Back to the Moon-ARC

Chapter 23

The four-person crew of the Chinese ship Harmony huddled together in the near-complete darkness of their ship’s crew cabin. The only light penetrating the blackness came from the LEDs on the instrument panel, showing which of the pitifully few systems were still powered on. Since the crash, the taikonauts had powered down virtually everything except the thermal-control system and, sometimes, the radio, in order to conserve power. The situation had been scary and uncomfortable, but not critical when the sun was in the sky, but now that the fourteen-day night had begun, every milliwatt of power translated directly into a few minutes of life. Power was heat, and in the unbelievably cold lunar night, heat was in short supply.

Harmony’s captain, Hui Tian, surveyed the status of her crew by turning her head to look at each directly. Spacesuit helmets didn’t allow for any peripheral vision, and in order to see something, she had to look at it directly.

To her immediate right was the ship’s physician, Dr. Xu Guan. The relatively tall and gray-haired Xu had weathered the crash fairly well and was fully engaged in keeping everyone functioning. Though his dry sense of humor was greatly appreciated during the flight out, it didn’t do much to boost morale after the crash. But that didn’t stop him from trying. No matter what the situation, Xu seemed to have some pithy comment at the ready. When they last spoke privately, Xu admitted that as a youth he had wanted to be a comedian but his father had disapproved. No doubt his patients back on Earth appreciated his humor more than the crew of the Harmony—at least at the present moment. Xu had propped himself against the wall with Harmony’s pilot, Ming Feng, leaning against him.

Ming had not weathered the crash well at all. In fact, he was failing both physically and mentally at a rapid rate. During their chaotic descent to the surface, when all the alarms had begun to sound, Ming had frozen and Hui had had to take control of the ship from him. If not for her rapid action, they might have all died upon impact—making a fairly sizable crater in the process. Upon impact, Ming was thrown into the control panel and, according to Dr. Xu, had fractured some ribs and perhaps suffered some internal injuries. He was now feverish and semicoherent. That might be fortunate—under the circumstances, Hui thought to herself.

To her left, rummaging again through the remains of one of the ship’s computer consoles, was the Harmony’s engineer and political officer, Zhi Feng. He was not a big man, but his agile frame allowed him to gain access to parts of Harmony that would have been impossible for anyone else. He was also the youngest member of the crew. Hui guessed his age to be not more than thirty-five years. Zhi was at times a gift—he had used his engineering training and creativity to scavenge the parts required to keep the air and power functioning for far longer than she had thought possible. At other times, he was a curse—being the ship’s political officer, he always made everyone feel like they were under a microscope and that any action of which he didn’t approve would be used against them or their families upon the return home. If they returned home. Zhi had gone ballistic when Hui had used the radio to contact the American ship they’d been listening to as it approached the Moon. If it were not for the support she received from Dr. Xu, she suspected he would have smashed the radio rather than let her use it. They depended upon Zhi to keep them alive, but they were also very afraid of him.

Hui shivered in her spacesuit. The power in her suit was still at maximum; Zhi had been able to keep their individual suit batteries fully charged as he drained yet another fuel cell from within Harmony’s lander. To conserve power, however, the temperature in all their suits had been turned down to sixty degrees Fahrenheit, and even though every member of the crew prided themselves as being made of “the right stuff,” they were all cold. Despite their status, and despite the actions taken by the now nearly useless pilot, she was proud of her crew. They were surviving and would likely last at least another day or so. Intellectually, she knew their situation was hopeless, but her nature didn’t allow her to feel that in her gut. There was always hope. And it was her job as leader to instill that hope in her crew. So far it was working.

“I think,” Hui said with a long pause, “I think I am going to turn on the radio again. Perhaps the American ship was able to alter course and is now in orbit or something. Please power it on, Zhi.” She knew there was virtually no chance that any ship traveling to the Moon would be able to change course and rescue them, but she had to do something.

Hearing the conversation, Dr. Xu straightened up and placed the pilot’s head against the bulkhead divider to keep him from falling completely over. Hui noticed and realized that the physician was positioning himself to provide the support she needed should this turn into a fight.

Zhi noticed the doctor’s movements as well. He looked at Captain Hui with an expression of near-complete disregard—not anger or hatred—and said, “We will turn it on. But only for a few minutes. We do not have much power remaining, and I will not have my efforts at conserving it wasted in a foolish gesture.”

Hui nodded her head, causing a strand of hair to fall annoyingly across her forehead to the middle of the field of view of her left eye. In a spacesuit, she could not simply brush it aside, and even moving her head to dislodge the hair was a major ordeal. She therefore ignored it.

“Hopefully, it will be more than a foolish gesture,” she said cautiously to the political officer. “But only time will tell. Very good. Thank you.”

Hui then walked over to the console and flipped the switch that would turn on the ship’s low-power radio. It was designed to provide communication with taikonauts walking on the lunar surface and not more than a few hundred meters away from the lander. Fortunately, their weak signal had been heard by the Dreamscape as it passed nearby.

To her surprise, and to the surprise of everyone in the room, the radio immediately came to life with a voice of a man speaking in Chinese. “Crew of the Harmony. Do not give up hope. Help is on the way. If you can hear this message, please reply.” The message was followed by twenty seconds of silence, and it was then repeated.

“Unbelievable!” Zhi gasped. “How is that possible? We’re near the limb, but for us to get a signal at this location would require enormous power!”

“Believe it or not, Zhi!” replied Hui, much more practical in her nature. “It does not matter how! Help is on the way! We must let them know we are alive.” She moved the microphone to the open faceplate on her suit.

“This is Captain Hui of the Harmony. We hear you. We are alive, but just barely. How soon will help arrive? We cannot last much longer.”

She stopped speaking and looked at the radio expectantly. Nothing happened for a few minutes, and then she again heard, “Crew of the Harmony. Do not give up hope. Help is on the way. If you can hear this message, please reply.” It was a recorded broadcast.

“Ha.” Zhi laughed pessimistically. “Of course they cannot hear you. The power on our transmitter is too low. They are broadcasting from Earth with who knows how much power. All we have is this miserable surface-to-surface radio.”

“I propose a little patience,” Dr. Xu interjected. “If it is from Earth, there will be a lag. So wait. Listen. And then respond again. You must try.”

Hiu waited through the silence and couldn’t contain her disappointment when the recording played yet again. As it stopped, she once again repeated her message, hoping that somehow it would get through.

Immediately following the meeting at which the idea of using Arecibo was first proposed, the Vice President of the United States contacted the Director of the National Science Foundation and secured the use of the dish. At first, the scientists who were told they’d lost their time at the observatory were quite upset—one even threatened to write his congressman. Once the situation was fully explained, however, they were unanimous in their support for suspending science operations and turning the big antenna into a radio station, broadcasting a message to the stranded Chinese taikonauts nearly a quarter million miles away.

At the same time the Vice President was making his call, NASA Administrator Ross directed that NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) begin listening for any low-power radio transmission that might originate from the Moon. Freeing time on the DSN was a bit more complicated. The DSN was used to collect data from multiple deep-space missions and to send them critical commands and software updates. Focusing the network on the Moon meant that signals from the probes circling Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and elsewhere might not get their messages back when they called home. To meet all these competing needs was a matter of scheduling, scheduling, and scheduling.

That was several days ago, and the team running the Arecibo radio telescope had been sending their automated signals for nearly twenty-five hours when the Chinese taikonaut finally turned on her receiver and heard their message. The DSN’s automated system picked up the extremely weak signal from Hui Tian and sent an alert to the operators monitoring the system. Less than six minutes after receiving Hui’s message, human ears were listening and getting ready to send a response. For the operators at the DSN, this was an unimaginably fast response time.

For Hui Tian and the rest of the Harmony’s crew, it seemed like an eternity.

Hui was staring expectantly at the radio when the automated message cut off and another voice inserted itself, in English. “Crew of the Harmony, this is Jeff Caldwell of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. We hear you. Is this Ms. Hui? What is your status?”

“This is Hui Tian of the Harmony. We are so very glad to hear your voice. We are cold and very low on power. We have, at most, thirty-six hours remaining before we are entirely dependent upon our spacesuits. One of our crew is injured. The rest of us are okay.”

After a brief lag Caldwell replied. “Understood. Ms. Hui, we are so glad to hear that. A representative of your government is here with us. Unfortunately, we don’t know exactly where, and we are trying to track him down.”

Caldwell’s voice then faded a bit as he was obviously speaking to someone with him and not into the microphone. “I don’t care if you have to personally search every bathroom in the building. Find him. What about the cafeteria? Okay, just go!”

“Ahem.” Caldwell cleared his throat and collected himself before he spoke into the microphone again. “Ms. Hui, there is a rescue mission on its way to the Moon. They know where you are, and they will be landing very close to your location.”

“A rescue mission?” said Hui. She was confused, knowing full well that China did not have another vehicle anywhere close to launch status. The transmission lag was quickly becoming intolerable.

“Yes. A NASA crew launched about two days ago. They are on the way to bring you home.”

Hui and Dr. Xu were visibly relieved. Help was on the way. They might just survive the wreck after all! Hui looked from Dr. Xu to the wounded pilot and then to Zhi Feng. Zhi’s expression was unreadable. It was clearly not the same one of relief that she was experiencing.

Moments later, a voice speaking Mandarin was heard through the radio. It was a voice Hui recognized. It was one of her fellow taikonauts, Gong Zheng. She and Gong had trained together, and she considered him to be a friend.

Gong said, “Hui. This is Gong Zheng. You sound well. Are you okay? You said someone was injured. Who?”

“Pilot Ming Feng was injured during landing. He needs medical attention.” Hui’s voice was firm, but she was very clearly tired.

“I understand,” Gong replied. “How are Dr. Xu and Zhi Feng?”

“They were not injured. But we are all very cold and tired.” She went on to explain their general situation.

After listening intently to the status of the crew, Gong said, “In order to help you, I need to know the status of the ship’s system in detail.” And so began a rather lengthy discussion of virtually every system on the Harmony—working and nonworking.

During the discussion, Hui once again glanced at the faces of her crewmates. Something was clearly bothering Zhi, and she had no idea what it might be. At the moment she needed to focus on keeping them all alive—and preferably warmer.