172 Hours on the Moon (17 page)

They had been told that the lunar lander was unusable.

Midori had helped Caitlin prepare a simple soup for the six of them who remained, but none of them had much appetite. The
now cold soup had remained pretty much untouched. Mia was sitting with her head resting on her hand, drumming her fingers
on the edge of the table, and Antoine was sitting across from her staring into space, going over in his mind everything they’d
just heard.

Coleman had been the one to address the group. “Commander Nadolski and I talked. There is a solution. We can’t guarantee that
it will work, but the way I see it we don’t have any other choice.” He looked the rest of them straight in the eyes. “It will
require hard work from everyone.” He wasn’t quiet for long. It seemed as if he hadn’t quite decided if he should say it or
not. But then he said, “There’s another DARLAH base.”

Ever since Houston, Midori had been wondering why the base they were going to was called DARLAH 2, but she had decided not
to ask for fear of sounding stupid. Odds were it was just a number that didn’t mean something significant. Like with cars.
They always had numbers and letters, like 340 SL or 240 GTI or whatever. They were all meaningless to her.

“What I’m about to tell you now is strictly classified, you have to understand that. Not even Commander Nadolski knew about
this before now. Under normal circumstances I would have had to ask NASA and military leaders for permission before I said
a single word, but because of the situation, I don’t have that option right now. Therefore I can only urge you, in the strongest
possible terms, never to mention a word of what I’m going to tell you to anyone. If you do, the government will fully and
completely deny everything, and you will be considered an enemy of the state. You’d be refused entrance into the United States,
and all doors will be closed to you. None of us would be able to guarantee your safety.”

Mia was uncertain for a moment. Maybe she ought to step out of the room? Was this essentially a death threat from the U.S.
government? She pictured existence as number one enemy of the United States, a life in hiding, always on the move, in constant
fear that at any time someone might show up at her doorstep, ready to finish her off. But what choice did she have? It’s not
like she had anywhere to go.

“DARLAH 1 is a military installation that NASA built for the U.S. Air Force in 1974. It’s a hundred feet below the surface,
about seven miles from here. It was built at the same time as DARLAH 2’s module three. The installation contains six
nuclear missiles, each with an explosive force equivalent to fifty megatons of TNT. If that number doesn’t mean much to you,
I can tell you that’s equivalent to three thousand times stronger than the bomb used on Hiroshima. The missiles were installed
by the Nixon administration during the Cold War and were meant to be one final defense if war broke out between the United
States and the U.S.S.R. In other words, if the war extended into space. People believed back then that that might happen.”

Coleman paused and inhaled.
Believed back then that that might happen
. What was he thinking, saying that? He’d been practicing this explanation for a long time, and he was really trying not to
talk too fast, which would clue everyone into the fact that he had just memorized this whole thing. Because not everything
he was saying was true. The information about the missiles was certainly true, but neither they nor anything else at DARLAH
1 had been built to protect them against the Soviets. The installation and the missiles were installed to annihilate the entire
moon if that became necessary. As a final solution.

But he wasn’t about to say anything about that now.

“DARLAH 1 also contains an evacuation pod,” he continued, “a minivessel created as a means to get off the moon and back to
Earth if anything should go wrong. Unfortunately for us, the pod only has room for three people, which was the number of astronauts
people thought it was feasible to have living up here permanently. That rules out our using it. Besides, there is some uncertainty
about whether or not it is still in working condition.”

Midori wondered why, in that case, Coleman originally
hadn’t seemed uncertain about the “working condition” of the rest of this stupid base.

“And now for the last and most important item,” he went on, finally getting to the point. “DARLAH 1 is primarily a power station,
and both the missile base and the evacuation pod are merely additional equipment. A high-voltage line is supposed to run directly
from DARLAH 1 to DARLAH 2, an emergency cable in the event that DARLAH 2 should end up in the situation we find ourselves
in now. Thus we need to send a team over to DARLAH 1 to activate the power station. Then we can get the power back up and
hopefully also radio communications so that we can call for help. But I ask all of you to be prepared for the fact that we
might be up here for a long time.”

Mia asked the obvious question on the teens’ minds. “What do you mean by a
long time
?”

“Possibly months, maybe close to a year. Until NASA can send up a rescue team.”

Mia listened anxiously to what Coleman was saying, and those final sentences settled like stones in the pit of her stomach.
No one was coming to get them. Not for a year. She thought of everything she would lose, that she would never get to see for
the foreseeable future: the woods, the ocean, beaches, streets, cities, cars, people. … She thought of her friends, who would
go on with their lives without her. The band, concerts she wouldn’t get to be part of. And after the battery in her iPod ran
out, and that would be soon, it might be a whole year before she heard any music again at all. That thought was unbearable,
and actually made her feel worse than the thought that she might never make it home again.

She ran her hand through Antoine’s hair.
At least he’s here
, she thought. And Midori. And Caitlin. That was a start. And maybe, just maybe, things would be fine, if the promises that
they really would be rescued held. At least she’d get out of a couple of years of school.

You had to look on the bright side.

But looking on the bright side has a nasty habit of leading to disappointments.

The six of them were still sitting in the kitchen a couple of hours later when Nadolski was ready to select who would join
him on the expedition to DARLAH 1.

“Unfortunately there are limited options at this point,” he began. “I … well, I hope you understand how difficult it is to
say this, but … we need Caitlin and Coleman here at DARLAH 2. Once I activate the power station, they’ll have to work together
to immediately reestablish contact with NASA to apprise the agency of our situation. This is our most pressing need, and for
one of them to come with me will cost precious minutes during which we could be receiving advice from Houston. That means
…” He closed his eyes and let that sink in. “That means that I have to ask one of you three to come.” He looked at the three
teens. “It’s not an ideal situation. None of you should be asked to do something like this. My God, none of you should be
in this situation in the first place. But I think everyone will agree that the problem here requires drastic measures. And
it would be simply reckless of me to go alone, with just one rover, in case something should happen —”

Antoine suddenly stood up. “I’ll go.”

Mia instinctively grabbed his shirt and pulled him back down into his chair. “What are you
doing
?” she whispered urgently, feeling her throat tighten. “That’s out of the question.”

Antoine looked at her gently. “But, Mia, don’t you remember what Coleman said? We’re all going to have to work hard. This
will be my contribution. I have to go. You know that.”

Nadolski studied the French boy carefully. It seemed as if he understood the situation. He’d said he was scared. But they
all were, and what the boy said was true.

“Thanks, Antoine. Thank you.” Nadolski turned to Coleman. “Coleman, you’ll be in charge of the group while we’re gone. Caitlin,
make sure everyone has food and water. And you should all get a little sleep, four hours each until we return. Coleman and
Caitlin will sleep in shifts. Antoine Devereux, report to the rovers in module four in forty-five minutes.”

The meeting was adjourned.

The sun had not yet fully risen over Paris when the rain woke up the seventeen-year-old girl. She wasn’t sure how long she’d
been asleep, but it was still predawn outside and she felt like crap, the way she always did when she woke up after just a
couple of hours of sleep. It was a feeling she had grown accustomed to lately. It had been like this for more than two weeks,
but she had no idea why. She went to bed early, ate healthy foods, and exercised three times a week. She went for long walks
through the city with Noël and drank tea half an hour before bedtime. Nothing helped. If anything, her sleep problems had
gotten worse.

She rubbed her eyes, aching from the lack of sleep, and dragged herself out of bed.

“Awake again?” she heard a sleepy voice ask. She turned toward Noël, who was lying in her bed, and nodded silently
before turning her attention to the window. It had been raining for four days straight, and soon the park over by the Eiffel
Tower was going to be one big puddle.

She and Noël had been together for a little over a year now, and things were still going well between them. She thought so,
anyway. He’d been here for more than a month now, living in her room, eating dinner with her parents. Every day. Being with
her. Every day. All the time. His clothes hung in her closet or lay strewn over her floor; his books, too. And the glasses
he was always bringing up from the kitchen but never took back down again. In the evenings he would sit in her chair and watch
her TV, with the remote control in his hands.

Come to think of it, it was almost as if he had quietly moved in and slowly but surely taken over her room, pushing her out
of it. She stood there by the window wondering if maybe, ultimately, it was Noël’s fault she couldn’t sleep anymore. But she
rejected the idea right away.

It wasn’t him. It was something else. A person she had thought was out of her life for good.

This was about Antoine.

And in a way she had known that all along. But why? It didn’t make any sense. They had broken up more than a year ago, and
she wasn’t in love with him anymore. She’d gotten over that ages ago, and she hoped that by now he had, too. They’d given
it an honest go, but it just hadn’t worked out for them. Shit happens. And then you move on.

She wasn’t sure she’d succeeded in doing that yet. Noël was snoring behind her in the bed, a sort of rasping, slow snore that
would drive anyone crazy if it went on for long.

The rain picked up, as did the noise from Noël. Simone shuffled across the floor, sitting down on the low armchair by the
stereo. There was an old wine crate next to it with her records in it. Simone had always liked the warm, clear sound vinyl
albums made when she played them on the record player her father had given her. She flipped through her albums, most of which
had also come from her father, and absentmindedly let her hand select one from the wine crate as she turned on the record
player. And when she realized which record she’d randomly grabbed, she felt almost sad.

It was Cannonball Adderley’s jazz album
Somethin’ Else
, which had been a gift from Antoine. For a second she wasn’t sure if she wanted to play it after all, but finally she decided
to put it on.

The piano and drums started cautiously, hesitantly, as if they were sneaking around, before an angry wind player got involved
for a brief instant. That disappeared and it was quiet again for a few beats, and then there was a brief pause, a musical
moment for contemplation. And then it came: The muted trumpet sounded like the saddest instrument in the world, and here it
was on this very record.
Les feuilles morts
, the dead leaves. It was as if summer was gone and fall was hobbling across the countryside, meeting winter halfway.

The music seeped out of the speakers and settled like a soft coating on the walls without waking Noël, and Simone sank back
into her chair, found a pack of smokes on the floor next to her, lit a cigarette, and closed her eyes. It was the most beautiful
record of them all, and she remembered the day Antoine had given it to her. They’d been to the theater on rue Laplace to see
an old French movie called
À bout de souffle
, and that was exactly
how they both felt — breathless — like they’d discovered something totally new.

Weird to think about how great they were together then. And how it didn’t last that long.

It had been worse for him, poor guy. After they broke up she had discovered him standing on the Eiffel Tower, up on the first
observation deck, by those big coin-operated telescopes. She knew how he’d pointed one of them at her apartment building.
Later that night she had snuck out and gone over to the tower, taken the stairs up, and found the telescope, untouched since
he’d left it. She put a euro in and saw, not surprisingly, that she was looking right into her own room. She made the same
trip a few times later on, too, just to confirm her suspicions that he was down there every night. Every time she climbed
up to the telescope, it was pointed right at her room.

One day, several months later, when she decided to check out the telescope again, it was pointed in a totally different direction.
Of course, that could mean that someone else had been using it in the meantime, but without really knowing why, she took it
as a sign that he’d found other things to kill his time with. And now, now when she almost wished he were standing out there
in the rain watching her again, she knew he was gone. He’d sent her a text message right before he left for New York. It was
the only thing she’d heard from him since they broke up.

And now he was up there somewhere, far, far away. She had of course heard about the contest and the spaceflight, like everyone
else. She’d toyed with entering herself. But she never did. She figured her chances were so minuscule it wasn’t even worth
trying. But he had done it. Which was strange to think about.

What was he doing right now?

Who was he with up there? She thought she remembered hearing that the other two winners were girls. Had she seen pictures
of them? So much had been written about them online since their names had been announced. And
Le Figaro
, the paper, had been reporting from the United States almost every day. But, no, she couldn’t picture the girls.

Maybe she ought to get in touch with him when he got back? Or would it seem like she was just doing that because he was now,
like, world famous? No, he would understand, she thought. She would call him. As soon as she heard he was back in Paris.

She made her way back to bed and pulled the sheet up. Noël had sprawled out since she got up, and she had to push him over
a little. He grunted softly when she touched him, and rolled over onto his side with a
humph
. Eventually, she fell back to sleep — but it was a nightmare sleep that comes fully loaded with dreams so real that you’re
willing to swear they actually happened.

She was trapped in a dark corridor. It was hard to breathe. Someone was after her. She couldn’t see anyone, but she heard
the sounds they were making, someone or something approaching step-by-step. And from somewhere far away she thought she heard
Antoine yell her name. And then something else. She strained to make out what it was. But it was like his voice was underwater,
as if there was nothing for the sound to travel
through. Something was coming closer and closer to her. He yelled again, and she thought she heard what he said this time.
The figure came closer, closer, closer. Something rushed past her hand. Antoine yelled again and she heard it clearly.
Get out of there!
he yelled. Just then the corridor was lit by floodlights, and Simone was staring straight into …

She woke with a start, sweating and cold. Breathless.

It was later that morning when she heard the bad news. The moon mission was in crisis.

Antoine …

Simone and Noël sat frozen in front of the TV all morning and afternoon, while the live news broadcasts did their best to
shed some light on what had happened out there. Experts espoused complicated theories, and the White House held the first
of many press conferences, led by a president who couldn’t offer anything other than a hope that it would all work out. No
one knew for sure, and all they could provide was guesswork, graphic models, and predictions of what might happen. But no
matter what, all the conclusions were the same: Unless the teens and the astronauts could get back on their own, there was
nothing anyone could do.

Noël, who knew Antoine was Simone’s ex-boyfriend and was one of the three teenagers, had been equally absorbed in the live
coverage, but now he was starting to reach his limit. He was getting tired of the whole thing. They just kept playing the
same footage over and over with little or nothing new to add. None of the attempts to reestablish contact with DARLAH resulted
in anything, and there wasn’t much else to do but wait.

“Why don’t we do something else for a little while, Simone? I don’t know how much more of this I can listen to. Wouldn’t it
be better if we got out and went for a walk? Maybe we could catch a movie or something? It’s a shame to waste the whole day,
don’t you think?”

Simone kept her eyes on the screen for a full minute before she finally turned to look at him. Something she’d been thinking
for a long time now was finally clear to her.

“Noël,” she said, “it’s over. I think it would be best if you went back home to your own place now.”