“Maybe because he’d be lost without it,” said The Chicago Sun-Times.

Jerry forced a smile to his lips. “I think he’d say that you’d be lost without it.”

He looked around the room and called on Fox News.

“Let me word this properly, so you don’t give us another runaround answer,” said the woman from Fox. “Once he reaches the Moon, what does he expect to find other than Moon rocks?”

“He doesn’t know,” said Jerry. “No one knows. That’s why he’s going.”

“How many people will be on the ship?”

“Four or five. I don’t believe it’s been finalized yet.”

“And he’s definitely going to be on the landing craft?”

Jerry nodded. “He’ll be on the ship. I don’t know whether he intends to go down to the surface.” Then: “I wish I was going, too.” He surprised himself with the comment. Would he really have been willing to ride the rocket for a chance to go to the Moon?

“Is he planning more flights?” asked The Miami Herald. “Commercial ones?”

“I don’t follow you,” said Jerry, frowning.

“Well, there’s no resort hotel on the Moon, but would it be terribly far-fetched to suggest he could get a few million per passenger to go up there, especially if he hints that there’s something strange going on, something our government has been hiding.”

“That’s ridiculous,” said Jerry. “For one thing, he’d have to charge close to one hundred million a ticket to break even. For another, he’s simply not going to do it.”

“Will he be transmitting pictures back to Earth, or does he plan to hang on to them and sell them to the highest bidder?” asked The New York Times.

“Wouldn’t you consider that immoral?” asked Jerry. “Given the importance of what might be in those photos.”

“Absolutely,” replied The Times.

“But of course you’d bid for them anyway,” said Jerry irritably. “Fortunately, Mr. Blackstone has no need of any more money. All photos and videos will be instantly posted on our Web page and can be picked up by any news publications and networks at no cost.”

“It just doesn’t make any sense,” said CBS.

“Could you elucidate, please?”

“I’ve followed Bucky Blackstone’s career for twenty years now, and he doesn’t do anything that hasn’t got a profit motive. The guy practically defines everything I hate about capitalism, and suddenly he’s a public-minded citizen who’s spending a goodly part of his fortune getting us back into space and perhaps clearing up a half-century-old mystery, just out of the goodness of his heart. I don’t buy it.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” said Jerry, searching for a quip or a put-down and not finding one.

“You know what I think?” continued CBS. “I think he’s doing this to embarrass President Cunningham, to somehow imply there’s some kind of nefarious conspiracy concerning the Moon and the space program.”

“Why would he do that?” asked Jerry.

“To enhance his chances when he runs for the presidency.”

“I can categorically state that Morgan Blackstone has absolutely no interest in running for any political office,” said Jerry, hoping that he was telling the truth.

“Then it doesn’t make any sense!” snapped CBS.

“Of course it does,” said Jerry. “Wouldn’t you go to the Moon if you could? And if you were convinced something had happened up there, something the government has been hiding for half a century, wouldn’t that be all the more reason to go? You’re a journalist. That bespeaks some sense of curiosity. Why do you feel that Mr. Blackstone can’t possess one as well?”

“Because everything he’s claimed is contradictory to everything we know!” snapped CBS. “The government wasn’t hiding Moon landings; it was bragging about them.”

“Bragging, certainly,” agreed Jerry. “And perhaps misleading as well.”

“If Blackstone doesn’t find anything up there that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin didn’t find, will he buy another half hour of TV time and admit he was wrong.”

“I assume he’ll do just that,” said Jerry, trying to keep the uncertainty out of his voice. He glanced to his right, where Ed Camden was listening to his cell phone. Suddenly, Camden grinned, turned to Jerry, and raised a thumb in the air. “In fact,” continued Jerry, “Mr. Blackstone has just confirmed it. If he can’t find evidence of a governmental cover-up, he will go on TV and say so.”

“If there were secret missions, they’d have taken place at the beginning of Nixon’s first term,” said The Chicago Tribune. “Now, we all know Nixon was secretive, and he had more than a few chinks in his moral code—but can you suggest any possible reason why he’d have secret missions just days and weeks after he took the oath of office? I mean, he had a government to set up, and a war in Vietnam to try to end. What the hell could divert his attention to the Moon and make him decide to keep whatever it was secret?”

“I don’t know,” admitted Jerry. “That’s one of the things Mr. Blackstone hopes to find out.”

“I have a question,” said The Christian Science Monitor.

“Go ahead.”

“Let’s say that Mr. Blackstone is right, and something happened up there.” He was almost shouted down by his own colleagues, but he waited patiently until the noise had died off and he could be heard again. “If Mr. Blackstone is right, clearly President Nixon felt there was a need to keep whatever it was secret.” He looked around, waiting to see if he would be shouted and jeered down again, but his colleagues were listening, trying to see where he was going with this. “And if that is so, doesn’t it imply that this was something that Presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43, Obama, and Cunningham have all agreed was important to keep secret? And if every president was in agreement, then perhaps there’s a pretty good reason not to try to expose what they are hiding.”

How the hell do I answer that? thought Jerry. It’s the same question that’s been bothering me when I go to sleep each night.

“You know what a secretive son of a gun Nixon was,” said NBC. “He’d probably never have told Agnew or Ford, so maybe it’s not a conspiracy of presidents, but a character flaw of one president.”

The journalists began arguing among themselves: Would Nixon tell anyone? Why would any president down the line feel compelled to keep Nixon’s secret?

Jerry relaxed with a sigh of relief. The relief passed when he realized that it was going to be like this every day, that in fact they were probably taking it easy on him because it was his opening day on the job.

The conference went on another twenty minutes. Finally, as it began winding down, one of them asked if Jerry would be on a future Moon rocket.

Jerry shook his head. “To be honest, I don’t even like airplanes. It’s terra firma for me.”

“Some spokesman for a space shot!” snorted a reporter.

“You didn’t seem to mind my being a spokesman for NASA,” said Jerry coldly. “I don’t remember your minding my setting up some private interviews for you when no one else would go out of their way to do so.”

The assembled journalists seemed to realize they’d pushed Jerry enough for one day, especially his first day, and they asked a few innocuous questions. Finally, Jerry said that he would take one final question and call it a day.

“Has the Moon rocket got a name yet?” asked Newsweek. “Maybe something like the Enterprise?”

“Yes, it has a name,” said Jerry.

“Well, what is it?”

Jerry turned until he was facing the bulk of the cameras. “The Sidney Myshko.”

And, twenty-eight floors above him, Bucky Blackstone smiled in satisfaction. “We hired a good one,” he said to Gloria Marcos. “I guess we’ll keep him.”