Sex on the Moon (7 page)
Authors: Ben Mezrich
Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Criminals & Outlaws, #Science & Technology, #True Crime, #Hoaxes & Deceptions, #Science, #Space Science, #History, #United States, #State & Local, #Southwest (AZ; NM; OK; TX), #General, #Nature, #Sky Observation
“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.
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 wind blows in the other direction constantly interrupting me, the rest of the world has moved on, all things are destined to decay. But the wind 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
.
10
“Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven—”
“Look at his eyes! He’s not going to make it!”
“Six. Five. Four!”
“Come on, man, almost there!”
“Three—”
Thad let out a sudden howl. His right arm shot forward, almost involuntarily—and he desperately grabbed for the oversized yogurt shake in the center of the round wooden table. He was halfway out of his chair, his other hand gripping the edge of the table so tightly his fingers were almost the same color as the shake. His knees were trembling, and there were beads of sweat running down his bright red cheeks. He nearly knocked over the massive platter of tandoori chicken as he fought to pilot the shake toward his blistering lips.
“And I really thought he was going to make it,” someone groaned.
Thad collapsed back in his chair to a chorus of applause, laughter, and even a few catcalls. There were only six people at his table in the back corner of the tastefully, if somewhat inauthentically, decorated Indian restaurant, but a few of the other nearby tables had joined in on the fun. No doubt everyone in the place—from the group of women seated at a ridiculously ornate, canoe-shaped bar in the far corner of the restaurant to the scattered parties of middle-aged men at the imitation hookah stations throughout the interior of the brightly curtained Indian dive—was a NASA employee of one sort or another. One week into his second tour, Thad guessed that some of them recognized him, some of them didn’t. But certainly they knew the other faces at his table, because Thad was in the process of being tortured by some of the greatest minds of the modern day.
“Don’t worry about it, kid,” the man directly across from him said with sympathy as Thad took large gulps of the strange, unpronounceably named yogurt. “I had Sanjay mix something a little special into the tandoori. I don’t even think Saumya could have gone ten seconds—and he was born with a hookah in his mouth.”
A fifty-something Indian to Thad’s right slapped him on the shoulder.
“It was a noble effort. And you’ll have a chance to redeem yourself in the next course. If you thought the tandoori was hot, wait until you taste the bhindi masala. It is simply outrageous.”
Thad laughed, despite the tears pooling in the corners of his eyes from the spices. The Kashmir Express was really a terrible restaurant, but for some reason it had become the favorite weekly meeting place for a large faction of the JSC elite. Certainly, proximity played a factor, but there were many—and far better—restaurants within five miles of the sprawling campus. Something about the kitschy, overspiced mock-up of a Bombay hot spot, located in a desolate corner of the South Houston strip mall, somehow connected with the lab rats who shared Thad’s predilection for adventure.
The ritual of the Monday lunch had certainly not been Thad’s idea; he was just thrilled to have worked his way to an invitation from such a prestigious crew. All of the men at the circular table worked in Building 31, but Thad was the only co-op in the group. Most of his interactions with these prestigious scientists had taken place in the hallways, elevators, and stairwells of the life sciences building. But even so, Thad had impressed them and—beginning the last month of his first tour, and somehow carrying over through the three months he had spent back at the University of Utah—he had become part of the weekly lunch crew.
If Thad had once felt like he didn’t really fit in with the other co-ops—he was little more than a shadow on a wall with this crowd. The six scientists spanned a multitude of disciplines—geology, physics, astronomy, engineering—but the thing that bonded them was that they were all world-famous. If Thad had walked into any bookstore in the country and looked up popular books on Mars, he would’ve found their names. Although Everett Gibson wasn’t at this particular lunch, he had joined the group at the Indian restaurant a number of times before. These were Gibson’s colleagues, his contemporaries, and Thad—twenty years younger than the youngest among them—felt utterly blessed to be invited, even while they were torturing him with potentially deadly levels of Indian combustibles.
The cool yogurt finally doused the invisible flames terrorizing the membranes of his mouth, and Thad refocused on the spirited conversation that enlivened the table. Usually, the Monday lunch session was an opportunity for the scientists to try to impress each other, but today one of the more senior geologists from Building 31 was trumping them all; he had just returned from an Antarctic rock-collecting mission, the very sort of mission that had led to Everett Gibson’s work on the Allan Hills meteorite.
“You’d be surprised at how upscale base camp is becoming,” the geologist was saying, gesticulating with a piece of chicken. “Hell, I’ve stayed in worse places in New York. It might be thirty below, but at least there’s room to stretch out.”
As the man spoke, Thad could see himself swaddled in the latest state-of-the-art snowsuit, roving around the ice floes on a souped-up snowmobile, scouring the glacial plains searching for meteorites. He knew that the Antarctic glacier was basically a big ice sheet that worked like a conveyor belt. Snow fell and collected in the mountain areas, moved down into the ravines, pushing more and more rocks into natural collection areas. The NASA geologists made annual journeys to search these natural collection areas, where they were more likely to find meteorites that had fallen thousands, and even millions, of years ago.
The geologist at the table hadn’t found anything quite as significant as Gibson’s evidence in support of life on Mars, but he had come home with a pair of small meteorites that would lead to a few pretty good papers in the scientific journals. The other men at the table were clearly envious, but in a good-natured way. Like Gibson had said, NASA was about the constellation, not the stars.
After the man had finished, the conversation shifted in Thad’s direction. Like the Indian locale itself, Thad’s co-op reports had become an important part of the ritual. Just as he lived vicariously through the stories told by the elite scientists, the older men lived vicariously through Thad’s experiences with the youngest members of the NASA family.
Beginning shortly after the pool party, Thad had begun arranging excursions for his co-op class. Growing up in backwoods Utah, he had always felt most comfortable outdoors—and he learned very quickly that the other NASA co-ops had very little experience with nature. So Thad had morphed into a de facto social chair, arranging adventures that ran the gamut of his expertise—from rock climbing to bungee jumping, and everything in between.
“This weekend wasn’t anything special,” Thad began, underplaying it just right. “Only a little skydiving down around the Galveston shore …”
He embellished as he went, not that it was really necessary. He’d found that as impressive as the scientists were, it was easy to thrill them with stories—as long as he included plenty of scenes with voluptuous first-and second-year co-ops, and a little bit of life-threatening adventure. Rock climbing, scuba diving, hang gliding, whitewater rafting—all things Thad had been enjoying for years with Sonya, but were totally new experiences for the JSC employees.
Everett Gibson seemed especially charmed by these tales of adventure. Thad remembered how the man had positively lit up when he had described what it was like to line up next to two terrified teenagers—who’d never jumped off the lowest branch of a tree, let alone off the top of a thirty-foot cliff—for a dive they’d remember for the rest of their lives.
In fact, most of the co-ops had never even been camping before, let alone cliff diving. Thad had given the interested ones a short lesson in survival skills, everything from starting fires to climbing trees. He had thought it was ridiculous that these brilliant kids had never done these things, and Gibson obviously agreed. Thad guessed it was because Gibson himself had once been quite adventurous; he’d told Thad that during college he’d been a river guide in the Grand Canyon, and he was also an accomplished hiker.
In Thad’s mind, Dr. Gibson had really taken a shine to him. And truthfully, Thad had become a little obsessed with the famous scientist. He’d read up on the man, fascinated by Gibson’s work on the ALH meteorite—something that had really begun and ended back in the eighties although it hadn’t been published until later. At the same time—and perhaps this was just fantasy, a concoction of his mind to build himself up to his idol’s level—Thad had begun to suspect that in some ways, Gibson might even have envied
him
, because Thad was still in the adventurous phase of his life. Thad liked to think that Gibson had once lived like Thad, and now he gave speeches to co-ops.
Still, Thad knew it wasn’t fair for him to compare himself to these men who had already accomplished so much. He’d only been at NASA a total of three months and one week. Maybe his enthusiasm level was a little too extreme; he knew that his vivid attitude was sometimes like a force of nature. It drove him to expect things to happen more quickly than they possibly could.
He wondered if that enthusiasm was also the source of the friction that he and Sonya had begun to experience over the past couple of months, before he’d returned for his second tour at NASA. Being at home, back in his classes at the university, daily life had seemed like a distraction. He couldn’t wait to get back to Houston, back to the lab and to these scientists. Home, and even Sonya, couldn’t begin to compete with what he had here.
As a pair of Indian waiters began stocking the table with strange-looking desserts on flimsy magic carpet–shaped serving platters, Thad tried to convince himself that the friction with Sonya was all in his head. It certainly wasn’t her fault. It was just … well, being away from NASA was like standing still. He had never been able to stand still.
He was glad that tomorrow Sonya was going to get a chance to see for herself what NASA meant to him. She was flying down to stay for the weekend, and Thad had promised himself that he was going to show her why this place was so amazing. He knew she would understand, and that his enthusiasm would rub off on her. Her life at home, her dreams of becoming a model—the castings, the clothes, the nightclubs she had begun to frequent with her modeling friends—would pale in comparison with the incredible magic of the JSC.
Thad smiled as he dug into a spicy dessert that put new tears into the corners of his eyes. Meanwhile, in his mind, he pictured Sonya hanging on to his waist as he piloted a massive snowmobile across an Antarctic glacial field. He could see her red-blond hair flowing behind her, her long, chiseled legs clinging to the roaring beast beneath them. And even as his tongue burned like the heart of India, he could feel the spray of ice against his cheeks.
11
There was only one word for it.
Power
.
Thad stood in a shadowed patch of grass a few feet beyond the stone path that encircled the beautiful monster, craning his neck to peer up at the closest of the five conical thrusters. Each of the thrusters was twice his height in diameter, hollowed out and stacked on top of one another in a fierce pentagon that jutted out of the base of the first cylindrical fuel stage. The thrusters were, in every curve and groove of their being, symbols of pure unadulterated power.
Thad stood alone at the base of the Saturn V rocket, even though it was deep into the afternoon and there were at least three different tour groups from Space Center Houston wandering around the rocket’s park. But the tourists seemed much more interested in the long, impressive fuel stages, and the nose cone—the Apollo lunar lander that the rocket carried on its tip—where the astronauts were to have traveled. To the tourists, the thrusters were ugly and utilitarian. But Thad only had to close his eyes to see them in their raw beauty, spewing huge bursts of fire and massive plumes of smoke, breathing pure, catalyzed rocket fuel like a dragon roaring through the sky.
It was the first time Thad had actually paused in front of the Saturn V, admiring its magnificence. He had walked by the rocket a few times, when he’d needed to decompress from a long day at the lab, but he’d never just stood there before, contemplating the thing itself. It didn’t matter that the heat was already starting to rise off the manicured blades of grass beneath his feet. Or that the humidity was drenching his NASA polo shirt and flattening out the curls in his hair. He felt at peace, at rest—which was a fairly unusual feeling for him.
Unusual, and so compelling that he didn’t hear the golf cart approaching from behind until it was already pulling to a stop on the path a few feet from where he was standing. The clack of high heels against stone was impossible to ignore, however; he turned away from the thrusters in time to see Sonya teetering toward him, a small flight bag slung precariously over one bare shoulder while she waved good-bye to the security guard who had given her a lift from the front gate. When she reached Thad, she was smiling—but he could see the shadow of annoyance in her dark, catlike eyes.
“It’s nearly one hundred degrees out here. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to meet at your apartment?”
She leaned forward to kiss his cheek. Without even thinking, out of reflex, Thad reached his hands out toward her flat stomach, to work his fingers under the thin material of her tank top—but she playfully pushed his hands away.
“I feel gross right now from the flight. And I don’t think you need to warm your fingers out here. If you touched that rocket ship, you’d probably burn your skin right off.” Thad took the bag from her, putting it over his own shoulder. He figured there would be plenty of time for the comforts of home; they had a whole weekend together. First, it was more important to him for her to see his world, his NASA—and he knew exactly where he wanted to start.
…
Thad wasn’t sure why he was so nervous. As he stood next to his wife at the top of the amphitheater steps, waiting for the lecture to end, his palms were damp and he was shifting his weight from foot to foot. It was foolish, he told himself; he had been in the amphitheater dozens of times. And this afternoon had begun in such a secure and comforting place—his lab, just a few floors away.
Helms hadn’t been around, but Sonya had still enjoyed seeing where Thad worked. She’d been duly impressed by the futuristic setting, and she’d also gotten to meet Thad’s immediate boss, Dr. Agee. Agee had seemed quite taken with her—and why wouldn’t he be, she was so damn striking in her high heels and tank top. Not exactly a good fit with the NASA dress code, but it certainly brightened the place up.
But the lab wasn’t the main reason Thad had wanted Sonya to visit Building 31 that particular day; he had wanted to show her the NASA she couldn’t learn about from a brochure. She shared his affinity for things that were real, objects that told stories—which was why he had taken her straight to the amphitheater after the lab. Now, watching as the first-year co-ops finally began to filter out of their seats and make their way up the steps, emptying the auditorium, Thad could only hope that his efforts would be worthwhile.
It was another few minutes before he finally caught sight of Dr. Gibson’s closely cropped gray hair and thick glasses as the man made his way up the steps after the last of the co-ops had exited. Gibson was wearing his lab coat over a blue button-down shirt, and he looked like he’d just come from his own lab, not just given the lecture that was one of the biggest draws of each co-op’s first tour. But he did have his NASA briefcase in his right hand; Thad felt a thrill watching that case bob back and forth as the older man took the amphitheater steps, because he knew exactly what was inside.
“Dr. Gibson,” he called out as Gibson was about to walk past where he and his wife were standing. “I want to introduce you to someone. I’ve been showing my wife around the place, and I know she would get a real thrill out of meeting an Apollo scientist.”
Gibson looked up. He seemed a little distracted, but when he caught sight of Sonya—the nervous smile on her bee-stung lips and the way she pushed the hair out of her eyes—he softened. She always had that effect on people.
“The pleasure is all mine,” Gibson said, emanating class. “Thad is one of our more enthusiastic characters. We’re all learning a lot from him.”
Thad smiled, then pointed at the briefcase.
“I was really hoping that you could show Sonya one of your cool meteorites. I know it would mean a lot to her to see one up close.”
Gibson glanced down at his briefcase, then back at Thad and Sonya.
“Actually, it’s a couple of big moon rocks today. The meteorites are back in my lab.”
“A moon rock would be great, too—” Thad started to say, but Gibson interrupted him.
“It’s no problem. We can head over to my lab—but have you guys had anything to eat, because I’m famished? Maybe a quick stop for Chinese?”
Thad could see that Sonya was into the idea; pretty cool, to get a lunch invite from a guy who had been on the Apollo project.
“Sounds like a great idea,” Thad responded.
Chinese food and moon rocks—just another normal afternoon at the JSC.
…
Forty minutes later, Gibson was leading them down a long corridor on a midlevel floor of Building 31. Sonya was right behind him, Thad a step after, and they were moving through the building at a rapid pace. Gibson and Sonya were making small talk, and it had been like that during most of the time at the Chinese restaurant. She was taking full advantage of her time with an Apollo scientist.
As they walked, Gibson described how the building used to be, when he’d first arrived at the JSC. No matter how many times Thad heard the story, he was still fascinated by thoughts of what it must’ve been like for Gibson as a young man, seeing those moon rocks for the very first time. And Gibson seemed to like telling the story.
He’d barely made it to Apollo 17, the last manned mission, when he turned a corner in the hallway and pointed toward an open doorway. From the outside, Gibson’s lab looked similar to Thad’s, and Thad couldn’t help noticing that there was a cipher lock next to the door frame, just like the one outside his lab—but because the door was already open, the lock was, of course, disengaged. Gibson told Thad and Sonya to wait in the doorway, then entered the lab. Thad figured it was some sort of procedural thing; from where he was standing, he could see that there was at least one assistant or co-op already in the lab at the time, working at one of the stainless-steel countertops. Thad couldn’t tell what the man was working on—but he assumed it was something having to do with actual extraterrestrial materials, not the practice rocks he and Helms were forced to use.
As Gibson disappeared deeper into the sixteen-by-twenty-foot lab, Thad felt his curiosity getting the better of him. He decided it wouldn’t hurt to stick his head inside, just to see where the man was going with the briefcase. Sonya didn’t even seem to notice what Thad was doing: craning his neck, Thad caught sight of Gibson at the very back corner of the rectangular room, standing in front of what looked to be a huge upright steel safe. There was a large wheel-style combination lock on the front of the safe—but Gibson wasn’t at the wheel, he was leaning over the top of the safe, the briefcase still in his hands. Thad squinted, seeing that there was a piece of paper with numbers written across it taped to the top surface of the safe. He wondered if those numbers could actually be the combination of the safe—right there, taped to the damn thing itself? It seemed a pretty foolish thing to do, but then again, this was a pretty secure environment. Gibson’s personal lab, where he’d probably worked for decades. If he didn’t feel secure here, he wouldn’t feel secure anywhere.
Thad couldn’t quite make out what Gibson did to the combination wheel after he was done with the taped piece of paper on top of the safe, but a moment later the huge door to the thing swung open. Thad saw that the safe contained five drawers, separated into compartments. Gibson bent down on one knee, opened his briefcase, and began placing the contents back into the safe. When he was done, he reached into a different compartment and retrieved a palm-sized object.
Thad quickly yanked his head back out into the hallway as Gibson slammed the safe door shut. Another minute, and Gibson was back at the entrance to his lab, smiling ear to ear. He asked Sonya to hold out her hand. When she did, he placed a small glass vial in her outstretched palm.
“This is what we call a calcareous meteorite. It’s the lowest-density meteor we’ve ever found. They usually break all the way up when they come into the atmosphere, but this little piece survived the journey.”
“This is amazing,” Sonya exclaimed. “This isn’t from the moon, is it?”
“No,” Gibson said. “Moon rocks are a little too valuable to give away. Even for scientists like me to get a lunar sample, you have to go through numerous steps. You conceive an experiment, you write a research proposal, it goes through peer review by non-NASA scientists—there’s a checks-and-balances system. Because all the moon rocks we’ve got came from those six Apollo missions. There aren’t any more, and there aren’t going to be any more. It wouldn’t even be legal for
me
to own a moon rock. The ones I have in my safe, I’ve acquired over thirty years of research proposals, and when I retire, they’ll go right back to the lunar vault.”
“But this meteorite?” Sonya asked.
“That’s a gift to you guys.”
Sonya looked like she wanted to give the man a hug. Thad felt himself swell with pride, even though he had nothing to do with the gift.
Gibson waved their gratitude away.
“It’s our job to inspire young people like yourselves. That’s really the point of this place. Thank you both for a lovely afternoon.”
With that, Gibson stepped back into his lab, closing the door behind him. Thad listened as the cipher lock clicked shut. Then he grabbed Sonya’s hand so that they could look at the meteorite together. And for that moment, as brief as it was, all of the friction between them disappeared.
