“What’s that stuff?” asked one of the reporters, pointing to the dome segments.
“That’s what we hope to find out,” said Bucky.
“Did they come from Myshko’s ship?” asked another.
“I’ve no idea.”
“Oh, come on, Bucky,” said a third. “Take a guess!”
“I’m no scientist,” replied Bucky. “We have to subject these things to all kinds of tests.”
“Okay, you don’t know what they are. What do you think they are?”
Bucky stared at the assembled members of the press for a long moment, and then his natural flamboyance came to the fore. “I think they’re part of a dome that was constructed on the far side of the moon, in the Cassegrain Crater.”
“By Myshko?”
A brief pause. Then: “I doubt it.”
“You’re saying it was made by aliens?”
“I’m saying that I doubt Myshko built it. Who else might have?”
“Where’s the rest of this dome?” asked another.
Good question, thought Bucky. He looked at the reporter. “I don’t know.”
“There’s no weather on the Moon, is there?”
“Not the way you and I know it,” said Bucky. “So to anticipate your next question, no, it wasn’t destroyed by a tornado or a cyclone or an earthquake . . . make that, a moonquake.”
“So are you suggesting that Myshko destroyed it?”
Bucky shook his head. “I’m not saying any such thing. In point of fact, I believe that Myshko’s mission was to look at it.”
“Now I’m really confused,” continued the reporter. “You didn’t find any aliens up there, did you?”
“I think you can be assured I would have said so if we did.” Bucky smiled.
“Then if the Myshko mission didn’t destroy it, and aliens didn’t destroy it, who did?”
“I think there’s only one possible answer,” replied Bucky. “I think it was destroyed three months after the Myshko flight by the Walker mission.”
Even the jaded reporters fell silent as they did a mass double take.
“Just a minute, Bucky!” said The Los Angeles Times. “Are you saying that there was a second Moon landing before Neil Armstrong?”
“Yes,” said Bucky. “Weren’t you paying attention? There were two descent stages left on the Moon.”
“But if there were no aliens there, no trace of any aliens, just this deserted structure, why would we want to destroy it?”
“To coin a phrase, I’d give a pretty penny to find out. But I’ve already spent quite a few billion pennies, so maybe you guys can be of some service here.”
“Us?”
Bucky nodded. “I can guarantee you that the answer’s not on the Moon. Surely you can find the answer if it’s here on Earth.”
Great! thought Jerry Culpepper. If the White House didn’t hate us before, they sure as hell do now.
“Are you saying the president is a party to this?”
Bucky stared at the reporter. “The president was six years old when Myshko landed. Do you think he was a party to this?”
“If Nixon kept it secret . . .” began the reporter.
“Not just Nixon,” said another. “They couldn’t have done this overnight. Look at the dates, and think of the preparation time. LBJ would have had to be part of it, too.”
“Whatever,” said the first. “If one or the other knew about it, and whoever was president when Myshko landed, it was definitely Nixon when—and if—Walker destroyed it. Did he just do it on a whim?”
“I doubt it,” said Bucky. “For one thing, Nixon wouldn’t have been the only person to know about it. If there hadn’t been a hell of a good reason, why would Myshko never claim credit for being the first man on the Moon? Why would Walker and all the others keep silent? There was a reason, all right. I don’t know if it was a good reason or a bad one, but it was one that they all bought into, which makes me think it was a valid one.”
“So are you suggesting that Ford and Carter and Reagan and the Bushes and Clinton and Obama and Cunningham, they all knew about it?” said The Chicago Sun-Times. “It must have been one hell of a secret. I mean, if Nixon didn’t use it to distract us from Watergate, and Clinton didn’t reveal it to take attention away from his impeachment trial, just what could it have been?”
“Right,” chimed in Fox News. “We weren’t under attack. The discovery of alien life, and sentient alien life at that—after all, they traveled to the Moon and they built this structure—would have been something to get up on the rooftops and yell about, not hide.”
“So maybe it wasn’t alien life at all,” suggested The New York Times. “All we have are a couple of curved metal plates, and the supposition of a wealthy playboy who hasn’t been trained in any of the sciences.”
“The wealthy I’ll take full credit for,” said Bucky. “The playboy I resent. Or at least I resent never having had the time to be one. Anyway, I am not stating any of this as a scientific certainty. I’m inclined to say you dragged it out of me”—he smiled—“but the fact of the matter is that what I’ve told you is all supposition. Logical supposition, I think, and I’d bet half my remaining fortune that we ascertain that this metal wasn’t created on Earth, but we don’t know anything except that Sidney Myshko and Aaron Walker did land on the Moon because we found the landing stages from their ships.”
“Why would ten presidents lie about it?” asked ABC.
“I don’t know,” answered Bucky. He was losing patience answering the same question every two minutes. “And maybe lie is the wrong word.”
“In what way?”
“When presidents keep various aspects of national security secret, no one accuses them of lying.”
“Are you saying this is a national security matter?” demanded MSNBC. “That we are in danger of being attacked by alien beings?”
Bucky shook his head. “No. I’m not saying anything like that. I just used national security as an example. There are a lot of things that presidents, and senators, and representatives, and generals, and for all I know, blacksmiths, don’t tell us about. Most of it isn’t national security. I’m not in the panic business, and I think it would be a good idea if you weren’t either.”
The man from MSNBC didn’t look as chagrined as Bucky felt he should have, so he stared at him until the reporter shifted uncomfortably and dropped his gaze.
“All right,” said Bucky. “I’ve told you what I know, which isn’t much, and I’ve suggested where you might look for answers, which, of course, is up to you.” Sure it is, with three billion people watching or listening to this. “Now you are free to interview scientists Marcia Neimark and Phil Bassinger, and pilot Ben Gaines. When you’re done, Jerry Culpepper, the spokesman for the Blackstone Enterprises space initiative, will provide you with more background for your articles and reports.”
“Have you got anything else to say?” asked The Wall Street Journal.
“Yeah,” said Bucky. He looked into the cameras. “Start saving your pennies, because when we and other companies begin offering commercial flights in space, whatever it costs, you’ll get your money’s worth. I’ve done a lot of things in my life, been a lot of places, but I’ve never experienced anything like this. I feel”—he searched for the words—“emotionally blinded and deafened just by being back on Earth.” He pointed out the open doors toward the sky. “Now that I’m here, all I want to do is get back there.”
Then, accompanied by Jason Brent and Gloria Marcos, he excused himself and left.
—
“Well,” he asked, when they were all seated in the private office that had been constructed for him, “how’d I do?”