Hard Landing 
After Testament of Arkadia
“Eagle Twenty-two to Alpha. Twenty-Two to Alpha… I’m declaring an emergency!” Pilot Alexei Lubov waited for a reply from Moonbase Alpha as he struggled with the sluggish controls of his nearly powerless spacecraft.
Assistant Controller Winters responded, “Alpha to Eagle Two-two: go ahead, Alexei.”
“I’ve lost all power to main motors and landing thrusters. I’m going down about… uh, sixty kilometers south of Alpha. Attempting to flatten my glide with maneuvering thrusters.”
“Understood, Two-two. We’re dispatching recovery teams now. Good luck.”
Lubov grunted a response as he fought to keep Eagle Twenty-two from plummeting nose first into the ground. Although he wasn’t headed for the ground at full throttle, he wasn’t going very slowly, either. Despite his efforts, the lunar surface was rising up awfully fast. Only years of training and discipline kept the pilot’s basic human urge to panic at the back of his mind; he was concentrating too hard on trying to land his craft to let anything else distract him. Lubov tweaked the maneuvering thrusters for all they were worth in order to keep the Eagle’s glide path level. At least something still works on this ship, he thought. Too bad they won’t slow my descent. Going to be a hard landing!
~~~~~~~~~~
At Moonbase Alpha’s Main Mission control center, Winters snapped into action as soon as he signed off with Lubov. “Crash alert!” he called over the comm system. “Emergency medical crew to Pad Two immediately. Rescue Eagle One prepare for immediate launch. Technical crew and Cargo Eagle to Pad Five, also to prepare for immediate launch.” He keyed the Medical Center. “Doctor Mathias, stand by to receive a patient; we have a pilot going down.”
Bob Mathias responded instantly: “I’ll have a triage team at Pad Two before the Rescue Eagle returns. Medical Center is ready and standing by.”
Winters turned to Analyst Tanya Alexander. “Telemetry… how’s he doing?”
“It looks like he’s going to end up fifty-eight kilometers due south of the base,” she responded with a calm Russian accent. “We may lose his exact position just before impact.”
“Time to impact?”
She shook her head. “Twenty-five seconds, give or take a few.”
The Main Mission crew could do nothing more than wait.
~~~~~~~~~~
Alexei Lubov could do little more than wait. As his ship closed in on the ground, he could make out individual boulders and moguls as they whizzed past the forward viewport. A long, low row of hills lay in his path just ahead. I’m a goner if I auger into that, he thought, lowering the visor of his spacesuit helmet. With only seconds left until impact, he activated controls that depressurized the command module’s cockpit; if the ship actually held together through the crash, the last thing he would need would be explosive decompression from a ruptured viewport.
The panic he'd kept at the back of his mind just started to work its way forward when the Eagle hit the lunar surface.
The heavy-duty suspension of the Eagle’s four landing pads was never intended to handle a horizontal skid at high speed; it cushioned the landing imperceptibly before all four pads snapped off from their outboard pads a moment later. Eagle Twenty-two bellied into the regolith, crumpling the useless vertical thrusters and rupturing the aft engine assembly’s lower fuel tanks.
A testament to Lubov’s skill as a pilot, the Eagle’s glide path had been shallow enough to translate into a straight skid on the moon’s surface, its nose still pointed straight ahead as friction slowed the craft bit by bit. Inside the cockpit, Lubov instinctively grasped the now useless steering controls with a grip which rivaled that of a woman in labor. The row of hills he’d seen was looming ever closer in the viewport. Unable to avert his gaze, the words augered in repeating in his mind.
Suddenly, a large rock outcropping along the skid path snagged the Eagle’s forward starboard pod, tearing it from the Eagle’s frame and pivoting the craft slightly to port. Before the pivot could become a full spin-out, Eagle Twenty-two slammed into the base of the hills. Its main support truss crumpled and bent upward just forward of the main passenger module. The forward command module was knocked slightly askew, but remained attached to the ship’s frame.
Eagle Twenty-two had abruptly and finally come to a stop, the only movement now coming from the dust and soil settling around it. The entire crash had lasted mere seconds.
~~~~~~~~~~
Alexei Lubov wasn’t sure how long he’d sat motionless in the pilot seat, still gripping the controls, before he realized the Eagle had come to a halt. He wasn’t exactly aware who he was, but he did know he was alive and apparently unhurt. He was also aware he was in the dark. No power was left in the downed ship; even the emergency batteries seemed knocked out. He let go of the controls.
More by rote than by conscious decision, he unstrapped his safety harness and turned on his helmet’s mini spotlight. He stood quickly, adjusting his footing on the now angled deck, and moved to the command module’s closed doorway. It was jammed; no amount of brute strength was going to open it.
Lubov turned, ambled up to the forward viewport (which had not even cracked during the crash), and pulled the manual release pin that triggered tiny explosive bolts in the viewport frame. He felt the small explosive ‘pop’ through the deck under his feet, the vacuum eliminating any noise. The viewport was now loose, but still in place. Lubov swiftly kicked it out and scrambled out of the cockpit onto the command module’s black anti-glare surface.
Glancing at the ground below, Lubov noticed the command module was partially buried in the regolith; he wouldn’t have far to drop by jumping over the side. Carefully but quickly, he jumped down, dropping a meter before hitting the loose soil. Slipping slightly downhill, he stayed upright and converted his slide into a loping gait, moving steadily away from the crashed Eagle.
When he was several meters away, he turned toward the ruined craft. For the first time since the crash, he realized who he was and just how quickly—a minute, maybe two—he had gone from sitting through the impact to standing alone on the lunar surface.
He also realized just how lucky he’d been. Lucky the maneuvering thrusters were still active to help cushion the landing. Lucky the Eagle had started to spin out, causing the command module to hit the hill obliquely instead of head on. Lucky to be alive.
He breathed a sigh of relief and exhaustion.
Still gazing at the wrecked Eagle, he thought about his wife, Dasha, working in Alpha’s maintenance facility. She’d be performing salvage on Eagle twenty-two rather than repair, but at least she wouldn’t be doing so a widow. Alexei Luvov smiled nervously as he tripped his commlock’s locator beacon. He mused aloud, “Any landing you can walk away from…”
Craig Rohloff
04/05/99
rev. 04/24/07
