Free The Cassandra Project by Jack McDevitt

staring at nothing in particular, and frowned. No one had landed on the Moon before Armstrong. If they had, it would be a triumph, not a secret. We were in a race with the Russians, and Sputnik had predated everything we’d done. We couldn’t have been sure that Khrushchev and the Russians weren’t secretly working on their own Moon landing. If we
could
have touched down, we
would
have.
    Don’t forget those Kennedy memos that came to light back in 2012,
he reminded himself. JFK didn’t give a damn about science. All he was concerned with was the prestige of beating the Russians to the Moon. And if Harvard John didn’t care about the scientific breakthroughs, you could be sure that Landslide Lyndon and Tricky Dick didn’t give a damn either. To all three, the only important thing was getting there first, so of course they wouldn’t hide the accomplishment.
    So why did Aaron Walker write that in his diary?
    Think, Bucky!
he told himself.
You’ve already bought half an hour on CNN and Fox News to offer
your
version of what happened and what’s being covered up, and to challenge the government to prove you wrong. You’d better be damned sure you’re right, or no one will ever listen to you again.
    One thing is certain: Walker didn’t write it as a joke. A lot of social mores have changed over the years, but diaries are still private things. He never expected anyone to read what he wrote—so
why
did he say that?
    He checked his Rolex. Thirty-three hours before he had to speak on television. That didn’t give him a lot of time.
    He had come with a skeleton staff—Ed Camden; his longtime secretary, Gloria Marcos; and his bodyguard, Jason Brent. (Bucky thought of himself as a pretty fit specimen, more than capable of taking care of himself—but when you’re a billionaire, you’re a target for kidnappers and all the disgruntled rivals you beat, which is to say bankrupted, on the way to your fortune. He hated the thought of traveling with an entourage of bodyguards the way so many others of his economic stature did, so he’d chosen Brent, a one-man wrecking crew who was a crack shot, a karate champion, and had the fastest reaction time he’d ever seen.) Bucky summoned all three of them to his suite. Well, to the huge living room of the presidential suite. Jason would never agree to stay down the corridor with a locked door between them, and slept in the adjoining bedroom.
    “What’s up?” asked Camden.
    “You heard the news?” said Bucky.
    “Yeah,” replied Camden. “I wonder what the guy was smoking.”
    Bucky turned to Gloria. “You think anyone’ll believe it?”
    “Why not?” she answered. “Hell, a third of the public doesn’t believe we ever landed. Why shouldn’t another third believe we landed more often than we said?” “I’m going in front of fifty million people tomorrow night,” said Bucky. “I’d like to think I’m not about to make a total fool of myself.” Jason Brent looked puzzled. “I don’t see a problem, Boss. I assume you’re going to give your version about why Kirby wouldn’t accept that award.” “He accepted it the next day,” noted Camden.
    “Even so, something’s going on, and the Boss is going to give his version. Thing is, whatever it is, they’ve kept it a secret for fifty years, and that’s if anything happened at all. So what if he’s wrong? Who will know? Or put it this way: If something
did
happen, and he’s wrong about what it is, the only guys who can contradict him and prove he’s wrong are the same guys who have been lying about it for fifty years. He’s not NASA’s enemy, so why would they reverse course just to embarrass him?” Camden considered what Brent had said and finally turned to Bucky. “He’s got a point, you know.” “Look,” said Bucky. “We’re going to the Moon. If I wind up looking like a buffoon over this, every single thing we find, everything we learn, everything we announce to the public when we return, will be