Apollo XI
by Anthony John

A short story from the ‘Debris’ collection.

“We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard…” The historic words from President Kennedy’s famous 1962 speech rang out from the loudspeakers surrounding the audience. The accompanying looped video on the flat screen at the front, showed him delivering the speech at Rice University. As he spoke, the scene switched to one of the gigantic Saturn V rockets, with the tiny capsule perched on the top, accelerating upwards through a storm of flame and smoke. The amplified base roar of the launch, felt rather than heard in the confined space.

However, the young girl, sat between Gelta and her mother, was obviously bored. When the noise subsided and the rocket, now accompanied by the rising crescendo of Also sprach Zarathustra, ignited its second stage, she took her fingers out of her ears and spoke. “Is there much more of this Mummy?” She rustled her sweet packet, digging deeply for a favourite. “It’s not even a holo. Why isn’t it a holo Mummy?” On her lap lay a small gift-shop figurine of a man in an awkward looking white spacesuit with the name “Armstrong” alongside the NASA logo on its chest.

“It was a very long time ago sweetie, before there were such things as holo’s.”

“Why did they need those funny looking spacesuits Mummy? We’re on the moon too and we don’t have them.”

 
“They didn’t have the domes then either darling.” She pointed at the doll, “he was the first person ever to come here. Watch and you’ll see.”

Gelta nudged his husband who sitting on the other side of him, “I think this is about where we came in Jav.” Javier nodded and together they stood up to make their way across to the transparent plexiglass walkway and the doors that led to the main exhibition. They hissed open in front of them as they went through into the tube leading to the main dome, their ears popping at the slight change in air pressure.

Inside the main dome another transparent walkway, suspended a couple of metres above the ground, surrounded the crumpled gold-foil-wrapped descent section of the Lunar Excursion Module. It stood, exactly as it had been left, spider-like on the pale grey surface. The surrounding dust still bore the footprints made by those pioneering astronauts, where they had ‘bunny-hopped’ across the plateau two and a half centuries before. On the other side of the dome, the Stars and Stripes of the US flag, although faded now by the harsh sunlight, still hung proudly on its short pole. After hanging stiff and lifeless in the lunar vacuum for so many years, its loose corner fluttered slightly in response to small air movements within the dome that now enclosed it.

It was Gelta de Silva and Javier Perez’s third anniversary, and to celebrate they had decided to take a short vacation. At first they had only intended to spend a few days on Gagarin Station, where they could relax and walk in the parklands, or unwind in one of the many spas dotted around the outer level. But while they were there, Gelta saw an advert on their room holo for a three-day sightseeing trip to the moon. 

“I have to be honest Jav, I’ve never seen any of the lunar sights.” Gelta mused as he watched the advert, “every time we’ve been there, it’s just been business; spaceport, hotel and office. You know how it is; we could be anywhere.”

“Okay Gel, so let’s be tourists for a change. I don’t mind going if you fancy it.” He glanced at the itinerary and noticed it included a visit to the museum dome that now surrounded the Apollo 11 landing site and continued. “Have you ever been to the Kennedy Space Center and seen the Saturn 5 exhibition there?”

“Não. But I’d love to. I suppose if the UN was still in New York I might have done, but from Moro it’s a long way for a weekend.”

“It’s a big thing, considering it’s almost all motor. I mean, it’s nowhere near the size of a lifter, and it only carried three people, not the three hundred they carry. But it’s impressive just the same.”

As they strolled around the walkway, looking at the various artefacts left behind by those first visitors, they pointed out to each other this or that detail to each other as it was described by the commentaries in their earpieces. Until that is, they were looking at the leg bearing the ladder, down which Neil Armstrong had made his famous descent. The voice in their ears spoke his “One small step…” words, and then described the plaque that should have been attached there. It described the two circular images of Earth’s hemispheres, and the signatures of the three astronauts and the then President, Richard Nixon, all of which it carried.

“That’s strange Jav, I can’t see that plaque anywhere.” Jav looked down at the tablet he was carrying and then at the module.

“It definitely doesn’t seem to be where it should be,” Jav said pointing to it on the tablet, then to the ladder. “It should be right there, but it’s not. Odd. Do you think it was removed for cleaning or something?”

They stood looking for a moment, then once again heard the voice of the little girl who had been sitting next to them during the presentation, only this time from the other side of the dome.

“Mummy, what’s that man doing?” She pointed to a man who was below them, under the walkway; his clothes closely matching the grey colour of the surface.

As they looked, a voice rang out around the dome, interrupting the narrative. “Please remain where you are. We have a slight problem. Would the person on the ground in the main dome kindly retrace their steps to the entrance?”

Jav and Gel watched as the man looked around. From their vantage point, they could clearly see that he held the plaque in his hand and that his shoes were doing untold damage to those historic footprints. In the low gravity the security personnel started bounding toward him as he tucked the plaque into his jacket and sprung up onto the walkway. Once there he grabbed the child’s mother, who screamed as he pressed a flechette pistol to her neck.

“Anybody moves and she gets an explosive dart in the spine!” Pulling her along with him, he started moving toward the exit.

Compressed air powered flechette pistols are made for use inside a ship. The tiny charge on the tips of the plastic darts they fire are easily powerful enough to kill, or to tear a hole in a vacuum suit if used outside, but aren’t powerful enough to do any real damage to a hull or heavy plexiglass panel.

Jav and Gel looked at each other and nodded, then began to move cautiously in opposite directions. Keeping out of the man’s direct view, they moved with a lithe purposefulness that betrayed the obvious training they had received in the United Nations Planetary Federal Corps. Gradually they worked their way around the dome until only few metres separated them from their quarry and his terrified hostage. Jav looked at Gel and nodded again, and with clicks of their tongues they both activated the communicators implanted in their back teeth. The man walked backwards towards Gel, his pistol still pressed to the panic stricken woman’s neck as he dragged her along.

Very quietly Gel spoke, “I need a distraction Jav.”

Jav looked around, searching for something that might be useful. Standing a short distance away from him was a man who was recording the scene on an expensive looking personal tablet. Without hesitation he grabbed the tablet from the man and pushed him over. 

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” He shouted, as he scrambled up onto his feet and tried to grab it back. As the man holding the woman automatically looked toward Jav, Gel lunged forward and slapped the gun away. The man pressed the stud in surprise and it hissed, the flechette bursting in a small puff of acrid smoke as it blew a finger-sized hole in the walkway’s thin plexiglass side. He quickly whirled around to see who had hit him, but as he did, Jav kicked him in the back of his knee knocking him completely off balance. An instant later, and they both leapt on him, pinning him to the ground and forcing the pistol out of his hand.

However, in the low gravity of the moon, even two people are not that heavy; no more than what a child would have been on earth. He struggled up onto all fours and shrugged off his assailants, bunny-hopping rapidly toward the exit as they disentangled themselves, his prize still tucked inside his jacket. Javier calmly picked up the pistol and expertly made it safe before passing it to one of the site security men, who now stood beside him. He then turned to the man he had snatched the tablet from, and handed that back as well.

“Apologies for that, but I needed a distraction, and I’m afraid you were it!”

“No problem, you took me by surprise, that’s all. But you obviously knew what you were doing.”

Javier smiled and replied. “Just lucky I guess.” And left it at that.

The guard looked at the flechette pistol, turning it over in his hand, “nasty little thing, isn’t it?”

 
Gelta nodded, “they are, they’re easy to conceal and hard to detect as well. I don’t think there’s a metal part in them.” They watched in silence for a moment as a swarm of baseball-sized floater droids moved across the surface around the lander’s leg. Using electrostatic fields to manipulate the dust they erased the attacker’s footprints and restored the originals. After a minute or so Gel looked up. “Did they get him?”

The guard’s eyes seemed to lose focus for a few seconds as he listened into his communicator, then he spoke. “Yup, he wasn’t going to get out after we sealed the doors between the domes. If we need to, we use the corridor as a trap, let them in at one end, then seal the other. They’re left with got nowhere to go then.’

“It’s great you were able to disarm him and slow him down like that, we even had time to clear the tube before he reached it.”

 

“What’s it worth do you recon?” Javier asked, “the plaque I mean.”

 

“Like anything I guess, whatever someone else will pay for it. But there are a few private collectors who would pay a lot for it. I heard that one of the ODDAC guys, the orbital junk collectors based on Gagarin, found a chunk of an Apollo a while ago. It was from fourteen they think. It was just one of the four conical shell segments that protected the LEM during launch. Most of them burned up of course, but this one must have been ejected into an elliptical orbit. In any case, he apparently sold it to a collector for a small fortune. So, imagine what a piece like that plaque would have been worth.”

“Yeah, but you could never show it to anyone. So, what’s the point?”

“Just to own it, I guess.” He shrugged, “the important thing here is that we got it back and it can replace it where it belongs.” He paused again, looking down at the display. “I do hope he didn’t do any damage getting it off.” He extended his hand toward Jav. “Thanks for your help guys. Who are you anyway?”

“Oh, just a couple of tourists celebrating their anniversary. It was nothing.”

 

“Tell that to the woman he grabbed, or to the little girl for that matter!” Jav just nodded, then linking arms with Gel, they strolled off together to continue their tour.