by Ben Mezrich
“Thad, just shut up and take off your clothes.”
Thad laughed; it was hysterical, hearing that Disney-mouse voice giving him an order like that. He guessed that she was terrified by now, because even he was feeling butterflies. It was pitch-black where they were standing, beneath the thick overhang of trees—so dark he couldn’t see his own hands. But even so, they were right out in the open, and only about a twenty-minute hike from the top of the granite dome where the other co-ops and interns were presumably still sleeping. It hadn’t been hard to creep out of the campsite and make their way to the bank of the winding stream that ran down one of the natural ravines. But now that they were standing there, side by side, barefoot beneath the trees—it felt so deliciously wrong.
“On three,” Thad said, reaching for the buttons of his shirt.
“Way ahead of you,” Sandra replied.
The next thing Thad knew, a little white tank top landed on his face, making him blinder than he already was. He laughed, yanking the soft material free—just in time to catch a flash of moonlit, lightly freckled skin racing down the bank toward the gurgling stream.
He hastily went to work on his shirt, giving up on the buttons and ripping it over his head. His belt gave him a little trouble, and by the time he had his pants down around his ankles, he could hear her splashing into the water, giving off a little squeak of pleasure as she submerged as deep as the shallow stream would allow.
“And you claim you’ve never done this before?” Thad yelled as he ran forward, his bare feet turning against the damp mud of the bank.
His underwear came off in one motion as his left foot hit the water, and then he was diving forward with total abandon, his chest seizing as the icy water splashed against his skin.
“Holy crap, that’s a lot colder than I expected!”
Sandra laughed, and he followed her voice with his eyes. She was about five feet away, kneeling down so that the water covered her all the way to the top of her chest. He did his best not to look too carefully. There were protocols to skinny-dipping, and since this was Sandra’s first time, he was going to make sure no lines were crossed. The only thing he wanted out of her was friendship.
He sank low into the water, settling into a cross-legged position on the floor of the stream. The water barely reached the top of his biceps, and the gentle pull of the current felt good against his muscles.
Naked in all respects, he found it very easy to talk to Sandra. Without even meaning to, he opened up to her about everything that was going on in his life. From the problems he was beginning to have with Sonya, to the wonder he felt working at NASA, to the future he hoped to build. To his surprise, Sandra began to open up to him in return. As he had suspected, she was extremely insecure. She was a freshman at the University of New Mexico who had grown up in a very small town outside of Nashville, Tennessee. She was a straight-A student, doing well at her internship at the JSC—but she still felt out of her league around the more aggressive scientists who populated the campus.
Thad did his best to convince her that she had nothing to be insecure about. She was as smart as anyone there, and she was a step ahead of most of the girls her age. She had as much of a shot at becoming an astronaut as any of them. She needed to get over her shyness. She needed to explore the world, to collect experiences.
“I know,” she said as she listened to his pep talk, her arms crossed against her naked chest. Thad could see the hint of a pink nipple beneath the crook of her elbow, but he really tried to avert his eyes. “That’s why I signed up for this weekend. And that’s why I’ve been thinking so much about the contest you started last year, before I got here.”
“You heard about that?”
Actually, Thad knew that every week, co-ops were still out scrambling around NASA, trying to push the limits of their security clearances, trying to accrue experiences they could later talk about at the swimming pools spread across Clear Lake.
“Yeah, and I’ve already planned out what I want to do. But I’m not going to tell you. Because when I do it, I’m definitely going to win.”
“I don’t doubt that at all.” Thad no longer participated in the contest now that he was on his second tour. But he was pleased to hear that he had inspired those younger than him.
“What’s your next act?” Sandra asked. “I don’t think you can skinny-dip your way into the history books.”
It was a subtle challenge—from a naked eighteen-year-old in a stream in the middle of nowhere—but Thad took it seriously. As always, he hated the idea of standing still, and the past few weeks—few months—of his relationship problems with Sonya seemed to be dragging him backward, which was even worse.
The current pushed him along as he released his grip on the floor of the streambed.
“I guess I’m waiting for the next opportunity to show itself.”
“You don’t strike me as the kind of guy who waits for things to happen.”
Thad playfully splashed water at her, and she ducked to keep it out of her eyes. The motion revealed more of her moonlit skin, but Thad nobly turned away. He lay back in the cool water, forcing his muscles to relax, willing himself to just float.
She was right, even though she didn’t know him at all. He wasn’t the type to just sit back and wait for something fantastic to happen.
But he was pretty certain—at NASA, you never had to wait very long.
13
A week later, Thad was sitting at the computer desk at the back of his lab, working his way through the final pages of a project involving the solar asteroid belt. The project hadn’t originated in his department—but that was one of the cool things about working at NASA. There was so much freedom, a co-op with more than the usual motivation could get involved in all sorts of fascinating things.
During his first tour, he had spent a lot of his time getting to know everybody, simply by walking around Building 31, asking plenty of questions. Through those chance encounters, he’d gotten himself attached to a number of wild experiments. He had spent three weeks helping to shoot cannons loaded with different geologic materials, measuring the impact craters, trying to reverse-engineer from those craters to identify the rocks that had caused the damage. In another instance, he had spent ten days analyzing computerized models of solar flares—simply because he had struck up a conversation with a solar specialist while waiting in line at the cafeteria.
And at the moment, Thad found himself helping out with the cataloging of all the asteroids in the asteroid belt—separating them into different classes based on their geologic makeup, searching for trends that would help determine where these asteroids might have originated. It was something he had stumbled into in his spare time, and it was supposed to have taken him the rest of his second tour. But just a few weeks after starting, he’d almost finished compiling the data, and he was hoping to return it to the planetary scientist two floors below in less than a week.
Because of the free atmosphere of the JSC, Thad wasn’t surprised when a woman he knew from various hallway interactions—Dr. Andrea Cooper—wandered randomly into his lab, caught sight of him at the computer—and instantly made him forget about asteroids, solar flares, and impact craters. Dr. Cooper, he knew, was a scientist involved with the Lunar Lab, one of the few places at NASA he’d still never been to. When she pointed a finger at him and gave him a pleading smile—he was immediately all ears.
“You don’t look very busy. I’m in need of someone to help me with an inventory job. Next Tuesday morning—but it might take all day, maybe two. It’s gonna be sheer torture, and you won’t get any recognition for it. Sound good to you?”
Thad was just glad Helms wasn’t there to get the offer before him. Cooper was basically inviting him to go into the Lunar Lab, and probably into the vault—the inner part of the lab, where the samples themselves were stored. He didn’t care how painstaking the job might be. It was like being invited into the basement of the Smithsonian.
“I think I can free up my schedule.”
The woman gave him a thumbs-up, disappearing back into the hallway.
Thad was going to get the chance to handle real moon rocks.
…
For the next five days, Thad thought of little else. By Tuesday, his anticipation was nearly unbearable, and when Cooper finally escorted him and a technician from Lockheed Martin, one of the contractors responsible for keeping the Lunar Lab running, his energy level was so high he had trouble staying a step behind the scientist. Given a chance, he would have pushed right past her and into the vault on his own.
“It’s like stepping into a submarine,” Cooper said as she led them into a stairwell with cement walls. She was carrying a sheaf of computer printouts, which contained the list of random lunar samples that they would have to check and inventory. The samples were cataloged by mission; samples brought back by Apollo 11 began with the number 11, followed by the catalog number—the first Apollo sample was therefore 110001. The second, 110002. And so on.
“And I don’t just mean the decor,” Cooper continued, taking them up the flight of stairs. “The place was designed to be an entirely self-contained, atmosphere-regulated building. It went up in 1979, a level-four construction project—which means it can withstand a category-five hurricane without any water damage.”
The guy from Lockheed whistled low, though of course he’d already know all of this. Thad glanced back at him, noticing that the man was pretty bulky. He’d probably played football in college. Thad guessed he was now a mechanical engineer, assigned to NASA as part of some enormous government contract.
They reached the top of the stairwell and came to a large steel door, with a cipher lock halfway up the frame. Dr. Cooper punched a number, then flashed her NASA ID in front of a camera pointing down from above the door. The electronic lock clicked, and the door slowly swung inward. She ushered the two of them inside.
Thad found himself in a small changing room; there was a bench in the middle of the room, a couple of sinks, and a row of lockers. Next to the lockers was a clothing rack, containing a dozen white bodysuits wrapped in plastic. Dr. Cooper waved the computer printouts at the suits.
“First we put on the suits. In the lockers, you’ll find white booties that go over your shoes. You’ll also need gloves, a hairnet, and over that a white surgical cap.”
This was going to be really fucking cool. Taking the scientist’s lead, Thad and the tech carefully put the white suits on over their clothes. It took a moment to figure out how the clasps worked, but finally Thad got the thing secure over his body, elastics closed tightly around his ankles, wrists, and neck. He retrieved a pair of booties from one of the lockers, pulling them on over his shoes. Then the gloves, hairnet, and the cap.
“You guys look like a million bucks,” Cooper said, finishing with her own cap.
“I feel like an ice-cream man,” Thad responded. “Or a brain surgeon.”
Cooper directed them toward a glass door at the rear of the changing room. She pulled the door open, pointing them into a small, cube-shaped room with glass walls and a steel-grated floor. Stepping inside, Thad noticed that the ceiling was also grated, and the place had a very claustrophobic feel; it was so small he could touch both sides with his hands. Cooper shut the door behind them.
“This is called the ‘clean room.’ It’s designed to cycle out any dust particles that are in your lungs. Don’t worry, it won’t hurt a bit.”
There was a sudden change in pressure, followed by a light, antiseptic-tinged breeze flowing through the room. Seconds ticked away on a digital readout affixed to one of the glass walls. After exactly one minute, there was a loud buzz—and the door on the opposite side of the clean room clicked open. Dr. Cooper gestured again, and Thad, who was closest, pushed his way through.
He found himself in a lab—but it was nothing like the lab he and Helms called home. Instead of stainless-steel countertops, there were huge Plexiglas nitrogen chambers, with sealed, valvelike hatches. Some of the hatches had rubber gloves attached to them; others were designed to support wicked-looking microscopes, as well as other devices Thad couldn’t name. There were also vents on the ceiling, along with large digital readouts that showed the oxygen and nitrogen levels in the room. He guessed that the entire place could be flooded with nitrogen, if an experiment warranted it; in that case, he’d have to be wearing one of the full-scale Racal bodysuits with self-contained air that he could see hanging along one of the walls.
Cooper led them through the lab, and at the very back they came to what Thad assumed was the vault door. It wasn’t hard to identify—the thing was truly massive. Huge and steel and menacing, it was like something from a nineteenth-century bank. There was a giant metal wheel in the center of the door, next to which Thad could see another complicated-looking double-wheel lock.
Cooper approached the lock and entered a five-digit number. Then the tech from Lockheed Martin took her place, twisting in his own code. Both codes were needed, it seemed, to get the thing open. When the tech was finished, Cooper pointed Thad toward the giant wheel.
Thad nearly leaped forward, putting both gloved hands on the cold metal. With some effort, he gave the wheel a spin, and listened as the locks disengaged. Cooper told him to pull, and he put all of his weight into it, leaning back so far that he was practically hanging off the thing. To his surprise, the door didn’t budge.
“You sure you put in the right combo?”
“It’s designed to withstand a pound of C-4,” Cooper responded. “Put some backbone into it.”
Thad gritted his teeth and tried again, using all of his strength. Slowly, the thing started to move. There was a hiss as the overpressurized, nitrogen-tinged air inside the vault whispered out, leveling out with the air from the outer lab. Inch by inch, the door glided outward—until it was open enough for them to slip inside.
The vault was much bigger than Thad had expected, extending deep into the building. Along the walls he saw row after row of huge aluminum cabinets. They started about two feet off the ground, running upward all the way to the ceiling. The cabinets contained shelves and compartments, each about eight inches wide, two inches tall, extending a foot and a half back into the cabinets.
Cooper crossed to the closest cabinet, reaching for one of the boxes. She gripped it in one gloved hand, gave it a pull, and Thad watched as it slid outward. There was a metal seal on the top of the box. Cooper broke the seal, and inside were numerous samples, each individually wrapped in a Teflon bag, cataloged by number.
“So you see how this works,” she said. “There are about a hundred and ten thousand samples in here, varying in size from a couple of pounds all the way down to micron dust. Each one is labeled, and our job is to go through them, find the random samples from this list, open the metal seals on the sample boxes, verify that it’s there, put the lid back on, and then reseal it.”
“A hundred and ten thousand samples,” Thad repeated.
“Yep. Eight hundred and forty-two pounds in total. I told you this was going to be fun.”
Thad peered into the open cabinet in front of Cooper. He could see into the plastic bag; it looked to be the size of a small pebble, dark, mildly pockmarked. He couldn’t tell for sure, but it had to be at least thirty or forty grams. He remembered what Gibson had said in his lecture—that someone had once tried to sell a single gram of moon rock for $5 million. Forty grams—well, that would mean that the little plastic bag might very well have a street value of $200 million.
It was a crazy thought—but to Thad, no amount of money could define such a treasure. And yet, glancing around that room, at all the aluminum cabinets that lined the walls—one hundred and ten thousand samples, eight hundred and forty-two pounds … it was a staggering thing to contemplate. It was like Fort Knox, except there weren’t any armed guards or men in military uniforms keeping watch. There was just the shared respect of men and women who valued science—and the historical nature of the Apollo missions—more than any amount of money.
; As Cooper and the tech went to work finding the samples listed on the computer printouts, Thad lingered a moment longer, looking around the room—and suddenly noticed a small door in the far corner. The door was only about three feet high, with another cipher lock on the outer edge.
“Dr. Cooper, what’s in there?”
She looked up from her computer list.
“That’s where we keep the return samples.”
“Return samples?”
“That’s right. The rocks that have been sent out, studied, and sent back.”
Thad stared at the little midget door. Of course, the return samples would be kept separately—they’d been taken out of the pristine, controlled environment of the vault, used in experiments—they weren’t useful as research samples anymore. But still, it seemed odd that they would be locked away in an even deeper corner of the vault.
“Don’t worry,” Cooper continued. “We’ll be inventorying them as well. There’s a safe in there, a few feet tall, it’s really kind of cute. Even though the return samples themselves are basically considered trash.”
Trash—that seemed like a particularly harsh way to describe the return samples. They were still moon rocks, brought back by hand by the Apollo astronauts. Thad had a strange feeling—like he was suddenly back in the museum at the University of Utah, sifting through crates of fossils in a storage basement. One man’s trash, another man’s treasure. Except, in this case, it was such an unbelievably significant treasure. It seemed shameful to think of it as trash.
“The return rocks—they’re still just as valuable as the rest, right?”
“The whole point of this place is to house lunar materials to be used by scientists for experimentation. The monetary value of these rocks is kind of beside the point. And I wouldn’t get hung up on the whole trash concept—only about two percent of the entire collection is in the return vault.”
Two percent of eight hundred and forty-two pounds. Thad did the math in his head. That meant there were seventeen pounds of moon rock in the return vault. Locked away in a safe designated as trash. Seventeen pounds, at 453 grams to a pound—that was 7,701 grams of moon rock. At $5 million a gram …