“It’s the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen,” Penny said grudgingly. She had tried sleeping but had given up, the view too irresistible.
“We’re going to be the first people to see the earth get smaller as we fly away,” Jack said, offering some history. Paco hung off his shoulder, a paw out toward the earth-ball. “The Apollo crews had just a little window and were facing the wrong way most of the time.” He looked over at Penny. “I’m sorry I had to lie to you. I didn’t think you’d understand.”
“Shut up, Medaris,” Penny said. “I’ll never believe anything you say ever again, so don’t waste your breath.”
Virgil cupped the receding planet with his hands. “Everybody I’ve ever known, all on that little blue and white and brown ball.” He mused over the world. “I wonder what they think about all this back at the Cape and Houston?”
“Houston!” Jack had forgotten about Shuttle Mission Control. He put Paco on the ceiling, pulled his feet out of the loops, and went down to the middeck, coming back with a laptop. “I should have set this up from the beginning,” he said, “but I got overconfident. I didn’t think Houston would try to do anything to us without letting us know.” He typed in some commands and the computer whirred softly. “Okay, it’s done. New software is in. We’ll run Columbia through this machine from here on. There’s no way the ground can break into it.”
Jack looked up to find Penny staring at him, incredulity written on her face. “You’ve disconnected us from Houston? Why? We might need them!”
“Because I don’t trust them, High Eagle. Isn’t that obvious? In case you haven’t noticed, so far they’ve let a rocket detonate close enough to ping one of our windows, they fired the RCS jets while we were in the engine bay, and they sent Endeavour up to attack us with a bomb.”
“But who’s going to watch all the systems while we’re asleep?”
Jack patted the laptop. “This little baby could put a hundred mission controllers out of work. It’ll look after us just fine.”
Penny squinted. “I hope to hell you know what you’re doing, Medaris.”
“I do, High Eagle. Not to worry.”
“When you tell me not to worry is when I start,” Penny retorted. Then she took on an air of resignation. “Are the middeck lockers getting power?”
“Of course.” Except for Paco, Jack had all but forgotten there was anything else aboard Columbia besides the hardware needed for the moon mission. Jack shared the belief with most NASA engineers that the vast majority of experiments carried into space weren’t good for much except as excuses for professors to write learned papers. He couldn’t help but ask Penny, in a doubtful tone, “Any of those experiments worth anything?”
She had caught his tone. “My cell culture experiments will demonstrate the growth patterns in microgravity of a variety of dendritic cells.”
Jack knew he should just shut up, let the woman do whatever she wanted to do. They were on a long journey. Everyone would need something to pass the time on the way. And he really shouldn’t needle her, he thought, but it seemed as if he couldn’t help himself. “I’m sure the world will be waiting impatiently to hear the results of that,” he said. “Why, I was just saying the other day, wasn’t I, Virgil, that it sure would be nice to know the growth patterns in microgravity of a variety of dendritic cells.”
“Hey, don’t get me into this,” Virgil said, hands in the air. Jack had to admire his wisdom.
Penny pulled out of her footloops and made her way down the ceiling handrails. “Medaris, I don’t know why you seem to glory in being ignorant.” She wriggled down through the hatch to the middeck.
Virgil came up next to Jack. “You really like that woman, don’t you, boss?”
“Like her? Virg, I can’t stand the sight of her.”
Virgil slowly nodded his head up and down. “Uh-huh. Right.”
Penny heard Medaris and Virgil talking but their conversation was muffled. Got to remember to just ignore that man, she thought. She opened her cell culture experiment and set up the microscope encased in foam in one of the middeck lockers. The very idea. Are these experiments worth anything? Well, they were, weren’t they?
Penny checked the thermoelectric incubator. It had run on battery power while Columbia was shut down. She saw no error messages and an initial observation showed all of the sample trays with cell growth. She began a more careful examination of each tray, photographing the cells and making notes. The last sample she inspected was one she had ruined during her hurried first setup. Still ill with SAS, she had accidentally mixed a lamb nerve cell culture with frog DNA. She had started to pitch the contaminated sample but then decided to include it with the other samples in the incubator. It might start stinking in the waste bag, otherwise.
Curious as to how the cells in her accidental mixture were growing, she clicked the sample tray in place on the microscope holder, adjusted the eyepiece, and added a little extra light. She found, as she had feared, the cells a mixed mess, lamb and frog cellular material overlapping one another, hopelessly contaminated. In one place, near the center, there seemed to be some sort of coil growing, white wisps like fine white hairs running down its length. Some sort of an impurity, she guessed, perhaps not even biological. Still, it was interesting and perhaps worth watching. She photographed the coil, made a note of it, and then put all the samples away.
She had done her science. She hoped Medaris would be up in the cockpit doing something, anything, so she wouldn’t have to talk to him. But when she came up through the hatch and saw that he was indeed busy, she felt oddly disappointed.
THE LUNAR CURATORIAL LABORATORY
Johnson Space Center
Shirley Grafton hustled up the steps of the low gray building on the Johnson Space Center campus. She was there on a hunch. She had arrived in Houston on the first flight out of Washington but by the time she got her rental car and drove to JSC, it was already approaching noon. Her vice presidential ID card had gotten her on the center. Her stomach growled to remind her she hadn’t had any lunch, but she was too excited by what she was about to see to pay it any heed. The Apollo astronauts had carried back 838 pounds of rock and dirt and dust from the moon, most of it stored at the building she was approaching, the Lunar Curatorial Laboratory. Even more than thirty years after the last moon mission, less than fifty pounds of lunar material had left the lab. Anyone wishing to study the larger rocks or sample tubes went to Houston.
The laboratory’s director, Professor Claude Koszelak, met Shirley at the door. Koszelak was thin and lanky, the kind of man that seemed to be everywhere in this corner of Texas, looking as dried out as a desert arroyo. Shirley would have bet good money that out in the parking lot, Koszelak had a truck with a cowboy hat on the seat and a rifle rack in the rear window. Those good old boys were invariably friendly cusses and Koszelak proved to be no exception. He gave her a grin, offered her all the hospitality he could deliver, and led her into the rows of stainless steel and glass sample cabinets. Black rubber gloves hung from unattended cabinets while others had bunny-suited lab workers seated in front of them, working with pieces of the moon.
As Koszelak explained what they saw, his intellect became clear despite his homespun appearance. Selected samples from the lunar breccia, he explained, were being sawn into different sizes, described, and placed in context as to where they were found. After that was done, each piece had to be photographed and tagged before it was sent out. “It’s time-consuming, very exacting work. And of course we don’t send out samples to just anyone. We exhaustively review all requests. We are very careful with our rocks.”
Shirley peered at the moon samples. “Do you get back the results?”
“Yes, ma’am, we sure do. That’s part of our agreement with anyone who receives samples.”
Shirley watched a technician as he handled a gray corrugated piece of the moon, weighing it before chiseling it into smaller, more manageable pieces. “I’m interested to see if any of the scientists were
investigating Shorty Crater,” she said.
Koszelak raised his eyebrows. “Shorty Crater? Okay, let’s check.” Koszelak led the way into his office. It was no surprise that he had the horns of a longhorn steer mounted on the wall over his computer. He saw where she was looking and smiled proudly. “One of my own steers loaned his horns to me,” he said. “I run a little spread down near Tyler.” He sat and entered commands on a desktop computer and a list filled the monitor screen. “Here you go. There’ve been two hundred and forty-three requests for samples from researchers in the last ten years that have to do with material taken from Apollo 17 ’s second excursion, which included Shorty. S’pose you could narrow your interest down a tad?”
“How many requests were approved?”
Koszelak tapped. “Seventy-three. The largest number of requests approved were for a Dr. Perlman, a researcher for an outfit called the January Group.”
Shirley looked over the list, recognizing none of the names. Very little of the esoteric scientific jargon in the description of their projects made much sense either. “What are they studying, Professor?” Shirley asked.
Koszelak scooted closer, studying the list. “Most of them are looking at Shorty’s fire fountain debris.”
“Come again?”
Koszelak rotated in his chair. “A fire fountain is lava that contains dissolved volcanic gases. When it reaches the surface, the gas comes out of solution and sends out a spray—sort of like shaking up a bottle of soda and then poppin’ the cap off it. The resulting spray—very hot and molten—is thrown up into the vacuum and as it falls, it forms into tiny glass beads. Harrison Schmitt found a mother lode of these beads on the rim of Shorty Crater.”
Shirley sat down in an offered chair and leaned forward with interest. “This Dr. Perlman. Does he say why he wants these beads?”
Koszelak studied the material. “Well, looks like to me Dr. Perlman’s interest is mostly in the gases contained in the beads.”
“You mean the beads are hollow?”
“Not exactly hollow, just filled with bubbles. When the glassy material was sprayed above the lunar surface, gas got trapped inside the spheres that formed.” Koszelak opened a desk drawer and dragged out a logbook. “Not everything is automated,” he apologized as he traced his finger down the lines in the book. “Yes, ma’am, I thought so. Six years ago it was. A colleague of Dr. Perlman’s spent some time with us studying the chemical composition of fire fountain products.”
Koszelak looked thoughtful. “You know, I was in the geologists’ back room when Shorty Crater was visited by Schmitt. The first thing he said was that Shorty was an impact crater. Then, when he found that orange soil, he thought maybe Shorty was a volcanic crater. It was a mystery. But after the pictures and samples got a closer look here in the lab, it turned out ol’ Shorty was indeed an impact crater—a meteor had formed it—and the orange soil was fire fountain beads that had been uncovered by the meteor. You know, everything isn’t cut and dried, even on the old moon.”
Shirley steered Koszelak back to the subject. “And it is the gas inside the beads Dr. Perlman was interested in?”
“Yes. Especially one gas. Helium-3. Have you heard of this isotope?” One quick look at Shirley gave him his answer. “Well, let’s see. How to explain it. Helium-3 comes from the sun, part of the solar wind. It sticks to anything in the solar system that it touches. The earth’s magnetic field and atmosphere keep most of it off the earth but the moon is like a big catcher’s mitt for the stuff. Pretty well covered up with it. But it’s not like you can go up there and scoop up a bucket of helium-3. It’s usually mixed in the soil and you need to heat it up to get it out. Unless, of course, it’s already in its gaseous state inside fire fountain beads.” Koszelak frowned over his log, turned back to his computer, and worked the keyboard. “Here it is. Dr. Isaac Perlman, Professor Emeritus... blah, blah, blah... Uh-huh, thought so! Researcher in fusion energy! Yep, makes sense. I betcha that explains Dr. Perlman’s interest in where the isotope can be found in concentrated form.” He peered at Shirley. “You do know what fusion energy is, don’t you, ma’am?”
“Tell me, Professor. I’m all ears.”
He did and one thing more. He looked Perlman up on the Internet. The Web site, one created for fusion researchers by the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, hadn’t been updated in a year. “This is interesting,” he said. “Says here Perlman has contracted with a private contractor to go to the moon and pick up soil samples that might contain helium-3.”
“Does it say which private contractor?”
Koszelak scrolled down the screen. “Here it is. MEC of Cedar Key, Florida.”
“Is there anywhere I could view films of the Apollo 17 expedition, Professor?”
“Sure,” Koszelak said. “Right here on my computer.”
Koszelak called it up. “Anything in particular?”
“When they were at Shorty Crater. Look for anything peculiar, different. I’m not sure exactly what.”
Shirley watched Schmitt struggling with the sample tube, saw Cernan come back with a capped pipelike thing in his hands. He used it to drive the tube.
“That’s odd, never noticed that,” Koszelak said. “He’s not using a hammer.”
Cernan dropped the pipe. “Wait, can you back that up?” Shirley asked, excited. “And can you zoom in with your software?”
“Sure can.” Koszelak backed the video up, zoomed in on the pipe, which, on closer inspection, seemed to be a kind of canister with screwed-on caps on both ends.
“Even closer,” Shirley breathed. “There!”
She could see clearly the initials “K.S.” on the canister. Katrina Suttner.
“I don’t recognize it and I thought I knew every tool they carried up there. What is it, Miss Grafton?”
Shirley was digging into her purse, going after her tissues. She was crying again. At this rate she was going to have to carry a box of tissues with her everywhere she went. “It’s a time machine, Professor.” She sniffed. “A very bright little girl built a time machine for the man she knew someday she’d love.”
Shirley thanked Koszelak profusely and left the center. She knew everything now or thought she did. She was heading back to Washington. Her boss, the vice president of the United States, needed to know everything too.
JSC-1
Fannin, Texas
Texas State highway 59 was a straight shot from Houston to Laredo on the Mexican border. It was a four-lane until it hit the little town of Fannin where it turned into a narrow two-lane. It was the perfect spot for a speed trap. A County Mountie clocked the red Porsche at over one hundred miles per hour, set his blue and reds flashing, and gave chase. The patrolman got close enough to read the Porsche’s license tag. JSC-1. He called it in, kept following. The high-performance car went even faster, the driver obviously not drunk. His turns around the curves just outside the state park were taken too smoothly for that. He was just in one big hurry. No matter how hard the patrolman tried, he couldn’t keep up. The Porsche finally went completely out of sight. The County Mountie grimly followed, then saw the skid marks going off the road, the crushed grass and splintered small trees. In a river upside down, wheels still spinning, was the Porsche. “Holy...” The patrolman gasped. The Porsche was on fire, even half submerged. It suddenly exploded, a big gout of orange gasoline-fed flame causing a mushroom like a small atomic bomb. He didn’t realize he was screaming into his mike until the lady on the other end asked him to please “tone it down, boy.”
The trooper hurried down the bank. The Porsche had settled onto the shallow bottom. He sat down on a rock, put his hands to his face, tried to tell himself it hadn’t been his fault. Then, hearing sirens in the distance, he gathered up his courage, waded into the water. A briefcase, charred but otherwise in good shape, floated out of the broken window of the smashed little car. He picked it up, held it while he looked inside the Porsche for the remains of the driver. He kept looking. There was no sign of him. He waded
back to shore, opened the briefcase. It was filled with papers, official-looking documents. He heard people coming. He snapped the case shut. Somebody else could look into the damned thing.
Something white caught his eye in the gathering darkness. He waded over to it, sucked in a breath. There, lying facedown along the creek bank, was the body of the driver. JSC-1, whoever he was. “You dumb son of a bitch,” the trooper said.
CECIL DOES THE MEDIA
Marymount Hotel, Washington, D.C.
Cecil picked up both The Washington Post and the Washington Times on the morning of the fourth day of Columbia ’s flight and found himself splashed all over the front pages of both. Someone, “a well-placed source in the Justice Department,” had leaked both his name and information about MEC’s contract. Whoever had done it had also told the newspapers where the department had stashed him. His telephone started to ring and it rang all day. Most of the reporters were hostile, asserting in their questions that Jack Medaris was a man bitter about his treatment by NASA, and that his taking of Columbia and the kidnapping of Penny High Eagle was a clear act of revenge and terrorism. Cecil tried to explain, didn’t feel as if he was getting anywhere, and decided he needed to go on television and tell the world the truth. The truth will set you free, he remembered one of his law professors saying. Yeah, or twenty to life, a smart-aleck law student beside him had whispered. It didn’t matter. Cecil didn’t figure he had much to lose by going public, and trying to build some sympathy for Jack before the government spun him into a traitor. When they called, he accepted an interview with Larry King. Then he started shaking in fear. Please don’t let me make a mess of it, he prayed.