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Invaders graphic in front of them jumped to four miles off-range: at six, mission rules called for a mandatory abort. Armstrong looked ahead and was not thrilled by what he saw: a field of huddled boulders, gathered like the remains of an ancient cemetery around the dark lip of a crater, into which the computer was blindly flying them. He made some quick calculations as to whether he could bring the craft down in front of the boulder field, knowing that they were probably composed of lunar bedrock and the geologists would be ecstatic, but realized that they were still going too fast. He pressed some buttons and took control of the craft, pitching it forward until it was almost upright. Now the rocket was slowing their rate of descent, without diminishing forward speed. He would try to set down in the first clear space he saw.
    No one except Armstrong knew about the crater or the boulders. Aldrin had his eyes fixed on the instrument panel and was issuing a steady stream of data, which is what Mission Control and the rest of us were hearing.
    â€œThree hundred and fifty feet … down at four … three hundred thirty, six and a half down …”
    Aldrin’s remote mantra was reassuring, but masked the fact that, with his partner too absorbed in finding a way to bring
Eagle
down before her fuel ran out to tell anyone what was happening, even Mission Control was in the dark. All they knew was that the plan had been ditched and Armstrong was now on his own, a quarter of a million miles from home. There was nothing they could do to help. Duke whispered to Kranz, “I think we’d better be quiet.”
    Three hundred and fifty feet up,
Eagle
skimmed over the boulders. Armstrong pitched her back to a rearward angle in order to avoid picking up too much speed. He banked left to skirt another field of rocks as the Moon seemed to rear up at him and telemetry showed his heart rate surge.
    â€œHow’s the fuel?” he asked Aldrin. An unnatural calm in his voice masked the fact that his pulse was now racing at over 150 beats per minute.
    â€œEight per cent,” came the reply. Less than in the simulations.
    At 250 feet, Aldrin stole his first glance out of the window, then quickly returned to his instruments. Armstrong was still searching for a landing site: he chose one, then discovered it to be flanked by another crater. There was now ninety seconds’ worth of fuel left, but twenty of those had to be saved for an abort: if they got to that stage and still hadn’t landed, the computer would automatically try to shoot them back into space and putative safety, no matter how close they were to the surface. Back in the control room, an automatic sequencer had begun counting down to such an eventuality, and everyone knew it. Armstrong edged forward and saw a clearing of about 200 square feet, bounded by craters on one side and more boulders on the other. The Moon was 100 feet beneath them. This had to be the place.
    Eagle
needed to be brought down in a straight vertical line. Any horizontal movement at the point of impact could snap off one of her matchstick legs. Yet, as he listened to Aldrin reciting his litany of figures – “sixty feet … down two and a half … two forward … two forward …” – Armstrong suddenly found his view stolen by an eruption of dust and rock that arced away in dense sheets, obscuring the landing area completely. Momentarily unsettled, he was training his eyes on somedistant rocks in order to maintain his bearing when he heard Charlie Duke’s voice in his ear, warning “sixty seconds.” No one in Mission Control knew about the crater, the boulders, the dust. All they knew was that in every successful simulation Armstrong had landed by now. The years of preparation, the billions of dollars, the lives that had been sacrificed on the way – most notably the crew of
Apollo 1
thirty months previously – all that energy and