172 Hours on the Moon (25 page)

She was alone.

She was hearing noises all the time. It was no longer easy to tell if they were imaginary or real. Footsteps approaching from
all directions, hideous voices mumbling unintelligible sentences. Chanting.

The negative pressure of the air release had sucked her flashlight out into space, and she could no longer fully make out
her surroundings. Only the dim light suspended from the power station ceiling far above was helping to give her a vague sense
of where she was. Mia kept her eyes firmly locked on the safety hatch at the innermost point of the large hall. She found
the door release and pressed it. The hatch opened with a hollow sound.

Mia stared into a long, dark corridor. The very sight of it made her feel sick.

You have to go through there
.

You have to go through there, Mia
.

I don’t know. I don’t know, I don’t know…
.

The evacuation capsule is on the other side of that corridor
.

How far could it be? A hundred yards? No more than that, at any rate
.

You can do it. You can walk a hundred yards
.

You’re going home. You will come back from here
.

You can do it
.

Run, Mia!

She hurled herself into the darkness.

She fumbled her way forward in a panic. The darkness was all-encompassing, but the sense that she wasn’t alone propelled her
swiftly down the corridor. To navigate, she swept her right hand along the side wall as she ran. She was sure the walls were
moving closer together with every step.

I’ve got to be there soon
.

It can’t be far now
.

This corridor was only supposed to be a hundred yards long, right?

It felt like hands were reaching out of the darkness, trying to grab her.

She kept going deeper. Deeper. Deeper.

Stopped.

She was at the end.

Her hands felt the door. It was impossible to see anything, but she groped around for the steel wheel. Grabbed hold and turned
it. It wouldn’t budge. She tried again. Stuck.

No. No, no, no
.

It’s not fair
.

Not now
.

Come on, damn it!

She put all her weight into it and suddenly it yielded, rotating, and the door opened. It was almost too easy. As if someone
on the inside had helped her open it. Dim light shone on her.

Mia cautiously pushed the door open and went in.

The room was smaller than the power station, about the size of a classroom.

And a gray, cone-shaped vessel stood in the middle of the room.

The evacuation capsule
.

The capsule was sitting on a small rocket launchpad, connected to a number of hoses and instruments. Mia moved closer to see
it. It wasn’t more than ten or eleven feet high at its highest point. The hatch was up near the top on the back. On the opposite
side there was a small, round window of thick, heat-safe glass.

She peered in through the window. It looked like a small airplane cockpit with two seats, side by side, in front of an instrument
panel. One more seat in back, up against the wall. Coleman had been right. There wasn’t room for four people. Hardly even
for three.

“What do you think? Do you like it?”

Mia whipped around when she heard a voice that sounded like her own, her eyes searching feverishly in the dim light. Nothing.

“Unfortunately, I can’t let you go, you know,” the voice spoke again. “That would be … wrong.”

Something moved in the corner.

The doppelgänger crawled out of a maintenance duct under the floor, as if she were a giant spider.

“Who … are … you?” Mia stammered, jumping away from the capsule.

The doppelgänger grinned repulsively at her.

“I’m Mia. Don’t you remember? I’m
you
.” She emerged from the dark corner, moving toward Mia. An identical copy, down to the smallest detail. Except her eyes. The
bottom portion of the doppelgänger’s irises were pitch-black.

Mia’s eyes flitted wildly back and forth between the evacuation capsule and the doppelgänger.

It came closer. In a few seconds it would be close enough to grab her.

Mia looked around, desperate for something to hit it with. But aside from the capsule, the room was empty.

She only had one chance.

Please
, she said to herself.
I’ve made it this far. Please let me make it home. Let me do that so …

The doppelgänger lunged toward her.

Mia struck out blindly with her arms, feeling herself hit it hard in the face.

Hands grabbed hold of her and pulled her down to the floor.

Please
.

She struck again, not sure if she hit, but still managed to get
up — run to the capsule — tear open the hatch. The doppelgänger was standing right next to her.

She flung herself into the capsule, shut the hatch again, and sealed it.

The other Mia screamed. She hammered on the door with the fierceness of a wild animal.

Mia frantically stared at the control panel.

Which one is it?

Which one?

A desperate face was pressed onto the window. The look was one of pure hatred.

Fingers clawed at the glass.

Mia feverishly pressed random buttons.

There was hammering on the walls of the capsule.

Voices.

Footsteps.

Screams.

And inside the capsule, there it was! A red button to the far right:

EMERGENCY LIFTOFF

She pushed it, and the panel lit up. The rocket engines started rumbling. It took mere moments for her to strap herself into
one of the seats.

More screams from outside the capsule, more hammering hysterically against the hull.

Mia heard the blast of the rocket engine igniting. The capsule shook violently, and Mia clung to the controls and closed her
eyes.

She was going up. She was going up!

Seconds later, the capsule lifted off from the platform. The cables ripped loose, and the capsule was launched out into space
with ferocious force.

NORAD — the North American Aerospace Defense Command — picked up the evacuation capsule on its radar a few minutes after noon.
Since NORAD couldn’t immediately confirm what type of object it was, for a few minutes officials thought it was a meteorite.
Or an enemy rocket. The secretary of defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff were contacted, and they considered shooting the
object down. But closer scrutiny showed that it was moving too fast to be an enemy missile. It had to be something from space.

NASA also detected the capsule, and although the agency couldn’t immediately confirm what the object was, there was reason
for hope. Hope that the team members NASA had lost contact with five and a half days ago had survived, and that they had made
it back to Earth on their own. If that were the case, it
would be nothing less than a miracle. But that was exactly what NASA needed right now. A miracle from above. Something that
could silence the noise from all the TV channels, newspapers, and talk radio programs that were reporting incessantly on the
tragedy and turning it into an international scandal, claiming that the organization had been reckless, greedy, and inhumane
to put young people’s lives at such risk.

But now all that could change. Instead the media would be full of tales of heroism. There would be interviews with and news
bulletins about the brave astronauts who had managed to bring them home again. There would be footage of sobbing mothers and
fathers hugging their sons and daughters. In the best-case scenario, all the attention might even boost the support for space
travel.

The NASA bigwigs were aboard the U.S. marine rescue helicopter that took off from its base an hour later, heading for the
waters off Newfoundland, where the capsule had apparently landed. Even before the helicopter reached cruising altitude, the
NASA team members had already started working on the speeches they were planning to deliver to the press once the crew was
safely aboard.

Mia slept most of the four days the trip took. It wasn’t until the capsule entered the atmosphere that she was jolted completely
awake again. Then the parachutes released to slow its descent. The capsule swayed gently as it sailed downward and touched
down somewhere on the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.

Mia undid her seat belt and made her way over to the window
and looked out at the water. The sight of the seemingly infinite blue ocean was overwhelming.

She walked stiffly over to the exit and released the emergency opening. The explosive bolts in the hatch made the hinges release
and the door fall off, disappearing into the ocean. Mia sat in the opening and felt the wind on her face. She turned her face
into the sunlight and felt the salty sea spray wash over her each time a wave hit the capsule.

She sat there rocking for several hours without thinking of anything in particular, as if all the stress had wiped her mind
clean. She just sat and stared, as if she had never seen water before.

Late that afternoon the first fishing boat showed up nearby. Astonished, weather-beaten, bearded fishermen were standing on
the deck of the
Sea Harvest
trawler, looking in awe at the girl sitting motionless in the capsule’s door opening. Captain Tyne ordered the crew to launch
the tender, and a few minutes later they raised Mia aboard. She was wrapped in blankets and brought to the captain’s cabin,
where Tyne himself kept her company.

Mia didn’t say much. She told him where she’d been and that something had gone wrong. That was it.

Captain Tyne gave her a concerned look.

“I’ll explain everything later,” Mia said. “I promise. I’m just not feeling that great right now.”

They set course for shore, and the coast guard helicopter that flew over them an hour later had no idea who was on the boat
below. She stayed in the captain’s home in a little fishing village on the Newfoundland coast while they tried to make contact
with NASA and wait for the representatives to show up.

But when morning arrived and Mrs. Tyne brought a breakfast tray up to the attic room where Mia was staying, the girl was gone.
The bed was neatly made and the curtains drawn. There was no trace of her aside from a note on the nightstand.

The helicopter hung quietly in the air less than a dozen feet over the capsule as the divers prepared and jumped into the
water. They searched the capsule and did countless dives in the vicinity to find any trace of survivors. The NASA representatives
took the announcement — “There’s no one here” — with somber expressions.

Disappointed, one of the bigwigs opened his briefcase and took one last look at the various drafts of welcome home speeches
he had written. Then he whipped open the side door of the helicopter and tossed the pages out. They fluttered down and floated
limply on the surface like dead fish.

Before they turned around to head back to the base, the two NASA officials stuck their heads out the opening to get one last
glimpse of the space capsule.

What was floating down there wasn’t the command module
Ceres
. It was labeled with another name.

DARLAH 1.

They were going to have trouble explaining this to the rest of the world.

It was easier to get to New York than she had thought, although it took time. That night, after Captain Tyne and his wife
went to bed, she got dressed and snuck out the front door without a sound. At the pier, she hid among the cargo crates until
morning came and then snuck on board the first ferry out. After hitching a few different rides to Ottawa, she managed to convince
an older married couple she’d met in the bus station that her wallet had been stolen; they gave her enough to take an express
bus to New York City.

Mia arrived at Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan early the next morning. She asked a nice elderly woman for some change
for the phone booth, and dialed the number of Johnson Space Center in Houston.

It was a short conversation. Mia was happy about that. Her mother couldn’t get a coherent word out; she just sobbed, and her
father had to take the phone. She told him where she had been found and about her stay in Newfoundland but didn’t mention
anything about what had happened on the mission. She just repeated that she was fine.

Her father yelled into the phone, as if he were afraid that she might disappear again any second. “Go to the Four Seasons
Hotel. I’ll call right away and arrange a room for you. A suite! Your mother and I are in Houston. We’ll head to the airport
and get tickets to New York as soon as we hang up. Don’t go anywhere, okay? Stay at the hotel, order whatever you want from
room service. Are you sure you don’t need me to send a doctor to see you?”

“No, it’s fine. Thanks anyway.”

“Your mother and I will be there tomorrow night at the latest. Hopefully sooner. We can’t wait to see you —”

“I ought to get going, Dad. It’s cold here.”

“Cold? Well, okay — get going, honey. To the Four Seasons, you hear?”

Mia hung up and walked the last little way to the hotel. Outside its front doors she passed a newspaper stand and noticed
the headline in the
New York Times
.

It didn’t faze her. No one would recognize her, and none of that mattered anymore. They didn’t even give her a second glance
as she approached the counter to check in.