Sex on the Moon (20 page)

And then, in front of them, the door with the cipher lock. Without pause, Thad reached into the duffel and retrieved a small, handheld black light that he had bought at Home Depot along with the tools. With a flick of his thumb, he engaged the light and shined it on the keypad. Rebecca gasped behind him as five of the keys lit up, bright as the moon on a cloudless night. Except, when she looked closer, she could see that the brightness was different with each key; a cascading scale of light, from the brightest number to the dimmest. Thad winked back at her, his green eyes the only part of his face visible above the surgical mask. His magic powder—the combination of fluorite, gypsum, and talcum—had worked. He had powdered all the keys—but only five numbers on the pad had been pressed within the past twenty-four hours, because the person who had pressed the pad had known the password, hadn’t been guessing in the dark. And with each key he had pressed, the oils on his fingertips had absorbed a little bit of the talcum, taking a little bit less of the fluorite along with it. Thad didn’t even have to guess the sequence of the five numbers—he could read it with the ease of reading five letters on a page.

One at a time, he pressed the keys in order of brightness. There was a buzz, the whir of mechanical gears—and the door clicked open.

“Okay,” he whispered through the surgical mask. “Wait here.”

This time, Rebecca didn’t complain. Thad could see, from the look in her eyes, from the sweat that was dampening her surgical mask, that she was now terrified. Her breathing was becoming short and fast, and there was the real chance that she was going to hyperventilate if she kept it up. He leaned close to her, so close that his forehead touched hers, and stared straight into her eyes.

“This is it. This is happening. And you’re going to be just fine. Stay right here; I’m going to take care of everything.”

Her breathing eased, and she nodded. She was scared, but she was going to make it. She trusted him. She had reason to trust him. In her eyes, he was James Bond, the guy who could do anything, who got her to jump off cliffs and dive out of airplanes. He spoke multiple languages, swam with astronauts, and might one day walk on Mars. He was going to give her the moon.

He turned and, alone, headed through the door.

…

And into the Lunar Lab. Past the Plexiglas nitrogen cabinets with the attached bristle of rubber gloves, whirling, twirling, right up to the massive steel door with the immense wheel lock, spinning, spiraling, through the steel door and into the vault, careening, teetering, past the skyscraper-like steel cabinets with the aluminum drawers, staggering, tottering, through the miniature door to the safe marked
trash
, kneeling, keeling, fingers on the electronic lock, hitting the numbers one after another after another after another, and—

Nothing.

Reset. Resume. Hitting the numbers one after another after another, and—

Again, nothing.

Thad jerked back from the safe, and suddenly reality hit him like a Saturn V rocket to the face. He wasn’t in the lunar vault at all. He hadn’t gone through the miniature door, or past the steel cabinets. He hadn’t opened the massive, unopenable, impossible wheeled vault door.

He wasn’t in the lunar vault. He was in a lab. Specifically, he was in Everett Gibson’s lab, the same lab he had once visited with his wife, Sonya, so she could see a moon rock for herself. And he was standing in front of Everett Gibson’s safe, staring at a combination lock that would not open.

He blinked, hard. He truly wasn’t certain when the plan had changed—when, exactly, he had shifted from the mental game of breaking into the lunar vault to the much more practical, much more doable puzzle of breaking into Gibson’s lab, to get to his safe. But somewhere along the way, just enough reality had broken into Thad’s fantasy to push him to this place, to this crime. In his mind, standing there staring at the shoulder-high safe, which he knew contained five drawers filled with specimens that Gibson had been collecting, experimenting on, for more than thirty years—in his mind, it was morally equivalent to robbing the trash safe in the lunar vault. These were used moon rocks, stored away in this safe in a corner of a sixteen-by-twenty-foot lab, trotted out now and again for a lecture, maybe carted around to a high school or a college or a private NASA function—but they were essentially still considered NASA’s trash. Gibson had had thirty years with them; it was now Thad’s turn to put them to use.

And what of Gibson, what of the kindly, professorial man who had been a part of NASA’s history, who had personally handled and held these moon rocks from the moment they had been brought back from the Apollo missions, who had been there when the moon landings actually took place? Well, Gibson had already lived through that experience; he’d have that glory and that moment within him for the rest of his life. Now it was Thad’s turn.

Thad blinked. His mind whirled back to Rebecca, still standing out in the hallway, probably terrified, trembling, nearing her breaking point. His jaw stiffened as he tried the combination one more time. Again, nothing. He took a deep breath, then sized up the safe with his eyes. Yes, it was big, and he knew that it was heavy. Between five and six hundred pounds. It wasn’t a guess, it was something he had researched, something he had hoped he wouldn’t need to know—but then, again, preparation was all about the details. The things you didn’t expect to need to know. Plans within plans. Thad had expected to be able to open the safe—but he had planned for the chance that he couldn’t.

He spun on his heels and rushed back out through the lab, now seeing it for what it was, a somewhat cluttered place of test tubes, steel sinks, and chrome shelves. Much like the lab he had worked in for two wonderful tours. He reached the door and stuck his head out into the hallway, catching Rebecca by surprise. She jumped back, nearly tripping over her covered shoes. Thankfully, she caught herself before she toppled into the range of one of the security cameras.

“I need your help,” Thad hissed. His calm demeanor was cracking, but he didn’t have time to polish the rough edges. They had to move fast.

“What? Why? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. I just can’t get the safe open.”

Rebecca’s eyes became saucers.

“You can’t get the safe open? Christ, what are we going to do?”

Thad pointed past her, to the metal thing they had carted along with them from the Jeep.

“That’s why we brought the dolly.”

Rebecca exhaled into her surgical mask. Of course that was why they had brought the damn thing—heavy and unwieldy, but rated to six hundred pounds with a mechanical crank lift and heavy-duty straps—really, Thad had hoped they wouldn’t need it. He had thought he was going to be able to open the safe right there in the lab. In fact, that was the main reason he had focused on Gibson’s lab when, even in fantasy, he’d realized that the lunar vault was impregnable.

Even though Gibson had made him stay outside the lab when he had retrieved those moon rocks for Sonya a year ago, Thad had been able to see the numbers affixed to the top of the safe. He had assumed they were the safe’s combination; obviously, he had been wrong. In retrospect, it was foolish to have thought that a man as smart as Gibson would have the combo right there in the lab. No doubt the numbers were actually a memory tool—maybe some sort of algorithm that helped the man calculate the combination each time he opened it. It would be easy enough to devise an algorithm that could be changed every few weeks without much effort, and you wouldn’t have to memorize anything other than the process for using the algorithm—multiplication, subtraction, whatever that might be.

Given enough time, Thad knew he could probably break the sequence—but he certainly didn’t have that time here and now. What he had was a dolly that was rated to six hundred pounds, an extra pair of hands—be they little, porcelain, and trembling—and a Jeep Cherokee waiting outside.

He stepped past Rebecca and grabbed the dolly, then pointed her ahead of him, into the lab. A minute later, he was back in front of the safe, Rebecca next to him. Carefully, he moved the dolly into position, then shifted so that he could put his full weight against the safe. Straining every muscle in his body, he tried to tilt it off the ground just enough to get the edge of the dolly beneath it. No dice; even with all of his weight, the damn thing wouldn’t budge.

“You’re going to have to help.”

Rebecca quickly put her hands next to his, and together they tried again. Thad’s face turned bright red, his arms and thighs becoming taut, his back crying out with the effort. Slowly, the thing creaked forward—and then it was up, just an inch, maybe two. Thad used a leg to get the dolly underneath—and then the safe crashed back down. But it had worked, the dolly was beneath the edge, and with him using both shoulders, it was only another minute before Thad had the thing where it needed to be. Quickly, he fastened the heavy-duty straps around the corners of the safe, and it was ready to go.

Grinning as he breathed hard, he tilted the dolly so that its weight was on its wheels, and slowly began dragging it back through the lab. Rebecca followed him, making sure the safe didn’t tilt or twist. Every now and then, she glanced up into his eyes—and Thad could see that she, too, was grinning beneath her surgical mask.

29

“One. Two. Three. Lift!”

Teeth clenched, shoulders burning, Thad strained against the safe with all of his strength as the two girls leaned their combined weight against the handles of the dolly, and slowly the thing angled backward just enough to get it over the raised lip of the hotel doorway. A second later, they all let go at once, and the thing crashed back to the floor, rocking what felt like the entire room.

Thad exhaled, shaking the sweat out of his hair. Then he went to work on the straps. Once the safe was untied, he motioned the girls out of the way and, using a back-and-forth motion, managed to rock the safe forward so that it slipped, inch by inch, off the dolly and onto the tarplike sheets he had laid out over the carpeted floor. Once it was safely on top of the sheets, he rolled the dolly out of the way, and the three of them stood in the doorway, looking at the steel monstrosity in the middle of the room.

“Christ,” Thad said.

“Yeah,” Sandra responded. “That’s probably not the appropriate word.”

Thad smiled, putting a hand on her shoulder.

“You can play lookout. Stand outside the door, keep an eye on all the other rooms and the parking lot outside. If you see something, shout.”

Sandra seemed all too happy to step outside, shutting the door behind her. They were all on edge—a mixture of excitement, but also a little fear, because now it was here with them in this room, a great monolith that seemed to suck all the oxygen out of the air. Thad could only guess how long it had sat in that corner of Gibson’s lab. How many times the old man had opened that door, lovingly placing specimens inside. Well, Thad only intended to open that door once.

He crossed to the tools laid out to the side of the safe and found what he needed. A large, handheld Skil saw with a specialized blade. Looking at it, he knew immediately that the blade was too thick for what he intended to do—so it was going to take some time. Worse yet, it was also going to make some noise. A lot of noise.

“Rebecca, the TV.”

“You want to watch TV?”

He shook his head.

“Just make sure it’s something loud.”

She blushed, understanding. She quickly rushed over to the set and turned it on, found some sitcom on one of the major stations. She turned the volume all the way up as Thad approached the safe.

Carefully, Thad placed the saw blade against the crack at the edge of the locked safe door and began drawing it back and forth—first slowly, to make sure he didn’t slip, and then faster, each stroke grinding away at the blade, sending up little wisps of metal and smoke. Grinding, grinding, grinding, the sound of metal against metal a near screech in the small room, just barely covered by the inane babble from the television. He went for about fifteen minutes straight, then stopped, his arm burning, sweat running freely down his back. He signaled Rebecca, who muted the TV. Then he looked back over his shoulder toward the door.

“Anything?” he called out, in a loud whisper.

Sandra, who was standing right outside, called back.

“Nope, keep going.”

And then he was back at it. The TV up, the saw a blur of motion. Grinding, grinding, grinding. Another fifteen minutes, then pause. The TV down, the room gone silent.

“Now? Still okay?”

“Still good. This place is deserted. I don’t think anyone is on this floor.”

Thad grinned through his growing exhaustion, then went back at the safe. Grinding, grinding, grinding. He could see that it was working, that the saw blade was slowly thinning—soon it would fit all the way into the crack, and then he’d be able to go to work on the pins that held the lock in place. Thad knew from research on the Internet that a safe this size would have four pins. He had no idea how hard it would be to get through them—but he’d bought a good half-dozen different blades, just in case. Hopefully, they’d be done before dawn, when assuredly someone, maybe a maid or a hotel manager, might wander by. Until then, he assumed it was going to go like this for a while—fifteen-minute intervals of work, a few minutes to pause and see if anyone had overheard, then back to work.

But his assumption turned out to be incorrect; just one more break, and one minute into the back-and-forth with the saw, and there was a sudden, loud metallic pop. Thad froze, looking up at Rebecca. She quickly shut off the TV, and both of them moved close to the safe, peering into the crack.

“Holy shit. The pin—it’s aluminum! It just popped like a fucking bottle cap!”

Rebecca clapped her hands. Thad quickly motioned her back to the TV and switched position, moving the saw to where he assumed the next pin would be. And again—
pop!
—just like that, he was halfway done. Within another five minutes, he’d gotten all four pins. He carefully removed the saw and placed it on the sheet, next to the other tools he wouldn’t be needing. The safe hadn’t been anywhere near as difficult as he had expected.

Rebecca turned off the television, and they called out to Sandra, inviting her back inside. After she’d locked the door behind her, they went to the duffel and grabbed the materials they would need. First, they all redonned their latex gloves. Then they positioned a tackle box next to the safe—oversized, metal, the kind of thing a professional fisherman might use—ready for the samples they were going to sell. Next to the tackle box they placed a small suitcase that Rebecca had brought over to the motel earlier in the day, which would be for the paperwork and anything else that might be needed to go along with the tackle box. And then next to the suitcase they unfolded the large packing box. The address was already written out on top of the box: it was a general NASA administration address, which meant it would take a few days for anyone there to process—but eventually, they would get the package and find whatever Thad and the girls sent back. Thad intended to return everything they weren’t going to sell, or anything that he didn’t consider trash—no matter what NASA or Gibson might have labeled it.

Finally, Rebecca retrieved a notepad and a pen. She was going to be the secretary of the event, logging and recording everything they found inside the safe, keeping everything cataloged exactly as they found it—weights, amounts, position in the safe—recording everything, just in case. They were, after all, scientists, and they were going to treat the samples with a scientist’s respect.

In solemn fashion, Thad approached the safe door. He gave one last look at Rebecca, then reached for the edge and slowly pulled it open.

As he remembered, there were five drawers inside, most of them containing small containers, capsules, and Teflon-sealed bags of material. Carefully, he reached for the closest drawer, and with his gloved hands picked up the nearest container.

“Sample 167106.88. From Apollo 16. Light, clean. The lunar highlands.”

He heard the sound of the pen scratching against the notepad. His mind was swirling. He was holding a vial that contained a tiny sample that had been retrieved by the astronauts of Apollo 16. It was almost unbelievable. He carefully placed the sample in the tackle box, then moved on to the next one. This was in a bag, dust with some pebble-sized pieces mixed in. It had a reddish hue.

“Vial 17422.20. Apollo 17. Brought back by astronaut Jack Schmitt—the only official geologist to ever step on the moon. The infamous orange soil. Volcanic in nature.”

He placed the bag in its own compartment within the tackle box, then returned to the safe. His eyes immediately moved to one of the containers in the next drawer down, because the catalog number jumped out at him. He realized, as he read it to himself, that it was from the very first Apollo mission. It had been collected by Neil Armstrong—the first man on the moon.

Thad lifted the little container out, but he couldn’t get the words to come out of his mouth. Rebecca and Sandra were both looking at him. Finally, he cleared his throat.

“This one I’m keeping.”

“Thad—”

“We have more than enough to sell.”

And then he had an even better idea. He was going to keep a little bit from each sample—just some dust, a pebble or two. Even after selling what they sold, he’d have the best rock collection in the world. He placed the container with Neil Armstrong’s sample aside and went back to the safe.

Painstakingly, over the next hour and a half, he went through the entire top four drawers. Slowly, as he went, it began to dawn on him—and by the time he finished, he knew for sure—that in that safe, they had samples from every single moon landing in human history. Some were tiny, little more than dust. Some were bigger, but none was particularly large. Altogether, in total, the weight of the samples added up to 101.5 grams. A little less than four ounces. It was far less than Thad had thought would be inside—but it was still an incredible haul. Although the deal he had made with the Belgian was for a hundred thousand dollars’ worth, if he actually wanted to calculate the full street value of what he had taken … well, it would have varied depending on what numbers he used—but he knew the range could be anywhere from $400,000 a gram to $5 million for the same amount. That put the value of 101.5 grams of the rocks at somewhere between $40 million … and half a billion.

It took Thad another thirty minutes to carefully parcel out a little bit from each sample to a separate container, which he intended to keep. It really would be the ultimate rock collection—a sample from every single moon landing there ever was, and maybe ever would be. Whatever the street value, it was actually quite priceless. Then he turned back to the safe and reached for the bottom drawer.

He recognized a few desiccators from his work back in the life sciences building, and knew from their appearance that they contained meteor fragments. Most of these, he had Rebecca put into the packing box, to send back to NASA. Toward the back of the drawer, he saw a desiccator that seemed slightly larger than the rest. Curious, he retrieved it, holding it close to his eyes as he read the label.

To his utter shock, he recognized the call letters immediately.

“ALH 84001.”

He stood there, staring at the little fragment inside.

“What’s that?” Sandra asked. “Another moon rock?”

Thad shook his head. Not a moon rock. It was even more valuable. It was the Mars sample—a fragment of the meteor that Everett Gibson had used to prove that there had once been life on Mars. The one that had been recovered from the ice in Antarctica in 1984.

“This one is from Mars.”

“Mars? You’re kidding.”

He shook his head. Then he carefully placed it in the tackle box.

“Why are you putting it there? Are we gonna sell it, too?”

“Maybe,” he responded, though he didn’t think he ever could. But for some reason, he wanted to take it with them as well. God knew how much it was worth to a collector like the Belgian; truthfully, Thad didn’t know if any amount of money would persuade him to let that one go. The idea that he now owned a piece of Mars was hard to get past.

“Okay, now for the paperwork.”

Beneath the bottom drawer, Thad found the curatorial forms—the actual NASA log of all the samples they now had in the tackle box. It was the best receipt—and written proof of the samples’ authenticity—that they could ask for. Thad carefully placed the forms into the suitcase, along with everything else that looked important still within the safe—a few loose papers, a vial or two—and was about to go about the process of reorganizing the tackle box by mission, in sequential order, when he noticed that Rebecca was still focused on the bottom drawer of the safe.

“Thad, what about that? That dust?”

Thad peered into the safe and saw what she was pointing toward. In one corner of the bottom drawer, there was a tiny bit of reddish-white powder. He realized that sometime during the process of moving the safe on and off the dolly, one of the sample bags must have leaked a little bit. It was really just a tiny amount—less than a gram, a very fine layer in just one little corner of the safe—but it was still from the moon. Thad stood there, thinking about it for a few more seconds—and then he did the only thing that came to mind.

He took his finger and slid it through the dust, then placed it into his mouth. Swallowing, he then grinned back at Rebecca.

“Now I’ll have a bit of the moon inside me.”

Without waiting for her reaction, he sealed the tackle box, closed the suitcase, and began cleaning up the rest of their staging area. He loaded the tools into the now-empty safe and then retrieved the dolly from where they had left it, near the bureau with the TV. The exhaustion was really starting to hit him, but he knew they still had a lot of work to do before the night was done.

As Sandra helped him work the safe back onto the dolly, Rebecca carefully folded up the sheets, then gathered the tackle box, suitcase, and the package addressed to NASA, and followed them toward the door. Thad and Sandra fought to work the still immensely heavy beast over the door frame. Meanwhile, Rebecca couldn’t help but ask the question that was on both girls’ minds.

“So how did it taste?”

Thad grunted as the safe lurched over the door frame, then inched its way outside.

“Salty, actually.”

He realized as he went that he was probably the only person on Earth who could say that with authority.

…

“I think I’ll have the Grand Slam Breakfast. In fact, we’ll all have the Grand Slam Breakfast. Grand Slam Breakfasts all around!”

Thad knew he sounded ridiculous, but he couldn’t help himself. Besides, if you couldn’t sound ridiculous in a deserted Denny’s situated on a lonely stretch of highway somewhere in the middle of bum-fuck Texas, then where could a guy, his girlfriend, and his confidante go to let off steam? And besides, it was really late—he wasn’t even sure what time, just that it was really freaking late—and he was beyond tired, so punch-drunk from living off that adrenaline high for so long that for the first time that he could remember, he had limited control of his faculties.

The girls didn’t seem much better off. Rebecca, for her part, had turned twice as bubbly as usual, and she was downing diet Coke after diet Coke as she counted—out loud—the rare headlights that flashed by on the highway outside the large picture window behind them. Sandra’s eyes were half shut, and she was slouched over at the banquette-style table, halfway between awake and asleep. Every now and then, Rebecca kicked her under the table just to make sure she was still conscious.