NONFICTION - Dec. 18, 1994

LOST MOON: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13 by Jim Lovell & Jeffrey Kluger (Houghton Mifflin: $22.95; 378 pp.) You want an adventure? Here’s an adventure. About the guys who didn’t get to walk on the moon--guys with preternatural cool and the courage of heroes. Concomitantly, about the legions of brainy, high-tech computer nerds who helped them get back to God’s Green Footstool. Here are commander Jim Lovell and lunar-module pilot Fred Haise and command-module skipper Jack Swigert, bopping about in space 200,000 miles from the planet, 50,000 from the moon and something goes bump in the night. Never mind the moon landing. Of a sudden, there is not enough power, not enough water, not enough oxygen to get them back to earth! And even if they do manage, somehow, to reach the home atmosphere in a thoroughly disabled spacecraft, how will they be able to fire what’s left of their thrusters at the requisite power and duration? A couple of degrees either way--a couple of microseconds, really--and they will either incinerate or skip off the atmosphere into eternal orbit around the sun, a sorry monument to man’s chutzpah. This is no “Space for Kids.” This is an adult book, written by and for adults. Jim Lovell once again exercises superb judgment in choosing as collaborator journalist Jeffrey Kluger, who sets precisely the right tone: men in mortal danger without a clue on what has fractured their life-supporting cocoon (a contractor screw-up, it turns out), refusing to panic, knowing that their only savior is dispassion. The narrative gets technical at times, but with the authors’ skill and reader’s application, one can follow each maneuver with all the trepidation of the prinipals. Just enough personal touches--the ordeal of Lovell’s family, the excruciating disappointment of circling the moon but never touching it--complete a drama skillfully chronicled.