So he began to work in more subtle ways. He joined the board of the National Space Society, for instance. He published his conceptual studies wherever he could, and plugged them on chat shows. He started to work his ideas into his fictions, building up a body of work that, piece by piece, it seemed to Geena, amounted to a kind of schematic of the future, a ladder to history.

Robert Heinlein had done something similar, back in the “40s and “50s, and so nurtured the minds of the youngsters who would go on to run NASA, and touch the Moon. Now — in less optimistic times, with a deeper understanding of how God-awful difficult the whole enterprise would be — Jays Malone was trying the same trick.

“I tell you,” he said, “I’ve given up on you guys. Your generation. All this New Age crap. But there are always the kids. Always the kids.”

Jays talked on, taking the questions — dumb, perceptive, intrusive, whatever — with a clumsy, good-humoured grace.

She waited until the autograph queue had dissipated, and approached Jays.

Jays regarded her gravely. “I know you. Geena Bourne. You just came down from Station.”

“Yes.” She felt vaguely surprised that he should follow the current program so closely. “I’m glad to meet you.”

“You are?”

“I’d like your help. I need to talk to you about 86047.”

A frown crossed his face.

Geena told Jays what she wanted. She hoped that if they went through the moment at which he collected rock 86047 one more time — with the help of the mission transcript and such documentation as existed — they would be able to reconstruct the rock’s context sufficiently to help Henry.

Jays was resistant. “I’ve been over those damn three days a hundred, a thousand times. What more is there to say?”

“Henry thinks there’s plenty you could tell him.”

“Oh, he does. It was my piece of bedrock, you know.”

“86047.”

“Yeah. I guess I risked my life to collect it. And they let it sit in the vault for a quarter-century.”

“Not any more.” She outlined Henry’s project. “That’s why the context is so important—”

Jays glared. “How the hell was I supposed to document it?”

“Well, that’s the point, Jays—”

“I had to hang upside down in that damn rille to capture it in the first place. Those geology back-room guys weren’t there. They couldn’t see how hard it was to follow their precious procedures, if you were there. I told them that.”

And so on. A one-way conversation.

“Anyhow,” he said to Geena, “there’s no good reason to ignore a rock like that for so long. I mean the attention they all gave that Genesis rock from Apollo 15—”

Ah, Geena thought. That was it. Rivalry with the other crews, the trophy fish they brought home. Even after all this time.