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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, either 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