Falling to Earth (40 page)

The Apollo 15 mission ends as I climb out of our charred spacecraft
.

I had to consciously tell myself how to walk. My legs didn’t work the way they should; I had lost the automatic sense of how to step. I had taken it for granted all my life, but after two weeks I’d forgotten. Jim looked a little shaky, too. I had to concentrate hard—left leg, right leg—as we strode down the red carpet toward the welcoming committee.

General Lucius Clay, commander in chief of Pacific air forces, was one of the dignitaries waiting to welcome us.

“It’s certainly been a wonderful and historic mission,” he said with a smile, “and I can’t help but also compliment you on your superb selection of music. Thank you, Colonel Scott.”

I suppressed a grin. A few days ago, around the moon, Dave had chewed me out for playing the air force anthem during his liftoff. Now he had to accept the congratulations of air force dignitaries for playing it.

It was my turn to speak. I forced my legs into motion and shuffled up to the microphone. “It’s not that I’m shaky, it’s just that I don’t have my sea legs yet,” I began. “We just finished probably the most fantastic twelve days I’ve ever had in my life. And I guess only one thing surpasses the excitement and the intense feeling I had on the flight, and that was sort of the feeling I had when I saw you all today. It sure is nice to be back, and it sure is good to see you all. Thanks a bunch for the pickup!”

Unshaven, I thank the welcoming crowd on the deck of the ship
.

The doctors were eager to get their hands on us and led us away for postflight tests. Even when lying down on a platform, we could feel that our heart rates were higher than normal. Our bodies were readjusting to gravity. The flight surgeons walked us around and took good care of us. We appreciated it, as we felt pretty odd. But we were still told nothing about the in-flight heart concerns.

For the first time, I noticed that Dave’s fingernails were black. He’d tightened up his spacesuit gloves so he could have a better feel at the end of his fingers when working on the lunar surface. As a result, he’d bruised and blackened them badly. He must have been in pain all the way back from the moon, but I had never known. Man, that guy was a hard driver. He was so goal oriented during the mission and would not give up, no matter what the barriers were. I had to admire that about him.

At last, after the medical checks, we could have a shower—our first in two weeks. Dave and Jim were still grimy with moon dust, and I didn’t smell too good either. Showers aboard ship were small and boxy, with rough military soap and towels. It was nothing luxurious. But after two weeks that warm water felt like one of the best showers of my life.

Time for lunch in the captain’s wardroom. The food on the flight had been good enough, but I was ready for something more substantial. A big, juicy steak awaited me, which I wolfed down. Dave and I had talked about ice cream all the way back from the moon, and now was our chance to be decadent. Jim didn’t eat much, but Dave and I slurped down ice cream like we were little kids.

I was full, and still not used to walking. But the celebrations weren’t over. The ship had about seven different compartments, each with its own set of workers, and each wanted to welcome us. So we toured them all. Every compartment had baked a special cake. I felt pretty drained by then from the exertion, but I cheered up when I saw the friendly reception. I had a ball, probably on a sugar high from seven slices of cake.

We received the good news that
Endeavour
had been brought aboard the ship without any water slopping through the hatch. It had been a long and eventful day. I had woken up more than sixty thousand miles from planet Earth and ended my day on a ship journeying south toward Honolulu. It was time to get some sleep.

I woke up to the sound of clanging. Our berth was right below the flight deck, and those guys started work early. A military ship is never a quiet place. I felt much better, though, and very well rested. Jim, however, still looked tired. He hadn’t slept well, he explained, because of the noise and also because he still felt odd, like his head was pointing toward the floor, even when he was sleeping flat.

We headed up to the deck, and there was the beautiful Hawaiian island of Oahu. A helicopter waited to take us the short journey to Hickam Air Force Base. Touching down, I stepped off the helicopter and onto solid ground for the first time since I had made my way to the launchpad in Florida. It felt good to truly be back on earth once again.

A crowd of thousands awaited us, along with some local dignitaries, so we gave some more brief speeches and thanked them. But there was no time in the schedule to enjoy Hawaii. After some hurried farewells, we were stuffed into a C-141 cargo plane for the long flight back to Houston.

By this point in the mission, I had forgotten all about the space covers deal Dave had arranged. Until we were back on earth, I’d had no reason to think about them for months.

But now here they were, as Dave pulled them out in the C-141. He’d not only had them stamped and postmarked to note the day of launch, he’d also managed to get them postmarked on the ship the day we splashed down. I looked at them with interest. I’d never seen one before. I’d never even seen the design.

While aboard ship, Dave had mentioned that he would have his covers stamped on the
Okinawa
with the splashdown date. Good idea, I thought. We hadn’t gone back into
Endeavour
after splashdown, but a team of technicians had removed all the important items ready to transport to Houston. They returned our PPKs to us, which was standard procedure. So I had my covers postmarked. Mine were not postmarked on launch day because they had been stowed in my PPK inside the spacecraft, as per regulations.

Then there was another surprise for Jim and me. We’d agreed with Dave to carry a hundred covers for Eiermann. But Dave unexpectedly pulled out a pile of about four hundred.

Don’t worry, Dave explained. He’d had another hundred made for each of us. We should keep them for ourselves until we were all out of the space program, and until Eiermann and Sieger had concluded their business. Otherwise we’d be undercutting them.

Dave was well prepared; he pulled out special pens for us to sign all of the covers. It was a smooth flight, and a long one, so we had plenty of time to sit there and sign away. I thought nothing of it. Once we landed I took my hundred covers with me to put in my safety deposit box. Jim took his, and Dave kept about two hundred, his own and the covers to send to Eiermann. It was done. I forgot all about them once again. In retrospect, I should have opened the door and thrown them out of the plane.

Perhaps it was an ominous sign of things to come with those covers, but it was dark and rainy when we touched down at Ellington Field. Despite the weather a crowd of thousands had turned out, dressed in raincoats and carrying umbrellas. It was time to give another quick speech. “I’m on the last leg of a trip from Cape Kennedy to Houston,” I joked, “and I saw some interesting things along the way!”

“We went as Americans,” I summed up, “but we really did it for all mankind.” These weren’t just PR words—I really
meant
them. It was also my opportunity to begin to thank the tens of thousands of people in Houston and around the world who had helped us with our flight. We got the glory, but we couldn’t have done it without an enormous team. I was—and I remain—very grateful to them.

Deke Slayton also welcomed us and added his congratulations for a great job. To know I had pleased him meant more than all the other praise showered on us. He was usually sparing with congratulations, which was a good thing. When he gave it, you knew he meant it.

At last I spotted Merrill and Alison, my beloved daughters, who ran over to give me an enormous hug. They had been caught up in the excitement of Dad flying to the moon and were thrilled to see me again. I had missed them a lot—and
boy
, did I have some stories to tell them.

My parents were still in town. My father, so teary-eyed and emotional when I launched, was back to his normal self. “You’re back safe,” he whispered to me, “and I’m glad.”

Have you ever been away on a long vacation? You’ll know the feeling when you first put the key in the door of your home and then close it behind you. After such an eventful time, the apartment seemed so
quiet
. Everything was where I had left it. I had mail to sort through, chores to do. It was time to get back to normal life.

I had a strange experience the morning after I came home. When I walked out of my apartment door in the early morning to grab my newspaper, I saw the moon in the sky. It shocked me to see it. It was bizarre to think that I was there just a few days before, flying across its peaks and valleys. The moon looked so different now: so very far away. It really gave me a new perspective on how far we had traveled.

I’d been asked to skip breakfast that morning, as I headed back to my workplace for some more medical tests. Then we began many, many days of debriefings. The mission planners wanted to go over every detail of our flight plan while it was still fresh in our minds. So we sat around a table and talked through every moment of the mission, reliving it for the engineers. We spent about as long debriefing as we had flying the mission. It also took us that long for our bodies to get back to normal.

For several days I had to really watch how I walked and how I reached for something. It felt harder learning to adjust to Earth than it was to adjust to space, something mentally to do with coming home. In space, I was very aware of learning new ways of moving. Returning to Earth, everything felt familiar, so I relaxed and didn’t think about it. I would subconsciously push on a table to float away or try and leave an object hanging in midair. I had to teach myself how to live in Earth’s gravity again.

Of the three of us, Jim was in the worst shape. He was still unsteady on his feet and felt off balance when he lay down to sleep. I’d always thought of him as the weight-lifting, exercise-conscious guy, so I was surprised to see him so worn out.

Then, in the debriefing period, I was finally told what had happened to him during the flight. I felt confused, more than anything else. Why hadn’t they told us during the mission? There were ways we could have talked about private medical matters with the ground without the whole world listening in. I never got a good answer.

Dave was also having trouble sleeping because of an ache in his shoulder, something which our flight surgeons dismissed. But Dee O’Hara arranged for some private treatment and he improved. I had trouble sleeping for a different reason. I couldn’t get all the damn people out of my apartment.

Unlike the crews of earlier moon missions, we did not enter any medical quarantine, because the doctors had decided there was no risk of any possible moon germs returning with us. I would almost have welcomed the quarantine, because we could have debriefed without any distractions.

As it was, I would go to work, debrief all day, and there was always something going on when I got home at night. Many of the people in my apartment complex would drop by for a drink and a talk. They just wanted to be around somebody who had returned from the moon. I’ve always been a social guy and enjoyed their company, but eventually I had to kick them out every evening.

Then I would sit in my living room, turn all the lights out, and still not feel sleepy. I was overtired. I would finally get around five hours’ sleep, drag myself out of bed, and shuffle back to the debriefings day after day.

With three worn-out astronauts, the debriefings soon became dull. At first, I felt proud to talk about what we’d done. Under Dave’s excellent command, we’d really done our jobs, and felt delighted with the way things had turned out. The mission had been what Apollo was truly all about.

But after a few days of constant talking, I grew wearier. The room was windowless and the sessions were long. Ironically, the mission was tough to discuss since it had gone according to plan—there was little new to say. Much of the debriefing was record keeping, so planners could match the scientific data and photos with specific locations and times in the flight plan. Each mission controller asked endless questions about his own area of responsibility.

I only really enjoyed my conversations with Farouk, who was like a kid in a candy store when I shared what I had learned. But even he was being pulled in two directions: he had to brief the crew of the next mission, Apollo 16. I told him everything I could to help prepare them.

I would also have loved to talk more with the scientists responsible for all the SIM bay experiments. But first they needed to work on the raw data before finding time to talk to me. They also needed to concentrate on Apollo 16.

Even though I talked about the flight every day at work, the mission began to take on an air of unreality. It was as if I had gone to my father’s theater as a child and become totally immersed in a movie, forgetting there was another world out there. Now the movie was over, and I was out on the street as cars and people went by, back in the real world again. The moon flight was an episode in my life that felt totally out of context; I didn’t know how to place it in my mind.