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After Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, and Michael Collins returned from the moon, President Nixon invited the astronauts for a private meeting in the Oval Office.
"Hello," he said, as the door clicked shut and left them alone. "My name is President Richard Milhous Nixon."
"We know your name," Michael Collins said. "You're the president of the United States, and also we've met before."
President Nixon ignored him. "You are so brave," he said. "I was very worried that the spaceship was going to explode and you would be torn apart and ejected into the vacuum of space, never to return."
Neil Armstrong shook his head. "The astral devils couldn’t explode our strong spaceship, sir."
"Or," President Nixon continued, "that there would be a horrible star serpent on the dark side of the moon, and it would swallow the command module as it was in orbit, and the Eagle would be left with no way of getting back to earth."
Michael Collins raised his eyebrows. "There, ah, there was no space serpent, Mr. President."
President Nixon did not seem to hear him. "I also worried," he said, gazing into the eyes of the portrait of George Washington on the wall, "that perhaps we were wrong about the moon being made of rocks, and actually it was—"
"I can now confirm it’s not made of good green cheese, sir," Buzz Aldrin interrupted.
President Nixon stared at him. He stared until Aldrin started to feel an uncomfortable heat on his forehead. Most people don’t know that Richard Nixon had laser vision. It wasn’t very strong, but it still explains a lot about the 1970s. "No," he said, "I thought maybe it would be made out of something softer, like Cool-Whip. We all know what Cool-Whip is, because it was introduced to the market in 1966, and it's 1969 now. It is a soft and squishy substance and I wouldn’t want to stand on top of a heap of it, or a moon made out of it. I was worried about these things happening because that would mean I wouldn’t get a moon rock when you came back, and that would make me very sad."
Neil Armstrong took the hint and reached into the inside pocket of his suit coat, and he brought out a small rock, light grey and pockmarked and large enough that it just filled the palm of his hand when he held it out to President Nixon. "I brought you your rock, sir."
President Nixon reached out and took the rock, and he held it close to his face. He looked at it very hard until his laser vision started to make it smoke a little. He held it up to his nose and took an extremely long sniff. Then he stuck out his tongue and licked it.
Everybody was quiet while President Nixon tasted the rock and looked up at the ceiling to think about it.
"It doesn't taste like yarn," he announced.
"I think the moon rocks taste more like banana pudding," Buzz Aldrin said.
"I think it's more like a lizard that you find as a kid and put in your mouth until your mom makes you take it out," Neil Armstrong said.
"No," President Nixon said, "I think it's more like when you have an open box of powdered laundry detergent in front of you, and you take an ill-advised breath through your mouth, and your tongue gets coated by a fine detergent film."
"I think you're all bonkers," Michael Collins said, "and it's weird that you're so fixated on moon rocks."
President Richard Nixon stared at Michael Collins. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin looked out the windows at the White House lawn and pretended that they hadn't heard anything. After a moment, President Nixon loudly cleared his throat and said, "What did you learn about the universe and our place in it from your mission to the moon?"
"I learned about jumping up high and coming down slow," said Buzz Aldrin. "It's harder to do when you're wearing a big heavy spacesuit. I wish we could walk on the moon without space suits so I could have jumped higher."
"I gained a new appreciation for the fact that the Earth is not very large, and it's easy to imagine a space monster scooping it up and using it as a volleyball, so we're lucky that there don't seem to be any space monsters like that," said Neil Armstrong.
Michael Collins said, "I learned about the awesome potential of human ingenuity when applied to an ambitious goal, and what we can achieve when we apply the wealth of this Nation, the vision of its political leaders, the intelligence of its scientists, the dedication of its engineers, the careful craftsmanship of its workers, and the enthusiastic support of its people."
Everyone looked at Michael Collins for a moment and then Neil Armstrong laughed. "Thank you for saying that, Mike," he said. "I forgot about all that for a minute there. Probably it is more important than what I said about monsters that don’t exist."
"I also forgot," Buzz Aldrin said. "Now I’m embarrassed that I’ve been telling everyone that the most important thing I learned was about jumping."
Nixon frowned at all of them. "I have no idea what any of you are talking about," he said. "This mission was carried out to bring moon rocks back to me personally."
"That is exactly what someone would say," said Michael Collins, "who is going to commit a lot of crimes and resign the presidency in August of 1974."
President Nixon became very angry at that, but the astronauts all linked arms and turned to leave. It was like the main characters in the film The Wizard of Oz. They didn’t skip out of the Oval Office, because there wasn’t enough room to do that, and also because the Secret Service looks with suspicion at people who skip anywhere near the president. But they did leave in a jaunty sort of way.
President Nixon stood alone in the Oval Office. He put his moon rock in his mouth and held it there as the sun went down and the room grew dark.
They were all wrong. It didn’t taste like banana pudding, or laundry detergent, or a lizard. It didn’t taste like Scotch tape or his mother’s kitchen in Whittier, California, or an inner tube. It tasted like inheriting the Apollo program from a beloved president who was shot, and never really getting credit for it.
"Damn you, Michael Collins," he said, "you and your husbands." He still had the rock in his mouth, so his secret recording devices could not clearly record what he had said. He spat the rock out and locked it in a secret drawer of his desk. He went down to the White House kitchen to ask them for a cake that tasted like glory.