Excerpt from When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Virgil looked up and saw yellow and orange clouds interspersed with the red of the evening. "It's amazing," he confirmed. "What I can see of it. The sunset itself is blocked by a Waffle House and a McDonald's."

"You're missing out," Emily said. "And it's not just the sunset. The moon is absolutely stunning."

"You can see the moon?" The day before had been a new moon, so today the moon would have been the merest of slivers in the sky, nestled up against the sun and usually visible for only a few minutes after the sun had set. Virgil was aware of the moon phases not just as an occupational hazard of being an executive director of an air and space museum, but because in a month there was an annular eclipse coming, the totality of which would slide up much of the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. Ohio would get a partial eclipse, which was still enough for the Armstrong Museum to prepare a number of educational programs about it for schools and nerdy adults.

"See it? You can't miss it," Emily said, of the crescent moon. "It's the brightest I've ever seen it in this phase." Emily and Virgil had met in college at a lunar eclipse viewing, which she had attended with her then-boyfriend, who she dropped in quick order after meeting Virgil. Her interest in casual astronomy had been a positive feature in their marriage. "You need to see it," she told her husband.

"Waffle House and McDonald's," Virgil reminded his wife.

"And yet you have legs," Emily said. "Go look. Love you." She hung up on her spouse.

Virgil grinned and followed his wife's suggestion, walking up Apollo Drive to Bellefontaine Street, the main drag of Wapakoneta, which was platted in a mostly east-to-west direction. The view of the sky there was littered with gas stations and fast food joints, but there was indeed also the sun and, slightly off to one side, a blazingly bright crescent.

Emily was right. It was the brightest sliver of a crescent Virgil had ever seen. Even with the sun still in the sky, the moon was clearly, almost relentlessly, visible.

Even framed by a Murphy USA gas station and an O'Reilly Auto Parts, it was one of the most beautiful astronomical sights Virgil Augustine had ever seen.

It shouldn't be that bright, Virgil's brain said to him.

Shut up, brain, Virgil said back.

Virgil's phone rang. It was Bud. "We got it open," he said. "You should get back here."

"Everything okay?"

"Just get back here, Virgil." Bud hung up.

A few minutes later Virgil was back in the Moon Room. As he cleared the hallway and passed the headless moon suit, he wrinkled his nose.

"Okay, good, you smell that, too," Bud said. He stood with Willa and Chief Wopat, off to the side.

"What is that?"

"You tell us," Willa said, and pointed to the display.

The display had been opened and one panel of the outer Lucite had been removed. From there, either Bud or Willa or Chief Wopat had removed the triangular prism of Lucite that surrounded the not-a-moon-rock. It stood bare, in its vise, open to the air.

"We didn't touch it," Herb Wopat said to Virgil. "We figured you should do the honors."

"Was the display tampered with?" Virgil asked.

"Not until we opened it," Bud said. "It was sealed up tight."

Virgil got in close to the display and breathed deeply. The odor was neither the burnt charcoal that astronauts claimed the moon smelled like, nor the sweet chemical smell of children's modeling dough. It was something far more familiar.

Before he could stop to think what he was doing, Virgil reached out to the object inside of the display, scratched it with a fingernail, and put his finger in his mouth.

"Virgil, what in the hell—" Chief Wopat began.

"It's cheese," Virgil said.

"What?" Bud and Willa said at exactly the same time.

"It's cheese," Virgil repeated.

There was silence for several moments at this.

Excerpted from When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi. Copyright © 2025 by John Scalzi. Excerpted by permission of Tor Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.