Bassinger leaned over and pointed to one.

“Thanks.”

“And remember,” said Bassinger. “You’re on camera, so don’t pick your nose.”

“You’re fired,” said Bucky. “Pack up your gear and get out of here.”

Everyone laughed, and then Bucky opened communications. “Hello, receding world. This is Bucky Blackstone.”

“The takeoff seems to have gone very smoothly,” said a pool reporter. “Everything okay aboard ship?

“It’s beautiful up here!” Bucky felt magnificent. “I’m living every kid’s dream! When I get back, we’re going to have to start selling orbital flights. Everyone deserves the right to see what I’m seeing.”

“But can everyone afford it?”

“Sooner than you think,” said Bucky. “After all, I’m not the government, so I’m not hiring three thousand people I don’t need and paying ten thousand dollars for toilet seats.”

“You’ve just passed out of the atmosphere,” said the reporter. “Does anything look or feel different?”

“Everything’s fine.” Bucky looked out the window at the Earth and then ahead, hoping to see the Moon. But the sky was clear.

“Are you all right, Mr. Blackstone?” said the reporter anxiously.

“Sure. Why shouldn’t I be?”

“You went silent for about twenty seconds.”

Bucky resisted the urge to say he’d been busy pinching Marcia Neimark, if only because he didn’t want her glaring at him for the duration of the trip. “Just looking back at where I came from.”

“Are you ready to tell us what you expect to find on the Moon?”

“Why guess?” answered Bucky. “We’ll know in a few days.”

Another reporter chimed in: “Has anyone got any messages for friends or family?”

Bucky looked at his crew. All three shook their heads. “Nope. They’re too busy keeping us afloat, or whatever the word is. I’m going to hang up now.”

“You mean ‘sign off,’” corrected the reporter.

“On your ship, you sign off,” said Bucky with a smile. “On mine, we hang up.” And he broke the connection.

“It’s glorious!” Neimark’s voice shook with emotion. She, too, was looking down at the home world.

“Look how bright the stars are,” said Bassinger. “You don’t realize how much the atmosphere hides until you see them like this.”

“Okay,” said Gaines. “We’ve got some mandatory tests to run now. Bucky, sit back and relax. Enjoy yourself.”

“I could help,” offered Bucky.

“I don’t want to be too blunt about it,” said Gaines, “but as far as the ship is concerned, you don’t know your ass from your elbow. We’ve been training on it for several weeks. You don’t even know how to unlock the hatch.”

“Don’t sugarcoat it,” said Bucky, amused. “You can talk straight with me.”

They all laughed. “Just relax,” Gaines said. “You’re the guy who’s paying for all this, and the guy who knows what we’re looking for, or at least where we’re going to be looking. Let us underlings get you there.”

“Fair enough,” said Bucky.

The other three spent the next half hour checking gauges and readings, going through routine operations that seemed wildly exotic to Bucky, and, finally, everyone reported that all systems were functioning perfectly.

“Boss,” said Bassinger, “or maybe I should say, Commander Boss.”

“What is it?” said Bucky.

“I hate to interrupt your reverie, but you have the stupidest smile on your face.”

“Just thinking.”

“About what?”

“The truth?” replied Bucky. “I was thinking that if we don’t find a damned thing on the far side, even if there’s nothing there but craters and rocks and dust, it’ll have been worth every penny.”

“Even telling the people you were wrong?” asked Bassinger with a smile.

“There’s nothing wrong with being wrong. As long as you don’t persist at it. Besides, a week later, it’ll be old news . . . and just getting back to the Moon should sure as hell encourage other entrepreneurs to do the same. Why not put a colony here? Why do cruise ships have to only cruise the oceans? People have been talking about the Man in the Moon for centuries. It’s time to put a lot of men there.”

“Are you saying you don’t think there’s anything up there?” asked Gaines.

“I’m betting a billion dollars that there is,” said Bucky seriously. “But if there isn’t, I’ll still have gotten my money’s worth.”

He’d been awake most of the night, too excited to sleep, but after another hour, he dozed off. He awoke six hours later when Neimark prodded him.

“Are we there?” he asked, confused.

She shook her head. “Not even close yet. But if you’ll look at the navigation display, you’ll see something interesting.”

“Better not be a bird,” said Bucky, blinking his eyes and forcing himself to become alert. He turned and stared out the window at a bright red orb topped by what looked for all the world like whipped cream.

“Mars?” he asked.

She nodded. “Indeed it is . . .”

“It’s gorgeous,” he said, staring at it.

“We’ve got the main scope trained on it.”

He squinted and peered. “I can’t make out the canals.”

She smiled. “We’re forty million miles away. But the colors are startling once you get the scope clear of the atmosphere.”

He nodded. “Just as well I can’t see the canals. I’d hate to think John Carter and Tars Tarkas weren’t riding their thoats around, or that Eric John Stark wasn’t off to some new adventure there.”

“Well, I’ll be damned!” said Bassinger. “The hardheaded businessman is a secret romantic!”

Bucky searched his mind for a caustic reply, but stopped when he realized that Bassinger was right, that he was a romantic at heart. Why else would he declare the trip a success a handful of hours into it when the Moon was still three days away?

After that first nap, Bucky slept intermittently during the next two days. He kept staring out the window, thrilled by the sights, reveling in the sensation of weightlessness. Finally, he fell into a deep sleep and woke up almost eight hours later, feeling totally refreshed and unbothered by the confined space in which he found himself.

As the Sidney Myshko neared the Moon, he still felt like a kid in a candy shop. He homed in on Mars again and spent a few hours studying and admiring it. Then he started spotting the bigger asteroids.

“We’ll move into orbit in about twenty minutes,” announced Gaines. “I’ve calculated it—well, the computer has calculated it—and this should put us right over the Cassegrain Crater when we’re on the dark side.” He paused. “Have you got any idea what we’re looking for?”

“Not since the last time you asked.”

“Could it be metal?” persisted Gaines. “We don’t have to see the exact shape of whatever it is. If we have a hint of what it’s composed of, we can run a spectroscopic analysis of the crater square mile by square mile and see if there’s, I don’t know, some titanium or steel there, something from Myshko’s ship.”

“We’ll know soon enough,” said Bucky.

“Not quite as soon as you think,” said Neimark. “Before we land, we’ll take a number of photos and videos with zoom lenses and transmit them back to Earth. Cassegrain Crater is maybe forty miles across. You could land in it and not see a brontosaur at the other end, let alone something the shape and nature of which you can’t even guess at.”

“I know.” Bucky sighed. “It’s just that I’ve been living with this for months, and I want to know what the hell made Myshko land, and especially what made him keep his mouth shut about it.”

“If he landed.”

“He landed,” replied Bucky with conviction. “And I want to know why damned near every photo of the Cassegrain Crater during the sixties was doctored.”

“Just because some unnamed source told that to Jerry Culpepper doesn’t make it so,” said Neimark.

“I trust him.”

“Oh, I believe he was told that, and that he was honest with you. I just don’t know if the source was honest with him.”