Route 60 cuts across the Florida peninsula above the glitter of the Gold Coast and below the Mouse-induced confusion of Orlando. It is straight, narrow and dull. Dr. Jonas MacPherson was driving it in a hurricane-force wind that blew the rain from the West, right into his windshield. His rate of speed had been diminished to about 40 mph to compensate for the onslaught, but it hadn't helped much. He was alone.

"It's so very lonely; you're two thousand light years from home," sang Mick Jagger on the radio, underscoring this fact.(1)

He told himself he was taking some time off to sort things out, to obtain perspective on the strange events that were taking place around him. Subconsciously, he knew he was engaged in mindless flight. He hadn't even told his wife he was leaving town.

Hinrichs, Draper and the rest of the old team were gone. No, not gone. They were dead. And that was the problem. They shouldn't be. None had died under suspicious circumstances. A few could be said to have lived longer than expected. There were no unusual accidents. The only thing was the concentration of death within a short time span.

The team of space scientists had worked together at the John F. Kennedy Space Center in the recently ended Apollo days, when men went to the Moon. In addition to his scientific duties, MacPherson had recruited and assembled the team on orders directly from Werner von Braun. They had worked on the Moon landings, along with thousands of others, but had also worked on a secret project connected with the Apollo program. After the final Moon landing, the team had gradually dispersed. Some left NASA. Others went to Houston. A few had simply retired. One had died.

But until last August, all the others were alive and accounted for. Now he was the only one left alive. And he simply could not believe the deaths were a coincidence. So he was running. But from whom?

He stopped at a gas station/souvenir shop at Yeehaw Junction, a depressing settlement which owed its existence solely to the fact that Route 60 intersected U.S. Route 441 at that point. He ran through the downpour into the store, splashing through the puddles that filled the holes in the gravel. By the time he'd arrived inside, one sock was soaked.

The tackiness of his surroundings and his physical discomfort conspired to distract him from seeing two men at his Buick Riviera. Had he looked, he would have seen one inspecting his right front tire and the other open each of the two doors briefly. At least, that's what it would have looked like.

When he resumed driving, he was headed in the direction of Lake Wales. The weather had not changed, but the traffic was light. Then a car appeared behind him. "The fool doesn't even have his lights on," he said to himself. As the vehicle behind grew closer, he saw that it was a full-size pickup truck with its chassis jacked up for off-road travel. It was approaching fast. Too fast. Too close.

Whomp was the sound made as the bumpers touched. The jolt was minor, almost a relief. Then the truck increased its speed, and with it the speed of Dr. MacPherson. The road was too narrow to do anything but try to stay on it. He didn't even try the brakes because the road was so slick. Instead, he used the accelerator to attempt to get away.

The truck stayed with him until he hit 85 mph. Then he got away. The truck was still there, but not so close. He would have to keep speeding to avoid it. As long as the road didn't turn before the rain let up, he might be O.K.

That's what he was thinking when the steering wheel pulled sharply to the right as the right wheel popped from the axle. The car immediately crossed the narrow shoulder and plunged into the canal on the right side of the road. It started to sink.

MacPherson was not seriously injured. The car had planed across the water at first. The water had cushioned the impact. The seat belt had kept him in the car. Now he unfastened it. His chest hurt where he had hit the steering wheel. The adrenalin was making him function, despite his bruises and shock.

He grabbed his door handle --- and it came off in his hand. He looked at it in wonder for a moment, then dove across the seat for the passenger side door. Its handle came off too. He noted that the car was sinking front first from the weight of the engine. He pressed the window button, but soon realized that the electrical system was now short-circuited by the rising canal water.

There was a water hyacinth on the windshield. The thought flicked through his mind that he might see a manatee up close. The car was filling. He was running out of time. He tried to break the windows with his arms, then with his feet, but could not find a position to support him for a decent kick.

The water was around his neck now. He took a deep breath and resumed flailing at the windows in the murk that surrounded him. He ran out of breath and pulled himself into the pocket of air that had formed at the rear window, which he pummeled with both fists to no avail. Then, as his breathing converted the air bubble to carbon dioxide, he stopped struggling. Just breathing was difficult enough.

Despite his efforts to concentrate, he started thinking that he should have kept his old Volkswagen Beetle, which supposedly floated. "The windows would have worked, too," was his final thought. Had he time reflect upon it, he would not have thought it was an unusual thought for a space scientist. After all, men had reached the Moon on sturdy, reliable vehicles.

/////

Dr. Jonas MacPherson was buried in his family plot at a small cemetery in rural Maryland. There was a marble headstone that contained the words he had written down for the occasion. His widow didn't understand them all, but she followed his wishes.

Two strange men in dark suits stood nearby, as if waiting for another burial --- but none was in evidence.

"Tits!" she exclaimed. "You all think I got the promotion because I'm a woman. I know it; so don't try to lie to me." Rae Kirkland was in rare form as she stood behind her desk and addressed her former equal --- now subordinate --- Ken Mason. "The real reason you didn't get the job is because you don't have enough drive, enough ambition. It shows, you know. Hell, you didn't even act like you wanted it!" This, of course, infuriated her, too. He was the best auditor in the department, but he didn't seem to care about his career. And now he was her problem.

Mason made a murmuring sound he hoped would pass for a suitable comment, since he had no idea what to say. Then he tried looking out the window of the General Accounting Office at the late winter drizzle of Washington, D.C. The rain had made the large brass letters G A O set in the sidewalk treacherous, as usual. He watched a visitor lose his footing and land on his back. What a miserable climate! If he could, he would move the nation's capital to somewhere dry and warm, maybe Arizona. He agreed with former President Reagan's observation that the East Coast would be a wilderness if the Pilgrims had landed in California.

"You're a daydreamer, too. It's a mystery to me how you ever get anything done."

"Uhm," he murmured again. He had heard this all before from his ex-wife --- before the "ex" became a prefix. Why did people who professed to like him always want him to change?

"So, do you have any questions about my position?"

He studied her for a moment and then said, "Congratulations on your promotion, which I take it you achieved despite some disadvantage inherent in having breasts."

The anger flashed across her face, but then she sighed and said, "Go back to work, you incorrigible bastard."

"It's not that I have anything against breasts, mind you. I remember them fondly (pardon the pun). My ex-wife had some. A pair, I seem to recall."

"If you want breasts, all you have to do is look at the television."

"Is that where they're kept these days? My ex used to keep hers in a holster strapped to her chest."

"Enough!"

Their relationship was back on a solid footing. He was relieved.

"About my work...," he said, leaving the sentence dangle, incomplete.

"New project for you. Concerns NASA. Stop groaning. As you know, the space program has received our scrutiny in the past, but this time someone wants to know what it really cost for each individual, separate Apollo Mission to the Moon. Without any allocation of NASA general overhead or other excludable amounts. You've worked on the NASA data before; so it should be a piece of cake for you."

"In other words, if Congress decided to do another Moon landing, you want to know what it would cost using the existing facilities," he offered.

"Bare bones," she added. "Only what's necessary. But actual cost then, not today's cost. Then an average cost for all the missions."

"Why would anyone want that now?"

"Who knows? Maybe some Senator is writing a book about the Moon program and is having us do his research. It wouldn't be the first time. I've just been told that the gross figures used for the Apollo program include so many unrelated or unnecessary items that they are useless for determining what any individual mission actually cost the taxpayers, above and beyond what they were paying for NASA to exist and the other NASA projects. Maybe they want to compare notes with the Russians, now that we're talking to each other," she speculated.

"So I'm to draw the line somewhere and try to define which costs were solely attributable to Apollo? What about little matters like Astronaut training?"

"That's a good one. The best approach would be to list it separately, in the Notes to Financial Data section," she said making a reference to their business accounting pasts.

"Keep it lean, but provide related factors and figures?" he asked.

"Exactly."

"Where do I start?"

"Do what you can with the records here. At least get to the point where you have a working draft before you leave."

"Then?"

"Then show it to me; so I have proper justification to send you off to Florida," she said with a smile. "I know you'll work fast here to get away. It's your pace in Florida that has me worried."

"It's brutal in the summer," he said as he left.

Rae turned her attention to the poster on her wall. It urged all who saw it to

It had been there for more than a week; yet no one had inquired what the initials CRF stood for. Rae took this as proof that CRF was epidemic. CRF stood for Cerebral-Rectal Fusion.

/////

The following week he reported that he had combed the applicable GAO records, which were conveniently in the computer data base. More importantly, he had concluded what further information he would need and outlined a plan for its retrieval. The first step was to fly to Orlando.