by Ben Mezrich
It was another twenty minutes before Thad got called for his own interview. Brian wished him luck, and then Thad was moving quickly down the hall that led to the administrator’s offices. The designated room was at the end, the door already open. He stopped in the doorway, peering into what looked like a huge space with an oversized wooden desk in one corner. There was a man sitting at the desk, back to the door, typing away at a computer. Thad immediately got the impression that this man had already made his decision. He certainly didn’t seem eager to meet another co-op.
But when the man finally turned around, Thad was in for a shock. The guy was grinning just like he’d been a week earlier, when Thad had returned the lost wallet to him. The man’s name was Mike, and it was just one of those crazy coincidences in life; Mike was one of the NBL’s project managers, and he had been given the task of hiring the new co-op for the dive assistant position.
“We can end the suspense right now,” he said, “because you’ve got the job. You, and your buddy out there; I’ll have to shuffle a few things, but we can certainly make room for two. But we’ve got to sit here for at least fifteen minutes and make it look like we’re doing an interview so I don’t get in any trouble.”
And for the next fifteen minutes they chatted, mostly about the NBL and how Thad would have to get recertified in scuba to NASA’s exacting standards. Thad wasn’t worried about any testing; he had yet to fail at anything he’d gone after.
…
“I don’t care how cool that monster of a swimming pool is,” Brian shouted over the sound of the space-age shower jets that were pummeling him from every angle. “The thing that really blows my mind is the goddamn towels.”
Thad grinned, raising his face to let one of his own shower nozzles go to work on his neck and upper chest. The tension was bleeding right out of him as the superheated jets of water cycled from soft to hard in a prearranged massaging program. The astronaut shower room was totally a scene right out of The Jetsons. The shower cubicles themselves were single-unit pods formed out of some seamless, space-age material. The electronic control panels affixed to the smooth interior walls were incredibly complex, offering control of the water temperature as well as the nozzle pressure. Thad was amazed at how extreme on either end the temperature and pressure could get; you could almost burn the flesh from your bones if you wanted. And since he had plenty of time to kill, waiting for the dive doctor to release him from the facility, Thad liked to set up massage routines that utilized a really wide range of pressures and temperatures. The controls also allowed him to choose the type of shampoo and conditioner he wanted to squirt out of the dispenser knobs attached to the ceiling. It was not unusual for a dive assistant’s shower to last half an hour, or more.
And when Thad stepped out of the shower—that’s when the mystery set in. Like clockwork, a steaming hot towel would appear out of the wall in front of him. Both Thad and his friend had spent hours searching for the sensors that told the computer it was time for the towel—to no avail.
“I think it’s something they brought back from space,” Thad responded as the streams of water pummeling his body finally softened, indicating the end of the cycle. “Definitely alien technology.”
When the water completely stopped, he stepped out of the pod—and there it was, the mechanical whir followed by a hot towel. He grabbed the towel and wrapped it around his waist. Brian was already at his locker, retrieving his NASA shirt and khaki pants.
As Thad approached the locker next to his friend, a thought sprang into his head—and certainly not for the first time. He and Brian were pretty close, had worked next to each other on and off over a long period of time. Brian didn’t really know him—just the persona he put on at NASA, the character he had become since that first evening at the pool party. But he did consider Brian a pretty good friend.
He wondered: What would happen if he told Brian about the e-mails, and the mental game he had been playing? But then he quickly shook the thought away. As much as he was dying to tell someone other than Gordon—who really was little more than an acquaintance—Brian would never have understood. Brian wouldn’t see it as a mental game, or some sort of potential prank—which is how Thad was beginning to describe it to himself. Brian would see it as a potential crime.
Even though NASA considered the rocks trash, and there was no good reason for them to remain stored away, forever, in the darkness—well, maybe it was a potential crime. But if Thad somehow figured out how to pull it off—what a fucking crime it would be.
Because the truth was, even though Thad had made himself sound so confident in the e-mails he had exchanged with Axel Emmermann—and since then, the man’s sister-in-law, a woman named Lynn Briley—the truth was, he had no idea how he would even begin to pull something like that off. The lunar vault still seemed pretty much impregnable to him.
He’d made some headway coming up with some of the steps he’d need to complete, some of the preparation he’d need to engage in before he even got started—but overall, he still didn’t have a full idea of how he was going to get to that safe full of discarded moon rocks.
All the more reason why he wished he could talk this out with someone, to bounce it off a confidant. But watching Brian at the locker, pulling his NASA shirt over his triangular face—the guy was too straitlaced, too NASA to the core.
For the moment, despite all the e-mails, despite the fact that there was now a woman in the United States who had gathered together $100,000, ready to pay him—a massive sum of money to Thad, who had never even imagined having that much cash—this would remain a mental game, another fantasy like the dozens of other fantasies that made up the texture of his daily life. An impossible, wonderful, terrifying fantasy.
Then again, a few feet away there was a swimming pool that contained the International Space Station and the space shuttle. A few feet away, astronauts in EMU suits conducted space walks while Mission Control guided them along, with the help of bone-conducting transmitters.
At NASA, nothing was impossible.
And a hundred thousand dollars—wasn’t that a pretty good motivation to solve the problems that lay ahead? Was the money worth the risk? Thad was on his third tour. He was working in the NBL. He was a star co-op. There was a chance he’d be hired by the JSC after he graduated.
At the same time, his relationship with Sonya was almost over. He wasn’t even sure he was ever going back to Utah. Utah seemed like a million miles away. NASA was his entire life, even if, as a co-op, it was still more fantasy than reality.
One day, couldn’t this be his life for real?
A hundred thousand dollars couldn’t be enough to make him risk all of that, could it? There had to be something else—a catalyst. Something to transform this from a mental game into something else. Gordon had been a first step: a link who’d gotten him in touch with someone willing to put up the cash. But to make this real—he needed an even more significant trigger.
Without a truly powerful new catalyst, to clear away the fog of fantasy, this would never be anything more real than a space shuttle at the bottom of a swimming pool.
21
In retrospect, the flip-flops were a mistake. Thad had managed the hour-and-a-half drive south all right, his Toyota leading the small caravan of mostly expensive foreign cars from the JSC outer parking lot to the Texas coast without losing a single co-op along the way. But once they had all jammed their way onto the single-deck ferry for the short trip to their Galveston Bay isthmus destination—the cars packed so closely together there was barely room for the doors to open the necessary few inches to allow the more adventurous among the group to slither out during the short ride over to the campsite—Thad realized he ought to have chosen more appropriate footwear. EMU space boots with magnetic grips would have fit the bill—although he would have settled for his dusty Timberlands.
He stumbled forward as the ferry pitched hard over an errant wave, and barely caught himself before tumbling halfway over the hood of a bl
ack BMW sedan. There was maybe a foot and a half between the BMW on his right and a Range Rover to his left, and he was forced to stutter-step as he moved between the cars. The flip-flops were playing havoc with his usually perfect sense of balance. The soles of the damn things kept getting caught on the metal ridges that marred the floor of the ferry, and it was unlikely he was cutting much of an impressive figure as he made his rounds up and down the line of cars, greeting his co-op followers. It wasn’t like he’d prepared a speech or anything, but he did have a reputation to uphold. A lot of the first-and second-tour kids didn’t know him personally, but most had signed up for the weekend excursion because Thad Roberts, social star of NASA, had arranged it—which meant it would be something fun, something different. An adventure.
He reached the driver’s-side window of the BMW and shook hands with the young man inside, introducing himself. He filed the guy’s name away in his nearly photographic memory, then continued on toward the next car. Another wave pushed him back against the rear of the Range Rover—so he improvised, giving high fives to the young couple in the backseat of the vehicle, second years he recognized from the JSC cafeteria—and then he steadied himself using the bumper of a four-door Mercedes.
The Galveston Bay excursion was one of his most popular, which was the reason he had chosen it for the first weekend of his third tour. The beaches where they were headed had pretty relaxed rules—which meant that by nightfall, Thad would have multiple bonfires up and going, with no worries that any authorities would come by to make them put them out. There would be alcohol, of course, though Thad hadn’t brought any himself and wouldn’t partake; he’d probably never be able to look at booze or cigarettes or drugs of any sort without being reminded of his father’s vivid stories of hell and damnation—but he enjoyed being around the party atmosphere that alcohol usually inspired. Not that alcohol or the bonfires would be the highlights of the excursion; in this case, nature was going to top anything he or his charges could arrange.
The beach they were going to was known for more than a lax police presence; where they were going, it was all about the algae. Thad had always believed that bioluminescent algae was something you had to experience for yourself; there was nothing like wading out to your waist, churning your hands along the bottom—and watching the water light up like the Fourth of July.
And as if the bonfires and the algae fireworks weren’t enough, Thad had something even more spectacular planned for later in the weekend. He was going to cap things off with a truly dramatic adventure that the co-ops would remember for the rest of their tours.
He was having a little better luck with his footing as he passed the Mercedes and a second BMW, glad-handing the co-ops who filled each of the vehicles. He could tell from the progress of the ferry that they were only ten minutes away from their destination, and he was about to turn back toward his car when he noticed the Jeep Cherokee at the front of the row to his left, only two more cars down. He figured he might as well make it to the end, say hello to everyone; besides, he knew the driver of the Jeep, a second-year co-op named Chip Ellis who had been with him on a dozen other excursions in the past.
He was halfway to the Jeep when, looking through the oversized vehicle’s back window, he noticed that there were two passengers in the rear seat. Girls he didn’t recognize, one of them tall with light hair, and the other, in the farthest seat over, petite, with sable hair cropped short, almost a pageboy cut.
Focused on the girls, he pulled himself along the Jeep by hand so that he wouldn’t pitch forward at the last moment and make a fool of himself. He could tell from the way the girls’ faces lit up as they saw him move past the side window, toward the driver, that even though he had never met them before, they knew exactly who he was.
Chip rolled down his window and gave Thad a vigorous handshake before introducing him to the ladies. The blonde was named Rachel, a physical engineer from South Carolina who had just begun her first tour, working with submersible, radio-controlled exploration vehicles. Thad figured that sooner or later, he’d probably see her on the deck of the NBL.
The other girl, the petite brunette, was named Rebecca. Chad introduced her as an up-and-coming biologist. She was only twenty, and one week into her first tour—but already she had impressed Bob Musgrove and the other heads of the co-op program into letting her run her own plant-life photosynthesis experiment. Plant growth in zero gravity was one of the more important areas of study at NASA, now that Mars was in its headlights; creating a sustainable environment would one day involve the secret world of plant biology.
The fact that Rebecca was already being described as a brilliant scientist barely registered; now that Thad was close enough to really see her through the open window of the Jeep, he was having an almost vascular reaction.
Physically, she was stunning. Her hair was jet black, framing a face that looked as if it had been carved from polished porcelain. Her cheekbones were unnervingly high, and her playful blue eyes lit up in a way that reminded Thad of the bioluminescent algae they were on their way to see. She was wearing a white T-shirt and extremely short shorts; even from a glance, it was easy to discern her tight, athletic form. The sliver of bare skin between her shirt and shorts sent chills down his spine, and he actually found himself turning his eyes away. To his utter surprise, he was intimidated by this ninety-pound girl.
He hadn’t spoken one word to her—and yet he found himself terrified that she was looking right through him, right past the exciting persona he had created, right through to his core. And he wanted nothing more than for her to react to that core, the way he was reacting to her presence. He felt numb all over. Like he’d been down in the NBL a minute too long—and now he needed the doctor to send them straight to the sci-fi showers.
So he did the only thing he could think of. He completely ignored her, focusing instead on his buddy in the front seat. He made small talk for a few minutes and then quickly hurried back down the line of cars toward his Toyota. His heart was pounding, and he no longer noticed the way the flip-flops grabbed at the jutted floor. He fought the urge to look back over his shoulder, to see if she was watching him. He had a feeling that if he did, there was a good chance he would lose his balance entirely and end up underneath one of the cars. He was completely at a loss to explain the way he felt. If it had something to do with the continuing demise of his relationship with Sonya, well—the timing couldn’t have been better. He was in need of a new experience.
As he reached his car, he had a feeling that the new co-ops weren’t the only ones who were about to embark on a life-changing adventure.
* * *
The long hours are still flowering. I watch them with my eyes closed and remember how I once played a part in a fairy tale. How the most beautiful young woman simply materialized out of my dreams. I was intimidated by her delicate grace, infatuated with her mind, and mesmerized by her body. In the peak of my confidence I was absolutely helpless. French words part her lips. She is thrilled to show me a lichen, she wants to go flying, she brings the heavens to me, she jumps into the water in her little black bikini—first!
* * *
22
It happened so fast, Thad never had a chance to react.
He was halfway into his speech, arms wide and outstretched, palms open like he was an actor taking part in some second-rate, drama-school production—Julius Caesar imploring the Senate—except in this case Caesar was naked but for a bright yellow Ocean Pacific bathing suit that clung to his muscular thighs, and the Senate was made up of a bunch of terrified-looking nineteen- and twenty-year-olds huddled together, backs against a rigid outcrop of granite-streaked rock. Thad’s own bare heels hung an inch out over the edge of the cliff formation where they were all standing; a mere few feet of mostly level stone that ended in what could only be described as a true precipice; a sheer fifty-foot, stomach-turning drop into the natural reservoir far below. The very magnitude of the drop made what Thad was in the midst of telling the gathered coll
ege kids seem all the more preposterous. And it didn’t even help that he’d practiced the rallying speech a half-dozen times the night before.
“Okay, guys, here’s the deal. I know from where you’re standing, this looks pretty intense. And I’m not going to lie to you—the drop behind me, well, it is pretty intense. Fifteen, maybe thirty seconds that will feel like a lifetime, and nobody’s going to be holding your hand on the way down. Each one of you, the air whizzing by, the water racing toward you—well, you’re right to be terrified.”
It wasn’t Braveheart or Gladiator or even Spartacus—but Thad could see he certainly had their attention. Wide-eyed, barely breathing, the college kids were hanging on his every word.
“Now,” he continued, his voice as calming as possible. “Nobody’s going to force you to go over this edge. Just like nobody forced you to follow me up here in the first place. Nobody held your hand and told you that this was something you had to do. And it’s not something that will end up on your résumé. It’s certainly not something that’s going to impress your parents over Christmas break. If you do this, if you have the courage to do this—you’ll only be doing it for the experience itself. It’s not going to help you get into graduate school, or help you get that job offer that we’re all hoping to get one day—it’s just a single experience, plain and simple. But it will be your experience, and that’s something no one will ever be able to take—”
And right then, it happened. Without warning, there was a sudden flash of motion from somewhere deep in the crowd of terrified students. And then one of them was hurtling forward, bare legs churning as she drove straight for the ledge. Thad’s mouth was wide open as he watched her go, more apparition than twenty-year-old college coed, her petite, tight body somehow 80 percent legs. In that brief second, he realized two things: the girl was wearing nothing but a tiny black string bikini. And he knew exactly who she was.
