Earth Bound Read Online Free PDF

nod to the computers, Charlie jumped into the deep end. It was a good thing she had learned to swim in the frigid waters of Lake Carnegie. She was going to master this challenge too—whatever it took.

    Parsons drank the last sip of coffee from his mug and checked the clock on the kitchen wall. 6:03 a.m. Roy was likely back from feeding the stock and eating his breakfast. It was the perfect time to call.
    Parsons punched the number into the kitchen phone and listened to the rings. There were only two before his brother answered.
    “Parsons residence.”
    Parsons would have known it was Roy on the line before he’d even spoken. His brother hated a ringing phone even more than he did.
    “Happy birthday, big brother,” Parsons said.
    “Hey, kid! Thank you. It’s good to hear from you.”
    It was good to hear Roy’s voice too, in the drawling accent Parsons didn’t experience often in the halls of ASD. “How’s the day so far?”
    “Got ham for breakfast instead of bacon, so pretty good. Biscuits too.”
    “Daisy put on a spread, then.”
    “Oh yeah. I guess she still likes me.”
    Parsons couldn’t help but smile. God forbid either of them should admit they were crazy about each other—Roy and Daisy had been sweethearts since kindergarten.
    “How’s Ma?”
    A deep sigh from Roy. “Well enough. Daisy gets over there most days to help her.”
    “Daisy’s a good daughter-in-law.” Ma had said that exact thing to Parsons two days ago, but he knew his mother would never tell Daisy so. That was how praise worked in the Parsons family—you never gave the praise to your intended target. No, that might feed their vanity, and vanity was the worst kind of sin. So you told someone else and relied on them to send on the praise and hope the person heard.
    It was how Parsons knew his parents were dead proud of what he was doing. They told Roy, who told Daisy, who told Kevin, his nephew, and his nephew had told him.
    “And Dad?” Parsons asked.
    He wasn’t certain if his question was lost through the telephone line or if Roy simply didn’t want to answer, because his brother asked, “How’s work?”
    He decided to let it go. “Could be worse. That woman I was telling you about started last week.”
    “Oh yeah? What’s she do again?”
    Parsons tried to find a point of reference his brother would understand. “You know how Gladys at the livestock auction keeps track of all the prices, calculates the average cost of pork and beef, and what corn’s going for on the Mercantile? You know, calculations?”
    “Oh yeah. Stuff like that, huh?”
    “Yeah.” It wasn’t quite a perfect comparison—and Gladys’s beauty had never once taken Parsons’s breath away—but it would do.
    “She must be pretty smart to work on rockets. Almost as smart as you are.”
    She was also damn unflappable.
    Just this week, Parsons had had to dress down Jack, a computer engineer with more confidence than experience. He had fouled up the schematic for an onboard computer, but when Parsons had pointed that out to him, Jack had denied he’d done anything wrong. When Parsons had finally gotten the son of a bitch to admit, yes, he’d made a mistake, Jack had gone on to give every excuse under the sun for his failure.
    Nothing pissed Parsons off more than a person who wouldn’t take responsibility for his errors.
    He’d raged at the man for a good fifteen minutes, so angry was he. The entire computing department watched in shocked silence as he threatened to fire Jack should this happen again.
    Except for her.  
    She’d kept on with her work the whole time—he couldn’t help but sneak the occasional glance at her. When he’d run out of invective, she’d risen and come over to him with a folder in her hand.
    “I drew up some schemes for how we can monitor the life support systems on the two-man capsule.” Everyone else was running from him, but she simply waltzed right up. No one at ASD did that.
    “I never asked for these.”