The most secret mission in United States Army history is about to reach the Moon—assuming its own security procedures do not destroy it first.

Project Hush has been concealed behind false records, restricted budgets, psychological screenings, and enough military paranoia to make even its carefully selected personnel nervous. Its objective is simple but historic: establish a permanent armed base on the Moon before a rival nation can get there.

Colonel Benjamin Rice and his elite team have sacrificed years of their lives to ensure that no one outside the project knows what they are building. Even neighboring military installations and other branches of the armed forces have been kept completely in the dark.

Against every technical and bureaucratic obstacle, the mission succeeds.

Then the soldiers discover another dome on the lunar surface.

Convinced they may be facing a foreign enemy—or something not of this world—the team prepares for a dangerous investigation. What they find reveals the spectacular absurdity of military secrecy, interdepartmental rivalry, and government organizations that conceal so much information they no longer know what their own country is doing.

Originally published in 1954, William Tenn’s *Project Hush* is a clever Cold War science-fiction satire that turns the race to militarize space into a sharply funny tale of bureaucracy, paranoia, and institutional incompetence.

Narrated by Chris Velasco.