Myshko did most of the talking on the way back, as he had on the flight out. “Crash” was Louie Able, the LEM pilot. He apparently never got near the onboard comm system.

—

Barbara came in to say good night. She was a good-looking brunette, mother of two boys, six and seven, both of whom had told Jerry they wanted to be astronauts so they could go to Mars one day.

Jerry had never married. Never found the time, really. Or maybe it was that the one woman for whom he would have been willing to give up his freedom had dumped him. He’d never really gotten over that. Consequently, he didn’t allow himself to get serious about anyone. But there were evenings—and this was one of them—when he’d have liked to have someone to go home to. Someone special.

He lived in a third-floor condo north of Titusville off Route 1 near the Brevard Community College. On restless nights, he tended to work late. There were always people wandering around at the Space Center, the dedicated types he’d felt sympathy for when he’d first arrived, people who seemed to have no lives outside the Agency. Somehow, through a process he didn’t understand, he’d become one of them.

So he strolled through the building that evening, talking to technicians who were trying to solve this or that problem because they claimed they couldn’t sleep with it hanging over their heads. Or with security people. Or with accountants working late.

A tour group was wandering through the new Hall of Fame. There were about twenty of them, led by one of the guides, a young woman. She was talking about Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffee, and Ed White. It sent a chill through him, reminding him of the sacrifices NASA’s men and women had been willing to make. He was feeling some regret that he hadn’t accepted Blackstone’s offer. And that realization, coming while he walked through a place dedicated to NASA’s heroes, induced a sense of guilt.

Maybe he’d been taken over by the mission, and maybe that was what deserved his loyalty, rather than the Agency.

Funny how your footsteps have a louder echo at night.

—

Jerry would have liked to talk with one of the astronauts on the Myshko flight, but its commander and Brian Peters had both been dead more than a decade. Myshko had succumbed to cancer just after the turn of the century, and Peters, a few years later, had lost a battle with clogged arteries.

Louie Able had died four months ago, ironically, in a plane crash. He’d been eighty-six.

But Frank Kirby, the CAPCOM, was still around.

The CAPCOM, or capsule communicator, was the principal ground connection with an in-flight mission. An astronaut was usually selected for the assignment, on the assumption that no one was better qualified to handle a problem in space than somebody who’d been there.

Jerry had met Kirby about a year ago, when he’d sponsored a visit to NASA by a group of elementary-school students from Orlando, where he lived. It had been no more than an introduction, and Jerry had carried away no memory of the man save that he’d seemed happy surrounded by the kids. Kirby had been retired more than twenty years, but he’d apparently stayed active in the community. He was a member of the Friends of the Library, he’d led an effort to improve recreational facilities for children throughout the city, he’d been involved in a campaign to promote safety for the blind by upgrading traffic-light technology. And he was a volunteer at a shelter for battered women.

When, the following morning, Jerry mentioned his name to Mary, she said yes, that she’d had a chance to talk with him when he’d been at the Space Center. “He’s a decent guy,” she said. “But I hope you’re not leading up to what I think you are.”

“It would be interesting,” Jerry said, “just to sit down and talk with him. Hear what he has to say.”

“I think,” she said, “it would be a good idea to leave it alone. You show up out there, and he’ll know exactly what you’re after. If there was anything going on, I don’t think he’s likely to open up to a guy who just appears on his doorstep. Let it go, Jerry.”

But Jerry wasn’t going to be put off that easily. “I was going to suggest,” he said, “that we bring him here. Give him an award of some kind. It would be a very nice public-relations move. In fact, it’s something we should have done years ago. We’d get a lot of good publicity by recognizing the community work of someone connected with NASA. We could bring him in for an award luncheon, give him a plaque, and it would cost nothing. This is a difficult time for us, Mary, and it would remind the public of the kind of people we have working here.”

They were in her office. The blinds were pulled against a bright sun. Mary sat for a moment without moving, then literally snickered at him. “Jerry, do you think Kirby would be so dumb that he wouldn’t know what it was all about?”

“Well, you’d be surprised what people will buy into when you tell them stuff they want to hear. No, I think we’d have no trouble getting away with it.”

“Okay, let’s say this guy, who used to be a Navy pilot, who was one of our astronauts, doesn’t have a brain in his head. He comes up here to accept an award. Do you think he might figure it out when you start asking him about Myshko?”

“I’ll be careful. I can manage it so he brings up the topic.”

She clearly did not approve of the idea. “Jerry, may I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“Are you saying that you think Myshko might actually have landed on the Moon? And then, for reasons unknown, they kept it quiet? Is that your theory?”

“Of course not. But something happened.”

“What? What could possibly have happened?”

“I don’t know.”

“If they landed, if they actually went down, what possible reason could they have had for covering it up?”

Jerry started thinking again about Blackstone. Maybe he should reconsider. Maybe he should jump over to Bucky’s outfit. It would be easier if Blackstone himself weren’t so despicable. “Maybe they were embarrassed that Myshko took things into his own hands. It would have been a public humiliation.”

She shook her head. “Preposterous. They’d have been embarrassed, yes. But landing somebody on the Moon would have far outweighed that.”

“What’s wrong with giving ourselves a chance to find out? You want to spend the rest of your life wondering whether, maybe, something did happen?”

She took a deep breath. Put her tongue in the side of her cheek. “All right,” she said, “set it up. But, Jerry—”

“Yes?”

“Don’t do anything to embarrass us.”

—

The first task was to find a name for the award. Jerry spent several days googling NASA personnel, active and retired, looking for someone who had made a serious contribution to the public welfare. Mary suggested he limit the search to astronauts, but he couldn’t see any reason to do that. Aside from those who had landed on the Moon, or those who had died in the performance of their duties, no one else, not even among the remaining astronauts, was familiar to the public. The reality was that the public had never shown any interest in flights that didn’t get beyond Earth orbit.

He considered naming the award for Kirby, but that would have been too obvious.

Then he found Harry Eastman, the perfect pick. Harry was a retired computer expert who’d spent thirty years with the Agency while simultaneously doing yeoman work for disabled children in Texas. Harry had set up a foundation to raise public awareness of the issue. He’d brought in film and sports celebrities and had accompanied them when they visited hospitals and special needs centers to talk to the kids, shake their hands, and give out souvenirs. The Eastman Foundation became a major fund-raiser for eight or nine charitable organizations. Jerry also liked the name: The Eastman Award had a ring of elegance.