“Will you have enough air?” asked Bucky.
“If we need more, we’ll go back to the lander and get it. And I’ll also bring back some instruments that should help me determine what the hell it’s made of.”
It took two more orbits, but finally Neimark was able to announce with certainty that the artificial structure had been a dome, and the photos they transmitted to the ship seemed to verify it.
“How big do you think it was?” asked Bucky.
“I don’t know. The more we dig, the more we find. The ground’s not packed here, it’s just rubble, so we’re not having any trouble uncovering it. So far, I’d say it’s at least thirty feet in diameter—but that’s a minimum. It could be—could have been—three times that big.”
“Whatever it was, it sure as hell wasn’t an outpost for observing us,” said Bucky. “You could never see the Earth from there.” He paused, considering the possibilities. “Could it have been made by men?”
“Not unless you think they reached the Moon before the dawn of the Apollo Program, erected whatever this structure was with materials the instruments still can’t identify, and came back unnoticed,” said Neimark.
“So it was an alien structure?” persisted Bucky.
“I’d say so, but nothing’s definite this early. The pieces are all curved, all the same way. It was a dome. That’s all we can be sure of right now.”
“Were there any windows?”
“None that we can see.”
“But if the dome has no windows, what’s the point?” asked Bucky. “I mean, you can’t see through it.” Suddenly he paused. “Or could they?”
“We don’t know anything about any mysterious ‘they,’” said Neimark. “But we’ve only uncovered one curved panel, maybe two. Have you ever seen an astronomical observatory, Bucky? They’re not transparent. They have reasonably solid, opaque domes, with holes and channels where they can position their telescopes.”
“But they can’t see Earth from this side of the Moon!” said Bucky in frustration. “What in blazes were they looking at?”
“You’re jumping to conclusions, Bucky,” she said. “We don’t know that they were looking at anything. Give us another few hours here, then we’ll grab some food, take a nap, replenish our oxygen, and come back to explore the site further.”
“If it’s okay with you, Bucky,” said Bassinger, “we’re going to stop talking to you and get to work. We’ll transfer all the stills and videos to you, and I already see a couple of pieces of whatever this is that are small enough to carry back to the lander and take up to the Myshko.”
“Yeah, go ahead,” said Bucky. “Besides, if you start using scientific terms, I’ll think you’ve gone crazy from the gravity and are speaking in tongues.”
Gaines broke the connection and turned to Bucky. “So what do you think?”
“Same thing as you. There was something up here that wasn’t human, wasn’t born on Earth.”
“Is there a possibility we might have killed them?”
“I don’t know,” said Bucky. “My first inclination is to say we didn’t. There aren’t any bodies, and they wouldn’t decay and vanish up here. And if they’d fired on us, don’t you think President Nixon would have tried to rally the people to his side? I mean, this is a lot bigger than Vietnam.” He paused, frowning. “And then . . .”
“And then what?” asked Gaines.
“Well, if we destroyed the dome, did we purposely or accidentally destroy whatever was in it?” He frowned again. “Myshko and his crew weren’t twenty-year-old fighter pilots with no experience. These were mature astronauts, trained in the sciences. Why would they destroy it? And why would nine administrations in a row hide it? Or did the last eight not even know? And if they didn’t, why would Nixon keep it a secret?” He shook his head in frustration. “I get the feeling that I know less now than before we took off from Montana.”
“By the way,” said Gaines, “I assume you want me to send the photos and video of the dome back to Jerry.”
Bucky shook his head. “Absolutely not. I don’t want the White House or anyone else seeing any of this until we’ve had time to study and analyze them back home.”
“I figured as much,” said Gaines. “But they’ll be encrypted.”
“They’ll be the most important thing ever sent from one machine to another. How long do you think it’ll take the CIA or the FBI to break through the encryption after they’ve intercepted them?”
“What’s the matter, Bucky? We’ve made the most significant discovery in the history of man, and suddenly you sound paranoid.”
“We aren’t the first to discover whatever this is,” said Bucky grimly. “You’re only paranoid if they’re not out to get you.”
33
Marcia Neimark and Phil Bassinger climbed into the command module and began removing their space suits.
“I wish I could say the air smells fresher,” remarked Bassinger.
“Settle for there being more of it,” said Bucky. He stared at the two of them. “I can’t tell you how much I hate you for being the ones to land while I was stuck up here.”
“Aw, that’s sweet,” replied Neimark.
“Really,” said Bucky. “Just be ready to spend the entire return flight describing everything you saw, every step you took, every sensation you felt.”
“Or you won’t feed us?” asked Bassinger with a grin.
“For starters.” Bucky’s tone was so serious that they couldn’t be sure he was kidding. Suddenly, he looked around. “Well, where the hell is it?”
“Come aft and have a look.”
Bucky half walked, half floated to the back of the ship, where the two curved plates were secured.
“You know,” he said, “if I saw these atop an ancient church or temple, or even an old, abandoned legislature building, I wouldn’t give them a second glance.” He paused and stared at the plates. “And yet they were responsible for three Moon flights and the expenditure of who knows how many billions of dollars. Why did we do it?”
No one had any answers, and, after a few moments, he made his way back to the front of the ship.
“So what do you think?” asked Gaines.
“Doesn’t quite stir the sense of wonder the way this does,” said Bucky, waving a hand at a viewscreen. “We’re not Earthbound anymore. I found a way; so will others. And now that I’ve shown that we don’t need the government to do it, man is coming back out here again and again. The human race’s greatest shame is that we turned our back on it for fifty years.” He stared out at the stars. “Damn, I hope it is an alien artifact! Once we know for sure they’re out there, nothing will hold us back!”
“Calm down, Bucky,” said Neimark. “You’ll have a stroke.”
“No I won’t,” he said. “Once upon a time, when I thought I’d experienced and accomplished just about everything, I’d have accepted a stroke with equanimity. But now that I’ve been up here, now that I realize I haven’t set foot on Mars yet but that I can during my lifetime, now that I’ve seen what we’re carrying back home, I intend to die with the greatest reluctance.”
“I’ll drink to that,” said Neimark.
34
Cunningham, like any president, had grown accustomed to criticism. But the flavor was changing. Usually, attacks charged him with bad judgment. Now they were suggesting he’d allowed himself to be deceived, that there was a conspiracy at the heart of the government, and he had no more sense of what was going on than the voters. Where was the president who’d campaigned as the man who could make government work?