Dark Star Rising Second Edition (Pebbles in The Sky) by Jeffery Bagley Read Free Book Online Page B

going back at JPL that I cannot just let drop.  There some other people who may be of more use to you.  I probably need to get back to my work now that I have brought this to your attention.”
    “Bullshit,” replied David.  “Michael Heckerman, your old boss on the Spitzer Telescope gave you rave reviews in your annual evaluations.  He said you practically ran the Spitzer Project while he did paperwork.  He had highly recommended you be given your own project to run. Poor guy is now drooling spit down his chin in a nursing home here in Washington.  Alzheimer’s is not a pretty way to go out of this world.”
      “Ultimately, I am your boss since JPL is under NASA, and as of now you are in charge of organizing the observation and study of this Brown Dwarf.  Get yourself an assistant if you need too and I want you to set up an office and get organized for this task.  JPL is probably as good a place as any to set up shop since you are already out there, but I want you to stay here until Thursday.  I will get some discretionary funding released for whatever you need, as long as it is not too crazy. And remember, keep this on a need to know basis for the time being.”
    “I sort of preempted you on some of that,” Mike said.  “I asked Mary Beth over at Hubble to divert some telescope time to look for our object of interest.  Maybe by Monday, she may have some more information.  I think I hear your wife and granddaughter coming back in.  I guess I will go grab a few hours of sleep and figure out who I can turn over funding requests to back at JPL,” Mike said as he stood to leave.  “Give my thanks to your wife for dinner.”
    “I will call you Monday morning,” David called after him.  “Hey Mike, it might be a good idea to try and put a muzzle on that Grad student for a few weeks until we can work all this out.  Not really sure how you can do that.  Maybe you can lean on Eric Casselman, his professor, to rein him in.”
    Mike turned around and grinned. “I have a better idea; you said to get an assistant, so what better way to keep him under wraps than to have him working for me.  I will talk to you on Monday.”
     
     
     
    Chapter 5
    March 20 th 2016
    Pasadena, California
     
    Dr. Eric Casselman hung the phone up and sat back down to his routine breakfast of oatmeal and dates.  “We are such creatures of habit,” he thought.  “I have had the same breakfast every morning for years and years.  If I do anything different at all, it is to use raisins instead of dates in my oatmeal,” He chuckled to himself.  “It is no wonder that I never married.  I am forty three years old and have yet to meet a woman that would tolerate me.  I am getting old, set in my ways, and my work has always been more exciting to me than any woman.”  There had been one woman about twenty one years ago that had caught his eye.  They had a quick and intense summer relationship and then he had lost interest in the relationship. She had realized that he would always be married more to his work than he could to any woman.  She had left college and moved back out east where she had an aunt that she was close to when she realized that their relationship had started to wane.
    His thoughts turned back to the phone call that had interrupted his Sunday morning solitude.  Mike Banscott had just called him from Washington.  Evidently, the Brown Dwarf, if that was what it was proven to be, was starting to stir the cold congealed pot of porridge that NASA and JPL had become with all the recent budget cuts.  He looked at his own oatmeal and smiled.  Comparing NASA to his own breakfast, it was probably good to stir in something new to that bowl of oatmeal. He glanced at the clock on the stove.  It appeared that JPL shared his evaluation of the data that Peter had dug up.  “I believe,” he said to himself, “that the field of astronomy and astrophysics is going to become a very hot subject in the near