“Oh,” Frank was nodding now. “Oh, you’re right. The Russians were testing an upgraded lunar-mission Soyuz, complete with a new Service Module stage called a Block-D. They launched it on a Proton booster. It all fit in with their lunar landing plans, that they scrapped when their N-l booster kept blowing up on them.”

Geena smiled. “And the Block-D—”

“Is still flying. They use it as an upper stage on their commercial Proton launcher.”

“And so—”

Frank started to sound quietly excited. “And so we could use that, along with a beefed-up Soyuz, as the equivalent of the old Apollo Command-Service Module. In fact, since the Block-D is a kerosene-oxygen, it should have a better performance than Apollo did. For the old Zond missions the stage must have imparted about ten thousand feet per sec. With the added mass of our lander outbound—” He scribbled on another napkin. “You’re looking at plenty of gas for both the lunar orbit insertion and Earth-return burns.” He looked at Geena, eyes wide. “What are we missing? Suddenly this is too easy.”

Jays nodded vigorously. “Soyuz to the Moon. Has a ring to it, doesn’t it? Of course they’re still flying that baby up to Station, but it’s an Apollo-era ship. Shit, I think it predates Apollo.” He laughed. “And believe me, if you find yourself flying one of those, it will make riding down to the Moon without a cockpit look like a cakewalk.”

Geena said, “So now we just have to figure how to get that combination on the way to the Moon.”

Jays said, “The highest performance stage we’ve got is the Centaur.”

Frank shook his head. “Won’t work. Liquid hydrogen. It would take a couple of them — and we’d have to launch on Titan IVs — but anyhow the LH2 on the first one would boil away before we could launch the second. Those stages are only designed for a couple of hours on orbit.”

“How about the IUS?” Jays asked. “They can go up on Shuttles or Titans.”

Frank pulled his lip. “Their performance is poor compared to the Centaur.”

Jays grinned. “So take more. Four, maybe?”

Frank scribbled quickly. “Actually, three would do it. Hmm. I guess you could launch the first on a Shuttle, second on a Titan, and the third on another Shuttle, then use that orbiter to assemble the stages.”

Geena said, “And the Soyuz—”

Frank put down his pen. “Easy. Send it up unmanned with the Block-D on a Proton, like they did with Zond. Autodock to Station—”

“We’ll need the Progress autodock module, then.”

“Yeah. Transfer the crew from Station. Then haul over to the IUS assembly, dock — and go to the Moon…”

Geena asked, “You think the Russians would agree?”