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evolving light in the sky, fascinated, and wondered if he should call his friend Henry Meacher at NASA who might know more about this—but then he’d heard Henry was leaving NASA, not to mention Geena, and it mightn’t be a good time…And, atop a Japanese mountain called Nantai, a Buddhist monk—originally from Ireland, called Declan Hague—stared at the strange light and wondered what it might mean for his self-imposed exile and the guilt that still racked him…
    …All around the planet, as it turned in the wash of Venus light, human faces were lifted to the sky, shining in the strange light like coins in a well, amused or puzzled or wondering or indifferent…
     
    …And in Houston, Tracy and Jays Malone spoke in hushed tones, so as not to wake the kids.
    More than three decades after his Moonwalk, a few years into a whole new century, and here was Tracy with kids of her own, kids to whom Apollo was some sort of Cold War relic—not even that, something prehistoric and incomprehensible, something their grandfather had done. For somehow, as if mocking the old dreams, the space program had become a thing of the past, not the future.
    But her name was undoubtedly, famously, written on the Moon—she’d seen photographs of it—and it would indeed be there for a million more years, less the few summers she had spent growing up since Jays came home.
    So there had been only one place to come on this strange and cosmic night.
    She stood with Jays on his verandah. It was just like all those years ago, except that now she cradled a pina colada in her hand instead of a soda.
    And, in the dawn sky, there was a new light, which outshone even the battered old Moon.
    “Quite a night,” said Jays, the light casting sharp point-source shadows on his face. “Quite a week, in fact.”
    “Yeah.” So it had been, all of seven days after the Venus event first showed in the sky.
    According to the TV there had been Venus-watching parties all over the U.S., a predictable run on telescopes and binoculars in the stores. The Hubble Web sites had crashed from the hit traffic, even though NASA hadn’t turned the Hubble that way yet.
    She said, “Those guys on the TV, yammering about anti-matter comets and alien invaders. The most remarkable week since Neil Armstrong touched down on the Moon— ”
    “Or since man came out of the caves. Makes you miss Cronkite,” he said, “and I’ve been farther out of the cave than most.”
    The heatless light of dying Venus made her shiver. “So what do you think has happened up there, Dad?”
    “Danged if I know.” His voice was light, but his face was a mask, expressionless. “I don’t think it’s a good omen, though.”
    And that made her more queasy than all the fantastic speculations of the TV pundits.
    He touched her arm. “Come on. I want to show you something.” He led her indoors, toward the lounge. “Something I never showed anyone. Not even your mother.”
    “Why not?”
    He grinned, and put his beer down on top of the piano. “Because it’s a federal offense.” He started to rummage at the back of a dresser drawer.
    She looked around the room. So familiar, nothing changed since she was a kid, it was like being transported back in time. It was an old guy’s trophy room, with Jays’sphotographs of airplanes and spacecraft, a whole-globe view of Earth taken with a hand-held Kodak, a little framed patch of spacesuit, gray with Moon dust. But everything was old and faded. Even the spacesuit piece looked like it had come over on the Mayflower.
    Jays approached her. He was carrying something in a fist-sized plastic envelope. The plastic had gone yellow and brittle with age. In the gathering dawn light, she could see it held a piece of rock, black as tar.
    “Oh, Dad. Is that what I think it is?”
    “It’s a piece of bedrock, sweet pea. It froze out of a lava flow, that bubbled out of the Moon more than three billion years ago…”
    It was, of course, Moon rock.
    “Are you