A first stop.

6

There were beacons and Navistar satellites, allowing John Tracyto plot and fly a fairly direct course to the distant moon. Fairly, because the geosynchronous ring, at 42,164 km, was nearly as crowded with orbiting jetsam as the higher graveyard ring, and had to be very cautiously threaded. Once these obstacles had been passed, though, it was more or less smooth sailing.

Thing about spaceflight was, once set on course, you'd keep going forever, provided nothing got in the way. No wind resistance, and, therefore, no real need for aerodynamics, or constant adjustments. 'Set it, and forget it', usually. But, John remained in his seat, anyway; determined to keep an eye on things.

While he used Endurance's fusion-powered thrusters to bring the girl into line, Roger drifted up to the right seat, braked himself with a hand to the headrest, and hauled himself down. (He'd finished being sick, and was ready to deploy 'Scooter', the ship's pint-sized, tethered hull camera.)

"All set?" He asked John.

"Good to go," the pilot responded, double-entering the last leg of their flight path. They'd reach the moon in seven hours, barring misadventure.

"Hey, Pete!" The big Marine called over one shoulder. "I'm ready with Scooter! Wanna man the camera?"

He was the crew's mechanic, field engineer and construction expert, the one usually chosen to work external contraptions such as the loading arm and hull cam, but they'd all rehearsed each other's tasks a hundred times, and could pinch-hit at need.

"Yeah! Gimme a sec...,"

The sandy-haired mission commander handed himself rapidly across the flight deck, halting by a port-side comm station. "Engine scan checks out, and Linda n' Kim' re working the bio-sensors. Let 'er rip."

In space, for the most part, Commander McCord was the consummate professional, reserving the jokes for those rare moments of calm. As Roger opened Scooter's outer hatch, using joystick controls and gas-jet thrusters to maneuver the little robot out of its bay, Pete glanced forward.

"How's it going up there, Tracy?"

"Green across the board," John replied, or thought he had.

"English, please!" McCord corrected good-naturedly. "No hablo lower Slamdunkian."

Sometimes, if he was very deeply distracted, John would rattle off a response in whatever language first presented itself. Basque, that time.

"I said: Green across the board, Pete. We'll be in by 1830."

"Long as I get my beauty sleep, the details are negotiable...," McCord responded. "Okay, Thorpe, slow and easy... Work him around the landing gear bay. Damn...! Looks like we scratched the paint job. Hold up...! Back again, thirty centimeters, and magnify. Gimme 5X."

Something had caught his eye; a possible breach in the tightly riveted outer hull.

Roger thumbed the joystick back just a little, and keyed up a higher magnification, watching on his own little screen what Scooter was transmitting to Pete. Tiny jets of compressed gas brought the robot around on its tether, and a stroke to the touch screen changed focus. Pete stared for a bit, then puffed out a gusty, relieved sigh.

"False alarm," he said. "Looks like we've got some carbonization around one of the control surfaces, though. Who wants to get out there with a sponge and bucket?"

Not surprisingly, there were no takers.

"Spit and polish," McCord lectured them all, watching closely as Endurance's hull rolled slowly by on his comm screen. "That's what this unit lacks! Why, when I was a baby astronaut in the Apollo Program, I scrubbed hulls, uphill, in the snow, both ways, and I liked it!"

It took a further four hours, but at last the inspection was complete, with only a single patch-up required. Besides imaging the spacecraft, Scooter could fire a stream of quick setting crystal adhesive, strong enough to seal shut an incipient hull breach. This had been a small one, micro-meteorite damage, possibly, or a bird strike. Kennedy Space Center was a wildlife sanctuary, after all, and pelicans were slow fliers.

Linda soon finished up the med-scans, and had advice for everyone.

"Pete, you're over-caffeinated; no more java for you, and that's a medical order, like it or not" He didn't, but nobody argued with the ship's doctor, by long tradition. Willowy and short, the brunettephysician looked like a child in her bulky red survival suit, but her firmness of purpose was well known, and much respected. Turning to frown at the overly-slim pilot, she went on.

"John, your blood sugar's low (yours, too, Cho.) Quit skipping meals! Try feeding the butterflies, and maybe they'll go away."

Both of them promptly received a sticky-sweet food bar and energy drink, though neither really felt like eating. In John's case, that weirdly disorienting 'top of the roller coaster' feeling tended to kill his desire for food. Mostly, though- like Dr. Kim- he just kept forgetting.

"Quit grinning, Roger," the doctor told Cpt. Thorpe, gesturing at the Marine with her free hand, while clinging fast to a strap with the other. From his perspective, she was floating sideways, which gave the whole lecture a somewhat surreal quality. "You need to get more sleep! Stop trying to look macho, and take a pill, if you have to, but get some rest where it'll do you good, not over the instrument panel, in the middle of a crucial maneuver. Got it?"

"Yes, Ma'am."

Linda had her own ways of handling big, tough, he-men, and had been selected for the mission for her absolute fearlessness in the face of alpha-male chest beating.

The moon station was located toward the far north of the pock-marked little world, in an area that received nearly constant sunlight. Early prospectors ( his father's mission, in fact) had found water ice in great quantities beneath the gritty dust of Peary Crater. This, then, was the site of the International Moon Station. A modest little place, mostly underground; with three working hangars, a huddle of domed green houses, acres-wide solar panels, and a crew of twenty-five offbeat scientists.

Hurtling through space at speeds that would have cindered them in any kind of an atmosphere, Endurance and her crew shot toward the moon. At first small and silver as a nickle, it ballooned in the forward view screen, turning a grim, sepulchral grey, blotched here and there with dark beds of ancient lava, and the stark, shadowed rims of deep craters. Vast, pale, ejecta blankets gave evidence to the horrifying force with which those craters had been gouged out. Like an old bombing range, the remains of past violence were literally everywhere.

The moon, then; beautiful, harsh and cold. Where a single, small mistake would kill herfoolish explorers, who nevertheless couldn't stay away.

...And if you'd ever stood on the Mountains of Eternal Light, staring at a fragile crescent Earth that you could cover with a spread hand, you'd know why. 240,000 miles away, you finally got the big picture.

"Moon Station, this is Endurance," John called over the comm, some three hours later, "requesting permission to land."

The response was swift, and cheerful. A man's slightly staticky voice came back,

"Endurance, IMS. Permission granted, and welcome! Use hangar 34-B, please, on heading 88.6 degrees N latitude, 33.0 degrees E longitude, 25 degrees co-longitude."

John acknowledged the greeting and directions, then punched in the complicated series of rocket burns that would put them over the American hangar. They were headed north, about as close to the pole as it was possible to get, and their orientation had changed. No longer arrowing at the moon, they were now zipping silently along above its craggy surface. Mountains, plains and craters shot by beneath them, bleak and brown and sere, the diamond-hard line between shadow and light as sharp as if drawn with a straightedge. Above, there was only velvet-black, star-peppered darkness; a hard andfrigid, unforgiving void.

He rolled the ship a bit, just enough to orient her properly for landing. Lost a little forward momentum in the process, though not enough. The rest would require reverse-thrusters to bleed off, a process he'd simulated so often, he could do it drugged, sick, or injured. Just in case.

Everyone aboard was suited up and strapped in, again, with life support hoses connected, and helmets sealed. Safety, not just first, but always.

At last, they reached Peary Crater. It was quite big, 45 miles in diameter, with the Moon Station's silvery domes, flashing beacons and landing guides tucked in just under the saw-toothed northern rim.

As they neared their flag-painted target, one of several giant metal trapdoors on the crater floor, John fired thrusters 1 & 2 for sixty seconds, halting their forward momentum.

Pete watched the ground through Endurance's lower camera array, meanwhile, and called out occasional instructions.

"Initiate burn on thrusters 3 & 4... five seconds from... mark. Watch your drift, Tracy... over to the left a little... that's it... doors 're opening. Drop the landing gear."

The massive steel trapdoor split down its length like a huge, square-toothed mouth. Light streamed from between the hangar's jaws, painting the ship's undercarriage a soft, sparking gold.

John brought Endurance lower, settling her within the yawning cavity like an elevator car descending a rocky shaft. Green guide lights pointed their way to a luminous target circle on the distant concrete floor.

Overhead, the doors were already grinding shut, eerily silent in this cold, airless cavern. He executed another burn, longer, this time, causing the space plane to halt a few feet above the ground. When Endurance's lower thrusters cut off, the ship settled onto her four stubby legs at the exact center of the painted circle. Abruptly, he became aware of gravity, again, and of the simple joy of a seat pushing back against him.

"Touch down...," Pete was saying, to John and far-off Houston, "...and landing. Good job! Initiating post-flight shut down procedures."

The overhead doors clamped and sealed, the huge teeth interlocking like a crocodile's snaggled jaws. Then, an enormous pump groaned to life, and air began hissing into the hangar. Dark rock and concrete, a galaxy of blinking panel lights, and great, gasket-sealed doors surrounded them. Nor was that all. About 150 feet straight ahead, some 20 feet up the rock wall, the hangar attendant waved at them through a warmly-lit window. Pete grinned, and waved back.

A sign, "America welcomes YOU!" flickered and sparked beneath the window. Beside it, an intermittent "Please Wait" signal competed for attention with a video-looped greeting from President Rand.

John hadn't voted in the last election (he detested politics), and was too busy with the shut down checklist to pay attention, anyway, so Madeleine Rand's message went almost entirely unnoticed. (Something about bold steps into the future...)

Finally, the red "Please Wait" sign sputtered off, replaced a few moments later by the emerald gleam of the "Hangar Ready" signal. Atmosphere and pressure within the rocky cavern were now close to Earth-normal, and it was safe to disembark... Or would be, after they'd berthed.

The circular landing pad shuddered and, with all the ponderous majesty of an ankylosaur bringing its deadly tail around to meet the snapping teeth of a predator, it began to rotate. Not a speedy process, by any means. John had visuals of harnessed titans blindly turning some immense, rusted gear shaft. But, all he said was,

"Something needs oiling." For, the mechanism's sublunar screech and groan were audible even through rock, hull and helmet.

"Yup," Pete agreed, with a tired smile, "and Station Authority 'll get right on that, after they install the tennis courts and snack bar."

In other words, 'don't hold your breath.'

An hour later, pointed in the right direction, and ratcheted into a big maintenance bay, they were free to un-helm and disembark. Deja vu, all over again.

With a sense of deep well-being, John stepped out through the hatch after Pete, the ladies, and Roger, to find that nothing much had changed.

Dim lighting..., tall, spindly cranes..., gunpowder-y, 'fried-rock' smell..., chilly air..., omnipresent brown dust..., and a crowd of grubby, friendly scientists.

It felt good to be back.