up and looked at his friend. “You nervous, man?”

Reese scratched at his temple. “Yeah,” he readily admitted. “And scared out of my mind. There are too many damn things that can go wrong with this mission, Ray. Hardly anything has gone according to protocol since this shit started a month ago.”

“Hey,” Taylor cut in. “You think that’s bad? Should’ve been there when I tried telling Louanne that I had orders carting me off to some little place I couldn’t tell her about, or how long I’d be there,” he said looking away into the pantry.

The captain felt sympathetic. “How’d she take it?”

Taylor let go a long sigh. “She was pissed.”

“Jesus, man,” the captain suddenly said. “I’m sorry.”

Getting up, the major started towards the pantry. “Yeah, well, you should be,” he said with a smile on his face. “If it hadn’t been for you, I could be at home right now, making love to my wife, instead of being here flying circles around this place,” he said as he opened the icebox and retrieved a half-drank Pepsi, twisting the cap off and downing some. “Next time you run outta gas don’t even think about calling me,” he told Reese with a laugh.

The captain managed a smile as he looked at his watch, heart skipping a beat when he realized he was a little too close to being late for a second go- round of training to take him into the dawn. “Whoa! I don’t mean to be rude, pal,” he said as he gathered himself, heading towards the door. “But I gotta go. Duty calls.”

“S’okay,” Taylor replied with understanding. “I gotta roll on outta here myself and get some bunk-time before my next shift in seven hours.”

Reese faced his old friend and offered a salute, which Taylor immediately returned. “Good seeing you again, pal,” the captain said as he dropped his arm and started on the way out. “Real sorry about all this, though.”

Just as he was about to step into the outside air, Reese was stopped, hand on the door knob, as the major bellowed out his name.

“Andy.”

The captain turned around, surprised to see a light smile on his former wing-man’s tired face, and more surprised that Taylor had called him by his first name, something he had done maybe once or twice in the seven years they’d known one another.

“Good luck with the launch tomorrow. Ah, uh….could I request a favor?”

“Name it.”

“See if you can bring me back one of those moon rocks, uh? It’d look cool as hell on a necklace for the old lady.”

A small chuckle escaped the young astronaut’s throat. “Consider it done, my friend,” he said as he took a leap from the top step, by-passing the other two completely. Then, with a final wave to his friend, he quickly walked along the cracked pavement that would take him back to the training hangar, his big brown eyes looking up at an almost full moon, looming like a giant question mark up in the star-filled sky.

* * *

Donna Hollanbach missed her husband. Her hormones had betrayed her, causing an overreaction and leaving her man in the coldness of his lonely house when he needed her the most. She knew Jonathan wouldn’t be there, but that didn’t stop her heart from swelling in anticipation of him walking down the steps, big sexy smile on his ruddy face, and whisk her off her tired feet to the bedroom, where he’d lay her down and apologize profusely for being a jackass and genuinely insensitive to her needs.

No, dammit!

She closed her eyes tightly and shook her head violently like a woman possessed, her ebony hair spiraling out like the swirls of a hurricane as she tried to clear her mind of such unwanted thoughts, trying to focus on the task at hand.

She knew all too well that if anyone was the jackass, it had to be her, running out like that didn’t matter, really, that she was being bombarded by chemicals and things carrying on so carelessly in her system…she knew better. Or at least she thought she did…because apparently she didn’t really know that much at all. It was her mother who suspected it noticing symptoms that had evaded her for weeks before the unannounced arrival at her parent’s house, where it became blatantly clear within a few days.

Donna gingerly treaded along the brown carpet to the sofa, carefully lowering herself down just as she began to hear the first drops of a late night rain splatter against the unyielding glass panes of the window, sighing with relief as her rear hit the welcomed cushion of the seat.

The phone sat on the wood-stained coffee table, silently taunting her to pick it up and dial the number. She held the business card out in front of her face again for at least the hundredth time, reading the bold black lettering of “Special Agent Mary Ellen Coley’s” name, address, and telephone number, the same number she had called two weeks earlier to get the message to Jonny… that she was sorry for walking out on him like that and she deeply loved and missed him. The next day the phone rang, a voice informing her of her husband’s well-being and parallel sentiments.

She knew then, but hesitated to tell him. Mother, of course, already knew, having been with her at the doctor’s office when he stoically confirmed the initial suspicions. But the joy she was experiencing was soon overshadowed by uncertainty and worry…and not long after…fear.

Putting the card down on the table, she sat back releasing an extremely heavy breath. He had every right to know, to be informed of her condition. But she knew Commander Jonathan James Hollanbach, a lot better than he sometimes knew himself, and she didn’t want him with more on his mind than what was already there.

What Donna wanted was for this mission to be completed. her husband home and safe right next to her, free to obsess and worry over her as he saw fit…without the possibility of killing himself or anyone else in the process.

She suddenly leaned forward and snatched hold of the phone, ripping it away from the hook. Donna knew what she had to do, and now, she contemplated the call as she looked at the seconds ticking quickly by on her watch.

Using her middle finger, she painstakingly dialed the numbers; her taut and tan long legs bouncing up and down in a fit of nervousness as she listened to the phone on the other end begin to ring, and ring, and ring, and…

“Hello?” whooshed a sudden voice into her waiting ear, although it did seem a bit groggy. “Special Agent Coley speaking. How may I help you?”

Donna bit down on her red polished nails, staying silent a few moments longer before she answered, still tormented that she might still be doing the wrong thing.

“Hello?” Coley said again, sounding a bit more alert and awake. “Is there anyone there?”

“Mary Ellen?” It was said in a rush. “Um…hi, it’s me, Donna.”

There was a pause as Coley pondered the familiarity of the voice. “Mrs. Hollanbach?”

“Yes,” came the confirmation. “I’m…I’m sorry, Agent Coley. I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“No, Mrs. Hollanbach,” Coley lied with a cheerful tone. “Not at all. What is it I can do for you?”

Donna’s legs were moving a little faster now, her foot beginning to bang against the carpeted floor. “I, uh…” she drifted off, still struggling with her course of action. “Is my husband okay?” she asked in a huff. “Everything is alright with him, right?”

Unseen, Mary Ellen smiled. “Commander Hollanbach is doing just fine, ma’am.”

A nervous laugh suddenly spurned itself from her mouth, as she got closer to saying it. “Good…great. Great. God, that’s so…um, great. Donna swallowed down the rising lump in her throat, her mind strengthening, telling her to do it now.

“Is there something you-,” Coley began.

“My husband,” Donna cut her off unintentionally. “I need you to get another message to my husband. It that possible?”

“Of course it is.”

She sighed relieved. “Okay…okay, then. Could you tell him that I love him very much, and that I’m….-

Coley listened to silence that followed, concern beginning to play on her as the passing seconds began to quickly add up.

“Mrs. Hollanbach?”

“Tell him that I’m…” She was drifting away again.

“Yes, Mrs. Hollanbach?” Mary Ellen prodded.

Donna sighed again, her mind heavy with doubt, but eager for a release. “Tell Jonathan that I love him very much.” Despite her efforts to speak in a calm voice, the words still came out shaky and raw, a tenseness soaking each word through to the last letter. Hands trembling, Hollanbach’s wife whispered an uneasy closing to the conversation on the phone.

“And…I’m pregnant.”

* * *

It had been, incredibly, enough EIGHT HOURS, since they had voluntarily inserted themselves into the private trailer to begin their twenty-four hour period of complete isolation, where the three astronauts would remain until about two or three hours before the actual launch, protecting themselves from any airborne viruses or bacteria that could resurface later in the mission, where even something as low-maintenance as a disturbing bellyache could very well collectively jeopardize all their lives.

The buzzer sounded, and they looked up at the large wall-length window that, for the time being, was their only view of the outside world (which wasn’t much considering it was only the corridor that connected them to main laboratory complex) where the general stood, holding up a poster-sized photograph of the moon’s terrain, pressing it against the window and taping the edges of it securely in place with crudely torn-off strips of masking tape.

“Gentlemen,” he began with a bright and almost disarming smile. “I have good news for you. Nothing but good news.”

Hollanbach stood up from the small table he and Reese had pretty much stayed riveted to since they got there, painstakingly reading and rereading the mission guideline and a quickly thrown together manual of the modified lunar lander they were taking with them. Herndum lay awake and staring intently at the command module switchboard, which was nothing more than a blown-up photo- graph, life-size in every detail, tacked into the ceiling tile above him and the bunk he rigged to simulate the DESPERADO’S couch.

The lieutenant had decided to use the time to reinforce his memory of the location and function of every switch, dial, button, and readout display that would soon be his sole responsibility as their CM pilot. But with the sudden sounding of the buzzer, all six eyes, regardless of the sensitive and vital material they were studying, shot over to discover their caller to be Mayson, thankfully, instead of another damned doctor. The commander reached over onto the panel on the wall, activating the vox unit that sat next to the sealed-off exit.

“Hello, sir,” he said, relieved not to be the subject of another self-induced medical exam. “If it’s okay with you, we’ll take the good news first.”

Mayson grinned widely. “Plenty of that to go around, Commander,” he said, his gaze locking onto Hollanbach. “Starting with you.”

Standing there with his big arms crossed over his chest, the mission commander glanced haphazardly over his shoulder as he was joined by Reese and Herndum.

The captain, however, continued walking forward, parking himself before the giant picture of the lunar landscape, rubbing his grizzled jaw in wonderment as he began to silently examine it.

“With me?” Hollanbach questioned.

Mayson again flashed a tremendous smile, walking back over towards the commander. “This is perhaps the best part of my day, Mr. Hollanbach. When I receive the privilege and honor, of telling one of my officers…one of my astronauts no less… that he’s about to become a father.”

The naval officer just stood there for a couple of seconds, the smile from his previously asked question deteriorating into an expression of complete perplexity, then a smile again as a small laugh pushed itself away from Hollanbach’s lips

“A father?”

Clearly, he began to think, there was a mistake. He and Donna had been careful every time they’d made that passionate connection. He used the rubber, she took the pill. There was no possible way that…

“Your wife,” the general said, breaking into Hollanbach’s thoughts. “Informed us of her condition just last night. According to her doctor, she’s a month into the pregnancy…maybe more.”

Hollanbach blinked his eyes a few times in disbelief, a weak feeling beginning to set into his knees that quickly prompted him to reach over and grab hold of the seat. A month into it, he thought…a reckless fear beginning to overwhelm him. Maybe more.

She hadn’t even started using the pill until a few weeks ago…if she had even started using it at all. Donna had been clamoring for a conception lately, citing her mother’s incessant nagging to become a grandmother and her own feeling of incompleteness…but he had made it perfectly clear (or, at least he thought he had) that now was not the time for him to begin creating a family and immersing himself into the role of a father. Wait, he told her, until the mission- the original Apollo 20 mission-was over. Then, and only then, would he even begin to consider getting her pregnant,

So…this was news. Very sobering and worrisome news, because now that she was pregnant and had unknowingly been so while taking the pill for so long.

“Commander.”

Hollanbach blinked again, finding himself still clutching the chair with a death grip as everyone stood looking at him. He let go and began to stand up freely on his own.

“Sir?”

Mayson gave him a look, one that indicated that he didn’t exactly care all that much for being ignored while he talked to someone. “I just got finished saying that we’ve already received a clean bill of health from your wife’s doctor.” He smiled again. “So relax, Commander…you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

Herndum smacked his friend on the back.

“You lucky bastard,” he said in the true Herndum fashion. “Congratulations. Make sure you name the kid after me,” he said. “Boy or girl.”

“Right,” the commander said with a mile wide smile. Relief setting in, Hollanbach allowed a little enthusiasm to seep out, grinning nearly without restraint once it became clear what was about to happen to him…and her, coming to a better understanding of Donna’s odd actions emotional swings lately. He looked back at Mayson.

“Thank you, General. Any other messages from her?”

The general shrugged. “Just that she misses you, and loves you…and that she doesn’t want you to worry about her.”

Hollanbach nodded his head. Too late for that, he though, still smiling profusely. “Understood, sir. Any chance I can get a message back to her?”

Mayson’s bottomed lip puckered out.

“Sorry, son. There’s just no time left in your schedule. That’s why I already took the liberty of sending sentiments back to her on your behalf. Assumed you wouldn’t mind.”

“Well, then,” he said. “Thank you, Sir.”

Mayson nodded. “Think nothing of it.”

From the other end of the window, Reese took his eyes off the photograph and looked over at the commander. “Yeah,” he said in a strange, somewhat faraway tone. “Congratulations, Skipper.”

Hollanbach nodded his thanks in return.

“That brings us rather smoothly to our next bit of news, Gentlemen,” Mayson said, walking over to the poster-photo where Reese stood on the other side. “I give you your landing site.”

“Gee,” Herndum muttered with a low breath. “And not a moment too soon.”

“What was that, Lieutenant?” Mayson asked.

Herndum winced at his stupidity, forgetting that while the intercom was in “vox” mode, the slightest sound would be picked up, and subsequently transmitted through the speakers to the general’s waiting ears. Damn he thought. How the hell do I get out of this one?

“The lieutenant was just commenting on the photo you brought us of the moon,” Hollanbach chimed in.

Hearing the commander’s voice, Herndum turned to give him a surprising and appreciative look, realizing that his friend just saved him six. “Weren’t you, Lieutenant?”

He grinned uneasily as he walked to the place where Reese, and Hollanbach, stood admiring the gridded format of the specified close-up of the moon’s far side. “Uh…yes. Yes, I was, Commander. Just…y’know, commenting. That’s all.”

“I see,” Mayson said, not too terribly convinced. “As you men can no doubt see, what you have here is a considerably enlarged portion of the lunar far side. It’s an old picture,” he told them. “One taken from one of the Soviet probes that orbited the moon a few years ago.”

“Russian probe?” Herndum asked. “Then how’d we-”

“Courtesy of Agent Coley, of course. And the collective resources of the CIA,” Mayson said with a sly grin.

The lieutenant nodded his head in understanding. “Oh.”

The general continues. “Anyway, because the United States doesn’t have a reliable satellite of its own, and those already up there are essentially worthless, we sent Dr. Sheldon this picture so he could determine a specific area of approach for this mission’s landing.” The general stopped for a moment, letting the three astronauts look over the picture. “So, what you’re all seeing is a detailed photo of the area around the “Cremona” crater, near the point of impact.”

“Damn,” Hollanbach muttered, inspecting the map even closer. “The terrain looks more treacherous that I thought.”

“No kidding,” Reese added in agreement, taking his finger and pointing to the three or four possible landing sites that Sheldon had marked in red. “Just look at that high collection of mountains and craters right there,” he said. “And there. And there. Damn, we’re going to be lucky to land the bug at all in all that mess.”

“Definitely,” the commander sighed. “Sure as hell ain’t going to be a walk in the park, Captain.”

Hollanbach suddenly turned to the silent Herndum, watching from behind his shoulders. “Still want to switch with me, Scotty?”

The lieutenant held up his hand in immediate protest. “No, man…that’s okay. You guys go ahead and land on the moon if you can. I’m fine where I am. Thanks, anyway.”

“Chickenshit,” Reese muttered.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing,” the captain said with a smile.

“Dr. Sheldon,” the general interrupted them. “Tried to give you enough multiple landing possibilities because he knew that the landscape you’ll be facing will be a lot harder than anything you’re accustomed to from your training. Do you men feel you can work with what he’s given you here?”

Hollanbach stood looking at the picture with the five “X’s” on it, spread out in about a fifty mile radius immediately adjacent of the Cremona crater. Most of the moonscape was indeed mountainous…with deep, darkened trenches zig- zagging in various paths all around them, many deeper that Earth’s own Grand Canyon. He was worried, there was no denying that fact. Judging from what he was looking at, there didn’t seem to be many level regions for the “UNFORGIVEN” (LEM) in which to set down safely. There was no doubt that Sheldon had done his best. Hollanbach knew, but the commander was skeptical of whether the good doctor’s best was enough. But he also knew that if he didn’t feel they could land there, top-secret emergency mission or not it would more than likely be scrubbed, leaving them all to who knew what kind of fate, seeing how they all now possessed intimate knowledge of certain things they really shouldn’t. He couldn’t shake the image of Donna and the baby dressed in black, grieving at his funeral.

Reese was silent for a few moments, taking his index finger and running it along the smooth surface of the window as everyone else watched him, drawing an invisible path to all the individual touchdown sites. Dropping his hand and sticking it in his pocket, he cocked his brown eyes over at Hollanbach and allowed a grin to overcome his features.

“I think I’ve got faith in my Skipper…Skipper.”

Hollanbach grinned, then turned to look at Mayson. “I guess it’s a go, sir,” an enthusiastic tone cleverly disguising his fears. He then turned to look back at his crew. “Looks like we’re going to the moon, fellas.”

* * *

Never mind the odd sensation he was feeling, standing there in his “EVA” suit, Tygron tubing gear underneath with a urinary collection sheath doing its obscene best to strangle the life out of his penis, Lieutenant Scott Mitchell Herndum was going to the moon…in about three hours.

He watched closely as couple of techs, Barry and Mike, according to their name tags, lowered the glass containment visor (or the ‘fish tank’ as he liked to refer to it) that would completely and effectively seal him off from the outside world until splashdown in the Atlantic eight days from now. Once the fish-tank was in place, Mike twisted it closed and Herndum immediately began to feel the coolness of the pure oxygen pump in from the suitcase-sized air-conditioning unit he carried in his gloved left hand. Barry was finishing up attending to Hollanbach, who wore a brisk smile on his face, probably still giddy with the knowledge of his impending fatherhood, as he held up his free hand with the thumbs-up sign, his voice venturing out across the unseen radio waves and into the other two men’s headsets.

“SHOW TIME!”

Mike patted the lieutenant on the back. “Okay, sir. You’re good to go.”

Herndum executed his on thumbs up. “Any chance I can grab a coffee and danish to go?” he asked with a smile.

The tech shook his head at Herndum’s comment and grinned. “Have a good trip, Sir.”

“Thanks,” the lieutenant told him, just as General Mayson walked into the room, himself full of smiles, ready for the mission to get going and get over with, bringing him yet another day closer to getting the hell off this little island and back home to the states.

“Gentlemen,” he began, stopping in the middle of the doorway and extending his arms outward to each side like he was ready to encompass them all in a massive bear hug, his entourage of a captain and a major, stood at a rigid, yet uneasy, position of parade-rest, garbed in bland green apparel, nine millimeter pistols strapped to their waiting sides. “The long wait is over,” he said.

His voice confident and strong, reminding Herndum of high school football and his coach, gathering the team together moments before kickoff to enlist their attention and give them each a piece of his heart, strengthening them with the passion to play through whatever evils would be waiting for them on the field. Granted, it may have been like comparing apples and oranges, but the lieutenant couldn’t help reminiscing the feeling of that memory, as the general continued his speech.

“Along with all the training and countless other things and time spent, preparing for this very moment…the moment where you three men,” he paused to harvest the effect over what he was about to say next. “American astronauts and our nation’s extreme finest, are about to set out on a journey that entire civilizations come and gone have only dreamt about but were never able to realize,” he said with his arms crossed sternly in front of him.

Mayson put his hands in his pockets and walked around the room, glancing in turn at Reese, then Hollanbach, and lastly Herndum, then continuing on. “And while you may not be the first among us to walk on the surface of the moon,” he stopped halfway between the two techs who were hurrying, getting their own gear together to tag along to the launch pad to help the astronauts into the tiny command module christened DESPERADO. “You may well be the first among us to answer the question as to whether or not we humans are alone in this universe,” he said as he broke into a wide smile, almost a grin of sorts, creasing his face with ripples of emotion. “And I just wanted to be the very first to wish you good luck and Godspeed on what just might become your maiden voyage into the history books.”

Having said that, Mayson snapped a picture perfect hand salute, his steely gray eyes ablaze with intensity only seen once before by Reese, recalling the day the man, then a full-bird colonel, called his squadron to arms in a fire fight, an anticipated fierce fire fight, over the war-scarred skies of Da Nang. Needless to say, it wasn’t every day that a man of Mayson’s caliber, stars of sterling and countless medals of heroism and valor aside, felt the need to forsake their egos and pay their respects to those of the lower stature and rank. Almost in unison, the three men returned the salute.

“Whatever happens after this day,” Mayson told them. “Remember that you are American astronauts and you shall not fail in any endeavor.” Dropping the salute, Mayson briskly retreated his steps back towards the door, taking the lead in front of his armed entourage and walking down the long corridor ahead, disappearing from view a few seconds later as they rounded a corner and vanished.

The astronauts stood there silently, gazing awestruck at one another, the full realization of what they were about to accomplish setting in, stirring their already restless souls into a new horizon of wonder and excitement.

Soon the countdown would begin.

No one had uttered a single word during the entire seven-and-a-half minutes it took for them to venture from the lab to the launch tower. Sitting in the back of the little van that was shutting them to the rocket, Herndum, Reese and Hollanbach could only occasionally glance at one another in between different thoughts of their own, as they bounced and shook about within dark confines as the van teetered over the old, broken road that led to their destination…the mighty SATURN 5.

Along the way, Hollanbach could hardly think of anything else but Donna, sitting at home totally unaware of what he was about to do, and the little baby growing inside her. In all the time he had known her and all the missions and experimental aircraft he’d been strapped to, he’d never felt quite like he was feeling now. A new feeling, completely without label, making him wish a million things all at once, none of them being anywhere near the launch pad where, his analytical mind was quick to point out, it ought to be.

Reese was busy mulling over the mess of a landscape he and the commander would be finding themselves hovering over in about three days. Sure, the Russian photos were old, grainy, and completely blurred in some parts, one of those parts not being all that far from one of Sheldon’s red X’s, marked crudely with a grease pen. But he was hoping…praying actually, that they’d run into a minimum of trouble up there. After all, there were four probable spots to sat down in, spread out over a good amount of area, and blurry photograph or not, Hollanbach had already found at least two more possible (okay, remotely possible) landing sites they could use in a pinch, himself, coming up with one. The only factor that could mess the whole thing up would be the fuel. With four sizable spotlights now providing additional weight (albeit, not too much, but still enough to count), neither man speculating as to how badly it would affect their descent time. That, for the moment, was Reese’s biggest worry.

And Herndum was only concerned with three things: getting up there, getting back, and getting it all over with so he could begin his journey into the realm of fame, and quite possibly the kingdom of riches, all depending on whatever Reese and the Skipper find laying around up there.

Okay…so maybe that wasn’t entirely all that the lieutenant had on his mind. There was a new communications arrays, experimented in itself, that were extremely vital to the mission. But not just that, he thought as he looked over at his two closest friends he had right now in the world, he was also worried for their safety up there on the moon.

What if something happened to them? A cold chill crept slowly along the skin covering his backbone. There would be nothing he could do to save his friends sixty miles beneath him. No rescue. No lifeline. No nothing.

And the lieutenant wasn’t sure if he had it in him to make the additional three day trek home…alone…with the memory of two dead men hat he could do nothing for, floating about in his mind like ghosts in the cabin with him. Herndum blinked rapidly a few times, feeling beads of sweat beginning to trickle along the lines of his forehead.

“Cool your jets, Lieutenant,” he scolded himself. “Not a dam thing is going to happen to anyone on this mission.” He took a deep breath and felt the purity of the oxygen begin to clear his mind, as he repeated the words, “Not a damn thing.”

The van jerked to a stop and almost immediately the back doors swung open to reveal Barry and Mike standing there, along with another tech, waiting for them outside on the darkened asphalt.

Reese was the first to step out of the van. Almost immediately, he was reminded and surprised at how much easier it was to walk in the newly restructured space suit than the other still used by NASA. And the deletion of fifty pounds made all the difference in the world as far as he was concerned.

But then, the captain realized as he stood upright, free of the van’s cramping interior he wasn’t wearing that backpack yet, either. Only one-sixth of the earth’s gravity, the weight and an additional two-hundred pounds hardly mattered.

“Right this way, sir,” said the new tech, Dave, leading Reese towards the elevator that would take them nearly all the way to the top of the tower.

The captain noticed that everything was splashed in a red light that coated all it touched in a sickly haze. No doubt they were using it to keep any un- authorized peeping toms on the ocean or up above them guessing. Red light didn’t have the wavelengths to travel far on the color spectrum, making it more difficult to illuminate an object or to see it in total darkness, without anything else to counter the light.

Unseen in his suit, Reese smiled at the military’s ingenious. If it had been NASA, he was quite sure they would’ve lit everything up in all its glory with spotlights…secret mission be damned.

It took a few minutes, until all three astronauts were crammed together inside the elevator with yet another technician, wearing a faded name tag which read Sam. With the men inside, Sam reached over and shut the grated metal doors, leaving the other techs outside with the van. Giving them a wry smile, he reached over to the right and threw the hand switch that would set the elevator in motion, climbing up on its tightly wound wire cables as the motor bolted above them, growling hungrily and snatching at it.

Herndum looked upwards and then back down, taking an excited deep breath. “Well,” he said as they rose ever upwards. “Here we go.”

“Yeah,” Reese agreed, staring down through the catwalk-like floor at the insistent darkness that swallowed the world beneath them. “Here we go.”

A second ago, everything was quiet. They were all strapped in the couch with all the possible comfort for three guys sitting atop a million tons of thrust potential almost four-hundred feet of unforgiving height.

But all that changed in the minuscule amount of time called one second, as Reese looked at Hollanbach, hand wrapped tightly around the ABORT switch as the last number on the countdown fell upon their ears, and the sleeping giant that was SATURN 5 woke up with pure vengeance, roaring to life to make its relentless ascent into the pitch-black sky of the night, letting loose the thunderous noise of a million angry gods.

All he could do was sit there and vibrate erratically along with the rest of the ship, closing his eyes in a vain attempt to escape the enveloping chaos, hoping that when he next opened them, it would all be over, and they’d be in the weightless void of space.

But for Reese, it seemed like the tighter he shut his eyes, the more frightened and violent the shaking became. Through the headphones, he could hear Hollanbach talking back and forth with Mission Control in Houston, having just taken over “Camp Paradise’s” role once they had cleared the tower. Yet, the commander’s voice was faint compared to the tiny voice inside his head telling him that he was going to die in that command module because he was going to be vibrated to death.

It had been a long time since he’d felt the force of increasing gravity pressing down on him like an unforgiving hand of God, since the initial training stages at the Cape to get into the astronaut program. It was beginning to feel like his chest was about to collapse on him. Breathing was labored and his eyes…Christ, his eyes felt like they were being pushed into his skull. All he could do was let the feeling wash over him… and not fight it.

But human instinct was proving to be a difficult opponent to ignore. The captain clenched his teeth, gripping the couch’s armrest and squeezing as hard as he could through his rubber-tipped gloves. He knew he was supposed to go limp relax the body…but the ball was altogether out of his court now; the body was the one in full control. It shouldn’t be too much longer, he thought, and they would soon be separating from the main rocket in the second stage.

A muffled explosion ripped open far behind him, and more g-force fell into him like a boulder as the Saturn’s second stage ignited, sending them higher into the Caribbean night sky as the dead booster fell away from them like a useless, burning scab, freeing the ship of its now needless weight and giving them the momentum they would need to reach the Earth’s exosphere, that last little thinly-strewn barrier of air that held the vacuum of the cosmos at bay.

The sound prompted him to open his eyes, peering into the harsh dark- ness of the command module. Only tiny bits of light dotted the foreground in front of him from the instrument panels, not nearly enough to bring any detail to what was happening in the cabin around him, just a faint glow to lend images to his imagination.

Gradually, the violence began to taper off, fading into a barely audible roar, sounding distant as if it were miles and miles away. The shaking stopped, a sign that they had breached the outer limits and had achieved low earth orbit. Then, almost in response in what he was thinking, Reese heard the second stage break away from them as the explosives cut loose, and a gentle tug as the third final stage kicked in, taking them yet higher to the orbital space of twenty-four thousand miles per hour…four hundred miles a second…that would send them into the next phrase of their mission, where they would ‘slingshot’ around the Earth to the moon…a little maneuver the boys at NASA liked to call “TLI” or trans-lunar-injection.

Raw sunlight was pouring into the cabin now as they found themselves crossing the terminator over the Pacific. Reese could see Hollanbach’s hands, now away from the defunct “ABORT” switch, busy unclamping the fish tank from his head. Neither the captain nor Herndum needed an invitation, and minutes later, they were free from the containment visor.

“Okay ladies.” The other two astronauts smiled as they watched Hollanbach float about the tiny cabin, negotiating a position slightly above them. “Here’s the plan. We make three orbits around the Earth and then we light the candle for trans-lunar injection,” he said, pausing to give Herndum a sly smile and adding mock worry to his voice. “With Scotty at the helm.”

“Ah,” Herndum said in a horribly butchered Scottish accent. “I’m pretty shoor I ken do it, Cap’n.”

They all laughed.

“In the meantime might I suggest you enjoy the view,” said Hollanbach, motioning towards their only window as the others bounded upwards in their weightless environment to share the vision. “Because where we’re going,” a slight touch of seriousness laced his words. “There’s only darkness and shadows waiting.”

And for the next ten…maybe twenty minutes…the three men gazed at what they all hoped would not soon become their final glance of the bright green, blue and white marble living in the vacuum beneath them. That delicate little sphere of perchance and possibility hanging in the black that each of them called home.

Technorati Tags: moon,moon mission,apollo 17,apollo 18,moon landing,fictional moon mission,fictional moon landing,black ops,the answer,don edwards,novel,science fiction,scifi,1973

CHAPTER FIVE?—THE ISLAND

It was no secret that Jonathan Hollanbach wanted nothing more than for the next year or so to fly by so he would be the one, along with his two crewmates, sealed within the pressurized module that was known as the “DESPERADO”, sailing effortlessly through the ebony sea of space to reach his lifelong destination of the moon.

Only now it had a name, “The Sea of Rains,” high up in the northern hemisphere, a landing site a few miles east of the massive “Archimedes” crater, one of the few craters that stood out boldly enough where you could actually see it on Earth unaided only by a telescope.

In fact, he could see it now, laying lazily on the white plastic lawn chair in the backyard of his rented house twenty-six and a half miles from the Cape. He knew he would have to get up soon to avoid the growing chill of the late-evening atmosphere, but all this astronaut and mission commander of the far-off Apollo 20 moon landing wanted to do right now was lay back as comfortably as possible, and enjoy the view.

And then came the unmistaken feeling of delicate fingers, soothing warm to to the touch, playfully creeping through the dark blond strands of his rigid flat-top, well-manicured fingernails gently scratching at his scalp.

“Mmmmm.”

He closed his stark blue eyes and stretched, a smile of contentment slowly spreading across his face as he did so. Reaching up, he grabbed at the wrists of the brazenly beautiful woman who knelt on the soft grass behind him, giving him a pleasant rub down. Opening his eyes, he looked up at her upside down face, puckering his lips to kiss hers, and then feeling a bit dejected when she got up and began to walk away.

“Dinner’s ready,” she mumbled.

“Hey,” the commander suddenly yelped, rolling onto his side and launching himself from the comfort of the lawn chair. “What was that?”

She stopped walking, and turned to look at him her own intense and bewildered blue eyes, her soft lips twisted into a teasing seductive smile as astray breeze caught hold of her long semi-curly black locks. “What was what?” she asked him back.

Hollanbach began to walk towards her. “You know what I’m talking about, little lady,” he said as his voice rippled with agitation. “Don’t play dumb with me.”

Her innocent smile grew wider where her teeth peeked out from the corner of her slightly parted lips, a hand parking itself suggestively on her hip.

“Oh,” she said in mock ignorance. “Did you want to tell me something?”

“No,” he said as he grabbed her roughly, wrapping her svelte figure in his strong and unyielding arms. “I wanted to kiss you.” But he was blocked by the sudden appearance of a finger, which pressed against his lips and pushed back.

“Sorry, sailor boy. But you’re not smooching your way out of eating my cooking this time. I’ve been working on that meatloaf all day,” she said as she pinched his lips together. I don’t care if I have to shove it down your throat with my bare hands…you’re eating it.”

“Mo’kay,” he said through the side of his mouth.“M’you min.”

She let go, quickly jumping up and kissing him. “I used your mother’s recipe, so you should like it, right?” she asked with uncensored uncertainty.

“If you made it, Donnie,” he said, calling her by her nickname he’d given her. “Then I’ll like it.”

Donna Hollanbach flashed her husband a tart smile. “Why do you lie? You know you can’t stand my cooking, Jonny.”

He put his arm around her as they walked into the house. “I’m not lying,” he said defending himself. “I’m giving myself hope,” he said as he quickly ran ahead of her and darted around the counter. “I’m hoping you’ll stop trying to kill me with your cooking,” he hollered, bursting into laughter.

She stopped and glanced at him, her hand once again on her hip, and index finger tapping angrily against the fabric of her slacks, lips pursed into look of meanness. “I wonder how lonely it gets on the couch at night?”

“Ah, c’mon, baby, I was only kiddin’ around now. Y’know that!”

Donna slipped on a pair of oven mitts as she prepared to open the oven and retrieve her meatloaf. “And to think I went out and paid good money for that hot little outfit…”she sighed. “Ah, well.”

Hollanbach watched as she bent over, grabbed their dinner and placed it carefully on the counter, a look of mystery clouding his face. “What outfit?” he wanted to know.

She flashed him a sinister smile, turned around to close the oven door, and then met his confused gaze with icy stabs from her eyes. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” she taunted him.

He was about to tell how much he really loved to know when the telephone on the wall next to him gave a shrill ring. Almost immediately, he reached over and snatched it off the hook.

“Hello?” he answered, still gazing at his wife, who now shared his look of bewilderment. “Yes, sir,” he said, his voice changing into the authoritative military bass she rarely heard him speak in. “I’m on my way.” He hung up the phone and looked at her.

“What?!” she said excitedly. “What’s going on?”

“That was Deke Slayton,” he told her with a practiced calm. “He wants me and the rest of the crew for a meeting.”

“When?”

Hollanbach grimaced as he looked at his watch. “Right now. I’ve got to pick up Reese and Scotty and get to his office ASAP.”

“What about? Is everything alright?” she barraged him with questions.

“I don’t know, Hon,” he said, walking over to her and putting his hands reassuringly on her shoulders. “But I’m quite sure everything is A-OK.” He kissed her on the forehead. “I’ll be back. Love you.”

But before he could walk away she grabbed him by the face and clamped her lips onto his, kissing him deeply into a temporary state of paralysis. Then, reaching over and plucking a chunk of meatloaf from the loaf, she pushed it into his still opened mouth and watched as he chewed it, blinking a few times back to alertness and smiling.

“Damn,” he said in surprise. “That’s pretty good.”

A grin overcame her as she wrapped her arms around her husband of two years. “Hurry home,” she told him. “And I’ll show you that outfit I was telling you about.”

Hollanbach reached over to the warm meat and tore off another chunk, munching on it as he grabbed his jacket and headed for the door. “I’ll be back before you know it,” he said as the door closed behind him.

You better be, she thought silently to herself, watching as the headlights pulled out of the driveway and into visibility through the living room window. You better be.

* * *

The meeting wasn’t held in Deke Slayton’s office. In fact, the man who was the astronauts chief executive officer of sorts was nowhere near the long-abandoned hangar as the two MP’s and a tall, black-clad CIA spook escorted Hollanbach, Reese, and Scotty Herndum once they had initially reached their boss’s office, where they were approached by their three new “friends”.

Apparently, nobody knew what the emergency meeting was about. Hollanbach had hear stories of the secret talks Slayton had with Frank Burman, the fly boss of Apollo 8, to send him on a trip to the moon, without a landing, in order to beat the Soviets in December of 68’. But this was 1973, Hollanbach reasoned, and they’d already landed on the moon half-a-dozen times since Armstrong’s arrival in ’69. What in the hell could they want with him and his crew, when it’s approximately a little more than a year away from launch and a ‘routine’ mission to the moon in the first place. The commander wasn’t sure and half afraid to find out.

The hangar was basically empty. Well-lit and uninviting as every step they made echoed about as the sound waves bounced around recklessly from one side to the other, sounding like a miniature mechanical thunder that was hard to describe.

Off in the distance were three metal fold –up chair and a card table that had a briefcase resting on top of it. Standing there with arms crossed wearing a black jacket and suit pants was a rather attractive-looking brunette, who wore a bright red lipstick that could be seen for mile. Hollanbach thought. But damned if she wasn’t cute.

As they walked on, Hollanbach heard Reese mumble something as an apparent recognition flashed onto his face when he saw her, his brown eyes jumping over to the commander with an almost apologetic look, perplexing him even more. Did this have something to do with Reese? Hollanbach sighed heavily. What did the Air Force do now?

“Gentlemen,” the brunette greeted them once they were close enough. “Thanks so much for dropping by. I apologize for whatever inconveniences this meeting may have caused you, but I assure you that there was no way around it.”

“Agent Coley. What’s going on here?” Reese addressed her, causing Hollanbach to stop suddenly and look at him then at Herndum, who shrugged his shoulders indicating that he was just as lost as Hollanbach was.

Coley smiled. “Captain Reese, if you and your crew would please have a seat, I’ll be more than happy to explain my intensions to you.”

Hollanbach walked over to the table, sticking his hand out as he gave Reese a semi-hateful glance. “Agent Coley,” he began. “I’m—”

“Commander Jonathan James Hollanbach, mission commander. I know,” she smiled pleasantly at him, as she reached into her pocket and produced identification of her own. “My name is Mary Ellen Coley,” she informed him as he looked at her badge. “I’m the agent-in-charge of your new mission.”

Hollanbach joined his comrades. “New mission?”

She walked around the table and crossed her arms in front of her, looking down at the men. “Gentlemen, let me ask you just one question,” she stated. “How would you like to go to the moon?” she asked them.

And just as Hollanbach was about to remind her that they were a little over a year away from doing just that, she gave a knowing grin that almost chilled the commander to the bone.

“How would you like to go to the moon…next month?”

Reese gulped, and the other men’s eyes widened in surprise. “Jesus…what did Sheldon see up there?”

“You can tell me later, Captain Reese,” Coley told him, unfolding her arms to prop herself up against the table. “Because you’ll be up there answering that question for everyone else,” she dug out a cigarette and immediately lit it.

“Sheldon?” Hollanbach inquired, looking over at Reese. “What’s going on here?” His tone was irate, having felt as though he’d just come in on the closing act of a play, having no idea what it had been about. “What the hell’s going on here, Andy? Where’s Deke?”

Coley summoned up an understanding smile. “I’m afraid Mr. Slayton won’t be joining us, Commander Hollanbach. This extends far beyond his current need-to-know. This is an intelligence operation, not a NASA operation.”

Hollanbach angrily stood up. “No disrespect intended here, Miss, excuse me, Agent Coley, but I was told that we were needed for an emergency meeting in Deke Slayton’s office, not in the middle of a…” he looked around. “A deserted hangar by some lady claiming to be some agent in charge of some secret mission. I believe we’re entitled to some answers,” he said harshly. “And now!”

The seductive agent took a drag from her cigarette, looking at Hollanbach through the waiting smoke. “At ease, Commander. I have your answers…and more. Now please…sit back down and I’ll be happy to begin.”

Complying, the commander took his seat and looked uncomfortably at Reese. “What the hell is going on hell, Andy? You know anything about any of this?”

Before Reese could reply, Coley began to speak.

“Captain Reese is not the person who called this little gathering of ours, Commander. I did. So I would appreciate any questions or comments you may have been directed to me.”

“Okay, then,” the upset commander began. “What the hell’s going on here?”

Her green eyes twinkled as she took another puff from her cigarette. “A secret mission,” she told him pointing upward. “To the moon. And you three brave men have been selected.”

Herndum didn’t understand. “Selected for what exactly?”

“To participate. To go. To launch your merry selves up, up and away in a rocket. Gentlemen, I know this is all probably goes against your training and logic, but you have to understand something here. We’re dealing with an event unlike anything we’ve ever experienced.” She paused for a brief moment to take a drag off the cigarette. “A few days ago one of our astronomers, Dr. Harry Sheldon, took some amazing photographs of what appeared to be lights, apparently crashing on the far side of the moon.”

“Meteorites,” the CM pilot quickly resolved.

Reese bit his tongue.

“Not quite,” Coley informed him. “Dr. Sheldon initially observed these same lights heading away from the moon, before an apparent…explosion…which caused the lights to slowly shift back towards the moon, steadily slowing down as they neared the lunar horizon, subsequently disappearing from view.”

Hollanbach looked up intrigued. “Then how do you know it crashed?”

“We don’t,” she told him. “But we have sequestered reports from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory that a rather significant moonquake was recorded after Sheldon lost sight of the anomaly.”

The commander looked over at his crewmate, who he noticed remained steadfastly quiet throughout the conversation. “And where do you figure into this?” he asked him.

“Captain Reese was with the Sheldons when the sightings originated. He was also the individual who contacted us with the information via official channels in the Air Force,” she told him.

Hollanbach remained calm, still staring at Reese with a look of disappointment in his eyes. “I see,” he said, shifting his gaze to Coley. “So explain to me why my crew, and not the boys on 18?”

“Publicity,” she said, blowing smoke into the cool air. “Publicity has surrounded the men of the Apollo program since day one. Well, the primary crews, anyway. But it would seem very little attention is given to the secondary launch crews of the program, which is what makes you all so perfect for this.” She finished her smoke and flung it down onto the floor, a tiny spark emerged from its impact. Hollanbach and the others watched as she stomped the life out of it with the toe of her high-heeled shoe.

“With a little more than a year in front the Apollo 20 launch, it’s safe to say that no one is really paying any attention to a back-up crew at this point in the game,” she said smiling at them. “Among other things.”

“Other things?” asked Herndum with a smile.

“Yes, Lieutenant Herndum. As in you are already familiar with about 80% of the training needed for the mission at hand, saving us on some time and making it quite feasible to exact a window for the start of this mission.”

“OK,” Herndum said. “I guess I can buy that. So, what now?”

She lifted herself onto the table, sitting on it, her pant-clad legs dangling precariously over the wooded edge. “For now, you remain here at the Cape,” she said. “Undergoing rudimentary training on landing the lunar module in darkness. And then-”

“Whoa!” Reese said anxiously. “Darkness?”

The secret agent smiled devilishly. “How else do you propose to land on the moon’s far side? That’s where your target is. That’s where you land.”

“It’s not that easy,” Hollanbach took over. “The moon’s far side is a lot rougher than the side we see all the time. And the LEM isn’t equipped with any lights or anything like that to help guide us down; we fly by radar and eyesight alone. What you’re talking about is a suicide mission, lady.”

“Then we install strong spotlights on the LEM.”

“Still,” Reese countered once again. “There’s the weight issue.”

“Weight issue?” she inquired.

“Yeah. The engineers have designed everything to work in unison according to exact weight. Any deviation and…”

“Not to worry,” she said reassuringly. “It will be taken care of.”

Hollanbach wasn’t convinced.

“How?”

“Even as we speak, Commander, plans are being made to extract your LEM and the first stage of your Saturn rocket from this complex where they will meet up with another Saturn vehicle far from here, where the launch is scheduled to take place.”

“I see.”

“With your cooperation, gentlemen, this entire operation will go off without a hitch, but we are strictly dependent on secrecy. I can’t stress it enough.” She stood up from her makeshift seat and began walking about. “If the Soviets or even the American public find out about this, well…”she drifted off, letting the men envision it for themselves. “Let’s just say it wouldn’t be pretty.”

Herndum spoke up. “Any idea what this thing is we’re risking our lives to get a gander at?”

“None,” she stated. “So we’re relying on your observations when you get there.”

Hollanbach shrugged his shoulders. “Scotty and Reese,” he informed her “Well, they aren’t married. But I am. What do you expect me to tell my wife?”

“You’ve all been recalled to ultra-secret or black status,” Coley said. “Make something up. Be vague. But you can’t tell her or anyone about this mission. Global security rides on your silence.”

“Did you say…global security?”

“Yes I did, Lieutenant.”

“This is pretty deep.”

“Deeper than deep,” Coley told him. “Are you men on board or not?”

Reese was the first to answer.

“It almost goes without saying,” he said standing up.“I’m in.”

She looked at Herndum, who also stood up.

“Lieutenant?”

“In,” he said. “A hundred and ten percent in,” he then said.

“Commander?”

“Of course,” he said quickly. “But I’m still uneasy about all this, you understand.”

Coley nodded in understanding, retrieving her briefcase from the table as Hollanbach stood up to join his crew. “You will all be briefed by me tomorrow morning,” she told them. “You all need to get some sleep and think about what I’ve just revealed to you tonight. Starting tomorrow, you will retain your ranks but no longer be NASA astronauts,” she paused, letting it sink in. “You will be CIA field operatives on a secret mission to the moon.”

Herndum grinned.

“Sounds cool.”

Coley smiled. “You gentlemen are dismissed.”

As the three of them turned to begin they trek out of the hangar, Herndum had a thought and turned around. “Agent Coley,” he said to her.

“What would’ve happened if one of us said no?”

Coley drew back her suit jacket and watched the man’s eyes widen, as he noticed the nine millimeter clipped to her side. “You really wouldn’t want to know,” she told him, letting the jacket fallback over her hip, shielding her weapon from view.

“Just let it go at that, hmmm?”

* * *

An old Hank Williams song echoed inside his head as he walked along the edge of the bleached white tarmac of the runway, kicking a rock that stubbornly continued to stay in his path.

It had been more than two weeks since the bombshell of a secret mission to the moon was dropped on them… a bombshell that had him and his crewmates, Hollanbach and Herndum, going along for the mysterious ride. In about six hours the three men formerly of “Apollo 20”, would board a small jet plane bound for the relatively unknown Bahamian Island, owned and operated exclusively by the United States government, unlike the other two hundred or so tiny islands dotting the blue waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Less than a week away they would await the actual launch of their mighty moon rocket, virtually undetected by the rest of the world.

Reese rounded the corner of the gate and began walking towards the jeep that was waiting for him.

“Best landing I’ve seen yet, Captain,” Hollanbach hollered at him as a thunderous C-130 transport plane passed overhead. “We just might make it to the moon after all.”

The youngest of the three American astronauts grinned as he hopped into the open passenger seat, reaching for the plastic canteen of water sitting next to him. “Too bad I’m not actually going to land the damn thing,” he said, taking a sip of the icy liquid. “I’m actually getting pretty good at it.”

Herndum was busy watching he technicians climb all around the lunar jet simulator where Reese had just spent the past few minutes, recreating the descent procedures to the lunar surface. The whole area was now lit up with jeep head- lights and lanterns, the two spotlights recently manned to the simulator’s bottom portion still on as Hollanbach threw their vehicle into gear, rolling along the asphalt with a series of grunts.

“So what’s it like landing that thing in the dark?” he began to ask Reese, as he turned around to face front.

A sigh escaped the captain’s lips. “Not as terrifying as it will be on the jagged landscape of the moon’s far side,” he said as he turned to Hollanbach. “Still no word on our landing site yet?”

The commander eased off the accelerator as they rounded a corner. “The only definite thing is that we’re parking the LEM somewhere near the Cremona crater,” he told his LEM pilot. “But there is still no confirmed landing site yet, no.”

“Doesn’t sound too good, Skipper.” They hit a small pothole in the road, jarring them a bit. “We’re less than a week away from launch and we’re leaving for the island tonight,” he reminded Hollanbach. “And all our simulated landings have been on hilly beaches in the middle of the damn day, and Sea of Rains without sunlight, or at least it will be by the time we get our happy asses up there. I don’t like it,” he said with resonating conviction. “I don’t like it at all. A site should’ve been picked by now.”

“Simmer down, Andy,” Hollanbach tried to console the man. “I know for a fact that they’ve got a bunch of guys sitting around in a room somewhere worrying about the same thing. If they can’t find a solution before we go, I’ll just have to land it by eye when we vector into low gate.”

“I don’t know Jonnie,” Herndum countered from the back seat with a sullen shrug. “Doesn’t sound too safe; too many things could go wrong. You’ve only got so much fuel to burn when landing that bug. After that it’s so long, moon landing, time to abort.”

The commander grunted offensively. “What the hell, guys? Everybody lose faith in the mission commander all the sudden?”

“No,” Reese said apologetically, joined by a subdued Herndum. “It’s not that at all, Skipper. It’s just that we’re all scared to death about this cloak-and-dagger mission in the first place. We’re all full of questions and getting no answers.” He sighed in frustration. “I have all the faith in the world in you, Commander,” he said. “Just not the people in charge of putting us up there.”

* * *

Two weeks later. Black Isle.

The mission commander was the first among them to emerge from the plane, a small streamlined dual engine jet that Hollanbach defined as a new Air Force experimental craft, surprising him with a pleasantly smooth ride, minimal turbulence, and the fact that, besides to glossy black fuselage finish, it bore no other identifiable marks except for the “USAF” emblem painted with a subdued gray on the top of the starboard side wing. But as the commanded descended down the steps leading off the jet, it was the stupefying beauty of the sun just beginning to set in the prismatic Caribbean sky that screamed out for his attention, not the unnamed craft that brought him there.

As a naval aviator, he had seen hundreds of islands and other masses from the air, usually at the breaking speed of supersonic travel, twisting and turning his F-100 like an airborne snake, trying his damnedness not to get shot down by various opposing forces who didn’t want him and his squadron in their backyard.

So it was safe to say that Hollanbach never truly was able to appreciate the divine architecture of such work, until he glanced out the window to take in Black Isle before they landed.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen such…there was really no words to accurately describe it. Beauty? Maybe if he were still a kid in Keysville, Virginia and hadn’t already experienced so much of the world first- hand, he’d say it was beautiful. But he’d seen so much since then, discovering that his little blue-and-green planet was more than a “beautiful” or “astonishing”, maybe even beyond “miraculous”.

Black Isle was indeed the most strategic location for a secret military base of any kind, seemingly constructed by “God” so that it couldn’t fit any other purpose but that.

Nearly surrounded on all sides by long-sleeping volcanoes and rolling ranges, a lush green plain deep within the island’s interior served as the sprawling base’s main location. Two sparkling rivers of clear blue ran zigzagging in a parallel dance, carving trails along opposite sides of the plain. A suitable frame job for “Camp Paradise,” as Black Isle was also known.

From the redesigned versions of air attack craft like F-104 Starfighter and the Army’s Cobra helicopter to the blood-re light atop the high-rise launch tower that held the mighty “Saturn 5” rocket clamped down to the earth, the base offered up the best and most modern of everything America’s military and technological arsenal had in stock. Black Isle was the proving ground for it all. And in eight days Hollanbach realized, squinting his hardened Navy blue- eyes at the hazy outline of the launch complex a few miles in the distance, this would be the proving ground of perhaps the greatest mission of all.

A cooling breeze rustled through his cropped blonde locks as he watched the door of the black Lincoln Continental open, and a man adorned in silver and blue stepped out, donning his cover embroidered with command olive branches, beginning to walk toward them on the runway quickly joined by a few other men departing from a jeep, who wasted no time following in the general’s shadows Glancing behind him, Hollanbach discovered the remaining two components of his crew loaded down with their own gear, stepping out from the confines of the plane and into the crisp tropic air of the afternoon. The look on Reese’s face caught his eye, an expression of surprise that slowly gave way to recognition.

“Sir?!” came his sudden cry of bewilderment. “What are…what are you doing here?”

As they descended the stairs to the tarmac, the tight-jawed general gave a tense, yet relaxing smile, extending his hand to greet Hollanbach, then Reese and Herndum in turn. “I’m here because a female intelligence agent told me to be here. I believe you all know her as Agent Coley of the CIA?”

Reese nodded. “Fellas,” he said looking at Hollanbach and Herndum. “This is General Mayson, my old squadron commander and mentor from ‘Nam. General, Sir,” the captain said setting up introductions to his crewmates. “Lieutenant Scotty Herndum, U.S. Navy,” he watched as Herndum dropped his duffel to grip the general’s waiting hand, giving a quick few shakes before turning attention to the mission commander. “And this,” Reese began with a smile. “This is Commander Jon Hollanbach, he’s Navy, too.”

“And damn proud of it,” he said to Reese, shaking Mayson’s big hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you General, sir.”

Mayson was beaming, his steely-gray eyes alive with light, secretly over- whelmed by the presence of American astronauts. Something he might have been, he thought painfully, if the arthritis hadn’t set up shop in his middle-aged ailing body.

“The pleasure is all mine, Commander,” he said with awe. “I am a big, big fan of the astronaut corps. But,” he began clearly switching into high-octane general mode that demanded the attention of all around him. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to cut short the usual pleasantries and jump right in with the business at hand. Sergeant,” he barked to a younger man, a gangly boy, his cover perched on his black hair at a slight angle. Mayson motioned towards the astronauts’ collection of bags and backpacks weighing already tired muscles down. “Take the gentlemen’s gear and stow it in Charlie bunker.”

As the enlisted man moved forward, Mayson turned back to the astronauts as he began retracing his steps to the car.

“In the meantime, all of you can come with me. We have a great deal to talk about.”

* * *

The car ride was quiet, mind-numbingly quiet.

Reese sat a bit uncomfortable in the window seat, looking out from behind the tinted glass at what was now his tiny little world. All of them remained silent for the short trek to Mayson’s office. Not that they had been told to, but Mayson’s presence was such that if he were not the ultimate instigator of conversation, a passive, uneasy calm would linger in the air like a fog, blanketing everyone’s thought about whatever they have been discussing.

Besides, Reese reasoned that this way was best. Neither he nor his comrades were sure of the level of security in place on the island. Sure, the mission had been labeled top secret, launching from an island very few people on the planet even knew existed, but that never stopped…

WHOA.

Is brown eyes widened at the glimpse of the Saturn 5, still a mile or so from them, looming up on its metal pedestal against the background of the Caribbean sky, the sun having been forced over the side to make room for Saturn’s mighty presence.

Before he knew it, the captain found himself pressed up against the window like a boy catching sight of his first circus, eagerness swallowing him whole. He turned suddenly, as the palm trees that lined the road temporarily obstructed his view, nudging Herndum in the ribs with his elbow, prompting a sharp reaction from his friend. Using his stubble covered chin, Reese pointed out the window as the trees began to clear again.

“Impressive, isn’t it?” he whispered with a smile, watching as his groggy friend immediately yawned, then whispered a curse at Reese for waking him.

Reaching over to his slightly throbbing rib, Scott Herndum forced his drowsy eyes open, leaning over from his sandwiched position between Reese and Hollanbach to see what could possibly be so exciting that he had to get elbowed in the side.

Clearing the last of the palm trees gave the lieutenant a grand view of the mighty rocket ship. His mouth hung open, as it often did when desirable objects, fleshy or otherwise, got locked into his sight.

“Holy shit,” he muttered instinctively. “Wouldja look at that.”

He reached blindly behind him to get Hollanbach’s attention, but there was no need for he was already staring in awe at his rising ship from across the sun- drenched plain, his blue eyes slightly smaller than his crew mates as he took it all in, nothing less than amazed.

Mayson as well was admiring the view, having been there since nearly the beginning, remembering the arrival of the powerful five engine rocket booster and lunar module shipped to them from the Cape and all those precise, but rushed days of around-the-clock work that allowed them to transform their earth- orbiting Apollo spacecraft perched delicately high atop the former 1B booster, into a furl-hungry monster, capable of eating away the quarter million mile barrier to send three men back to the moon in hopes of solving a mystery.

Odd, the general thought as the major twisted the steering wheel of the Lincoln to drive onto the main road of the base. It is odd how things some- times tend to work out.

He was with Reese a less than a month ago, engaged in a riveting conversation about mysterious lights and the far side of the moon. Now here he was again, one of the many that was about to send him on his way, eight days and counting, to see exactly what might be waiting up there, in the shadow of the moon’s unseen hemisphere.

The Lincoln pulled into the general’s designated parking space and came to a silent halt. Mayson turned around as the major slid out of the driver’s seat, closing the door with a muffled bang behind him.

“Sorry about the detour,” he apologized. “I’m well aware that you men are dead-tired and eager as hell to roll into your bunks, but I felt we needed to get a few things out of the way first,” he said as he opened the car door. “That way we can all start off on the same page together,” he said as he shifted around to get up and out of the car. “If you three gentlemen will follow me, then we can get this thing under- way,” he said.

A second later he was up, the door shutting tightly behind him. Herndum glanced over at Reese as Hollanbach quickly exited the car.

“Hey, man,” he said in a hushed whisper. “I can’t get a handle on this guy,” he said referring to the general. “You know him…what’s he like?”

Reese shrugged.

“Like any other general I guess. Pretty fair guy. Why do you ask?”

An evil grin passed over his round face.

“Think he’d mind if, y’know, when we get back, if I hit on Coley, maybe take her out when all this is over?”

The captain smiled. “I think he might have a bit of an objection to that, Scotty. She is his girlfriend, y’know. I told you that.”

“Yeah,” he said as they slid out of the car. “But she’s hot, and I’m telling ya, the way she was lookin’ at me that time at the briefing,” he rolled his eyes and grinned wider. “She digs me, man!”

Reese nodded. “Keep dreaming.”

Herndum scoffed.

“Whatever, man…chicks dig me. You just don’t know.”

The general was rummaging around in the miniature refrigerator stuck in the crowed corner near his big oak desk. There was also an old fan churning forth a bit of the stale office air that lingered about like a rotting soup, all thanks to the window that had been painted forever shut, likely by some idiot private years ago when the place was first built.

Mayson looked up from his search as Herndum shut the door.

“Get you boys anything?” he asked, his hospitality unnecessarily surging forth. “I’ve got water and I’ve got…” he dug a bit further back his head briefly disappearing from view. He sighed. “Water.”

The men politely declined. Mayson shrugged and closed the refrigerator door, taking his cover off and tossing it down onto the desk.

“Suit yourself then,” he said as he opened a desk drawer and pulled out a bottle of rum and a shot glass. “God only knows how long that water’s been sittin’ in there anyways,” he said as he opened the rum and poured a bit into the glass then lifted the bottle to his lips for a quick swig, making a sour face as he did so. “Ugh!” came the exclamation. “Nasty!” He tightened the top on the bottle and chucked it back into the drawer.

“Okay then…back to business. Consider this your official welcome to Camp Paradise. As you already know, I’m General Mayson, temporarily assigned here as base commander for the duration of this mission,” he said as he sat down in the big leather seat and leaned up onto the desktop. “This is a black operations facility, as in beyond top secret and into the realm of the never existing. The civilians you see here are the only people you will refer to by name. They wear little nametags on their uniforms above the breast pocket, going by given names only. Military personnel are referred to only by rank, as you will be. Which reminds me…none of you have I.D. on you…any military badge or dog tags, correct?”

Hollanbach answered for them. “Yes, sir. We were told by Agent Coley before we departed to leave all identification items behind.”

“Excellent,” Mayson responded, quite pleased. “You’ll find that even your spacesuits are nameless, tagged by your respectable ranks only. Any questions so far?”

There were none.

“Good,” he said, continuing. “When you get to your barracks you’ll find new jumpsuits there, each tailored to your exact measurements. These will be your uniforms until the day you launch. That NASA garbage you’re all so used to by now?” he said as he paused. “Forget it; you’re on my playground, gentlemen. Play by the rules.” The general gave them all a minute to let them soak in the new information and process it.

“You three men,” he began. “Are the most important three men in the world. And believe me when I tell you that is no exaggeration. These next eight days, right up until the minute of ignition, you will eat, breathe, sweat, and shit training. Unlike the other Apollo missions, this will be a one-shot deal. Nobody else knows about this mission except for you, me and the key personnel in D.C. and Houston, so we will train you and train you until it’s coming out of your ears. We got new spacesuits for you to try out, and a flying bedstead just so you fellas wouldn’t get bored over here.”

Mayson coughed a few times, sitting back in his chair.

“I don’t need to tell you that the details of the mission are to be kept among ourselves. We’ve gone to great pain to isolate information regarding certain aspects of the launch to those responsible for making it happen. For example, the rocket crew only knows they’re finishing up the re-assembly of the rocket, the launch crews at Houston and here only concern themselves with the actual launch. Nobody knows the ultimate results of what they’re doing, and we’d really like to keep it that way. If you feel the need to strike up conversation with the “natives”, I can’t stop you. But exercise extreme caution with every word you utter, every phrase you say. Understood?”

Again the mission commander answered for them all. “Yes, sir.”

The general sat there a minute before nodding his graying head of black hair.

“Any problems you experience here will be taken care of immediately, from technical recalibrations to toilet paper re-issue,” he said as he stood up and walked over to the door, opening it with a rough twist and a pull, bellowing at the major still waiting patiently down the hall, then Mayson refaced his audience. “That’s all. The major will drive you to your barracks upon my dismissal. I suggest you use the time wisely and get all the sleep you can. Now,” he sighed, tired. “Any questions?”

Silence.

“Then you’re dismissed. One other thing though,” he said quickly. “You’ll be eating chow in the officers mess with the other brass.” Then the general gave a quick smile. “I guess there are some things that don’t change.”

All three men stood up and headed for the door. Hollanbach stopped and shook the general’s hand.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Think nothing of it, Commander. We’re all just doing our job here so that you can do yours,” he said as he released his grip as Hollanbach and Herndum walked on, eyeing Reese as he approached his exit. “Captain,” he said calmly.

“Sir,” came the response.

“Good luck,” Mayson said as he dropped his hand and Reese smiled.

“Thank you, Sir.”

The captain stepped out of the office and into the empty hallway, joining his awaiting companions as they headed towards the big double oak doors leading to the outside, vanishing from the general’s sight as they rounded the corner to enter into the late afternoon of Camp Paradise.

“You have got to be kidding me.”

Lieutenant Herndum stood looking down rather dejectedly at the flat four-inch thick mattress that was supposed to be his bed for the next week. Standard military sheets of crisp white lined, a lumpy pillow, and an uninviting green blanket stenciled with the letters “U.S.” in black were folded in grand military tradition, and sat next to the jumpsuits and new boots all placed geometrically sound on the bare-striped mattress. Herndum looked at Reese.

“Jesus Christ! I’m in boot camp again!”

“Settle down, Lieutenant,” came Hollanbach’s voice from the other side of the open floor building. “It’s not that bad. In fact,” he added. “It’s exactly what we need.”

“Maybe for you, Skipper…but I prefer the rich comforts of my home on the beach,” he said as he unclasped his tightly packed duffel and began emptying its contents onto the bed. “I never thought I’d have to slum it outta my duffel bag again.”

“Want some cheese to go with that whine?” Reese needled him from a few bunks over, himself unpacking as well. “I thought I was going to the moon with a couple of big, tough Navy guys, not a big ole crybaby.”

Hollanbach unexpectedly burst into laughter, annoying the lieutenant even further.

“Screw you, Reese,” Herndum muttered with a growl. “Screw the both of you. We’ll see who the big crybaby is when I leave your sorry asses on the moon!”

The commander had already dug out his shower gear, and stood shirtless by his bunk listening as his two companions argue as they unpacked, when it hit him.

“Reese,” he said the captain’s name in a rather quiet and relaxed tone, walking over to the other side of the barracks where the young astronaut stood, shirtless as well, sorting his gear neatly into a nearby wall locker. Herndum had fallen face down onto his bunk, exhausted, remnants of laughter still trickling from a joke Reese had just told a second before.

The captain stepped out from behind the open door of the wall locker, looking at Hollanbach as he approached.

“Yeah, Skipper,” he responded. “What’s up?”

But the mission commander did not answer immediately, instead taking a seat on one of the other mattresses nearby on a single-tiered bunk, the springs groaning as his weight pressed down on it. Herndum’s eyes popped open, the sudden silence that filled the air proving to be a little too much for him, even in his depleted state. He watched as Hollanbach took his blue eyes and stared intently at the wondering Reese.

“Don’t you think it’s about time you told me what happened?” he asked straightforwardly. “I’m a patient man, but I can’t take it any longer. We’re just a week away from beginning this thing and you haven’t said one word to us about your obvious pre-involvement in it all.” Hollanbach sat back a little further on the bed, leaning his back up against the wall. “You’ve been silent long enough, compadre,” he said as a slim smile grew into place. “Spill your guts.”

Reese shut the open wall locker and leaned against the cool metal of the door, relishing the feeling it had against his hot skin. Tilting his head as far back as he could, the captain closed his tired brown eyes and let go of a heavy sigh.

“What are you talking about? We’ve been briefed and rebriefed a hundred times on all this by now,” he said as he lowered his head to meet the commander’s insistent gaze. “You already know how I fit into all of this. There’s nothing else to tell.”

“You sure? Seems a little odd to me the way everything pans out, and connects together, concerning you.”

The captain was getting a bit agitated. A combination of Hollanbach’s questioning and the tiredness that was beginning to rapidly set in, were shaping the captain’s growing irritable attitude. And he didn’t really understand where Hollanbach was going with his queries.

“Look, Commander,” he started off angrily, and then reigned in his aggressive tone. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

Hollanbach was quick to respond. “I want to know what they aren’t telling us, Reese.”

The captain shook his head, beginning to chuckle, as he finally understood.“Okay,” he said, slowly nodding with understanding. “It all started when I took a wrong turn on a mountain road near the base in Colorado…”

Hollanbach listened with captured interest as the captain described the details of his old “Aston Martin” running quite surprisingly out of gas hi endless search for a way out of the ascending rocky path of a road, leading to his encounter with the Sheldon’s and soon after, the unbelievably discovery of the lights in the sky that spawned a tremendous quake on the moon’s far side.

As Reese talked on, the commander could pick up on the young captain’s obvious attraction he had towards the astronomer’s daughter, a detail that he was trying to hide, but Hollanbach was no fool. He could see those brown eyes light up with each mention of the girl’s name…Angelica. The exact same way he felt whenever he reminisced about Donna.

Donna.

He wondered what she was doing right then, nearly three since their argument (okay, fight) that led to her sudden departure to her parent’s brown- stone in the suburbs of the city, leaving without so much as a good-bye.

True. He tried to call her, what seemed like a million times, during their additional two weeks on the Cape, and never a single response. It would have been enough to make him break ranks and go in search of her had he not received her message to him before he left, when they first married. That led to an overnight stay in the local motel while he reluctantly left for another night of training when he was first selected for the program.

He watched as Reese explained on, more or less unaware of the commander’s waning interest or Herndum’s upright position on the bunk beside him, listening intensity as the captain spun his tale.

What if he thought, in all the rushing to relocate the booster and LEM amongst all else, this mission proved to be fatal? What if (God save him for even thinking it) if he didn’t…they didn’t come home? He’d been there during the Apollo 13 ordeal, watching how it pulled at the wives last nerves and everyday dwindling hopes, as it looked more like the crew wouldn’t make it home. Hollanbach remembered that, feeling they all shared secretly and otherwise, and he knows first-hand the hell it could wreck on a loved one’s unsuspecting soul. A long and heavy sigh escaped from his lips and once again, worry set into his mind, quickly turning into a thudding headache from which there was no immediate escape.

The captain finished, and Hollanbach got up, his mind light years away. He walked on back towards his bunk without so much as a word to Reese, grabbing his towel and shower kit from his bed along the way, and subsequently disappearing into the bathroom at the end of the room.

Reese glanced over at Herndum, who also had a slight look of puzzlement on his face. “Was it something I said?” he half-joked.

Herndum rolled over onto his back completely, starring up at the ceiling. “Couldn’t tell ya, Air Force,” he said simply. “Couldn’t tell ya at all,” he said as he slowly turned around.

* * *

“Okay, Captain,” a voice crackled over the wires of Reese’s headset.

“You should be approaching the third test object on your right. So keep an eye out, eh?”

Reese breathed in the oxygen pumping into the new EVA suit he was testing out; it was two days later and the pitch black of a cloudy night. The prototype helmet he wore had a bright battery-operated light that illuminated wherever he looked from the left side. On the right, a videotape-recording camera lies in wait for another trial operation.

“What am I looking for out here?” he asked the electronic voice guiding him through the test course on the island’s darkened beachhead, “All I see are footprints in the sand.” A pause followed that communication. “Hello? Herndum are you still there?”

There was a chuckle on the other end. “A license plate,” the lieutenant told him. “The list says you’re looking for a license plate.”

The stout astronaut looked over at the technicians gathered in the room with him about a half mile from Reese’s location. “So…the helmet is actually recording everything he’s seeing?”

An Oriental-looking man, balding and a few years older and a few pounds heavier than Herndum looked up from one of the readout monitors gauging Reese’s vitals and the suits stats. On his nametag was the single identifying word Pat. Pat adjusted his horn rims and walked over towards Herndum.

“Theoretically,” he answered. “As long as Captain Reese has the camera turned on, of course,” he said. “Activated, the camera will record all information it picks up onto the analog videotape.”

Herndum nodded. “Cool. So…can somebody show me how this contraption works?”

“Of course,” came a sweet-sounding, feminine voice from behind Herndum. “I can.”

And that’s when he saw her, as she stood there, like a Monet come to life, with blonde hair swooped high up and knotted behind her head, sparkling blue eyes peeking out from under plastic lab glasses. The lieutenant felt a slight twinge in his groin as she walked over towards him, her white lab coat doing nothing to help shield her nubile body from his imagination, which already had her stripped and writhing maniacally beneath him, her pouty crimson lips begging for more.

Herndum blinked, the professional aspects of his personality struggling with the dismissal of such wanton images. He smiled at her as she met him with her gaze.

With a careful movement, “Helena” reached over and delicately plucked the mock helmet from the astronaut’s grip as he just stood there, dumbly gaping at her with a sloppy grin. She smiled back. More movement below. Herndum thrust his hand deep into the pockets of the olive-green flight suit, trying to prevent a rising dilemma.

“The technology,” she began with a soft voice, slightly accented with… German (?)…he wasn’t sure. “Is still relatively new and the first of its kind,” she said as she turned the helmet around and showed him the big rectangular blister in the back of it. “Within the housing is a videotape.”

Silently, the lieutenant raised a questioning eyebrow.

“Videotape?”

Helena gave him a smile that seemed to lift his mind away from his body.

“Something along the line of the newer audio tapes put into production recently, but much larger in size and longer in recording time. On the reels is about two to three hours’ worth.”

The lieutenant smiled back. “Wow,” he said, more or less amazed with Helena’s stunning good looks and not necessarily the technology she was flaunting before him. “So then what’s this that Pat was referring to?” he said as he jutted his chin in the direction of the tech. “Are the camera’s on all of the time?”

Blonde tresses of straggling hair that had escaped from the rest shimmered about her face as she slowly shook her head. “No, sir,” she answered, setting the mockup back down on the desk. “Although that would certainly be ideal…but the developers simply haven’t had the time to work on the longer battery life that would be needed to operate both the camera and the light. Like I said, Lieutenant,” she sighed heavily, almost as if she was disappointed. This is still brand new technology we are dealing with.”

“Okay then, how do you turn it on and off?”

A familiar voice crept up behind him, startling the stocky astronaut. “There’s an activation pad on the helmet’s side…where the camera is.”

Herndum turned around to see Hollanbach standing in the doorway of the lab, himself suited in the thick layers of the EVA (extra vehicular activity) gear, minus the helmet, which he was handing over to one of the techs that had approached him upon his entrance. “What are you doing here bothering these guys, Scotty?” he asked playfully, watching Helena smile at the question. “Shouldn’t you be on the pad going over the commo gear?”

“Nothing I can’t handle, Skipper.”

“Excuse me, Lieutenant,” Helena cut in politely. “Do you have any further questions about the new helmet?”

Looking at her, Herndum realized the only thing he really wanted to ask her was probably the last thing in the world he should even be thinking about. So he lied. “No. Thanks anyway,” he told her. “But the big boss is here now, and any questions I got, I’m pretty sure he can answer.”

“Gee, thanks,” Hollanbach said off of the side, walking towards the monitors logging Reese’s status.

The blonde started to turn away, stopping suddenly and piercing into Herndum with her captivating azure eyes. “Glad I could help out, Lieutenant,” she said. He smiled at her in a childlike manner.

Just before walking away, she peered at him from over the rims of her safety glasses and mouthed the words “good luck” moving her stark red lips in a way that could only strike Herndum as completely sexy, walking away from him, back into the darkness of the lab surrounding them.

Technorati Tags: novel,scifi,science fiction,apollo program,moon mission,apollo 18,the answer,don edwards,fictional moon mission,moon landing,aliens,monsters,astronaut,dark side of the moon

CHAPTER FOUR?—THE PLAN

Andrew Reese stood looking out the picturesque window at the Denver airport, coping with the painful fact he was having a hell of a time thinking about anything other than a certain young female named Angelica. It was hard to believe that she or her father could understand why he reported their sightings to General Mayson an Air Force Intel. Of course, and he felt almost ashamed to admit it, even if it was to himself, but he had no idea the CIA would become involved with such an extreme prejudice, upsetting the Sheldon’s into believing that his actions were a brutal stab of betrayal, thrust deeply into heir backs.

He sighed remorsefully, casing his dark brown eyes down onto the red-and-white coveralls of the busy workers outside, scurrying about the jet way like a batch of misplaced ants. If he only had more time here to find her, talk to her, then maybe he might be able to make her understand why such things needed to be done.

Idiot, he diminished himself, examining his sorrowful reflection in the glass. You should’ve kept your damn trap shut and not said anything at al to Mayson. How was he suppose to know the old man was banging a CIA spook? A top spook, apparently, for that matter. What he should’ve done was to just let things be, and let Sheldon report in to NASA like he said he would and…

What? Wait for the news to send a few million people into a frenzied panic? Just because of the creative press release assuring the world of a Soviet was base being built on the moon? Or maybe they’d say it was aliens up there, plotting to rig up a giant ray gun to atomize the whole planet?

No. He knew that he’d done the only sensible thing a man in his position could do…took the lesser of two possible evils. He would rather suffer the hatred of the Sheldon’s whom he was pretty sure never to see again, than to live with the knowledge of helping create panic I the streets of America. But so what, he reasoned. Right or wrong, good or bad, even if his skin were on fire, Angelica would rather watch him burn redder than her hair on her head, than to help put out the flame.

He squinted at his reflection, surprised to see a redhead standing behind him. Reese shook his head in disbelief, but she was still there. No, he thought. It couldn’t be.

“Hello, Captain Reese,” she said as he turned to face the object of his unyielding thoughts.

She gazed at him with her fierce green eyes.

“Don’t look so startled to see me,” she told him.

“I asked the CIA lady where you might be headed after you left.”

He was truly beyond words…barely able to stammer firth what he said next.

“Is your father here, too?” he said as he worriedly looked around.

“No,” she replied, her eyes not straying too far from his handsome face.

“He’s back at the observatory where I left him.”

Reese looked directly at her.

“So then why are you here?”

“Oh!” she exclaimed.

“Yeah, It’s nice to see you, too,” she said sarcastically, a small portion of the anger in her voice lost when she laughed out loud, staring at Reese with a conviction in her eyes that he knew had sent many others like him straight to their knees. Her answer was honest.

“My father, the good Dr. Sheldon, asked me to apologize to you in his stead for what was said in anger at the meeting this morning.”

She paused, reaching up to swipe away some of the crimson strands that hung unrestrained over her eyes.

“After we got home, he sorta mulled over the whole thing, and convinced himself that things happened this way for the best.”

Reese nodded slowly in understanding.

“What about you?” he asked her.

“You convinced?”

She laughed a little and averted he eyes from him, darting them around as she spoke.

“I’m convinced that I’m crazy for being here,” she told him.

“For even wanting to talk to you…” and then she relaxed her exited eyes back onto him, slightly smiling.

“For even wanting to see you again,” she said as she exhaled heavily looking quickly away from him again, staring into the dirty blue carpet they stood on.

“I just felt like I had to see you.”

“Angel, I-”

“Wait,” she commanded.

“Let me…get this out,” she said as she swallowed the lump out of her throat and focused back on him, taking his hand into hers, squeezing gently.

“I’m sorry…” she carefully began.

“I’m sorry for talking, well, snapping at you like I did this morning. I had no right to act that way…and I apologize,”

Reese looked at their touching hands and then up at her with an under-standing smile painted onto his young face.

“Apology accepted.”

She rubbed his palm with her index finger for an uninhibited second, not taking long to regain her senses and let go of his hand altogether.

“That’s all,” she said.

“That’s why I’m here.”

And that’s when he went in, grabbed the warm soft flesh of her face and clamped his mouth down on hers like he’d done a thousand other times in his daydreams. Reese felt her go numb at first, caught off-guard by his brashness, but it was only the prelude to the enveloping of her arms around as she accepted the kiss, allowing his tongue to pry into her wet mouth, even going so far as to return the favor. She felt his touch move up to her hair, running his fingers through her blazing locks with confidence of a hunter feeling over the fading warmth of his downed prey.

But in her surrender to him, there was very little loss warmth. If anything, it amplified itself a billion fold, combined with the thumping of a pulsating heart, making her flush with the sweat in a heat of such passion. It was an embrace she’d longed for since the second she touched his hand for the first time back at the base. An embrace she hoped to never forget.

The end came too soon. A warbled female voice announced throughout the airport that the next flight to Florida was boarding and only moments away from leaving. Hearing this, Reese finished his kiss and grabbed his duffel bag up off the floor, leaving the breathless Angelica hanging there in mid-euphoria, her eyes closed.

He touched her cheek softly and spoke in an exasperated breath.

“That’s me,” he said.

“I’ve gotta go.”

She warmly smiled, and then realized that he hadn’t said those three words, she dug into her tight jeans pocket, and brought forth a neatly folded piece of yellow paper.

“Here,” she said handing it to him.

“Take this.”

He looked at her a little oddly.

“My phone number,” she informed him.

“I want to do this again before your trip to the moon.”

“Meet in an airport?” he joked.

She playfully punched him in the arm.

No, Silly, Kiss. And maybe some dinner, too.”

Reese pocketed the number and began to walk towards the gantry leading to the plane. He stopped suddenly, turning to look at her, but she was already gone, vanished into the converting crowd of people.

Damn he thought, turning to face the attendant who took his ticket and tore it from the stub half, handing it to him.

“Enjoy your flight,” she said with a practiced grin.

Sorry lady, he thought wryly as he boarded the gantry, but I’m already way ahead of you.

A feeling of immense relief and thankfulness washed over her entire being as she stepped onto the asphalt of the landing strip, and climbing down the dis-embankment ladder on the cockpit of the quieting F-4 Phantom fighter jet.

Unsnapping the chinstrap of the helmet, Mary Ellen Coley leaned over at the waist, letting it fall into her open hands. Straightening herself, she threw her head about in a rushed motion, allowing the long locks of her sienna-color hair to unfurl from their sweaty heap and out into the cooling evening atmosphere that surrounded her.

Clothed in olive-drab coveralls that did little to accentuate her trim and curvy figure, she reached down and clutched at the handle of the black leather briefcase the airman handed her.

“Thanks,” she said to him as she donned a pair of aviator’s shades to keep the sun out of her intense jade-green eyes, walking at a hurried pace towards the pilot ahead of her, wondering how silly she must look as the tubes of the breathing apparatus banged at her hips as she clogged onward in a pair of shiny black combat boots.

“Appreciate the lift Lieutenant,” she thanked the mustachioed blonde clogging a bit more suavely beside her.

He dug into his pockets and whipped out his cover, quickly putting it on.

“Not a problem, ma’am,” his smile doing little to soothe he frazzled nerves.

“I’m always available for the general…and his beautiful friends.”

Coley gave him an appreciative, but wary glance.

“Easy there, Hotshot,” she warned him casually, interwoven with a hint of deadly seriousness.

“I’m a little more than just a friend.”

The lieutenant retreated with a sly mock salute.

“I do believe that’s my cue,” he said in a slight Southern accent.

“To head on out. Besides, I’m getting’ the feelin’ I’m a little out of my league.

Coley looked to see a stretch limousine waiting about a hundred feet ahead of them and agreed, thanking the generous pilot once again for the unscheduled flight as he walked on towards the row of hangars silhouetted against the harsh light of the setting sun.

And before his gradual descent into the distance, she saw him turn around one last time and waved back at her, before she suddenly being confronted with the chest of a very large, an as she looked up, and looked up a little more, face of a very ugly and scarred black man in a matching suit and tie, who wasted no time opening the driver’s side of the limo’s aft section, his big hand suggesting she get inside.

“Good to see you again, Ms. Coley,” his deep voice reasoned over the roars and screams of the airfield behind her.

“Still baby sitting the boss, Rodney?” she asked with a pretending disbelief.

“I thought you were working your way back up to becoming a field agent?”

Rodney gave her a sly smile.

“Mr. Haberlin takes real good care of me,” he said, adding mischievously.

“Besides, I still get to carry a gun.”

She leaned over and gave him a friendly kiss on the cheek.

“My offer still stands, y’know.”

He just continued to smile, gripping the limo door with his strong hands as he waited for her to slip in.

“Sorry, Ms. Coley, I don’t bodyguard people who are better shot than I.”

She batted her green eyes as she finally got into the car.

“Who? Me?” she said with a playful innocence,

“Whatever on earth are you talking about?”

“Hopefully,” came a friendly and familiar voice as the door shut, sealing off the noise from outside.

“You’re not here to talk about anything on the earth.”

Coley examined the balding, blackhead man with the thick sideburns now sitting next to her, a slick twinkle in his eye.

“Welcome to Washington, Agent Coley.”

“Director Haberlin, “ she greeted him with a pleasant smile, hoisting her briefcase up onto her lap.

“So nice to see you again, Sir.”

“Vice Director,” he corrected, reaching for a shot glass filled with a crystal-clear drink.

“Don’t make me out to be so damn ambitious.”

Coley felt the limo nudge a little as Rodney loaded his weight into the limo and began pulling away from the runway. Haberlin eyed her briefcase.

“What’s in the brief?”

She tapped it with a highly polished red nail.

“A little bit of the mysterious,” she teased.

“And probably the biggest thing since the Roswell incident.”

He flashed her a well-practiced and almost sincere look of blankness.

“What Roswell incident?”

Smiling knowingly, she lined up the combination on the lock of her briefcase.

“Exactly,” she said, popping the gold latches open as she firmly depressed the buckle release, opening the lid of the leather case. Reaching inside, Coley withdrew the eight by tens and handed them over to the eagerly awaiting hands of the vice-director.

“These were developed earlier this morning from a roll film Dr. Sheldon shot at his observatory.”

Haberlin leafed through them.

“And exactly what am I looking at here?”

She held up the two audiotapes.

“Sheldon and his daughter recounted the entire event on tape.”

“But if you want the condensed version-”

“Please,” he interjected.

She cleared her throat, slightly agitated that he had cut her off.

“Angelica, the daughter, first witnessed the trio of lights coming out from behind the moon and subsequently away from it. As she watched, there were multiple change in the coloration and brilliance in the center light, alternating from a deep, cooling bluish-green, to a bright red-orange, before it disappeared altogether, leaving only the other two lights.”

“It was at that time her father came in and took over the telescope, watching as he lights suddenly shifted back towards the moon, apparently slowing down as it neared. Dr. Sheldon also witnessed the third light come to life again in what he describes as a “sudden and brilliant flash”, only to go out a second later just before the thing vanished beyond the moon’s far side near Pythagoras’s crater.”

“You mean the dark side?”

Coley sighed heavily, trying to catch her breath.

“No sir. I mean the far side, being that hemisphere of the moon that always faces away from us. It’s not totally dark,” she explained.

“And it gets the same amount of sunlight that the near side- the part we see does. That’s what we call a “new moon.”

“Right,” he said.

“I never bothered with astronomy in the Academy.” He chuckled.

“Damned hindsight. Okay now,” he said leafing through the typed pages of a report that were stapled to the photographs.

“What’s this underlined in red here?”

“About reports from a seismology probe on the moon?”

He took a swig of his beverage.

“Water?”

“Yes, please, I’m parched from the long, and fast, flight over,” she said.

“JPL recorded a massive ‘moonquake’ with an epicenter near the Cremona crater,” she told him as he poured her a glass and handed it to her.

“Thank you…uh, which is on the far side. This occurred at the same time Sheldon lost sight of his lights, and on another note, the largest scale tremor ever recorded on these probes thus far.”

He swallowed some water.

“And I don’t mean meteors either.”

“I’m in agreement with you, Sir,” she said.

“In fact, it was Captain Reese who first suggested the idea of this thing being a piloted craft.”

“I see,” Haberlin said as he handed the pictures back to her.

“Who’s Captain Reese?”

She took the picture and the report and locked them back into the briefcase along with the two tapes.

“That would be Air Force Captain Andrew Reese,” Coley answered, getting ready to go into a little more detail.

“The lunar module pilot for the upcoming Apollo 20 mission. Apparently he was in the area, his car broke down or something like that, and he was picked up by the Sheldon’s, taken to the observatory to use the phone, and consequently witnessed the whole thing secondhand.”

She took a little sip of her water as she placed the briefcase on the floor of the limo between her legs.

“If it weren’t for the good Captain’s involvement, we probably wouldn’t have known anything about this until we saw it for ourselves in tomorrows headlines.”

She held her thumb and forefinger barely a quarter-inch apart.

“Sheldon was this close to reporting the sighting to NASA.”

Haberlin finished the remainder of his water with a greedy gulp.

“Well then,” he exclaimed, sounding a little relieved.

“Thank the lord for Captain Reese! If not for his intrusion, we’d be busy trying t prevent panic in the streets by now.”

Coley agreed.

“More or less, Sir.”

“So,” he said.

“What’s the plan?”

She looked him dead in the eye.

“Send a team up there to find out what it was that Harry Sheldon and his daughter saw.”

The vice-director grinned.

“Never one to take the low road, eh, Mary Ellen?”

He then reached over to the radiophone hanging close to him, dialed a number and waited without saying another word to a bewildered Coley.

“Cranswell,” he excitedly blurted into the phone.

“I need a few favors. One, the NASA and Defense Secretary at my office tomorrow morning at oh-nine-hundred in Langley…Cambodia? What the hell is doing there? No, no…the junior edition will do.”

He paused, the twinkle in his eyes brightening as he looked at Coley, waiting for the voice on the other end to shut up. A slight smile penetrated his guarded features. Then a sudden look of frustration.

“You’ve got to be kiddin’ me here! No…shit. Okay then, forget him. I need my NASA buddy up here, too. In Houston…No…I can’t tell you what’s up over this line, it’s an unsecured frequency…right…right…you’re a lifesaver, Cranswell…” His smile grew wider into a full-fledged grin.

“I think I can arrange for that to happen,” Haberlin chuckled.

“Thanks.” Then he hung up.

“What was all that about?” she queried, then quickly caught herself.

“If you-uh don’t mind my asking, Sir?”

He flashed her a yellow tooth smile.

“That was about making your plan a reality. Friend of mind in a…higher place is going to help get the ball rolling.”

Her eyebrow rose in question.

“Secret Service?”

“Don’t bother,” Haberlin said as he dug out a cigarette.

“You haven’t heard of him.”

He lit up and took a long drag.

“Nobody has,” he blew a stream of smoke.

“Except for those of us already established within the system.”

He glanced for a second out the window.

“Speaking of which, reach into the seat compartment in front of you,” he began cryptically.

“And check out the inconveniences modern technology can bring.”

Taking her hand and reaching inside, Coley withdrew a yellow envelope clearly labeled with a series of letters and numbers in typed ink, addressed to Haberlin’s eyes only.

“Go ahead,” he encouraged her.

“Open it.”

Coley gripped the envelope; a slight nervous twinge beginning to pull on her heart, as she slowly undid the tiny metal clasp holding it closed, and guided her finger inside to retrieve its secret contents.

Before her were a series of hazy black-and-white pictures like she’d handed Haberlin earlier on, the only difference being they were focused on the earth, not from it. But that wasn’t the shocking part, not immediately anyway. What interested her were the large oblong diminished objects pointing up at her.

“Is that what I think it is?”

“Baikonur, Russia, or as they like to call themselves, the “Union of Soviet

Socialist Republics.”

He grimly sighed.

“What you’re looking at is nicknamed “Star City,” one of the newer launch complexes the Reds have recently built. Seems as though they’ve recovered from their little ‘incident’ at Taratam a few years ago, eh?”

Coley shook her head in disbelief. “I would hardly call a sub-nuclear explosion that killed almost five thousand people a ‘little incident’, Sir.”

She pointed to the predominant objects in all the photographs.

“What are these?” she asked.

“They’re way to big to be N-1 rockets.”

He agreed.

“That’s because they’re not N-1’s, Agent Coley, but a beast much bigger and twice as nasty.”

He killed his smoke in an unceremonial final drag, and then stabbed it out inn the limo’s ashtray.

“While there’s no official name for it yet, the boys in Intel are dubbing it the “Vodka Rocket,” for lack of a better name.”

“Cute,” she said as she shook her head in disbelief and covered her tired eyes in frustration.

“I thought we had people on the payroll to inform us about this sort of thing…in advance.”

Haberlin shrugged.

“We do. But evidently we’ve been fed bogus information concerning the demise of the Soviet space program.”

He scratched roughly at his sideburns..

“The disaster at Taratam didn’t stop them, just set them back a little bit.”

His agent cast him a nervous glance.

“Do they have a launch window?”

The vice-director was solemn.

“Intelligence says they could send it up as early as May. Two whole months before we are slotted to launch the eighteenth Apollo mission.”

“So there’s no definite launch announcement from the Soviets themselves that we might know of?”

Haberlin leaned restlessly back in the comfortable seat.

“They don’t even know we know these things exists,” he said as he poured another glass of water.

“Christ. It’s bad enough they rebounded fast enough to build one, but there’s two of the goddamned things.”

He took a gulping drink.

“Already on the launch pad.”

Coley shook her head and began thinking aloud.

“I had originally planned for us to send a replacement astronaut for a member of the crew for eighteen,” she mused.

“But we might as well forget that altogether.”

Her piercing jade eyes cornered Haberlin.

”We need to get up there to this thing first, Sir.”

“We need to get up there now.”

“Unless you know something I don’t, Agent Coley,” he said pretentiously.

“I don’t see that happening at all.”

She sighed.

“I seemed to remember hearing something about a Caribbean launch site,” she said.

“Operated by the Navy and the Air Force for getting defense and spy satellites up in the air without civilians or foreign launch detection.”

Haberlin was surprised. And that never happened.

“How reliable is the source?” he asked her.

Her smile was a wily one.

“You’d be surprised,” she hinted.

They felt the limo come to a sudden stop.

“Well,” Haberlin smiled.

“Here we are, casa de’Coley.”

He thought for a minute.

“That stewardess still living with you?”

Coley gave him a cockeyed look.

“Why?”

He looked away from her, almost as if he was afraid she’d see the true intentions locked away behind his lying eyes.

“Oh,” he said with an air of innocence.

“Just, y’know, curious.”

And she laughed inside, knowing that the only thing the recently divorced Haberlin was curious about was whether or not he could acquaint himself with Sasha’s moist inner thighs

“Sasha’s engaged to some rock-and-roller in Detroit now,” she told him.

Defeat blanketed her supervisor’s once hopeful face.

“She moved out last week to go live with him.”

“Sorry to hear that, Coley. I know you were good friends.”

“Well,” she said as Rodney opened the door, revealing the nearness of the night outside.

“I guess I’ll leave this here with you,” she tapped her briefcase on the seat.

“You know the combination?”

He grinned.

“For a while now.”

Haberlin sipped at his water.

“There will be a meeting in my office tomorrow, consider yourself invited,” he informed her.

“I’ll have a car pick you up at eight o’clock sharp.”

“Think you can get a plan together by then?”

Coley got out the limo, turned back around, poking her brown trussed head in the door.

“I can’t say for sure,” she told him honestly.

“But the point will be moot if we don’t do something before the Russians discover the whole thing for themselves.”

He gave her an odd look.

“Assuming they don’t already know?”

“No, Sir,” she quickly clarified.

“Praying to God that they don’t.”

* * *

It had been a rather long and sleepless night. The kind where your eyes effuse to close because your mind is so hyped up on emotion, that all you can do is react to your body’s thoughts and movements. Another one of those times you are effectively out of control, realizing that your body does whatever the hell it wants, and you are quite simply just along for the ride. Not to mention the lack of sleep in the past, Coley checked her watch. Almost forty-six hours, and she struggled to pop the stubborn left eye open as the elevator doors closed, somewhat going strong.

She pushed the appropriate button and sauntered groggily into the wood-paneled corner as she felt the machine begin its trek upwards to the seventh floor, and the office of Justin K. Haberlin, vice-director of Intelligence and Operations, International. A man she’d known and worked with repeatedly over the years, ever since their first gig together gathering tidbits of information on the Soviet space launch of Sputnik, al those years ago, a full week before it launched. So when news of it took the world “by surprise”, Coley, Haberlin, and a few others, including the president, already knew the specifics of the round breaking event, right down to the type of paint used to cover the exterior of the mighty rocket.

And she’d been involved from then on, without much deviation to any-thing else. Coley had been assigned to the branch of aerospace intelligence since fifty-six, when she arrived all wide-eyed and fresh faced from college at Harvard and a year-and-a-half at MIT, until her application at the agency was accepted, and the rest, as is so often said, is history.

Every spec sheet and blueprint, even rocket, and every astronaut that ode atop them.

She met, observed, and scrutinized in some way. There were things she knew that nobody else knew or either had been forced to forget, like the attempted assassination of a certain young astronaut’s life by a group of radical religious types, thwarted by her and several other agents a week before he caught his ride to walk on the moon.

Something only she, and five other agents, including the FBI men who “secured” the threat knew about. Not even the man in question knew anything, which was exactly how her job should be done, and how she liked it.

The elevator stopped and the door slid back, revealing the threshold leading directly into Haberlin’s much-coveted office space, spanning the entire floor of the building’s top level, with an incredible view of the countryside, lake, and broad span of trees that lie beyond the crystal clearness of the windows.

From across the way, she could see Haberlin sitting on the edge of his oak desk, conversing with two other men, sitting down facing him, who upon closer inspection turned out to be a well-suited Vincent Spartigo, deputy advisor to the national security council, and a powerfully medalled older man she’d seen around the Washington building from time to time, General George D. Lockenshire, one of the president’s joint chiefs. A four-star Army man who was…very…influential.

Haberlin stopped talking and glanced up at her, a pleasant smile of recognition brightening the seriousness from seconds before.

“Ah, Agent Coley. Right on time. I was just telling the general and Mr. Spartigo here about our, ahem, little situation.

He got up as she walked around the giant table-size desk, noticing her briefcase opened and waiting for her, the photographs of the “Vodka Rocket”, and thee Sheldon’s sightings staring up at her, a tape player nearby indicating that they’d already listened to at least one of the tapes.

“Yes, well,” she began, sorting the items out in front of her.

“I believe I’ve come up with a solution to our problem of getting a crew to the moon before the Soviets.”

“Really?” Haberlin was speaking in that all-too-familiar tone that suggested he knew more than he was telling.

“I believe you might like to hear the General’s proposal first.”

She stopped fidgeting with her notes and such, and shot her awakening jade eyes at the old war-hero.

“Certainly, Sir,” she said.

The general grunted.

“We have a launch complex that no one knows about, other than the hundred men stationed there and us, located on the uninhibited island of Keyakatur, about a hundred or so miles off the western coast of the Florida panhandle,” he said as he coughed roughly a few times before continuing.

“We have a Saturn booster rocket already there and in a warehouse,” he said as he smiled.

All that’s needed is the first stage and a LEM, and we can have you up there in less than a month. Not counting of course any training time you’ll need for your crew,” he said as his grin became a little wider.

“Didn’t steal too much of your thunder, Agent Coley…did I?”

A smile gradually spread across her face.

“No,” she politely told him.

“I still have some left, although I only recently became aware of the launch site myself. And as far as training time for a crew, all they’ll need is a little remedial training and fitting for the new EVA suits they’ll be wearing, and landing the LEM in almost total darkness.”

Spartigo became concerned.

“What’s that?”

“If it was a craft that crashed, it happened near the Cremona crater on the moon’s far side. A very dark place most of the time.”

And the remainder of the time?”

Coley shrugged.

“It’s brightly lit by the sun. But if we’re to beat the Soviets, assuming they have knowledge of this and are gearing up to investigate it themselves, we won’t have time for a launch window that’s convenient to the light factor.”

“But what about the safety of the crew?”

“We’re not overlooking their safety, Sir. The LEM can be fitted with strong spotlights to help guide them down. It isn’t totally dark up there. It’s somewhat like a moonless night right here on Earth; dim, but still visible.

“And the crew?” Spartigo asked, intrigued.

“Have you selected one yet?”

“Yes, Sir, we have,” she replied.

“Although it wasn’t the easiest of processes.”

“What do you mean?”

Coley smiled uneasily.

“Well, Sir, a lot of thought needed to be put into who we actually needed to put on the mission. While it would be nice to have strictly agents on board with us, I soon realized that would be next to impossible. The training of our men would take entirely too long because being inexperienced astronauts, we would start from scratch,” she said as she took a breath before continuing.

“These recent Apollo missions have been relentlessly scrutinized by the media ever since NASA’s upheaval with Apollo 13. Now that their launch dates are getting closer, the crews have become instant celebrities. Any sudden disappearance by these men would instantly be picked up on…and questioned by an international forum,” she said reaching into her briefcase on the desk, she retrieved a single sheet of paper.

“Which left us with these three men: Jonathan James Hollanbach, Commander, U.S. Navy; Scott Mitchell Herndum, Lieutenant, also in the Navy; and Andrew Morgan Reese, Captain, United States Air Force…the crew for the far-off Apollo20 mission, which is about a year or so away. A crew virtually unnoticed by the media, and astronauts already trained in full for a manned mission to the moon.”

Haberlin interrupted her.

“Reese? Isn’t that the one who was with the Sheldon’s when they saw the lights?”

“Yes, Sir,” Coley confirmed.

“He certainly is.”

“Damn,” he said, an eerie feeling seeping into his mind from the strange coincidence.

“That’s kind of spooky…even by our standards.”

True, Sir,” his cohort agreed.

“It couldn’t be any better if we planned it that way ourselves.”

The general raised a curious eyebrow.

“You didn’t?”

Coley threw the paper back in the brief, closing and locking it as she did so.

“Sorry, Sir. We’re not quite that high up on the espionage level.”

“Yet,” Haberlin added, smiling wickedly.

Throughout the majority of the meeting, Spartigo had been mostly quiet, opting to hear the whole thing out, rather than jump in, guns blazing with questions, before everyone’s secrets were revealed, but now that a sense of finality had begun to settle in the atmosphere, he started to fidget restlessly in his chair and decided to break his silence.

“I’m not quite certain this is a good idea,” he suddenly stated.

“Why not,” the general asked with an almost indignant roar.

“For one thing,” the deputy security advisor began.

“There’s no telling within accurate margin of error, what the hell it may or may not be, we don’t have any idea what it is we are sending these men to the moon to investigate.”

Spartigo huffed a little angrily.

“There are a million possibilities that come to mind, and I’m uncomfortable with every last one of them, Aren’t we able to send a probe up there together initial data to help determine what it is we’re dealing with first?”

Coley spoke up to answer him, knowing exactly where he was coming from with such a reaction. Spartigo was in the business of security after all, and he didn’t want to part of the blame for some unforeseen cataclysm, disease or worse, to pose major threat to the country, if not the world itself, especially if we could just turn a blind eye to the whole affair and concentrate on what was going on here, instead of a useless hunk of rock a quarter of a million miles away. So she decided to educate him.

“I’m afraid we can’t, Sir, for a number of reasons. On, it would take scientists and engineer’s months to design, test, and build a robotic probe to send to the moon to get our answer for us, and there’s no guarantee that it will work once it actually gets there. To, a probe is out of the question anyway, because this incident happened on the moon’s far side, a virtual black-out-zone concerning any sort of communications transmission.”

She took a moment to catch her breath, and to let those words sink into the politician’s thick head, before KO’ing him with the final punch.

“And three,” Coley smiled at the group uneasily.

“Is the most terrifying reason I can think of not to go up there for ourselves no matter what this thing turns out to be,” she said as she paused for effect.

“THE SOVIETS.”

Both Spartigo and Lockenshire’s face scrunched up into a hateful scowl, letting the sly agent know that she already clinched the deal. But she decided to push on, cementing it in place.

“Not to mention the Chinese, who have been extremely busy developing a space program of their own lately. Vice-director Haberlin has already shown the satellite photos to you; depicting two massive Soviet rockets on the launch pad already to go. The United States can’t afford to let them find this thing before we do. You both know the Russians and their lack of cautionary respect. They could easily bring back an illness that could wipe us all out, exterminating the human race. Or maybe they would find wreckage up there that could advance their technology by as much as a hundred years, or perhaps a weapon of some sort, allowing them military supremacy over us all.”

“With all due respect, Mr. Spartigo, I am forced to disagree. We need Americans up there to determine, contain and access the situation safely and responsibly, without worrying about the infinite ‘what ifs’ of a maverick superpower getting to it first. Not just for own national security, but for the planet’s.”

Finished, Coley watched as Spartigo sat, remaining quiet and still for several seconds afterwards, pondering the meaning behind her words, then slowly nodding his gray, black-haired head in agreement once the message became perfectly clear.

“A good argument, Agent Coley, you have my support.”

“As well as the entire Department of Defense, if you so need it,” Lockenshire said.

“I’ll be damned if I’m going to let those commie bastards kill us off with a flu bug from outer space,” he said as he banged his fist on the chair arm.

“I say we get the ball rolling on this thing right now!”

Haberlin took a seat in the big leather chair behind his desk.

“I agree,” he said as he looked at Coley.

“How long will it take to get everything we need to the island? A week or so?”

“About a week,” she answered.

“Excellent,” Haberlin said, liking what he was hearing.

“Consider yourself top dog on this project, Agent Coley. You’re to answer only to me and the President, Clear?”

“Crystal, Sir,” she excitedly replied.

“Good. Brief our astronauts and get them to the island as quietly as you can. If we’re to be on time we need these rocket jockeys fitted for EVA suits and integrated with the new training as soon as humanly possible.”

Something Haberlin said caught her off-guard.

“On time, Sir?” she questioned.

“We still need to discuss an appropriate window for a moon launch, and I think that we-”

“Mary Ellen.”

“Sir?”

“I had a very lengthy discussion with the chief executive before you arrived this morning. And he informed me that if we all came to an agreement, and had a rock-solid plan for making this happened he wanted us back on the moon investigating this thing no later than the end of April.”

He looked at her, the seriousness dripping from his words.

“We have a month,” he told her.

“And the clock is ticking.”

The sudden realization of what she was about to undertake dawned on her tired mind with the intensity of a thousand rising suns, knowing that if she was not a strong and confident woman, she probably would have fainted by now.

“Agent Coley?” Haberlin was asking her.

“Are you on board or not?”

She blinked, surrendering herself to the impulse.

“Yes,” she said in a burst.

“Yes, Sir, I uh, I am on board.”

Haberlin and the general smiled as Spartigo chose to remain stone-faced and quiet, staring out the windows.

“Outstanding,” Haberlin said, then added in an innocent and child-like tone.

“I wonder what it is we’ll find up there?”

In between self-consciously trying to coerce her heart to slow itself down, Coley could hardly hear past the thousands of thoughts spinning the gears around inside her aching head ne in particular, perhaps the answer they were all searching for, stood out in the crowd like a bright flash of light, vanishing quickly as she attempted to focus on it, the hollowness of its sudden absence, chilling her with its scary mystery.

Perhaps that’s when she began to feel something, some dark secret, following her within the dark boundaries of her own shadow, taunting her every-where she turned, everywhere she walked. A feeling never leaving her tortured side as she realized that Haberlin was a question that perhaps no one need answer.

EVER.