Moon For Sale

by Jeff Pollard

  “Why didn't you tell us about him until now?” Sylvia asks.

  “This was like over a year ago, I didn't remember that, but the name sparked that memory.”

  “Do you think it's possible that Mark in Marketing is a spy?” Sylvia asks.

  “I don't know,” Ellie replies.

  “Tell us about him, what's he like,” Sylvia says.

  “He has a BA in Marketing from USC,” Weller says.

  “I don't want to read a god damn file, I want to hear what she has to say,” Sylvia says.

  “He's umm, slick.”

  “What is that? Slick?”

  “Like he's...he's a marketing major, you know, he's obsessed with image. His clothes all look tailored, he talks about branding and corporate synergy. As if marketing is the most important thing in the world. Very self-important.”

  “Sounds like every marketing major I've ever met,” Weller says.

  “You hate all non-STEM majors,” Hammersmith replies. Weller just nods in agreement.

  “And like he's always showing off with the latest everything, whatever expensive toy you can have, he's not only got it, but he finds a way to show it off.”

  “Like what?” Weller asks.

  “For example, he has Google Vision,” Jensen says, referring to the successor to Google Glass which has migrated from glasses to contacts, providing the wearer with the ability to take pictures and videos of their own vision and use a multitude of search options. As an example, there is an app which will allow the wearer to look at a dog and have an overlay appear that tells them the breed of dog. Other apps use facial recognition to tell you who is in front of you, an invaluable tool for people who have face-blindness and also for those who want to network with thousands of “friends.”

  “And like, one of Google Vision's main selling points,” Jensen says, “is that it's basically invisible, people don't know you're wearing it. But that doesn’t make for very good conspicuous consumption, so he was literally going around telling everyone that he was using it so he could show off about it. Basically he has no subtlety.”

  “If somebody came to him and said, I'll give you a million dollars if you can put this flash drive in a computer in engineering, do you think he'd be listening?” Sylvia asks. Ellie pauses.

  “I mean...maybe. I don't know. If anything he'd be too dumb to pull it off.”

  “Dumb?” Sylvia asks. “You didn't say anything about dumb.”

  “Dumb is harsh. He lacks self-awareness. Like he's marketing himself with the tailored clothes and non-subtle conspicuous consumption, but then he has the worst facial hair of all time, I don't even know what to call it. It looks like the facial hair the Riddler would have. Like he clearly trims it exactly every day and you just want to ask him why the hell he settled on that jig-saw puzzle of a facial hair design? And then he'll try to hit on girls with the same stupid magic trick.”

  “So we're not talking about James Bond,” Sylvia says.

  “Precisely,” Ellie says.

  “What's his favorite movie?” Sylvia asks.

  “I don't have any idea,” Ellie replies.

  “Does he read books?” Sylvia asks.

  “Umm, probably not many. He probably has read like four books for pleasure in his life.”

  “Are any of those books by Ayn Rand?” Weller asks.

  “I don't know.”

  “If it turned out that he was a huge Ayn Rand fan would you be surprised?” Weller asks.

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Looks like we have our man,” Weller says dramatically.

  “Are you serious?” Hammersmith asks.

  “Have you ever met a huge Ayn Rand fan that wasn't a colossal douchebag that has their own pet theories about the superiority of boot-strapsy people like himself and didn't wear way too much cologne?” Weller asks.

  “I guess not,” Ellie says unsurely.

  “Whether or not this is the guy or if he turns out to be an Ayn Rand fan, I say we make a rule that we never hire Ayn Rand fands, who's with me?” Weller asks.

  “Okay Keynes, let's finish this witch-hunt before we start a new one,” Sylvia says. “Where's Marky-Mark?”

  “Security is bringing him here right now and the dork-squad is searching his computer and desk,” Weller says.

  “Have security make sure he's not wearing Google Vision, we don't want him recording any of this,” Hammersmith says.

  “Don't play dumb with us,” Weller says sternly.

  “I don't have any idea what you're talking about,” Marky-Mark the Marketing Mark replies.

  “Does this look familiar?” Weller asks. He lifts a cloth revealing the flash drive with the SpacEx logo on it. It looks similar to flash drives they give away at events, but the design is slightly off.

  “It's a flash drive,” Mark says simply.

  “With your fingerprints on it,” Weller replies.

  “So what, dude, I used a flash drive, call the cops, I must be a hacker,” Mark replies.

  “Who said anything about a hacker?” Weller asks.

  “It's what everyone in the building is talking about, we're on lockdown, you're looking for a hacker, I'm not an idiot. So sue me, I used a flash drive.”

  “This isn't a flash drive,” Weller replies. “This is a hacker's Trojan Horse. This is how somebody gained access to our systems. This is the smoking gun. And it has your fingerprints on it. So why did you put in the back of Jensen's computer and leave it there? And where did you get it?”

  “I don't know anything about hacking. It's a flash drive, those things float around the office, it's like a pen, you lose one, you find another,” Mark says.

  “So where'd you find it?” Weller asks.

  “I don't know,” Mark replies immediately. Sylvia, standing silently behind Weller and Chris, draws the gun from the holster at the small of her back and sets it on the table, pointed safely at the wall, saying nothing. She stares at Weller, looking for any kind of reaction at all.

  “You wanna think for more than a half a second and try answering again,” Weller asks.

  “Alright,” Mark says, looking down at the table, he looks to be entering a confessing mood. “I found it in the parking lot.”

  “You saw a flash drive sitting on asphalt in the parking lot. You take it and then plug it into secure computers and conveniently leave it plugged in to a computer in engineering, and plugged in in the back where it can be forgotten about,” Weller says.

  “Yeah.”

  “Why did you plug it in the back?”

  “Did I?”

  “It was in the back, I had to get on my knees to get back there to even see the port, and there were open ports in the front. So why the back?”

  “I don't know,” Mark insists. “Maybe she moved the computer, this was a while ago, you know. Maybe it was sideways or on her desk or something.”

  “We thought of that,” Chris replies. “She says it literally has not moved a centimeter in two years. So you would have had to get down on your knees to reach back there, so why do that unless you're intentionally trying to keep it hidden back there?” Chris asks, seated next to Weller, seated across the table from Mark. Hammersmith chose not to attend so as not to be involved too intimately: plausible-deniability.

  “I don't remember doing that. I would not get on my hands and knees and get under her desk, that would not be cool.”

  “And you wouldn't want to do something uncool in front of a girl like Ellie Jensen,” Sylvia says, a loaded statement, like a probing jab from a boxer trying to find the holes in the opponent's defense.

  “I don't know what you mean by that,” Mark says.

  “You don't know what I mean when I say a girl like Ellie Jensen?” Sylvia asks. “Wanna guess what it means?”

  “That's she's hot?”

  “Were you hitting on her?” Sylvia asks.

  “What does that matter?”

  “Y
ou said it wouldn't be cool to get on your knees,” Sylvia says, “are you trying to play it cool around her? Are you trying to fuck her?”

  “I don't know.”

  “You don't know if you want to fuck her?” Sylvia asks.

  “I mean, she's cool,” Mark replies.

  “So you do want to fuck her,” Sylvia says.

  “You've seen her, what do you think?” Mark asks.

  “Do you wear Google Vision?” Sylvia asks as she walks slowly to his side of the table. Mark visibly gets more anxious.

  “Sometimes, why, what does that matter, what does that have to do with anything?” Mark asks.

  “What do you use it for?” Sylvia asks, standing directly behind him now, making him uncomfortable as he talks to someone standing ominously behind him.

  “You know, networking, search functions, it's got a million uses.”

  “Do you ever take pictures?” Sylvia asks.

  “Of course,” Mark replies.

  “Videos?”

  “Sure,” Mark says. Sylvia leans down to speak softly into Mark's ear.

  “Is it possible that you got down on your hands and knees,” Sylvia says slowly, “made up some excuse to plug it in the back, weaseled your way under her desk, so that you could then see up Ellie Jensen's skirt and with the added bonus that you got to take all the pictures and video you wanted with your Google Vision and she wouldn't have any idea?”

  Marky-Mark's eyes dart down at the table and his face turns red.

  “I think he's an asshole and an idiot, but I don't know that he's intentionally a traitor,” Sylvia says as they try to figure out what to do next just outside the room where Mark-Mark is being kept.

  “You buy that story?” Weller asks. “Our networks are compromised by the brilliant tactic of dropping flash drives in a parking lot and hoping an idiot plugs it in to a secure computer? Oh and he tries to get creepy upskirts thus resulting in the flash drive being hidden from view.”

  “I believe it,” Chris says.

  “Why?”

  “People are idiots about computers,” Chris replies. “Whenever they have competitions to see if hackers can break a new system, they don't let them talk to the people using it because you can hack any system by calling up an idiot in the company, saying you're from IT, and just asking for their password. People are the biggest hole in security, so yeah, I can absolutely see a hacker just dropping flash drives and hoping one finds its way into a secure computer.”

  “I think the lesson here is that we stop hiring people who will pick up flash drives off a parking lot and use them,” Weller mutters.

  “How about we not hire people who take upskirts of their coworkers,” Sylvia replies.

  “Yeah that too,” Weller agrees.

  “Well, we have security cameras in the parking lots. Look for this doofus's car, see if we can pinpoint the day he actually picked up the flash drive, then work backwards and see who dropped it,” Weller says.

  “That's what like a year long period to sift through, that's gonna take us a month to pour through that,” Sylvia says.

  “We have interns,” Weller replies.

  “Okay, well while we do that, we have a bigger problem,” Hammersmith says. “If we're being hacked, ULA could be getting hacked, so could the Chinese. Do we tell anyone?”

  “If it is ULA and we tell them, then they know we're on to them,” Weller replies. “Not to mention they might tell the press we've been hacked, how's that gonna look?”

  “And if we don't tell them and they've been compromised by idiots with flash drives,” Hammersmith says, “then their spacecraft might just explode.”

  “That could help us you know,” Weller replies.

  “Don't say things like that,” Hammersmith says. “Besides, a catastrophic Moon mission is not going to help us with the whole building a Moon base for NASA thing.”

  “If anything, they're more likely to be compromised than us, they have way more employees, more points of failure in a security sense,” Chris adds.

  “So do we tell them?” Weller asks.

  “It's gonna be K's call,” Hammersmith replies.

  Chapter 30

  “To what do I owe the honor?” Anthony Parks asks Kingsley Pretorius. Parks is at ULA HQ in Colorado, seated in the glassed off VIP area behind mission control.

  “I have something to tell you,” Kingsley replies.

  “You missed your period?” Parks suggests. Kingsley audibly laughs from 150,000 miles away.

  “You know Parks, you really set a high douche bar for yourself, and you never disappoint. It's pretty impressive.”

  “What do you want K, keeping in mind that the FBI is probably listening to this to make sure we're not colluding.”

  “I wish the FBI actually did that, then I wouldn't have had to start a rocket company to interrupt the Boeing Lockheed Martin circle-jerk,” K replies.

  “What. Do. You. Want.”

  “I'm going to tell you something that's sensitive,” K says.

  “What like your mother's taint?”

  “You mean my dead mother?” K asks.

  Parks laughs. “You think you caught me!? I full well knew she was dead. Get to the god damn point.”

  “Remember what I was saying about that high bar? Yeah, good job.”

  “Get to the fucking point.”

  “I'm telling you this, but you must not repeat it to the press. And I'm only doing this to help you.”

  “Why do I have the feeling you're about to try to fuck me?”

  “You're just having a flash-forward to your time in prison,” K replies.

  “Get. To. The. God. Damn-”

  “We've been hacked,” K says.

  “What do you mean hacked?”

  “We have reason to believe that a hacker or hackers have infiltrated our networks and it's possible that they are responsible for some or all of our recent failures. We've cut them out, we think we're in the clear now, but I felt compelled to let you guys know because I think it's somewhat likely that these cyber-attacks ultimately originate from Russia or China or god knows where else and that these could be attacks on the American space program rather than attacks on just SpacEx. In other words, watch your backs, get some, what do you call them, smart people, tell them, have them check your cyber-security. Be careful with your mission.”

  “You're not very good at poker,” Parks replies. “Right before LOI, you tell me to watch my back. You trying to psyche me out? Scare us into stopping everything to quadruple check all our systems and give you just enough time to beat us to the surface? You think I'm a god damn idiot?”

  “I do, but that's not what this is. Believe me, don't believe me, I don't care. Just tell some nerds about it just in case. If anything these cyber-attacks came from you anyway, so fuck you Parks.”

  “Good talk,” Parks says and ends the call.

  The crew of Pegasus 3 watches the livestream coverage of the Luna 100 mission. Richard Branson talks into the camera and shows the view of the up-close Moon out the window as they prepare for lunar orbit insertion, the burn that slows them from lunar escape velocity. The burn occurs over the far-side of the Moon and there is no blackout period thanks to the Deep Space Network of relay satellites. There are a pair of long range comm sats parked in the Earth-Sun L1 and L2 Lagrangian points, which offer virtually uninterrupted coverage of the Moon.

  Kingsley and Tim quietly root for some kind of malfunction in the way that a racing driver roots for his competitors to experience difficulty, but without, you know, dying.

  “What are the odds they've been hacked?” Tim asks.

  “Depends on who was doing the hacking. Obviously if they were behind it-”

  “Include that in your odds,” Tim says.

  “Fifty-fifty? If you're a Russian hacker I don't know why you target us and give ULA a pass,” K replies.

  “You guys are gonna give us bad karma,” Car
oline says. “Let's just watch and not casually discuss people suffocating in lunar orbit.”

  “More likely they'd asphyxiate,” K says, for which he receives the stink-eye.

  The Orion spacecraft begins the LOI burn. It's a tense and dangerous moment. If the engine quits mid burn, they will zoom around the Moon and might be stranded in space. They have no backup engine, they simply have the Orion spacecraft.

  The Griffin 3.0 on the other hand is still docked to its Aquila upper stage that performed TLI. The Aquila has a few tonnes of fuel still on board and can serve as a backup propulsion system should the Griffin fail.

  “Shutdown,” Dexter Houston announces on the other side of the Moon. “We are in lunar orbit, over.”

  “Alright, well, soon it'll be our turn,” K says. “Let's get ready.”

  Hours later, the world watches as the Griffin gets ready for LOI. Before the burn, the Griffin flies over the lunar South Pole before heading around to the far-side. Meanwhile on the near-side of the Moon, at 250 km in altitude, the Luna 100 is closing in on rendezvous with the Boeing Lunar Lander awaiting them.

  The Griffin 3.0, unlike earlier Griffins, has no trunk for storage, and unlike Apollo or Orion, it does not feature a service module. The Griffin is a single-module conical spacecraft. Orion or Apollo could never reuse their service modules which are left to burn up. But Griffin is meant for fairly rapid re-use and thus what would essentially be the service module, the tankage and engines required for deep space maneuvers, fills the bottom of the the ship. Before LOI, they undock and back away from the Aquila upper-stage. The Griffin then orients retrograde, that is pointing in the opposite direction as their vector of motion. A pair of mini-Raptor methalox engines unfold from the base of the capsule so they can point straight down rather than angled slightly along the silhouette of the capsule.

  Valves open and liquid oxygen and liquid methane meet in the combustion chambers of both engines in the instant that the triethylaluminum-triethylborane mixture is injected, resulting in a brilliant flash of radiant green which is quickly replaced by rapidly expanding plume of nearly invisible exhaust. The crew knows immediately that the engines have lit and the burn is working when they are pushed into their seats with just under a full G of acceleration. Not needed as a backup any longer, the Aquila heads back to Earth. It will require a slight mid-course correction before its heat shielded nose closes back over the docking mechanism and points downstream. It will return to California like a meteor, and hopefully flip around and use that last tonne of fuel to slow to a soft-landing near the SpacEx headquarters. No Aquila has yet been re-used, and only a handful have successfully landed in one piece.