Free Sex on the Moon by Ben Mezrich

moment to process the words, to let the familiar voice yank him back into the lab. He switched off the saw and glanced back over his shoulder. Helms was standing by the counter where Thad had laid out all of his practice samples; everything from minute educational slices in individually wrapped Teflon bags to carefully constructed desiccators holding mock meteorites, ready to be sent to labs all over NASA.
    “I wasn’t sure when you were going to be finished running errands for Dr. Draper. So I figured I’d get started on my own. I guess I lost track of the time.”
    “I’ll say. I assume Dr. Agee showed you how to do all this?”
    Agee, Thad’s official mentor, had indeed stopped by earlier that morning to introduce himself, but he only stayed for a few minutes. Thad had been on his own most of the day. That didn’t bother him; actually, he found it quite liberating. His adventure at the mock space shuttle had taught him that NASA was a place an independent mind like his could take great advantage of. And Thad had become very independent. Ever since he’d been kicked out of the hermetic world where he’d grown up—the Mormon Church the way his father interpreted it, the heavy-handed way of the Mission Training Center—he’d become hungry to make his own future, to build his own name. The cool thing about the co-op program seemed to be that he’d be able to find his own way, to a large degree.
    “He gave me some pointers. But I learned a lot of it from reading your notebooks, and using the checklist I found on the laptop.”
    Helms glanced back at the computer station in the far corner of the lab. There was one laptop, a couple of desktops, and some wiring that led into NASA’s secure mainframe. It was a pretty high-tech station, and it was also highly secure. Helms had duly informed Thad that NASA security could monitor any use of the computer system, including personal e-mails. Thad figured that was for the best. Even a cursory search of the mainframe using the laptop had told him that there was a lot of pretty cool information available to an employee with his level of security. He could only imagine what higher security clearance would get you.
    “You missed lunch,” Helms said, moving next to Thad to help him begin to disassemble the saw. “But if we’re quick, we can grab something on the way over to the lecture.”
    Thad raised his eyebrows. He really had lost track of the time. He’d been at NASA over a week now, but he’d only made it to the Stardust Café twice. He didn’t really care—food had never been a real priority for him. Back at home, Sonya had often had to remind him to eat. As a struggling model, she had found the ease with which he skipped meals quite annoying. But certainly at NASA, no matter who you might run into in the cafeteria, Thad found meals the least interesting part of his day.
    The upcoming lecture was a perfect example. Although Thad had yet to meet Dr. Everett Gibson, he certainly knew the man by reputation. Gibson had been a standout scientist in the life sciences division for well over thirty years. One of the brightest stars in the astromaterials research office, he was the epitome of the old-school NASA scientist. After attaining a master’s in physical chemistry and a Ph.D. in geochemistry, he had gone to work for the JSC—or, as it was called at the time, the Manned Spacecraft Center—in July of 1969, just as the Apollo 11 capsule first returned from space.
    Thad was already in awe of the man. Gibson wasn’t an astronaut, but he was the closest thing a laboratory scientist could ever dream of becoming. It was fitting that he would be giving his lecture in the life sciences building, where Thad worked. Gibson had spent almost all of his thirty-plus years at NASA stationed in that building because—as Thad had learned only the day before, during a bull session with Helms and a couple of other co-ops—Building 31 had once housed the lunar receiving