_Live From Cape Canaveral_ - Jay Barbree [79]
Their first excursion was complete, and like little boys crawling into their tree house, Shepard and Mitchell eased their way back into Antares’s cabin, sealed the hatch behind them, pressurized their ship, and ate and drank their fill. They replenished their spacesuits’ containers with oxygen and water, checked the battery packs and systems, and enjoyed the pleasure of being free of their cumbersome exoskeletons.
Exhausted, they slept.
Antares’s astronauts were up and ready to go two hours early. They had slept well and were telling the 150 people in Mission Control and its back rooms to get the lead out.
“Hey, we’re up and running this morning,” the forty-seven-year-old Shepard boasted. “The shape of the crew is excellent.”
The flight surgeon nodded, the flight director was delighted, and CapCom told the moonwalkers, “We’re turning you loose.”
Shepard and Mitchell bounced down Antares’s ladder eager to top every item on their moonwalk work list. This was the first full “geology field day.” They loaded their lunar rickshaw for the trip to Cone Crater, sure it would carry their heavy load, giving them a break from lugging rocks as big as bowling balls. But the rickshaw failed to fulfill its promise. Fra Mauro was covered with thicker and deeper dust than that found at the Apollo 11 and 12 landings sites, and pulling the rickshaw was like plowing through deep sand.
“This is ridiculous,” Mitchell called to Shepard. “Let’s pick up the damn thing and carry it.”
There was no argument from the commander, and the two carried the rickshaw loaded with supplies only to be fooled by the undulating nature of the terrain. It was like looking at mountains across a desert on Earth. In clear air, a mountain peak or range might appear to be only a few miles away when it is actually forty or fifty miles distant.
The navigation charts seemed to have been prepared for some other planet, and distance measurement proved to be misleading. The sun angle and the crystal-clear sharpness of a world without atmosphere threw off their depth perception.
Their journey had become a fierce slog. Frustrated, their strength sapped, they lost sight of where they were, and more important, where they were going. Every time the astronauts stopped they referred to their checklist, collected samples, and noted lost time. They were gulping oxygen, drenched in perspiration, but they weren’t giving up. “There’s the rim of Cone,” they assured each other. “We’re getting close now.”
Houston was concerned and told them to take it easy. Keep moving, but take it easy.
Then, finally, before them a steep climb loomed. It was a slope longer than a football field to the rim of Cone Crater. To get there, they would have to slug it out through a massive boulder field. There was rubble and smashed rocks everywhere, and they knew they were almost out of time. They pushed themselves as hard as they could—fighting up the slope in ankle-deep moon dust.
“You take two steps up,” Shepard told Mission Control, “and you slip back one. It’s like a day at the beach, plodding through deep sand.”
Suddenly, Shepard slipped to one knee and Mitchell had to come to his rescue and help him up. It was becoming obvious they were nearing the end. Houston would soon be ordering them to start back to Antares. They gulped in air and kept on pushing and pulling, digging their boots into the loose, dusty surface. But it was painfully clear Cone Crater had won.
Time, oxygen, and physical strength were all running out, and Mission Control knew Shepard and Mitchell were at the very edge of their endurance. They were still about seventy-five feet from the top.
“Alan, Ed, you guys have already eaten into your thirty-minute reserve,” said CapCom. “We think you’d better proceed with the rock sampling where you are.”
The high rim of Cone Crater would remain unchallenged.
“I think we’re looking at what we want right here,” Shepard told Mitchell, trying to put the best face