When he saw the negative publicity his business rivals were receiving, he sold out his interest before any of them could come to stand on his broad shoulders.
Next came the invention of an engine that would run on water. It didn’t work, but he let Saudi Petrostock, National Dutch, China National Offshore Oil, American Petroleum, Royal Abu Dhabi, and Kuwaiti Oil Resource pool a quick two hundred million and buy it from him to keep it off the market.
He began casting around for his next business, analyzed his successes, and decided he’d pretty much followed “Wee Willie” Keeler’s old dictum from a century earlier: “Hit ’em where they ain’t.” No one had started a successful men’s magazine for a decade and a half before Suave, no one had had the chutzpah to supply weapons to warring banana republics in this hemisphere, and no one had blackmailed or terrified the auto companies in more than half a century. You had to go all the way back to Tucker, which wasn’t quite the same thing since Tucker’s car actually worked.
So Blackstone cast around for some other place where “they” weren’t, and it wasn’t long before he realized that the average state was a good five billion dollars in debt, and some of the larger spendthrifts, like California and Illinois and New York, were each well over fifty billion in the hole.
How could they raise money in a hurry since the federal government wasn’t about to bail them out? Easy. They’d legalize gambling. There’d be a hue and cry from some of the more religious sections of the electorate, but some politician would point out that even churches hosted bingo games to raise money, and besides, the alternative was bankruptcy. And within a year, spreading money around various state capitals where it would do the most good, he had built luxury casinos in North Dakota, New Mexico, South Carolina, and Wyoming, and was the major stockholder in a fabulous new racetrack in Montana.
And when the dust had cleared five years later, he was no longer a millionaire, or even a multimillionaire, but had risen to the level of billionaire, and figured to amass his second billion in less than a year.
He looked around again, applying the same principle, and tried to determine where they weren’t hitting ’em that year. The landscape was covered with enterprises and innovations, and for the first time, he couldn’t spot his next move.
Until he looked up.
Then he knew. There was the biggest untouched target of all. Men had walked on it in 1969, and the stars were ours. A colony on the Moon by 1990, on Mars by 2010, then the moons of Jupiter, and surely by 2030 we’d have found a way around Einstein’s theory and would be on our way rapidly to the stars.
Science said it couldn’t be done, that there were laws that governed the universe—but Blackstone knew he came from a race of lawbreakers. Tell a man something can’t be done, and he’ll set about proving you wrong out of sheer cussedness.
Mars, the outer planets’ satellites, the Oort Cloud, the stars, we’d reach them all. But first, the Moon. The government never had any interest in it, except for reaching it before the Russians did. We’d turned our backs on it a long time ago, and it was time to get that colony built. There’d be a mining section, and a low-grav hospital for heart patients (he’d figure out how to get them there, all in good time), and an astronomical observatory, and a refueling point for trips to Mars, and maybe Venus if he could develop space suits that could withstand the heat. Then on to Io and Europa and Ganymede.
And because he knew that this was his last great business venture, because he knew he would spend the rest of his life on it, Blackstone determined not to be just a figurehead but to learn it from the ground up. He spent time in the Public Relations Department, acquired some basic lab skills, even underwent training as an astronaut (though he hated the word and wanted his own term for it, preferably something that incorporated the word Bucky or Blackstone).
He even considered running for office on a platform of going back into space. Name recognition was no problem; he was a handsome, self-made billionaire, and he and his two ex-wives, both as eye-catching as Miss 42, were featured every week in the supermarket tabloids. But as a senator, he’d be one of one hundred, and he would have to convince fifty very independent—and often very foolish—men and women to vote with him, then hope the House could find 218 members in agreement, and further hope that the president didn’t veto whatever initiative he’d launched. He could run for president, of course, and he was sure he could win, but it would take three or four years of organizing and money-raising. He didn’t want to take three years away from the Moon to organize a political campaign, and while he could pay for the campaign out of his pocket, he didn’t want anyone saying that he bought the presidency.
So, instead of becoming a member of the government, he decided that his best course of action was to rival the government, to do what it was too broke or too reluctant or too timid to do, to go back to the Moon and claim it for Blackstone Enterprises (and, incidentally, for the United States of America).
At first, the Congress ignored him, and the press made fun of his ambitious new project. That lasted about six months, until his first successful suborbital flight. By the time a year had passed, a Blackstone ship had made an orbital flight—after all, the technology had existed for half a century—and suddenly Congress decided that he meant business and was in dire need of congressional oversight.
He decided otherwise, only to find himself the object of a scare campaign. He wanted to put missiles on the Moon and fire them at our enemies. The public approved. But he might miss and hit Omaha or Charlotte or Seattle. The public laughed. He had made a secret pact with Hector Morales, the crazed dictator of Paraguay, and had promised to take him to the Moon before his downtrodden masses could rise up and kill him. And put him where? asked the public.
Finally, the government backed off and tried a new approach. “We’re incredibly proud of our dear friend and outstanding citizen Bucky Blackstone,” they announced, “and we’ll do everything we can to help him.”
“You can start by getting the hell out of my way,” Blackstone had answered through his spokespeople.
“We’re on your side,” said the government. “We have all kinds of knowledge and experience to share with you.”
“Keep it,” said his spokesman. “And,” added Blackstone, “I’ll bet you a million dollars I reach the Moon before you do.”
And, finally, the government realized that it was not dealing with its notion of a team player, and left him alone. They tried to convince the media to do the same, but even the president’s most fawning sycophants in the press couldn’t resist story after story of the cowboy billionaire who spit in Washington’s collective eye and got away with it.
Everyone at Blackstone Enterprises cheered and congratulated each other. Well, everyone except Blackstone himself. He knew how quickly a winner’s fortunes could change, especially in the financial and political arenas.
They needed something more. Everyone loved the notion of a cowboy’s defying the government, but he couldn’t do it every day, and it would soon become boring if he tried. And he could look ahead and see that he’d be a hero the day he reached the Moon and became the first man to walk on it in more than fifty years—but a month later, unless they found some purple people eaters, it would be a big yawn, just as it was the first time. People just didn’t go crazy with enthusiasm at the sight of some rocks, no matter how far away they came from.
But then came these tiny hints about the Myshko flight. Microscopic hints in the beginning . . . but they didn’t go away. Something wasn’t kosher about that mission.
The problem was that it had occurred in 1969. It hadn’t been mentioned in half a century. It didn’t halt or even slow down the Apollo XI mission. It had never been mentioned as anything more than it was: a pre-Moon-landing mission, a mission that reached the Moon but never landed, never even intended to land. If they saw anything dangerous, anything out of the ordinary, no one said anything. If they saw any reason for Neil Armstrong not to take a giant leap for mankind, eit
her they never reported it, or else no one took it seriously, and indeed the Apollo XI mission went like clockwork.
Finally, Blackstone called in Ed Camden, who had been his primary spokesman for a year.
“Have you heard anything more about it?” he asked, lighting a cigar and offering one to Camden, who passed.
“About what, sir?”
“The Myshko mission, of course.”
Camden shook his head. “I’ve spoken to my former colleagues at NASA and elsewhere, and no one knows anything. Most of them think it’s a totally false lead, that your friends in the Pentagon and the White House are trying to divert you from your purpose.”
“They’re doing a damned good job of it,” admitted Blackstone. “I’ll tell you the truth, Ed. All logic says nothing happened because there sure as hell weren’t any consequences, and we live in a universe of cause and effect. No effect? Then there was probably no cause.”
“Well, there you have it, sir,” said Camden.
“It seems so,” agreed Blackstone. Suddenly he frowned. “But damn it, Ed, nobody in the Pentagon or NASA is subtle enough for this to be a ruse. Their idea of distracting me would be to release a description of a four-armed fifteen-foot-tall green man riding a thoat, or whatever the hell Edgar Rice Burroughs called it.” He paused, took another puff of the cigar, grimaced. “Something happened on that Myshko mission, something they don’t want us to know about.” Suddenly he got to his feet, strolled over to the window, and stared up at the sunlit sky, wishing the Moon were visible. “But what the hell could it be that didn’t keep Myshko from returning to Earth, didn’t stop any of the Apollo missions, and yet needs a continuing fifty-year cover-up?” He shook his head. “God, it sounds crazy just describing it!”
“That’s why we haven’t uncovered anything,” said Camden. “It is crazy.”
“No,” answered Blackstone adamantly. “I’ve always listened to my gut, and my gut tells me something happened, something they don’t want me to know.”
“You?” repeated Camden, surprised even after all these years at his boss’s ego.
“All of us,” conceded Blackstone. “Everyone.” He paused and stared off into space, as if at something only he could see. “And I’m going to find out what it is.”
“How? We’ve pulled just about every string we’ve got.”
“Culpepper.”
Camden looked around, frowning.
“It’s a man, not a vegetable,” continued Blackstone.
“Oh? The guy from NASA?”
Blackstone nodded. “Jerry Culpepper. He’s a good man.”
“He’s a loyal man,” said Camden. “He spouts the company line.”
“True.”
“Well, then?”
“He’s also a moral man. Eventually, he won’t be able to spout this nonsense any longer.”
“You know that for a fact?”
“I’m a pretty good judge of character,” answered Blackstone. “I offered him a job.”
“My job?” demanded Camden.
“Something similar.” Blackstone shrugged off the other man’s obvious concern. “I can keep you both busy.”
“When does he start?”
“He turned me down,” said Blackstone. He relit his cigar. “It was too soon. When he can’t stand the pressure any longer, he’ll come over here. Another month, another half year, certainly less than a year. And when he comes, he’ll confirm what we find out or intuit in the meantime.”
“I don’t like it,” said Camden. “I’ve been loyal to you for all these years . . .”
“If I was firing you, Ed, I’d tell you up front,” replied Blackstone. “You know me well enough to be aware of that. But something happened that they don’t want anyone to know about, and they’ve kept it secret for fifty years. Now suddenly it’s starting to seep out. They’re going to clamp down, and clamp down hard. That’s obvious.”
“Then what’s this all about?”
“They’re going to have to tell Jerry what happened, so he doesn’t inadvertently give us enough leads so that we can find out ourselves.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“If Myshko was eaten by Moon lizards, he couldn’t say it jokingly, and he couldn’t firmly deny it. The first would start people thinking, and the second would start them digging.”
“But Myshko came back,” Camden pointed out.
“That was just an example, Ed.” Blackstone made no attempt to hide his disgust with his underling for not being able to follow his train of thought. “Don’t try so hard to convince me that I should replace you.”
There followed a few awkward minutes. Camden didn’t know what to say, and Blackstone began feeling guilty about humiliating him. He finally sent him back to his office and spent the rest of the afternoon pacing his own restlessly, trying for the hundredth time to dope it out: What are they hiding, and why are they hiding it at this late date? What could possibly have happened that would still affect anything? If it would make a flight to the Moon more dangerous, why won’t they tell us? They know I’m going to send up a manned flight within a year. Surely they can’t want an American ship, which will be viewed as an American mission by everyone outside the country, to blow up or crash because of something they could have told us about and decided, for some reason, not to. So if the mission won’t be endangered by our lack of knowledge, what is so goddammed important that they’re lying like rugs?
They had to be lying. That was the one certainty. But about what?
He had to force himself to look at it logically.
The ship took off. Check.
The ship circled the Moon. Check.
The ship returned to Earth on schedule. Check.
What the hell could have happened?
He walked to the window and stared out—and up—again. And suddenly he began to get excited. It was almost there, almost within his mental reach. He stood perfectly still, trying to stem his excitement, to just concentrate on the problem—and finally he had it!
He knew what had happened, why they had lied—and if he couldn’t force the president to tell the country (and he was sure he couldn’t, because the president would never admit to lying to the electorate), and he couldn’t get Jerry to show him the data he needed, he was going public with what he thought had happened and making the government confirm or deny it before he took off.
Yes, he concluded mentally. To hell with a pair of pilots and three scientists. This was important enough to lose a scientist and add a billionaire cowboy who had figured it out.
4
Jerry was on hand to greet Frank Kirby when he came through the doors of the Hall of Fame. Despite what Jerry had expected, he did not appear feeble. He was permanently confined to a wheelchair, but his voice was strong, and he shook hands with the grip of a professional wrestler. “Jerry,” he said, smiling broadly, “it’s good to see you again.”
“And you, Frank. Welcome home.”
He’d been accompanied by several family members although his wife had remained in Orlando. “Janet asked me to say hello,” he said. “She wanted to come but just wasn’t up to making the trip.”
He introduced a son and daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren, both probably in their thirties. Mary came over, and they did another round of introductions. The son, whose name was also Frank, thanked Mary for arranging the event. “Dad has done a lot for Orlando,” he said, “since his retirement.” Ordinarily, Jerry knew, she would have passed credit for the idea to him, but on this occasion she let it go. Best not to connect him with the award.
They strolled into the main dining area, where Kirby got a surprise: Several friends from his NASA years had been brought in. They surrounded him, laughed, offered toasts, shook hands, embraced, introduced family members, and talked about the old days. A gray-haired woman leaning on a cane flashed a wide smile. “It’s good to see you again, Frank,” she said. “How many years has it been?”
Frank shook his head. “Too many, Myra.�
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The VIP table waited at one end of the room, with places set for ten people. A tabletop lectern had been set up. Harry Eastman was already seated, talking with the operations director. Jerry wandered away from the group and sat down in back with Takara Yoshido, a systems designer.
Gradually, the guests drifted in. Mary got Kirby placed and took the seat beside him. The Orlando mayor was also present, as well as Laurie Banner, the president’s science advisor. Several representatives from organizations that had benefited at various times from Kirby’s support were present. Florida’s Senator Mayville was across the room, engaged in a spirited conversation with Eugene Cernan.
“You and Mary did a good job, Jerry,” said Takara. Her features took on a dreamy aspect. “It’s a beautiful gesture. I like to think that someday maybe I’ll be up there to receive the Eastman Award.”
“What are you doing now to qualify?” Jerry asked.
“I was looking at Frank’s résumé,” she said. “I have a Girl Scout troop. I guess I’d have to step things up a bit.”
“It’s a good start, Taki.”
A few reporters, including Cole, were scattered around the room. A TV camera in back would capture the event for the NASA Channel.
Everybody settled in. A few people went up to the head table for autographs or simply to shake hands with the guests. Eventually, the food began to arrive, baked salmon and roast beef, fortified with beets and potatoes and coleslaw. The low hum of conversation was interspersed with clinking silver. Kirby seemed to be enjoying himself, caught in an animated dialogue with Mary on one side and Cernan on the other.
The Cassandra Project Page 4
