Labyrinth

April 22, 1972
12:03 P.M., Houston Time
6 days, 0 hours, 9 minutes mission elapsed time
Descartes Highlands, The Moon

During their second foray outside the lunar module, James Elder and Howard Kennedy were jolted about as their moon rover lurched across a jagged landscape of boulders and minicraters.

Great view. Kennedy's familiar midwestern accent came crystal clear over the radio headset Elder wore under his helmet.

Elder nodded, mesmerized by the scene unfolding outside his tinted visor. The sun at their backs was as brilliant as a bomb blast. Stone Mountain rose before them in a series of shadowed ridges while Earth hung overhead in a sky of speckled black.

Elder parked the rover, then called into his microphone, Houston, we're five hundred feet above the Cayley Plains. Highest point ever reached by man on the moon.

Fantastic, said a voice from Mission Control. The crackling transmission was solid. Now you boys better get to work.

Kennedy got out and immediately began to gather samples. Elder climbed farther up the mountain, looking for rocks known as basalts, which would indicate that volcanic activity had formed the Highlands. But all he was seeing were "breccias," stones created by the impacts of asteroids and meteors.

Four billion years ago, the theory went, the moon was pummeled by giant chunks of rock hurled through space by the Big Bang detonation that created the universe. One huge impact created the South Ray Crater on the side of Stone Mountain, five times the size of a football field, more than a hundred feet deep, and covered with coal- and pearl-colored rocks. As Elder approached the rim of the chasm, he was looking at matter forms from the beginning of time. When studied under a microscope, he thought, these stones might well seem a universe unto themselves.

Elder paused, aware of the suck and whoosh of his breath inside his helmet, then called into his microphone, Houston, I'm gonna dig a trench up here, see what really made these old highlands.

Roger...keep...The radio link with Houston broke up under waves of static.

Come back, Houston?

Not reading...flares...

Elder turned and looked downslope eighty yards toward Kennedy, who worked with his back to him.

You catch that, Howie?

Must be a solar storm choking communications.

Damn big one, Elder agreed, holding his hand up to shield his eyes from the sun.

If we lose Houston more than fifteen minutes, we'll head back to the module.

Roger that.

Elder used his rake to dig into the chalk-white dust on the crater's rim. After several minutes of work, he felt as if he might not find anything. Then the rake turned over a stone roughly the size and shape of a child's soccer ball. He photographed and gave a number to the find: moon rock 66095, a shock-melted breccia, eleven hundred grams in weight.

Elder used a scooper to lift moon rock 66095 and transfer it to his left hand. Shaking the stone so the dust would fall away, the astronaut held it up to his visor. At first glance, except for its shape, it seemed rather plain, a gray rock composed of concave planes and a few minor extrusions. But closer examination revealed a ragged web of dark crystals embedded in the surface of the stone. Elder shook more dust off the rock, then tilted it so the sun shone directly on the crystals. The sunlight invaded the black glass, made it flash like a rushing stream. Then it began to vibrate. The crystals' sparkling flared into a welder's blinding arc of light. The astronaut heard the hollow, oscillating roar of something deep and primitive.

A gale of energy, strong and electric, gusted through Elder and he doubled over as if punched. A flare of razored pain seared through his head. For a moment the astronaut could see nothing but that glaring light, hear nothing but that insistent, hushed roar, feel nothing but pulse after bolt of hot, insistent energy passing through him. Elder went to one knee, still clutching the rock in his hand, sure he was about to collapse.

Howie! Elder gasped.

Downslope, Kennedy spun around to see Elder force his hand open and drop something. The second astronaut saw it free of his commander's fingers for only a split second. But it was enough. He stood dumbfounded as Elder collapsed to one side.

Jim! Kennedy cried, dropping his equipment and climbing as fast as he could, bellowing into his headset, Houston, Houston, Elder's down! Houston, do you read me? Elder's down!

Nothing came back but heavy static.

By the time Kennedy reached Elder, the mission commander had gotten himself up into a sitting position. The searing, deafening pain that had all but crippled him had eased. His vision and hearing were returning, but he was nauseated, dizzy, and panting.

Kennedy crouched by his partner. You okay? What happened?

Elder gestured dully behind Kennedy. Like I was plugged into something, like grabbing a live wire, Jim. But not in the shocking way you'd expect. More like waves of...stuff...going through you, shaking you all up, deep, like in your cells, like...

Elder could not go on; he just shook his head in bewilderment. For a moment, Kennedy gaped at his partner, normally such a strong, even-keeled man. Then again, he himself had seen something from down the slope; it had appeared in his field of vision for a fraction of an instant, but that flashed image had been retained; it looked for all the world like heavily filtered photographs Kennedy had seen of solar eclipses -- a dense mass surrounded by a shimmering corona of light.

Now Kennedy followed the line of Elder's gesture to a rock behind his left foot. He picked it up, turned it over, and examined it, a gray stone seemingly no different in appearance from any of the ten thousand others strewn about them.

This?

Yeah. I think. I...I don't know.

Jim...Howard? Do you copy, over? The radio link with Houston had returned.

Houston, Kennedy began, we have a prob -- Elder reached out and put his hand on Kennedy's arm, stopping him from finishing his sentence. Their eyes met through their visors in silent understanding. They'd been exposed to something. Kennedy had caught a glimpse of it. Elder had been all but overwhelmed by it. But the event was not ongoing and that was the problem.

NASA had cut short several space walks during the earlier Gemini missions because astronauts floating in the void had exhibited symptoms similar to those of anoxia, what deep-sea divers call "the rapture of the deep": disorientation, a feeling of detached well-being, hallucinations. Without evidence to support what they'd seen, the boys back in Houston might cut short their stay on the moon. Both men had spent their entire adult lives preparing for this single endeavor. They did not want to be accused of bugging out.

Come back? the mission commander called.

Jim's feeling a little out of sorts, Kennedy said.

Jim? What's going on?

I'm all right, Elder insisted, forcing himself to his feet. Just got a little...queasy there for a second.

There was a long pause, during which both astronauts stared down at moon rock 66095 in Kennedy's glove.

Well, that was one heck of a solar gust that just blew through up there. The docs down here say you could have gotten hit with some radiation, or the rapid change in light could have triggered the nausea.

Elder hesitated. Kennedy nodded. Rapid change in light, Elder said. Must be it.

We're going to want to run a full check on you when you get back to the module.

Roger, Elder said. But I'm good to go now.

You're sure?

Elder took one last long look at moon rock 66095 before holding out his collection bag to Kennedy. He had already photographed and given the rock a number. The stone had to return to Earth or they would face intense questioning about its absence. Kennedy nodded, then dropped the rock into the bag.

Positive, Houston, Elder said. Absolutely positive.

Three months after his return to Earth, however, James Elder's behavior turned erratic. He sank into depression, suffered bouts of insomnia, and began to drink. One night he tried to break into the Lunar Sample Laboratory, where all rocks brought back from the moon are kept. He was drunk and belligerent and told NASA security officials that he alone had the right to possess the moon rocks he'd brought back from the Descartes Highlands. In response to the incident, NASA quietly placed Elder on administrative leave and demanded he seek psychiatric help if he wished to rejoin the space agency. He admitted in therapy that he was obsessed by the moon rocks he'd brought back to Earth and that he was haunted by nightmares that all took place on the dark side of the moon. A psychiatrist put Elder on antidepressants and then antipsychotic drugs, but they did not help. In early 1974, despondent and suffering from delusions, Elder committed suicide. An autopsy showed an inexplicable concentration of heavy metals in the cortex of the astronaut's brain.

Copyright © 2002 by Suspense, Inc. Thirty-two years Later...