“You did not have your hand raised, sir, and I did not recognize you. I will answer no further questions or comments from you.” Bucky turned to NBC. “You’re next.”

“You can’t shut me up!” bellowed CBS.

“I don’t have to,” said Bucky. “Ladies and gentlemen, this press conference is suspended until you get the gentleman from CBS to agree to be silent for the remainder of it—and if he speaks out again after so agreeing, the conference is permanently concluded.”

And sure enough, it worked. No one, not even a colleague, was going to cost them a story.

“Is there any proof that Sidney Myshko actually landed on the Moon?” asked CNN.

“Almost certainly,” answered Bucky.

“That sounds like you’re hedging.”

“You want a stronger answer? Okay, yes, proof exists.”

“Then where is it?” asked The Chicago Tribune.

“Beats the hell out of me,” said Bucky. “I’m sure the White House could tell you, and I’m equally sure they won’t. But if it didn’t exist, they wouldn’t be working so hard to cover it up.”

“If it didn’t exist,” said MSNBC, making no attempt to keep the sarcasm out of her voice, “wouldn’t they be behaving exactly the same?”

I hate questions like that, thought Bucky. Aloud, he said: “I have proof of a cover-up in my possession. We’ve only been investigating this for a few days, and I’m not prepared to make what I have public until we’ve unearthed every piece of corroborating evidence.”

“What does the White House have to gain by lying about the landing?” asked The Wall Street Journal. “In fact, what did any of them have to gain?”

“That’s what we plan to find out.”

“This proof you keep hinting at,” said CNN. “Can you at least give an idea what constitutes it? Is it a document, a photo, something in a computer? Or”—he tried unsuccessfully to suppress a smile—“could it be something on the Moon itself?”

“I have some of the proof in my possession,” answered Bucky. “We’ve just started hunting for the rest.”

“Will you be hunting on the Moon, too?” snickered MSNBC.

“Almost certainly.”

“How do you know your crew won’t be part of the cover-up?” continued MSNBC.

“I don’t,” answered Bucky. He paused and stared across the assemblage. “That’s why I’m going on the flight.”

Suddenly, there was excited buzzing, and, finally, Fox News raised a hand.

“Are you saying that you’re going on the Moon flight expressly because you don’t trust your crew to accurately report what they find?”

“What is there to find?” added CBS. “It’s a big, empty rock.”

“You, sir,” said Bucky, pointing to CBS, “have already been told that I will not answer your questions.” He turned to Fox. “In answer to your supposition—I hate to dignify it by calling it a question—I’m going because it’s my corporation and I can. I trust my crew implicitly, but I want to see whatever’s there with my own eyes.”

“And if nothing’s there?” asked The New York Times.

“Then I’ll have had the trip of a lifetime, and every one of you will wish you’d been there instead of me.”

“And if you find out you were wrong, won’t there be any consequences?” persisted The Times.

“Yes, there will,” said Bucky. “I’ll have lost almost all credibility, and it’ll be a long time before anyone believes me again. But the beauty of a free society is that I can make a fool of myself, and each of you can—and doubtless have—done the same and survived it.”

He spent ten more minutes answering variations of the same questions, and the press started getting annoyed that he wouldn’t give them the facts they wanted, or admit he didn’t have enough proof to make such outrageous statements.

Finally, he closed it off, went back inside, and instructed Brent to lock the entrance so they couldn’t follow him all the way up to his office, as he was sure they wanted to do. Then he and Brent rode up to the penthouse, where his office overlooked the city.

“I saw you on the tube,” reported Gloria, when he entered the office. She smiled. “I’m amazed I haven’t quit and reported you to the local asylum.” Then: “Are you really going on the Moon flight?”

“I said so.”

“When did you decide? Today? Yesterday?”

“The truth?” asked Bucky with a guilty smile. “When I had my last checkup four months ago and my doctor said my body could handle it.”

“You never told us.”

“That was four months I didn’t have to argue with all my well-meaning staff members who thought the trip would kill me,” replied Bucky. He walked over to his desk, where Sabina was staring at his computer screen. “How’s it going?”

“I found one,” she responded, looking up at him. “The only one—Amos Bartlett.”

“He’s the only survivor from two Moon flights?”

“That’s right, sir. I mean, Bucky.”

“If you know that, the press has to know it, too,” said Bucky. “It’s been two nights since I made that speech. They’ve got to have tracked him down. What has he said?”

“Not a thing,” replied Sabina.

“Don’t tell me he’s a mute?”

“No, sir . . . Bucky. But he’s very sick and can’t have visitors. He’s living by himself in an assisted-living home. When the press found it, they camped out there. The home got a court order to get them off the property, but they surrounded it, and he’s been moved to a military hospital, where they can keep the press away.”

“How sick is he?” asked Bucky. “Likely to die before we can reach him?”

Sabina smiled. “He’s old, and he’s infirm, or he wouldn’t be in an assisted-living facility, but I don’t think he’s sick at all.”

“Music to mine ears! Tell me why you think that.”

“I did something that’s probably illegal, sir,” she said, so intent on her revelation she forgot to correct herself and call him Bucky. “I phoned the closest pharmacy to the facility on the assumption that that’s where they’d get their prescriptions, pretended I was the home, and said I was just double-checking to make sure they’d transferred Bartlett’s prescriptions to the hospital. They told me they’d transferred the Lipitor, but thought the hospital would be taking his blood pressure and might want to change the dosage on his Diovan.”

“Cholesterol and blood pressure,” repeated Bucky happily. “Hardly the sign of a dying man, especially since they didn’t change the one and didn’t seem to think the other was due for an instant change. Yeah, he’s healthy, all right. The only question is whether he’s in the hospital against his will or not.”

“I can’t tell that from the computer, Bucky,” said Sabina.

“No, we’ll have to ask him in person. Thanks, Sabina. You used your brains and your initiative, and that’s what I’m paying you for. You’ll find a pleasant surprise in your next check.”

“Thank you, Bucky,” she said, getting to her feet. “It was a pleasure. Anytime I can help you . . .”

“I’ll remember,” he said, escorting her to the door. When she’d left, he turned to Gloria. “How much is she making?”

Gloria shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Find out, and raise her two hundred a week.”

“Right,” she said, jotting it down in a notebook. “Anything else?”

“Find out what hospital they’re keeping Bartlett in, buy Camden a plane ticket, and send him out there to talk to him.”

“Just to talk?”

“If he’d like to come back here, and the hospital will let him go—don’t forget, it’s military—fine. But if he’s got something to say, have Camden buy whatever he’s got to say.”

“He’ll want to know how high he can go.”

“Whatever it takes. I’d like to send someone else—Camden’s face is pretty well-known—but he’s as good as we’ve got at spotting someone who’s lying.”

“You want to send someone else, someone with a real brain who isn’t known to anyone with a television set?” said Gloria. “Send Sabina.”

He considered it for a moment. “What the hell—why not? Send her back up here, and I’ll give her instructions—what to ask, what to look for, what to ignore. And what to offer.”