“I’ll take you,” said Gloria, grabbing him by the forearm and leading him away from the dressing room.

“Hello, Mr. Blackstone,” said the director, as Bucky reached the soundstage. “Would you prefer to be seated or standing?”

“Makes no difference.” Bucky scanned the soundstage. “I don’t see a desk or a chair, so I’ll stand. Where do you want me?”

“Over here will be just fine,” said the director, indicating a spot. “I’ll have the teleprompters move over to—”

“Don’t bother. I don’t use them.”

“The anti-Obama,” said the director with a smile.

“I never use a prepared text, so there’s nothing to read.”

The director looked dubious. “You mean you’re just going to speak off the cuff to thirty million people?”

“Forty million,” said Gloria.

“However many,” said the director.

“Yes, that’s what I mean,” answered Bucky.

“I’ve covered six presidential campaigns,” said the director. “No one does that.”

“Maybe that’s why we have so many problems,” said Bucky. “Tell me when you want me to stand there, and have someone give me a countdown when I get there.”

He found a folding chair and sat down, totally relaxed, while those who knew him and those who didn’t marveled at the total lack of tension in his face and his bearing. Presidents who addressed the country every week were usually immersed in their notes, or practicing their opening lines to themselves, three minutes before they went on camera. But as Bucky had mentioned earlier, he wasn’t running for any office, and there was no one who could take away what was his.

“All right, Mr. Blackstone,” said the director. “Take your position, please.”

Bucky stood up and walked over to the spot where he’d been instructed to stand.

“Very good. Look into whichever camera is showing the red light.”

“I’m looking into this one,” said Bucky, pointing to the closest of the three cameras. “You do whatever you want, but that’s where I’ll be looking the whole time.”

“Please, Mr. Blackstone! I’m the director!”

“And I’m the guy who’s paying for the airtime. As long as everyone remembers that, we’ll get along fine.”

“I doubt it,” muttered the director.

“Then I’ll buy this network and get along fine with your replacement,” said Bucky, and, suddenly, the director fell silent.

A makeup woman came up to wipe a couple of drops of perspiration from his forehead. He simply shook his head no, and she made a right turn and walked away.

“Twenty seconds,” said the director.

Bucky cleared his throat.

“Ten.”

The countdown continued to zero, and he heard a voice say: “At this time, we bring you a special address from Morgan Blackstone, the owner of Blackstone Enterprises.”

You could have added Blackstone Innovations and Blackstone Development, thought Bucky irritably as the red light flashed on.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen—and select politicians,” he added with a smile. “I’m Morgan Blackstone, and I’m here to talk to you about something important.

“First, a little background. Since the last Apollo mission, it’s been close to half a century since man has set foot on any world except our own. This is little short of shameful. Earth is part of a solar system, a number of planets in orbit around a star. It’s estimated that there are more than one hundred billion stars in our galaxy, which we know informally as the Milky Way. And it’s estimated that there are more than one hundred billion galaxies in the universe. Since the creation of the Hubble telescope, we are learning that more stars have planets than do not. There are over a billion G-type stars in the Milky Way, which is to say, the same type of star our Sun is. And all this is a roundabout way of saying that there’s a lot of real estate up there, probably a lot of it habitable, and, somehow, we’ve lost interest in it.

“Yes, I know, every president has found better things to do with the money that should rightfully have kept NASA flying to Mars and the asteroids and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. And even NASA officials admit that a hungry child or a sick senior needs that money more than they do, so it has become incumbent upon private industry and entrepreneurs to continue man’s exploration of space. There have been a number of successful manned orbital flights, and as many of you know, my own corporation is planning to make the first manned landing on the Moon since the end of the Apollo program, which means since more than two-thirds of you were born.”

Bucky paused and stared into the camera, ordering his thoughts for a few seconds, then continued: “All this is background, information that you can find on the Internet, or see on any newscast, or read in any local newspaper on the unlikely assumption that your community still has a local newspaper.

“What I’m about to tell you next, however, is something you won’t be able to find in any of those places, no matter how hard you look. I’m telling you because the government is going to do everything they can to discredit me once this talk is over. They may try to keep us from taking off for the Moon though they have no legal right to, and when I bring back proof of what I’m about to tell you, they will put the entire machinery of the government to work trying to convince you that I’m a flake or a con man.”

He put on his most open and trusting face. “I’ll leave it to you to decide. Just remember: They work for you, not the other way around. I won’t let them bully me, and you must stand up to them, too.”

Now came the fatherly smile. “All right, I know you weren’t expecting anything like this. I’m going to give you a minute to come back from the kitchen, the bathroom, wherever some of you have wandered off to, and then I will tell you something that your most trusted public servants have been hiding from you for all or most of your lifetimes.”

He fell silent and signaled Gloria for a glass of water, which she promptly brought to him. He wasn’t the least bit thirsty, but he wanted to be doing something during his minute-long break, if for no other reason than that people just tuning in wouldn’t think they were watching some idiot who was too nervous to say anything and just stared dully into the camera.

He counted the seconds as he toyed with the glass, handed it back to Gloria—who again walked in a kind of half squat so she wouldn’t be seen on camera—and once again faced the red light. “I trust you’re all back,” he said. “Now I have a question for you. What were the first words spoken by the first man to set foot on the Moon?”

He paused to give them time to mouth the answer. “I’ll wager all of you said, ‘One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.’ Am I right?”

He smiled, the way a schoolteacher might smile. “I regret to inform you—oh, how I regret it—that that answer is not correct. ‘One small step for man’ were the first five words spoken by Neil Armstrong—but they were not the first words spoken by the first man on the Moon!”

He waited for the impact of what he had said to strike home.

“That’s right,” he continued. “Apollo XI was not the first American ship to land on the Moon, and there is an excellent chance, almost a certainty, that a man named Sidney Myshko, and not Neil Armstrong, was the first American to walk on its surface. That is what the government has been hiding since 1969!”

He had to pause again for the buzzing among the studio staff to die down.

“I have had near-certain proof of this in my possession for more than a day, but I—and others—have had our suspicions about it a lot longer. I will be making certain things public once I’m sure that innocent parties are insulated against the fallout.

“I have one more announcement, and that is that I will be on the ship that flies to the Moon this summer, and I will bring back further proof of what I said. Hopefully, I can also determine why, when we were in a race with the Russians to reach the Moon, we went out of our way to hide all proof of our initial landing, only to then make Apollo XI’s accomplishments available to the entire world as they were happening.