The Truth is Dead

  “This isn’t about the moon,” he said. “It’s about us.”

  Until they told me Mum was moving out, I really hadn’t known that my parents had been having problems. As it turned out, I don’t think my dad had either. Sure, Mum would sometimes say that he loved his work more than he loved us, but we’d never taken her seriously. Looking back, I suppose this was her way of quietly convincing herself that the changes in her heart were for the best. I didn’t cry when Mum revealed that she’d met someone else. I just nodded when she promised me that everything would be OK, and stared at the table when Dad began to weep.

  “I should go,” my mother said. “I would ask you to come with me, Lottie, but space is an issue and this is only for the very short term. Your father and I have a lot of sorting out to do, but we’ve agreed that you come first. Once we sell this house, we’ll have enough money to provide you with two places you can call home.”

  “But I don’t want to move,” I said. “And I don’t want you to go.”

  My mother rose from the table. She circled behind my father, touched his shoulder for a moment and then headed for the door. When she opened it, the howling I could hear out there sounded like another world entirely.

  The first few nights were the worst. I suppose we had to get used to the loss and what it meant for us all. The winds struck at sunset and only calmed as dawn broke. In the darkest hours gusts would rampage across town and country with such violence that I couldn’t sleep. The experts explained how this was due to the absence of a gravitational pull. As I looked at the impact around me, it seemed more like the loss of a calming influence.

  On the television Dad and I watched endless news footage of tidal surges and oceanic whirlpools. It looked to me like God had got fed up with us all and decided to pull the plug. All my favourite programmes were replaced by reports about emerging changes to our planet. Birds flocked in unusual directions, clouds formed strange new shapes, and dogs howled after midnight as if plagued by a frequency beyond our hearing.

  Even people behaved differently. Many panicked, with riots taking place as far afield as Reykjavik, Moscow and Rio de Janeiro. I also heard from Maisie that her neighbour had switched to a day shift on account of all the late night looting. As for me, I found my hay fever disappeared completely.

  At home our cat reacted badly to the situation. It didn’t help that Mum was the one who had always taken care of him. After she left he went hungry for several days because Dad and I completely forgot to feed him. Worse still, the high winds really spooked the poor thing. Instead of spending his nights out on the prowl, he chose to stay indoors. Even with the calm that came at daybreak, he would pop out only for a very short time. Then he’d crash back through the cat flap as if chased in by a snarling dog.

  “What’s frightening him?” I asked on one occasion.

  My father considered this for a moment, watching the fur on the cat’s back settle. “Change,” he said finally. “It’s an unsettling time for us all.”

  Throughout this period, while most governments appealed for calm, the two superpowers continued to raise the temperature. In an address to the world President Reagan not only denied all involvement in the moon strike, but even went so far as to suggest that the Russians had been attempting a surprise attack on American defence satellites. One which had ended in a cosmic disaster for us all. As each side had primed their nuclear arsenal to take flight, I asked if we should prepare a fallout shelter. In response, Dad turned to me as if emerging from a dream, and said it was too late for that.

  I was at school when Mum first returned to pick up some things. I knew she had been here as soon as I walked in. Her perfume hung in the air and the cat was at his bowl, finishing a treat of canned tuna.

  Then, late last night, she came back again. I was in bed when I heard the key in the lock. Normally at that hour I’d have been asleep but, what with the high winds, I was wide awake.

  I heard her close the door against the gale, and then her voice calling softly for my father. I wanted to get up and see her. I really did. I was just worried that by padding downstairs, somehow I would scare her away. A moment later, my parents were speaking in the kitchen.

  It struck me then that Dad hadn’t shown any anger about the situation. He wasn’t like the president, whose emotions were quite clear each time he made a broadcast. Reagan didn’t shout or beat the desk with his fist, but you could see it in his face. From a tension in his jawline to the way his eyes pinched when he outlined the American position. My dad didn’t carry that kind of fire within him. Once he had stopped weeping, there was nothing left.

  As I listened to them from my bed, it sounded as if my mother was doing all the talking. At one point I even heard some words.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m just sorry.”

  The storm that night was more ferocious than anything we had experienced. It raged so hard against my window that I was too scared to climb out and peek through the curtains. I just pulled my duvet over my head, and prayed the house would not be blown to bits.

  Now, as sunrise sees the winds subside, I look out and catch my breath. Trees have come down everywhere, bringing power lines with them, while somewhere in the distance I can hear a voice droning through a megaphone. Weirdly, though, the street is deserted. I switch on my radio, if only for some company, and that’s when I hear about the emergency measures.

  “Dad!”

  Grabbing my dressing-gown, I rush across the landing to the main bedroom. If the government really have ordered troops onto the street, there’ll be no school today for sure. I don’t pause to knock. I throw open the door and then stop in my tracks.

  I’m surprised to find the cat curled up at the foot of the bed. My father is sound asleep, but what leaves me reeling is the sight of the woman in his arms. Her head is resting upon his shoulder, with her palm flat on his chest. She opens her eyes and looks at me. At first, we just gaze at one another.

  “We’ve been ordered to stay inside,” I say eventually, blinking back tears. “It’s chaos out there.”

  Just then, from somewhere over the hills, we hear the crack of gunfire. The sound takes a moment to decay, as if refusing to fall silent.

  “Things will never be the same again,” says Mum in barely a whisper. “All we can do is hope that we’re over the worst.”

  ONE GIANT LEAP

  Philip Ardagh

  In July 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the Moon…

  There are countless monuments to the memory of US astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, with hundreds in the United States alone. The best known must be the Apollo 11 Memorial in Washington DC, and the Armstrong–Aldrin statue at the Kennedy Space Center. There are, of course, no graves in Arlington National Cemetery, where one would have expected such all-American heroes to be laid to rest. There were no grand funerals. No coffins draped with star-spangled banners or soldiers with heads bowed.

  The silver-haired man had visited many of these monuments over the years, but it was to the one in Wapakoneta, Ohio, that he always returned. It is an enormous statue of an astronaut, at least double life-size but looking even larger up on its high plinth. It’s of Wapakoneta’s most famous son, Neil Armstrong: one of only two people ever to have walked on the surface of the Moon. The lifeless Armstrong stands proudly in his spacesuit, his goldfish-bowl-like helmet tucked under his arm, looking up with sightless stone eyes to the stars, where he sought adventure and remains for ever. This is the people of Wapakoneta claiming their own.

  In July 2009, on the fortieth anniversary of the Moon landing, the man took yet another pilgrimage to Wapakoneta, quietly and anonymously, away from the bigger crowds of officials and dignitaries gathered in Washington and Houston, Texas. He stood in front of the Armstrong statue. Armstrong had not grown old as he had. The commander stays thirty-eight years old for eternity. He, on the other hand, was now seventy-eight. His military bearing was still evident, but his back no longer as rod straigh
t as he’d have liked. Age has a nasty way of sneaking up on one like that. He looked at his shoes and saw that the leather was scuffed at the toes. He wished he’d thought to bring a newer pair – not that anyone would give him or his shoes a second glance.

  It was early evening when he arrived, and the dying sun created a beautiful light in the wide Ohio sky, casting long, low shadows. He felt the faintest of breezes ruffle his hair, its usual silver made orangey-gold by the sun’s final fading rays. The cuffs of his light blue shirt were worn, though not actually frayed.

  A child laughed and began to circle the outer perimeter of the roped-off area around the statue’s base, chased by a girl the man took to be his elder sister. The boy was clutching a toy space rocket while she had cotton candy on a stick. She happily chewed on the pink spun floss as she roared after him.

  The inscription at the base of the Apollo 11 Memorial in Washington DC reads: Their deeds and their sacrifice were for all mankind. The inscription on the Armstrong–Aldrin statue at Cape Kennedy states: These brave men died not for their country but for humanity. Both are quotes from President Nixon’s address to the world, viewed by billions back in 1969.

  Here in Wapakoneta, however, the words carved into the stone simply read:

  NEIL ARMSTRONG

  BORN: WAPAKONETA, USA, EARTH

  AUGUST 5, 1930

  DIED: THE MOON

  JULY 21/22, 1969

  There is no specific date given for his death because no one is exactly sure when the last of the oxygen ran out. The calculations have been made and debated a thousand times, but no one can say with absolute certainty which side of midnight he and Buzz died, so it is not writ in stone.

  At their own request Armstrong and Aldrin ended all contact with Mission Control for their final minutes or hours. With the eyes and ears of all the world upon them, they were granted the one thing that their controllers back here on Earth could afford them: the dignity of a private passing.

  Standing before the Wapakoneta statue, the silver-haired man reflected on how technology had changed beyond recognition in the intervening forty years. He remembered how the row after row of screens at NASA’s Mission Control in Houston had seemed the very pinnacle of what computers could achieve. The safest pair of hands one could hope to be in. Now his washing machine contained more technological know-how than all of Mission Control’s computers back then put together.

  People from all over the world have visited Wapakoneta over the years and left flowers, cards and messages at the foot of the plinth. Many have run their fingers across Armstrong’s name. These literally touching tributes have smoothed the once crisply carved letters’ edges: a form of human-made erosion. They will be worn away long before his and Aldrin’s footprints on the windless Moon. The two astronauts have become the icons and inspiration to adventurers and explorers in all walks of life. On that day in July 2009, there were more small personal tributes carpeting the ground than ever, along with official tributes from organizations, “personalities” and nations. The silver-haired man found himself leaning over the red rope and scanning the cards for familiar names.

  Now he turned and walked back towards his car. Seeing him coming, the overweight driver had struggled out of his seat and opened his door for him. The man climbed in. There would be services throughout the US that weekend to remember the only two human beings ever to have walked on ground not belonging to their native planet, their having paid the ultimate price for that privilege.

  The events of 1969 were for ever etched into the silver-haired man’s memory. When he closed his eyes in the back of that car – as the last vestiges of warmth disappeared with the sun – the images were still acid-burnt into his retina, barely faded with time. He could remember everything so clearly. There was a cavernous void in the pit of his stomach.

  He was not one of those who had huddled around a tiny television set at home or at a friend’s or relative’s, as was the experience of so many back then. He had sat alone, waiting like no other.

  It is 20 July 1969 and the world watches, waits and listens as the lunar module Eagle separates from the command module Columbia and – after what seems a nail-biting eternity – lands on the Moon.

  Time passes. Now, bouncing down the ladder of Eagle and onto the Moon’s dusty surface, Neil Armstrong speaks the immortal lines: “One small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind” and changes history in a way that it has never been changed before.

  Satellites may have been sent into orbit. Men and women may have flown into space and even have walked in it, but this was the first time a human being had left a footprint on the Moon. The unreachable had been reached. Suddenly a million other possibilities come into flower.

  Suddenly the name of Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space, becomes secondary to that of Neil Armstrong, the first human on the Moon. Until now the space race has not been a proper race at all, with Russia easily winning at every level: first satellite, first person (a man), first woman, first space walk … with the US’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration lagging far behind. Now Russia’s bubble has been burst. All other firsts will be all but forgotten. The rules have changed. Now the US can claim the ultimate prize…

  …a prize about to be tarnished by tragedy.

  After a total of twenty-one hours on the surface, it’s time for Armstrong and Aldrin to leave the Moon and to rejoin Michael Collins, who is orbiting it in the command module. It is 1.54 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on 21 July 1969 … but nothing happens.

  There is no graceful departure. No arched trajectory through space. Instead, a damp squib and a sinking heart. In Armstrong’s own words, the engines of the module fail to “light up”. Despite repeated efforts on the Moon and suggestions from Houston, the ghastly possibility that the astronauts may be doomed begins to sink in.

  Then it becomes a reality. The module and the men inside are going nowhere.

  Time slows to a standstill.

  The empty hours are filled with mind-numbing speculation. The television is filled with talking heads not really knowing what to say. The world waits.

  Then comes the announcement. The president of the United States of America is about to make an address. People tune in across the globe.

  Waiting.

  They are finally met by an image of a sweating President Nixon seated at his desk in the Oval Office. His voice breaking with emotion, he begins to speak the words he hoped and prayed he’d never have to utter.

  “Fate,” he says, “has ordained that the men who went to the Moon to explore in peace will stay on the Moon to rest in peace.”

  This single sentence – these twenty-four words – sends shock waves around the world. All sense of triumph and euphoria is snuffed out in an instant. The sickening possibility – unspoken by most – has become a dreadful reality.

  To some the shock is so great that the next few sentences of the president are lost. He refers to Armstrong and Aldrin as “these brave men” and talks of sacrifice. Then, with shoulders back and real tears in his eyes, Nixon stares straight into the camera and says, “In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.”

  One of the billions watching the broadcast is William Safire. He sits alone in a borrowed office, shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbow, the only light coming from the flickering cathode ray tube. In his hands he holds a memo headed In Event of Moon Disaster. Silently he mouths the words as Nixon speaks them.

  “Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man’s search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain foremost in our hearts.”

  These are Safire’s words, crafted by his hands and put in the president’s mouth. This is one presidential speech everyone in the White House had hoped would never have to be delivered.

  The broadcast is nearly at an end. Nixon is reading the final words on the autocue: “For every human
being who looks up at the Moon in the nights to come—” Then he breaks off. He struggles for something personal to say, not something pre-planned for a worst-case scenario, but something immediate and from the heart. He looks down at the copy of the speech on the Oval Office desk: typed and double-spaced. He lifts it up, shuffling the pages. Then he utters possibly the most famous words of his presidency.

  “My fellow Americans,” he says. “These brave men died not for their country but for humanity. Their deeds and their sacrifice were for all mankind.”

  After the address, there are the phone calls, conducted off the international stage, away from the eyes of the world’s media. Nixon has already made calls to the widows of Armstrong and Aldrin. He did that before the broadcast. As commander-in-chief, the president has had to make such calls before – to widows of other fallen servicemen – but never to the wives of such a unique brand of hero. Just twenty-four hours previously, Armstrong was the most talked-about man on the planet. Now Aldrin’s name can be added alongside his. Had things turned out differently, he might just have been remembered as the second man to walk on the Moon, simply following in another’s footsteps. As it is, their names will be linked for ever, as their bodies lie together in another place.

  Then comes the final leg of this tragic journey: the return of Michael Collins, the third, forgotten, astronaut. Collins is the pilot whose job it was to orbit the Moon in the command module Columbia, while the other two set down upon its surface. With Armstrong and Aldrin dead, the top priority – the only priority – is to get him safely home.

  His successful re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere and his retrieval from the space capsule in the sea are, in the end, a subdued affair. No one can paint him a hero, however hard they try.