IGMS Issue 5 (17 page)

And what a view it was! Craters and mountains slid by and as we descended closer, I felt as though I could make out ripples in the lunar soil. My stomach had calmed down, but my nerves! -- the view thrilled me, filled me with a rush that I'd never felt before, although I didn't know if it was the rising surface of the moon, or the profile of Audrey's face, caught in the fiery light of the descent engine, that had a greater effect on me.

Within a few minutes, we'd circled back around and the edge of the Ocean of Storms came into view on the horizon. We were much lower now, and had slowed down considerably. The view gave the illusion of floating down to the surface; graceful, poetic --

"What's going on in here?"

We looked up and saw that one of the flight attendants peering down through the open panel.

"We were, we just, uh, we --" I said helplessly. I could only guess what he was thinking. Audrey just grinned.

"I must ask you to return to your seats at once. This is a restricted area," the attendant said.

I pushed my way up through the panel and tried not to look into the eyes of the other passengers. I didn't even look back to see Audrey pull herself up and sit down next to me. All I could think of was how much trouble I'd be in if my folks found out -- and I hadn't even made it to the surface yet.

"Don't be sore," Audrey said, "it was fun."

"We could have gotten into serious trouble," I said.

"But we didn't."

"Not yet, anyway."

That's when she leaned over and kissed me. Just like that. Her lips were soft and warm, and though my eyes were closed, I held her image in my mind and it told me all I needed to know: I was in love. That kiss drained the anger right out of me.

I was floating so high that I never felt the shuttle touch down on the surface of the moon.

The sea has many traditional romantic qualities, but when the great literary lights of the ages wrote their masterpieces, I don't think it was the desolate, slate gray sands of the Ocean of Storms they had in mind. And yet when I cast my eye back across the years and think of romance (as one is bound to do when one wonders in somber moments how the magical devolves into the mainstream), it is the Ocean of Storms I see. It was my first venture onto the surface of the moon, and I played the role of hopeless romantic, for I was certain I was in love.

It had been my idea to settle into the hostel, and then leaf through the guidebook and determine the best order in which to view all of the tourist attractions in Conrad. I wanted to get the most out of my trip and I was intent on being methodical about it.

It was Audrey who suggested that we head out into the Ocean of Storms and visit the Intrepid. Blinded by the unfamiliar emotions I was feeling, I agreed -- anything just to spend time with her -- even though it meant my sneaking out onto the surface with her because I lacked a permit for doing so. (As an astronomer, Audrey had a permit and had made numerous treks out onto the surface, and so I felt I was in good hands.)

We never made it to the Intrepid.

Once we were on the surface (I had a hard time thinking of it as "outdoors") I was lost in the scenery. It may appear drab and gray; it may have been described as "magnificent desolation," but as we bounded across the surface, I finally understood what Robert Conway felt upon reaching Shangri-La. Audrey's presence only magnified the effect.

About halfway to the Intrepid, Audrey suddenly headed up a small rise and then bound over the peak and out of sight. I followed as quickly as I could and as I crested the rise, I saw that it formed the lip of a small crater into which an observatory of some kind had been built.

"What is it?" I asked over the radio built in to my helmet.

"A research station," she said. "It houses a small telescope, but has a hookup to the Korolev radio telescope on the far side, as well as a couple of orbiting telescopes. You can get a view in here that you'd never be able to get on earth."

After a moment, the airlock door slid open, spilling light onto the shadows of the crater. "Come on," Audrey said, and I followed her in.

We got out of our surface suits, but the suits were covered in moon dust and that fine dust transferred itself to our clothing.

"I'm afraid we're going to have to strip down," Audrey said arching an eyebrow.

I laughed and joked back, "Okay, but ladies first."

To which Audrey replied by slipping out of her pants and pulling her shirt over her head so that she stood in her underwear. The light was dim but there was enough of it to fill me in on any detail that I might otherwise have missed. I'm normally not an observant person, but in this case --

"Come on, Mr. President, your turn."

I snapped back to attention and hesitated. "I thought you were joking," I said, "Someone might see us."

"Aw, is the President shy?"

"Well, no, but --"

"Look, there's no one here. It's a remote station these days, used to be staffed, but it's cheaper to link up the equipment to the network. They keep it operational for grad students and the occasional observations that have to be made directly. We won't be bothered."

I couldn't argue with logic, so I stripped down to my boxers.

We brushed the remaining dust of one another (which, though flirtatiously pleasant, reminded me of the way chimpanzees groom one another). As I flicked sand from the crater that formed in Audrey's shoulder, I had a thought:

"Why do we have to strip?"

"Lots of sensitive equipment," she said, making a final swipe at my chest. And then as an afterthought, she added, "The dust can cause it to malfunction."

Audrey tapped at the door panel and the door to the station proper slid open and then closed behind us as we moved out of the lock and into the station. There was a musty smell inside, old air, the way that I imagined a cave would smell.

"That's a small telescope?" I said looking at the massive tube that angled up three levels through the dome.

"Small compared to some," she said. It was surrounded by a catwalk structure and at its base was a computer console which I presumed controlled the instruments. "I want to show you something, but it will take a moment to make the adjustments."

Her bare feet slapped across the tiled floor and my eyes followed her to the computer terminal. She tapped in some commands and a moment later, the room was filled with a low hum. I felt slightly disoriented, and then realized that the whole room was moving as Audrey adjusted the direction at which the telescope pointed at the sky.

When the humming stopped, she hopped up from the chair and said, "Follow me," and bounded lightly up the catwalk stairs to the second level of the structure. She led me to what appeared to be a dead-end that was blocked by the telescope itself. But then I saw Audrey lean over and peer into an eyepiece. The room was suddenly quiet. I could see the rise and fall of her chest. I imagined that I could hear her heart beating.

"Okay, take a look," she said. She was smiling as though she knew something I didn't. I smiled back at her, stepped in front of her just close enough to brush up against her, and then bent down to look into the eyepiece.

My entire field of vision was suddenly full of stars. It looked almost three dimensional, and far too many to count. Not only that, but there was what appeared to be a gaseous blur of color, like an explosion frozen in time, just off the center of the image.

"It's over ten-thousand light years away," she said when I looked up at her. "Isn't it beautiful?"

"It sure is," I said, and it was, but I was looking at her.

Audrey's cheeks grew a shade pinker, the first time I'd seen her react that way, and that stirred me to a new level of courage.

"How about some music?" I asked.

"I think that can be arranged," she said.

"Is there an interface on the terminal?"

"Of course."

"Well let me do it then." And I bounded down the catwalk stairs, found the environmental controls and queued up the song that I was looking for. I called up to her, "I think this will be perfect!"

When I reached the top of the catwalk, Audrey was looking into the eyepiece. The music started as my foot touched the top step, the soft background choir fading in. And after a few beats, Bing Crosby crooned, "Far away places . . ." Audrey stood up suddenly and looked at me.

"How do you know this song?" she said.

"I'm a fan of old music."

"I've loved this song ever since I was a little girl."

"Would you care to dance?" But I didn't really give her the chance to answer. I stepped forward and put my arm around her waist and pulled her close to me and for the next two minutes, we danced in the Ocean of Storms.

When the song ended, I said, "Okay, show me more." But Audrey just kissed me and it was quite a while before we got back to the telescope.

We did get back to the telescope though, and though we didn't know it yet, this nearly perfect evening was about to gain an unexpected crowning jewel.

Audrey spent quite some time showing me a variety of astronomical objects: nebula and planets, comets and clusters, all of them far away places.

Noting my enthusiasm, she asked, "Is this the first time you've ever looked through a telescope?"

"Yes," I said, even though that was a little white lie. There had been the time back in high school when I was at my friend Derek's house and we'd pointed his (very small by comparison) telescope at Summer Halfast's window nearly a half a kilometer down the block. But that didn't really count since I wasn't looking at stars.

"Do you want to try controlling it?"

"Sure, what do I have to do?"

Audrey showed me how to manipulate the controls so as to move the telescope (or the observatory as a whole) and I fiddled with them until I had picked out a swath of sky that, from the ground, looked devoid of stars. I leaned down to the eye piece to look at the result.

Sure enough, there were hundreds of stars that simply could not be seen with the naked eye. One star in particular shone strongly as a small pinpoint of very red light. "What's the red one?" I asked Audrey.

She stepped up to the eye piece and took a long look. When she stood up straight, she had a puzzled look on her face.

"So what is it?"

"I don't know," she said furrowing her brow.

"Well, it doesn't surprise me," I said. "With umpty-ump billion stars out there, you couldn't possibly know all of them."

Audrey grunted, but still looked puzzled. Then she snapped her fingers. "These stations do regular sky surveys as part of providing data to astronomers and scientists across the network. Let's go pull up the most recent one and find out what it is."

"It's not really not that important. I was just wondering."

"Science is all about answering questions," she said seriously. Then her face twitched and she smirked, "Unlike politics, which is all about avoiding answers." And before I could grab her and repay her for her denigration of my life's work, she bounced down the stairs to the main terminal.

By the time I'd caught up with her she'd already pulled the image onto one of the plasma screens. "That was fast," I said.

"Oh, that's just the image on the telescope right now. I'm going to have the computer pull up an image of the same section of sky from the last survey and then we'll see what our little friend is." She tapped away and in a moment, the same image appeared on a second plasma screen.

Audrey zoomed into the first image and highlighted a section of space that contained the red pinpoint star. She tapped some more keys and the second image zoomed in as well.

"It's not there!" we said at the same time.

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"It means that you, Mr. President, may very well be the discoverer of a new star." She paused. "Hmm? The survey image was taken only a few weeks ago, so this must be a really new star."

"Do I get to name it or something?"

Audrey rolled her eyes, "Going to your head already, huh? Let's find out about this little guy so we can submit the necessary records for independent confirmation." Audrey tapped in more commands and the image of the star on the first screen was replaced with data. I tried to skim through it but it might as well have been Martian for all I could make of it.