Sex on the Moon (6 page)

“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.

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 mocked-up cockpit of the space shuttle. It was supposed to represent something infinitely more valuable. A chunk of the moon, hand-delivered 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 Greek-style 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.”