Chapter 15
Gray on gray on gray. Thick and dark and ominous, like the intertwining ropes of an immense fishing net cast across the sky, swallowing up every inch of visible air, obscuring everything, even the muted glow of the nearly full moon. Looking up at that angry sky, Thad knew he was about to get soaked. Still, he remained right where he was, flat on his back on the cool cement roof of the South Physics Building of the University of Utah, his head resting against a faded couch cushion as he watched the clouds block out the moon. It was a little after ten, and he had been lying like that on the roof of the building for a good two hours; he’d already ignored a half-dozen calls from Sonya on his cell phone, letting the annoying, electro-pop ring tone he had selected to represent the girl she was rapidly becoming reverberate off the walls of the domed observatory that rose up on the rooftop behind him. There was a time when Sonya would have accompanied him to the weekly Wednesdaynight Star Party, which he had originated when he had resuscitated the comatose observatory—but tonight Sonya, as she had done the last few Wednesdays, had joined her model friends at a downtown dance club, leaving Thad alone with the gray-on-gray sky. Of course, there wouldn’t be any Star Party tonight. The clouds made sure of that. Nevertheless, Thad’s duty to the observatory— which he had personally rebuilt, lobbying the university for the funds and equipment, turning astronomy into one of the most thriving extracurriculars on campus—was still a good excuse to avoid a night wasted in some noisy, smoky club; no matter how bad the weather, there were always a few stragglers who would show up. It didn’t always dawn on people: if you couldn’t see the stars through the clouds with your naked eye, a Celestron eleven-inch mounted telescope wasn’t going to make any difference. Although Thad been the one responsible for the growing popularity
of the astronomy club, the structure of the observatory had been around for nearly fifty years. Built on the roof of the South Physics Building in 1976, it had been through a number of changes in the past few decades. Recent additions of a pair of high-tech telescopes, a few cameras, a spectrograph, and some shiny new mounts and housings had turned the place into a first-class stargazing facility. As soon as Thad had returned from his second tour at NASA, he’d gotten the Wednesday-night Star Parties going, and over the past few months they’d grown from a handful of moon-obsessed telescope freaks to a real social gathering, sometimes numbering in the dozens. Thad was proud that he’d been able to bring aspects of his reinvented personality back to the university with him. But sadly, his new persona hadn’t helped him at all with his relationship problems. Sonya had also become more outgoing and social, but her new friends, and the kinds of places they liked to go—Thad didn’t have anything in common with her world at all. So he had simply stopped accompanying her to the casting calls, cocktail parties, and especially the nights out in the dance clubs. Lying outside on the roof of the university building, the observatory rising up behind his back, staring out into that gray-on-gray sky—here he could pretend he was back at NASA. Back in a world of science and fantasy. Thad’s thoughts of NASA dissipated as the sound of a door opening and closing echoed across the desolate rooftop. He didn’t lift his head as he heard the approaching footsteps. From the way the stranger’s boots shuffled against the cement roof, he could tell that the person was either drunk or on his way to being so, which meant he was probably one of the Star Party regulars, either too soused or too stupid to realize that a cloudy sky looked like a cloudy sky, even through the most powerful telescope on Earth. “Thanks for coming,” Thad said, without lifting his head from the couch cushion, “but this week’s Star Party is canceled, due to the lack of stars. Come back next week, and hopefully we’ll have something to look at.” The steps didn’t even pause, shuffling closer until they were just a few yards away. Thad heard a grunt as someone lowered himself next
to him on the roof, and then there was the sound of a lighter flicking on and off. A sickly-sweet, decidedly herbal puff of smoke floated past Thad’s face. Thad had nothing against marijuana use, although he didn’t touch the stuff himself, but he was surprised that someone would smoke the illegal substance right out in the open, on the top of a university building. Any moment, a professor or a security guard could wander out—and in fact, often the astronomy TAs came for the Star Parties, although an astronomy TA would know better than to come up to an observatory on a cloudy night. Curious, Thad raised his head to look at the visitor. The guy was sitting cross-legged, his back against the wall of the observatory, his arms crossed against his chest. He was wearing a wool cap pulled down low above his eyes. His jeans had holes in them, and he was wearing gloves with the fingers cut out. He looked kind of homeless, but where his face was lit up by the tiny marijuana cigarette, Thad could see that he was young, maybe even younger than himself. There were patches of facial hair on his jaw, and his cheeks had the ruddy complexion of a guy who spent a lot of time outdoors. Ringlets of brown hair stuck out from beneath the lip of his cap. He was staring past Thad, past the edge of the rooftop, at the rolling view of the south corner of the university’s campus. “No worries, man,” the stranger said. “Happy to look at the clouds if I can’t see the stars.” There was a hint of California surfer dude in the way the guy talked. Maybe it was the weed, but he seemed so relaxed, so completely devoid of tension. Thad didn’t think he’d ever felt the way that man looked. He’d always been so much more tightly wound, so infused with the energy that often came out as enthusiasm. He couldn’t imagine this guy ever being described as enthusiastic. “I guess that’s a pretty good attitude.” The guy took another hit off his joint, then let his head rest back against the observatory wall behind him. “How big you think it is? I mean, like, does it really go on forever, like they say in the books? Because how the hell can something go on forever?”
Thad assumed the guy was talking about the sky or, more specifically, the universe. Compared with the kind of conversations Thad had gotten used to at NASA, it was pretty basic and a little juvenile—but it was science, and Thad liked nothing more than to talk science. Compared with a conversation about fashion or modeling at some neon-lit club, this was as close to the JSC as he was going to get. So he lay back against the cushion and started to talk. As they conversed, Thad learned a lot about the laid-back kid. His name was Gordon, and he was also a student at the university. He had taken a little time off here and there, but now he seemed to be on track with his studies, trying to make it through the spring semester without getting lost somewhere along the way. What Thad liked most about Gordon was that he seemed extremely curious about the big questions in life. About the size of the universe, about how many stars there really were, about the possibilities of life on other planets. Surprisingly, at the same time, Gordon was very religious, and it became clear almost immediately that he had grown up in a Mormon environment very similar to Thad’s. Halfway into the conversation, Gordon mentioned something about losing a wife and kid to the Mormon Church, which Thad didn’t press him on; crazy, that at their ages they had both already been married, but that was Utah. Somehow, Gordon had remained close to his mother and uncle, and had also retained much of the Mormon teachings. Interspersed with his questions about science, he often quoted Mormon Scripture. The possibility of life on other planets seemed to conflict him, but that didn’t keep him from trying to dig deep into the idea. Thad liked the guy, and also thought there was something very bold and exciting about him; he had the balls to just sit out there on the roof smoking pot, talking about aliens—yet deep down he was still this wellmannered Mormon kid. Adding to the conflict in his personality, somewhere in the conversation Gordon mentioned that he had a bit of a criminal record, something small and insignificant, but there nonetheless. Things had been bad for him for a while, but now he was back at school and he was doing well. He wanted to hang out with people who were going to be good for him—and he really liked hearing that Thad was a triple major—obviously someone who worked
hard and was moving in the right direction. By the time midnight rolled around, the half-dozen calls from Sonya had become more than ten, and Thad knew it was time to get moving. He and Gordon agreed to keep in touch, whatever that might mean. Not a formal thing—just an agreement that if they ran into each other on the street, they would maybe meet for lunch. As they headed toward the elevator that would take them off the roof, a light rain began to fall; Gordon didn’t seem to notice, maybe because he was on to his second joint by then, or maybe because his hat was pulled down so low he couldn’t feel the drops. But Thad was shivering as the dampness worked its way into his bones. Something about Gordon had inspired a thought: the two of them might never become friends—but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t have an impact on each other’s life. Sometimes, Thad knew, as a scientist, it was the molecules that only briefly touched that caused the biggest reactions. … Thad ran into Gordon a handful of times over the next few weeks. Twice at one of the campus dining halls, when Thad was just on his way out and Gordon on his way in. Once, crossing in front of the geology building, Thad walking with a couple of girls from one of his science classes and Gordon just sitting there, on a bench, smoking another joint. And then a third time, on the steps of the main library. Gordon was drinking something out of a thermos, still wearing his wool hat and cutoff gloves, and Thad paused in front of him, coming to a sudden decision. Thad hadn’t intended on bringing up the topic—but seeing Gordon on the library steps, right in the bright light of day, he decided maybe it was time to put words around the thoughts streaming through his head. Throw it out there, see where it landed. But not here, in the middle of the campus. “You doing anything right now?” he asked. Gordon looked at him like he was crazy. “Solving world hunger. Why?” Thad grinned, and beckoned Gordon to follow him.
… Twenty minutes later, Gordon was still following as Thad strolled through a deserted wing of the University of Utah’s Museum of Natural History mineral collection, pointing out the various crystals and unique fossils that lined the lit-up glass cabinets that ran along the walls. It was a pretty good collection, and Thad had spent numerous hours wandering through the museum, alone and with Sonya. At various points in his time at Utah, he had worked cataloging these very minerals and fossils, carting them up and down from the basement storage areas of the museum—and yes, he had borrowed a few to display in his apartment, but nothing as valuable as the specimens in front of them now, specimens like the imprints of a brontosaurus foot off to their left, or the shiny green jade deposit encased in brightly lit cubes straight ahead. Thad was surprised to hear that Gordon had been in the museum before as well; in fact, just the summer before, Gordon had donated a rare angel wing calcite crystal to the university, which was now tagged with the note Gordon had written himself: In Memory of Kelen McWhorter—a sister who had died in a car accident five years earlier. Thad had heard of the crystal, and he told Gordon that he believed it was worth a fair amount of money. Which kind of led, naturally, into what Thad had brought Gordon to the museum to discuss. And that’s all it would be, in Thad’s mind, two college kids having a conversation. Nothing anywhere near as dangerous or illegal as lighting up a joint. Just a conversation, words, the expression of a little fantasy that had been building in Thad’s mind. “I’ve been thinking about something,” Thad started, “and I wanted to get your opinion.” “People don’t usually come to me for advice,” Gordon responded, peering into a case that contained fossilized insects from the Jurassic period. “Okay, not advice, really. I’m just trying to figure something out. See, I think I might be able to get my hands on something valuable.” “Like dinosaur fossils?” Gordon pointed, grinning. Thad laughed. “Even more valuable. And I’m trying to figure out if maybe it would be
possible to find a buyer. Like, on the Internet or something.” “World is made up of buyers and sellers. You got something to sell, there’s usually someone out there who’s willing to buy. And the Internet —you can find a buyer on the Internet for anything, if you look hard enough.” It was the kind of answer Thad had expected from Gordon. Thad’s thinking was, since Gordon obviously knew something about drugs, and had already pointed out that he had a little criminal record, maybe he knew people in the underworld. Maybe he had some weird connection into some underground market somewhere. “So if I did have something valuable, you think you’d be able to find someone to buy it?” “Depends what we’re talking about.” Thad swallowed. Was he really going to say this out loud? “Moon rocks.” Gordon looked at him, then started to laugh. “You know that’s all bullshit, right?” “What’s bullshit?” “The whole moon-landing thing, man. Couple of guys, walking around hitting golf balls, planting some freakin’ flag—you think any of that was real?” Thad rubbed his eyes, trying to figure out if the stoner was playing with him, or actually meant what he was saying. He realized that he had never explicitly told Gordon that he worked at NASA. Gordon had no idea that Thad hung around men who had actually been there when Neil Armstrong had walked on the moon. “So you think—” Thad started, and then stopped himself. He wasn’t going to get into an argument about conspiracy theories. “Look, here’s the thing. I might know somebody who can get his hands on a couple of rocks. They’re worth a lot of money, if we can find someone who’s interested. A collector, a gem dealer, someone like that.” Gordon was tapping his fingers against a glass fossil case. “Moon rocks. From a museum? A private collection?” Thad shrugged. He didn’t want to go into it any deeper than that. The kid could believe whatever he wanted. That Thad knew about a moon rock locked away in a basement drawer in the same museum they
were walking through. Or that some member of the royal family of some South American country had a rock he wanted to fence. Who cared? Thad just wanted to know if Gordon could help him figure out if there was any way to sell a moon rock, if he had one. “I could probably figure that out,” Gordon finally said. “Do a little research, send out some e-mails. I’m pretty good with the Internet.” Thad nodded, his excitement rising. Was there really anything wrong with Gordon sending out a few e-mails? Would it really be a big deal? Thad hadn’t done anything wrong yet—and he was probably never going to. Hell, he didn’t even think the moon-rock thing was actually possible. Just thinking about what he would have to pull off, to get inside that vault—no, it was just a mental game. Another fantasy that he was beginning to construct. That was his true talent, fantasy. He had reinvented himself as a social star at NASA, he was impressing everyone there with his adventures and his contests, his enthusiasm— all of it. These thoughts, they were just a natural progression—another adventure, but this one so far-fetched it would likely remain lodged in fantasy. Thad continued on through the museum, moving from the fossils and minerals to an area filled with precious mosaics that the museum had borrowed from a collector in Turkey. By the time they reached the building’s exit, Gordon had his wool hat pulled down low over his eyes, the thermos out from under his coat. For all Thad knew, Gordon had already forgotten about the exchange. The moon rocks had gone back into the dark, quiet space in the back of Thad’s mind. And maybe that would be for the best. Christ, yeah, that would definitely be for the best.
sex on the moon - the amazing true story
Re: sex on the moon - the amazing true story
Chapter 16
It was a little less than two weeks later that Thad ran into Gordon again, passing by the same library steps; Thad was moving fast, a full load of oversized physics texts cradled in his arms, barely paying attention to his surroundings because he was already ten minutes late for a lecture on quantum mechanics. Moon rocks were the furthest thing from his thoughts; they had been replaced by quarks, neutrinos, and a dozen poorly understood little particles, spinning and twisting through imaginary orbits behind his eyes. Deep into the spring semester, he was beginning to find physics almost as interesting as astronomy. Even as enveloped in the upcoming lecture as he was, Thad almost dropped his textbooks when he heard the familiar California-stoner voice from the direction of the library steps. “Train keeps a-rolling, eh, man? You’re liable to run somebody down, moving that fast.” Thad restabilized the books against his biceps, then looked up, seeing Gordon strolling down the steps in his direction. “Just heading to a lecture.” “Right on, brother. You and me both. But when you get a chance, you might want to check your e-mails.” Thad felt the weight of the textbooks digging into the skin of his arms. He realized with a start that he hadn’t looked at his e-mails in a day, maybe longer. For the first twenty-four hours after his last conversation with Gordon, he’d checked his e-mail account every couple of hours, but in the past few days he had been looking at it less and less often. He had assumed he’d been right, that Gordon had forgotten about his request. But from the grin on Gordon’s face, it was obvious now that he had been wrong. “I’ll go check it out right now.” Gordon didn’t stop moving; he just crossed right in front of Thad and
gave him a little wink. “What about your lecture?” But Thad had already changed directions and was hurrying up the library steps. Quantum physics could wait. … It didn’t take long for Thad to find an open computer terminal in a fairly isolated stall near the back of the library’s 1960s-era research room. The computer wasn’t anywhere near as up-to-date as the one he was used to at NASA, but it was perfectly functional, and more important, the cubicle had high enough walls to obscure the screen from any prying, nearby eyes. Thad knew he was being paranoid as he hunched over the computer, hitting the keys rapidly, opening his e-mail account. Of course, nobody was going to be the least bit interested in what he was doing. And really, he wasn’t doing anything at all, just checking an email from a friend. It took less than a minute for Thad to locate the e-mail: the address from which it had been sent was bizarre enough that it could only have come from one person. [email protected]. And the e-mail itself seemed as disjointed as the address. It was more than a page long, and it was obvious from the start that Gordon had cut and pasted a number of different messages together. Thad counted at least seven addresses within the body of the e-mail, all people that Gordon had either contacted or received some sort of response from. Some of the missives seemed promising, but none were concrete. It looked as though Gordon had been shooting out almost random feelers into the electronic wasteland—beginning with a private international mineral collectors Web site located in Iraq, from which he’d managed to cull fifty or so e-mail addresses from potential collectors. Using these e-mails as his targets, Gordon had then concocted a short form letter, basically spam, which he’d mass emailed to the addresses. The form letter was pretty foolish sounding—
especially the fake name Gordon had chosen for himself—but he had managed to get the information mostly correct. It was wild, seeing the spam letter; the idea that it was out in the open, bouncing around the Internet—it was pretty terrifying. But it was also exhilarating; although many of the responses were simply short, sometimes profanity-laced messages explaining that the sale of moon rocks was, indeed, illegal, a handful seemed to be interested. Thad realized that he’d have to take over from here; Gordon had done his job, had made a few contacts—but Thad was the one who actually knew what they were trying to sell. If, indeed, they were really trying to sell anything at all. Thad had spent enough time on the NASA computers to know how to set up a dummy e-mail account. As ridiculous as Gordon’s chosen pseudonym sounded, Thad was forced to adopt the new name. Using the handle, he went to work on a new missive: rereading Gordon’s e-mail, he discovered that a number of the potential targets were related to a certain international Web site for mineral collectors— a sort of club for “rock hounds.” Since the site was in Europe, Thad didn’t feel nervous crafting an advertisement to put on the mineral club’s online newsletter. He had to choose his words carefully—but he knew that the advertisement would reach the entire club at once. If these people took their hobby seriously enough to spend time on a Web site dedicated to rocks, there was a good chance that at least one of them would be interested in what Thad was purporting to sell. As Thad drafted the ad, he tried to picture the sort of person who might respond to an offer of a chance to buy the most valuable substance on Earth. He knew a lot of people found moon rocks fascinating, but it would have to be a special sort of individual, someone desperate to actually hold a moon rock in the palm of his hand. He was searching for a true rock hound. Someone who took his hobby seriously enough that he’d read the advertisement and immediately get that burst of adrenaline, that rush that could only come from a true addiction. Grinning at the thought, Thad hit more keys on the computer. Even though it was little more than a game, for the moment, it was still quite
possible that Gordon’s e-mails, and his own crafty advertisement, were about to make some lucky rock hound’s day.
It was a little less than two weeks later that Thad ran into Gordon again, passing by the same library steps; Thad was moving fast, a full load of oversized physics texts cradled in his arms, barely paying attention to his surroundings because he was already ten minutes late for a lecture on quantum mechanics. Moon rocks were the furthest thing from his thoughts; they had been replaced by quarks, neutrinos, and a dozen poorly understood little particles, spinning and twisting through imaginary orbits behind his eyes. Deep into the spring semester, he was beginning to find physics almost as interesting as astronomy. Even as enveloped in the upcoming lecture as he was, Thad almost dropped his textbooks when he heard the familiar California-stoner voice from the direction of the library steps. “Train keeps a-rolling, eh, man? You’re liable to run somebody down, moving that fast.” Thad restabilized the books against his biceps, then looked up, seeing Gordon strolling down the steps in his direction. “Just heading to a lecture.” “Right on, brother. You and me both. But when you get a chance, you might want to check your e-mails.” Thad felt the weight of the textbooks digging into the skin of his arms. He realized with a start that he hadn’t looked at his e-mails in a day, maybe longer. For the first twenty-four hours after his last conversation with Gordon, he’d checked his e-mail account every couple of hours, but in the past few days he had been looking at it less and less often. He had assumed he’d been right, that Gordon had forgotten about his request. But from the grin on Gordon’s face, it was obvious now that he had been wrong. “I’ll go check it out right now.” Gordon didn’t stop moving; he just crossed right in front of Thad and
gave him a little wink. “What about your lecture?” But Thad had already changed directions and was hurrying up the library steps. Quantum physics could wait. … It didn’t take long for Thad to find an open computer terminal in a fairly isolated stall near the back of the library’s 1960s-era research room. The computer wasn’t anywhere near as up-to-date as the one he was used to at NASA, but it was perfectly functional, and more important, the cubicle had high enough walls to obscure the screen from any prying, nearby eyes. Thad knew he was being paranoid as he hunched over the computer, hitting the keys rapidly, opening his e-mail account. Of course, nobody was going to be the least bit interested in what he was doing. And really, he wasn’t doing anything at all, just checking an email from a friend. It took less than a minute for Thad to locate the e-mail: the address from which it had been sent was bizarre enough that it could only have come from one person. [email protected]. And the e-mail itself seemed as disjointed as the address. It was more than a page long, and it was obvious from the start that Gordon had cut and pasted a number of different messages together. Thad counted at least seven addresses within the body of the e-mail, all people that Gordon had either contacted or received some sort of response from. Some of the missives seemed promising, but none were concrete. It looked as though Gordon had been shooting out almost random feelers into the electronic wasteland—beginning with a private international mineral collectors Web site located in Iraq, from which he’d managed to cull fifty or so e-mail addresses from potential collectors. Using these e-mails as his targets, Gordon had then concocted a short form letter, basically spam, which he’d mass emailed to the addresses. The form letter was pretty foolish sounding—
especially the fake name Gordon had chosen for himself—but he had managed to get the information mostly correct. It was wild, seeing the spam letter; the idea that it was out in the open, bouncing around the Internet—it was pretty terrifying. But it was also exhilarating; although many of the responses were simply short, sometimes profanity-laced messages explaining that the sale of moon rocks was, indeed, illegal, a handful seemed to be interested. Thad realized that he’d have to take over from here; Gordon had done his job, had made a few contacts—but Thad was the one who actually knew what they were trying to sell. If, indeed, they were really trying to sell anything at all. Thad had spent enough time on the NASA computers to know how to set up a dummy e-mail account. As ridiculous as Gordon’s chosen pseudonym sounded, Thad was forced to adopt the new name. Using the handle, he went to work on a new missive: rereading Gordon’s e-mail, he discovered that a number of the potential targets were related to a certain international Web site for mineral collectors— a sort of club for “rock hounds.” Since the site was in Europe, Thad didn’t feel nervous crafting an advertisement to put on the mineral club’s online newsletter. He had to choose his words carefully—but he knew that the advertisement would reach the entire club at once. If these people took their hobby seriously enough to spend time on a Web site dedicated to rocks, there was a good chance that at least one of them would be interested in what Thad was purporting to sell. As Thad drafted the ad, he tried to picture the sort of person who might respond to an offer of a chance to buy the most valuable substance on Earth. He knew a lot of people found moon rocks fascinating, but it would have to be a special sort of individual, someone desperate to actually hold a moon rock in the palm of his hand. He was searching for a true rock hound. Someone who took his hobby seriously enough that he’d read the advertisement and immediately get that burst of adrenaline, that rush that could only come from a true addiction. Grinning at the thought, Thad hit more keys on the computer. Even though it was little more than a game, for the moment, it was still quite
possible that Gordon’s e-mails, and his own crafty advertisement, were about to make some lucky rock hound’s day.
Re: sex on the moon - the amazing true story
Chapter 17
Antwerp, Belgium Greetings. My name is Orb Robinson from Tampa, FL. I have in my possession a rare, multicarat moon rock I am trying to find a buyer for. The laws surrounding this type of exchange are known, so I will be straightforward and nonchalant about wanting to find a private buyer. If you, or someone you know, would be interested in such an exchange, please let me know. Thank you. Orb Robinson. Axel Emmermann watched the green-yellow glow of his computer screen dance around the curvature of his pilsner as he expertly turned the tall glass in front of his eyes. He could even make out a few words from the strange e-mail that had arrived in his in-box just moments ago, but for the moment, his attention was more focused on the contents of the pilsner glass than its surface. The beer was incredibly light, its carefully cultivated golden coloring so profound, it could almost be described as a texture. The deep hue completely overwhelmed the handful of minuscule air bubbles that signified its gentle carbonation. Axel slowly pressed the glass to his lips, taking a small sip, letting the bittersweet, smoky mixture play across his taste buds. He noticed, with no small satisfaction, that the temperature of the beer was just about right, and the pilsner glass had allowed it to breathe well enough to satisfy his practiced palate. Thoroughly pleased, he brought the glass back to his lips and took a deeper drink. Axel knew that if his wife—or one of his two children, aged twelve and fifteen—had wandered into the first-floor living room and caught
sight of him performing the ritual of the pilsner glass and the amber beer, there was no doubt it would have been the cause of much amusement. In Axel’s world, even something as simple and mundane as enjoying a late-night beer had its procedures. Everything in its place, everything in its way. A continually examined life, Axel liked to remark, and he really couldn’t help himself: he liked things in his world to behave the way they were supposed to, whether that referred to beer kept at a precise temperature and aerated for exactly the right amount of time, or to the bigger political issues that often seemed so foreign in a place as wonderfully sedate as this quiet corner of suburban Antwerp. Axel considered himself a self-taught Renaissance man, and he had been collecting knowledge about the way the world was supposed to work for almost fifty years now. His wife and kids liked to say he was a student of everything—which, they often remarked, was a class you could never finish. Axel knew they were probably right, that there was no end point to knowledge for knowledge’s sake. But that’s what made being a student of everything so much more interesting—every day there was a new puzzle you had to try to solve, which only led to the next puzzle, and on and on. Axel drained the last drops of the wonderful beer and placed the glass carefully back on its coaster, situated near the corner of the small oak desk he had inherited from his father, years ago. To an outside eye, the small office area he had carved out of the corner of his living room might have seemed cluttered; to Axel, everything in the area made perfect sense, from the high stack of manila folders containing spectography data that covered nearly every inch of the compact bureau overlooking his garden via a small, shuttered window, to the loaded-down, handmade wooden shelves that lined the walls, filled to near collapse with cardboard boxes and sealed Tupperware containers. Everything in its place, everything in its way. Except, a little after midnight in the middle of the week as a subtle rain sputtered against the thick glass of the windowpanes above the bureau, there were at least two things that did not seem to be in their place, or way, at all; Axel was awake, for one, which was easily explained, the result of a particularly heavy dinner of vlaamse
stoofkarbonaden, a Flemish stew made with beer—though in this case not anywhere near as satisfactory a vintage as the amber concoction he had just drained. But the second puzzle seemed much more complex, and Axel knew he would not be joining his wife upstairs until he had at least begun to make sense of it. Axel leaned forward so that his wire-rim eyeglasses were only a few inches from the computer screen, and reread the e-mail again, mulling over each and every word, like some sort of college professor studying an important and archaic text. Of course, he wasn’t a professor, though his appearance could easily give off that impression: balding, with a rapidly whitening, meticulously trimmed beard, ruddy, rounded cheeks, and sometimes, especially late at night, a spiderweb of fault-line cracks at the corners of his eyes, the result of spending far too much time looking at things that were very, very small. Greetings. My name is Orb Robinson from Tampa, FL. I have in my possession a rare, multicarat moon rock … Axel couldn’t deny the sudden flush he felt in his cheeks as he reread the sentence. Like everyone else in the modern world, he got a fair amount of junk mail, spam, garbage sent to his e-mail address every day, but there was no doubt in his mind that this specific e-mail had been sent to him, specifically, because it would cause just such an excited reaction. He could guess exactly where this “Orb Robinson” had gotten his e-mail address—from the Web page of the Antwerp Mineral Club, where Axel was listed as one of the charter board members. He was a rock hound. More than that, his obsession with rocks and minerals had been a centerpiece of his life for many years now. He still remembered where it all started: he had been around eight years old and had heard on the radio about a British Petroleum promotion in which they were giving away little boxes of Brazilian minerals with every purchase of gasoline. At the time, only one member of his extended family had owned a car, and it had taken a while to convince his uncle to drive him to the nearest BP gas station, far out on the
highway that connected Antwerp to Amsterdam. But the minute Axel had held that box of rocks in his eight-year-old hands, he had become hooked. Twenty-four little pieces of rubble, ugly as hell—and yet they seemed completely magical to Axel, how each one told a story about a time and place, how each one hinted at an orderly and understandable historical record. By age sixteen, Axel had found and joined the Antwerp Mineral Club, of which he was still a member thirty-four years later. Over the years, he had always maintained a hobbyist’s interest in the things that helped him understand the rocks he collected through the club: chemistry, geology, even a little space science. But after his mandatory army stint, he had begun to find girls and beer a little more exciting. A seven-year job as a DJ in a local disco had made him just successful enough to grow his collection to about nine hundred specimens, none of them very valuable but, on the whole, quite respectable. He had also managed to collect a wife, serendipitously named Christel. It had been Christel’s idea for him to reconnect with the mineral club in a more regular fashion, and by the mid-eighties he was meeting with them every Monday, helping to host visiting rock collectors and geologists from all over the world. Antwerp wasn’t exactly a major stop on any European tour, but it was close enough to Paris and Amsterdam to bring in a few dozen notables over the years. Axel was quite proud of what he and the club had accomplished. Three or four of the club’s more prominent members were actual professors with minerals named after them. And in fact, one of the most prominent members, Professor René Venassle, had been called to the royal palace to give a technical speech when U.S. president Richard Nixon presented an actual lunar sample to the king himself. Rereading the e-mail, pausing on the words moon rock, Axel remembered that episode: how the U.S. ambassador had personally dropped off the heavily guarded sample, how it was displayed by Axel’s very own club at that week’s mineral show. Although at the time Axel wasn’t spending nearly as much time at the mineral club as he did now, he had done a fair amount of reading about lunar samples, to better educate himself about Nixon’s gift. He knew that the rocks were illegal to own, and that they were also very valuable.
Two facts that made the e-mail immediately suspect, but also a little bit exciting. On a first reading, Axel had even wondered if the e-mailer was referring to lunar samples at all. His first thought was that the seller was actually referring to “moonstone,” which was a variety of feldspar, an uncommon but not incredibly rare type of gem. Of course, the trading of moonstones was perfectly legal. Which made the next line of the email make a lot less sense: The laws surrounding this type of exchange are known, so I will be straightforward and nonchalant about wanting to find a private buyer. Which meant that the e-mailer was, indeed, talking about lunar samples. Axel’s next instinct was just to delete the e-mail, without another thought—because if this person was talking about moon rocks, the e-mail was obviously a hoax. Axel had seen how well guarded the moon rock sample that had been given to the king was; no doubt lunar samples everywhere were kept under the same kind of lock and key. If owning a moon rock was illegal, certainly selling one would be even more so. Axel had even reached for the delete key— before stopping himself, more thoughts running through his head. He realized that it was probably—almost definitely—a hoax. But even so, there was something odd and disconcerting about the message. Axel knew that Christel would think he was simply being his obsessive, inquisitive self, but something in this didn’t seem right. If you were going to try to sell a fake moon rock, wouldn’t a rock hound such as himself be the last person you would e-mail? Because certainly, it wouldn’t take a man like Axel Emmermann very long to recognize a fake; a few questions, a photograph, or even a moment eye to eye with the item in question, and he’d know its true nature. No, you’d have to be ridiculously stupid to attempt to sell fake moon rocks to a charter board member of the Antwerp Mineral Club. But rereading the message yet another time, Axel didn’t see any signs of idiocy. The syntax was good, even the man’s name had a certain panache to it: Orb Robinson, like some sort of transposition of Roy
Orbison—the dead rhythm-and-blues singer, who, in point of fact, had a degree in geology. It occurred to Axel that the person who wrote this e-mail wasn’t stupid at all. Which meant that quite possibly he really was trying to sell a “multicarat moon rock.” Axel was beginning to lose track of the time as he contemplated the curious e-mail, and he realized that he’d never get to sleep if he didn’t investigate further. He knew enough about computers to do a pretty simple search of the originator of the e-mail. To his surprise, he quickly found that “Orb Robinson” had posted his inquiry to a fairly large number of mineral-club bulletin boards across Europe. But even more surprising, Axel found something that caused him to sit straight up in his chair. Back on March 9, Orb Robinson had posted an advertisement on the Antwerp Mineral Club’s main Web site. Axel quickly followed the link, and there it was, ad number 1275, posted to the Web site’s “Virtual Quarry”: Priceless Moon Rocks Now Available!!! “Orb Robinson” [email protected] If you have an interest in purchasing a rare and historically significant piece of the moon, and would like more information, then please contact me by e-mail and leave your contact information and an explanation of your interest. Sincerely, Orb Axel whistled low to himself, then removed his glasses and rubbed them against his sleeve. He glanced at the empty pilsner glass, wishing he still had some of the good amber stuff within arm’s reach, because now he felt like he needed a drink. He was suspicious before, but seeing the ad right there on his own club’s Web site, he was beginning to be convinced. Hoax or not, he was witnessing a crime in progress. Even though he was an avid collector, the thought of actually attempting to buy what this person was purporting to sell never crossed Axel’s mind. Just as he thought that the world needed to have
an order about it, everything in its place, he was a firm believer in right and wrong, that there were lines you couldn’t cross, shortcuts you couldn’t take. He had served in the military because it was expected and also because it was the right thing to do. He wasn’t a rich man by any means, but he lived a good life in his little corner of Belgium, he had a wife who loved him and two kids who didn’t hate him. And he had his hobbies, his puzzles; that, to him, was what this crime really was—a puzzle that he now needed to solve. Everything in its place, everything in its way. The only question that remained was how, exactly, Axel was going to put this Orb Robinson into his proper place. … The weekly meeting of the Antwerp Mineral Club was already in full swing as Axel strolled determinedly through the wide, high-ceilinged dining hall of the Antwerp youth center. Even from the back of the hall, he could see that most of the regulars were there, gathered around the dozen or so industrial-looking rectangular tables that took up much of the center of the room. The slide projector had already been turned on, but not advanced to the first slide; the big screen that took up the entire far wall of the cantina glowed a bright, almost solar shade of yellow, backlighting the tables and the conglomeration of middle-aged, mostly bearded men who migrated around them—a herd inspecting a familiar water hole. It wasn’t the tables themselves that the herd found interesting. On top of the tables were various-sized boxes, ranging from the cardboard variety to more high-tech compartmentalized plastic cases that kind of looked like fishing-tackle containers. It was a weekly ritual; before the slideshow presentation, there was an hour set aside for the buying and selling of specimens. As Axel reached the first table, and reflexively glanced into the nearest set of boxes, he could see that it was the usual fare: shiny pieces of quartz, a few volcanic specimens, a handful of minor gemstones—nothing of particular value anywhere but here. To these men, who would offer up a perfectly good Monday night to spend gathered in a youth-center dining hall—a bit of quartz or a volcanic rock could sometimes seem like a treasure.
Axel was disappointed in himself for being late, because it certainly wasn’t like him to be late. But tonight, just as it had done for the past two nights, dinner with his wife had led to a discussion about the strange e-mail—which he was now convinced was a window into some sort of crime in the making. Not an argument, exactly, because he and Christel never argued. But certainly a hashing out of opinions. Over the past forty-eight hours, Axel had become convinced that he had to do something. But Christel, for her part, didn’t like the idea of him sticking his nose into something that might end up being dangerous. If this was some sort of hoax, then the danger would be minor. But if somehow this person was selling a real moon rock—Axel might be getting himself involved with a dangerous character. Axel had explained to his wife that it wasn’t in his nature to just sit back and watch a crime in progress. What sort of person could stand by and see something they knew was wrong, and do nothing about it? But his wife wasn’t buying any of it; she had responded by saying that despite his noble explanation, the real reason he wanted to get involved was that he thought it would be fun. Another entertainment, another hobby. Like rock collecting itself. Or “popinjay,” another of Axel’s passions—a strange little archery game that involved shooting a wooden bird off the top of a ninety-five-foot pole. Sometimes with a crossbow. In front of an audience. Axel knew there was some truth in what she was saying, but he didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of winning the discussion. It might be a puzzle he intended to solve, but damn it, solving the puzzle would redress a wrong. “Mr. Emmermann,” one of the bearded men hovering over a nearby tackle box filled with gemstones exclaimed, causing most of the men around him to look up and smile. “We were worried you might have fallen into the river. Or, at the very least, gotten your foot stuck in a pilsner glass on the way out of your house.” Axel grinned at the man, then made a big show of bending over the rim of the tackle box, peering at the contents. “Actually, we’re having a little issue with the foundation of our chimney. But I knew I could count on you to bring me a little worthless rubble to fill the gaps.”
The bearded man feigned indignation, placing a hand over his heart. He was the club secretary—in his mid-sixties, among the oldest members of the mineral group; a postman by day, he was one of the most respected rock hounds in Antwerp—and he also knew how to run the slide projector. “But why would you have come all the way here to buy my rubble when we all know you could have easily used your wife’s stew. One spoonful in between the bricks, and your chimney would have lasted a hundred years.” Axel laughed, because he couldn’t argue with the man’s point. Before he could think of something witty in response, a bushy-haired, portly amateur geologist shouted over from a table to the left. “Or maybe he’s late because he was busy buying moon rocks.” Axel’s ears perked up as he stood frozen over the tackle box of mildly precious gemstones. He looked toward the bushy-haired, portly man. Alfred Schnermeyer was one of the handful of Ph.D.s in the group, and for the past three years he had been the editor of the club’s newsletter. Axel looked from him to the other rock hounds nearby and saw that they were all smiling, as if in on the same joke. “Don’t look so surprised,” the club secretary exclaimed, giving Axel’s shoulder a squeeze. “We were just discussing it before you got here.” “You all got the e-mail as well?” “Everyone on the club’s main Web page. This Orb Robinson is a very persistent fruitcake. He wrote the president, the vice president, all of us here, even a couple of the visiting speakers. I wish one of us had printed out the e-mail so that we could put it in the opening slide. But everyone deleted it, immediately.” Axel was about to say something, let them know that he, in fact, hadn’t deleted the e-mail—but he could see from the looks in his fellow hobbyists’ eyes that they were convinced that it was a hoax, and not worth their time. Axel decided to keep his suspicions to himself. Most likely, he was the one who was overreacting, and his friends were correct—it was some nutcase, a fruitcake, a waste of everyone’s time. But in Axel’s mind, no matter how you looked at it, this was wrong. If the person behind the e-mail actually had moon rocks, he had to have stolen them.
If he didn’t, then he was trying to commit a fraud. “A shame,” Axel finally joked back. “We could have used the offer as the front page of our next newsletter. Maybe entice a few new members, one of whom might bring over a collection that doesn’t look like something I could use to pave my driveway.” They all had a good laugh as Schnermeyer moved toward the slide projector, preparing to get the meeting started. The other members of the Antwerp Mineral Club had already forgotten about the e-mail, and the nutcase who called himself Orb Robinson. But Axel Emmermann still had images of moon rocks dancing in his head. … When Axel finally returned home from the youth center, the house was already dark. He let himself in as quietly as he could so as not to disturb his wife and kids. A second late night in a single week was incredibly unusual for him, but he had a feeling this was just the beginning of unusual things. He briefly considered waking Christel to tell her exactly what he was going to do—but he didn’t want to reopen that can of worms. Besides, he really didn’t think what he was about to do could be dangerous. Although he couldn’t be sure, he guessed there was an entire ocean between him and Orb Robinson. He crept through the house as carefully as he could and made his way to the darkened living room. He didn’t even sit at the desk; he just stood in front of the computer in the corner of the room and began to type. When it was done, he stood back from the computer. Bathed in the warm, pixelated glow from the desktop monitor, he felt his cheeks flushing red. Everything in its place, everything in its way. His hand was trembling as he reached forward and hit the send key.
Antwerp, Belgium Greetings. My name is Orb Robinson from Tampa, FL. I have in my possession a rare, multicarat moon rock I am trying to find a buyer for. The laws surrounding this type of exchange are known, so I will be straightforward and nonchalant about wanting to find a private buyer. If you, or someone you know, would be interested in such an exchange, please let me know. Thank you. Orb Robinson. Axel Emmermann watched the green-yellow glow of his computer screen dance around the curvature of his pilsner as he expertly turned the tall glass in front of his eyes. He could even make out a few words from the strange e-mail that had arrived in his in-box just moments ago, but for the moment, his attention was more focused on the contents of the pilsner glass than its surface. The beer was incredibly light, its carefully cultivated golden coloring so profound, it could almost be described as a texture. The deep hue completely overwhelmed the handful of minuscule air bubbles that signified its gentle carbonation. Axel slowly pressed the glass to his lips, taking a small sip, letting the bittersweet, smoky mixture play across his taste buds. He noticed, with no small satisfaction, that the temperature of the beer was just about right, and the pilsner glass had allowed it to breathe well enough to satisfy his practiced palate. Thoroughly pleased, he brought the glass back to his lips and took a deeper drink. Axel knew that if his wife—or one of his two children, aged twelve and fifteen—had wandered into the first-floor living room and caught
sight of him performing the ritual of the pilsner glass and the amber beer, there was no doubt it would have been the cause of much amusement. In Axel’s world, even something as simple and mundane as enjoying a late-night beer had its procedures. Everything in its place, everything in its way. A continually examined life, Axel liked to remark, and he really couldn’t help himself: he liked things in his world to behave the way they were supposed to, whether that referred to beer kept at a precise temperature and aerated for exactly the right amount of time, or to the bigger political issues that often seemed so foreign in a place as wonderfully sedate as this quiet corner of suburban Antwerp. Axel considered himself a self-taught Renaissance man, and he had been collecting knowledge about the way the world was supposed to work for almost fifty years now. His wife and kids liked to say he was a student of everything—which, they often remarked, was a class you could never finish. Axel knew they were probably right, that there was no end point to knowledge for knowledge’s sake. But that’s what made being a student of everything so much more interesting—every day there was a new puzzle you had to try to solve, which only led to the next puzzle, and on and on. Axel drained the last drops of the wonderful beer and placed the glass carefully back on its coaster, situated near the corner of the small oak desk he had inherited from his father, years ago. To an outside eye, the small office area he had carved out of the corner of his living room might have seemed cluttered; to Axel, everything in the area made perfect sense, from the high stack of manila folders containing spectography data that covered nearly every inch of the compact bureau overlooking his garden via a small, shuttered window, to the loaded-down, handmade wooden shelves that lined the walls, filled to near collapse with cardboard boxes and sealed Tupperware containers. Everything in its place, everything in its way. Except, a little after midnight in the middle of the week as a subtle rain sputtered against the thick glass of the windowpanes above the bureau, there were at least two things that did not seem to be in their place, or way, at all; Axel was awake, for one, which was easily explained, the result of a particularly heavy dinner of vlaamse
stoofkarbonaden, a Flemish stew made with beer—though in this case not anywhere near as satisfactory a vintage as the amber concoction he had just drained. But the second puzzle seemed much more complex, and Axel knew he would not be joining his wife upstairs until he had at least begun to make sense of it. Axel leaned forward so that his wire-rim eyeglasses were only a few inches from the computer screen, and reread the e-mail again, mulling over each and every word, like some sort of college professor studying an important and archaic text. Of course, he wasn’t a professor, though his appearance could easily give off that impression: balding, with a rapidly whitening, meticulously trimmed beard, ruddy, rounded cheeks, and sometimes, especially late at night, a spiderweb of fault-line cracks at the corners of his eyes, the result of spending far too much time looking at things that were very, very small. Greetings. My name is Orb Robinson from Tampa, FL. I have in my possession a rare, multicarat moon rock … Axel couldn’t deny the sudden flush he felt in his cheeks as he reread the sentence. Like everyone else in the modern world, he got a fair amount of junk mail, spam, garbage sent to his e-mail address every day, but there was no doubt in his mind that this specific e-mail had been sent to him, specifically, because it would cause just such an excited reaction. He could guess exactly where this “Orb Robinson” had gotten his e-mail address—from the Web page of the Antwerp Mineral Club, where Axel was listed as one of the charter board members. He was a rock hound. More than that, his obsession with rocks and minerals had been a centerpiece of his life for many years now. He still remembered where it all started: he had been around eight years old and had heard on the radio about a British Petroleum promotion in which they were giving away little boxes of Brazilian minerals with every purchase of gasoline. At the time, only one member of his extended family had owned a car, and it had taken a while to convince his uncle to drive him to the nearest BP gas station, far out on the
highway that connected Antwerp to Amsterdam. But the minute Axel had held that box of rocks in his eight-year-old hands, he had become hooked. Twenty-four little pieces of rubble, ugly as hell—and yet they seemed completely magical to Axel, how each one told a story about a time and place, how each one hinted at an orderly and understandable historical record. By age sixteen, Axel had found and joined the Antwerp Mineral Club, of which he was still a member thirty-four years later. Over the years, he had always maintained a hobbyist’s interest in the things that helped him understand the rocks he collected through the club: chemistry, geology, even a little space science. But after his mandatory army stint, he had begun to find girls and beer a little more exciting. A seven-year job as a DJ in a local disco had made him just successful enough to grow his collection to about nine hundred specimens, none of them very valuable but, on the whole, quite respectable. He had also managed to collect a wife, serendipitously named Christel. It had been Christel’s idea for him to reconnect with the mineral club in a more regular fashion, and by the mid-eighties he was meeting with them every Monday, helping to host visiting rock collectors and geologists from all over the world. Antwerp wasn’t exactly a major stop on any European tour, but it was close enough to Paris and Amsterdam to bring in a few dozen notables over the years. Axel was quite proud of what he and the club had accomplished. Three or four of the club’s more prominent members were actual professors with minerals named after them. And in fact, one of the most prominent members, Professor René Venassle, had been called to the royal palace to give a technical speech when U.S. president Richard Nixon presented an actual lunar sample to the king himself. Rereading the e-mail, pausing on the words moon rock, Axel remembered that episode: how the U.S. ambassador had personally dropped off the heavily guarded sample, how it was displayed by Axel’s very own club at that week’s mineral show. Although at the time Axel wasn’t spending nearly as much time at the mineral club as he did now, he had done a fair amount of reading about lunar samples, to better educate himself about Nixon’s gift. He knew that the rocks were illegal to own, and that they were also very valuable.
Two facts that made the e-mail immediately suspect, but also a little bit exciting. On a first reading, Axel had even wondered if the e-mailer was referring to lunar samples at all. His first thought was that the seller was actually referring to “moonstone,” which was a variety of feldspar, an uncommon but not incredibly rare type of gem. Of course, the trading of moonstones was perfectly legal. Which made the next line of the email make a lot less sense: The laws surrounding this type of exchange are known, so I will be straightforward and nonchalant about wanting to find a private buyer. Which meant that the e-mailer was, indeed, talking about lunar samples. Axel’s next instinct was just to delete the e-mail, without another thought—because if this person was talking about moon rocks, the e-mail was obviously a hoax. Axel had seen how well guarded the moon rock sample that had been given to the king was; no doubt lunar samples everywhere were kept under the same kind of lock and key. If owning a moon rock was illegal, certainly selling one would be even more so. Axel had even reached for the delete key— before stopping himself, more thoughts running through his head. He realized that it was probably—almost definitely—a hoax. But even so, there was something odd and disconcerting about the message. Axel knew that Christel would think he was simply being his obsessive, inquisitive self, but something in this didn’t seem right. If you were going to try to sell a fake moon rock, wouldn’t a rock hound such as himself be the last person you would e-mail? Because certainly, it wouldn’t take a man like Axel Emmermann very long to recognize a fake; a few questions, a photograph, or even a moment eye to eye with the item in question, and he’d know its true nature. No, you’d have to be ridiculously stupid to attempt to sell fake moon rocks to a charter board member of the Antwerp Mineral Club. But rereading the message yet another time, Axel didn’t see any signs of idiocy. The syntax was good, even the man’s name had a certain panache to it: Orb Robinson, like some sort of transposition of Roy
Orbison—the dead rhythm-and-blues singer, who, in point of fact, had a degree in geology. It occurred to Axel that the person who wrote this e-mail wasn’t stupid at all. Which meant that quite possibly he really was trying to sell a “multicarat moon rock.” Axel was beginning to lose track of the time as he contemplated the curious e-mail, and he realized that he’d never get to sleep if he didn’t investigate further. He knew enough about computers to do a pretty simple search of the originator of the e-mail. To his surprise, he quickly found that “Orb Robinson” had posted his inquiry to a fairly large number of mineral-club bulletin boards across Europe. But even more surprising, Axel found something that caused him to sit straight up in his chair. Back on March 9, Orb Robinson had posted an advertisement on the Antwerp Mineral Club’s main Web site. Axel quickly followed the link, and there it was, ad number 1275, posted to the Web site’s “Virtual Quarry”: Priceless Moon Rocks Now Available!!! “Orb Robinson” [email protected] If you have an interest in purchasing a rare and historically significant piece of the moon, and would like more information, then please contact me by e-mail and leave your contact information and an explanation of your interest. Sincerely, Orb Axel whistled low to himself, then removed his glasses and rubbed them against his sleeve. He glanced at the empty pilsner glass, wishing he still had some of the good amber stuff within arm’s reach, because now he felt like he needed a drink. He was suspicious before, but seeing the ad right there on his own club’s Web site, he was beginning to be convinced. Hoax or not, he was witnessing a crime in progress. Even though he was an avid collector, the thought of actually attempting to buy what this person was purporting to sell never crossed Axel’s mind. Just as he thought that the world needed to have
an order about it, everything in its place, he was a firm believer in right and wrong, that there were lines you couldn’t cross, shortcuts you couldn’t take. He had served in the military because it was expected and also because it was the right thing to do. He wasn’t a rich man by any means, but he lived a good life in his little corner of Belgium, he had a wife who loved him and two kids who didn’t hate him. And he had his hobbies, his puzzles; that, to him, was what this crime really was—a puzzle that he now needed to solve. Everything in its place, everything in its way. The only question that remained was how, exactly, Axel was going to put this Orb Robinson into his proper place. … The weekly meeting of the Antwerp Mineral Club was already in full swing as Axel strolled determinedly through the wide, high-ceilinged dining hall of the Antwerp youth center. Even from the back of the hall, he could see that most of the regulars were there, gathered around the dozen or so industrial-looking rectangular tables that took up much of the center of the room. The slide projector had already been turned on, but not advanced to the first slide; the big screen that took up the entire far wall of the cantina glowed a bright, almost solar shade of yellow, backlighting the tables and the conglomeration of middle-aged, mostly bearded men who migrated around them—a herd inspecting a familiar water hole. It wasn’t the tables themselves that the herd found interesting. On top of the tables were various-sized boxes, ranging from the cardboard variety to more high-tech compartmentalized plastic cases that kind of looked like fishing-tackle containers. It was a weekly ritual; before the slideshow presentation, there was an hour set aside for the buying and selling of specimens. As Axel reached the first table, and reflexively glanced into the nearest set of boxes, he could see that it was the usual fare: shiny pieces of quartz, a few volcanic specimens, a handful of minor gemstones—nothing of particular value anywhere but here. To these men, who would offer up a perfectly good Monday night to spend gathered in a youth-center dining hall—a bit of quartz or a volcanic rock could sometimes seem like a treasure.
Axel was disappointed in himself for being late, because it certainly wasn’t like him to be late. But tonight, just as it had done for the past two nights, dinner with his wife had led to a discussion about the strange e-mail—which he was now convinced was a window into some sort of crime in the making. Not an argument, exactly, because he and Christel never argued. But certainly a hashing out of opinions. Over the past forty-eight hours, Axel had become convinced that he had to do something. But Christel, for her part, didn’t like the idea of him sticking his nose into something that might end up being dangerous. If this was some sort of hoax, then the danger would be minor. But if somehow this person was selling a real moon rock—Axel might be getting himself involved with a dangerous character. Axel had explained to his wife that it wasn’t in his nature to just sit back and watch a crime in progress. What sort of person could stand by and see something they knew was wrong, and do nothing about it? But his wife wasn’t buying any of it; she had responded by saying that despite his noble explanation, the real reason he wanted to get involved was that he thought it would be fun. Another entertainment, another hobby. Like rock collecting itself. Or “popinjay,” another of Axel’s passions—a strange little archery game that involved shooting a wooden bird off the top of a ninety-five-foot pole. Sometimes with a crossbow. In front of an audience. Axel knew there was some truth in what she was saying, but he didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of winning the discussion. It might be a puzzle he intended to solve, but damn it, solving the puzzle would redress a wrong. “Mr. Emmermann,” one of the bearded men hovering over a nearby tackle box filled with gemstones exclaimed, causing most of the men around him to look up and smile. “We were worried you might have fallen into the river. Or, at the very least, gotten your foot stuck in a pilsner glass on the way out of your house.” Axel grinned at the man, then made a big show of bending over the rim of the tackle box, peering at the contents. “Actually, we’re having a little issue with the foundation of our chimney. But I knew I could count on you to bring me a little worthless rubble to fill the gaps.”
The bearded man feigned indignation, placing a hand over his heart. He was the club secretary—in his mid-sixties, among the oldest members of the mineral group; a postman by day, he was one of the most respected rock hounds in Antwerp—and he also knew how to run the slide projector. “But why would you have come all the way here to buy my rubble when we all know you could have easily used your wife’s stew. One spoonful in between the bricks, and your chimney would have lasted a hundred years.” Axel laughed, because he couldn’t argue with the man’s point. Before he could think of something witty in response, a bushy-haired, portly amateur geologist shouted over from a table to the left. “Or maybe he’s late because he was busy buying moon rocks.” Axel’s ears perked up as he stood frozen over the tackle box of mildly precious gemstones. He looked toward the bushy-haired, portly man. Alfred Schnermeyer was one of the handful of Ph.D.s in the group, and for the past three years he had been the editor of the club’s newsletter. Axel looked from him to the other rock hounds nearby and saw that they were all smiling, as if in on the same joke. “Don’t look so surprised,” the club secretary exclaimed, giving Axel’s shoulder a squeeze. “We were just discussing it before you got here.” “You all got the e-mail as well?” “Everyone on the club’s main Web page. This Orb Robinson is a very persistent fruitcake. He wrote the president, the vice president, all of us here, even a couple of the visiting speakers. I wish one of us had printed out the e-mail so that we could put it in the opening slide. But everyone deleted it, immediately.” Axel was about to say something, let them know that he, in fact, hadn’t deleted the e-mail—but he could see from the looks in his fellow hobbyists’ eyes that they were convinced that it was a hoax, and not worth their time. Axel decided to keep his suspicions to himself. Most likely, he was the one who was overreacting, and his friends were correct—it was some nutcase, a fruitcake, a waste of everyone’s time. But in Axel’s mind, no matter how you looked at it, this was wrong. If the person behind the e-mail actually had moon rocks, he had to have stolen them.
If he didn’t, then he was trying to commit a fraud. “A shame,” Axel finally joked back. “We could have used the offer as the front page of our next newsletter. Maybe entice a few new members, one of whom might bring over a collection that doesn’t look like something I could use to pave my driveway.” They all had a good laugh as Schnermeyer moved toward the slide projector, preparing to get the meeting started. The other members of the Antwerp Mineral Club had already forgotten about the e-mail, and the nutcase who called himself Orb Robinson. But Axel Emmermann still had images of moon rocks dancing in his head. … When Axel finally returned home from the youth center, the house was already dark. He let himself in as quietly as he could so as not to disturb his wife and kids. A second late night in a single week was incredibly unusual for him, but he had a feeling this was just the beginning of unusual things. He briefly considered waking Christel to tell her exactly what he was going to do—but he didn’t want to reopen that can of worms. Besides, he really didn’t think what he was about to do could be dangerous. Although he couldn’t be sure, he guessed there was an entire ocean between him and Orb Robinson. He crept through the house as carefully as he could and made his way to the darkened living room. He didn’t even sit at the desk; he just stood in front of the computer in the corner of the room and began to type. When it was done, he stood back from the computer. Bathed in the warm, pixelated glow from the desktop monitor, he felt his cheeks flushing red. Everything in its place, everything in its way. His hand was trembling as he reached forward and hit the send key.