Back to the Moon-ARC by Les Johnson, Travis S. Taylor

and watched Childers, who was rocking back and forth in his chair and talking a mile a minute about buying something short. Paul guessed there was a broker on the other end. Finally, Childers tapped his earbud and hung up the phone.
    “Paul, glad I caught you before you left for the airport.” Paul grunted and nodded. “Caroline, is everything set up for the press conference tomorrow?”
    “Yes, sir. No hitches as far as I can tell.”
    “Very good. We need to talk about our demeanor tomorrow. Not sure if you two have had time to watch, but NASA just did the automated landing on the lunar surface.” Gary looked over at Paul and then at Caroline. Paul guessed it was to judge his reaction. As far as Paul was concerned, he didn’t really care. If he had sixteen billion dollars a year, he was certain that he could land a pickup truck, a marching band, a full-fledged circus, and a swimming pool equipped with synchronized swimmers right in the middle of the Sea of Tranquility. He wasn’t that impressed. Apparently, his expression showed it.
    “That right there, Paul. That expression! You can’t make that face when NASA and the Moon missions are brought up.” Childers didn’t frown at him, but he didn’t smile, either.
    “I understand what this is about,” Caroline said. “We’ve talked about this, Paul. No matter how you feel about NASA and how they are performing their mission, we must show unified and enthusiastic support for it. We cannot afford to look like naysayers, pessimists, or anti-space in any way. It will hurt us and everything we’ve worked for.”
    “What? I wouldn’t say anything.”
    “Paul, just stop. We’re not accosting you for your opinion.” Gary held up his hand and started in. “Hell, I agree with you. The best success NASA has had since Apollo has been unmanned. Oh, sure, the shuttles were successful, at flying up and down and round and round in low Earth orbit. The public doesn’t really care, or we’d still have shuttles. And all these stupid little robotic controlled rovers rolling around on Mars? Give me a break.”
    “Gary,” Caroline said, “The Pathfinder/Sojourner was a great public relations success for NASA. We studied it in graduate school. The thing had over a million hits a day to the mission Web site for the first couple of weeks.”
    “Nonsense.” Gary laughed.
    “It is a fact, Gary. You can look that up.”
    “Oh, hell, I know it is a fact. The nonsense part is that the million hits meant a damned thing. How many kids are in the public-school system in the U.S.? Hmm? Do you know that statistic?” Gary tapped his knuckles on his desk when he asked.
    “Uh, no, Gary. I don’t.” Caroline looked perplexed, as if she didn’t see the relevance.
    “Well, I do. I’ve studied this industry long and hard. The public doesn’t give a damn about the robot rovers. The so-called success was due to every science teacher in every public school having the fifty-four million students in the U.S. log on to the Web and write a homework essay about it. That is how the thing got so many hits. And clearly, less than one fiftieth of the students managed to do this. But the fact that the hits lasted a couple weeks probably accounts for a lot of them.” Gary wrapped his knuckles against the desk with each point he made.
    “I agree with Gary on this. And look where they chose to land!” Paul finally joined in. “They landed in the desert, for God’s sake. You know what the official NASA mission description for the rover mission was? Rhetorical question. Don’t answer. I can tick them off one at a time. Let’s see…Number one, to prove that the development of faster, better, and cheaper spacecraft is possible for a cost under one hundred and fifty million dollars. Number two, to show that it is possible to send a load of scientific instruments to another planet with a simple system and at one fifteenth the cost of the Viking missions. Those damned things were just under a