Read The Eye With Which The Universe Beholds Itself (Apollo Quartet) for Free Online Page A

front wheels. He shuffles about the vehicle removing pins and cables, then lifts up the seat and footrest.
    He steps back and gazes at the MRV. He’s done enough for his first EVA, he thinks. Tiredness eats at his bones, his muscles burn, and he can barely bend his fingers in his gloves. It’s going to be a fight to get back into the MM, and he best do it now while he’s got a chance of succeeding. The mission plan has him out here for another hour, but he’s cutting it short.
    The mission planners have filled his nine days for him and after forty minutes on Mars he knows there’s no way he’s going to be able to do everything they want. He’s going to have to focus on the important stuff, and he knows the real science is going to get short shrift because another agenda has come into play now. The pencil-necks are going to be pissed at him because other things are more important now—
    The goddamn Face. And the Pyramid.
     
    1999
    Elliott has been on the Robert H Goddard for a week now and he’s fairly sure he knows his way round it. The module through which he came aboard holds supplies, then there’s the command module, and the last one is the passenger and crew module. Occasionally he uses the wrong connecting tunnel and finds himself not where he expected to be, but it’s pretty easy to figure out which module is which. Everywhere he turns, he is assailed by memories of Ares 9, and they trick him into thinking he knows precisely where he is. And then some strangeness, something that reminds him he’s not aboard Ares 9 en route to Mars, he’s in the Goddard, travelling to an exoplanet faster than the speed of light.
    They’ve assigned him a compartment, though he had the pick of them as he’s the only passenger aboard. They’re all exactly the same: a triangular space with a locker against the curved exterior wall and a sleeping bag fastened to an interior partition. A mat on the floor and a canvas ceiling provide privacy.
    This tiny compartment where he spends his nights is only a smaller space within a tiny universe. He’s cut off from everything outside the Goddard and since he’s a passenger he has nothing to do. His thoughts inevitably turn to Judy, and he wonders if he should have contacted her from Space Station Freedom. And then he thinks, no goddamnit, she left him, not the other way round, she’s the one who’s throwing away their marriage, the years they had together, the good times, the life he created for her. He’s not going to apologise, she knew he had to take this mission, he couldn’t turn it down, she’s the one with the goddamn problem. And he pulls out the photos he brought with him, but it hurts too much to look at them so he puts them away.
    He spends most of his time in the command module—the daily operations of the Goddard he finds endlessly fascinating. The crew module has exercise and recreation facilities, and he has to exercise for two hours every day on the ergometer, but he doesn’t sleep as well as he once did, not even in zero gravity. The Goddard’s crew are mostly young, taciturn, and even off-watch they treat him according to his rank. No one is ever really off duty in space.
    Major Finley doesn’t seem to mind him hanging around the command centre, providing he stays out of the way. Elliott spends hours in the cupola, gazing out at the surface of 1862 Apollo, which glows silver beneath a nacreous sky.
    What is that? he asks Finley, pointing up at the pearly brightness which surrounds the asteroid.
    Light, Finley tells him. We’re in a bubble of spacetime generated by the Serpo engine, and the light trapped inside with us can’t escape until we reach our destination and collapse the bubble, so it just bounces around and produces that effect. When we arrive, it all escapes with a big flash. The guys on Earth Two say they always know when we arrive—the flash lights up the sky.
    It’s kind of weird, admits Elliott.
    You get used to it, replies Finley. The