Free Lights in the Deep by Brad R. Torgersen Page B

to best couch the news to the rest of the nation that the circumlunar flight—had they even yet allowed it to get out that one astronaut had already died—was now a total disaster. Doubtless Kennedy would not take kindly to such news. He needed something positive for the American people, as he prepared to hand the country over to his old rival, Nixon.
    Jack wanted his administration to go out on a high note, so that hopefully in four years Bobby could latch on to that legacy—following Nixon’s anticipated implosion under the weight of the two wars Jack had begun—and reclaim the throne for the family.
    With me dead and the Gemini program badly stalled as a result, the President’s second term was set to close on a decidedly sour note.
    Especially since there was a Soviet capsule orbiting somewhere in lunar space. The Communists would be happily trumpeting about their victory while my corpse slowly freeze-dried.
    Radio with the ground failed thirteen minutes into my ninth orbit. More leftovers from Vic’s accident. Under normal circumstances, it would have been a perfect time for me to shit a brick. But I was all out of bricks, and could only muster a weak laugh, followed by silence as I continued to drift and stare at the implacable stars.
    • • •
    I saw the light moving. Perhaps a third of an orbit ahead of me. I hadn’t seen it before, but upon closer visual inspection, I guessed that it was at a higher altitude, with less velocity. I floated and waited quietly, watching through two more orbits as the light drew nearer. I found I didn’t at all miss the constant clucking from Houston. The silence of the radio had matched the silence of the cosmos.
    One of the hand cameras had a telescopic lens. I fished it out of the Gemini and aimed it at the light. What initially seemed like a single object resolved into two, separate objects: another Chiron, and something I’d only ever seen in grainy black-and-white photos during security briefings.
    The Soviet L3 was in big trouble. Panels had been blown off along one side of the booster assembly, with wires and plumbing strung out into space like the innards of a disemboweled man.
    Apparently my mission wasn’t the only one to have had technical difficulties.
    The Chiron was a derelict from the test flights. GCBV-7003 and GCBV-7004. The first had conducted remote operations and thruster tests, before being de-orbited over the Pacific. The second had been fired via radio to test the booster’s ability to break Earth orbit and maneuver in translunar space. GCBV-7004 had actually reached lunar insertion before Earth lost contact with it.
    The Russians were hijacking my only hope of getting home.
    I reeled myself back to the hatch and crammed myself down into my seat, hands and fingers moving almost too quickly for my thinking to catch up with them. Neither needing nor caring about the checklist, I closed the door, did a quick de-couple via rote memory, and slowly pulled the Gemini free of its wounded—and useless—Chiron booster. In Earth orbit the Gemini would not have had enough onboard fuel to jump the necessary distance. In the weaker Lunar gravity, I hoped the odds would be a little more in my favor. Using the Gemini’s onboard computer and radar, I locked on to the approaching light—which gave solid pingbacks, to my relief—then set about some back-of-the-envelope calculating, based on relative velocity and distance.
    Whatever moroseness I’d been feeling about Vic’s death, it had been overcome with a single, maniacal drive to get home: kiss my wife, see my kids, breathe fresh air that didn’t come from a can. I forgot about what had gone wrong to that point and made rendezvousing with the defunct Chiron my sole goal in the universe.
    How the Russians might feel about my arrival was something I’d deal with when I got there.
    I didn’t realize I was sweating profusely until the pooled, salty liquid began to creep from my face into the corners of my