The Man Who Squandered the Moon
When a rocket-building billionaire doesn't live up to his late idol's standards, can a ghost set him straight?
Squish. Squish. Squish.
Not good sounds for a man to wake up to in the middle of the night. A house that cost eight figures should not have a leaky roof.
Squish. Squish.
Was the sound getting closer? The billionaire said, “Alexa, lights,” holding up a hand to shield his eyes from the glare.
The gadget on his bedside table said, “Bedroom lights on.” The table lamp and ceiling lights illuminated a shiny figure, stepping toward him.
“Alexa, panic panic panic!” he ordered. Not a standard feature. But being the founder and biggest stockholder let him demand special features, such as a command that had his Alexa summon an armed security team to deal with intruders.
Or it would have if the intruder hadn’t reached his bedside table before he said the last “panic.” Its hand reached into the Alexa. The device shorted out with sparks and a hiss of steam. A circuit breaker tripped and turned off half the lights in the room.
No armed response coming.
He lunged off the bed, punching straight for the intruder’s nose. Its face gave way. His fist plunged into something so cold he recoiled instinctively, putting his fingertips in his mouth to warm them.
The billionaire tasted salt water—salty as when he’d swum in the Pacific.
The intruder shoved him back onto the bed with an icy hand to his chest. “Sit, son. We need to talk,” it said in a grating voice.
Drops of water trickled down his stomach from where it touched him. Sitting on the edge of the bed he could take a good look at the intruder. The shine wasn’t a vinyl suit, which had been the first impression. The light was reflecting off water.
It was made of water, the size and shape of a man. Taller than him. Not pure water—it was filled with flecks of dirt or ash or something, swirling about.
“Now that you’re paying attention, let’s talk,” said the intruder.
Whether it was a ghost or monster or what, he didn’t want to talk to it and couldn’t fight it. He rolled out of the bed to get past it, leapt to his feet, and dashed out the door, grabbing a bathrobe off a chair on the way.
He skidded on one of the wet footprints in the hallway. This spot overlooked the open area of the first floor. He didn’t see any other intruders.
He heard the squish, squish, squish of the . . . thing following him. Undine, a water elemental with a humanoid form, supplied his memories of high school fantasy games. He wished he could erase them to make room for something useful.
By the time he reached the stairs, he’d pulled on and belted the bathrobe, which made him feel a little better. He went down the stairs as fast as he could, looking up to see if it was catching up to him.
The undine appeared at the end of the stairwell, looking straight at him. Then it poured itself over the railing, splashing onto the hardwood below. It stood up, back in man form again.
It was in front of the door to the garage. He pivoted at the end of the stairs and dashed into the living room. If he could get through to the kitchen, he could go out the back door and escape into the woods.
As he went around one of the couches, he heard a hissing sound like a garden hose. A stream of water jetted over him, splashing down in the doorway of the kitchen. The undine rose from the puddle.
The billionaire turned around. Going through the dining room to the receiving room would let him reach the front door.
The undine squirted over him again. This time it rose in an arms akimbo pose, laughing at him.
He was trapped.
He backed up until he bumped into the bookcase. The only bookcase. All his reading was electronic now, of course. This held the paper books he was too sentimental about to get rid of.
The undine spoke again. “Good. This is a better place for our conversation.” Its voice was smoother now, as if it was more practiced at talking. The accent was American Midwest. A baritone voice, expecting people to listen and obey.
A watery arm reached past him to snag a paperback from the shelves.
“Hey!” The instant he recognized it he snatched the book out of the hand. He could see water stains on both sides where it had gripped the book. “You’ll ruin it.”
He rubbed the book against the bathrobe to dry it before the damage was any worse. It was his copy of The Man Who Sold the Moon. The spine was cracked and the cover frayed. He’d read it more times than he could remember as a teenager. It’s what made him want to create his own rocket company. The book was by Heinlein, who’d been a huge influence on him back then. No matter how much easier reading an electronic version was, he wanted to keep that book.
“You should have replaced that copy years ago,” it said in an amused tone. “It’s worn out. They’re meant to be disposable.”
“Well, I like it,” he said, rubbing at the wet patches with the bathrobe belt.
“You should. I wrote it for you.”
The billionaire stared into the face of the undine. It was the moustache that did it. Well, the bits of ash lined up in the shape of a pencil-thin moustache. He flipped over the paperback and looked at the author picture on the back. The creature before him matched it from the precise moustache to the gleaming curve of the bald scalp. This was the ghost of Robert Heinlein.
“You wrote it for me?” he croaked.
“Not you specifically. For a rich man with dreams of space. You did a splendid job on the first part. I’m impressed as hell. Never even imagined some of that stuff. You made a huge pile. You didn’t even need to sell advertising to fund your space company. Made a solid start to it.”
The undine-ghost leaned in and shouted, driving him against the shelves. “So why the devil is your project sitting on the ground shuffling papers!?”
“We’re making progress,” the billionaire protested. “I’ve been to space.”
“You spent more money to pretend to be Al Shepard than it cost to put Al Shepard in space the first time. You’ve spent more than it cost to orbit John Glenn and haven’t put a rivet in orbit.”
“Reusable launch vehicles are harder to build,” he said. “Project Mercury flew men on throw-away military rockets. No one cared if a valve would break if the flight lasted one more minute. We need to build our rockets so every part will work for flight after flight. That means careful design work and a lot of reviews and testing. You might know that if you’d actually built a rocket instead of just writing about them.”
An eyebrow made of ash quirked. “It’s not reusable unless you use it. And the other guy managed to reuse his rockets.”
He clenched his fists down at his sides. “Why aren’t you talking to him, then?”
“He doesn’t need to hear from me. Any more praise would make his head explode like one of his prototypes.”
The ghost’s index finger poked the bit of the billionaire’s chest left uncovered by the bathrobe. “What he needs is competition. That’s your job.”
“What, I should be number two to make number one work harder?”
“If that’s all you’re good for, yes.” Ashes left an empty space on the undine’s face for a wide smile. “Is that all you’re good for?”
The billionaire realized it was manipulating him. Pushing buttons to rouse his emotions. Fear of the supernatural. Anger at the insults. Injured pride. And the frustration he’d been bottling up over the lack of progress, now boiling over.
A bad mood to make decisions in.
“What do you want from me?”
It pointed at the paperback he was still holding. “Make your dreams happen. Don’t get distracted on the way. It’d be a hell of an epitaph, ‘He glimpsed the stars but was too distracted to reach them.’”
“I am making it happen.”
“No, you asked somebody else to dream your dream for you. But that doesn’t work unless you find another true believer. You need someone who loves rockets. Not a man who’d just as soon build widgets as spaceships.”
“He’s a damn good executive.”
“I wouldn’t know. But he hasn’t put anything in orbit. He’s focused on government contracts. Is that where your focus should be? I wouldn’t recommend it. The government is always changing its mind and asking for more paperwork. Even in the middle of a war.”
The billionaire knew it was right.
“I can’t work full time on it. I have too many other responsibilities. I’m running charities. There’s the Post. And there’s the lab to work on life extension technology. You’ve written too much about living a long time to pretend that’s not important.”
“You’re right, that is important. But can you accomplish something great if you’re going in so many directions at once?” The ghost Heinlein shook its head. “Which one is your dream? Newspaperman? Philanthropist? Doctor? You can only reach a dream if you focus on it. Don’t let the distractions pull you away. Go for your dream.”
“You want me to go to the Moon, then?”
“I don’t want you to chase my dream. What do you want? The Moon? Asteroids? First man to Saturn?”
The billionaire turned the paperback over and looked at the cover. A rocketship against the Moon’s cratered surface. “I’ve been looking at the Moon my whole life. I want to go there.”
“Then make it happen.”
“I will.”
“Good man.” The undine held out its hand.
He took it, and squeezed back despite the cold and wet.
It released the grip and said, “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to have words with the sons of bitches who published For Us, the Living.”
Update January 16th, 2026: Blue Origin successfully reached orbit with its first New Glenn launch, invalidating the ghost’s complaint. The company CEO was also replaced with one less interested in litigating government contract awards.
For more stories of rockets, check out the Torchship Trilogy, complete in one volume.
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This was excellent! Bravo! Just the inspiration I needed this morning! Thanks so much, Karl!