“It shouldn’t surprise you. Your previous boss is protected around the clock by the Secret Service.”
“You expect a president to be a target,” responded Jerry. “You don’t think of it in terms of normal people.”
“I won’t even resent being called a normal person,” said Bucky with a smile. “But consider this: In the almost two and a half centuries the United States has been in business, four presidents have been assassinated—Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy. How many nonpresidents have been shot down in that same amount of time?”
“I wasn’t arguing,” replied Jerry. “I just hadn’t considered it.”
The route was well marked with glowing signs and arrows, and after a couple of minutes, Bucky came to a stop next to a freight elevator. They got out of the vehicle, walked over to the elevator, and ascended to ground level. There was an armed guard standing right at the elevator door, and others were posted at the various entrances and exits. Bucky nodded to him, which seemed to be all the guard needed to know about Jerry, and he stepped aside to let them pass.
They found themselves in a huge area, some two hundred feet on a side, forty feet high, with a number of cranes not in use lining the back wall—and right in the middle was the ship that would be taking Bucky and four others to the Moon.
It was a glistening white vehicle, slim and elegant, with more than a hint of raw power, pointing to the ceiling and, beyond that, the stars.
Jerry let out a low whistle of admiration. “Somehow I thought it would be bigger,” he said. “It seems dwarfed in a place like this.”
“I wish it were bigger,” said Bucky. “I’m going to feel awfully cramped after a couple of days.” Suddenly, he smiled. “I wish we could at least have added a flush toilet.” He paused. “It takes off vertically and lands horizontally. The Moon lander lands and takes off horizontally. Everything’s magnetized or somehow attached to the bulkheads since we’re going to be out of gravity pretty soon.”
“Where the hell’s the booster?”
Bucky pointed to it. “It looks like it’s part of the ship. But we’ll be jettisoning it not long after we take off.”
“I’m impressed,” said Jerry.
“It looks even smaller when it’s on its belly, which is the way it’s going to touch down,” replied Bucky. “I never know which parts of it they’re working on from day to day, so I never know if it’s going to be pointing to the ceiling or to a wall.” Suddenly, he smiled. “We could make it bigger,” he added, “but if we did, I don’t know if we could get it off the ground.”
“You know,” said Jerry, “I’ve never seen one of these close-up, at least not before it’s taken off and returned minus a couple of stages. I signed on after the last shuttle launch.”
“It’s not a shuttle anyway,” said Bucky. “This baby was built to reach the Moon.” He pointed to a smaller section of the ship. “And that baby was built to land on it.”
“Well, I’m impressed,” said Jerry. “I just think it’s a shame that you had to do this yourself, that NASA couldn’t get the funding.”
“It’s not a shame at all.”
“Oh?”
“I’m a capitalist. I think it’s a shame that we ever needed NASA in the first place, if in fact we did. There’s money to be made up there, exploring the planets, mining the asteroids, building colonies.”
“I agree with mining the asteroids, but when you talk about building colonies, you’re making it sound like science fiction.”
“Am I?” said Bucky. “As best we can tell, there are oceans hidden beneath the Moon’s surface. If they’re H2O-type oceans, there’s a lot of oxygen to be pulled out of them until we can create enough hydroponic gardens to sustain life for a few hundred or a few thousand people. You think five hundred heart patients wouldn’t pay whatever it takes to live out their lives—their much-longer lives—in a low-gravity hospital on the Moon?”
“You’d make a profit from them?”
“Don’t hospitals?” retorted Bucky. “Don’t ambulances? If I invest a couple of billion, don’t I deserve a return on my money?”
“That’s why we have organizations like NASA, which don’t exist to make a profit.”
“They don’t exist at all if the government doesn’t take your money to fund them,” said Bucky. “There’s a little less charity in the world than you’ve been led to believe. But that’s neither here nor there. There’s a little less truthfulness, too. And that’s why I’m engaging in this enterprise, and why you’re going to be reporting it to the public, whatever the results.”
Jerry sighed deeply. “There’s no sense arguing about lunar colonies and hospitals, or about charities and economics. I’m here to help disseminate the truth about the Myshko and Bartlett missions, whatever that truth may be. And now that I am working for you, I’ll tell you something else I’ve been able to find out: Just about every shot you’ve seen of the Cassegrain Crater taken since 1959 has been doctored.”
“Cassegrain?” repeated Bucky. A grim smile crossed his face. “Damn! I thought it might be Cassegrain.”
Jerry frowned. “What do you mean? Why Cassegrain?”
“It’s the area with the smallest number of photos and almost no description of it.”
“That’s your destination?”
“That’s right.”
“What are you looking for—footprints?”
Bucky shook his head. “We’ll look for them, of course, but I would imagine they were swept clean.”
“It’s a big crater, maybe forty miles across,” said Jerry. “How will you know exactly where to look—and what will you be looking for, if not footprints?”
Bucky led Jerry around the ship to the smaller lunar lander. “Do you see this?” he said, pointing to a section of it.
“Yeah.”
“That’s a descent stage. If we’re right about this, there should be two of them on the ground.”
“Damn!” exclaimed Jerry. “I never thought of that!”
Bucky flashed him a grin. “I’ll bet George Cunningham never thought of it either, or he’d find some obscure law to prevent us from taking off.”
“So it’s not going to be like looking for a needle in a haystack!”
“We probably won’t be able to see them from orbit, but we’ll have instruments that can find them and pinpoint their location. Then maybe we can finally find out why nine presidents in a row have lied to the American people.”
Cassegrain. The word kept running through Jerry’s head. And then he realized—“There’s something else,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“There was a secret project back during the Apollo days.”
“Really?”
“Its name has an echo.”
“Its name?”
“They called it Cassandra.”
Suddenly, Jerry began to feel very excited again. It was a feeling he hadn’t experienced since he first began working for NASA. He’d forgotten the sensation, and now that it was back, he never wanted to lose it again.
22
“They’ve had the breakthrough, Mr. President. Wescott tells me, assures me, that the average American born this year will be able to look forward to a life expectancy almost twice that of people in the last century.” Laurie Banner, his science advisor, was standing three feet in front of the president’s desk. Abraham Wescott was a Nobel Laureate who’d been leading the charge toward extended life spans for years. He was known to be extremely conservative in his official statements. So if he said so—
Laurie was a tall, thin African-American, impeccably dressed, wearing a conflicted expression. Good news and bad news. They’d known this was coming, but Cunningham had hoped it would hold off until he was out of office.