STORMING SPACE

By Michael Cassutt

Would that be Mr. Cash?” the voice behind me said, surprising the hell out of me.

I was in Haugen’s Bakery on Highway 14 getting my morning cup of coffee, though that’s not why I stopped there. I didn’t even like coffee much; it made me jittery, and made my heavy lifting, tricky at best, almost impossible. The owner, a joker of indeterminate gender named “Fran”, was hard on the eyes and nerves.

But Haugen’s had this waitress named Evelyn. Well, her name was pronounced Evelyn: on her nametag it was written, no fooling, “Eva-Lynne”. She was tall and slim and blond and about 25 years old, and my purpose in life, that unseasonably hot day in October 1968, was to find out what mistake she made in a past life that dumped her into a bakery in Mojave, California. Until then I, like the truckers passing through, continued to come by for some really bad coffee, questionable pastries, and just a whiff of her perfume. Perhaps a throaty, “Thanks for coming in. Good to see you again.” (She always seemed on the verge of remembering my name.)

You certainly didn’t come to Haugen’s to have strange foreign men loom up behind you without warning.

“Hmm?” I said, or something equally articulate.

“Mr. Cash Mitchell?” The speaker was a man about forty, thin, dark. Indian, I judged, from the lilt to his voice. Not a joker, either.

“Speaking,” I said, foolishly, as if we were on the telephone. (I was moving closer to my encounter with Eva-Lynne.)

“Ah, good. I am Tominbang. I wish to speak with you on a matter of great urgency.” He shook my hand a bit too enthusiastically.

And I took another step forward. The customer in front of the customer in front of me—a busy-looking woman of 35, almost certainly a real estate professional—suddenly launched a complicated series of orders at Eva-Lynne, no doubt nosh for some morning meeting. I was trapped.

“I’m listening,” I said to Tominbang. If you saw me, medium height, overweight, glasses, you would not be intimidated. But I had had a good couple of months lifting various items for Mr. Warren Skalko of Lancaster, Las Vegas, and other municipalities, so I felt smug. I could not imagine why this foreign man would be talking to me; more precisely, I suspected that any association between us was not going to make me rich. (This turned out to be painfully true.)

“Mr. Warren Skalko recommends you to me,” Tominbang said.

I lost probably a third of my attitude at the mention of my mentor. “I’m always happy to meet a friend of Mr. Skalko’s,” I said, summoning as much enthusiasm as I could. Just to be safe. “Where do you know him from?” Mr. Skalko had several sorts of associates, some from his noted (and legitimate) charity work, others from his country club, and a few from being what that same popular press called “the crime lord of the southwest.”

“We were introduced on the first tee at Riviera,” Tominbang said, naming Mr. Skalko’s Los Angeles country club, and nicely slipping into the second category of Skalko associates. “He mentioned your specific abilities as a mass transporter—”

He was interrupted by a commotion not five feet away. Real Estate Woman was giving my beloved Eva-Lynne a hard time. “What the hell do you expect me to do? Carry it all by myself?”

The customer in front of me, sensing a longer-than-usual wait for bad coffee, shook his head and departed. At that moment I caught Eva-Lynne’s eye—and was struck by something I’d never seen there before.

Panic.

She was trying to maneuver a heavy, unbalanced load of hot coffees and pastry—enough food for a group of a dozen longshoreman, I judged—while behind her a coffee machine somehow managed to boil over and one of the bakers chattered in her ear. Big bad Fran was busy elsewhere. “I’m sorry,” she was saying, “Just give me a—”

“Let me help,” I said, surprising myself as I edged past the annoying Real Estate Woman and placed a hand on Eva-Lynne’s shoulder. This is how my lifting works: physical touch, with mass-to-be-moved proportional to the strength of my grip. The trigger is emotion, and anger or even general annoyance (my usual state), is the most reliable.

You can bet I was gentle. I didn’t want hot coffee spewing all over us. Sure enough, the load lightened just enough so that Eva-Lynne didn’t have to worry about it. One lovely eyebrow arched in surprise. “Out to your car?” I said to the Annoying Real Estate Woman.

“No, why don’t you just carry it over to Joshua Street for me.” Ordinarily I have little patience for sarcasm, but being in actual physical contact with Eva-Lynne had a mellowing effect.

“Let me help,” I whispered to Eva-Lynne, since I had to remain in physical contact to keep lifting. And we glided outside into the gravel parking like a Kern County version of Fred and Ginger.

“Thank you,” Eva-Lynne told me, once the order was safely deposited on the front seat of a new 1969 Ford LTD, and Annoying Real Estate Woman had departed. “I really appreciate it.” Her nose sort of crinkled, and she smiled. “Your name is Cash, isn’t it?”

At last! I’d made it across the barrier, from vaguely familiar five-day-a-week morning customer to friend-with-a-name! Who knew where this could lead! I was just about to extend my hand when Fran appeared in the doorway. “Eva-Lynne, we have customers!”

“Back to the grind,” she said, heading back inside. I followed.

In those brief-but-glorious moments of personal contact, I had forgotten about Tominbang. “You are a gentleman, Mr. Mitchell.”

“Not really,” I said, and I wasn’t just being modest. “What was it you wanted to talk to me about?”

“Ah, my project,” he said, lighting up like a Mojave dawn. “I am thinking of making a flight to the Moon.”

Nothing less could have torn me away from Eva-Lynne. (And even then, it was close.)

Mr. Tominbang’s late model El Dorado was parked outside, right next to my ’66 Mustang (the fruit of my first lifting jobs for Mr. Skalko, a shipment of color televisions that somehow fell off their truck). There was some discussion as to whether I would ride with Tominbang (“Where are we going, exactly?”) or he with me, until we compromised on having me follow him. That was a relief: if I’d left the Mustang for, say, two hours, the next place I would have seen it would have been as pieces in one of the Mr. Skalko’s other subsidiaries, the Palmdale chop shop.

Tominbang headed north, then west on Highway 58, toward the nether reaches of greater Mojave. This was strange territory for me: I live south of Palmdale, which is itself south of Mojave, in my little rat shack on the slope above Pearblossom Highway. I only found myself frequenting Haugen’s Bakery on Highway 14 thanks to visits to one of Mr. Skalko’s hideouts—excuse me, residences.

No sooner had we cleared the collection of shacks, trailers and used auto parts lots that is Mojave than I developed second thoughts. Maybe it was the wind, which was blowing hard enough to nudge the Mustang off the centerline. (Did you know that Tehachapi is the windiest municipality in the continental US?) Maybe it was hearing Scott McKenzie singing, “If You’re Going to Jokertown” for the hundredth time in a week, with its lyrics about taking that longshot when you see it. (A guy like me doesn’t have many opportunities with a girl like Eva-Lynne.)

Maybe it was thinking about what Mr. Tominbang said. A flight to the Moon?

I was seven years old when the wild card turned, so aliens from another planet were as real to me as Rin Tin Tin or my Fourth grade teacher. My older brother, Brad, used to force me to play Buck Rogers with him—the times we weren’t playing Wake Island, that is. We fought marsh creatures on Venus, dust dragons on Mars, and even some weird rock beings on the Moon.

Brad wanted to explore space when he grew up. Who cared that the Takisians had been there first? Human beings would go further, faster! He read all the Tak World novels, which he then passed down to me. (I read them, too, but under duress.)

More practically, he went to college at Purdue, got his engineering degree in ’61, then joined the Air Force. This was not long after the X-11A fiasco; I remember him telling me that the US was edging back into the space business—but in secret. He had heard rumors of new students being recruited out of Purdue.

Brad went off to Vietnam and disappeared over Haiphong in January 1964. He was still listed as Missing in Action. And America’s “secret” space program? For all I knew that day, we could have had a fleet of flying saucers bombing Haiphong, maybe, or spying on all the freaks in Berkeley.

They sure weren’t flying to the Moon.

We were now so far into the wilderness that my radio reception was fading: there was mention of a riot at some rock concert in California. There were always riots in the news that year. I wouldn’t have bothered to pay attention, but it said the Hell’s Angels were involved. I knew the local Angels: they also did some jobs for Mr. Skalko. When I changed channels, all I got was country and western crap, or preachers, so I switched it off.

Besides, Tominbang’s car was turning onto a dirt road leading to a pair of distant hangars at Tehachapi-Kern Regional Airport. We had passed up a perfectly good asphalt road that led to a perfectly good administration building and tower. I made a note to send Tominbang a bill for any damage to the Mustang’s undercarriage.

The wind was still blowing when we got out. Tominbang’s tie flapped noisily. I wedged dust out of the corner of my eye as my guide fumbled a key out of his pocket and spent an unnecessary amount of time trying to open a padlock.

I looked at the two big hangars and what I couldn’t see from the road—a set of fuel tanks and other mechanical structures behind them, along with a much better road that led back to the airport proper. No other cars present, except one battered blue Scout. “Here we are,” Tominbang said proudly, wrenching the door open.

We had to pass through an anteroom of sorts to enter the hangar itself. Actually, a room and a hallway, with Tominbang flipping on lights as we went. “Please excuse,” he said. “I have just acquired this property and have yet to staff it completely.”

“How many, uh, staff, are you going to have?” I asked, smelling mildew and seeing rust and dirt wherever I looked.

“Perhaps three dozen. Perhaps more.”

Were forty people enough to build a spaceship that could fly to the Moon? I doubted that.

“Before we proceed, I must ask …” His voice trailed off as he pulled a two-paged typed document out of the drawer of a battered metal desk. “This is a non-disclosure agreement certifying that you will keep what you are about to see confidential, until such time as it becomes public.”

I looked around at the cold, unused office with its peeling paint, and tried not to laugh. And signed. “How much is this all costing?” I said, handing the document back to Tominbang.

“The final price tag will be close to ten million dollars US,” he said casually, as if he were disclosing the price of a new suit of clothes.

He opened one last door, and we emerged into a rather different space: a huge space probably three stories tall. Bing, bing, bing, on went the lights.

And sitting in the middle of this space was a strange vehicle I can only describe as stubby-winged and shaped like a pumpkin-seed. “This is Quicksilver,” Tominbang said, proudly waving me toward it. “A prototype space plane developed at Tomlin four years ago.”

Not the X-11A. “Never heard of it.”

“It was secret.”

“Then what’s it doing here?” And in the hands of a shady foreign national?

“The Quicksilver program was cancelled last year. It proved to be technically feasible to fly it from the surface of the earth into orbit and return, but at a much higher cost than the Pentagon was willing to pay. Especially with a war going on. This Quicksilver is supposedly being stored until the day it can be displayed in the Air Force Museum.”

“How the hell did you even hear about it?”

“Ah,” Tominbang said, very pleased with himself, “my business is computers and telecommunications. One of my subsidiaries had the contract for the Quicksilver ground stations.”

So he knew about it legitimately. Well, semi-legitimately.

Up close Quicksilver looked used: the paint was faded. There were what appeared to be scorch marks on its skin. Of course, those were just the superficial details. “It was flown into orbit,” Tominbang said.

“Earth orbit is a long way from the Moon.”

“That’s where you come in,” a new voice said.

Out of the shadows lurched a slim, weathered man of sixty. Or, once he stepped into the light, a hard forty. His hair was gray and ragged, like a military crewcut gone to weed. His eyes were pale blue. It was the web of lines around them that made him seem old.

“Ah!” Tominbang said, with the sort of enthusiasm I used to have for Christmas morning, “Commander Al Dearborn, I have found Mr. Cash Mitchell.” Tominbang turned to me. “Commander Dearborn is a Quicksilver pilot.”

We shook hands. His grip was surprisingly limp. “Call me Al. All my ex wives do.” He smiled. “Though they usually add ‘that cheating son of a bitch’.”

“I’ll skip that part until I know you better.”

Dearborn laughed, perhaps a bit too hard. “That’s good. You’re gonna need a sense of humor on this thing.”

That statement alarmed me, and Tominbang noted my reaction. “Commander Dearborn is a noted humorist,” he said. And drunkard, I wanted to add. “He was the primary test pilot for Quicksilver.”

“Actually, I was a Navy exchange test pilot for the bird at Tomlin. The Air Force project pilot was a buddy of mine, Mike Sampson.”

I didn’t like Dearborn’s smell and boozy appearance, so my normal sociability was strained. “So why don’t we have Sampson here?”

“Major Sampson is still on active duty at Tomlin,” Tominbang said, quickly, and with a nervous glance at Dearborn. Obviously this was a delicate subject.

Dearborn peered at me as if we had not just been introduced. “I can’t decide whether I’m gonna like you or want to kill you.”

Ultimately, he did neither. What he did was throw up on my feet.

I’m not a fastidious man; I generally wear T-shirts and jeans, to the annoyance of Mr. Skalko, who clings to the sport coat look and seems to want a “team uniform” for his associates. I also wear sandals, generally a wise choice in the desert heat.

It was not wise on that day. Having my bare feet splashed with vomit violated even my loose standards of hygiene. I practically screamed in disgust. Then, with Tominbang’s help, I found a men’s room and managed to rinse off. Repeatedly. The sickening odor, combined with the ancient fetor of the men’s room, almost made me pass out.

Tominbang was more upset than I was. He kept apologizing for Dearborn. “He has a drinking problem. But he is very capable. He has been logged two hundred hours of Quicksilver test time, and made three orbital flights.”

“Can he stay sober long enough to do the job?”

“It was my impression that he only drinks when he doesn’t have a mission.”

“You’d better get him to work faster,” I said. “If he throws up on me again, I’m walking out.”

If I expected an apology from Dearborn, it would have to wait. He was passed out—let’s say sleeping—on a pile of canvas formerly used to protect the Quicksilver vehicle. This gave me my chance to pin Tominbang down. “So, what exactly is the plan here? Can you really fly a spaceplane to the Moon?”

“Oh, yes. With your assistance, Mr. Mitchell.”

“You’re losing me.”

“Since Quicksilver is capable of orbital flight, it only requires minor modifications for landing on the Moon. A landing gear must be added. Communications gear has to be beefed up. We need to obtain suitable space suits. And the life support fittings need to be changed to accommodate a crew of three.”

Everything was making sense up to the last point. “Why do you need three people? Isn’t this a one-man vehicle?”

Tominbang looked at the floor, as if he were embarrassed. “We will need the pilot—Dearborn. We will need a spacecraft specialist. And I wish to go along.”

That was alarming. “You’re spending all this money just so you can fly to the Moon?”

“No, Mr. Mitchell, that would be crazy,” he said, meaning nothing of the sort. “I have a practical reason. I have made a fortune in allowing certain electronic financial transactions to pass through the offshore offices of my communications firm. But governments have been making that sort of work more difficult, and it will soon be impossible. I hope to set up the ultimate offshore data recording and retransmitting station.”

I was about to say that that idea sounded crazier than simply spending $10 million for a ride to the Moon. But Tominbang leaned close again. “This is the information you must keep confidential.”

“No problem,” I said, wondering just what subject I could bring up that would lead to my immediate departure from the hangar. I might even be able to stop at Haugen’s and resume that interrupted flirtation with Eva-Lynne. “You were about to explain why you needed me.”

“Because of your unique lifting ability, Mr. Mitchell. Quicksilver’s power plant can’t blast it out of earth orbit, or off the surface of the Moon. Unless, at a key moment, we can somehow reduce its mass to a fraction.”

I opened my mouth to laugh, then closed it. The biggest object I had ever lifted was a semi-trailer full of Johnny Walker and other fine beverages. (Mr. Skalko was unhappy with certain tariffs due him from the passage of this truck through his territory.) That semi dwarfed Quicksilver.

So the gig seemed possible, in theory. Which is all I’ve ever had. (As my father used to say, “Cash, you violate the laws of gravitation.” To which I usually answered: “I never studied law.”) Nevertheless, the very idea of performing a lift while in space and sitting on a rocket—well, it made me feel as faint as when I was washing Dearborn’s vomit off my flesh.

“I don’t know about this,” I said, perhaps more than once. It was one thing to fantasize about kicking up the dust of Mars with your boots. It was quite another to entrust your life to a crazy foreign man with more money than sense, and a drunken pilot. Oh, yes, on a flight to the Moon!

“The compensation would be of the highest degree,” Tominbang was saying, perhaps more than once and in different ways.

I have many faults, among them slovenliness and laziness, but the greatest of these is greed. So I said, “How much?”

And then he mentioned a figure that would not only buy my cooperation, but my silence and enthusiasm and that of everyone I know for at least a year. “Mr. Tominbang,” I said. “You’ve got a deal.”

(If you’re thinking that I thought I would find Eva-Lynne easier to impress if were a moderately richer man, you would be correct.)

Dearborn uttered a snort at this point, forcing me to look his way. “And what about him?”

“He has already agreed to the terms.” He shook his head. “He really just wants to fly Quicksilver again.”

I said “Oh,” or something equally helpful, then added, “Are we going to dry him out? Seeing as how we’ll be a quarter of a million miles from home and depending on his sobriety?”

“I am searching for a way. I would take him into my own residence, but my travel schedule does not permit it.”

“What about Dearborn’s situation? Does he have a wife?”

“Sadly, Commander Dearborn needs a place to stay.”

I don’t want to recount the rest of the conversation. I must have been weakened by dollar signs, because I agreed to take him in.

Temporarily.

“Doreen threw me out when I told her I had spent the weekend with Tominbang.” Dearborn and I were headed back down Highway 14 toward Palmdale. It was mid-afternoon, but he had awakened from his nap as fresh and perky as a teenager on a Sunday morning. If he had any reservations about going off to live with a man he had just met, not to mention vomited on, he hid them. “She thought that was some kind of code name for a Thai hooker, and that was it.”

“Doreen sounds as though she’s a bit suspicious.”

“Well,” Shoe said. “I may have given her reason to be. On other occasions.” And he laughed. “Hey, does this thing go faster than 55?”

“Not when I’m driving it,” I said. That was one of the hard lessons I had learned in my association with Mr. Skalko: keep a low profile and avoid even the appearance of breaking the law.

Dearborn laughed and sat back, his feet up on the dash. “You know, they’ve got this new invention called ‘air conditioning’.”

“Never saw the need,” I said. The high desert gets hot at mid-day, but one of the side effects of my wild card is a lower body temperature. Except when I’m lifting. And I generally don’t lift when driving.

“You’re a deuce, huh?”

“Yeah. Want to get out and walk?”

He pointed to himself. “I’ve got a touch of it myself,” he said, surprising me for the second time that day. I wondered what his power was? But he offered nothing. “Besides, I’ve worked with many a joker in my day.” He pointed to the south and east, the general direction of Tomlin Air Force Base. “Right over there.”

“I didn’t know we were allowed in the Air Force.”

“Well, Crash, there’s allowed, and then there’s ‘allowed’. The policy was certainly against it. But some got in. Stranger things have happened.”

“Like Tominbang getting hold of Quicksilver.”

Dearborn started laughing. “Yeah, ain’t that unusual? It’s not as though we have a lot of them sitting around. They built two, and broke one. There was also some kind of ground spare, but that’s it.”

“So right now, nobody’s missing the Quicksilver.”

“Nope. She’s all ours, Crash.” He slapped me on the back so hard I almost drove off the road. “Hey,” he said, suddenly serious, “what the hell kind of name is Crash? For a flight project, that is.”

“Don’t tell me you’re superstitious.”

“Son, there isn’t a pilot alive who isn’t superstitious.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “The name is ‘Cash,’ not ‘Crash’.”

I was spared the indignity of adding “cook” to my new role as “host” when Dearborn suggested we make a stop in Lancaster for an early dinner. Naturally, he knew a little place just off the Sierra Highway on Avenue I. I was reluctant, at first, until Dearborn offered to pay. “Just because I’m homeless don’t mean I’m broke.”

Well, given the fee Tominbang offered, I was far from broke, too, though my riches were still theoretical—which is to say, non-existent. “Besides,” Dearborn added, “I owe you.”

The restaurant was called Casa Carlos; it was a cinder block structure surrounded by a pitted gravel parking lot. (Actually, that description fits almost any structure in the area.) The jumble of cars spilling beyond the nominal border of the lot testified to the joint’s reputation for fine Mexican cuisine, or possibly the lack of other dining options.

It was dark, smoky and loud when we walked in. The floor was sawdust. The clientele a mixture of agro workers in stained shirts and cowboy hats, and the local gentry in short-sleeved white shirts and undone ties.

At first I expected one of those tiresome displays of familiarity, in which Dearborn, the Anglo regular, would embrace Carlos, the Latino owner, exchanging a few laughs and phrases in Spanish. At which point Carlos would snap his fingers at a waitress and order her to bring “Senior Al” the chimichanga special or whatever. It was the sort of arrival staged by Mr. Skalko across the width of the LA basin.

Nothing of the kind occurred. We slunk into the restaurant like two tourists from Wisconsin, quietly finding a table off in one corner.

Dearborn did take the seat that would keep his back to the wall, and his eyes on the entrance. I’d seen that maneuver with Mr. Skalko, too. “Expecting someone?”

“As a matter of fact, I am. An old buddy who eats here about four times a week.”

I let the subject drop as a waiter arrived. We ordered a beer each, then, when the plates arrived almost instantaneously, started in on the food. I should say, I ate; Dearborn devoured a double combination that seemed to consist of a heap of refried beans and cheese the size of a football. At one point he slowed down long enough to say, “Don’t watch too close now, Cash. I only had one meal in the past twenty-four hours, and, as you will recall, I was unable to retain that for long.”

The beer had mellowed me to the point where I was able to smile at the memory. I got Dearborn talking about himself, partly to avoid having to talk about myself, but also to hear the standard military shit-kicker war story bio. I was surprised, then, when Dearborn told me he was from Chicago and had grown up in a privileged North Shore family. His father had been a senior executive at Sears prior to the wild card, at which point he had been turned, losing his job and his money. Dearborn was lucky enough to win an appointment to the naval academy at Annapolis. After graduating in 1951, he became a naval aviator.

He won his wings of gold too late to shoot it out over Korea, but served with the fleet in the Mediterranean, then did a year of graduate work in nuclear engineering, before coming to Tomlin in 1958 to attend the test pilot school as a navy exchange pilot. “I had just graduated and joined the project when they had the accident.”

He meant the X-11A disaster, the spectacular mid-air collision between a prototype space plane and its mother ship that killed pilots Enloe and Guinan, and sparked a wild card hunt that destroyed the homegrown American space program. Or so I’d heard.

“That was a bad scene, for a long time after. I stayed at Tomlin flying chase and pace on a few other programs. They sure weren’t eager to let the X-11 guys get their hands on new aircraft. We were jinxed.” He smiled. “I missed out on three other accidents. There was quite a bad string there around 1961, ’62.

“But when General Schriever became head of Systems Command, he rammed through the Quicksilver program. I was the only X-11 pilot around, and being in the right place at the right time, got in on the ground floor.” He smiled. “Ruined my navy career, of course.”

“Ruined? Being one of the first Americans to fly into orbit? Even if it was secret, you should have had it made!”

“You don’t know much about the military, do you, Cash? When I joined Quicksilver, I had already spent four years here at Tomlin, which meant I was working for the Air Force, not the Navy. I needed to do a tour at the Pentagon and in ’Nam, then command a ship. If I ever wanted to command a carrier, which is the whole reason you become a navy aviator.

“I stayed at Tomlin through the first year of test flights. Me and the prime Air Force guy, my old buddy, Mike Sampson. Then the program got cut back, and both of us were left twisting in the wind. Sampson made out better than me: he went off to drive 105s out of Cam Ranh Bay, and wound up getting a Purple Heart.

“I was too old to go back to the fleet. Why waste time re-qualifying me for carrier ops? I’d be eligible for retirement before I finished a tour like that. So they assigned me to a missile test squadron at China Lake.” He smiled bitterly. “That’s when I started drinking. And drank myself right out of the cockpit, right out of the Navy, and out of marriage number two.”

In spite of that, he had ordered a beer, though, to be fair, he had barely sipped it. “I’m guessing Doreen is number three?”

“Correct. I came back to southern California to work for Lock-heed as a civilian, since they had the support contract for Quicksilver. She was my first secretary …” He laughed at the memory. “Guess I wasn’t cut out to work in an office. Too much opportunity for mischief.”

I must have been feeling brave. I pointed at the beer on the table. “Are you cut out for Tominbang’s project?”

Dearborn smiled, picked up the beer and poured it on the sawdust floor. “Being the first human on the Moon? I can give up drinking for that, no problem!”

His voice trailed off and his expression grew tense. I realized he was looking over my shoulder. “Well, well, well,” he said, softly.

I turned and looked: all I could see was another man about Dearborn’s age, though smaller and less weathered, smiling and chatting with the hostess. “Is that the guy you were expecting?”

“Yes. Major Mike Sampson! Hey, ‘Wrong Way’!” He started his phrase in a conversational tone, but by the time he reached “Wrong Way” he was shouting.

“Wrong Way” Sampson—the compact man at the entrance—turned with the deliberation of a gunfighter being challenged. Then he recognized Dearborn, and his face lit up like a harvest moon. Working his way to your table, he knocked over other patrons like tenpins, stopping short of actually hugging Dearborn. Instead, he punched him the shoulder. “You lucky son of a bitch!” he said.

“How much luck can I have, if you found me!” They exchanged similar sentiments for several minutes. Eventually I was introduced; Sampson wound up joining us.

It turned out that he had recently returned to Tomlin after recovering from wounds received in combat. He was now head of something called a “joint test force” at the flight test center. “Why didn’t you just take disability?” Dearborn said.

“Because I wasn’t disabled,” Sampson snapped. “Yeager fought his way back into the cockpit after getting burned in that crash, and he was much worse off than me.” He hesitated, glancing in my direction, but some invisible gesture from Dearborn cleared him for further revelation. “Besides, the Air Force has some very interesting stuff cooking. I want to be part of it.”

“Nothing as interesting as what we’re doing,” Dearborn said, shooting me an all-too-visible shit-eating grin. He then proceeded to violate every clause in Tominbang’s confidentiality agreement, telling Sampson every detail of the project!

Sampson absorbed the information silently, but appreciatively, nodding with growing enthusiasm. “I should have known,” he said. “Everybody was saying, ‘Poor Al, he really screwed the pooch at China Lake.’ But I knew better. I said, ‘It only means there’s something great coming along for him.’”

Sampson would go far in politics, because he almost had me believing him. Dearborn chose to do the same. “Thanks, buddy. But I really pushed the envelope on luck this time, let me tell you.”

“We’re older, Al. Like pro athletes, the power isn’t what it was.”

“We’ve both got enough juice for one last caper, especially something like this. Are you in?”

“Hell, yes!” They shook on it. “Obviously, it will all be on the Q.T. Vacation time or evenings.”

“You already know the vehicle, so you shouldn’t need more than that.”

After confirming various phone numbers and some personal catchup—there was fond mention of a woman named Peggy, a name which meant nothing to me—Sampson went off to meet his original dinner companions, who must have been furious by that time.

I was a little furious myself. “What do you think you’re doing? You told him about the project and signed him up as what? Your alternate?”

“Look, Tominbang’s putting out a lot of his own money in this. And, let’s face it, Cash, I’m not the most reliable individual. I’m thinking of the program at large: Sampson’s good. Weird, but good. He’ll be there only if we need him.”

“Do you think we will?”

“The one thing I learned from flight test is this: nothing ever goes as planned. I don’t care if you’re a nat, a joker or a deuce. Always, always, always have a backup.”

My apartment had two bedrooms, and came already furnished, so I was easily able to make up a place for Dearborn to sleep. Or, to be more precise, to live.

Before turning in, he said, “Days on the flight line start early, Co-pilot.” Somehow, between the pouring of the beer on the floor, and my announcement that I had made up his bed, “Co-pilot” had become Dearborn’s name for me. “I usually wanted to be at ops by six A.M. Since we aren’t flying yet, I want to be back at Tehachapi by seven.”

Which is why Haugen’s Bakery appeared to be closed when we pulled in the next morning. It was six-twenty—mid-morning by bakery hours. Seeing lights and activity within, I got out of the car and rapped on the front door. Dearborn got out to stand looking across the high desert to where the sun was already up, shining down on the vastness that was Tomlin.

As I waited for Eva-Lynne, I wondered idly where she lived—a trailer out back, perhaps? Or one of the grim little brick bungalows scattered in half-assed developments among the Joshua trees?

And did she live with anyone? She wore no ring. And in all the hours I had spent in her company, however remotely, I had never seen her with a boyfriend, or seen her give any sign of having one.

A key rattled in the door: Eva-Lynne, brushing a stray wisp of blond hair away from her face. “Oh, hi!” A pause. “Cash!” She lowered her voice … flirtatiously? “My hero. We’re just opening. The usual?”

“Yes, thank you.”

I followed her in. “You’re early today,” she said, slipping behind the counter, though not without giving me a memorable retreating vision. “New job?”

“How did you know?” The door opened and closed behind me.

“Just a guess. You’ve always looked a little—at odds,” she said, handing me a cup and my bag of Danish, and waving away my money. “My treat, as a thanks for yesterday.”

I was so pleased by the mere knowledge that Eva-Lynne had actually given me some thought that I almost missed what happened next:

Dearborn stepped up to the counter. He made no overt sign that he found Eva-Lynne attractive. In fact, he was painfully polite, as he asked for a large cup of black coffee.

She spilled it. “Oh, God,” she said, reddening, “what’s the matter with me?”

Dearborn quickly righted the cup and sopped up the pool of coffee with a napkin before Eva-Lynne could deploy her counter rag.

It was only a moment, but it made me sick. Dearborn’s mere presence had unnerved Eva-Lynne.

I had to keep him away from her.

We said nothing about the events at the bakery as we drove the last few miles up to Tehachapi-Kern Airport. What, indeed, could I have said? Commander Dearborn, please don’t have any contact with a woman I worship from afar?

He would have laughed at me. I would have laughed at me.

Then we reached Tominbang’s hangar, and the subject no longer seemed as critical.

In the hours since Dearborn and I had driven off, the Quicksilver team had gained a number of new members. First off, a pair of steely-eyed security guards in khaki and sunglasses quizzed us before we could get close.

There were at least thirty cars of varying age and make in the lot. The lights were on in the hangar. People were scurrying around, apparently to great purpose. Tominbang was the center of attention, introducing people to each other, signing various pieces of paper, smiling and nodding the whole time.

Many of the new hires, I realized, were deuces. Possibly all of them. “I guess Tominbang’s the only nat in the place,” I said to Dearborn.

“Think again, Co-pilot.”

I hadn’t spotted Tominbang as a deuce, but, then, I often fail to detect them. It made all the sense in the world, though. Who else would have come up with the idea of a flight to the Moon as a solution to a financial problem?

Sure enough, spotting us, Tominbang broke away from the fluid horde. “Greetings, crew mates!” He was smiling so broadly that he seemed deranged, an unfortunate image. Certainly he was, now that I had been alerted to it, clearly a deuce. “We are really rolling now!”

Paralyzed by the troubling sight of Tominbang’s smile, I could not respond. Fortunately, Dearborn was more resilient. “Where the hell did all these people come from, T?”

“I have been hiring them in Los Angeles for the past three weeks. Today was the day they were to report.”

I finally found my voice. “What are they supposed to be doing?”

Tominbang was like a car salesman showing off the features of a new model Buick. “That group,” he said, indicating a group of five examining the undercarriage of Quicksilver, “will perform mechanical modifications to the exterior of the vehicle.”

“Landing gear,” Dearborn added, helpfully. Obviously he had had more extensive conversations with Tominbang than I.

A smaller clump was busy looking into the open cockpit. “That team will modify the life support systems, and also the space suits.” I hadn’t thought about space suits. Obviously we couldn’t walk on the Moon in our street clothes!

There were other groups in discussion—legal, security and public relations, Tominbang said. I gave those issues zero thought at that time.

The smallest group—a pair of jokers, one an honest-to-God human-sized cockroach, the other apparently related, since he looked like a giant bee—stood nearby, watching us with what I took to be unnecessary interest. “And what do they want?”

“Ah,” Tominbang said, as Dearborn chuckled, “our trajectory team. These are specialists from Cal Tech who will program the maneuvers Commander Dearborn will make with the Quicksilver.”

“The nav system is primitive, but workable. Propulsion is the big question mark.”

“I thought propulsion was my responsibility,” I said, foolishly.

“Absolutely!” Tominbang said. “These two are your instructors!”

I have never done well in school. I have done spectacularly poorly with nat tutors. I could not imagine myself working happily with teachers who were jokers.

Before I could protest, however, Dearborn slapped me on the back. “You better get started, Co-pilot. We launch in sixty days.”

Before that day was out, I was introduced to Bacchus, the bee-like joker, who claimed to have been a professor at Cal Tech in an earlier life. The roach was named Kafka, and he made sure I knew he had no degrees of any kind. “I’m just a homegrown genius,” he said, without a trace of humility.

Bacchus took the lead in my education, hissing and wheezing his way through my first my first lessons in astro-navigation, making it clear that I, who could barely find the North Pole in the night sky, would need to learn the locations of twenty “guide” stars. (Navigation and propulsion—which is to say, my lifting—were linked, since the lifts had to occur at precise locations in space.)

It just got worse from that point on.

The only bright spot in that first two weeks was that I was able to keep Dearborn away from Eva-Lynne. Well, it was not so much a deliberate action on my part as deliberate inaction. Even though I hated being locked in a room with Bacchus and Kafka I began to prolong my lessons as late as I dared, and within the first week Dearborn was so frustrated that he went to Tominbang and said he needed a car of his own.

Tominbang obtained a 1959 Cadillac convertible with fins more suited to an airliner. It was painted pink. Dearborn, ever practical and obviously secure in his image, took it happily. He even went so far as to apologize to me. “Sorry, Co-pilot, but for the next few weeks, I’m flying solo. You’ve won your wings.” Sure enough, I saw less and less of him at my apartment, though he did actually make it home every night—sober. Now all I had to do was be sure to arrive at Haugen’s by six-thirty every morning, and linger there until I saw Dearborn’s pink beast flash past.

While the extra time spent at the bakery caused me to gain weight (I was now averaging two pieces of Danish per morning), it also allowed me to approach Eva-Lynne.

It was slow going; she had to work the counter, and she was, it seemed, immensely popular. But over the course of a week I learned the following: she was 24. She lived with a cousin in Rosamond, the tiny community to the south of Mojave, at the entrance to Tomlin. Her favorite musician was not, as I had feared, one of the Monkees or possibly Simon and/or Garfunkel, but “all those Motown singers”.

And, a big surprise, she was not a refugee from a bad experience in Hollywood. She had, in fact, never been to Hollywood, and didn’t know if she wanted to go. “Everybody keeps asking me about it, so maybe I should.”

While she was beautiful enough to compete in that brutal environment, I could not, in good conscience, advise her to try. “You’re the only reason people come to Mojave.”

“Stop!” she said, blushing with what I hoped was pleasure.

What I didn’t learn was whether or not she would go out with me. Part of it was due to my own inability to utter an invitation. The sheer amount of foot traffic also made such a delicate conversation difficult.

It was on a Friday morning in early June, however, less than three weeks after Mr. Tominbang first approached me, that I felt I had my opening. I had arrived, as usual, at six-twenty, only to find Eva-Lynne with her eyes red-rimmed. I immediately asked if she was all right, but got no answer, because Fran was already yelling at her, a more frequent occurrence. “Hey, beauty queen, get your ass over here!”

I got my coffee and Danish and sat down at one of the small tables by the window, and witnessed no further outbursts. Imagine my surprise when, during a quiet moment, Eva-Lynne suddenly sat down with me. “Cash, do you mind if I ask you a question?”

Only if I can ask you one in return. The words appeared in my brain, but stayed there, stuck amidst the numbers. “Sure,” I said, pathetically.

“This new job you got—could they use a secretary or something? A girl to answer the phones, maybe?”

I had no idea of Tominbang’s staffing requirements. But at that moment, in a fit of arrogance, I decided I would pay Eva-Lynne’s salary, if necessary. He was paying me enough. “We sure do,” I heard myself say. “It’s only a temporary job, though.”

“Anything to get me out of here now.”

“What time do you get off work?” I was able to ask her a question like that as long as the next phrase had nothing to do with a date.

“Two.”

“Can you get a ride to the airport in Tehachapi?”

She got a look on her face that suggested a hidden power, one having more ancient roots than the wild card. “That won’t be a problem.”

I described Tominbang’s hangar, then told her I would alert our guards to be looking for her around 2:30.

She leaned forward, kissed me on the forehead, and said, “You’re a doll.”

I drove to Tehachapi wrapped in a golden cloud.

It wasn’t until that afternoon, after Eva-Lynne, eyes alive and happy, arrived for her appointment, after I had spent the day in a tedious session with Kafka concerning retrograde impulses of the Quicksilver propulsion system, that I realized I had made a terrible mistake:

I had brought Eva-Lynne into daily contact with Al Dearborn.

It was only a gradual realization. Tominbang would have hired Eva-Lynne on sight (as my father used to say, he seemed to have an eye for the ladies), though he was not too proud to accept my offer to underwrite her salary. “I think she will prove to be an excellent addition to the team,” he said. “If you find any more like her, please bring them to me.” For a variety of reasons, I was not tempted. (Besides, there was only one Eva-Lynne.)

She was immediately assigned to general office help, with special duty as my part-time assistant. (Bacchus and Kafka were burying me in technical documents that required filing and organizing.)

Only then, once she had signed the now-familiar non-disclosure agreement, did she learn what we were doing. “To the what?”

“The Moon,” I said, the first time I had ever actually said such a thing aloud.

“Who? How?” She was genuinely astonished and, I think, a little frightened. (As if this were nothing but a cover story for some much more mundane, but very illegal activity.)

I showed her our Quicksilver, then introduced her to several members of the team. She soon came to be comfortable with the idea of flying to the Moon. More comfortable, I noted, than she seemed with the number and variety of jokers and deuces.

It wasn’t until the end of the workday, as I was preparing to offer Eva-Lynne a ride back to Rosamond (after all, it was on my way), that Dearborn appeared.

Three weeks without drink—three weeks with the job of a lifetime—had improved his looks and his energy, not to mention his manner. (No more vomiting on feet.) He gave Eva-Lynne a wave, as if she had worked there all along, and turned to me. “We’re going to take our bird out for a test hop tonight. What do you say, Co-pilot?”

“Would a simple, ‘No, thank you’, be sufficient?”

“We’re not going into space, Cash. Just a little proficiency run around the neighborhood. Uh, no ‘heavy lifting’.” He laughed at his own joke, and turned to Eva-Lynne. “Will we have the honor of your presence?”

“What time do you want me?” she said, forthrightly, eyes blazing, using exactly those words, and breaking my heart.

Our small group moved into the hangar proper, where Tominbang and the rest of the team gathered, and I lost track of Eva-Lynne. I confess I got angry—at Tominbang, for disrupting my life and dragging me into this stupid project; at Dearborn, for being everything I was not.

Even, I must admit, at Eva-Lynne.

Darkness fell, and a huge orange Moon rose in the east—like a giant jack o’lantern rising from the desert. I had barely begun to study lunar geography, but I could already recognize the dark smear that was the Sea of Storms—Quicksilver’s landing site.

Our landing site, if I had the stomach to turn around and face my fears. (And I don’t mean fears of death.)

So I did.

Quicksilver was towed to the runway apron by a tractor with a sputtering motor.

“You’d think they could afford a new tractor,” Eva-Lynne said behind me.

I was feeling mildly heroic, proud of a chance to show off for Eva-Lynne, when Bacchus appeared suddenly out of the shadows, handing me two ring binders filled with paper. I glanced at the pages. “I had to pencil in some figures, position of the Moon at launch time, stuff like that. But it should give you a good sense of when to do your mass transfer.”

“To what end?” I wasn’t worried about doing the lifts. All I had to do was glance at the orientation of Quicksilver, its velocity, its reported position in three axes, and wait for Dearborn to tap me on the shoulder.

“For a proper simulation,” he said, clearly disgusted with my lack of professionalism.

I turned, hoping to re-connect with Eva-Lynne, but Commander Dearborn chose this moment to emerge from the hangar.

He was wearing a heavy, silvery garment like a diving suit, complete with a neck ring. Under one arm he carried white helmet. He seemed completely focused on the task ahead of him, like a bullfighter I had once seen in Tijuana.

Tominbang was a step behind him, but compared to Dearborn’s glittering presence, might as well have been invisible.

(I noticed one strange face in the crowd, not far behind Dearborn: Sampson, his backup pilot.)

Dearborn stopped and looked up at Quicksilver, which had now been towed to a distance of fifty yards from the hangar door. He raised his helmet, lowered it over his head, locked it into place.

Some of the team members applauded. I felt an unfamiliar surge of pride. From what I could see of Tominbang’s face, so did he.

And, for a moment, so did I. I was part of that crew!

The next half hour raced past. Dressed in street clothes (but carrying a crash helmet handed to me by Kafka), I joined Dearborn and Tominbang aboard Quicksilver. I had never been inside the vehicle before, and had to be helped down through the top hatch into the newly-installed airlock by Sampson. (“This is where the weapons bay used to be.”) Then I crawled forward into the cabin and wrenched myself to the left-hand seat. (There were three, one forward, and two behind.

“I hope I don’t have to get out of this thing in a hurry,” I said, half-joking.

“The pilot can blow the canopy for emergency egress,” Sampson said, his eyes bland and almost sleepy. I decided right then that I didn’t much like him. Maybe it was the air of truly unpredictable strangeness he radiated—his “wrong way” wild card, no doubt.

As the team cleared out, my helmet radio squawked. “Pilot to Co-pilot,” Dearborn said, “that pistol grip tiller close to your right hand is your lifting mechanism. It is finely calibrated to connect with the center of mass of this vehicle. Touch it only when you do your lifting.”

“Uh, roger,” I said, trying to sound astronautical.

There was some chatter on the radio that did not directly concern me. Next to me, Tominbang practically bounced up and down like a restless child.

Dearborn counted down to ignition, and pressed the start button. Flame shot out of the back of Quicksilver. In a cloud of debris, the pumpkin-seed vehicle started rolling down the runway. It rotated almost immediately, then headed straight up into the night sky …

I felt some pressure, but not much more than on an airplane. For the first few moments, that is. The pressure kept building and building, and to my extreme discomfort, we rolled to our left and over on our backs. “Why are we doing this?” I said between clenched teeth.

“Aerodynamics don’t apply here,” Dearborn said, almost cackling with glee. “It just lets our radio antennas communicate with the ground.”

Then he said, “First waypoint, Co-pilot. Give her a little lift.”

As I’ve said, annoyance is my perpetual state, and it quickly transitions to anger.

We made a good test lift.

Twenty minutes late we were back on the ground, hatch opened. As I walked away, weak in the knees, I looked back to see Quicksilver glowing like a campfire coal on the runway.

A crowd surged toward us. Dearborn removed his helmet, he handed it to me. “Flies great, doesn’t she, Co-Pilot?”

I couldn’t help agreeing.

My elation was so profound that it wasn’t until an hour later, as the crowd finally thinned, as Quicksilver was towed back into the hangar, that I realized Dearborn was gone.

And so was Eva-Lynne.

He didn’t come home that night. I know, because I sat up until three.

Maybe that’s why, when the phone rang at six A.M., I was willing to face—no, to welcome—my next challenge. “Yes, Mr. Skalko.”

Mr. Warren Skalko gave no over sign of his power or his wealth. No flashy car. No expensive suits. No gold pinkie rings or necklaces. No thick-necked sideboys. (They were around, but you never saw them, unless you happened to realize that the occasional passing motorcyclist was probably one of them.) His golf game was average, and his bets were small—five-dollar Nassaus. Even his physical person was nondescript: at 50 he was of medium height, a little overweight, balding, his eyes swimming behind thick glasses. If you met him without knowing who he was, you would have thought yourself in the company of an accountant, and not one who handled large accounts.

At one point, early in our relationship, I was silly enough to ask him why he did what he did, when he seemed to live so modestly.

“I can’t help myself,” was his reply.

He always made his own calls, too. “Cash, Warren Skalko here,” he chirped. “Sorry about the early hour. Wondering if you’d have time to get together later this morning, around eight, at the usual place.”

Eight it was, at the driving range of a ratty municipal par-three in Lancaster. It was October now, and the desert nights were cold enough to leave frost on the fairways and greens. So the crowd at the driving range was sparse.

Only Mr. Warren Skalko taking some swings with a seven-iron. “Tominbang tested his plane last night,” he announced the instant I was within earshot. (That was another Skalko trait: getting directly to the point.)

I think my heart stopped for a good five seconds. Obviously Tominbang had a distant connection to Mr. Skalko. Less obvious was why Mr. Skalko would have any interest in his activities. Equally less obvious, but of much greater concern to me was whether Mr. Skalko was angry about my involvement. “Yes.”

“Think it’s gonna work? This flying to the Moon?”

I couldn’t help a reflexive smile. “I hope so.” It was, after all, my life.

“Oh, you’d be all right. That Dearborn fella, he’s got the luck.” Swish. Mr. Skalko launched a shot down the range. “But I’m not sure I like this deal,” he said.

This was not code for a stronger emotion. Mr. Skalko was a direct man: if he really hated Tominbang’s project, he would have said exactly that.

“I’m not sure of the value, either,” I said.

“Why are you doing it? The money?” Mr. Skalko knew everything he needed to know about my money problems.

“Yes,” I said, then adding, because he would know, anyway. “And a girl.”

“Ah. That’s even worse.” Swish went the club. “When is the big day?”

“We’re scheduled to take off in two weeks.”

Mr. Skalko examined the seven iron, and then, apparently deciding, he had had enough fun at the driving range, slid it back into his golf bag. “Tell you what,” he said, “give me a call when it looks as though you’re ready to go. No later than the day before, at the usual number.” He sighed and looked around at the country-side. “I need to think about what this means.”

There was never any doubt that I would agree to do whatever Mr. Skalko wanted.

It was only after putting miles between my car and Mr. Skalko that I began to feel troubled by my new status as a spy inside Tominbang’s project. My heart began to beat faster, my breathing grew ragged. It was as if I had just run a mile.

I would have been alarmed, but I had learned to expect this reaction. All I could do was pull off at the first auto salvage yard I came to.

Here were hundreds of Fords, Chevys, Buicks, complete with tailfins and chrome, all suitable for my brand of lifting.

I started at the end of one row and lifted seven in a row, flipping each car onto its hood with a loud bang!. Not only was it noisy, it was dusty. But by the time I had reached the end of the row, my heart rate had returned to normal. And my emotions were spent.

I drove past Haugen’s Bakery (I no longer had reason to stop), then directly to the hangar, where I almost welcomed the sight of Eva-Lynne tottering in, giggling, wearing yesterday’s dress, and on Dearborn’s arm.

My father used to tell me I had no spine, an unfortunate phrase, given that it literally applied to at least two of my joker playmates. Perhaps that’s why I gave his judgment so little credence for so long.

But various mistakes in my life, beginning with flunking out of Harvey Mudd followed closely by a disastrous marriage, which led to excessive gambling and debts, and thence an unsolicited association with Mr. Warren Skalko, had convinced me of the truth of my father’s evaluation.

I had been a coward. Or, if you find that too harsh, I had never faced a challenge, either professionally or personally. Case number one, Eva-Lynne, now lost to a man who embraced challenges, or, if necessary, created them.

Case number two—the flight to the Moon. Some time between Dearborn’s walkout in his silver suit, and my “workout” at the auto salvage yard, I decided that this was the one challenge I had to face.

When I reached Tehachapi-Kern, I avoided any chance of contact with Eva-Lynne, and immediately searched out a technician named Sobel, who had left messages for me for at least a week.

He turned out to be some sort of aquatic joker who actually had to wear a bowl-like helmet filled with water, as well as a bubbling device which regularly uttered a disturbing noise like a baby’s cry. “Wouldn’t you be happier in the sea?” I asked him.

“Never learned to swim,” he said, completely deadpan. (Well, they do call them jokers.) “Actually, I signed up when Tominbang hired a friend of mine. Who wouldn’t want to be part of the first flight to the Moon?”

Which made me feel bad that I had ignored his messages. When I learned that he was the specialist in charge of space suits, that he had wanted me to come in for fit checks for a suit of my own, I felt even worse.

Fortunately, we got to work, and within two hours I learned more about the operational aspects of the flight to the Moon than I had in three weeks. The silver suit, made mostly of heavy rubber, was one of half a dozen originally developed for the X-11A program a decade past, acquired, no doubt, through some shady contact of Tominbang’s. “We’re adding special boots, a white coverall and a special helmet visor for use on the lunar surface.”

“I’ll be out on the surface?”

“At the moment, only Dearborn and Tominbang are scheduled to walk on the Moon. They will erect the relay station. But if they have trouble, you will have to help them.” Somewhat ashamedly, I found myself hoping they would: why go all the way to the Moon and not walk on it?

I bent myself into various shapes in order to get my head through the helmet ring. Then I was zipped tight, and immediately began to perspire. I could not stand up straight, either. “You’ll be sitting most of the time,” Sobel said, taking some measurements, like a tailor, then helping me out of the garment. “You’ll either be hooked up to Quicksilver’s cooling system, or to a backpack.”

Then a more practical question arose. “What about sanitary facilities?”

Sobel smiled and held up a metal bottle and tube. “Standard USAF catheter.”

“And what about … other functions?”

“You’ll be on a low residue diet for the last few days prior to the flight.”

“How long will I be in this thing?”

“Two days, tops.”

That was some relief.

When I returned to my office, I found Bacchus leering all over an alarmed Eva-Lynne. (I couldn’t help noticing that she had, indeed, changed clothes from the previous night.) “I’ll be with you in a minute, Doctor,” I told this sex-crazed joker. “Eva-Lynne, I need to talk to you in private.”

As I closed the door, she said, “Thank God. I’ve met some aggressive men in my life—” I could only imagine. “—but he is by far the worst. I don’t even like having him breathe on me.”

“Sorry. I should have warned you.”

“I’m not sure a warning would have done much good. I probably wouldn’t have believed you.” She favored me with the same smile that had so bewitched me that first time I saw her. “But it’s very sweet of you to protect me.”

Seeing that she was about to leave, I cleared my throat and prepared to subject myself to bad news. “Speaking of protection, did you get home all right last night?”

She whirled to face me, and I saw a look on her lovely face that I had never seen before. One lovely golden eyebrow rose slightly. The effect was far more womanly, if that’s the word. Knowing. “Let’s just say, I got where I was supposed to get.”

I must have blushed. I certainly had no idea what to say. And I never, in fact, got the chance to respond, because Eva-Lynne prevented it. She took me by the hand and said, “You know, Cash, I think you and I need to have a picnic.”

My protest was truly feeble. “There’s nowhere to eat.” Most of Tominbang’s team packed lunches, or ate the offerings of the tiny cafeteria over at the airport.

“Don’t be silly, Cash. It’s not about food.”

“I hope you weren’t under the impression I was a virgin,” she said, once we’d reached our picnic grounds, a flat area halfway up the hill a hundred yards beyond the fence which ringed Tominbang’s hangar complex. In one last stab at being a masculine provider, I had bought two bottles of Dr. Pepper from the building’s vending machine as we walked out.

“No,” I said, telling the truth. This was, after all, 1968. Virginity had ceased to be in fashion about the time of my sophomore year at Harvey Mudd some years earlier. I had been married, and had been in several shorter sexual relationships myself, so I should have been beyond the adolescent fear that my sexual skills would not measure up, so to speak.

“But you were hoping I wasn’t a slut,” Eva-Lynne said, articulating my next thought before I could. My blush confirmed her statement.

She exhaled. “Have you ever heard of Diamond Butte, Arizona?” she said.

“Should I?”

“No reason. When I get through telling you about it, you’ll probably wish you still hadn’t heard it.” Diamond Butte, she explained, was a tiny town in the northwestern corner of Arizona a few miles south of Utah. “It’s cut off from the rest of Arizona by the Grand Canyon, but technically not in Utah. It’s kind of like—what’s that television show? The Twilight Zone. Nobody knows which set of laws to apply, because no one’s there to enforce them.

“Let me guess,” I said. “Nobody enforces either set.”

“Right.” She grimaced. “Which is why, for years, most of the people in the area were polygamists. My family, for example. My mother was my father’s seventh wife. I had twenty brothers and sisters. And I was literally sold to a man—my future husband—when I was fourteen. I became his eleventh wife when I was sixteen.”

“And that’s what you ran away from?” I said, hoping that was the end of the story.

Eva-Lynne ignored me. “It was bad. Polygamy may work for some. I think my family generally got along. But Roderick, my husband, was a bastard. I think he would rather have beaten us rather than slept with us.

“All of us tried to run off at one time or another. We all got caught and taken back, and it would be even worse.

“Finally one of the other men in the town heard what was going on, and challenged Roderick. But Roderick killed him and took his wives for his own.

“Which left him free to get rid of us. He sold us to the Gambiones, Cash. They dragged us off to New York, Jokertown, where they had a brothel just for jokers.” Her voice had grown quieter as she spoke. By this time there were tears rolling down her cheeks. For her sake and mine, I wanted to her to stop. But no. “I spent three years there.” Now her smile was savage. “I was very popular with the clientele.

“Eventually one of the girls died; a joker killed her. The Gambiones had to lie low for a few weeks; they shipped most of to San Francisco.

“I’d saved a little money.” She hesitated for a moment, then said, in the smallest possible voice, “I used my charms. And I got out. You wanted to know how someone who looks like me winds up in Mojave? That’s why.”

“I had no idea.”

“I’m glad. But now you know. And now you have good reason not to fall in love with me.”

I mumbled something. “What was that?” she said.

“My mother used to say, even after the wild card: ‘love trumps all’.”

Eva-Lynne gave a short, sharp laugh. “I’ll tell you what—

She was interrupted by the blare of a warning siren, the same one used the night of the flight test. We both jumped at the sound, and she said, “We’d better get back.”

As we started down the hill, I let Eva-Lynne lead the way, thrilling to her every step and sway. In spite of the revelation of her sordid or, at least, troubling past, I loved her more hopelessly than ever.

As we reached the hangar, we saw that Quicksilver had been rolled into the open. Eva-Lynne took my hand and said, “I can’t believe you’re going to ride that thing all the way to the Moon.”

“And, hopefully, back again,” I said. She laughed. For a moment, everything seemed possible.

Then Kakfa scuttled up to us. “Need to talk,” he hissed. Or perhaps spat would be a better word. He looked directly at Eva-Lynne. “Alone.”

She took her dismissal with grace, and headed back to the office.

“We’re launching tonight,” Kafka said.

“Tonight? Since when?”

When Kafka got agitated, he began to scuttle back and forth, like a roach in a jar. “Tominbang’s orders. He says there are ‘problems’.”

“What kind of problems?”

“I don’t know,” Kafka hissed. “But we go tonight!”

I had prepared myself to make the call to Mr. Skalko. I had not expected to do it so soon.

“Tominbang’s in a lot of trouble,” Al Dearborn told me a few moments later. Tominbang had failed to appear for a lunch meeting. Instead he had telephoned, and wound up telling Dearborn his sad story: he had not been using his own money for the Quicksilver-to-the-Moon program. Instead, he had dipped into funds belonging to others, apparently in the hopes that profits from the first Moon flight would allow him to pay back his unwitting “investors” before they realized they’d been robbed.

But one of the parties found out. “Some guy named Warren Skalko. Ever heard of him?”

“Yes,” I said. In order to keep Dearborn from pressing further (since I doubted I could lie to him), I added, “he’s the local godfather. Bad news.”

The bad news explained the flurry of activity in the hangar. Jokers and deuces were shredding papers; a burn barrel out back was a-flame. Every few moments, a car would launch itself out of the parking lot in a spray of gravel. “You’d think we were about to be bombed,” I said to Dearborn.

“From what Tominbang said, that’s a distinct possibility.”

“How can we launch tonight if he’s not here?”

“He’s not making the trip.”

“Given the situation, I’m not sure I’m making the trip.” In fact, I was, at that moment, quite and sure I wasn’t. I was two minutes away from making a hasty departure from Tehachapi-Kern.

“Well, Cash, as you know: without you, there is no flight to the Moon.” He smiled to take the edge off what was clearly a threat: “I’d hate to have to kidnap you.”

“In that case,” I said, “when do we leave?”

Dearborn clapped me on the shoulder. “That’s the spirit!”

Seeing one last opportunity to put an end to this madness, I said, “Can we operate Quicksilver with a crew of two?”

“Operate, yes. But the mass properties have been very finely calibrated to your talents, Co-pilot. We’ve got to have a certain amount of mass in that right-hand seat. And, given that we can probably use the extra hands on the Moon, I’d rather not just fill it with a sack of cement.”

Just then, Bacchus walked in, brought by Eva-Lynne. “You wanted to see me?” the joker physicist said.

“Yeah, how much do you weigh?”

“In the mornings I mass 185 pounds,” Bacchus said, his voice like a hiccup. “By evening that decreases to around 182, depending on my fluid intake—”

Dearborn held up his hand. I could have told him that with Bacchus, there was no such thing as a short answer to a direct question. “Sorry. That puts us over our weight limit—”

Before I could even think it, much less say it, Eva-Lynne announced, “One hundred and twenty pounds.”

“What’s that?” Dearborn said.

“How much I weigh.”

Bacchus snorted. Dearborn and I looked at each other.

“Do you know what we’re talking about?” I said.

“Going to the Moon, Cash.” As if she were talking about a drive to Barstow, or possibly as far as Las Vegas.

“Can we take a girl to the Moon?” I asked.

“I don’t know about you, Co-pilot, but I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have along.” He grinned at me and Eva-Lynne. “Let’s kick the tires and light this candle.”

It was the evening of Friday, December 20. I realized that Christmas was only a few days away, and I had bought nothing for anyone—not even Eva-Lynne.

Dearborn and I struggled into our pressure suits. Eva-Lynne, after spending several precious moments wrapping her blond tresses into some kind of braid, wore hers as if she were born to it. I said as much as we walked toward Quicksilver. “This suit is nothing, compared to a girdle.”

Thinking of women’s undergarments triggered another worry: “Uh, what are you doing to do about … sanitary matters?”

Eva-Lynne stifled a laugh, and motioned me close. “I helped raise a dozen babies, Cash. I know how to make a diaper!” My curiosity more than satisfied, I was about to climb into Quicksilver’s cockpit when she added, too loudly for my taste, “What are you guys using? Can-o-pees?”

Dearborn was already in the forward seat as I strapped into the left rear position. Then Eva-Lynne wedged herself into the one to my right—Tominbang’s former seat.

Sobel was about to close the airlock hatch when he leaned in, agitated. “Bikers are storming the gates!” he said. “What should I do?”

“Lock the damned door and take cover,” Dearborn growled. He had already started the engine.

Sobel froze with indecision for a long moment. Then, apparently deciding that Dearborn’s order made sense, gave me his hand. “Good luck! Bring back some green cheese!”

He wiggled out of sight and closed the hatch behind him. We heard several clicks as the latches fired, and we were sealed in.

“One minute,” Dearborn said. “Hold on, people. You’re going to take the ride of your lives!”

Eva-Lynne reached back to take my hand. I felt no fear: I was too convinced of Dearborn’s luck to think I could be killed in his presence. But I felt trapped in the pressure suit, my movements hampered.

Spang! Something struck Quicksilver! “What was that?” Eva-Lynn said.

“I think the SOBs are shooting at us,” Dearborn said. “Hang on, we’re go.” And go we were—

For perhaps a hundred yards down the runway. Even with my limited visibility, I could see the flashes of bullets striking the pavement in front of us. Then one of them struck home, making the cockpit ring. Then I heard hissing.

Red warning lights erupted on Dearborn’s console. A bell sounded. “Goddammit,” he snapped. With inhuman—or joker—calm, he tried to stop our rollout. The whole vehicle shook as we skidded off the runway. Only then did I realize just how fast we’d been going.

Quicksilver slewed to the left and slammed into something immobile. Eva-Lynne and I were thrown to the left; I hit the bulk-head, though my harness and suit protected me from injury. Eva-Lynne seemed to be fine.

Not so Dearborn. Perhaps his harness had been loose. In any case, he had hit the instrument panel. He was breathing hard, waving weakly at the two of his with a free hand, “Get out!”

I obeyed, hitting the emergency egress switch on the canopy. It flew off with a muffled thump! The next few moments were chaotic as I unstrapped, helped Eva-Lynne, and got both of us out of Quicksilver.

Lights blinded us. Shadowy figures boiled out of the darkness, swarming over Quicksilver and Dearborn like insects.

Eva-Lynne and I were hustled to our feet, and half-dragged to the hangar building. I still had my helmet on, so sounds were muffled and vision was impaired. I saw some of the Quicksilver team members lined up against the wall, hands (or, in the case of Kafka, pincers) in the air, as beefy nats and jokers in the black leathers of Hell’s Angels held them at gunpoint.

I saw Sobel lying face-down on the ground just outside the hangar, a trail of blood marking the path of his death crawl.

We were shoved into the same equipment room where poor Sobel had helped us into our suits not an hour earlier. We barely had time to catch our breath when Mr. Skalko entered, accompanied by several of his thugs. “You,” he said, pointing to me. “Out.”

I was hauled to my feet and essentially stripped of my suit. Then, wearing nothing but a T-shirt and shorts, I was marched out of the hangar. Dearborn and Eva-Lynne remained behind.

“You cut it a little close,” Mr. Skalko said.

“Tominbang moved up the launch.” I’m sure I sounded angry, because I was. I had assumed that Skalko would take action once he knew the Quicksilver launch was imminent. I hadn’t expected that action to be a mob shootout.

“I know that now. Good thing for you.” I’m sure Skalko knew all about Tominbang’s plans. For one thing, he had surely interrogated the poor man. For another, I doubt I was his only spy inside the program. “Kind of a shame,” he said. He actually sighed. “I was still thinking about it when you called.”

“Why did you stop it? The money?”

Mr. Skalko looked at me with amusement. “You mean, what he stole?”

“Yes.”

“I deal with stuff like that all the time. No, I had to kill this whole idea. Going to the Moon.”

Now I was as intrigued as I was angry. “Why would you care?”

“One flight means nothing. It’s what happens after the flight.” He looked at me as if weighing my worthiness. Apparently I was found worthy. “Once you’ve proven you can do this, other people will follow. They’ll build a little outpost up there. Then a bigger one. Then a whole damn city.

“And to service that city, they will have a regular system of transportation that I can’t control.” He stood there, in the darkness of a desert night, looking at the stars. “Things will come into this country that I can’t stop. That would be bad for my business.”

I saw the point. Not that I cared. “What’s going to happen to them?” I said, meaning Dearborn and Eva-Lynne.

“I don’t know yet.” He saw that I was ready to go back into the hangar. “I want you to go home.”

He tossed me my car keys. I don’t know if he found them with my clothes, or whether he had his own set, which would have been a typical Skalko touch. “Oh, by the way,” he said, “we’re ending our association.”

In spite of the fact that I wanted our association to end—better yet, to have ended some time prior to this—I started to protest. Mr. Skalko held up his hand. “You’ve done good work. You’ve been paid well. But I know people, and this one is going to haunt you. Keep your mouth shut and you don’t need to see me again.”

I had just stepped out of the shower, having taken inventory of a new set of bruises, when I heard wheels crunching on the gravel drive. By the time I was dressed, there was a knock at my door.

Dearborn and Eva-Lynne. He was limping, and Eva-Lynne was supporting him.

Skalko’s men had let them go. After all, the purpose of the attack had been to stop the flight to the Moon. Tominbang had already been punished.

I wanted both to spend the night, but Dearborn shook his head. “Co-pilot, we’re not out of the game yet. We need your car.”

The drive to Los Angeles took two hours, perhaps because it was Friday night, with the holidays approaching. South from my place in Lancaster, through the Antelope Valley into the San Fernando Valley. Then down the new freeway into western Los Angeles. I asked Dearborn several times where I was heading, but he just smiled (or grimaced; he was clearly in pain). All he would tell me was my next turn.

Eva-Lynne dozed in the back seat.

Eventually we arrived at Douglas Field, a small airport in Santa Monica bordering the plant where so many aircraft had been built over the decades. The Douglas Company had moved its manufacturing elsewhere, leaving behind a number of huge, empty buildings. I was directed to drive up to one of them.

Eva-Lynne woke as the car stopped. “What are we doing here?” she said.

Dearborn postponed his answer until he had unlocked a side door.

We walked into a hangar much like the one at Tehachapi-Kern. Even more strangely, a Quicksilver vehicle sat in this middle of this one, too. And my old friend, Kafka, was busy in the cockpit!

“Here is where we’re going to launch the first flight to the Moon,” Dearborn said, looking pale but satisfied. As Eva-Lynne and I stared in wonder—and began to recognize other members of the team from Tehachapi-Kern—he explained that Tominbang had always felt that Mr. Skalko would eventually learn of his plans, and strike at him. So he had paid for modifications to a second Quicksilver vehicle, the “ground spare” originally ticketed for the museum!

That was astounding enough. But then Eva-Lynne asked another question: “You’ve got another vehicle. Great. But you can’t possibly fly it.”

“I know,” Dearborn said. “Mike!” he called.

A vaguely familiar figured emerged from the other side of Quicksilver. Major Sampson, Dearborn’s old X-11A colleague, his alternate.

“Remember what I told you, Cash. Always, always, always have a backup.”

The preparations resumed, almost as if the horrifying incident at Tehachapi-Kern had been nothing more than a fouled-up dress rehearsal for some high school drama. Dearborn assured Eva-Lynne and me that Sampson was perfectly capable of flying the mission. Better yet, that he knew all about my lifting power and just how that integrated into the flight plans.

As the sun rose over the mountains to the east, on the cold morning of Saturday, December 21, 1968, Sampson, Eva-Lynne and I once again donned our suits (brought here from Tehachapi-Kern by Kafka) and boarded Quicksilver.

We were much more business-like this time, due, I think, to our improved realization of the seriousness of what we were attempting, and also to Sampson’s more disciplined methods.

At 6:51 a.m., the main rocket kicked in, and we started down the runway. On Sampson’s order, I grasped the tiller, and we lifted.

Even though the test hop had prepared me for the experience of flying into orbit upside down, I was startled by the sight of Douglas Field, then downtown Santa Monica and the Pacific, all of Southern California and finally the blue earth itself growing smaller while rising to the top of the window.

We were feeling heavy, of course. Kafka had told me we would endure at least 6 Gs. But we were strapped in so tightly that it was merely a mildly unpleasant feeling, not something truly stressful.

What was unnerving was being able feel every burp and pop of our rocket motor. “A little instability there,” Sampson said, far too casually, following one particularly wrenching example.

Our flight on the rocket lasted less than three minutes, and ended with an abrupt shutdown which flung us forward in our harnesses. (This was, for me, the single most disquieting sensation of the whole voyage. I felt as though I would fly right through the forward windows.)

“Everybody okay back there?” Sampson asked, in that peculiar, fatherly tone of his.

“Fine!” Eva-Lynne answered brightly. I glanced over at her, and was rewarded with her best smile.

“We’re going to loop around the earth once,” Sampson explained, for Eva-Lynne’s benefit, “then let Cash do his thing. That will send us toward the Moon. In the meantime, enjoy the view. I plan to.”

Of course, being forward, Sampson actually had a view. Though shortly even he didn’t have much to see, as we flew over the nightside of the earth. Below us was darkness punctuated by a surprising number of lightning flashes. Hundreds, in fact.

Eva-Lynne and I removed our helmets and watched this display with enthusiasm, as Sampson tended to the business of orienting Quicksilver. Rolling the vehicle tended to change our view, and, ultimately, made me ill.

In fact, as we neared the completion of our first orbit, and Sampson gave me warning that I would be lifting in ten minutes, I realized I was too sick to do anything. I opened my mouth to say so, and promptly repeated Al Dearborn’s greeting to met that first day at Tehachapi-Kern—I threw up.

“Oh, dear,” Eva-Lynne said. Fortunately, she had noticed that I was turning green, and had a paper towel and airsickness bag ready. The mess was blessedly minor, and within minutes I was feeling better.

Better—but nowhere near capable of doing a lift. “Two minutes,” Sampson said. “Are you ready back there?”

“I don’t know.”

He twisted and faced me. “Eva-Lynne, seal your helmet.”

With a speed that astonished me, Eva-Lynne did as she was ordered. Then Sampson turned halfway toward me and began speaking in a voice so low I could barely hear him without my helmet open. “I know all about your phone call and your friend, Skalko. But she doesn’t. Want to see the look on her face when she hears you sold us all out?”

I felt a sudden, and all-too familiar, surge of anger.

“Now!” Sampson said.

My hand found the tiller, and we lifted.

Because we had taken off earlier than planned, we sailed toward a Moon we couldn’t see. With his telescope, Sampson claimed to be able to see a dull sliver limning the nightside, but I couldn’t. “Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s out there.”

“I’ll just have to take your word for it,” I told him.

The day-long flight would have been intolerable if we’d had to stay strapped in. Fortunately, the airlock behind the two rear seats provided a certain amount of room—and privacy.

We all needed it, especially Eva-Lynne. But I also crawled inside the lock, primarily to get away from Sampson. I understood the rationale for his nastiness in forcing me to lift. He must have known that I needed a strong emotional charge, however brief, to channel. But I didn’t like him for it. Perhaps it was his general air of smug superiority; perhaps it was just knowing he had a tool he could use against me again.

Perhaps it was the nagging feeling that we were doomed because the lucky Commander Dearborn had somehow managed to miss the trip, and we were left with the man who would always be in the right place at the wrong time. I spent the entire flight from the Earth to the Moon feeling like a man who has just been told he has months to live.

I dozed for a fitful couple of hours, and woke to find the Moon not only visible, but growing in size.

“Looks like we’re here,” Eva-Lynne said.

I had no difficulty getting in the proper mood to make the braking lift: the sheer spectacle of seeing the lunar landscape provided all the adrenaline I needed. To my mind, we were falling lower and lower, going faster and faster, about to crash into a bleak world of mountains, craters and rocks. The craters themselves were filled with smaller craters as well as giant boulders—

I made the braking lift; Sampson followed with a series of bursts from the main engine, and we began our descent.

I wish I could say I saw it, but with Quicksilver in a wings-level, nose forward position, only Sampson could see the lunar surface. Eva-Lynne and I saw nothing but the black sky of lunar night, until, at that last instant, the sunlit peaks of the dark gray mountains appeared. “Thirty seconds,” Sampson told us. (He was giving us—not to mention Dearborn and the rest of poor Tominbang’s team back on Earth—a terse commentary the whole way down.)

At the last moment, it seemed that we were traveling far too fast. Sampson announced, “Contact!”

And we scraped to a stop, rocking for a moment, as if on the edge of a cliff, then settling gently.

We had reached the Sea of Storms. “Please be advised,” Sampson radioed, “we have arrived.” I realized that Eva-Lynne had been clutching my hand the entire time.

No warning lights glared on Sampson’s console. We heard no unusual sounds. So we stayed, our time on the lunar surface necessarily limited. After all, in Tominbang’s vision, we were merely pathfinders demonstrating that it was possible to reach the Moon—and return safely. Sampson had the simple task of erecting Tominbang’s communications array, whether or not our unfortunate backer ever used it.

In the original plans, Dearborn would have done the work, with Tominbang’s assistance. Now it was up to Sampson and me.

Within an hour, Sampson emerged from the airlock, stepping onto the surface and uttering one simple word: “Wow”.

He went for a short scout while, with Eva-Lynne’s help, I repressurized the airlock and moved inside with the array package. “Sure you don’t want to come out?” I said.

“Very sure. This is close enough for me.”

Mission rules dictated that one of us had to remain inside Quicksilver. Eva-Lynne had volunteered: I don’t believe she had a great deal of faith in her hastily-modified pressure suit. (In fact, once she landed, she unzipped it, and eventually shed the whole thing.)

She gave me a kiss, then closed the inner hatch.

Once the air pressure had bled down, I opened the outer hatch and hauled myself out. Moving was incredibly difficult, not because of lunar gravity (which, thanks to the heavy suit, felt the same as Earth gravity to me). I slid rather than climbed down the side of Quicksilver, and fell to my knees in the lunar soil. I saw the slightest puff of gray dust, which settled instantly.

“Oh, beautiful,” Sampson said, sarcastically.

I thought at first he was referring to my inelegant first steps, but instead he was looking at the undercarriage of Quicksilver:

A shiny gash ran from back to front. The cause was obvious … a small, rounded rock that rose about a foot higher than the otherwise flat, soft lunar soil around it. “Did that do any damage?”

“Hard to tell,” Sampson said, getting on his hands and knees and trying to look under the vehicle. “There’s a stain on the skin of the ship, but that could have been there before landing, or even before we took off.”

Sampson’s attitude suggested a man who was confronted with, at worst, a flat tire. I envied that, as I stared at what could only be a fuel leak, knowing we needed to fire the main engine before I could perform a lift that would send us flying back to Earth. “What do we do?” I said, trying not to sound as terrified as I felt.

He was back on his feet, bouncing toward the array package I had dropped. “Complete the mission. We’ll deal with the other problem in its turn.”

“It’s too bad this had to happen,” Sampson said abruptly, about halfway through the construction of Tominbang’s array. Just when I thought he was going to address our problem, he continued: “If the damn Takisians hadn’t arrived, this would be the biggest story on the planet! ‘Man on the Moon’! Can you imagine? Thousands of people would be listening on the radio. We might even have television here.

“And we would just be the first. There would be other landings, too. Scientists would come up here. Even tourists. Once the human race proved it could do something like this, it would never turn back!”

I could have argued with him: I wasn’t too sure that the human race “would never turn back”. We’d “turned back” every chance we got.

Or I could have told Sampson that a certain mobster in southern California agreed with him completely. But all I said was, “If the Takisians hadn’t come, neither of us would be here.”

So we completed our mission, performing an hour of pointless work under the glare of a naked sun. Only when we were starting back toward Quicksilver did I pause to attempt to appreciate the fact that I could die in a place no humans had ever visited. I remember thinking it was an honor I would rather have done without.

Eva-Lynne would die, too, which made it even worse.

As Sampson loped ahead of me, I stopped and, using my boot, wrote the following in the soil: “Cash + Eva-Lynne”. I wondered how long it would be before human eyes saw it. If they ever saw it.

Sampson was already back at his controls when I emerged from the airlock. He acted as if everything were fine. “Strap in, gang. No sense hanging around longer than we have to.”

As I finished removing my suit (it was covered with dust, and my oxygen tanks were empty), I put my head close to Eva-Lynne’s. “Did he—?”

“I was listening,” she said, finishing my question. We had no time for further conversation, because Sampson snapped, “Let’s go back there!”

I was angry, but I strapped in. In fact, I tried to reassure Eva-Lynne. “It might be nothing,” I said, whispering.

Sampson finished his checklist, and with twenty seconds’ warning, punched the engine start button. With a dull drone, it started up—

Then died. Now the warning lights flashed. “Dammit.” It was the first time I had heard Sampson use profanity. “We’ve got fuel, but we’ve got a leak in the line that runs to the main engine.” Which meant we didn’t have enough energy to get off the surface of the Moon.

I looked at Eva-Lynne; it was her turn to see panic in my face. For a moment she seemed lost. Then that disturbing, yet attractive knowing look appeared on her face, and she leaned close to me. Her hair, stirred by small breezes from the ventilation fans, surrounded me, caressing me. I forgot about the stale odor of the Quicksilver interior as I inhaled perfume.

And felt her warm breath on my neck and her hand on my chest. Her lips brushed my ear. I think I mumbled a syllable of protest. “Sshh,” she said. Then: “Colonel, why don’t you step inside the airlock.”

Sampson didn’t hesitate. With a look on his face that combined disgust and hope, he crawled past us and into the chamber, dogging the hatch.

My straps seemed to unbuckle themselves. Eva-Lynne’s undergarment removed itself, as did mine. I took her in my arms, feeling her breasts against me, her mouth on mine.

Moments later, I fumbled for the tiller, and faster than any rocket, we fired off the Sea of Storms.

That is the inside story of the first human flight to another world. This is, as far as I know, the only record of it. None of the support team talked. I don’t believe many of them knew what our true destination was.

I never saw or heard from Tominbang again, though the relay station was fully operational. Did he survive to make his transactions?

Sampson is now a major general, first chief of the new Space Command. He’ll never talk, at least not until he’s safely retired. He was mortified at witnessing my love-making with Eva-Lynne. (He wouldn’t meet our eyes on the flight home.) An association with our highly-illegal operation would also be bad for his military career, which is going great. He took the lessons he learned from Quicksilver and applied them to a revamped vehicle called the Hornet, which flies into orbit without the need of an assist from a horny deuce.

Nor will you find Eva-Lynne or Cash Mitchell on Paregrine’s Perch telling tales of that first flight to the Moon. Not as long as Warren Skalko lives. Skalko never forgets.

Nevertheless, I am forever grateful for my small role in a secret history. I not only found Eva-Lynne, I learned the truth of her life-long lesson, the one she almost imparted to me on the hillside above Tehachapi-Kern Airport:

Sex trumps all.