Charles Shepherd (character)

"Astronaut Charles Shepherd" is a fictional character in the novel "Ice" by Shane Johnson.

Character introduction

As LM Pilot on "Apollo 19", Charlie Shepherd undergoes a serious test of his Christian faith while stranded on the Moon when the LM is crippled.

Explanation of the character's name

The surname "Shepherd" may or may not refer to the common characterization of Jesus Christ as "The Good Shepherd."

Character sketch

Motivation(s)

Glory to God, service to his country, and friendship with and loyalty to his mission commander, Astronaut Gary Lucas

Goal(s)

To preserve his life, and that of his commander, after their mission goes horribly wrong.

Conflict(s)

* With nature, a limited oxygen supply, and ultimately a limited time when he starts a countdown on a device that threatens to destroy him.
* Between his faith, which has no warrant for intelligent life beyond the Earth, and seemingly undeniable evidence of that very thing.

Minor irritation(s)

* His friend refuses to believe in Christ, and challenges his faith.
* His friend disappears, leaving him in a situation where his training cannot help him.

Epiphany

God shows him, through his doubts, that He always provides, and always has a reason for everything He does, or allows to happen to one of His elect.

Biographical summary

Prior story

Charles Shepherd failed of selection as an astronaut when he first applied. But that failure afforded him the opportunity to meet his wife, Carol, also a believer. They have one young son, Joseph ("Joey").

Shortly before the launch of "Apollo 19", Shepherd participated in a gambling pool to see whether his commander would succeed in making a precision landing closer than the record set by Astronaut Pete Conrad in "Apollo 12". The precision landing is required because part of their mission equipment is a new kind of heavy rover, delivered previously aboard an Apollo LM Truck.

Actions in "Ice"

Apollo 19--and Disaster

Astronaut Shepherd is inordinately proud of his commander, because the commander has bested Pete Conrad's old precision-landing record, thus winning Shepherd a hundred dollars in a gambling pool (see back story above). He is even happier when he and Gary Lucas, driving their heavy rover in the Marlow Basin (actually the Aitken Basin), discover an outcropping of precious and semi-precious stones--easily the most colorful geological samples ever recovered from the Moon.

He is not so happy when the LM ascent engine fails to fire. Repeated attempts to restart it end in failure. Consequently, he and his friend are stranded. Lucas orders that they retrieve their discarded life-support backpacks and prepare to abandon the LM and strike out on their own.

At Shepherd's suggestion, they name their rover "Mirabelle", after his father's old World War II bomber. Lucas agrees. Together they return to the Marlow Basin, driving beyond all contact with Earth. At first they find multiple boulders containing iron ore. Then they find themselves on ground that is not only level but optically flat--and so polished that it reflects the stars. They stop and take a sample, which turns out to be water ice. Unable to explain the phenomenon, they drive on.

During their drive, Shepherd realizes that his backpack was damaged and is leaking. To preserve his air, Lucas punps it into the rover's system, essentially tethering Shepherd to the rover. Finally, the rover's battery grows too weak to propel it any further. Lucas tells Shepherd that he has seen a "glint" in the distance and will go out to investigate, leaving Shepherd behind.

Shepherd is startled out of a sound sleep by a call from Lucas--and realizes that his oxygen is out. He extends his time with his Oxygen Purge System and abandons the rover. As he walks rapidly toward the edge of the ice, he realizes that the ice sheet is changing--and then he finds himself knee-deep in water. The ice has, incredibly, melted. The rover has sunk to the bottom.

Shepherd splashes ashore and follows Lucas' footprints. Then, to his horror, he discovers an empty glove and thinks he sees his friend in the distance, a suicide. But as he draws closer, he realizes that the dead astronaut cannot be Lucas, because he is eight feet tall, and his suit is not the same as an Apollo EVA suit. While he puzzles over the dead man's origins, Lucas greets him, telling him that he could not continue because his suit light battery is dead.

Together, the two men follow the dead man's footprints for ten minutes--and then Lucas, now totally out of oxygen, collapses. Shepherd realizes that they are within dragging distance of an open door to an airlock. He drags his friend inside and somehow manages to close the airlock, which then cycles--just in time, as Shepherd's own air is out. He doffs his suit, then removes his friend's helmet before he suffocates.

Adventures on the Base

The first problem that the two men confront is the realization that they are in a Lunar base that cannot have been built by any contemporary superpower. Lucas suspects extrasolar visitors, but Shepherd says no because the Bible has no warrant for such a thing. The two men agree to disagree, as they search for and find personal light keys that will enable them to unlock doors on the installation.

At first they find an apparent war room, where Shepherd activates a display showing a map of what looks like their solar system. They recognize Jupiter, but find five rocky inner planets instead of four, no planet corresponding to Pluto, and rings around all four gas giants. Lucas reiterates his conviction that the base is extrasolar in origin, and expresses his fear that the builders could conquer Earth easily.

The two continue to explore. First they find an airlock containing an EVA prep room and a rack of EVA suits, each much larger and more efficient looking than an Apollo EVA suit. But then they find a storeroom containing the remains of at least some of the base crew, who have killed each other with blunt instruments and some kind of guns (and in some cases, have mutilated one another in grotesque ways). Adding to the horror, they discover the base dormitory area, and find one room occupied by a man who slit his throat while seated at a table. Why this man took his life, and why the others killed each other in the storeroom, neither man can explain--and the finding of "artwork" depicting stylized scenes of torture does nothing to settle their nerves.

The next morning, Shepherd awakes to the sound of Lucas' voice calling him to another day of exploration--they still need to find a mess hall. Shepherd takes time to shave, using a razor he has found in an empty dorm room. When he comes out into the corridor, Lucas is nowhere to be found. Shepherd then begins a systematic exploration of the base. He finds a sacrificial temple (in which the last sacrifice was a human one, to wit, a female base crew member) and a machine whose appearance suggests a life-support system. Eventually he finds the base's athletic court and mess hall, the latter holding a food dispenser that, by trial and error, he learns to operate.

His time on the base settles into a routine of continued fruitless searching. He returns to the war room and activates the next console--which shows him a layout of the base. He realizes that he has left one room unexplored--a hangar beyond the EVA prep room he and Lucas had found earlier. He explores the hangar--which turns out to be empty. Furious, he returns to the war room and activates all its systems in turn, except for one console that remains dark despite his touch. Unable to make sense of any of the control systems, primarily because of an insurmountable language barrier, he kneels on the floor and cries out to God, saying, "There has to be a reason!"

Days later, he returns to the remaining silent console and plays with it again. It answers with an insistent voice, which then sounds angry and final. A set of bright red dots appears, and the console falls silent. Later, Shepherd notices that one of the dots has turned off--and he realizes, to his horror, that he has activated a self-destruct sequence that is now following a countdown.

In the days that follow, the failure of key base systems, starting with the gravity and the heating, confirm his worst fears--the base is shutting down, one system at a time. He stalls for time by drawing water into every spare container available. The fall of some equipment in an empty storeroom gives him a brief, false hope that his friend has returned to him. But eventually, the machine he thought was a life-support system utters three piercing alarm tones, and then opens--revealing Gary Lucas, dazed but alive. Shortly thereafter, two astronauts who had been sent to retrieve his and Lucas' remains find both men alive. They evacuate them to their LM and lift off to a Skylab rescue vehicle.

Only then does Lucas awaken. Lucas startles Shepherd by saying that he has actually met the base builders while on a trip to the past. Shepherd says that that is impossible--that Lucas was inside a machine that was somehow feeding him and keeping him alive for two months. Before the two men can settle the question, a bright, searing light fills the windows of their spacecraft. The base has finally destroyed itself.

Back on Earth

Shepherd feels doubly guilty at being asked to participate in a cover-up, because NASA won't or can't admit the possibility of extrasolar visitation of the Moon, and Shepherd himself cannot reconcile the implications of what he has seen with his Bible lessons. But then Gary Lucas offers him an explanation. The base is not the product of an extrasolar civilization--it is the product of Antediluvian civilization. The base builders never attacked Earth, because they were from Earth. As for Lucas--whether he was in the machine the whole time, or whether the machine actually sent him somewhere, he'll never know. What he does know is that he has experienced life on Antediluvian Earth, actually met Noah, builder of the famous Ark, and even worked on the Ark, helping to apply its coating of pitch. Thus he was on Earth shortly before the Great Flood came--and then was on the Lunar base just as its crew destroyed one another in mutiny, mayhem, murder, human sacrifice (thus explaining the corpse Shepherd had found in the temple), and the suicide of the base commander, who turned out to be the dead astronaut they had found outside the base. Shepherd at first has trouble accepting that Antediluvian civilization was so advanced, until Lucas points out that the Flood destroyed all trace of its technology--and that no civilization commanding a lesser technology could have built the Ark, even if God did dictate its design. Shepherd now has two reasons to rejoice: that his faith has withstood its most challenging test, and that his friend, and his friend's wife, have found God and become "saved."

Relationship with other characters in "Ice"

* Astronaut Gary Lucas, his commander.
* Carol Shepherd, his wife
* Joseph "Joey" Shepherd, his son
* Astronaut Victor Kendall, "Apollo 19" CM pilot
* Astronauts Bruce Cortney, James Irwin, and Donald K. Slayton, his rescuers

Major themes

A devout believer tests his faith against tremendous fear, uncertainty, and doubt, and emerges with his faith all the stronger for the experience.

Literary significance & criticism

This character has not been known long enough to generate a significant body of criticism.

Allusions/references from other works

None known.

Film and TV portraits

Charles Shepherd has not been portrayed on film.

ources, references, external links, quotations

See "Ice"