Sex on the Moon Read Online Free PDF Page B

compress right up against the bone—it was hard to even imagine. That this thing was real, not some model or mock-up, made the moment even more thrilling.
    As Thad reached the end of the rocket, he saw a small group of people being led around the spacecraft thrusters by a young woman wearing a NASA uniform—some sort of tour, he assumed. The tourists all had badges on necklaces hanging around their necks. Thad also noticed that there were cameras along the road, a few trained toward the rocket and the tour group, but others aimed up and down where he was driving, covering what appeared to be every inch of the way in and out of the JSC. The cameras and the badges, like the rocket itself, again brought home the importance of where he was—that this was the first moment of an adventure that would surely change his life. He wondered how many people were watching his progress through the compound. Even from just inside the entrance, he could see that the place was huge. He knew there were over a hundred buildings on sixteen hundred acres—but those statistics didn’t capture the open feel of the compound, how truly immense the place was. And this was just one facility of NASA; all around Clear Lake, the part of Houston where the JSC resided, there were multiple complexes serving the astronauts and scientists as they trained for future missions. And now Thad was part of all this, and would be for the next few years. He would be making a name for himself, impressing the people that mattered—and ultimately, always aiming toward his real goal of becoming an astronaut. Of maybe one day being the man who took that first step on Mars.
    He was grinning hard as he finally pulled into the satellite parking lot and found a spot at the end of a row of cars sparkling in the growing heat. As he stepped out onto the pavement, he reached again for his sunglasses. His adrenaline was spiking as he squinted through the haze, making out the closest building where he’d be able to ask directions to the co-op orientation. It would be a bit of a walk in this heat, but he didn’t care. He could already tell that he was going to love this place.
    A few days ago, he was studying while helping Sonya fold laundry in some Salt Lake City Laundromat.
    Now he was standing a hundred feet from a fucking rocket ship.
    He almost laughed out loud as he took his first few steps toward the interior of the JSC campus.

5
    The air-conditioning was jacked up so high Thad could almost taste the Freon on his tongue. Even so, rivulets of sweat trickled down the skin of his back as he stood near the end of a long line of young, pretty people snaking through the cavernous lobby of the industrial-era building. The walk over to Building 2 of the Johnson Space Center had been blistering, but as tired and hot as Thad was, he still had rockets on his mind as he waited with the other co-ops to enter the Teague Auditorium for the orientation lecture.
    Locating Building 2 hadn’t been all that difficult, even without the aid of a map; the swarm of smiling, highly energetic kids gathered around the front entrance would have been hard for Thad to miss. Now that he was among them, he could tell that his new colleagues represented a world he’d never been a part of before. Because of Sonya, and later, at the U of U, Thad had broken out of his shy shell, but he could still count on one hand the number of people he truly called friends. Friday nights, at best, meant a small dinner party and maybe a movie. He and Sonya were a self-contained unit rather than part of some definable social scene.
    But here—packed into this refrigerated lobby full of young, exceedingly jovial kids—Thad was a blank slate. He could easily reinvent himself. Hell, the only person in the room who even knew his name was standing just inside the auditorium door, looking just as he had in the picture taped to Thad’s living room wall—wearing a mischievous grin and a white shirt, joking amiably with the