Phases of Gravity Read Online Free PDF
Author: Dan Simmons
He slowed his breathing and tried to experience any last feelings that he might be harboring.
I'm here, he thought. This is real.
He felt silly, standing there, breathing into his mike, running the schedule even further behind. The sunlight on the gold insulating foil around the lander caught his eye. Shrugging slightly in his bulging suit, Baedecker bounced effortlessly across the pocked and trampled plain toward the waiting spacecraft.
The half-moon rose above the jungle. It was Maggie's turn to putt. She bent over, knees together, her face a study in concentration. The lightly tapped ball rolled too quickly down the concrete ramp and bounced over the low railing.
"I don't believe this," Baedecker said.
Khajuraho consisted of a landing strip, a famed group of temples, a tiny Indian village, and two small hotels on the edge of the jungle. And one miniature golf course.
The temple compound closed at five P.M. Entertainment other than the temples themselves consisted of a hotel-sponsored elephant ride into the jungle during tourist season. It was not tourist season. Then they had strolled out behind the small hotel and found the miniature golf course.
"I don't believe this," Maggie had said.
"It must have been left behind by a homesick architect from Indianapolis," said Baedecker. The hotel clerk had frowned but provided them with a choice of three putters, two of them bent beyond repair. Baedecker gallantly had offered Maggie the straightest of the lot and they had charged out to the links.
Maggie's missed putt rolled into the grass. A thin green serpent slid away toward higher grass. Maggie stifled a scream and Baedecker held his putter out like a sword. Ahead of them in the humid dusk were peeling plywood windmills and decarpeted putting strips. Cups and concrete water hazards were filled with lukewarm water from the day's monsoon rains. A few yards beyond the last hole stood a real Hindu temple, seemingly part of the miniature montage.
"Scott would love this," laughed Baedecker.
"Really?" asked Maggie. She rested her weight on her putter. Her face was a white oval in the dim light.
"Sure. This used to be his favorite sport. We used to get a season pass to the Cocoa Beach Putt-Putt course."
Maggie lowered her head and sank a ten-foot putt across pebbly cement. She looked up as something eclipsed the moon.
"Oh!" she said. A fruit bat with a wingspan of three feet or more floated out of the trees and coasted black against the sky.
It was the mosquitoes that drove them inside from the fourteenth hole.
Woodland Heights. Seven miles from the Johnson Space Flight Center, flat as the Bonneville Salt Flats and as devoid of trees save for the precariously supported saplings in every yard, the homes of Woodland Heights stretched in curves and circles under the relentless Texas sun. Once, flying home from a week at the Cape, early on in the training for the Gemini flight that was never to be, Baedecker banked his T-38 over the endless geometries of similar houses to find his own. He finally picked it out by the repainted green of Joan's old Rambler.
Impulsively, he put the little trainer into a dive and leveled off at a satisfying and illegal two hundred feet above the rooftops. The horizon banked, sunlight prismed off Plexiglas, and he brought the jet back for another run. Pulling out, he kicked in the afterburner and brought the T-38 up into a steep climb, arched it into a tight loop, culminated by the sight of the somehow miraculous emergence of his wife and child from the white ranch house.
It had been one of the few moments in Baedecker's life that he could point to and say that he was truly happy.
He lay awake and watched the strip of moonlight move slowly up the wall of the hotel room in Khajuraho. Baedecker idly wondered if Joan had sold the house or if she was still holding it as rental property.
After a while he rose from the bed and went to look out the window. In so doing he blocked the fragile line of
I'm here, he thought. This is real.
He felt silly, standing there, breathing into his mike, running the schedule even further behind. The sunlight on the gold insulating foil around the lander caught his eye. Shrugging slightly in his bulging suit, Baedecker bounced effortlessly across the pocked and trampled plain toward the waiting spacecraft.
The half-moon rose above the jungle. It was Maggie's turn to putt. She bent over, knees together, her face a study in concentration. The lightly tapped ball rolled too quickly down the concrete ramp and bounced over the low railing.
"I don't believe this," Baedecker said.
Khajuraho consisted of a landing strip, a famed group of temples, a tiny Indian village, and two small hotels on the edge of the jungle. And one miniature golf course.
The temple compound closed at five P.M. Entertainment other than the temples themselves consisted of a hotel-sponsored elephant ride into the jungle during tourist season. It was not tourist season. Then they had strolled out behind the small hotel and found the miniature golf course.
"I don't believe this," Maggie had said.
"It must have been left behind by a homesick architect from Indianapolis," said Baedecker. The hotel clerk had frowned but provided them with a choice of three putters, two of them bent beyond repair. Baedecker gallantly had offered Maggie the straightest of the lot and they had charged out to the links.
Maggie's missed putt rolled into the grass. A thin green serpent slid away toward higher grass. Maggie stifled a scream and Baedecker held his putter out like a sword. Ahead of them in the humid dusk were peeling plywood windmills and decarpeted putting strips. Cups and concrete water hazards were filled with lukewarm water from the day's monsoon rains. A few yards beyond the last hole stood a real Hindu temple, seemingly part of the miniature montage.
"Scott would love this," laughed Baedecker.
"Really?" asked Maggie. She rested her weight on her putter. Her face was a white oval in the dim light.
"Sure. This used to be his favorite sport. We used to get a season pass to the Cocoa Beach Putt-Putt course."
Maggie lowered her head and sank a ten-foot putt across pebbly cement. She looked up as something eclipsed the moon.
"Oh!" she said. A fruit bat with a wingspan of three feet or more floated out of the trees and coasted black against the sky.
It was the mosquitoes that drove them inside from the fourteenth hole.
Woodland Heights. Seven miles from the Johnson Space Flight Center, flat as the Bonneville Salt Flats and as devoid of trees save for the precariously supported saplings in every yard, the homes of Woodland Heights stretched in curves and circles under the relentless Texas sun. Once, flying home from a week at the Cape, early on in the training for the Gemini flight that was never to be, Baedecker banked his T-38 over the endless geometries of similar houses to find his own. He finally picked it out by the repainted green of Joan's old Rambler.
Impulsively, he put the little trainer into a dive and leveled off at a satisfying and illegal two hundred feet above the rooftops. The horizon banked, sunlight prismed off Plexiglas, and he brought the jet back for another run. Pulling out, he kicked in the afterburner and brought the T-38 up into a steep climb, arched it into a tight loop, culminated by the sight of the somehow miraculous emergence of his wife and child from the white ranch house.
It had been one of the few moments in Baedecker's life that he could point to and say that he was truly happy.
He lay awake and watched the strip of moonlight move slowly up the wall of the hotel room in Khajuraho. Baedecker idly wondered if Joan had sold the house or if she was still holding it as rental property.
After a while he rose from the bed and went to look out the window. In so doing he blocked the fragile line of