The third day started at four in the morning. We set off to the south west for six hours with a goal of making our way point of D'Alembert crater. D'Alembert is a huge walled plain two hundred and forty eight kilometers in diameter and about the same size as Clavius crater on the near side. These are about as big as craters get on the Moon. Up close on the eastern edge of the crater, all we got to see were a range of hills that marked the crater rim. From D'Alembert, we headed pretty much straight south to Chandler crater, where we turned to the southwest. We ended up the day about an hour due south of Chandler. We covered five hundred and eighty five kilometers that day, which is a little better than anyone expected.

  The clock said five in the morning when we started rolling on the fourth day. Our first way point was Hutton crater which was three hours away. Hutton crater was fifty kilometers in diameter and marked the start of a whole chain of craters that led off to the South. We would pass down them to their East before reaching the end and largest crater Trumpler. From there we’d bend more to the southwest and make camp somewhere in the vicinity of Freundlich crater. The land in this section was rougher than the day before, so we were making slower progress. After lunch, I started driving and after driving for a couple of hours we passed by Shayn crater just to the West of us. Shayn was ninety three kilometers in diameter, but all we really saw of it were the rounded hills that formed it’s crater walls.

  Sam had just started driving after our lunch break when our luck ran out. We were traversing along the southeastern edge of Trumpler crater. Trumpler is a hole in the ground about seventy seven kilometers in diameter. From the outside, just like all the other large craters we had passed, the crater wall just looks like a large hill and we stayed off the rim and down on the flatter terrain as much as we could. Directly to the southeast of Trumpler and sixteen kilometers away is a smaller crater only thirteen kilometers in diameter. Our course took us through that sixteen kilometer gap between the craters and that was when trouble found us. Most of the route was gentle slopes on one or both sides of us. In that gap between the craters it was pretty much the same except for a small section where the Trumpler side slope quickly grew up to a forty five degree angle.

  I had began one of my homework assignments on my E-Pad when there was a tremendous bang from farther back in the rover and the cabin was jolted to the left. Sam immediately stopped. There didn’t seem to be anything to explain the noise inside the cabin so we used the outside cameras to check over the rover. Before we could do much looking the cabin pressure alarm went off and Sam and I both grabbed our helmets and sealed up our pressure suits. We checked each other over to make sure we were properly sealed up.

  “Rover Two to Rover One.”

  Sandy replied, “Go ahead, Sam. We just got a ping you stopped.”

  “Bryce and I are okay. There was a loud bang and while we were trying to figure out where it came from the cabin pressure alarm went off. We’re both safely sealed up. Give us a couple of minutes to figure out what’s going on.”

  “Roger that, Sam. We’ll stop here and wait.”

  Sam and I went back to the external cameras and found the issue. Lying on the ground next to the right side of the rover was an irregularly shaped roughly round stone about thirty centimeters across its biggest face. The camera showed its point of impact, about half way up the rover’s side. The rock had impacted near the bottom of a hull panel separating the third and fourth window back from the rover’s front.

  “Sam, what do we do now? There’s a crack at the bottom of that one window.”

  “Get back in your seat. I’m going to pull the rover forward and get away from that slope just in case anything else decides to come tumbling down. Then we’ll have to shift the cargo around until we can get to that section of the wall and fix the leak.”

  I sat back down and strapped in. The homework forgotten as I contemplated what might have happened if the rock had come down a little bit later and instead of smashing into the post between the windows, had smashed full on into the window. For this trip, the windows were sealed off with thermal and radiation shielding. The shielding wasn’t air tight and it would have only slowed down the escaping air a little. I thought back to all the times Sam had been on me about keeping my helmet cabled to me in case I needed it quickly. We had just missed finding out how scary an event like sudden decompression could be. I was really thankful that Sam didn’t have to go through that a second time.

  Sam pulled the rover forward until we were just in front of Rover One. She was back on the radio with the Major and Sandy and the decision was quickly made to set up camp here for the night. That was three hours earlier than we had planned on stopping for the night, but as originally planned we would have made the Observatory by midday tomorrow so we had some extra time built into the schedule. The extra stop over time would be used by me and Sam to shift the food boxes around so we could reach the damaged wall section and slap on a patch. It didn’t sound that difficult, however, working in a pressure suit while having broken ribs isn’t conducive to getting a lot done quickly. Not to mention Sam wasn’t in the best shape for standing much either. We ended up forming a two person bucket brigade with her up front grabbing boxes and me in the rear figuring out where to stash them. The only free room in the rover was up front . I started out stacking boxes on our seats and then moved on to filling up the bunk spaces and even the bathroom. It wasn’t like we could use the bathroom while we were in our pressure suits so I figured I might as well use what space I could in it to store boxes.

  “That should be the last box. Hand me the tool box so I can get this shielding taken down so we can get at that window.”

  I returned with the tool box and said, “Here’s the tools. Hey, I was just thinking. Those thermal and radiation shielding mats, that they have up on the walls and the ceiling for this trip really aren’t that thick. Would they protect us if there was another storm? I mean an average storm. Not a monster like we just had or a Carrington level event.”

  I could see Sam’s smile through her helmet and she said, “A little late to worry about that now, hey?”

  “Getting a closer look at this stuff just got me wondering.”

  “For a long trip like this, the extra shielding keeps our exposure down to more comfortable levels. For a storm of any size, if that’s all we had, we’d be in serious trouble. The rover is also equipped with active shielding. Don’t ask me how it works. They lost me after they said it uses plasma shielding. For that matter, don’t ask me if it works. The set up for it is a little on the complicated side, hey.”

  It took us four hours to get everything moved, the side sealed up, atmosphere restored to the inside of the rover, and then the boxes all moved back. The nice thing was once we had pressure restored, we were able to strip off our suits and just work in the suit liners , which made it much easier to get around. Sam gave the Major regular updates as we completed things and it was late by the time we all got to bed.

  THE FURTHEST KILOMETERS

  I woke up to the smell of breakfast the next morning. Sam was already up and about and had heated up the breakfast meal kits for both of us.

  “That smells good. How’s the rover look this morning?”

  “Get up and eat. It’ll be good to get out of this rover and the sooner we eat, the sooner we can get going. I checked the readings this morning and the pressure’s held steady all night. I think we’re all set. So,,,like I said, get up and get a move on, hey.”

  We had roughly five hundred or so kilometers to travel today to reach Anderson crater where the Far Side Observatory was located. Anderson was only three hundred and twenty five kilometers away, however the Observatory was located on the southern flank of the one hundred and nine kilometer wide crater. The safest approach for us took us looping to the west of the crater and out around a whole series of small craters ranging from five to twelve kilometers across and located on Anderson’s western flank. All the detours added up to a long day of traveling.

  After I finished eating, I put my pressure suit on and clipped my helmet to it without Sam needing to remind me. She just smiled as she watched me.

  “Sam, what’s the first way point today?”

  She pulled up the map on the driver’s console and said, “Freundich is another big one about eighty five kilometers in diameter. We’ll pass to the west of it in about an hour and a half. From there, we continue south and we’ll break for lunch to the west of about half way between Freundich P and Zemike Z. Those guys are small. Zemike Z is only twenty four kilometers in diameter and Freundich P is even smaller. All we’ll probably see are the crater walls in the distance since they’ll be about ten kilometers away.”

  The Major’s voice interrupted at that point saying, “Rover One to Rover Two, good morning, people. How’s Rover Two looking this morning?”

  Sam grabbed the radio and said, “Good morning, I checked the gauges first thing this morning and it looks like the patch is holding with the cabin pressure remaining steady all night. We’re ready to roll when you are.”

  “Roger that. Freundich, here we come.”

  Rover One started moving off. Sam waited until they had a good lead on us and then eased the rover into pursuit. She had left the map on the console screen, but she wasn’t paying any attention to it. She was just following along behind Rover One, which brought up something that did make me wonder.

  “How do we know where we are? I mean, there’s no road signs or GPS. Some of the craters have unique features in them that would allow you to identify them from a map, but all we see of most of these craters is the rim walls and one lunar hill side pretty much looks like the next to me.”

  “If this was a CLT30, how would you verify you were in the right place?”

  This was a topic Mr. Saner had ground into Nina’s and my head multiple times..

  “Well, the inertial navigation system keeps a fairly accurate track of our position. Periodically, the navigation system will check some guide stars to make sure we’re really where we think we are. If you’re just plain paranoid, you can manually shoot the guide stars to verify your position.”

  “So the rovers work the same way, hey.”

  “Okay, I can see the inertial guidance working. What about checking your position with the guide stars. That would work during the lunar night when you can look out and see the stars, but during the day like now, you can’t see any stars.”

  “You can see the stars now. You just have to shield your eyes from the glare coming off the lunar surface. Stars are faint and the glare washes them out. Even during the night on the nearside it’s hard to see the stars because the Earth is so bright. The other way we know where we’re at, is those autonomous scouts that Psuche Neural loaned us are dropping a small beacon every ten kilometers or so. The scouts accurately place them and download the course to the next beacon. Every time we come across one the Major uploads the update, checks our position and then squirts an update back to us.”

  “Huh, that takes all the skill out of it. I thought he was following their tracks like some old West tracker.”

  “That would work, too.”

  The day wore on. The terrain was mostly rolling hills with a small crater thrown in for some variation. With the sun shining more directly overhead now, the sharp white versus black lunar surface contrasts of when the sun was lower in the sky had faded to a pallet of grays and even faint browns. We stopped for lunch at the five hour mark and then I got my turn at driving. I noticed that yesterday’s little misadventure with the rock had left me feeling a bit anxious any time the terrain on either side started rapidly increasing in grade. Luckily, the grades always backed off before they got that steep and we didn’t have a repeat of the falling rock incident. It just weirded me out that the rock had sat up there on that crater rim for probably a couple of million years. Either some faint tremor from the rovers had set it sliding or maybe it was just after the stress of a million day, night transitions, the material supporting it had let go. Down it came to slam into the side of the rover just as we were passing by. It made me feel like the universe had it out for us.

  We broke for dinner when I had us on the northwestern slope of Anderson. There was an excitement to dinner as we both knew that soon the trip would be over. Before our meals were finished heating, there was a burst of static over the radio and then the Major was saying, “Rover One to Rover Two, we just heard from the Observatory. I didn’t think the radio would reach out this far, but they laid out their own repeater network in anticipation that we might come by rover instead of the CLT30.”

  Sam responded with, “That’s great, Major. I imagine they are very happy to hear from us. Are they suggesting any changes to our route?”

  “No changes, Sam. They came out this way pretty much the way we had planned on traveling so we can make a little better time on this last leg following their tracks back.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Sam, they do have one request for us. They have been isolated here and have expressed a great interest in just talking to us while we’re on the way in. They’ll be monitoring 296.8 MHZ. Sandy will be talking to channel 4. If you could have Bryce talk to them on Channel 7, that would be great.”

  “Will do, Major. I’ll have Bryce start talking to them after we’re done eating. Anything else?”

  “No, that’s it for now. I know everyone is anxious to get there. Take this time to eat your dinner and relax. We need to stay sharp on this final segment. It would be a shame to come all this way and then have something mar our journey on the very last leg.”

  “You got it, Major. Talk to you when you’re ready to leave.”

  I thought it was pretty neat that the Observatory crew had come out this way to make sure our last leg of the journey was a breeze. It did bring up a question I had.

  “Sam, how did the Observatory know we were coming this way? What if we had decided to go around the eastern rim of the crater?”

  “Well, if you look at the map, taking the eastern route almost makes a lot of sense. The surrounding area hasn’t taken as much of a pounding as it has on the western side of the crater. The problem lies down on the southeast rim of the crater where you have craters Sharonov X and Sharonov butting up against Anderson. We’d either have to traverse Sharonov X or take a detour all away around Sharonov and it’s almost as big as Anderson. The Observatory knew we’d stay out of craters as much as possible so that ruled out the eastern route and the ground is pounded up enough on the western route that it’s pretty obvious where we’d have to go, hey.”

  After dinner was over, we set off on the last leg of our trip. I set the equipment up so I could talk with a headphone microphone that Sam routed to the radio I would be using to chat with the Observatory staff. I got it all ready to go and then realized I hadn’t a clue as to what to say.

  “Sam, I have no idea what to talk about.”

  “Introduce yourself, tell them about the trip, tell them about your mom and dad, tell them about your friends. Ask them to tell you about themselves, what they do here, where they are from on Earth. Trust me Bryce, they’ve been so isolated here that you could just read the sport scores from a game they don’t follow that was played five years ago and they would be happy. They just want some human contact. You’ll be okay”

  I was fine with the talking. The observatory staff I was talking with were just so happy to talk to someone else that it gave me a lot of energy and that fed back into the talks. We talked about anything and everything as the final kilometers melted away. Maybe they didn’t melt away as quickly as we had all hoped. I was encouraged when the major had said we would make better time following the trail the Observatory team had left. In reality, we were only going a kilometer or two an hour faster than we would have been going. The Major was happy to have a trail to follow, but he wasn’t going to allow that to encourage him to take chances.

  Eventually, we started to see other trails branching off from the main one. Evidence of the observatory staff doing some exploring of their own. Finally, our rough trail ended and the rovers pulled onto a road paved with sintered regolith paving stones. The road traveled directly towards the crater. Here on top, there was a mostly flat plain sprinkled with smaller craters, the largest being barely a half kilometer across. It was a great place to set up a landing pad and as we got closer to the lip of the crater, I wasn’t surprised to see that the Observatory had completed a landing pad that looked very much like the ones we had back at the Habitat.

  The road crested the lip of the crater and we began the long descent down into the crater. The view was spectacular. On either side, the rim of the crater marched off as a hill line that eventually came back to together one hundred and nine kilometers away. Almost in front of us, twenty kilometers out, was the smaller Anderson L crater that dotted the main craters floor on the southern edge. Anderson L was an almost perfectly bowl shaped crater some thirteen and change kilometers in width. It reminded me of the Arecibo radio telescope that I’d seen in an old movie and I wondered if maybe that smaller crater was part of the attraction that had led the Chinese to select Anderson crater for their Observatory.

  We finally came to the end of the long descent from the rim of the crater. It had taken us almost fourteen kilometers to reach the bottom of the grade. The road expanded into a large flat pad that flowed back up to the beginning of the slope we had just come down. Cut into the slope were two doors. The first was a man hatch, which must have been the first thing that was built and led into the hillside to the rooms the Observatory staff inhabited. On the left of the man hatch, was a newer looking door sized for a vehicle like our rover. To the left of the first door, was a construction area for a lock on a much larger scale. Judging by the size of the construction, the Observatory was probably going to be assembling full sized dish antennas within the shelter of the crater wall. Once the telescope was completed, they’d bring it out through a lock and take it to its final location. I’d seen a show about the old Very Large Array telescope in New Mexico and the opening looked about the same size as the Antenna Assembly Building at the VLA site.

 

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