by Ben Mezrich
“But it’s really a misconception,” Sandra was saying, as animated as a cartoon as she bounced around Thad’s apartment, using her hands to help paint the picture for him as he lay back against a couch and tried to imagine himself in the scene she was describing. “It’s not weightlessness. You’re actually falling. Falling around the Earth, at seventeen thousand miles per hour. Altogether you get about twenty minutes of zero g—and it’s just amazing.”
Her left hand was still making elliptical motions, showing the path of the airplane, and her little freckled face was beaming, as if she had just stepped off the thing. Thad was duly impressed. Sandra was still only nineteen, just an intern, not even a co-op, and she had gotten to do something that he himself had still never done. She had really broken out of her shell, and Thad felt proud that he had been a part of her growth. If it hadn’t been for the confidence he had instilled in her over the past year, in person and via their telephone bull sessions, she would never have had the guts to present her project idea to the team in charge of the Vomit Comet. But the fact that they had chosen her work, that was due to her alone; she was a rising star, and no doubt she’d be a co-op by next tour.
“So did you get sick?” Thad had to ask, lacing his hands behind his head as he stared up at the ceiling. In his mind, it was him floating around that cushioned cabin.
“Nah. They give you these pills that make it almost impossible to get nauseous. I think only ten percent of people still have problems. I was too excited to feel sick. And once I started my work, I forgot I was on a plane at all. You know how hard it is to wire a circuit board in zero g?”
Thad could only imagine. He was really happy for Sandra, because she’d had an experience that almost nobody else would ever have. She wasn’t even at the JSC full-time, just visiting now and then, but she had created a memory she would carry with her for the rest of her life.
Thad must have gone silent for longer than was appropriate, because before he realized it, Sandra had sidled up next to him on the couch, pushing his legs aside to give herself room to snuggle into the cushions. She was looking at him intensely, and he kept his eyes turned away—because he knew she was about to bring it up again.
“Okay, now you’ve got to tell me,” she started, proving that he had read her correctly. “It’s just not fair, you keeping secrets like this. Does it have to do with Rebecca?”
Sandra had been peppering him with questions about Rebecca since their aquarium date had morphed into a full-out love affair; in fact, in the past two weeks, Thad and Rebecca had been inseparable. He had spent every night in her still-furnitureless apartment. They had shared nearly every meal together, had spent the weekends camping, alone in a tent. They had made love every night, woken up naked and entwined together.
He hadn’t spoken to Sonya much since meeting Rebecca. She had called a few times in the beginning—but over the past nine days, she had given up trying to reach him, and there was no doubt she suspected that something was going on at the JSC, involving someone else. Thad didn’t want to hurt her—but Rebecca had become much more than a fling to him.
He was in love. As always, it was difficult for him to separate what was fantasy and what was real—but the feelings he was having for Rebecca felt like both, fantasy and real. So he had thrown himself into her with total abandon.
And the more time he spent with her, the more the thoughts in his mind had grown clearer, the more the mental game had started to take a more physical shape. In the process, the game had become a secret that he was finding increasingly more difficult to keep. Both Rebecca and Sandra had noticed—especially during moments like this, when he went silent, playing it through in his head, like a movie on a spool that kept running over and over. With Rebecca, he had resisted by telling her that it was something he needed to protect her from, that if she really wanted to know, he would tell her—but that keeping it from her was for her own good. With Sandra, he had simply remained mysterious. But it was obvious from the way she was gripping his calf, her mouse fingers tightening into a claw, that she was getting tired of the subterfuge. If she was really his confidante, she felt she had a right to know.
“Okay, if it’s not Rebecca, is it Sonya again? Because I still think you’re doing the right thing—”
“Why does it have to be about a girl?”
“Because you’re a slut,” Sandra responded. Then she grinned. Two girls in one lifetime was about as far from a slut as a guy Thad’s age could get. Though he was technically married, and sleeping with a twenty-year-old beauty. But he no longer saw it that way. He was sleeping with the girl he was in love with.
“Okay, if it’s not Rebecca or Sonya, then what is it?”
Thad slowly sat up, crossing his arms against his chest. He looked at Sandra, trying to read the freckles on her cheeks. She really wanted to know—and in truth, he really wanted to tell her. But the minute he said it out loud, to someone here, in the JSC—it was going to become real in a whole different way. Gordon was so out of it and so out there—hell, Thad was pretty sure the stoner still had no real clue about what they were even e-mailing about. Gordon was playing a game, too, though Thad could never be sure what game the guy thought it was. But Sandra would understand—she would think it was impossible, because it was, but she would understand. And even just knowing about it—that would make her part of the scheme. Thad didn’t want to be responsible for that. He had helped her come out of her shell—he didn’t want to do something that could be detrimental in even a small way.
Still, the idea of talking about it—even in a gentle way—was appealing. He decided that it couldn’t hurt to at least feel it out, without giving away anything important.
“It’s not so much of a secret, actually, as it is a hypothetical.”
“Like, hypothetically, whether or not you believe in love at first sight? Whether someone can fall so deeply in love in a couple of weeks—”
“It’s not about love. It’s more of a moral hypothetical. Let’s say you were in a situation where you knew that there was somebody who owns something that’s clearly theirs—yet they throw it in the trash, they identify it as trash. And let’s say you had the opportunity to grab this thing before anybody knew. And even though they had labeled it as trash—you could sell it for a lot of money.”
Sandra was watching him carefully, her left hand still resting gently against his calf, but her claws had retracted.
“A lot of money,” he repeated. “Would it be morally all right to take this thing and sell it?”
Sandra’s eyes never left his face.
“What are you getting at?”
“It’s a hypothetical.”
“Thad—”
“Just go along with it. I really want to know your opinion.”
“Okay, hypothetically, I think it would probably be okay. Since there’s no harm being done, because whoever owned the thing has already deemed it trash. You’re kind of creating value. So in a way, it’s actually a good thing.”
Thad was getting warm inside, like when he’d taken a sip of Rebecca’s wine before letting her finish the glass.
“Now this is torture,” Sandra grumbled. “You know you can trust me. I mean, I’ve known you like ten times longer than Rebecca, and don’t forget—I saw you naked first.”
“It’s not a matter of trust. It’s just … it’s something pretty crazy. And it’s a lot safer if you don’t know.”
“Now you’ve really got to tell me. I’m not scared. I don’t get scared anymore.”
Thad laughed. He really didn’t want to tell her, but he was running out of excuses. Just like with Rebecca—it was doubly hard to keep a secret that you didn’t really want to keep. And was it really anything more than the hypothetical he had just brought up? Wasn’t it still just a hypothetical heist?
“I’m going to give you only one chance,” he said finally. “A little game. If you win, I’ll tell you. But if you lose, you can never ask me again.”
“What
sort of game?”
He reached over the arm of the couch and retrieved a little cardboard box from the floor. Inside the box was a stack of flash cards. Each had a Chinese character written on one side, an English translation on the other. Thad had gone through them many times in the course of his Chinese lessons, and even so, he still found them difficult. Reading those twists of black ink was as hard as intuiting an expression from a matrix of freckles.
“I’m going to show you twenty of these flash cards and tell you what they mean. Then I’m going to shuffle them and show them to you again, one at a time. If you get all twenty right, I’ll tell you what you want to know. And if not—”
“I can never ask you again.”
She shifted her body so that she was facing directly toward him, little hands on her lap, her face a mask of concentration. Almost immediately, Thad regretted offering up the game. Still, twenty characters? She couldn’t possibly get them all right.
“Here we go.”
He held up the first card, showing her the convoluted twists of ink that made up one of the more recognizable Chinese words.
“This one means ‘love.’ I guess it’s as good a place to start as any.”
“At the very least,” Sandra joked as her eyes flicked back and forth over the flash card, putting it to memory, “I’m going to have some great ideas for a tattoo by the end of this.”
Thad sighed, wishing he hadn’t told her so many details about his time with Rebecca. He held up the next card, showing her another character.
“‘Umbrella.’ Not quite as popular as tattoos go, I imagine.”
And on and on they went, through the flash cards. Thad didn’t move too quickly, but his pace wasn’t slow either. Within a few minutes, he had been through all twenty, and then he began shuffling. Sandra barely seemed to be watching him, but he could tell she was going through the cards over and over again in her mind.
Carefully, he began showing her the shuffled cards, one at a time. By the fifteenth card, he felt his cheeks flushing red. He had underestimated her. Her memory was even better than his own. As he reached the twentieth card, his fingers were shaking. He held the card up in front of her—and she paused only a moment. Then her face broke out in a huge, freckled grin.
“‘Happiness,’” she nearly shouted, her voice bouncing off the walls.
Shit. Thad thought about ignoring the results, simply telling her again that he just couldn’t risk getting her involved. Really, it was for her own good. But she had played the game, and won.
He leaned close, and lowered his voice.
“Okay,” he said—and then he started talking.
* * *
I haven’t stopped loving you, Rebecca, but I have accepted our separate paths. I hope that someday you allow me the closure I have longed for, that you forgive me for not being there forever, for taking a foolish risk that jeopardized our union. Perhaps you desire not to be friends, perhaps you have succeeded in convincing yourself that my love was not genuine. I hope these things have made the past few years easier, but as the wound heals I hope you find it in you to share your mind with me.
* * *
25
Rebecca ricocheted through the compact, galley-style kitchen, first tossing her purse on top of a pile of unopened mail, then grabbing a tied-off plastic bag full of recyclables with one hand while opening the refrigerator and retrieving a pair of long-neck bottles of root beer from the fridge door with the other. Still moving—hell, the girl never stopped moving—she offered one of the bottles to Thad, who was half skipping behind her, trying desperately to keep up. Then she yanked open the sliding-glass door that led to the small balcony where she kept her garbage. The bag of recyclables landed with a clunk next to an overstuffed garbage can, and Thad had the feeling that his girlfriend was taking care of the recycling for her entire building.
“It’s just so crazy what this place used to be like,” she gushed as she spun back through the kitchen, using her arms to hoist herself onto the edge of the counter, her slim bare legs crossed at the ankle. “I mean, it’s still cool now—but back then it was just insane. These guys, these cowboys—they were basically strapping themselves onto the tips of missiles. Blasting off into space, trying to get one foot onto the surface of the moon—actually competing for the opportunity to go on what was basically a suicide mission—and all of it taking place in a time when their biggest supercomputers were less sophisticated than my cell phone.”
Thad laughed, but he was no less awed by the thought than she was. He guessed that conversations like this were taking place all over the JSC; tonight had been the annual co-op ritual where everyone gathered together to watch the movie Apollo 13—the story of one of the ill-fated attempts to duplicate Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon.
Having spent time in the old Mission Control room, where the events documented in the movie had taken place, Thad had seen for himself how rudimentary some of the technology had been during the Apollo era. He’d sat in the actual flight director’s chair, his fingers touching the very consoles that had been used in those missions. But nothing about seeing the original Mission Control made him feel superior—quite the opposite, seeing what those men had to work with, the truly historic level of bravery—it only made him feel utterly small.
“Mars isn’t going to be all that different,” Thad responded, putting his hands on her bare knees as he leaned in, planting a kiss on her lips. “We’re still going to be strapping ourselves into a tin can attached to a missile. The toy’s a lot shinier—but the project is going to be just as dangerous. It’s going to take a special type of person to embark on what might end up a suicide mission. Someone willing to take a chance, to make a leap of faith.”
Rebecca put her hands on his shoulders, feeling his muscles through his shirt.
“A leap of faith; I like that. Like, maybe, finding yourself madly in love with someone you’ve only known for ten days.”
She was grinning, but Thad couldn’t really read her expression. He wasn’t sure whether she was talking about herself or about him. They had been using words like love and forever since their very first evening together, but it was hard to know whether those sentiments were just symptoms of her youth, or symbols of his passion; Thad only knew for sure what he was feeling. Which was beyond anything he could remember ever feeling before. He’d always loved Sonya, but he didn’t remember it ever being this all-encompassing, mind-bending thing.
He realized that he had once again slipped into that other place, going silent as he stared right through her. Her grin had turned down at the corners as she watched him, her hands going limp against his chest.
“There it is again,” she said. “That thing you do, sometimes right in the middle of a sentence. Sometimes even when we’re making love. I know there’s something you’re keeping from me.”
Thad stepped back, taking his hands off her knees. It wasn’t the first time they’d had this conversation. He’d explained again and again that it wasn’t some other woman, some relationship, or anything to do with Sonya. But now they were at a point where she was asking about his secret almost every time they were together.
“It’s not that I don’t want to tell you. It’s just that, well—I’m thinking about doing something that’s technically illegal. I mean I’m pretty sure I’m not going to do it, but even talking about it feels like it could be dangerous.”
He felt his adrenaline rising, because this was the closest he had come to telling her. And he knew he was standing on the top of a slippery slope. Telling Sandra hadn’t made the secret any easier to keep; in fact, he’d gotten such a rush out of talking through his plan with her, he was having a hard time not shouting it from the rooftops. And he could see by the way Rebecca’s eyes had gone really intense that she wasn’t going to be content with another excuse.
Maybe it was time to tell her. Meeting her had pushed him forward in the mental game; that very morning, he’d sent another e-mail to Gordon, asking him to res
earch the sister-in-law of the Belgian rock hound, the woman named Lynn Briley, because, at least via e-mail, they were coming close to actually setting up a face-to-face meeting. Not just any meeting—an exchange, goods for cash—as if it were really that simple, as if there weren’t a step in between the e-mails and handing over the parcel in exchange for a hundred thousand dollars in a suitcase. A step that was still entirely fantasy, entirely impossible.
Thad breathed deeply—and then, he just let it out. It was like he was back on that cliff, heels hanging out over the drop—but this time, it was he who was going to jump first.
“I have this idea. It’s completely insane. And it’s also impossible. I’m thinking about stealing a safe full of moon rocks. It’s in an impenetrable lab, protected by the highest level of NASA security. The samples are considered trash because they’ve already been worked with and experimented on—but they’re incredibly valuable. I’ve already got someone who wants to pay me a hundred thousand dollars for a little piece of the moon.”
Rebecca was still staring at him, her eyes wide and her lips parted so that he could see just the tips of her teeth. Even as he was talking, he was thinking it through, not just how elaborate and ridiculous and impossible the actual heist would be, but internally, he was asking himself why he was even still playing this game, why he didn’t just erase all the e-mails, lose the contact info for the woman in Philadelphia, maybe even throw out Gordon’s phone number—just forget about the whole stupid thing. And yet he kept talking.
