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shoulder at the purchase orders and gave in to his fatigue. They could wait until the morning. “Yeah, Virg. I’m ready to pull the plug too. Go ahead. I’ll lock up.” Virgil, Jack knew, wanted to know who was going to be the last out of the building. The MEC burglar alarm system was cranky, requiring a complicated code to be entered into a box at the exterior door and again at the parking lot gate. It was a time consuming process and about half the time it didn’t take and had to be reset and reentered. Everybody hated it. The system had been installed, the cheapest available, when MEC first moved into the facility. Jack depended, more than anything, on the remoteness of the site to protect the company. Trooper Buck, the Cedar Key constable, made routine swing-bys during the few hours the plant was unoccupied at night. Still, having a burglar alarm that might not even work was foolish and Jack knew it. One of the purchase orders on his desk was for a new security system, but there had just been so much to do.
    â€œSee you tomorrow, boss,” Virgil called.
    â€œOkay, Virg. I’m right behind you.”
    Jack took a moment to savor
Prometheus,
but memories of his wife flooded him as they often did when he was tired. Looking out over the moon miner reminded him of the time when he had found Kate in their mountain-home sunroom, pensively gazing down on the city of Huntsville and, on the distant horizon, the big rocket test stands of Marshall Space Flight Center. When he’d asked her what she was thinking, she had said, “Jack, if I die, will you forget how much I love you?” He hadn’t known what to say. It was such a preposterous idea. She was younger than he, the very picture of health. “Please tell me you won’t ever forget.” He’d knelt before her, taken her hands, and promised. They’d ended up making love, passionately clinging to each other as if they only had a few hours left together rather than a lifetime. Five months later she and their unborn child were dead. NASA had determined that it had been his arrogance that had killed them. Soon after, he had resigned and left the agency. Ever since, it had seemed that he lived in a different world, one of shadows and pain.
    Jack shuddered, pushed away the memory that was beginning to creep into his thoughts, of the bitter night on the test stand, when he had lost all that he loved. What good did it do to think of it now? A lump in his throat, Jack turned from the window, found his briefcase, and was nearly through the door when the telephone rang. It was Sally Littleton, calling from what sounded in the background like a party. “We’re getting down here at the Pelican, Jack,” Sally yelled over the din. “You got to come on by and live a little, boy. You deserve it.”
    He felt drained. “It’s been a long day, Sally.”
    â€œJack Medaris, you get on over here. Isn’t that right, everybody?” Jack heard a chorus of shouted agreement in the background. Sally came back on. “Your people are celebrating and they want you with them!”
    Jack looked at
Prometheus,
saw his own reflection in the window. He had been a solitary man for years. He was lonely. There would never be, couldn’t ever be, another Kate. Yet he needed the touch and the warmth of a woman in his arms, her breath in his ear, her perfume.. . . ”All right, Sally,” he said quietly. “Tell them I’m on my way.”
    â€œI’ll be waiting, Jack,” she replied with the emphasis on
I.
    Jack clumped down the wooden steps of the old hangar, set the alarm on the clean room, then moved through the two outer dressing chambers. The old hangar was plunged into darkness except for an emergency light mounted above the main door. He went outside, turning to set the exterior alarm. Compared to the crisp, sanitized air in the plant, the breeze coming off the lapping ocean nearby was