Rocket to Luna

Ted worked furiously with pencil and paper, referring constantly to the instruments that measured their speed and distance from the Moon. He would have to start turnover soon. With time to accomplish this first step in the landing, the task would not be so difficult.

Tremulously, he told the men what he intended doing.

“It’s in your hands,” Dr. Phelps said.

“Do as you see fit,” Dr. Gehardt said, nodding his bald head.

Forbes said nothing. He crouched beside Merola, studying the captain’s pale features.

The buttons were pushed and the circuits closed. The hum of the engines politely intruded into the silence of space. At the ship’s center of gravity, the flywheel began to rotate, slowly at first, and then increasing in speed. The port rockets spit yellow fire into the night, and the ship turned slowly, like a lethargic grub on a vast, black leaf.

Its nose pointed back over the miles it had covered, and its stern jets came around toward the face of the Moon, slowly, slowly.

Ted stood by the control panel, watching the Moon disappear from the forward radar screen. He flicked on the rear radar, then waited. The Moon shoved its way across the screen, still distant, yet ever closer. In the forward radar, Earth appeared, blue against the blackness, large. Ted closed a knife switch, and the engines swallowed their own roar until there was only silence again and the harsh breathing of the men.

“Does that do it?” Forbes asked. There was bitterness in his voice, but there was concern too.

“I think so.”

“Are you sure?”

“No, sir.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“When will we know?” Dr. Gehardt asked.

“When we actually come down,” Ted said. “We’ll start braking when we get a little closer to the Moon.”

“How close?” Forbes asked.

“I figure we should start braking when the Moon is about two hundred miles below us.”

“What...”

“It’s not so risky as it sounds, sir,” Ted said.

“Not risky? Traveling at something like 5,000 miles an hour?”

“If we can produce a deceleration of one gravity with our rockets — and I know we can — we’ll be able to check our fall in about four minutes. That should bring us down to the surface.”

“Let the boy do it his way,” Dr. Phelps said.

“Sure,” Forbes said sarcastically. “It’s only our necks.”

In the radar screen the Moon grew larger. The rocket charged through space like a knight in silver armor. On the instrument panel, the electronic impulses being sent to the Moon’s surface bounced back with blinding rapidity, recording the distances. A thousand miles. Five hundred miles. Four hundred miles. Three hundred miles.

“Better take to the couches,” Ted said.

“Are we ready to land?”

“Yes. Almost.”

“Are we going to come down near the supplies?”

“I... I think so.”

He eyed the radar screen again, the Moon completely filling it now. The men shuffled to the couches, removed their sandals, and strapped themselves in. Ted climbed into his own couch, swinging the portable control panel into place. His eyes never left the instruments as his finger hovered over the button that would release the fury of the engines once more. The range marker dropped to two-fifty, two-forty, two-thirty...

The rocket fell toward the Moon, its blasting tubes pointing toward the surface, its nose turned away from the satellite. The open ends of the tubes were blackened and scorched — dead holes punched in a silver frame.

And suddenly they belched fire, and the ship seemed to tremble with the sudden thrust. A livid tail of yellow lashed at the sky, ripping at the blackness.

The ship shuddered, swallowing its tail as it plunged downward.

Together, like two wrestlers, the rocket and the Moon reached for each other.

Chapter 9 Crashup