Chapter 8
Smile for the cameras. Thad kept his head low as he strolled by the entrance to Building 5 for what had to be the sixth time; he’d been casing the place for the past twenty minutes, but he still hadn’t come up with anything resembling a plan. Christ, what an awful criminal he’d make. If anybody was monitoring the dozen or so cameras that were perched along the tree-lined path circumnavigating the modern-looking complex on the south corner of the JSC, they’d probably think that one of the co-ops had gone batty: a kid with bright green eyes in a NASA shirt and khaki pants, aimlessly circling one of the most secure astronaut training facilities on the campus. Thad couldn’t imagine what he’d been thinking when he’d made the boast at the pool party. He’d been at NASA less than two days, and here he was. Twenty minutes ago, he’d finished an amazing day spent learning how to slice meteorites into tiny segments; now he was wandering around a secure building, contemplating a stunt that could get him kicked right out of the program—and possibly even arrested. As he passed a set of bushes that marked the far corner of the building, he fingered the yellow security badge that was hanging around his neck. Yellow meant level two—a step beyond what most coops wore, because of his position in the life sciences department. The badge meant he could get into most of the buildings on campus—but there were a few important exceptions. Building 1, where the NASA brass had their offices. Building 31N, where all the valuable lunar materials were kept. And Building 5. Yet here he was, wandering back and forth in front of the smoked-glass entrance, trying to figure out a way to get inside. Helms had spent most of the day trying to convince Thad that it was an extremely bad idea. Helms had grown up in this environment; he
knew how seriously people at the JSC respected rules and regulations. But to Thad, Helms was looking at it all wrong. Science was about going beyond the rules, taking chances. Wasn’t the whole point of the co-op program to expand his mind? And besides, Thad only had to close his eyes and he could still picture himself in that swimming pool, all those other kids hanging on his every word. He’d never really felt like that before. And he wanted to feel that way again. He stopped at the next set of hedges and doubled back toward the glass entrance to the building. There was nothing wrong with at least giving it a try. All he wanted to do was get inside the building, take a quick look at the simulator, then get the hell out. If he got caught, well, he could just play dumb. As long as no one looked at his résumé, he could probably get away with it. He reached the steps that led up to the black glass entrance—but this time he didn’t pause. He did his best to control his breathing as he entered the building. He quickly found himself in a spartan foyer, facing a huge metallic door. The surface of the door was completely smooth; no knobs, buttons, or levers that he could see. Above the door was a single security camera pointing down at him. To the left of the doors was a punch pad and a tiny TV screen. Thad felt a wash of panic spread through him, and he almost turned and ran back through the glass entrance. But he realized that the camera could already see him; before he could do anything, a woman’s voice echoed out of the TV screen. “Can I help you?” Thad had to improvise. “Yes. I’m here for the Shuttle Simulator.” There wasn’t even a pause. A buzz echoed from behind the door, followed by a mechanical click. The door sprang open a few inches, and Thad quickly pushed through. He immediately found himself in a busy hallway. There were people everywhere, some in white lab coats, some in NASA shirts like his own. But Thad’s eyes quickly focused on the astronauts—at least three that he could see—in their standard blue uniforms, all with shuttle patches on their shoulders. Christ. Thad could feel his heart pounding in his chest. Again, he
fought the urge to turn and run back the way he had come. But he’d gone this far—and the thing was, nobody in the hallway seemed to notice him. There were people everywhere, but none of them were paying him any attention. He leaned back against the hallway wall, contemplating his next move. He saw that a few of the people in the hallway were holding clipboards. The guys with the clipboards seemed the least aware—so he figured that one of them was his best bet. He waited until one of the clipboards moved past him, and then fell right in step behind the man. When the guy finally looked up, Thad smiled at him, forcing the nervousness out of his voice. “Can you point me toward the Shuttle Simulator?” The guy didn’t hesitate at all. “Sure, I’m headed that way.” Thad almost had to skip to keep up with the man’s pace as he navigated his way down the long hallway. They took a hard, ninetydegree turn—and suddenly they were in front of another metal door. There was a card reader next to the door, and without pause the man with the clipboard took out an ID and swiped it through. He pushed the door open, leaned his head in, and hollered at someone on the other side. “This guy’s here for a simulation run, can you take care of him?” Thad nearly choked. He wanted to say something, but his voice was completely gone. The man with the clipboard held the door open for him, and Thad had no choice but to step inside. Oh, shit. Thad didn’t even hear the door click shut behind him. He was standing at the edge of what looked like an enormous airplane hangar. There were computers everywhere, workstations separated by engineering panels and whiteboards, all of it interconnected by spaghetti snarls of thick black electrical wire. And there, in the center, rising high into the cavernous space, stood the Space Shuttle Simulator. It was nothing short of spectacular. “Your first time? Wish it was always this easy to spot a virgin.” The voice came from Thad’s left, and he glanced over toward a pair of technicians in matching light blue smocks, hovering over something that looked like an oversized circuit board. The one who had spoken
was grinning at him, so he grinned back—but he couldn’t keep his focus very long. Like a set of house keys in an MRI machine, his gaze was yanked back toward the technical wonder that took up most of the hangar in front of him. “It looks a lot bigger in person,” he mumbled. The simulator was made up of two separate parts. The smaller of the two, the motion-based crew station (MBCS), as it was called, was attached to a huge scissor crane—a jointed, steel monstrosity, loaded with springs and curled-up pneumatic hoses, that assumedly provided incredible levels of hydraulic lift. The MBCS looked like the nose cone of the shuttle, gripped by a massive robotic arm. Although Thad couldn’t see inside the thing from where he was standing, he knew that the MBCS was configured just like the real cockpit of the actual space shuttle, with room for the shuttle commander and the shuttle pilot. The arm gave it six degrees of motion—which meant the thing could simulate every phase of spaceflight, from launch to landing. It could tilt up to ninety degrees in every direction and could simulate acceleration, even moments of weightlessness. The second part of the simulator was the fixed crew station. A rectangular box, it was a veritable porcupine of wires, antennas, and even miniature radar dishes. The MBCS had room for a commander, a pilot, a mission specialist, and a number of other crew members. It wouldn’t simulate motion, but it was also raised up on an elevated platform, and it was supposed to perfectly simulate the interior environment of the shuttle itself. For long-duration mission simulations, crew members could spend days or even weeks in the MBCS. Food and water would be raised up to them so that they could live exactly like they would in an orbital environment. “That’s what one hundred million of your tax dollars will get you,” the technician responded as he finally stepped away from the circuit board and approached Thad. “I assume you’re here for the monthly systems check?” Thad looked at the guy again. The technician was in his mid-thirties, with a receding hairline and a few extra pounds hanging down above his belt. Probably a contractor, obviously not someone Thad would consider an authority figure. No doubt the tech had confused him with
someone who was supposed to be there. Or maybe he just didn’t care. He saw the NASA shirt, and that was enough. For a brief moment, Thad considered ending his charade. Something felt wrong about the deception, even though he hadn’t actively done anything to convince anyone he was supposed to be where he was. At the same time, Thad couldn’t ignore the spikes of pure adrenaline that were ricocheting through his system. It was like the first time he’d flown a single-engine plane by himself, but even more intense. He felt really alive, and the fear of getting caught no longer crossed his mind. “That’s correct,” he heard himself respond. “I’m supposed to observe the test run.” “The rest of your crew is already inside,” the tech responded, starting forward toward the simulator. “If we hurry we can make it before it begins.” Thad’s eyes widened. He had assumed he’d be observing the test run from where he was standing. Well, in for a penny, in for a onehundred-million-dollar simulator. There was no turning back now. He quickly followed the man toward the massive machine. A second later, he was a few feet away from the giant hydraulic crane. The MBCS’s nose cone was right in front of him, and the tech headed for an open hatch affixed to one side. The tech pointed through the oval opening. “You guys have the coolest fucking toys.” Thad wasn’t sure he was even breathing anymore as he stepped past the tech, bending his head so he didn’t hit himself on the simulator’s ceiling. Before he could blink, he was inside the cockpit of the space shuttle. At least, a mock-up so realistic no astronaut in the world would be able to tell the difference. In some ways, it was like the interior of an airplane. Except a million times more. There were triangular viewing windows ahead, windows on either side—and every other surface of the thing was covered in switches, diodes, buzzers, and levers. There was already a man strapped into the pilot’s seat to Thad’s right. He couldn’t tell if the man was an astronaut or a technician, because he was wearing what looked to be gray-on-gray overalls. But there was no doubt he knew
what he was doing. His hands were flicking around the switches, beginning what had to be the launch sequence. Without looking up, he gestured toward the other chair—the commander’s seat. Thad felt another moment of extreme panic, which he quickly swallowed down. As he told the tech, he was just there to observe. That was the charade he had invented, and that was the charade he was going to stick with. Just a lowly co-op who had been sent by his mentor to witness the monthly check of the Space Shuttle Simulator. It took a moment to figure out how to strap himself into the commander’s seat. There were seat belts coming from every angle, and a holster that went around his chest. When he was done, the pilot said something into a communicator attached above their heads, and Thad heard the whoosh of the hatch sealing shut behind him. “Let’s finish the checklist,” the pilot grunted, and Thad quickly looked where the man was pointing. There was a printed checklist attached between their seats. Because Thad had his pilot’s license, he was at least barely able to follow what was going on. He didn’t know where anything was located, but he was able to mimic the pilot’s lead, flicking a switch here and there, reading an alternator or a temperature control. “Fire it up,” the pilot said. And the next thing Thad knew, the entire cockpit began to shake. At first, it was a low tremble, but then the thing was really jerking up and down, like a paper airplane riding across the top of a thunderstorm. And suddenly the whole cockpit tilted all the way on its back, nose pointing up. Thad stifled a gasp. To his surprise, the window ahead of him no longer looked out on a converted airplane hangar. Thad was looking at the sky. They weren’t windows; they were high-definition monitors, playing feedback from a real shuttle launch. A second later, Thad was slammed hard into his seat. The view through the windows became one of pure motion, streaks of light like laser beams flashing before his eyes. The noise of the engines was like thunder reverberating around him in truly deafening peals. Thad realized he was shouting, in pure unadulterated joy. Maybe the pilot noticed, maybe he couldn’t hear over the din of the mock thrusters —Thad didn’t really care. In his mind, he wasn’t in a simulator tucked
into a secure building on the JSC campus. In his mind, he was sitting in the cockpit of a rocket ship, hurtling toward Mars. … It wasn’t quite the overwhelming energy rush of a simulated shuttle thruster pushing him back into a leather commander’s seat—but it was pretty damn close. Sitting cross-legged at the edge of the same swimming pool from the week before, half the young population of Clear Lake spread out across the patio in front of him as he told the story—so many eyes and ears and minds focused entirely on him— maybe embellishing a little bit here and there, but keeping to the narrative as much as possible … well, it was a truly pivotal moment in Thad’s life. He could see his own charisma reflected in the eyes of the pretty girls closest to him, and even in the unabashedly awed expressions on the faces of the men. “So all in all …” Thad finally wrapped up the story. “I think it was a pretty good week.” There was a moment of frozen silence, just like there had been when he’d first proposed the idea of the contest a week ago. And then everyone was applauding at once, congratulating him, wave after wave of handshakes and pats on the back, and even a few kisses on the cheek. Helms gave him a grudging thumbs-up, shaking his angled head in admiration. Thad had secured his place at the top of the social food chain. It was a spot he’d never occupied before—and he liked it. When the crowd moved away, Helms sidled next to him, dipping his finlike feet into the cool water of the shallow end of the pool. “Your contest was quite a success. I think it might end up a weekly thing. But I doubt anyone’s going to top flying the space shuttle.” “It was just a simulation.” Thad laughed. “I’ll probably wait till my third tour to try and sneak into the real thing.” Helms laughed back—then paused and looked at Thad. “You’re kidding, right?” Thad slid forward into the pool, submerging himself all the way down to his bright green eyes.
sex on the moon - the amazing true story
Re: sex on the moon - the amazing true story
Chapter 9
It was a moment every true scientist knew well—although it wasn’t something quantifiable, it wasn’t something you could predict or reverse-engineer or data-map or even really describe—but it was a moment that anyone who had spent time sequestered in a lab or behind a computer screen or at a blackboard, chalk billowing down in angry stormlike clouds, could identify, if not define. Thad has his own word for it: serenity. The moment when the act of science organically shifted into the art of science; when even the most mundane, choreographed procedures achieved such a rhythm that they became invisible chords of a single violin lost in the complexity of a perfect symphony. Minutes shifting into a state of timelessness, where the world seemed frozen but Thad was somehow moving forward: content, fulfilled, free. The project itself was far from spectacular. Slicing away at a piece of volcanic rock using a tiny diamond-tipped saw while keeping track of every microscopic wisp of volcanic dust—accurately documenting the final weight of the sample that was left behind. The work was painstaking, but the volcanic rock was just a stand-in, like the mockedup cockpit of the space shuttle. It was supposed to represent something infinitely more valuable. A chunk of the moon, handdelivered more than thirty years ago by men whose names were enshrined in history books. For Thad, it didn’t matter that the procedure was little more than a dress rehearsal. The process itself had overtaken him, and in that moment he was truly lost in the art of the science. The whir of the diamond saw, the pungent scent of the heated volcanic sample, the swirl of the dust as it billowed upward into a mercury-based measuring machine. He was in that serene place where nothing else existed. And he would have been content to stay there forever. “Wow. You did all this by yourself?”
It took Thad a moment to process the words, to let the familiar voice yank him back into the lab. He switched off the saw and glanced back over his shoulder. Helms was standing by the counter where Thad had laid out all of his practice samples; everything from minute educational slices in individually wrapped Teflon bags to carefully constructed desiccators holding mock meteorites, ready to be sent to labs all over NASA. “I wasn’t sure when you were going to be finished running errands for Dr. Draper. So I figured I’d get started on my own. I guess I lost track of the time.” “I’ll say. I assume Dr. Agee showed you how to do all this?” Agee, Thad’s official mentor, had indeed stopped by earlier that morning to introduce himself, but he only stayed for a few minutes. Thad had been on his own most of the day. That didn’t bother him; actually, he found it quite liberating. His adventure at the mock space shuttle had taught him that NASA was a place an independent mind like his could take great advantage of. And Thad had become very independent. Ever since he’d been kicked out of the hermetic world where he’d grown up—the Mormon Church the way his father interpreted it, the heavy-handed way of the Mission Training Center— he’d become hungry to make his own future, to build his own name. The cool thing about the co-op program seemed to be that he’d be able to find his own way, to a large degree. “He gave me some pointers. But I learned a lot of it from reading your notebooks, and using the checklist I found on the laptop.” Helms glanced back at the computer station in the far corner of the lab. There was one laptop, a couple of desktops, and some wiring that led into NASA’s secure mainframe. It was a pretty high-tech station, and it was also highly secure. Helms had duly informed Thad that NASA security could monitor any use of the computer system, including personal e-mails. Thad figured that was for the best. Even a cursory search of the mainframe using the laptop had told him that there was a lot of pretty cool information available to an employee with his level of security. He could only imagine what higher security clearance would get you. “You missed lunch,” Helms said, moving next to Thad to help him
begin to disassemble the saw. “But if we’re quick, we can grab something on the way over to the lecture.” Thad raised his eyebrows. He really had lost track of the time. He’d been at NASA over a week now, but he’d only made it to the Stardust Café twice. He didn’t really care—food had never been a real priority for him. Back at home, Sonya had often had to remind him to eat. As a struggling model, she had found the ease with which he skipped meals quite annoying. But certainly at NASA, no matter who you might run into in the cafeteria, Thad found meals the least interesting part of his day. The upcoming lecture was a perfect example. Although Thad had yet to meet Dr. Everett Gibson, he certainly knew the man by reputation. Gibson had been a standout scientist in the life sciences division for well over thirty years. One of the brightest stars in the astromaterials research office, he was the epitome of the old-school NASA scientist. After attaining a master’s in physical chemistry and a Ph.D. in geochemistry, he had gone to work for the JSC—or, as it was called at the time, the Manned Spacecraft Center—in July of 1969, just as the Apollo 11 capsule first returned from space. Thad was already in awe of the man. Gibson wasn’t an astronaut, but he was the closest thing a laboratory scientist could ever dream of becoming. It was fitting that he would be giving his lecture in the life sciences building, where Thad worked. Gibson had spent almost all of his thirty-plus years at NASA stationed in that building because—as Thad had learned only the day before, during a bull session with Helms and a couple of other co-ops—Building 31 had once housed the lunar receiving laboratory. When the first few Apollo missions had come back from the moon, NASA had set up a really tight quarantine; nobody had any idea what the lunar samples they had brought back might contain. There was a very real fear of alien pathogens spreading some strange, unearthly disease throughout the space center—and perhaps from there, the entire world. So a high-tech quarantine had been created not just for the astronauts themselves, who spent weeks in sealed chambers going through multiple levels of purification, blood tests, and even psychological evaluation, but also for the lunar samples—the moon
rocks, as they quickly became known to the public. The protocol for the transport and storage of moon rocks was unbelievably strict, involving vacuum-sealed rock boxes, nitrogen chambers, bodysuits with self-contained oxygen. Gibson was one of the first scientists charged with preparing and studying the moon rocks brought back by the Apollo program, missions twelve through seventeen. He had conducted the original moon rock studies, searching for signs of life, unknown materials, pathogens—everything that made the lunar samples unique. Eventually, the quarantine on astronauts and materials was lessened, and by Apollo 15 dropped. The rocks, though deemed incredibly valuable, were no longer considered a danger. But they were still irreplaceable; after the Apollo program ended, it was immediately made illegal for American citizens to even own a real lunar sample. All together, the Apollo astronauts had collected 842 pounds of the stuff, divided into 2,200 individual samples, which were then subdivided into 110,000 studiable parts—and it had been determined that the moon rocks needed a building of their own. A self-contained facility, Building 31N, had been constructed right next door; Thad had yet to visit the Lunar Lab, but he had heard plenty of stories about the place. It was considered the most secure building NASA had ever built. Atmosphere-controlled, built without any connection to the outside world—no wires, pipes, ducts—it was supposedly strong enough to survive a thousand years underwater without damage to the inner contents. Hell, it would probably outlast the entire city of Houston. Thad hoped he’d get the chance to visit the Lunar Lab. Since he was involved in the study of space materials, he knew that it was not far-fetched. But until he got to handle the samples himself, the closest he would get to moon rocks would be hanging out with people like Dr. Gibson. “Forget lunch,” Thad said, hastily cleaning up his workstation. “I’d rather starve and get a good seat up front than be bloated in the back row.” Helms smiled, though, as a second year, he’d heard Gibson’s lectures before. But nobody in Building 31 missed an opportunity to hear about the Apollo missions from a man who had been so involved
himself. It was as close to walking on the moon as a guy who worked with test tubes was ever going to get. … Gibson began his speech on the moon, but the body of his talk took them millions of miles beyond; sitting in the very front row of the Greekstyle amphitheater, leaning all the way back so that he had a better view of the stocky, square shouldered, sixty-something-year-old man behind the lectern, Thad realized he should not have been surprised. Like everything else at NASA, Gibson was caught up in the incredible reorientation of the American space program. But it was still amazing to see this gray-haired, slightly balding, bespectacled scientist—a genius who had taken part in the greatest adventure in modern human history—so enthusiastically involved in something new, something that would take at least a quarter of a century to become real. At the beginning of the speech, Gibson talked about the first samples he’d ever seen when he started at NASA—the Apollo 11 samples, which were collected by Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon. Gibson went on to describe how different the samples were from each successive moon mission, how each of the six landing spots had been chosen to study different areas of the moon’s topography. The results were startlingly different types of rock, from the very fine-grained materials brought back from the valley of Taurus Littrow, a deep mountain valley in the northeastern part of the moon—a material that was made up of little tiny beads commonly known as “orange glass,” to the gray, almost black Apollo 17 samples—the very last samples ever collected by human beings, from the dark portion of the moon. In passing, Gibson acknowledged how utterly valuable the samples were—not just that they were irreplaceable, but that requests came in from all over the world, every day, from scientists, museums, and colleges wanting to display or study these national treasures. And every year, NASA chose a few hundred lucky souls who would have a chance to see a moon rock for real. Thad smiled as he listened to this part of Gibson’s speech. In his lab, just a few floors away, he had been practicing the techniques that would be used to prepare those moon rocks. He was part of the NASA
machinery, part of the fraternity of scientists who made such science possible. When Gibson added, almost as an aside, that these samples were also infinitely valuable in nonscientific terms, Thad barely registered the thought. That someone had once tried to sell a single gram of illegal moon rock for $5 million—that really didn’t mean anything to Thad, at the time. The value of those lunar samples went well beyond money. They represented the greatest human endeavor in history. Once Gibson shifted his talk away from lunar rocks, Thad did not believe the man could somehow refocus the audience’s attention, but then Gibson shocked them all by reaching behind the podium and lifting up a small glass vial. From the front row, Thad could actually make out what was inside—a glassy-looking piece of rock, almost volcanic in nature, but certainly something that he had never seen before. Gibson smiled at the crowd as he said the object’s name: “ALH 84001. Recovered from the ice in Antarctica in 1984, this little thing has been the focus of my life for nearly a decade now. In 1996, I published the scientific results of my studies in Science magazine. I’m sure some of you have read it. This meteorite, which is over four billion years old—we believe it came from the planet Mars. And this meteorite contains within it evidence of past biological activity. In other words—this meteorite suggests, unequivocally, the possibility of life on Mars.” Thad reacted with the rest of the audience, awed and amazed. He glanced around himself, saw the raptured faces of the co-ops around him; it was one thing to impress a swimming pool full of college-age kids with a story about a trip on the Space Shuttle Simulator, Gibson had shown an entire amphitheater evidence in support of life on another planet. The man had held in his hands moon rocks from every landing in human history—and here he was, holding a piece of Mars itself, dredged up from the deep ice of Antarctica. Thad may have been in the process of reinventing himself as a social leader of the JSC co-ops, but Everett Gibson was a fucking rock star. …
After the lecture had ended, and the audience had filed away toward the various labs, cafés, and workstations that dotted the NASA campus, Thad lingered behind. He waited until Gibson had packed away his notes—and the Mars sample—into his leather-bound, NASA briefcase, before approaching the edge of the stage. Helms was a couple of rows back, chatting up a pretty coed from the University of Texas. Even so, Thad could see, out of the corner of his eye, that Helms was partially watching him. Helms, it seemed, was always watching out for him, maybe worried that Thad had the capacity to push things too far, take too many chances. Thad was amused by the thought. NASA was a dream come true; he had no intention of ever doing anything to ruin that dream. All he wanted to do was introduce himself to the man who had just opened his eyes. Eventually, Gibson noticed Thad at the edge of the stage. Gibson strolled over, his gait casual, if a little stiff. He leaned down so Thad could shake his hand. “I’m Thad Roberts. I work in the building. I’m on my first tour.” “I recognize the name,” Gibson said, smiling amiably, “and I look forward to getting to know you better during your time here at NASA. You enjoying yourself so far?” “I feel more alive than I’ve ever felt,” Thad started, realizing he was talking way too fast, maybe even bordering on a speed that could be described as manic. But he couldn’t help himself. “I can’t believe I’m shaking hands with the man who discovered life on Mars.” “Science is a group effort here at NASA. A lot of brilliant people put in a lot of time to make discoveries like this, as I’m sure you’ll learn. Nothing happens here overnight. And it’s more important to be part of a brilliant constellation than try and go it alone.” Before Thad could respond, a group of older co-ops sidled in front of him, capturing Gibson’s attention. Thad found himself bumped and jostled away from the edge of the stage—until he was nearly back at the front row of seats, watching the brilliant scientist holding court. He could still feel Brian Helms’s gaze on his back, but he didn’t yet turn around. Deep down, he understood what Gibson had told him, that being part of a brilliant constellation was what a place like NASA was all
about. What Thad didn’t realize yet—but would soon learn—was that being just one bright star in a constellation simply wasn’t in his nature. Men like Everett Gibson—and Brian Helms—could be content being shiny parts of this historic solar system. But Thad would always need something more. He wanted to be the brightest star—the one everyone saw when he or she looked at the sky. And the scary thing was, it didn’t really matter if that star was bright because it was the biggest—or because it was just about to go supernova.
It was a moment every true scientist knew well—although it wasn’t something quantifiable, it wasn’t something you could predict or reverse-engineer or data-map or even really describe—but it was a moment that anyone who had spent time sequestered in a lab or behind a computer screen or at a blackboard, chalk billowing down in angry stormlike clouds, could identify, if not define. Thad has his own word for it: serenity. The moment when the act of science organically shifted into the art of science; when even the most mundane, choreographed procedures achieved such a rhythm that they became invisible chords of a single violin lost in the complexity of a perfect symphony. Minutes shifting into a state of timelessness, where the world seemed frozen but Thad was somehow moving forward: content, fulfilled, free. The project itself was far from spectacular. Slicing away at a piece of volcanic rock using a tiny diamond-tipped saw while keeping track of every microscopic wisp of volcanic dust—accurately documenting the final weight of the sample that was left behind. The work was painstaking, but the volcanic rock was just a stand-in, like the mockedup cockpit of the space shuttle. It was supposed to represent something infinitely more valuable. A chunk of the moon, handdelivered more than thirty years ago by men whose names were enshrined in history books. For Thad, it didn’t matter that the procedure was little more than a dress rehearsal. The process itself had overtaken him, and in that moment he was truly lost in the art of the science. The whir of the diamond saw, the pungent scent of the heated volcanic sample, the swirl of the dust as it billowed upward into a mercury-based measuring machine. He was in that serene place where nothing else existed. And he would have been content to stay there forever. “Wow. You did all this by yourself?”
It took Thad a moment to process the words, to let the familiar voice yank him back into the lab. He switched off the saw and glanced back over his shoulder. Helms was standing by the counter where Thad had laid out all of his practice samples; everything from minute educational slices in individually wrapped Teflon bags to carefully constructed desiccators holding mock meteorites, ready to be sent to labs all over NASA. “I wasn’t sure when you were going to be finished running errands for Dr. Draper. So I figured I’d get started on my own. I guess I lost track of the time.” “I’ll say. I assume Dr. Agee showed you how to do all this?” Agee, Thad’s official mentor, had indeed stopped by earlier that morning to introduce himself, but he only stayed for a few minutes. Thad had been on his own most of the day. That didn’t bother him; actually, he found it quite liberating. His adventure at the mock space shuttle had taught him that NASA was a place an independent mind like his could take great advantage of. And Thad had become very independent. Ever since he’d been kicked out of the hermetic world where he’d grown up—the Mormon Church the way his father interpreted it, the heavy-handed way of the Mission Training Center— he’d become hungry to make his own future, to build his own name. The cool thing about the co-op program seemed to be that he’d be able to find his own way, to a large degree. “He gave me some pointers. But I learned a lot of it from reading your notebooks, and using the checklist I found on the laptop.” Helms glanced back at the computer station in the far corner of the lab. There was one laptop, a couple of desktops, and some wiring that led into NASA’s secure mainframe. It was a pretty high-tech station, and it was also highly secure. Helms had duly informed Thad that NASA security could monitor any use of the computer system, including personal e-mails. Thad figured that was for the best. Even a cursory search of the mainframe using the laptop had told him that there was a lot of pretty cool information available to an employee with his level of security. He could only imagine what higher security clearance would get you. “You missed lunch,” Helms said, moving next to Thad to help him
begin to disassemble the saw. “But if we’re quick, we can grab something on the way over to the lecture.” Thad raised his eyebrows. He really had lost track of the time. He’d been at NASA over a week now, but he’d only made it to the Stardust Café twice. He didn’t really care—food had never been a real priority for him. Back at home, Sonya had often had to remind him to eat. As a struggling model, she had found the ease with which he skipped meals quite annoying. But certainly at NASA, no matter who you might run into in the cafeteria, Thad found meals the least interesting part of his day. The upcoming lecture was a perfect example. Although Thad had yet to meet Dr. Everett Gibson, he certainly knew the man by reputation. Gibson had been a standout scientist in the life sciences division for well over thirty years. One of the brightest stars in the astromaterials research office, he was the epitome of the old-school NASA scientist. After attaining a master’s in physical chemistry and a Ph.D. in geochemistry, he had gone to work for the JSC—or, as it was called at the time, the Manned Spacecraft Center—in July of 1969, just as the Apollo 11 capsule first returned from space. Thad was already in awe of the man. Gibson wasn’t an astronaut, but he was the closest thing a laboratory scientist could ever dream of becoming. It was fitting that he would be giving his lecture in the life sciences building, where Thad worked. Gibson had spent almost all of his thirty-plus years at NASA stationed in that building because—as Thad had learned only the day before, during a bull session with Helms and a couple of other co-ops—Building 31 had once housed the lunar receiving laboratory. When the first few Apollo missions had come back from the moon, NASA had set up a really tight quarantine; nobody had any idea what the lunar samples they had brought back might contain. There was a very real fear of alien pathogens spreading some strange, unearthly disease throughout the space center—and perhaps from there, the entire world. So a high-tech quarantine had been created not just for the astronauts themselves, who spent weeks in sealed chambers going through multiple levels of purification, blood tests, and even psychological evaluation, but also for the lunar samples—the moon
rocks, as they quickly became known to the public. The protocol for the transport and storage of moon rocks was unbelievably strict, involving vacuum-sealed rock boxes, nitrogen chambers, bodysuits with self-contained oxygen. Gibson was one of the first scientists charged with preparing and studying the moon rocks brought back by the Apollo program, missions twelve through seventeen. He had conducted the original moon rock studies, searching for signs of life, unknown materials, pathogens—everything that made the lunar samples unique. Eventually, the quarantine on astronauts and materials was lessened, and by Apollo 15 dropped. The rocks, though deemed incredibly valuable, were no longer considered a danger. But they were still irreplaceable; after the Apollo program ended, it was immediately made illegal for American citizens to even own a real lunar sample. All together, the Apollo astronauts had collected 842 pounds of the stuff, divided into 2,200 individual samples, which were then subdivided into 110,000 studiable parts—and it had been determined that the moon rocks needed a building of their own. A self-contained facility, Building 31N, had been constructed right next door; Thad had yet to visit the Lunar Lab, but he had heard plenty of stories about the place. It was considered the most secure building NASA had ever built. Atmosphere-controlled, built without any connection to the outside world—no wires, pipes, ducts—it was supposedly strong enough to survive a thousand years underwater without damage to the inner contents. Hell, it would probably outlast the entire city of Houston. Thad hoped he’d get the chance to visit the Lunar Lab. Since he was involved in the study of space materials, he knew that it was not far-fetched. But until he got to handle the samples himself, the closest he would get to moon rocks would be hanging out with people like Dr. Gibson. “Forget lunch,” Thad said, hastily cleaning up his workstation. “I’d rather starve and get a good seat up front than be bloated in the back row.” Helms smiled, though, as a second year, he’d heard Gibson’s lectures before. But nobody in Building 31 missed an opportunity to hear about the Apollo missions from a man who had been so involved
himself. It was as close to walking on the moon as a guy who worked with test tubes was ever going to get. … Gibson began his speech on the moon, but the body of his talk took them millions of miles beyond; sitting in the very front row of the Greekstyle amphitheater, leaning all the way back so that he had a better view of the stocky, square shouldered, sixty-something-year-old man behind the lectern, Thad realized he should not have been surprised. Like everything else at NASA, Gibson was caught up in the incredible reorientation of the American space program. But it was still amazing to see this gray-haired, slightly balding, bespectacled scientist—a genius who had taken part in the greatest adventure in modern human history—so enthusiastically involved in something new, something that would take at least a quarter of a century to become real. At the beginning of the speech, Gibson talked about the first samples he’d ever seen when he started at NASA—the Apollo 11 samples, which were collected by Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon. Gibson went on to describe how different the samples were from each successive moon mission, how each of the six landing spots had been chosen to study different areas of the moon’s topography. The results were startlingly different types of rock, from the very fine-grained materials brought back from the valley of Taurus Littrow, a deep mountain valley in the northeastern part of the moon—a material that was made up of little tiny beads commonly known as “orange glass,” to the gray, almost black Apollo 17 samples—the very last samples ever collected by human beings, from the dark portion of the moon. In passing, Gibson acknowledged how utterly valuable the samples were—not just that they were irreplaceable, but that requests came in from all over the world, every day, from scientists, museums, and colleges wanting to display or study these national treasures. And every year, NASA chose a few hundred lucky souls who would have a chance to see a moon rock for real. Thad smiled as he listened to this part of Gibson’s speech. In his lab, just a few floors away, he had been practicing the techniques that would be used to prepare those moon rocks. He was part of the NASA
machinery, part of the fraternity of scientists who made such science possible. When Gibson added, almost as an aside, that these samples were also infinitely valuable in nonscientific terms, Thad barely registered the thought. That someone had once tried to sell a single gram of illegal moon rock for $5 million—that really didn’t mean anything to Thad, at the time. The value of those lunar samples went well beyond money. They represented the greatest human endeavor in history. Once Gibson shifted his talk away from lunar rocks, Thad did not believe the man could somehow refocus the audience’s attention, but then Gibson shocked them all by reaching behind the podium and lifting up a small glass vial. From the front row, Thad could actually make out what was inside—a glassy-looking piece of rock, almost volcanic in nature, but certainly something that he had never seen before. Gibson smiled at the crowd as he said the object’s name: “ALH 84001. Recovered from the ice in Antarctica in 1984, this little thing has been the focus of my life for nearly a decade now. In 1996, I published the scientific results of my studies in Science magazine. I’m sure some of you have read it. This meteorite, which is over four billion years old—we believe it came from the planet Mars. And this meteorite contains within it evidence of past biological activity. In other words—this meteorite suggests, unequivocally, the possibility of life on Mars.” Thad reacted with the rest of the audience, awed and amazed. He glanced around himself, saw the raptured faces of the co-ops around him; it was one thing to impress a swimming pool full of college-age kids with a story about a trip on the Space Shuttle Simulator, Gibson had shown an entire amphitheater evidence in support of life on another planet. The man had held in his hands moon rocks from every landing in human history—and here he was, holding a piece of Mars itself, dredged up from the deep ice of Antarctica. Thad may have been in the process of reinventing himself as a social leader of the JSC co-ops, but Everett Gibson was a fucking rock star. …
After the lecture had ended, and the audience had filed away toward the various labs, cafés, and workstations that dotted the NASA campus, Thad lingered behind. He waited until Gibson had packed away his notes—and the Mars sample—into his leather-bound, NASA briefcase, before approaching the edge of the stage. Helms was a couple of rows back, chatting up a pretty coed from the University of Texas. Even so, Thad could see, out of the corner of his eye, that Helms was partially watching him. Helms, it seemed, was always watching out for him, maybe worried that Thad had the capacity to push things too far, take too many chances. Thad was amused by the thought. NASA was a dream come true; he had no intention of ever doing anything to ruin that dream. All he wanted to do was introduce himself to the man who had just opened his eyes. Eventually, Gibson noticed Thad at the edge of the stage. Gibson strolled over, his gait casual, if a little stiff. He leaned down so Thad could shake his hand. “I’m Thad Roberts. I work in the building. I’m on my first tour.” “I recognize the name,” Gibson said, smiling amiably, “and I look forward to getting to know you better during your time here at NASA. You enjoying yourself so far?” “I feel more alive than I’ve ever felt,” Thad started, realizing he was talking way too fast, maybe even bordering on a speed that could be described as manic. But he couldn’t help himself. “I can’t believe I’m shaking hands with the man who discovered life on Mars.” “Science is a group effort here at NASA. A lot of brilliant people put in a lot of time to make discoveries like this, as I’m sure you’ll learn. Nothing happens here overnight. And it’s more important to be part of a brilliant constellation than try and go it alone.” Before Thad could respond, a group of older co-ops sidled in front of him, capturing Gibson’s attention. Thad found himself bumped and jostled away from the edge of the stage—until he was nearly back at the front row of seats, watching the brilliant scientist holding court. He could still feel Brian Helms’s gaze on his back, but he didn’t yet turn around. Deep down, he understood what Gibson had told him, that being part of a brilliant constellation was what a place like NASA was all
about. What Thad didn’t realize yet—but would soon learn—was that being just one bright star in a constellation simply wasn’t in his nature. Men like Everett Gibson—and Brian Helms—could be content being shiny parts of this historic solar system. But Thad would always need something more. He wanted to be the brightest star—the one everyone saw when he or she looked at the sky. And the scary thing was, it didn’t really matter if that star was bright because it was the biggest—or because it was just about to go supernova.
Re: sex on the moon - the amazing true story
My Dear Rebecca, The seasons have swayed back and forth, but time has flowed beyond me—left me alone as I gaze into the horizon where your memory still shapes the entire world. The w ind blows in the other direction constantly interrupting me, the rest of the world has moved on, all things are destined to decay. But the w ind has never known its center, it dances out the curse of ever-grasping, always passing everything by. All it knows is the sad song of moving on. I once knew a beautiful young woman that didn’t believe in forever. She became my forever.