Free Sex on the Moon by Ben Mezrich Page B

the samples were from each successive moon mission, how each of the six landing spots had been chosen to study different areas of the moon’s topography. The results were startlingly different types of rock, from the very fine-grained materials brought back from the valley of Taurus Littrow, a deep mountain valley in the northeastern part of the moon—a material that was made up of little tiny beads commonly known as “orange glass,” to the gray, almost black Apollo 17 samples—the very last samples ever collected by human beings, from the dark portion of the moon. In passing, Gibson acknowledged how utterly valuable the samples were—not just that they were irreplaceable, but that requests came in from all over the world, every day, from scientists, museums, and colleges wanting to display or study these national treasures. And every year, NASA chose a few hundred lucky souls who would have a chance to see a moon rock for real.
    Thad smiled as he listened to this part of Gibson’s speech. In his lab, just a few floors away, he had been practicing the techniques that would be used to prepare those moon rocks. He was part of the NASA machinery, part of the fraternity of scientists who made such science possible. When Gibson added, almost as an aside, that these samples were also infinitely valuable in nonscientific terms, Thad barely registered the thought. That someone had once tried to sell a single gram of illegal moon rock for $5 million—that really didn’t mean anything to Thad, at the time. The value of those lunar samples went well beyond money. They represented the greatest human endeavor in history.
    Once Gibson shifted his talk away from lunar rocks, Thad did not believe the man could somehow refocus the audience’s attention, but then Gibson shocked them all by reaching behind the podium and lifting up a small glass vial. From the front row, Thad could actually make out what was inside—a glassy-looking piece of rock, almost volcanic in nature, but certainly something that he had never seen before. Gibson smiled at the crowd as he said the object’s name:
    “ALH 84001. Recovered from the ice in Antarctica in 1984, this little thing has been the focus of my life for nearly a decade now. In 1996, I published the scientific results of my studies in Science magazine. I’m sure some of you have read it. This meteorite, which is over four billion years old—we believe it came from the planet Mars. And this meteorite contains within it evidence of past biological activity. In other words—this meteorite suggests, unequivocally, the possibility of life on Mars.”
    Thad reacted with the rest of the audience, awed and amazed. He glanced around himself, saw the raptured faces of the co-ops around him; it was one thing to impress a swimming pool full of college-age kids with a story about a trip on the Space Shuttle Simulator, Gibson had shown an entire amphitheater evidence in support of life on another planet. The man had held in his hands moon rocks from every landing in human history—and here he was, holding a piece of Mars itself, dredged up from the deep ice of Antarctica.
    Thad may have been in the process of reinventing himself as a social leader of the JSC co-ops, but Everett Gibson was a fucking rock star.
    …
    After the lecture had ended, and the audience had filed away toward the various labs, cafés, and workstations that dotted the NASA campus, Thad lingered behind. He waited until Gibson had packed away his notes—and the Mars sample—into his leather-bound, NASA briefcase, before approaching the edge of the stage. Helms was a couple of rows back, chatting up a pretty coed from the University of Texas. Even so, Thad could see, out of the corner of his eye, that Helms was partially watching him. Helms, it seemed, was always watching out for him, maybe worried that Thad had the capacity to push things too far, take too many chances. Thad was amused by the thought. NASA was a dream come true;