Rocket! An Ell Donsaii story #4) by Laurence Dahners Read Free Book Online Page A

eyes. “You and Roger work at the same company?” she asked suspiciously.
    “Yes Ma’am.”
    “Don’t they have rules against dating your boss?”
    Ell glanced at Roger, seeing he was appalled again and winked at him. “Why no. They don’t have such a rule, but it’s a very new company.” She frowned with concern, “Perhaps they should?”
    Mrs. Emmerit said, “Well I for one think it’s bad karma to mix romance and work. But if you and Roger continue to hit it off, perhaps you could find another job?”
    Roger finally couldn’t take it anymore, “Gramma!” He rolled his eyes in exasperation. “Ell runs the company. She doesn’t work for me, I work for her. And if someone had to ‘get another job’ it would be me , not her!”
    Mrs. Emmerit turned to stare at Roger in disbelief, then turned to look at all the others around her who were smothering their mirth. After a moment she threw her head back and laughed out loud. She turned back to Ell. “Well! I guess I’ve done stuck my foot in my mouth! I apologize. I guess you can tell from the way my own family’s laughing at me that this isn’t the first time I’ve done it?”
    Eyes twinkling, Ell said, “Oh no Ma’am! I am absolutely astonished that anyone might think that!”
    To her amazement Grandmother Emmerit grinned, then turned and stuck her tongue out at her nearby family members.
    After the dinner was over a couple of the younger family members did ask Ell if she’d sign autographs for them. By the time she’d signed the entire family was bundling up to go out and sing carols for the neighbors. Ell went along and at first just mouthed the words, afraid of singing badly and spoil the harmony. A few minutes into the first carol she realized that several of the Emmerits sang horribly but joyfully so she joined in. Caroling turned out to be a funny, sweet, inspiring and joyful endeavor from which she returned home quite late.
     
    ***
     
    Cape Canaveral—NASA and ILX today announced that they will attempt to launch another Vulcan 5 rocket with supplies to the International Space Station within the next two weeks. ILX hopes that some recent modifications they’ve made to the Vulcan 5 rocket motors will be successful. Although the supply situation at the Station is not desperate as yet, there is no doubt that a successful mission to the station is becoming a very high priority…
     
    The D5R researchers had gathered around one of the big stainless steel tables in the middle of the big industrial room at the research facility for their morning meeting. Ell looked around the group, “Happy New Year to you all. Since we’re all so new, some even newer than others, I’d like to introduce and reintroduce the members of our little research group to each other. I’m Ell Donsaii. Since I wrote the original paper that our research is based on our investors have put me in charge of ‘directing’ D5R’s research program.” Ell waved to her right, “Roger Emmerit here has just completed his PhD in Physics at NCSU and is very interested in all aspects of our investigations but doesn’t have a particular specialization as yet. Next is Ben Stavos,” Ell indicated a slender thirty year old man with a shock of wild blond hair.” Ben comes to us from Hewlett Packard where he was a maven of microconstruction. He’s going to lead the team attempting to construct port rings by moving entangled molecules into place with high-speed micro assemblers. Fred Marsden,” Ell indicated a tall redheaded man, “comes to us from SUNY where he just completed a post doc with Edgar Venter working to quantum entangle macro molecules with some new techniques they’ve developed. He’ll lead our team that will see if they can successfully entangle carbon nanotube tori so that we don’t have to assemble ports two molecules at a time. Next is Brian Short,” Ell nodded at a grizzled man, “Brian is a lifelong machinist who can actually run all the equipment in our