The Cassandra Project by Jack McDevitt Read Free Book Online

it.” He paused, took another puff of the cigar, grimaced. “
Something
happened on that Myshko mission, something they don’t want us to know about.” Suddenly he got to his feet, strolled over to the window, and stared up at the sunlit sky, wishing the Moon were visible. “But what the hell could it be that didn’t keep Myshko from returning to Earth, didn’t stop any of the Apollo missions, and yet needs a continuing fifty-year cover-up?” He shook his head. “God, it sounds crazy just describing it!”
    “That’s why we haven’t uncovered anything,” said Camden. “It
is
crazy.”
    “No,” answered Blackstone adamantly. “I’ve always listened to my gut, and my gut tells me something happened, something they don’t want me to know.”
    “You?”
repeated Camden, surprised even after all these years at his boss’s ego.
    “All of us,” conceded Blackstone. “Everyone.” He paused and stared off into space, as if at something only he could see. “And I’m going to find out what it is.”
    “How? We’ve pulled just about every string we’ve got.”
    “Culpepper.”
    Camden looked around, frowning.
    “It’s a man, not a vegetable,” continued Blackstone.
    “Oh? The guy from NASA?”
    Blackstone nodded. “Jerry Culpepper. He’s a good man.”
    “He’s a loyal man,” said Camden. “He spouts the company line.”
    “True.”
    “Well, then?”
    “He’s also a moral man. Eventually, he won’t be able to spout this nonsense any longer.”
    “You know that for a fact?”
    “I’m a pretty good judge of character,” answered Blackstone. “I offered him a job.”
    “
My
job?” demanded Camden.
    “Something similar.” Blackstone shrugged off the other man’s obvious concern. “I can keep you both busy.”
    “When does he start?”
    “He turned me down,” said Blackstone. He relit his cigar. “It was too soon. When he can’t stand the pressure any longer, he’ll come over here. Another month, another half year, certainly less than a year. And when he comes, he’ll confirm what we find out or intuit in the meantime.”
    “I don’t like it,” said Camden. “I’ve been loyal to you for all these years . . .”
    “If I was firing you, Ed, I’d tell you up front,” replied Blackstone. “You know me well enough to be aware of that. But something happened that they don’t want anyone to know about, and they’ve kept it secret for fifty years. Now suddenly it’s starting to seep out. They’re going to clamp down, and clamp down hard. That’s obvious.”
    “Then what’s this all about?”
    “They’re going to have to tell Jerry what happened, so he doesn’t inadvertently give us enough leads so that we can find out ourselves.”
    “I don’t follow you.”
    “If Myshko was eaten by Moon lizards, he couldn’t say it jokingly, and he couldn’t firmly deny it. The first would start people thinking, and the second would start them digging.”
    “But Myshko came back,” Camden pointed out.
    “That was just an example, Ed.” Blackstone made no attempt to hide his disgust with his underling for not being able to follow his train of thought. “Don’t try so hard to convince me that I
should
replace you.”
    There followed a few awkward minutes. Camden didn’t know what to say, and Blackstone began feeling guilty about humiliating him. He finally sent him back to his office and spent the rest of the afternoon pacing his own restlessly, trying for the hundredth time to dope it out:
What are they hiding, and why are they hiding it at this late date? What could possibly have happened that would still affect anything? If it would make a flight to the Moon more dangerous, why won’t they tell us? They know I’m going to send up a manned flight within a year. Surely they can’t want an American ship, which will be viewed as an American mission by everyone outside the country, to blow up or crash because of something they
could
have told us about and decided, for some