Free The Truth is Dead by Marcus Sedgwick Page B

emotion, he begins to speak the words he hoped and prayed he’d never have to utter.
    “Fate,” he says, “has ordained that the men who went to the Moon to explore in peace will stay on the Moon to rest in peace.”
    This single sentence – these twenty-four words – sends shock waves around the world. All sense of triumph and euphoria is snuffed out in an instant. The sickening possibility – unspoken by most – has become a dreadful reality.
    To some the shock is so great that the next few sentences of the president are lost. He refers to Armstrong and Aldrin as “these brave men” and talks of sacrifice. Then, with shoulders back and real tears in his eyes, Nixon stares straight into the camera and says, “In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.”
    One of the billions watching the broadcast is William Safire. He sits alone in a borrowed office, shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbow, the only light coming from the flickering cathode ray tube. In his hands he holds a memo headed In Event of Moon Disaster . Silently he mouths the words as Nixon speaks them.
    “Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man’s search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain foremost in our hearts.”
    These are Safire’s words, crafted by his hands and put in the president’s mouth. This is one presidential speech everyone in the White House had hoped would never have to be delivered.
    The broadcast is nearly at an end. Nixon is reading the final words on the autocue: “For every human being who looks up at the Moon in the nights to come—” Then he breaks off. He struggles for something personal to say, not something pre-planned for a worst-case scenario, but something immediate and from the heart. He looks down at the copy of the speech on the Oval Office desk: typed and double-spaced. He lifts it up, shuffling the pages. Then he utters possibly the most famous words of his presidency.
    “My fellow Americans,” he says. “These brave men died not for their country but for humanity. Their deeds and their sacrifice were for all mankind.”
    After the address, there are the phone calls, conducted off the international stage, away from the eyes of the world’s media. Nixon has already made calls to the widows of Armstrong and Aldrin. He did that before the broadcast. As commander-in-chief, the president has had to make such calls before – to widows of other fallen servicemen – but never to the wives of such a unique brand of hero. Just twenty-four hours previously, Armstrong was the most talked-about man on the planet. Now Aldrin’s name can be added alongside his. Had things turned out differently, he might just have been remembered as the second man to walk on the Moon, simply following in another’s footsteps. As it is, their names will be linked for ever, as their bodies lie together in another place.
    Then comes the final leg of this tragic journey: the return of Michael Collins, the third, forgotten, astronaut. Collins is the pilot whose job it was to orbit the Moon in the command module Columbia , while the other two set down upon its surface. With Armstrong and Aldrin dead, the top priority – the only priority – is to get him safely home.
    His successful re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere and his retrieval from the space capsule in the sea are, in the end, a subdued affair. No one can paint him a hero, however hard they try.
    There is nothing Collins could have done. There was no backup plan for if the lunar module engines failed to fire and it could not take off again – other than to have him return home alone. Despite this, many cannot forgive him for “abandoning” them, least of all Michael Collins himself.
    He remains for twenty-one days in quarantine in a chamber intended for three. No witty banter for the camera or the company of