Earth Bound by Emma Barry & Genevieve Turner Read Free Book Online

unconscionable that retrieval waited so long to take care of this.” Actually, she thought they were lazy and rather stupid, but the best way to handle Hal was to flatter him, so she ratcheted her feelings up to “unconscionable.”
    “The consequences should be on their heads, then,” Hal said with a nod. “I’m playing golf with Stan on Saturday; I’ll mention the concerns I have about Rodger. He ought to be replaced. Stan should know before he has a real crisis on his hands.”
    Oh yes, the shadow work of ASD that went down on the fairways and in watering holes. She couldn’t care less about that side of things.
    “If you think that’s necessary.” That was at least tactful. “But look, there’s another dimension to this. If we don’t help them, they’ll have the entire Pacific Fleet trolling from Hawaii to Samoa. It will take them forever to find the capsule.”
    Hal snorted. “That does appear to be their plan.”
    “If that happens, it’ll be very embarrassing for ASD. The capsule floating who knows where for who knows how long after this historic flight…” She shook her head. “It would make us look very bad to the Soviets. Let me put a couple of the girls on it. The ones in Virginia. It won’t involve you, and it won’t take up too much time.”
    Hal watched her, his expression inscrutable. She’d made the pitch the best way she knew how. If this didn’t work, she was out of bids.  
    Without speaking, Hal gathered his things and pushed his chair back from the conference table. He stood up and rapped on the back of his chair twice. “I don’t like the message it sends. It makes the computer department seem like a service industry, like we’re there to fix the screwups of others.”
    But we’re all in this together. “Maybe it makes us look magnanimous, focused on the mission.”
    He sighed, his shoulders falling. “Very well, work up the report.”
    Since she wanted to, that was convenient. “Of course. For your approval?”
    “No, you can send it straight on to Parsons.”
    Interesting. “Of course. Thank you for the opportunity.” And all the extra work, which he didn’t think she should do.
    “If we’re going to do it, do it right. Don’t screw it up.” With that contemptuous touch—as if she would screw up work she’d practically had to beg to do—he strode out.
    “I don’t intend to,” she said as the door closed behind him. And she didn’t. Hal might be a bit of an ass, but this was precisely the sort of opportunity she’d come to ASD to pursue. She intended to knock it out the park and straight into orbit.

    The monkey pulled back its thin lips, revealing a row of yellowing teeth, the canines obscenely long.
    Parsons resisted the urge to bare his own teeth.
    “So, this is Shem,” the monkey keeper said, as if actually introducing Parsons to the thing. “He’s all ready for his mission.”
    Parsons peered into the cage. The monkey had been brought to Houston from the facility in Arizona, before the animal finished his trip to the Cape. Parsons wasn’t sure why the monkey had to meet them here at ASD, but here it was.
    ASD wasn’t quite prepared to send up a man—the rockets still only had a fifty-fifty shot of making it off the pad, and they had no idea if the capsule sitting atop those rockets would prevent outer space from killing any life forms inside. So they were sending up the next best thing.
    “Ready? How?” Parsons asked. The monkey simply had to survive the shot to space and the fall back to Earth—there were janitors doing more hands-on work on this mission.
    “Oh, he’s been trained to push buttons in a sequence.”
    The monkey kept its teeth bared. Parsons would feel the same about having to push buttons in a sequence.
    In about twenty-four hours, this animal would go where no human had ever been. Yet it looked as if it would rather be picking lice off another chimp. Or sinking those canines into the nearest human.
    “Hmm,” he said.