"Roger."

Stetson grabbed the tether and moved quickly to the ladder that led to the ground. Looking down and wondering how he and Dr. Xu were going to get the pilot up to the top deck, he again cursed the engineers who designed the lander with the crew compartment so far off the ground, this time with the microphone off. "Jacka.s.ses."

By the time Stetson reached Dr. Xu and the motionless pilot, they had been without power for about twenty minutes.

Tony's voice coming through the radio startled him. "Bill, I believe the captain is going to be okay. I put her on oxygen the minute I could get to her, and her color is starting to return. It was close. She's still out cold, though."

"That's good news, Tony. I wish we could tell her friend here. Let's hope we are as lucky with these two. I don't know how long she was without power, but it can't have been very long or she would have been dead."

Not wasting any time, Stetson had been working with the doctor in pulling Ming Feng up from the lunar surface and placing his bulky s.p.a.cesuit arms over their shoulders. He looked over at the Chinese doctor and saw from the look on his face through the suit's visor that he was ready to go.

Hearing only his breathing, Stetson and Dr. Xu walked across the dimly lit lunar surface toward the Altair lander. The walk seemed to be taking a long time to Stetson; he could only imagine how long it seemed to the doctor. Finally, they reached the base of the lander.

"Tony. I'm trying to tell the doctor to take the end of the tether and to start climbing the ladder. But without a radio, I'm not sure how to explain it."

"Bill! Touch your faceplates and scream!"

"Think that'll work?"

"Try it."

"Okay." Bill faced the Chinese astronaut and leaned his faces.h.i.+eld over until they touched. At first Dr. Xu started to back away, but Stetson shouted as they came into contact, and the man paused. "Can you hear me?"

"Yes, but barely."

"d.a.m.n, Tony, it works."

"How about that."

"Listen!" Bill shouted again. "Take this up the ladder! Then I'll attach the other end to him. Once on top, loop it over a strut and start pulling while I push him up from underneath. Understand?"

"Understand! Will do!" was Xu's reply.

Moments later, Dr. Xu, holding the tether in one hand, began climbing. The first five feet went smoothly, but then he abruptly stopped. After pausing, he resumed his ascent, but at a slower and more clumsy-appearing gait.

"Tony, can you see him? What is going on?"

"He looks to be confused as best I can tell, Bill," Tony said.

"He stopped being much help and has become real d.a.m.n clumsy."

"His extremities must be getting very cold, Bill. He probably has to watch his hands and feet on each and every step since he isn't getting any feedback from them. One misstep near the top and we may lose him." Bill was beginning to be glad he had brought Anthony Chow, M.D. along.

Dr. Xu was moving very slowly at this point. He was only slightly more than halfway up and Stetson was starting to doubt that he could make it. Stetson looked around, trying to come up with plan B.

"He's taking too long," said Stetson.

Painfully slowly, the doctor climbed to within the last few rungs of the ladder from the top. He swayed, and Stetson steeled himself for what seemed inevitable-a twenty-foot fall to the lunar surface. The swaying stopped and the doctor reached for the next rung. Finally, he made it to the top and the relative safety of the platform, upon which he collapsed. Miraculously, he did not drop the tether.

Stetson paused, not sure of what he should do next. Without the Chinese doctor pulling while he pushed, it would be impossible to get the unconscious pilot to the top of the ladder.

The tether moved, slowly at first, and then it rapidly became taut. Looking up, Stetson was surprised to see Tony Chow's faceplate looking down at him. Chow gave him the thumbs-up sign.

"Bill, let's get your guy up here, and then one of us can go through the airlock with him. If you're ready, then let's get this done." Tony's voice sounded fresh, enthusiastic, and very, very good.

Stetson grabbed and lifted the limp pilot's body as Tony pulled it from above using the rope. Slowly they lifted him up to the platform that surrounded the habitat.

Once on top, they carried the two Chinese to the s.h.i.+p's airlock and stuffed them inside. The airlock was designed to hold two fully suited astronauts who were standing under their own power. Getting two limp bodies upright and into a room that was only slightly larger than a broom closet with a third astronaut was quite a challenge.

As he waited for the airlock to cycle and his turn to enter, Stetson looked out over the lunar surface toward the boulders that obscured the damaged Chinese lander. It is so beautiful, It is so beautiful, he thought. he thought.

At first Stetson thought his eyes were playing tricks on him, but he soon realized that the motion in the distance was real. The shape of another s.p.a.cesuited human was now clearly visible as it walked toward the American lander.

"What the...?" Stetson said. "Tony, I think the fourth taikonaut has decided to join us. He's walking toward us now."

"I wonder what took him so long. Does he look like he'll need help? He's bound to be out of power like these guys."

"Don't know," Stetson said. "I can't tell. He doesn't look like he needs help. When you get inside, give him a shout."

Another five minutes went by before Stetson heard anything from Chow. In the meantime, the Chinese taikonaut had gotten much closer. From what Stetson could tell, he didn't look like he was going to need any help.

"Bill. I'm in. I've got three unconscious Chinese in here. They are all breathing, but it's too early to tell if there has been any brain damage. But everywhere I step, there's people."

"Good work, Tony." This drew a smile from Stetson and was really the first good news he'd had in an hour or two. "That's a good problem to have. There'll soon be two more of us in there. Hopefully, we will be able to stand under our own power."

"That's a good thing. It's getting pretty crowded in here," Chow replied.

"Hey, how'd you know we could touch helmets and talk like that?" Bill asked Chow.

"I read it in a science fiction novel once when I was a kid. Have s.p.a.cesuit Will Travel Have s.p.a.cesuit Will Travel or something like that." or something like that."

"I'll be d.a.m.ned."

"Well, if you are, it'll be standing room only."

Stetson figured it must be very crowded at maximum capacity inside the Altair now. The simple fact of the matter being that the Altair's ascent stage was designed to hold four people under very Spartan conditions. To sleep, the astronauts would string hammocks and sleep two on each side with one directly above another. There was not enough room to have four cots on the floor. For getting back into s.p.a.ce, it was a.s.sumed that the four astronauts would be standing. Six standing astronauts would be a tight fit, but doable. Having one or more of their number lying on the ground could make things complicated. Having three on the floor was something he hadn't planned on.

"Agreed, Tony," Stetson replied. "That's a good problem to have. I'm just glad that we'll be coming home with all of them."

Stetson walked to the ladder and looked down as taikonaut number four approached. The Chinese astronaut looked briefly upward and began to climb the ladder toward Stetson.

A few minutes later, Bill Stetson and Chinese Political Officer Zhi Feng cycled through the airlock and into the Altair.

Chapter 25.

Everybody except the injured pilot seemed to have strong vitals. Bill rummaged through some of the last-minute supplies that had been stored aboard the Orion and then transferred into the Altair after launch. The key supplies were replacement power packs for the Chinese s.p.a.cesuits. Bill pulled them from a storage bin Velcroed to the rear wall and started to examine how to install them. The Chinese engineer, the only conscious member of the Harmony Harmony crew at the moment, saw what Bill had and moved carefully around his limp crewmates strewn about to get a closer look. crew at the moment, saw what Bill had and moved carefully around his limp crewmates strewn about to get a closer look.

"I can do this." He looked at Bill and held out a hand to take the power cells. "Do you have a regular screwdriver?"

"I have two." Bill handed the man half of the cargo and reached in a sleeve pocket for a screwdriver. Both of the men had removed their helmets and gloves but were still in their suits.

"Why do we need these? There is air in here." The Chinese taikonaut seemed confused and a bit more than concerned to Bill. But Stetson was going to cut the man some slack since he had been practically left for dead for several days now.

"We're all too heavy. This s.h.i.+p's engines are a precursor to the ones that Altair will eventually have. This one just wasn't ready for a big, bulky sample-return mission. We're gonna have to go outside and remove some exterior panels in order to be light enough to get us all up to lunar orbit." Bill pointed at two of the panels that would have to go. The two panels alone were three hundred kilograms.

"I see. China was not the only country with technical constraints."

"More like political." Bill shrugged. "The on-again, off-again, on-again nature of politics and the American s.p.a.ce program left Altair as the last vehicle to be finished, and at a third of the originally planned budget."

"Ha, the American might is not so great after all." Bill didn't know how to respond to the man, so he didn't.

"We've got to get these suits back up and running." He nodded to the suits and started to work. Stetson wasn't sure that he liked the man's att.i.tude and wasn't all that happy about talking with him at the moment.

"Mission control, we're all suited up and ready to begin the exterior skin modifications." Tony scanned the interior of the s.h.i.+p and made certain that all of the pa.s.sengers had their suits sealed off. Three were still unconscious, so he had to check them each himself. Bill had recruited the coherent engineer fellow to go outside and do the work on the s.p.a.cecraft. Tony wasn't sure if Bill didn't like leaving the Chinese inside all by themselves with them locked outside or if he just thought that the doctor in the bunch should stay inside with his patients.

"Roger that, Mercy I Mercy I. Pipe Bill through, and we'll walk him through the mods."

"The line is open, Houston."

"Roger that, Mercy I Mercy I. Begin decompressing the cabin."

Tony stood with his back against the wall, leaning a bit to take the weight off as he cycled the interior-pressure vents. He was tired. It had taken him and Bill and Zhi nearly two hours to cycle all of their superfluous supplies and whatnot out to the lunar surface. Now there was deconstruction work to be done. Sure, all six of them could stand inside the vehicle, very closely. Very. Closely. But they were still too heavy to get off the surface. The mission had been planned to take four American astronauts to the lunar surface and back on a shoestring budget and a very compressed schedule. This version of the Altair was only a limited prototype and not the final design of the vehicle that would fly on future flights, if there were any. The politics of the Constellation program to send Americans back to the Moon had been quite a battle. The program had used a majority of NASA's budget since 2011.

The Apollo-era program had about the same amount of money, sixteen or so billion dollars per year, between the mid-1960s and early 1970s. Extrapolating the Apollo budget to modern-day dollars, taking into account inflation, would be about one hundred and two billion dollars per year. So, it was clear that the NASA budget was about six to seven times underfunded. It was ridiculous how low the funding for the American s.p.a.ce program had become while any number of ent.i.tlement programs were running at hundreds of billions of dollars per year with no public debate on shutting them down. And, to top all that off, the robotic-probe planetary scientists had a powerful lobby on Capitol Hill literally able to force NASA to use up about a quarter of its budget for unmanned probes to the outer planets, comets, asteroids, and other places like Pluto. The science return on those missions versus the science return on manned missions was often the subject of heated debate.

Needless to say, the Altair, being the last of the vehicles to be constructed in the project, was built on a fraction of the planned budget. It was slimmed down, and every corner that could have been cut on its design and construction was was cut. The engine was smaller, the frame bulkier, than it should have been, and the fuel tanks were smaller. There was very little margin left for extra weight with four occupants. With six, they were way overweight, and even throwing everything overboard was a couple hundred kilograms short, with no margin for error. The engineers back at NASA had figured out a work-around, but that meant some major modifications to the vehicle's exterior structure. cut. The engine was smaller, the frame bulkier, than it should have been, and the fuel tanks were smaller. There was very little margin left for extra weight with four occupants. With six, they were way overweight, and even throwing everything overboard was a couple hundred kilograms short, with no margin for error. The engineers back at NASA had figured out a work-around, but that meant some major modifications to the vehicle's exterior structure.

Tony could faintly hear some whirring, more like buzzing noises, vibrating through the structure of the s.h.i.+p and into his helmet that was propped against the wall. His guess was that it was from the cordless power tools being used outside. It took another hour for the engineers at Johnson s.p.a.ce Center to talk Bill and Zhi through which bolts to remove. Where to pry at a panel. When and where to hit something with a hammer. And then all of a sudden a large screwdriver blade poked through the wall from the outside. Tony listened, only half paying attention, and nearly dozed off at one point, but the vibration of a saw blade cutting through a metal panel fastener startled him to attention. Then all of a sudden he heard Bill.

"There, Zhi. Hold it there." Then there was a pause. "Step out of the way and hold on to something."

"Okay, Tony," the engineer at Houston said. "Very carefully, hold on to the pilot-station panel and kick the skin panel with the bottom of your boot."

"Uh, roger that, Houston." Tony carefully found himself a handhold. He didn't want to bounce out with the panel and go flying onto the surface some twenty or more feet below. Once he a.s.sured himself he was secure, he prepared to kick. "Kicking in three, two, one." Clank. Clank. The vibration of the kick resounded through the structure of the cabin. The vibration of the kick resounded through the structure of the cabin.

"It didn't come free," Bill pointed out.

"We expected that, Bill," Houston responded. "Our models show it will take a minimum of three kicks. Tony, when you're ready, kick it again."

"Roger that," Tony replied and steadied himself again. "Kicking in three, two, one." This time the panel surprised Tony and the engineers at Houston since it let go and sailed out across the lunar surface quietly until it skidded to a stop somewhere out there in the darkness.

"Great, Tony!" Stetson exclaimed.

"Houston, it came free," Tony acknowledged. There was some chatter behind the engineer's voice that sounded almost like bickering. "Either your models were wrong, or I can kick harder than you guys thought."

"Good job, Mercy I Mercy I. Be alert that the guys down here have made several wisecracks about always knowing that you were stubborn as a mule, but they didn't realize you could kick like one, too."

"Copy that, Houston," Tony said with a bit of an unenthusiastic laugh.

"Get ready to repeat that process," Stetson instructed.

"Roger that, Bill."

"We are go for second panel removal," Houston said.

"No rest for the wicked, hey, boys?" Tony added.

"Let's get to work, Zhi." Stetson didn't waste time in moving on to the second panel. "Maybe this one will be easier since we've got experience now."

It wasn't.

It took a total of five hours and thirteen minutes for Stetson and Chow and Zhi to completely prepare the Altair for its return to s.p.a.ce. For the first two and a half hours, Tony, Bill, and Zhi had tossed supplies out of the airlock. The remainder of the time was pulling the exterior panels. Only moments after the first panel came off, both Hui and Dr. Xu regained consciousness and were able to help. Once they were all six back inside the Altair, it was still crowded but at least now they had an entire wall out, so the view was fantastic. Well, it would have been fantastic had it been daytime and they could have seen anything. Actually, the view was extremely limited and very low light, but it was still the Moon. So, as far as the astronauts were concerned, the view was fantastic. It didn't hurt that they could just see the Earth on the horizon s.h.i.+mmering blue and white and begging them to come home.

At least at this point any extra baggage could just be tossed through the open hole in the s.h.i.+p. They were careful to cover the edges of any rough pieces of metal with special tape that they had brought along for just that purpose. Dr. Xu and Hui made themselves busy covering the opening rough spots very carefully. It would have been very bad to tear a suit on a jagged edge during the three-hour ascent to the Orion capsule in orbit.

"Houston, this is Mercy I Mercy I. We just chucked the last of the ballast overboard, and we're almost through the prelaunch checklist. Have you uploaded the ascent trajectory yet?" Chow was the one speaking to ground control while Stetson continued locking things down for the ride to s.p.a.ce. They had added some extra strapping in order to tie themselves to the wall panels during ascent. n.o.body at Houston liked this part of the mission, but it had to be done.

"Mercy I, this is Houston. Yes, the trajectory was just uploaded. If you go on time, you'll be on an optimized return to Orion for the trip home. Medical wants to know your a.s.sessment of your pa.s.sengers' conditions." this is Houston. Yes, the trajectory was just uploaded. If you go on time, you'll be on an optimized return to Orion for the trip home. Medical wants to know your a.s.sessment of your pa.s.sengers' conditions."

"Well," Chow began, "Captain Hui is in good spirits and seems fine. Dr. Xu is also okay. He's been at the pilot's side since he awoke. The pilot is still out cold. They said he's been that way for days. And the engineer, Zhi, he's, well, he's here. He hasn't said much since he came aboard, even when he was helping Bill with the modifications."

Chow turned to face Captain Hui and said, "Captain, are you and your people ready to go home?"

"Absolutely." Hui smiled.

"Houston, her smile said it all. We'll be ready at T minus zero."

Before returning to his own business, Chow looked at Zhi one more time. Zhi looked back; his gaze was more of a stare than polite eye contact. Chow thought, Geez, you'd think he didn't want to be rescued. Why'd he help us if he doesn't want to go home? I've seen that look before. He must be in shock or, worse, experiencing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Geez, you'd think he didn't want to be rescued. Why'd he help us if he doesn't want to go home? I've seen that look before. He must be in shock or, worse, experiencing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

An hour and fifteen minutes later, the six-person crew of the Altair was ready to leave the Moon. Unlike when Gene Cernan had departed those many years before, there were no lofty words or promises of a peaceful return. There was simply the business of getting ready to launch and the perfunctory exchanges with the control center back home.

The countdown clock counted backward toward zero as five of the six astronauts stood side by side, with Hui and Xu sharing handholds intended for use by only one astronaut during this phase of the mission. The fallen pilot, Ming Feng, was propped against one wall, and both Captain Hui and Dr. Xu had to stand against him, wedging him in place. He was strapped against the handholds. There was simply no room to stand elsewhere. Zhi Feng stood against one wall, motionless and still quiet.

"Mercy I, the clock is ticking," Houston announced.

"Alright, everybody brace for lift-off!" Stetson ordered his crewman and pa.s.sengers. "Tony, we've got a green light on the thruster-pump valve."

"Roger that, TPV is go."

"Here it comes!" Stetson held fast and did his best to scan the screens and the occupants of the little s.h.i.+p as the burn kicked in. It was clear that they all felt the initial lunge. The Altair's main engine ignited, and they rose from the surface quickly at first. Due to the jolt, everyone in the cabin had to readjust their footing to keep from falling.

"Houston, this is Bill. Present velocity is one point eight kilometers per second and increasing." Bill did his best to hold on and keep up with the instruments.