Romero’s question wasn’t hard, York knew. It was an interesting area: nonlunar, but with easily visible geologic relations among colorful rock units. But the stances and expressions of the astronauts betrayed a mixture of bafflement, embarrassment, and resentment.

Christ, York thought. This trip is going to be a disaster.

But Romero was windmilling his arms at them. “Come on! The one thing you’re always short of on the Moon is time. You — Charles. Come over here and start us off.”

With a kind of lazy grin at Bleeker, Chuck Jones went strolling over to Romero. He leaned against the tree, beside Romero, and began to summarize what he could see.

Romero was maybe fifty, York supposed, but he was vigorous and supple, apparently still full of energy; his sunburned nose stuck out from under his sunglasses, and a few strands of graying hair licked out from under his floppy hat. York had taken in a graduate lecture of Romero’s some years back. Working out of Flagstaff, Romero was a great field geologist as well as a geochemical analyst. He had immediately struck her as someone who could not fail to inspire the most reluctant of students — such as your average beer-swilling, wise-cracking pilot-astronaut hero, for instance.

So when Ben Priest had told her that Romero had agreed to give the Apollo 14 crews, prime and backup, some geologic training, and Ben had invited her along to help out, she’d been pleased.

“…No, no, no! What about the layers in that mountainside over there?”

“Look, Professor—”

“And you have missed the most important feature of the landscape altogether!”

Jones looked baffled; he was squat, solid, dark, and the thick primate hair on his hands and arms seemed to bristle with anger. “What ‘important feature,’ for Christ’s sake?”

“Look here.” Romero knelt and picked up a handful of fragments, of a white rock, from the floor of the valley. “Can you see? Such rocks are everywhere — are they not? — now that you observe.”

Jones had had enough. “This is a goddamn boot camp.” He kicked at one of Romero’s white rocks. “Ben, this is a fucking waste of time. Our program is compressed enough without this crap.”

“Come on, Chuck,” Adam Bleeker said easily. “You haven’t given it much of a chance.”

“Fuck it, and fuck you,” Jones said. “Listen up: we’re only the backup crew for Apollo 14. That’s the first thing; we probably won’t even make it to the Moon. Two. The target is the lunar Apennines, not goddamn California. So why am I here tripping myself up on a pile of Californian rocks? Three. I’m an aviator. I don’t see why I need to know a fucking thing about the geology of the goddamn Moon to do my job.”

“Look, Chuck—” York stepped forward.

The look he gave her then — of sheer, undiluted contempt — made her hesitate, just long enough for Romero to raise his hand.