“Anything else?” Kaz asked.
A bespectacled younger man with shoulder-length hair and a wispy, drooping mustache spoke up. “What about KREEP?”
Kaz looked at him. “What’s creep?”
“It’s spelled K-R-E-E-P. K for potassium. REE for rare earth elements, and P for phosphorous.” He shot Kaz a look, who nodded to show he knew what rare earth elements were. “They aren’t actually all that rare, it’s just that it’s hard to find them in concentration anywhere. They’re sort of evenly spread in the Earth’s crust, due to their chemical nature. But on the Moon, we think they ended up solidifying into a rich layer just below the crust. Lots of the moonrocks in this building have KREEP basalts in them.”
Kaz pondered. “Okay, but why is finding KREEP on the Moon important?”
“Theoretically, the same process that concentrated the KREEP should also sometimes enrich it with uranium and thorium. It may be feasible to mine radioactive elements on the Moon, which means we could power a Moon colony there.”
Kaz was careful to keep his excitement to himself. Uranium on the Moon? Is that what the Soviet robot prospectors had found? Could this be the reason they had landed Lunokhod where they did? Finding out what the Soviets were looking for would be key in deciding exactly what the Apollo 18 crew was going to do on the Moon.
Kaz said, “Anything else I should know?”
Don Baldwin surveyed his team. “I think that’s it, Lieutenant Commander.” The dig was subtle, but the man was telling Kaz he’d done his homework and recognized the military component to all this.
Kaz didn’t rise to the bait. “Well thanks, then, everyone. That was extremely informative. Chad and I will update the crew, and I’ll be following up with you as we finalize mission planning.”
Kaz caught up with Laura as they left the conference room.
“Think you’ll find more holes?” he asked.
Laura turned to look at him, her gaze shifting from his right eye to his left and back again. “I expect so. If it happened once, then it can happen again. Pretty exciting to be in on discovering something totally new.”
“I look forward to hearing what you find. I’m not in the MSC directory yet, so how about I give you my number?”
“Sure.”
Kaz pulled out his notepad, copied his new number onto a blank page and carefully tore it out for her.
“At the rate we’re looking,” she said, “we should know within a couple days.”
When she made no move to give him her number in return, Kaz took a chance.
“If you ever want to go flying, I have access to a little plane just west of here. Nice on a sunny day.”
Laura looked at him, considering. “That sounds like fun,” she said at last. “I’ll give you a call on both.”
He nodded. “Talk to you then.”
Laura smiled at him, then turned and headed down the corridor. Kaz watched her as she strode purposefully away, her thick black hair swaying.
Kaz considered his actions; he wasn’t usually so impulsive. He’d been engaged when the accident had happened, but the relationship hadn’t survived his recovery, or rather the dark few months when he couldn’t see a future path. He’d been careful about romantic entanglements ever since.
But there was something about Laura that he liked.
8
Lubyanka, Moscow
Espionage, like chess, is a game of patience and focus. Carefully move the pieces to ever-stronger positions, endure the setbacks, wait for the opportunities provided by the opponent and then—pounce.
Vitaly Kalugin, a long-term player at the spy game, sat down at his desk, preparing to start his day. Unlike the three men he shared the office with, Vitaly liked a neat desk. Next to his pen stand he kept a low wooden tray for incoming correspondence. He always made sure his outgoing tray was filled with the telexes and reports that he’d read and notated before he went home every night, to be sent on by the office runners to the next names on the lengthy distribution lists. The KGB was the single security agency for the entire Soviet Union, handling both domestic and foreign intelligence and counter-intelligence, while combating dissent and anti-Soviet activities. It made for a lot of reading every day.
He kept his beige phone on his left, where he could hold it and talk while writing with his right hand. An emptied ashtray was on the far right, his matches and cigarettes still in his jacket pocket. Vitaly unlocked his desk, set his lunch box into its deepest drawer, next to the half-empty bottle of Moskovskaya vodka. Irina always sent him to work with pirozhki stuffed with meat and vegetables, a block of pale Russian cheese and pickled cucumbers or tomatoes. He got a hot lunch at the office stolovaya, but he liked to eat, and the extra food carried him through the long days.