Rocket! An Ell Donsaii story #4) Read Free Page A

difficult to make six foot two inches of solid muscle look like it spends most of its time musing in the library.”
    Ell snickered, “I swear I can see the ghost of his old M-25 in his hands!” She paused, “Well, this is the Physics building. You guys could have some coffee in the little shop over there while I’m upstairs.”
     
    Roger Emmerit fidgeted and slid a finger under the collar of his shirt. He seldom wore a tie and it was driving him crazy. Of course, his nerves might also have something to do with the fact that he was about to defend his thesis for his PhD.
    Dr. Johnson and the other two professors on his committee had arrived and seated themselves in the front row of the small conference room. Dr. Johnson had insisted that he redo his experiments repeatedly when they failed to support classical theories in Physics. Then Roger had had to repeat and modify his experiments many more times, once he’d demonstrated that the results he was getting were compatible with the new math conventions and theories that Donsaii had published in Nature. For a while Roger had wondered whether Dr. Johnson would ever allow him to defend his thesis but as experiment after experiment agreed with Donsaii and failed to meet the predictions of classical theory Johnson had finally relented.
    Several other people had gradually filtered in and seated themselves in the audience. More than he had expected. They registered mostly as blurs to Roger, though he assumed that some of his grad student friends were there. Johnson said, “Let’s get this show on the road.”
    Roger turned to the big screen at the front of the room. He began to speak as his first images appeared on the screen. Forty minutes later by the clock and forever by his internal time sense he finished his presentation and asked for questions. An initial barrage of questions flowed over him. Some other faculty had shown up, having heard of Roger’s surprising results and their questions reflected their dubiousness regarding his results, or at least regarding his interpretation. Here Professor Johnson’s earlier attacks served him well, because he’d already heard all of their objections from Johnson and had done the experiments to show that their contentions were incorrect. The questions slowed and eventually trickled to a stop. Finally his committee asked that the room be cleared for their deliberations. Roger stepped outside with everyone else and his friends clustered around to shake his hand and wish him well.
    Al and James promised to buy him a beer at West 87 no matter the results. Emma gave him a hug and whispered fiercely, “They’d better give you a pass.”
    Jerry gave him a “bro” hug with a slap on the back and said, “Good luck. We Alpha Centaurians are on your side.” Everyone chuckled at Jerry’s old joke.
    Roger looked around. A couple of more distant friends spoke among themselves. Suddenly he recognized a familiar posture in the slender girl leaning up against the wall with her hoodie up and hiding her face. “Ell?”
    She turned and grinned at him as everyone else standing in the hall turned to stare. She pulled her hoodie back exposing her short reddish blond hair and crossed the distance to him in three strides, throwing her arms around him and hugging him fiercely.
    Hugging her back Roger said, “Damn, girl! Why didn’t you say something?”
    She drew back and raised an eyebrow, “Didn’t want to throw you off—or make the professors think I was trying to influence your findings as they regarded my theory.”
    The door opened behind Roger. Professor Johnson leaned out, “Roger?” He motioned him back in. Suddenly Johnson’s eyes lit on Ell. He turned back to the room behind him and said, “I’ll be just a moment.” Then he stepped out into the hall and said, “Ms. Donsaii, a word please?”
    Ell, dreading the possibility that Johnson would be confrontational again, stepped down the hall with him.
    He said, “I would like to