The Eye With Which The Universe Beholds Itself (Apollo Quartet) Read Online Free
Author: Ian Sales
Tags: Apollo Quartet
memory—so much so she comes to represent home, Earth, the life he left behind and to which he is determined to return.
Now he’s hurtling towards a curved plain of russets and ochres and reddish-browns, and soon he’s so close all hint of curvature has gone. After one last report to Walker, he positions himself at the commander’s station, attaches the waist restraints, and waits for the Mission Timer to hit 31234315, when the DSKY will tell him the MGC is running the descent program.
As the MM skims across the top of Mars’ atmosphere, he has one hand to the thrust/translation controller and the other to the attitude controller, but he’s not flying this craft. He looks down on the planet, and he’s spent so long training for this he’s used to the montages from the simulator, but now the landscape of Mars is written so emphatically across its face he can pick out major features and it all seems perversely unreal. The three Tharsis Montes: Arsia, Pavonis and Ascraeus; and now Noctis Labyrinthus, Hesperia Planum… It amuses him the Latin names sound so scientific, but translated into English they describe a fantasy land: Peacock Mountain, the Labyrinth of the Night, the Lands to the West…
The MM begins to vibrate and rattle as its heatshield hits wisps of Martian air. The atmosphere here is only fourteen miles deep and less than one percent as dense as Earth’s. It’s not enough to slow him from his interplanetary dash—but the designers have that covered. There’s a rocket engine in the heatshield and it fires on schedule, dropping the MM through the Sound Barrier, and he’s briefly amused at the thought of a sonic boom rolling unheard across the lifeless hills of Lunae Planum.
He watches the altimeter and rate of descent meter. It’s a rough ride and his wasted muscles are making it hard to cope. The heatshield ablates as he hurtles across the Martian sky. He can see an orange glow from below, but is that the Martian surface or the heatshield burning? And now a white fireball envelopes the MM. This spacecraft was not designed for atmospheric entry, not even an atmosphere as thin as Mars’. It’s two hundred and fifty times thinner than Earth, but it’s still air, it’s not a vaccum, and this flimsy thing was originally built to land on the airless Moon.
At least he’s not experiencing the crushing Gs of an Earth re-entry. After thirty days in freefall with no exercise, it’s a real strain, and his legs are aching, he’s feeling a little light-headed, but he knows it feels much worse than it is so he rides it out—
Now the MM is in freefall, dropping towards the Martian surface. The spacecraft shudders as the heatshield is discarded. The MM is still flying descent stage first, so all he can see in the window is dark sky. A moment later, the spacecraft rocks as the drogue chutes are released. The MM jerks from side to side as the chutes open, there is a moment of vertiginous stability as the spacecraft falls for more than 15,000 feet, and then the drogue chutes are gone, work done, and he hears a loud bang as the mortars fire and the main chutes deploy.
The MM drops toward the surface with the chutes reefed for several long seconds, then the reef lines are cut and the chutes open to their full extent. The sudden deceleration is worse than he expected, his knees buckle and he has to lock them to avoid falling, and he swears as his forearm slides from the arm-rest and bangs against the control panel. The MM abruptly pitches upright, and the Martian landscape pivots into view.
He gasps, he can’t help himself. He’s looking down on a vast desert, reds and umbers and pale browns, from horizon to horizon. It looked so unearthly from orbit, but now, a thousand feet above the surface, it could be Earth, some unvisited corner where dunes creep across the land while sand vortices dance from crest to crest, a landscape punctuated by rocks and hills and ridges. But he knows no one has ever set foot
Now he’s hurtling towards a curved plain of russets and ochres and reddish-browns, and soon he’s so close all hint of curvature has gone. After one last report to Walker, he positions himself at the commander’s station, attaches the waist restraints, and waits for the Mission Timer to hit 31234315, when the DSKY will tell him the MGC is running the descent program.
As the MM skims across the top of Mars’ atmosphere, he has one hand to the thrust/translation controller and the other to the attitude controller, but he’s not flying this craft. He looks down on the planet, and he’s spent so long training for this he’s used to the montages from the simulator, but now the landscape of Mars is written so emphatically across its face he can pick out major features and it all seems perversely unreal. The three Tharsis Montes: Arsia, Pavonis and Ascraeus; and now Noctis Labyrinthus, Hesperia Planum… It amuses him the Latin names sound so scientific, but translated into English they describe a fantasy land: Peacock Mountain, the Labyrinth of the Night, the Lands to the West…
The MM begins to vibrate and rattle as its heatshield hits wisps of Martian air. The atmosphere here is only fourteen miles deep and less than one percent as dense as Earth’s. It’s not enough to slow him from his interplanetary dash—but the designers have that covered. There’s a rocket engine in the heatshield and it fires on schedule, dropping the MM through the Sound Barrier, and he’s briefly amused at the thought of a sonic boom rolling unheard across the lifeless hills of Lunae Planum.
He watches the altimeter and rate of descent meter. It’s a rough ride and his wasted muscles are making it hard to cope. The heatshield ablates as he hurtles across the Martian sky. He can see an orange glow from below, but is that the Martian surface or the heatshield burning? And now a white fireball envelopes the MM. This spacecraft was not designed for atmospheric entry, not even an atmosphere as thin as Mars’. It’s two hundred and fifty times thinner than Earth, but it’s still air, it’s not a vaccum, and this flimsy thing was originally built to land on the airless Moon.
At least he’s not experiencing the crushing Gs of an Earth re-entry. After thirty days in freefall with no exercise, it’s a real strain, and his legs are aching, he’s feeling a little light-headed, but he knows it feels much worse than it is so he rides it out—
Now the MM is in freefall, dropping towards the Martian surface. The spacecraft shudders as the heatshield is discarded. The MM is still flying descent stage first, so all he can see in the window is dark sky. A moment later, the spacecraft rocks as the drogue chutes are released. The MM jerks from side to side as the chutes open, there is a moment of vertiginous stability as the spacecraft falls for more than 15,000 feet, and then the drogue chutes are gone, work done, and he hears a loud bang as the mortars fire and the main chutes deploy.
The MM drops toward the surface with the chutes reefed for several long seconds, then the reef lines are cut and the chutes open to their full extent. The sudden deceleration is worse than he expected, his knees buckle and he has to lock them to avoid falling, and he swears as his forearm slides from the arm-rest and bangs against the control panel. The MM abruptly pitches upright, and the Martian landscape pivots into view.
He gasps, he can’t help himself. He’s looking down on a vast desert, reds and umbers and pale browns, from horizon to horizon. It looked so unearthly from orbit, but now, a thousand feet above the surface, it could be Earth, some unvisited corner where dunes creep across the land while sand vortices dance from crest to crest, a landscape punctuated by rocks and hills and ridges. But he knows no one has ever set foot
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