“No. But I was on deck when they were brought in.”

“All right. So what did you want to tell me?”

“Maybe nothing, really. Nothing that makes any sense. But it’s always bothered me, and I’d just written it off until I heard about that radio exchange. Between the capsule and ground control.”

“What did you see, Captain?”

“We pulled three astronauts out of the water, Mr. Culpepper. They all had bags with them. Well, no big deal about that. It’s what you’d expect. But one of them stumbled coming on board and dropped the bag on the deck. I don’t remember which one it was.”

“And—?”

“A couple of rocks fell out.”

“That’s it?”

“Mr. Culpepper, these guys were riding a Saturn rocket. Weight mattered. Why would any of them take along a couple of rocks?”

2

Had he accepted Blackstone’s offer, Jerry would have been perceived by his colleagues as betraying the organization. And betraying them. It would be an admission that he believed NASA’s mission had effectively ended. That the future for the organization had run out. It would also, he thought, be a betrayal of himself.

He loved working for NASA. Loved what it stood for. The ongoing lack of funding, which continued year after year, decade after decade, was frustrating. Infuriating. He was not a little kid, was not affected by idle dreams of flying to the Moon so we could say we’d done it. He believed relentlessly that humanity had to move on or slide backward. That the planet was becoming too crowded. That there were practical reasons to establish a foothold beyond the home world. He wasn’t sure precisely what the nature of that foothold should be. But he knew that it required the presence of an active United States.

But somewhere down the line, we’d sold out.

Jerry had worked on several political campaigns, including the gubernatorial and presidential runs of President Cunningham. He’d done public relations for Ohio State, for the Pentagon, and for the Carmichael & Henry law firm. In all those situations, everyone on board had understood that they were there to sell a product. His colleagues in the various government agencies felt the same way. The connection was strictly business. Even the political campaigns. There’d been no sense of destiny in the wind, of inevitable disaster if Laura Hopkins had made it into the Oval Office instead of George Cunningham. They all pretended to believe the fate of the nation rested on the election, but everybody knew that the nation would survive however the vote tally went. But with NASA, it was somehow different.

Cape Canaveral was the gateway to the world beyond. That was where it was all supposed to happen. And if they’d been a little slower to roll out the future than everyone had expected, it wasn’t the fault of the Agency. The money, and the political will, had never been there. They’d gone to the Moon, and somehow, for the politicians at least, the luster came off. There was nowhere else to go. Mars was too far. Nobody cared about robot missions. Nobody cared about orbiting telescopes. Consequently, NASA had been left to its own devices. No politician dared close it down, though, because the space agency had somehow become inextricably interconnected with America. But they left it on a subsistence diet. Jerry’s packing up and heading out to Blackstone Enterprises, Inc., would ruin his reputation with those who understood what the Agency represented. And these were people he cared about. Blackstone wanted nothing so much as to bring down the Agency.

Jerry sat in his office watching rain clouds roll in from the west. He’d taken the job there with some reluctance. Mary had been George’s campaign manager in Ohio and later an active participant in his successful run for the White House. At the president’s suggestion, she’d hired Jerry, who’d come to the Cape with some reluctance. Everyone knew the Agency was a ticket to nowhere. But his attitude had changed during his two and a half years on the Space Coast. He’d become a certified true believer. If we were to get off world, Jerry knew, NASA was indispensable.

Barbara’s voice broke through the clouds: “Jerry, Al’s on the line.”

Returning Jerry’s call. She put him on-screen, and he smiled uncomfortably. “I checked the transmissions, Jerry,” he said, staring down at a piece of paper on his desk. “They are correct.” Al was close to retirement, and he looked it. He was tired and ready to go. His skull gleamed in the light from a lamp.

“Okay.”

“I’m sorry. I wish I could have warned you. But there’s just no way. We don’t have the people—”

“It’s all right, Al.”

“Is there anything else?”

“Actually, yes. I need a favor. Can you send me the complete record of the Myshko flight? The communications? Everything?”

“Sure,” he said. “But I can probably have one of my people do a search if you just tell me what you’re looking for.”

“I’m not sure what I’m looking for, Al.”

“You’ll know it when you see it?”

“Exactly.”

He nodded. Frowned. “Jerry?”

“Yes?”

“Look, I can tell you you’d be wasting your time. I’ve read through the transcripts. I think they were just screwing around, Myshko and the CAPCOM.”

“You’re probably right, Al. If they were, though, I need to know about it.”

“Okay.” He sucked in some air. “You’ll have it before you go home tonight.”

—

The Myshko mission had lifted off January 11, 1969, and returned January 21. Their objective had been to test various equipment and take pictures. The operation did not include sending a lunar module, manned or otherwise, to the lunar surface.

We are in the LEM. Ready to go. You couldn’t really mistake the meaning. But it had to be a joke. Myshko no doubt grinning in the cabin, and Frank Kirby, the CAPCOM, getting a good laugh on the ground.

It was a gag they’d shared. Nothing more than that. Couldn’t be anything more.

Except that Captain Harkins believed he’d seen a couple of rocks.

—

After the comment about the lander, there’d been no more exchanges for about forty minutes, until the ship emerged from behind the Moon, and transmissions became possible once more. Then they’d talked about position and course and life-support status and fuel usage. No further mention of the LEM.

In less than an hour, it was back behind the Moon. When it emerged a second time, they returned to exchanging routine data. Everything was working fine.

But there was a different voice speaking from the ship.

The new voice spoke with Kirby. It was all routine stuff. Position. Calibration of something or other. Fuel levels. Jerry did not hear the original voice as the vehicle moved across the lunar face. Then it slipped behind the Moon again. He moved ahead until it was back in the visible sky. Still the new voice. Ditto on the next pass. And on the next.

He checked the accompanying data, which informed him that the second speaker had been Brian Peters, the command module pilot. He was the guy who, in an actual landing, would stay behind while the commander and the LEM pilot went down to the surface.

It continued that way for twenty-seven orbits. Peters’s voice was the only one on the circuit. Peters reporting all was well, keeping Mission Control updated on life-support status, occasionally commenting on how beautiful the home world was.

Then, without warning, almost fifty hours after he’d last been heard from, Myshko was back. “Houston, Crash thinks he may have spotted some ice in the north,” he said, “but it’s probably just a reflection. Reaction control hasn’t been what we’d expected, but we’ll give you details when we get home. We’ve also got a busted strut. Other than that, we’re good.”