Alone on the moon, p.1
Alone on the Moon, page 1
part #5 of Altered Space Series
Table of Contents
Golden
The Thirteenth Cosmonaut
Alone on the Moon
Acknowledgments
"Brennan has written a deeply original story imagining an alternate reality in the Cold War. An account of two Soviet cosmonauts on a dangerous mission to the moon becomes, in Brennan’s hands, a character study about ambition, luck, and courage from the halcyon days of the space race. As with his earlier book on Gagarin, Public Loneliness, Brennan has an uncanny ability to dig deeper into the world of the spacefarer in a way that is rare, satisfying, and often unsettling. A great addition to his canon."
― Asif A. Siddiqi, author, The Red Rockets' Glare: Spaceflight and the Russian Imagination, 1857–1957
PRAISE FOR ALONE ON THE MOON
"Gerald Brennan is the poet laureate of the desolation of space, a master of capturing it not as the operatic backdrop of movie science fiction, but as the darkly oppressive deadly void between worlds. Alone on the Moon is Brennan in peak form―it's Apollo 13 minus Hollywood, a very human exploration of an alternate history moon mission...right up to its nail-biting conclusion."
― David Hitt, author, Homesteading Space: The Skylab Story
OTHER BOOKS IN THE SERIES
INFINITE BLUES
“Brennan’s most ambitious novel to date is an engaging adventure thriller showing how just a few changed moments in history—perhaps even chosen by the reader themselves—can alter our world forever. The spine-chilling descriptions will remain with me long after finishing it.”
— Francis French, author, In the Shadow of the Moon
ISLAND OF CLOUDS
“Brennan is clearly having a ball here, reimagining the what-ifs and might-have-beens from the golden age of space exploration. His research, passion, authenticity, and exuberant writing all bring the implausible to life--man and machine, earth and moon. For fans of Andy Weir's The Martian, NASA's Apollo era, 2001: A Space Odyssey, the 60s and 70s, Star Trek, and anything by Bradbury, Bukowski or Le Guin. Speculative sci-fi at its finest.”
— Neal Thompson, author, Light this Candle: The Life and Times of Alan Shepard, America's First Spaceman
ALONE ON THE MOON
Other titles in the series:
Zero Phase: Apollo 13 on the Moon
Public Loneliness: Yuri Gagarin’s Circumlunar Flight
Island of Clouds: The Great 1972 Venus Flyby
Infinite Blues: A Cold War Fever Dream
ALONE ON THE MOON
A SOVIET LUNAR ODYSSEY
PART OF THE ALTERED SPACE SERIES
GERALD BRENNAN
TORTOISE BOOKS
CHICAGO, IL
FIRST EDITION, MAY, 2022
Copyright © 2022 by Gerald D. Brennan III
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Convention
Published in the United States by Tortoise Books
www.tortoisebooks.com
ASIN: B09HX4JDWC
ISBN-13: 978-1-948954-65-5
This book is a work of fiction. All characters, scenes and situations are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Front Cover: AS15-96-13085, A view featuring the Moon's "Southern Sea". Image credit: National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Scanning credit: Kipp Teague
Interior Image: Detail from N1-L3 line drawing, ©Alexander Shliadinsky. Used with permission.
Soyuz 7K-OK line drawing, ©Michael J. Mackowski. Used with permission.
Tortoise Books Logo Copyright ©2022 by Tortoise Books. Original artwork by Rachele O’Hare.
With eternal gratitude to Giano Cromley for climbing aboard an untested craft and embarking on a voyage into the unknown. Your guidance and friendship have been indispensable.
“’The essence of man,’ Budach said, chewing slowly, ‘lies in his astonishing ability to get used to anything. There’s nothing in nature that man could not learn to live with. Neither horse nor dog nor mouse has this property. Probably God, as he was creating man, guessed the torments he was condemning him to and gave him an enormous reserve of strength and patience.’”
– Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Hard to be a God
Golden
We cannot see anything through the windows of our spacecraft.
We are coasting through cosmic space, between the earth and moon. One might expect glorious vistas: the cloud-mottled blue of our home, the intricately pockmarked gray of our destination. But our orientation’s wrong for that. The nose of the spaceship is pointed at the moon, and the whole assembly’s spinning slowly about the roll axis, like a pig roasting on a spit. So the various portholes are taking their turns pointing at the blinding sun, or off into the blackness of space.
And it is indeed black. For in this sun-soaked place, the pupils contract enough that starlight is not visible to the naked eye. So: no panoramas of the galaxy spread out before us; we cannot even see individual stars, except by placing covers on the portholes and looking through the periscope.
Still, Leonov—or Blondie, as Yuri used to call him, with a familiarity I never had—has retrieved a pad of paper, an artist’s sketchpad, and is pulling out charcoal looking to create…what? A work of art? Here, floating in space, awkwardly holding everything with no gravity to keep it in place, he is going to create a masterpiece?
“We can’t see anything,” I point out. “What are you going to draw? You’re going to look through the periscope to see one single star? One crater on the moon?”
“We can see the interior.”
“You could have drawn that back on earth. Spent some extra time in the training mockup.”
He allows me a slender smile: a thin crescent, swiftly waning. “We could have done a lot of things back on earth, Boris.”
He struggles to get the drawing pad in place, pressed between wrist and thigh; when that fails to satisfy he abandons it for another tactic, holding the pad tightly in one hand and sketching loosely with the other. Trying to sketch loosely. I drift around to get out of his way, and shake my weightless head. Add a noise of disdain.
“It feels different up here,” he adds. “The light is different.”
“You’re not worried?”
“About the mission?” A weightless nod towards the unseen moon, on which he’s scheduled to leave humanity’s first footprints. All alone.
“About what people will think. If anything goes wrong. That you were distracted by…frivolities.”
“Nothing’s going to go wrong.”
“You’ll jinx us, by saying that.”
“I’ve sketched up here before, you know.” Another attempt at a line of charcoal. It does not look successful. Never-theless, he continues. “On Sunrise-2. I made four quick sketches right after my spacewalk, while the memories were still fresh.”
“Four sketches.”
“It was quite an experience! To be the first one out there, floating alone in cosmic space…” His eyes grow distant. He was indeed the first one out there; Yuri and the others were up here first, to be sure, but they had all still been cocooned in the metal shells of their spaceships. He was the first to get out there alone, to be able to look this way or that and see, either way, the infinite blackness. A swimmer in the cosmic ocean. A more thrilling first than Yuri’s…it doesn’t seem fair that he should get yet another.
Still: “Four sketches.”
“There was a lot to remember! The spacecraft was bathed in this…blinding white golden light. Impossible to capture with charcoal, unfortunately. I tried to get it right in my paintings. But I’m not sure it’s ever been as vivid as it is in my memories…”
“I have a memory. Of you talking to Sergei Pavlovich.” Korolev, the Chief Designer. “That big party, at OKB-1, right before he went to the hospital for the first time. I was standing behind you as you talked to him.”
“You were spying on me.”
“Not an uncommon preoccupation, you must admit. I heard you telling him about the flight. You said, very distinctly, that you had made three sketches.”
Floating, our faces are fuller than normal: blood unhindered by gravity, puffing up the face and eyes. Do I see an extra red flush of shame? An unfamiliar emotion for the golden man, the people’s idol…
He looks away.
I continue: “What is the point? Making a big story bigger. What is the need? To put one more sketch on exhibit? To give away one more keepsake? Come to think of it, how do we know you’ve drawn anything in space? If you’re having so much trouble with it now…”
“You could let me have some fun, at least.” He turns his attention back to the sketchpad. Still, he allows me a fuller smile this time, punctuated by a shake of the head—a quick rotation about the yaw axis, initiated and reversed and arrested.
•••
We were not supposed to be crewmembers for this, the greatest mission. We were not supposed to be crewmembers—but then came the accident.
We have never been friends. Is that his fault or mine? Who can say. He says every person is unique, so every relationship is unique; he is always talking about crew compatibility, as if he’s a wine drinker searching through proper pairings. Whereas I feel like everyone who mentions these things is looking for a sanitized reason to express their prejudices.
I retrieve my dinner from the storage area. A can of beef tongue and a packet of bl ack bread. I pull myself through the interior hatch and into the cramped descent module so I can eat in peace. Lips tight on my false front teeth: frustrating memories.
“Dining alone?” he calls through the open hatch.
“I’m letting you have your fun.”
“If we eat together enough, maybe we’ll be friends. Like the saying goes: wait and be patient. You’ll love your wife eventually.”
“There are two of us up here, and two modules. It seems like a satisfactory arrangement.” I open the beef and start eating: fatty and salty and all mine.
He floats in nevertheless, pad and charcoal in hand. “I know what it was. Why it was easier last time. I was strapped in.” A full smile now, a cursed smile. “There are two seats in here. It seems like a satisfactory arrangement.”
My meal floats in front of me, parked in empty space in the middle of the module; I have to shepherd it out of the way to make room for the golden boy. I sigh so he knows it’s an effort.
“Beef?” he says, with a nod at the tin. “You didn’t want the sausage?”
“I like the beef.” Was it an innocuous question? Or his way of probing about dietary restrictions—that word, the other half of me, the one that means all of me to some: Jew. “We have a broadcast coming up, do we not?”
“We do indeed. We should pretend to be friends, for the sake of socialist fraternity.”
“I’m a cosmonaut, not an actor. One flighty creative type is quite enough for a crew.”
“We should pretend to be friends.” He takes his place, oblivious to my discomfort.
“As long as we don’t have to share a fraternal kiss.”
“We will be brothers, in a sense. Once this is over.” Strapped in now, everything is easier for him; he starts fresh with a black circle, the empty void of the porthole. “I can show the camera a sketch or two. So people on Earth know I’ve drawn something in space.”
“There will still be doubters. Remember after your spacewalk? The Americans spread those rumors...”
He purses his lips, shakes his head. “As if we’d fake all that.”
“There are people who will doubt we’re up here, even.”
“We can prove it to them. Turn the spacecraft sideways. Show them the earth and the moon.”
“They will say we’re on a set at Mosfilm.”
“We will be floating.”
“A clever series of cuts, they’ll say. Footage from the studio, and film from a training flight on a Tupolev.”
“We can prove it to them.” His charcoal hand flies across the paper, laying down shapes. Outlines of panels and hatches. Light and loose and carefree.
•••
I retrieve the television camera from the storage locker. Our first broadcast will be starting soon. This is the one task we haven’t rehearsed. And yet: important, to the powers-that-be.
“What should I show them?” I ask Leonov. Whatever issues we’ve had, he’s still the commander.
“We’ll talk to Control about showing the earth and the moon. It won’t cost much propellant, to do it once.”
“And inside the spacecraft?”
“I have the sketches.”
“They’ll think you did them on the ground.”
“I can pretend I’m touching one up for the camera.”
More dishonesty. “All right. The Alexei Leonov Show. Starring the greatest cosmonaut, artist, and all-around human being of our time, with the earth and the moon in supporting roles.”
“We can take turns on camera, Boris!”
“Very well.”
“You’re a part of this, too. Enjoy it.” His weightless eyes make him look Oriental, call to mind the old musings about whether Russians are Europeans or Asians. And with both of us born in Siberia…
“Yes, sir.” I hand off the camera.
A radio voice in the headset: Komarov. “Golden Eagle…” (Our call sign, stolen from East-4.) “…Golden Eagle, this is Control. Come in, over.”
“Control, Golden Eagle. Go ahead, over.”
The radio waves take their time through cosmic space; the slight delay reminds us the distance is real. “Golden Eagle, please turn on your camera so we can confirm receipt of signal.”
“Very well…just a moment.” To me he nods. “Go into the orbital module. We can have you do…somersaults or something.”
I float through the hatch and into the roomier space. Somersaults. Circus tricks for the masses.
Again, Komarov: “Golden Eagle, Control. We have no signal. Is the camera on?”
“Control, here you go. Over.” He flips the switch and I can see the red light. All those eyes.
Or maybe not yet. “Golden Eagle, Control. We are barely getting an image. Please adjust your connections. Over.”
“Control, Golden Eagle. The broadcast is starting in five minutes, correct?”
“Affirmative, Golden Eagle.”
“Let me reposition the spacecraft stack. Our instruments are showing 96% on propellant. We’d like to show them something out the windows. Stand by.” He straps in loosely.
“Do you need me to…” I gesture towards the other seat.
“You’ll be fine.” He smiles. “The walls are padded.”
“Just like the asylum,” I mutter.
His hand twitches on the controller and we hear thruster noise transmitted through the frame of the spacecraft and suddenly I feel like I’m rotating slowly, though it’s just that the ship has stopped. One side swings gently towards me; I raise a hand to push off the padding.
But he’s not paying attention, just checking the portholes for home and destination. “There we go.” He sounds, as usual, quite pleased with himself. “Control, Golden Eagle, we have repositioned. Over.” Then to me: “What did you say?”
“It’s like…”
Ground crackles in. “Golden Eagle, we have lost your television signal entirely. Please repoint your antenna to angle nine-zero degrees, elevation one-five degrees. Over.”
“Control, stand by.” Leonov adjusts the directional controls.
I shake my head. “You’re going to fly the whole mission yourself?”
He grins. “Just the important parts.”
“Ahh. So picking you up after you lift off from the moon…apparently it’s not important?”
“All right. The challenging parts.” His grin grows wider. Then to ground: “Control, Golden Eagle. How is that, over?”
After the delay: “Where is your camera pointing? We cannot see much. Over.”
The camera has, in fact, floated towards the bulkhead in the descent module; even if it’s transmitting perfectly, it can’t be showing much. I pull my head and arms through the hatch, grab it before Leonov can, and point it straight at him. “Control, I’ve got him in my gunsights. Over.”
“Attacked by a madman,” he says, nonchalant. “Nothing I haven’t lived through already.”
And nothing we want to talk about on the air. Shame floods my face. In my mind, the flicker of snapshots: the policeman’s uniform, the flash of the muzzle, the limousine windows shattering, the crowd screaming. I hadn’t even been thinking of that…
“Golden Eagle, he looks like a blurry ghost. Try adjusting again. Over.”
Leonov scans the antenna knobs but does nothing. “Control, maybe the problem is on your end. Have you tried putting aluminum foil on your antennas? My wife swears by that.”
So typical of Leonov: claiming the problem is elsewhere. But his delivery’s warm enough that after the delay I hear laughter on the other end. I remember the years of shortage before I flew, the years when foil was a luxury. “Not everyone has access to the special stores,” I remind him.
“Let’s not talk about the special stores,” he says. “We don’t know who’s listening.”
After the delay, Komarov crackles: “The country will be listening! The country, and the world. We haven’t formally announced the plan for the landing, but the rumors are…” (Static.) “…so please be…” (The rest is lost.)
