“Well, yes. That’s the point.” He frowned, puzzled. “Don’t you want it?”

“You’re giving it to me? Mike, what the hell am I supposed to do with it?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Give it to Jack. Put it in a locket. Sell it, to someone who will appreciate it.”

“Mike, you’ve brought me a lot of stuff in the past — stuff I could never have gotten hold of otherwise — but this is different.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s against the law.” She looked into his eyes, the way she used to when he was a kid. “You must have let someone down, to take this.”

“What?”

“Someone who trusted you. Someone who gave you responsibility.”

Shit, he thought. “…I suppose so.”

She pushed the vial back into his hand. “You’ll have to take it back.”

“I can’t. What do I do, glue it back to the rock?”

“You can’t keep it, Mike.”

“It’s Moon dust.”

“Even so.”

He hesitated.

“You know I’m right,” she said.

“Oh, Christ. I hate it when you’re right.”

“That’s what big sisters are for.”

He took hold of the rubber stopper. “You may as well look. You’ll never be so near a piece of the Moon again.”

She crowded close.

He pulled out the bung; it came loose with a soft pop.

She sniffed the vial. “I can smell wood smoke.”

“That’s the Moon dust. It’s never been exposed to free oxygen before. It’s oxidizing. Burning. Here.”

He tipped up the vial, and tapped its base; the Moon dust poured into Jane’s palm. It was just a few grains; there really was hardly any of it.

Jane pushed at it with the tip of her little finger. “It’s sharp. Like little needles.” She lifted her fingertip and inspected it. “It’s stuck to my skin. Oh, well…”

She tipped her hand, and let the grains scatter. They sparkled briefly before dispersing.

Talking, arguing, they made their way down the flank of Arthur’s Seat, towards the Dry Dam. Above them, the sky brightened.

…They were just grains of basalt, falling through the air.

A little piece of the Moon, come to Scotland. But, though different from any terrestrial samples, the grains themselves were unremarkable.

They fell now to a massive plug of agglomerate. They would not be found again, by the most determined petrological inspection.

…Except that where they fell, the bare rock glowed, softly silver, in spots a fraction of an inch wide.

6

The debriefing session for Geena’s mission was held in the Teague Auditorium in JSC Building 2, the Public Affairs Office. Geena had to sit behind a desk on a stage with the four others from her crew, bathed in the glare of TV lights. As clumsy young sound technicians tried to fix microphones to their lapels and ties, the astronauts chatted awkwardly, like newsreaders under the credits.