Dan always thought it impossible to keep a tidy desk and be an effective newspaper editor at the same time. So he never tried to do both. For him, clutter was comforting confirmation that he was the boss, especially on days when confronting eager reporters like Neil Jensen about their bizarre story ideas.

Dan sat at his desk, holding two photos of missing people. He looked up at Neil, wondering why this kid was taxing his valuable time. He saw Neil's eager eyes and tight lips, and braced himself for the kid's latest pitch.

"So?"

"So?" Neil replied.

"Yeah. So what?" Dan tossed the photos back at Neil.

Neil picked them up and held them in front of Dan's face. "So where are they?"

"I don't know if the world cares that much, kiddo."

"It's not the individuals, it's the rash of missing people." Neil looked at the photos and pulled one, holding it up. "Colonel Wayne Collins, a Portland native -- an astronaut who was in charge of training at NASA until nine or ten years ago. Now, no one knows where he is." He held up the second photo. "Arnold Braun, a Portland native -- professor of physics and computer sciences at Princeton until four years ago. No one knows where he is." Neil tossed the photos back in front of his editor, then held up his compufone, its little monitor displaying a list of names. "And there are at least fifty other scholars, scientists, and military people nationwide who seem to have disappeared off the face of the Earth."

"They could have retired or took leaves."

"I don't know. But can I find out for sure?"

"Something like this takes ti me, and we have an election year coming up. I need all my reporters here, not chasing after ghosts."

"What? You're finally putting me on the election beat?"

"No, not yet. But I do need back-up to make sure other beats are covered."

"Hell, I'm tired of being a back-up." Neil ruffled his red hair, exacerbated by Dan's resistance. He then leaned on the desk causing a small stack of notebooks to fall on the floor. "You've been on me about generating my own stories. I have a hunch that there's something going on here and I need time to figure it out. Come on, Danny. I'm dying just doing back-up stuff. Give me a little time on this?" Dan slowly turned his eyes toward the little mess on the floor. Neil looked down at it too. "Oh, sorry." He bent and picked up the notebooks and papers, arranging them in a neat stack, then placed them back on the same spot. &q uot;Come on, Danny. How 'bout it?"

Dan looked at the two photos again, then took a gut-filling sigh. "You're on my last nerve, kiddo."

Neil held up his right hand as if taking an oath. "I guarantee I'll be less of a pain."

"Yeah, right." Dan eyed Neil sternly. "Real news happens everyday."

"-- And I'll still be available. Just don't put me on dog shows and craft fairs."

"I like dogs shows and craft fairs. Community news always sells." Dan scratched his neck. "But I'll give you two months to find something. Remember, you're on 24 hours call for any real news, clear?"

"Clear!" Neil clapped his hands together once and offered Dan a hardy handshake. "I'm telling you there's real news here. You watch. Thanks, Danny."

# # #

"Stand-by. Ten seconds." A TV floor director stooped between two cameras. He turned back toward an audience of about a hundred elementary and middle school children, and began clapping his hands. They responded by clapping and cheering loudly. He lifted his hand high so the show host and his guestcould see it, then counted down the last five seconds with his fingers. At zero he pointed to the host, a slender man in a NASA jumpsuit.

The host hopped to the edge of the stage, his round childlike eyes growing wide. "Hey kids! Welcome back to NASA Space Camp with Space Cadet Bill from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida!" The cheering calmed, the studio becoming silent. "We're still here with the second person ever to set foot on Mars, Astronaut Carl Dorsett. You enjoying yourself, Carl?"

"Oh yeah." Carl waved at the kid s and they began cheering again.

Bill turned back to the camera. "Now is the part of the show where you can ask questions of our guest. I'm gonna come out to you with the microphone, and you can ask anything you want. Come on cameras." Bill jumped off the stage and sprinted into the cheering crowd of children. The camerapeople tried following Bill's fast moves, but had trouble because of his jolting fakes. "Hah! Too fast for you, huh?" A little girl with her hand up caught Bill's eye. "You! Get on over here! Ask Captain Dorsett a question."

The little girl walked up to Bill and spoke into his mic. "Hi, Captain Dorsett."

"Hi, sweetie."

"What's your name?" Bill asked.

"Katrina."

"Where are you from?"

"Melb ourne."

"Go 'head. Ask your question."

"Captain Dorsett, would you want to live on Mars?"

Carl stood and walked to the edge of the stage. He chuckled to himself, then began shaking his head. "I get asked that a lot. And every time I think about that question, I think about the Wizard of Oz and that saying of Dorothy's: 'There's no place like home.' No, not really. I wouldn't want to live on Mars -- at least not yet. I like color, something I couldn't appreciate until I got back. Fourteen months of seeing nothing but sterile technology, black space, and on Mars everything was rusty brown. Even the ice was pink. Nothing looked more beautiful than the blue Earth when we first saw her on the way back.

"Someday, we may learn terra-forming to make Mars more pleasing for humans. But don't forget those fragile little bacteria. That's their world -- their home. I'd hate to think about an advanced alien civilization coming to Earth to make it more pleasing to them.

"So, no. Mars is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there."

"Thank you." Bill gave the little girl a gentle shove back toward her seat, then called out a little boy. "Yeah you! Got a question?"

The boy had on a little NASA jumpsuit covered with patches. He tugged Bill's arm, bringing the mic closer. "Yeah --"

"-- First, what's your name?"

"Walt."

"Where're you from?"

"Daytona."

"Go 'head, Walt. Ask Captain Dorsett your question."

"How do you use the bathroom in space?"

Laughter jolted the studio's silence. "HOOOOO!," Bill screamed. "I knew it! The question about the greatest mystery in space. How do they use the bathroom? And keep it clean, Captain Carl."

Carl rubbed the bridge of his nose and shook his head again. "You know, I get asked that a lot. And when I think about it, I think of the Wizard of Oz and 'There's no place like home -- there's REALLY no place like home.'" The kids laughed. "But really, on Sojourner 4 the system involved individual compartments specially made for men and women. My compartment had a vacuum tube for number ones, and capture bags in a toilet-like seat for the other thing. And these things are not easy to use in zero-G."

The kid pulled the mic back to his mouth. "Where did it go when you flushed?"

"What?"

"When you flushed, where did it g o?" A girl laughed loudly causing some of the other kids to snicker.

"We compacted it and stored it in tanks."

"For 14 months?" Bill asked.

"Sure. The compacting process squeezes out the water, some of which was recycled through our reclamation system for drinking and bathing." Some of the kids moaned over the idea drinking recycled urine water. "I know -- I know. I thought the same thing when I first heard about it. But you know, most big cities with limited water resources have similar systems on a bigger scale. But uh, the solids are brought back along with all our other garbage. We can't be littering space."

"I guess with a crew of twelve that can be pretty rough," Bill said.

"Actually, the system wasn't bad. I was surprised. Of course we all wanted to bunk as far away from those sto rage tanks as possible."

"I can imagine that. Well, we're running out of time boys and girls. I want to thank our very special guest Captain Carl Dorsett, pilot and first officer of Sojourner 4, humanity's first manned expedition to Mars." Bill turned back to the kids. "Let's hear it for him, gang!" The kids all stood and cheered.

Carl bowed and waved. "Thanks. It's good to be here."

"That's it for this week," Bill said over the continuing applause. "Next week we'll be taking a VR tour of Mars' polar caps with our special guest, Sojourner 4 mission specialist Audrey Kepler. We'll see you next week, kids!"

Some of the kids walked up to the stage holding out papers and pens. Carl towered over the gathering crowd, signing autographs as the ending credits and music played on the studio monitors.

"We're clear," the floor director shouted.

"Thanks, gang," Bill said, waving to the control booth and floor crew. "Good job." Bill unzipped the chest portion of his cadet jumpsuit, then worked his way through the crowd surrounding Carl. "Hey Carl?" Carl looked up briefly before signing another autograph.

"Thank you," a little girl said.

"You're welcome. Yeah, Bill?"

"Thanks again for doing the show."

"No problem."

"You can be funny when you want to."

"Yeah, humor helps in this business. Remember that, kids. Okay?"

"Yeah," some of them sang.

As the studio crew began pushing the cameras away from the stage, a serious looking man in a business suit walked into the studio through a side door and waved his hand.

"Captain Dorsett?" His stern voice pulled everyone's attention in his direction. "Captain Dorsett?" The man walked up to the group and leaned toward Carl, gently pulling his arm. "Excuse me, kids." He spoke softly in Carl's ear. "Don't forget your appointment, sir."

Carl nodded his head and signed one last autograph. "I gotta run, guys." Some of the children pouted and moaned, disappointed over not receiving an autograph. "Sorry. I'll see you again. You all take care of yourselves. Bill?" Carl waved at him. "Gotta run. Take care."

"You too, Carl."

Carl led the man out of the studio. The kids and Bill watched them silently. When they exited, Bill turned to the kids and threw his arms wide. "Say , who wants Space Cadet Bill's autograph?" The kids who didn't get Carl's autograph reluctantly settled for Bill's. Those who already had Carl's walked away.

The man escorted Carl up to a boardroom-like office in the space center's administration building. He opened the door and allowed Carl inside. A huge window, with a view of the old Vehicle Assembly Building, and the construction site for its replacement, completely illuminated the room.

"I'll let Director Lindale know you're waiting for him," the man said.

"Thanks."

The man closed the door as he left. Carl walked around the long, polished table and sat in a plush chair. He pivoted it around toward the window and noticed a lack of activity around the construction site. It was a strange sight, a weekday morning with vacant tractors and cranes. In fact, no one was on the construction site.

His eyes wandered to the distant launch pads, the place where he and his fellow crewmates began their Mars odyssey almost two years ago with Pathfinder transports to the Geosync Orbital Assembly Complex. He took a deep breath and glanced down at the six mission patches on his jumpsuit. With time, it grew increasingly harder for him to conjure up vivid memories of each space flight. He was ready for another mission, and expected to hear something about that this morning.

He heard the door open and spun his chair back to the front. When he saw NASA Director Walker Lindale and that serious looking man walk in, he stood.

"Captain Dorsett?" Lindale reached out and shook Carl's hand.

"Nice to see you again, Mr. Lindale."

"Good to see you too." Lindale turned back to the door where the serious looking man stood. "Ed, can you excuse us?"

"Sure."

"Shut the door behind you, would you?"

"Yes, sir." Ed did as Lindale asked.

"Have a seat, Carl. You been all right?"

"Yeah."

Lindale sat next to Carl. "No unusual illnesses or anything?"

"No."

"Good. We still have to keep our eyes on you twelve. Even though you've been out of quarantine for six months, we still don't know everything about those little germs."

"Well, they seem pretty fragile compared to Earth germs."

"Yeah." Lindale smiled and sighed. "I bet you're wondering about this urgent meeting."

"Yeah."

"Well, I won't beat aro und the bush. What I'm about to tell you is classified. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"In six months to a year, NASA will disappear as we know it."

Carl's face lengthened. "Disappear?"

"Yep. NASA and other organizations with similar goals and purposes are being absorbed into a super agency called TEG-Comm. Exactly what that agency is, I don't know. For now, it's top-secret. And it's not my concern anymore since the President is appointing me to the Office of Management and Budget effective in six months. What I do know, these changes are in response to some sort of a profound national security threat. They need the best of the best. That's why I'm talking to you. They want you, Carl. You're being reclassified for military command in the service of TEG-Comm."

"Now wait a minute! I'm kind of out of the military. I have a choice, don't I?"

Walker shook his head. "No."

"What do you mean 'no?'"

"If you had a choice what would you do, Carl? NASA will be TEG-Comm's plaything in six months. All NASA research and science missions have been canceled. We only have five Pathfinder supply transports scheduled in that time. Then TEG-Comm takes over."

"I can work with private aerospace companies."

"Carl, ALL space transport will come under this organization's control. You want to be an airline pilot? TEG-Comm's staying out of that for now." Carl didn't have an answer. "Anyway, you don't have a choice. You're being drafted into this service. Others are too. I can't mention their names, but this is about you." Lindale reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket, pulled out an envelope and offered it to Carl. "You'll have 30 days to arrange your personal affairs. After that, you're to report to Special Operations Command at MacDill in Tampa on October 5th at 10 AM. The paper in this envelope contains a fictitious news article. The date in the first paragraph is the day you are to report. The military organization in the second paragraph is the location where you will check-in, MacDill. It's a reminder in case you forget.

"And Captain, please don't forget to report. Keep your lips sealed about it. I have a feeling the security nature of whatever this is can cause disappearances and accidents. I don't want to see anything happen to one of our national heroes." Lindale stood. "I'm sorry, Carl."

"You're sorry?" Carl slumped back in his chair. "National hero. Shit."