The Eye With Which The Universe Beholds Itself (Apollo Quartet) by Ian Sales Page A

enough.
    I have to go down there, Elliott says. Maybe there’s clues on the ground to what happened.
    Too dangerous, replies Finley.
    Dangerous? scoffs Elliott; It’s a dead world. Fifteen years we’ve had a base there and they’ve found zip.
    Yeah, but now the base is gone. Maybe they did find something, maybe that’s what happened to the base.
    All the more reason for me to go down there, insists Elliott.
    The rest watch impassively as he and Finley argue it out. The major may command the Goddard, but this is Elliott’s mission and he knows it. Elliott calls the shots.
    Goddamnit, Finley snaps. Why? Going down there is dumb. If you can’t find the base, there’s no way back up.
    We have to know what happened, Elliott says mulishly.
    Is this why they picked you for this mission? Finley sneers.
    That’s classified, Elliott says.
    And that’s it: argument over. Finley has no comeback to that. Reluctantly, he agrees to Elliott’s plan. One of the flight engineers is sent to prep a Command Module for a descent. They will also load it with plenty of supplies.
    Elliott returns to his compartment to dress in his spacesuit. He floats beside the sleeping bag attached to the wall. From his PPK, he pulls out a photograph of his wife and gazes at it. This is not the picture he took to Mars. A couple of years ago, he and Judy visited the Grand Canyon, and he snapped this photo in the car park by the Hopi House. He remembers telling Judy about Valles Marineris, and though he never visited the Martian canyon it struck him he’s as much an historical artefact as the Hopi House. He’s the only man on Earth who can talk about Mars and its scenery as someone who has visited there.
    In the photograph, Judy is smiling, and it’s one of her rare unguarded smiles. He married her because of that smile—something during her childhood, she never told him what, made her wary and undemonstrative as an adult. But sometimes he surprised her in a display of real happiness, and he treasured those rare genuine smiles. He profoundly regrets he did not make her happy more often. During his darker days, and he has them like anyone else, he wonders if he would have sacrificed Mars for those smiles.
    He’s not spoken to her for over a month, not since leaving the house for the Cape, and this photograph is the only one he has. When he went to Mars, they spoke regularly, and her voice kept him going during those 667 days travelling through emptiness. Later, she admitted she’d hated every minute she’d spent in the public eye, hated her own complicity in the media circus, hated herself for believing she was doing it out of loyalty to her husband, and to NASA. One night, she even confessed she’d believed she needed to be loyal to safeguard him during the mission. He has never told her about his long walk back to the MM after he broke the MRV, he has never said how close he came to dying on Mars. It was a poor reward for her loyalty, his dishonesty. But she’s not loyal now, she’s probably already packed up and left. Perhaps he deserves it.
    He shoves some clothes into his kitbag and dresses quickly in his spacesuit. He returns to the rec area on the deck above, where Finley waits for him. The major leads him up to the docking adaptor at the top of the module, where the hatch to one of the Command Modules gapes wide. Elliott swims into the CM and brings himself to a halt on the bank of seats. Turning about, he sees Finley hovering in the open hatch.
    You sure about this? the major asks.
    Elliott nods. He pulls himself about and, holding onto the seat’s struts, pushes himself down until his rear touches canvas. It’s a struggle to get the harness fastened, and so Finley enters the CM to give him a hand. This involves the major putting a foot to Elliott’s chest and pressing him down and then clipping the harness together and tightening the straps. Elliott says nothing about the triangular cleat on Finley’s sole pressing into his sternum,