Kristine Kathryn Rusch -- Recovering Apollo 8.pdf

The author's latest Retrieval Artist novel, Paloma, was published late last year by Roc and

she had stories in Analog and the North American Review around the same time. In her

latest tale for Asimov's, a man's life-long obsession becomes both his life story and the

story of…

Recovering Apollo 8

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Asimov's Science Fiction

February, 2007

Part One: 2007

Richard remembered it wrong. He remembered it as if it were a paint-ing, and he were

observing it, instead of a living breathing memory that he had a part of.

The image was so vivid, in fact, that he had had it painted with the first of what would

become obscene profits from his business, and placed the painting in his office—each

version of his office, the latter ones growing so big that he had to find a special way to

display the painting, a way to help it remain the center of his vision.

The false memory—and the painting—went like this:

He stands in his backyard. To his left, there is the swing set; to his right, clotheslines

running forward like railroad tracks.

He is eight, small for his age, very blond, his features unformed. His face is turned

toward the night sky, the Moon larger than it ever is. It il-luminates his face like a halo from a

medieval religious painting; its whiteness so vivid that it seems more alive than he does.

He, however, is not looking at the Moon. He is looking beyond it where a small

cone-shaped ship heads toward the darkness. The ship is almost invisible, except for one

edge that catches the Moon's reflected light. A shimmer comes off the ship, just enough to

make it seem as if the ship is expending its last bit of energy in a desperate attempt to save

itself, an attempt even he—at eight—knows will fail.

Someone once asked him why he had a painting about loss as the focus of his office.

He was stunned.

He did not think of the painting, or the memory for that matter, as something that

represented loss.

Instead, it represented hope. That last, desperate attempt would not have happened

without the hope that it might work.

That's what he used to say.

What he thought was that the hope resided in the boy, in his memory, and in his desire

to change one of the most significant moments of his past.

The real memory was prosaic:

The kitchen was painted bright yellow and small, although it didn't seem small then.

Behind his chair were the counters, cupboards and a deep sink with a small window above

it, a window that overlooked the sidewalk to the garage. To his left, two more windows

overlooked the large yard and the rest of the block. The stove was directly across from him.

He always pictured his mother standing at it, even though she had a chair at the table as

well. His father's chair was to his left, beneath the windows.

The radio sat on top of the refrigerator, which wasn't too far from the stove. But the

center of the room, to his right and almost behind him, was the television, which remained

on constantly.

His father could read at the table, but Richard could not. His mother tried to converse

with him, but by his late childhood, the gaps in their IQs had started to show.

She was a smart woman, but he was off the charts. His father, who could at least

comprehend some of what his son was saying, remained silent in the face of his son'

genius. Silent and proud. They shared a name: Richard J. Johansenn, the J. standing for

Jacob, after the same man, the family patriarch, his father's father—the man who had come

to this country with his parents at the age of eight, hoping for—and discov-ering—a better

world.

That night, December 24,1968, the house was decorated for Christmas. Pine boughs

on the dining room table, Christmas cards in a sleigh on top of the living room's television

set. Candles at the kitchen table, which his father complained about every time he opened

his newspaper. The scent of pine, of candle wax, of cookies.

His mother baked her way to the holiday and beyond; it was a wonder, with all those

sweets surrounding him, that he never became fat. That night, however, they would have a

regular dinner, since Christmas Eve was not their holiday; their celebration happened

Christmas Day.

Yet he was excited. He loved the season—the food, the music, the lights against the

dark night sky. Even the snow, something he usually ab-horred, seemed beautiful. He would

stand on its icy crust and look up, searching for constellations or just staring at the Moon

herself, wonder-ing how something like that could be so distant and so cold.

That night, his mother called him in for dinner. He had been staring at the Moon through

the telescope that his father had given him for his eighth birthday in July. He'd hoped to see

Apollo 8 on its way to the lunar orbit.

On its way to history.

Instead, he came inside and sat down to a roast beef (or meatloaf or corned beef and

cabbage) dinner, turning his chair slightly so that he could see the television. Walter

Cronkite—the epitome, Richard thought, of the reliable adult male—reported from Mission

Control, looking seri-ous and boyish at the same time.

Cronkite loved the adventure of space almost as much as Richard did. And Cronkite

got to be as close to it as a man could get and still not be part of it.

What Richard didn't like were the simulated pictures. It was impossi-ble to film Apollo 8

on its voyage, so some poor SOB drew images.

At the time, Richard, like the rest of the country, had focused on the LOS zone—the

Loss Of Signal zone on the dark side of the Moon. If the astro-nauts reached that, they were

part of the lunar orbit, sixty-nine miles from the lunar surface. But the great American

unwashed wouldn't know the as-tronauts had succeeded until they came out of the LOS

zone.

The LOS zone scared everyone. Even Richard's father, who rarely ad-mitted being

scared.

Richard's father, the high school math and science teacher, who sat down with his son

on Saturday, December 21—the day Apollo 8 lifted off—and explained, as best he could,

orbital mechanics. He showed Richard the equations, and tried to explain the risk the

astronauts were taking.

One error in the math, one slight miscalculation—even if it were acci-dental—a wobble

in the spacecraft's burn as it left Earth orbit, a miss of a few seconds—could send the

astronauts on a wider orbit around the Moon, or a wider Earth orbit. Or, God forbid, a

straight trajectory away from Earth, away from the Moon, and into the great unknown, never

to return.

Richard's mother thought her husband was helping his son with home-work. When she

discovered his true purpose, she dragged him into their bedroom for one of their whisper

fights.

What do you think you're doing? she asked. He's eight.

He needs to understand, his father said.

No, he doesn't, she said. He'll be frightened for days.

And if they miss? his father said. I'll have to explain it then.

Her voice had a tightness as she said, They won't miss.

But they did.

They missed.

Mission Control had a hunch during the LOS, but they didn't confirm the hunch with the

astronauts, not right away. They asked for a few things, another controlled burn, hoping that

the ship might move back on track, a few more reports than usual just to get the men's

voices on tape while they were still calm (apparently), but nothing they did changed the

tragic fact that the astronauts would not return to Earth.

They would float forever in the darkness of space.

And for a while, they didn't know. The ship itself had limited control and almost no

telemetry. The astronauts had to rely on Mission Control for all of their orbital information—in

fact, for most of their critical infor-mation.

Later, it came out that the astronauts deduced the problem almost im-mediately, and

tried to come up with solutions on their own.

Of course, there were none.

Which was why Cronkite looked so tense that Christmas Eve, sitting in the area cleared

for broadcasters in Mission Control. Cronkite had known that the three astronauts were still

alive, would remain alive for days as their little capsule headed into the vast beyond. They

stayed in radio con-tact for longer than anyone felt comfortable with, and because they were

heroes, they never complained.

They spoke of the plainness of the Moon, and the beauty of the Earth viewed from

beyond. Apparently, on a closed circuit, they spoke to their wives and children one final time.

They belonged to the Earth, as long as the radio signal held. As long as their oxygen held.

As long as their hope held.

That was what Richard remembered: he remembered the hope.

No one played the tape any longer of Lovell, Borman, and Anders, talk-ing about the

future. The future had come and gone. What reporters and documentarians and historians

played nowadays were the goodbyes, or, if they were more charitable, the descriptions of

Earth—how beautiful it looked; how small; how united.

It's hard to believe, Lovell said in what would become his most famous quote, that such

a beautiful place can house so many angry people. From a distance, it looks like the

entire planet is at peace.

Of course it wasn't.

But that didn't concern Richard then.

What worried him—what frightened him—was that this failure of the space program

would end the program.

It worried the astronauts as well. They made a joint appeal with what would be damn

close to their last breath.

This is not a failure. We're proud to be the first humans to venture be-yond the Moon.

Please continue the space program. Get us to the Moon. Get a base on the Moon. Send

another group to explore the solar system — one who can report back to you. Do it in our

name, and with our blessing.

Merry Christmas to all.

And to all, a good night.

That broadcast brought Richard's mother to tears. Richard's father put a strong hand on

Richard's shoulder. And Walter Cronkite, that stalwart adult, removed his glasses, rubbed

his eyes for a moment, and gathered himself, much as he had done five years earlier when

a president died un-expectedly.

Cronkite did not say much more. He did not play the radio reports from the bitter end.

He let Lovell, Borman and Anders' desired last statement be their last statement.

He did not speculate on the means of their deaths, nor did he focus on the failure.

He focused on the future.

He focused on the hope.

And so did Richard—

At least, he tried.

But while he worked toward the conquest of space, while he studied his physics and

astronomy, remained in great physical condition so that he could become an astronaut at a

moment's notice, he would look through his telescope into the darkness beyond the

Moon—and wonder:

What had they seen in those last hours?

What had they felt?

And where were they now?

Nearly forty years later, they were coming home.

Or as close to home as they could get with a dead ship and a dead crew, and no one

heading out to greet them.

Apollo 8 had ended up in an elliptical orbit around the sun, much as the experts

predicted might happen. The orbit took just over sixteen months to complete, but kept the

small craft far above the plane of the Earth's or-bit most of the time. The first time Apollo 8

had come home, or at least close to home, it had been just over eighteen years.

That first time they were discovered almost by accident. Sunlight, glinting off the

capsule, drew the attention of amateur astronomers all over the world. Something small,

something insignificant, reflecting light in an unusual way.

People speculated about what it was, what it might be. Giant telescopes from the Lowell

Observatory to the new orbiting telescope began track-ing it, and pictures came in, pictures

showing a familiar conical shape.

It couldn't be, the experts said.

But it was.

Everyone hoped it was.

Richard spent those heady days begging his friends at the University of Wisconsin's

observatory to turn their telescope toward it—ruining re-search, he was sure, and he didn't

care. He wasn't even an astronomy stu-dent any longer. He had done his post-grad studies

in aeronautics and en-gineering and had just started the company that would make him the

country's first billionaire.

But in those days, he was still a student, with little power and even less control.

In the end, he had to go to the outskirts of town, away from the light, and try to see the

capsule for himself. He stood in the deep cold, the an-kle-deep snow, and stared for hours.

Finally, he convinced himself that he saw a wink of light, that it wasn't space dust or the

space station the U.S. was building in Earth orbit, or even some of the satellites that had

been launched in the last few years.

No, he convinced himself he saw the ship, and that fueled his obsession even more.

Perhaps that, more than the incorrect memory of the original loss, caused the wink of

light on the capsule in his painting.

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