Casserine Read Online Free PDF Page A

me honey, don’t you?” “Yes Dear, at least until I stop getting a rise out of you. Would you prefer Lieutenant?”
    “I guess I can allow terms of endearment. Shall I call you sweetiepie?”
    “On second thought, Lieutenant Byers, perhaps we do need a more formal relationship.”
    Byers laughed appreciatively. “You don’t look like the type to be called sweetie pie anyhow.”
    “The tea helps, doesn’t it?” “Yes, I think I need an IV drip of pure speed.” “It won’t work. When you come down, it will be twice as bad, and you can hurt yourself without realizing it. The tea helps in a few different ways. I put sugar, spice, and vitamin mix in it.”
    “Why can’t they make the inside station into a regular gravityzone?”
    Jake sighed. “I told you, it would kill you going in and out of the station. You would be unable to function whenever you had to go outside, or between storage areas. I could probably build you your own little earth gravity room, and you could stay there all the time.”
    “I just wanted to hear the exasperation in your voice, when you told me why again,” she chuckled, as she slurped the rest of her tea.
    “I better get you some more to drink. You lost a lot of fluid practicing to be my footstool.” He took her cup, and went to fill it with his tea mix.
    “I like it when you call me Honey.”
    “Then I guess I will have to switch to lard ass then.”
    “You beast. It stays between thirty degrees Fahrenheit at night to sometimes fifty degrees Fahrenheit during the day around here, right?”
    “Pretty close,” Jake acknowledged. “It cools off a little more than that seasonally, but we have a very odd rotational arrangement with this section’s fireball. Because of the density of Casserine’s core, we have a number of moons cluttering up our orbit. The atmosphere, because of being denser and more humid, keeps everything in a state of almost frost. It holds nearly all of the heat it gathers from the fireball during the daylight hours. If you feel up to it, I’ll take you outside to see something you might like.”
    “One more cup of your elixir here, and I will almost be able to crawlout.”
    She sat bundled up on the makeshift porch chair Jake kept outside. Although a little harder to breathe on the porch, the sky glowed in a type of crystalline rainbow of flowing colors. The many satellite moons, within Casserine’s orbit, highlighted the spectacular sunset canvas. These multicolored globes finished the task of stealing whatever breath a person had left from fighting the gravitational pull. She felt Jake pull up a chair next to her as he placed another cup of tea in her hands. She sipped the concoction gratefully.
    “I will never ask you again why you wish to stay on Casserine,” she whispered.
    “When you see the sunrise, you will know why I balked at even a medical leave on the base.”
    Byers turned and placed a chilly hand on his warm one as it lay across his armrest. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
    He put his other hand over hers. “I didn’t know how,” he saidsimply.
    They sat in silence within the tapestry of the Casserine sunset.
    Jake felt a hand on his shoulder, and smiled. After three months on Casserine, she had not allowed him to sleep through a single sunrise.
    “Come on goofy, I have your breakfast ready out on the porch,” Adrian said brightly. “What did you do in the morning before I came down here?”
    “Well, for one, I slept through a sunrise once in a while, and lived to tell about it.” Jake left his bed with practiced care. Adrian would wait now until the last minute, and if he did not get up on his own by the appointed time, she woke him with the same mantra, and handed him his clothes, one piece at a time, until she made sure he would not return to his bed. Even a detour to the bathroom would bring a look of consternation to her face. She could never get enough of their time on the porch now.
    Jake slowed down on fastening his boots