Lunar Descent Read Free

Island, from the violent tropical storm which blew over Florida’s northeast coast two weeks ago. The mini-shuttle was ready to be towed to the Vehicle Assembly Building for mating with a booster, as soon as the two almost-rival companies got the paperwork out of the way and NASA found a window in the Cape’s crowded launch schedule. Fast Eddie grimaced and shook his head as he glanced away from the OS-32 shuttle. All dressed up and no place to go, aren’t you, Little Deke?
    But it was Bay Three, immediately to his left between the Puttkamer and the Ley , which demanded his attention. As Fast Eddie reached the stairway leading down from the work platforms to the hangar floor, he paused to rub imaginary dust from his right eye while he furtively studied the floor of Bay Three. From here he could see the blunt nose of the Boeing S-202B Sally Ride protruding through the forward tiers. Like the Puttkamer , the Ride was a second-and-a-half generation shuttle; raised payload bay on the top aft fuselage, no vertical stabilizer, long delta wings with tip fins, advanced avionics designed for quick turnaround at the Cape. In the trench underneath the fuselage he could see jumpsuited technicians making last-hour adjustments to the landing gear hydraulics. The doors of the humpbacked payload bay were open, and sure as hell, Eugene the Dork was waddling down the mobile ladder out of the shuttle and down to the hangar floor. Right on time.
    The Dork paused on the lowermost platform to ask a question of the bay foreman—Fast Eddie could make out Lynn Stoppard’s pained expression, even if Eugene missed it entirely—and to fuss over his datapad with his lightpen. Eddie took the opportunity to relish his target of opportunity. Eugene Kastner was the king nerd of Skycorp’s graveyard shift at the Cape, the wanker to end all wankers. This was a guy who probably tucked his Fruit of the Loom undershirt into the waistband of his baggy shorts before he went to bed in the morning. He was an assistant scoutmaster for the local Boy Scout troop, took his Sunday day-off to attend the Baptist church in Titusville, voted Republican across the ballot even for municipal dogcatcher, rarely wore anything which wasn’t white, gray, or brown (and secretly cheated on company dress code for management by using a clip-on tie instead of learning how to tie a decent knot), always kept a half-dozen colored pens (no two alike) in his breast pocket, and couldn’t keep his weight down because his darling wife always made sure that there was a packet of Sara Lee double-fudge cookies in his dull gray lunchbox. Eugene hummed along with Muzak when he thought he was alone, stopped reading science fiction when he thought all the writers were becoming liberals, and once bared his soul to a couple of other cargo inspectors in the NASA cafeteria to tell them that, if it weren’t for them, Lord knows what would get into the cargo canisters lifted to orbit by the shuttles during their weekly supply missions.
    The last was utter hypocrisy because there were two secrets in Eugene Kastner’s life, and one of them was that when he completed his meticulous inspection of the contents of the cargo bays of outbound shuttles—usually at 3 A . M ., if there were no severe holdups in the launch cycle—he would retire to his office, close the door, and steal a half-hour of sleep in his desk chair. You could tell it was coming when he yawned. Fast Eddie had to smile as he watched the Dork slowly walk away from the Sally Ride and head for the door to Bay Four. Just before he reached the door, Eugene stopped in his tracks and yawned. He then glanced at his watch before opening the door. Lord , Eddie thought as he headed down the stairs, I love a man who keeps to a tight schedule. Shows strength of character .
    But there was another, darker secret which Eugene kept: He had been bribed a long time ago to ignore certain outbound payload canisters.