Every night from the Vulcanite radio the same message repeats itself like a looped recorded broadcast from some indeterminable source: the moment of the lunar landing and then the tragic hours before the Eagle’s scheduled return to orbit with the command module and before its ill-fated abort. But tonight is different. Duncan turns the radio’s knob past Radio Luxembourg to a point on the dial where the needle goes no farther, a channel of static from which, when he listens in the dark, a faint sound begins to emerge, at times a ghostly jumble of voices and at others a crisp enunciation punctuating the charged ether. He hears the voice of Michael Collins, ghostly and insubstantial yet filled with urgency:
Collins to Eagle. Over.
Collins to Eagle. Over.
Buzz. Neil. Come back, over.
Houston, are you picking this up on the LVL? I think there’s a problem with telemetry between the CM and the LM, over. I can’t tell what’s happening down there. I’m changing frequency to NasCom, over.
Now operating on NasCom. Houston? Eagle? Can you hear me?
CM to Houston, do you copy?
Passing into lunar shadow in forty seconds, and counting.
CM to Houston. Hope to return to radio transmission in two hours, over. Houston, do you copy?
Forty seconds.
Be great if you guys could get the RCT up and running by the time I’ve made sequential orbit. It’s getting pretty lonely up here without any human voices for company. Over.
Twenty seconds.
I’ll look for Neil and Buzz on my next pass. Buzz brought his baseball bat. Wanted to see how far in he could hit a baseball in space. [laughs]
Ten seconds.
I think … [garbled].
Out of the dark … [garbled]. Over.
Collins to control. If you have a moment, say a prayer for all of us, would you? We need everything we can get up here.
The Hyginus Rille is in sight. Beginning transmission blackout. If you make contact with Neil and Buzz, tell them I was asking for them. Am eager for rendezvous and excited for their return. What a job they’ve done! See you on the … [garbled].
And then it ends and there is only a vacant electrical hum and soft bursts of static as power surges down the line. Duncan reaches out and turns off the radio and the room is dark once more, but when he lies back in bed, pulls the sheets and blanket to his chin and stares at the ceiling, the deep night of space swirls above him and there are no stars and for the astronauts and his father no promise of dawn and only the never-ever of returning home again.