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Authors: Jack McDevitt
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chance to comment. Why don’t you take a look at what he said? You should have it now. I can wait.”
The journal entry was dated April 21, 2009:
Hard to believe it’s been forty years since my stroll on the lunar surface. Oops, forgot I’m not supposed to say that. Wonder what that thing was, anyhow?
“What do you think?” said Ralph.
“Is that it?”
“The context is interesting.”
“How do you mean?”
“He was describing a day at the ballpark. He’d gone to the Orioles-Yankees game. He gave up when Robinson Cano homered in the seventh. It gave the Yankees, I think, a 9–2 lead. He got up and left.
“That night he commented on it in his journal:
‘That was it. I’d had enough. Sitting up there when I should have been out somewhere celebrating the biggest event of my life. Of anybody’s life.’
Then he tosses in the line
‘Hard to believe . . .’
”
“Where’s it been all these years?” Jerry tried to sound skeptical.
“Jane said she’d forgotten he kept a journal. She found it after he died. She’d never really looked at it, beyond reading about when he’d first met her mother. The mother’s been dead a long time. Then when this stuff started about Myshko, she got curious and went back to it.”
“Who’s Jane?”
“Jane Alcott. His daughter. His only child, in fact.”
“Who has the journal now?”
“I do.”
Jerry looked out at the launch towers. “How does the entry read for April 21, 1969?”
“There isn’t one. We have an entry for April 3, describing his feelings, his anticipation, for the flight. Then there’s nothing until May 2. Three days after he got back.”
“On April 21, they were orbiting the Moon?”
“Yes.”
Jerry was getting a cold feeling in his stomach. “So what’s the May 3 entry say?”
“Just how glad he was to see his family again. To be back on solid ground. That sort of thing”
“What does his daughter think?”
“She says she never noticed the ballpark line. She says she was not a baseball fan.”
“I think Amos Bartlett’s still alive,” said Jerry. Bartlett had been one of Walker’s crew.
“We called him,” Ralph said. “Bartlett was the command module pilot. He told us it must be a mistake. Or a joke.”
Jerry nodded. Of course. What else could it be? “That should settle it,” he said.
“Do you have a comment, Jerry?”
“Sounds to me as if Walker was dreaming. Thinking about what might have been. Maybe he’d lost touch with reality. Started making up stuff for his journal.”
“Is that the formal NASA response?”
“No. I’d guess, Ralph, at this point, that we’re strictly no comment.”
—
Jerry went immediately to the archives. For more than seventy hours, while the capsule orbited the Moon, Bartlett’s voice had been the only one heard from the capsule. On the way out, and during the return flight, Walker had dominated the conversation. And occasionally, Lenny Mullen, the LEM pilot, could be heard.
But for almost three days, Walker and Mullen had been silent.
It was a rerun of the Myshko recordings.
5
Bucky Blackstone was in New York when the news broke. He made three quick calls, one to Ralph D’Angelo, two more to D’Angelo’s editor and his publisher—both longtime acquaintances if not exactly friends—and when he was done, he had no doubt that the diary mentioned a landing.
But that was ridiculous. The most important event in human history, and they covered it up for half a century? It made no sense. Even if the government had some reason for a cover-up, how the hell could they get the consent of the crew? There wasn’t a schoolkid anywhere in the Western world who didn’t know the names of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. How could you convince any landers who predated them to forgo that glory? And even if they agreed at the time, why would Myshko and the others keep quiet for twenty or thirty years—or fifty, if any of them were still alive?
He rubbed his chin absently,
The journal entry was dated April 21, 2009:
Hard to believe it’s been forty years since my stroll on the lunar surface. Oops, forgot I’m not supposed to say that. Wonder what that thing was, anyhow?
“What do you think?” said Ralph.
“Is that it?”
“The context is interesting.”
“How do you mean?”
“He was describing a day at the ballpark. He’d gone to the Orioles-Yankees game. He gave up when Robinson Cano homered in the seventh. It gave the Yankees, I think, a 9–2 lead. He got up and left.
“That night he commented on it in his journal:
‘That was it. I’d had enough. Sitting up there when I should have been out somewhere celebrating the biggest event of my life. Of anybody’s life.’
Then he tosses in the line
‘Hard to believe . . .’
”
“Where’s it been all these years?” Jerry tried to sound skeptical.
“Jane said she’d forgotten he kept a journal. She found it after he died. She’d never really looked at it, beyond reading about when he’d first met her mother. The mother’s been dead a long time. Then when this stuff started about Myshko, she got curious and went back to it.”
“Who’s Jane?”
“Jane Alcott. His daughter. His only child, in fact.”
“Who has the journal now?”
“I do.”
Jerry looked out at the launch towers. “How does the entry read for April 21, 1969?”
“There isn’t one. We have an entry for April 3, describing his feelings, his anticipation, for the flight. Then there’s nothing until May 2. Three days after he got back.”
“On April 21, they were orbiting the Moon?”
“Yes.”
Jerry was getting a cold feeling in his stomach. “So what’s the May 3 entry say?”
“Just how glad he was to see his family again. To be back on solid ground. That sort of thing”
“What does his daughter think?”
“She says she never noticed the ballpark line. She says she was not a baseball fan.”
“I think Amos Bartlett’s still alive,” said Jerry. Bartlett had been one of Walker’s crew.
“We called him,” Ralph said. “Bartlett was the command module pilot. He told us it must be a mistake. Or a joke.”
Jerry nodded. Of course. What else could it be? “That should settle it,” he said.
“Do you have a comment, Jerry?”
“Sounds to me as if Walker was dreaming. Thinking about what might have been. Maybe he’d lost touch with reality. Started making up stuff for his journal.”
“Is that the formal NASA response?”
“No. I’d guess, Ralph, at this point, that we’re strictly no comment.”
—
Jerry went immediately to the archives. For more than seventy hours, while the capsule orbited the Moon, Bartlett’s voice had been the only one heard from the capsule. On the way out, and during the return flight, Walker had dominated the conversation. And occasionally, Lenny Mullen, the LEM pilot, could be heard.
But for almost three days, Walker and Mullen had been silent.
It was a rerun of the Myshko recordings.
5
Bucky Blackstone was in New York when the news broke. He made three quick calls, one to Ralph D’Angelo, two more to D’Angelo’s editor and his publisher—both longtime acquaintances if not exactly friends—and when he was done, he had no doubt that the diary mentioned a landing.
But that was ridiculous. The most important event in human history, and they covered it up for half a century? It made no sense. Even if the government had some reason for a cover-up, how the hell could they get the consent of the crew? There wasn’t a schoolkid anywhere in the Western world who didn’t know the names of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. How could you convince any landers who predated them to forgo that glory? And even if they agreed at the time, why would Myshko and the others keep quiet for twenty or thirty years—or fifty, if any of them were still alive?
He rubbed his chin absently,
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