Star Dust Read Online Free PDF

because this is yet another symptom of how you approach your test flights. It matters because carelessness like this will cause missions to fail and people to die.”
    All of the noise in the room had ceased. Every Perseid astronaut had frozen and was fixed on Kit and Parsons.
    Kit ground his teeth. “You can’t engineer something like this to be failsafe. There’s going to be failures and errors—it’s never been done before. And as to the danger, you’re strapping a person onto a rocket and sending him into a vacuum. Of course it’s dangerous. We all accepted that.”
    “Parsons, I know you don’t understand,” Carruthers said, “but we’re all military men here. And pilots. Don’t wrap us in fucking swaddling.”
    Storch added, “We’re not monkeys. When things go wrong, we actually know what to do. Thanks to all the training you force on us.”
    “If you think some beer on a spec manual is the end of the world for this mission…” Dunsford shook his head.
    Parsons’s nostrils flared. Kit just kept staring him down, knowing that all the other men had his back. Nothing united the Perseid Six faster than their dislike of Parsons.
    “Look,” the engineer said, “this isn’t flying toy jets trying to set some kind of silly speed record.”
    “Hey!” Storch held one of those speed records, and he wasn’t pleased to hear it dismissed.
    Parsons ignored him. “The entire world is watching. We fail, and the Soviets win. And you may not care if someone dies on these missions, but I certainly do.”
    With that, Parsons turned on his heel and left. Kit’s fists shook with fury. How like that bastard, to give a speech like that and just run off. He was always trying to ensure he got in the last word. Kit threw the spec manual onto his desk, sending one of the hills of paperwork crashing down.
    Yes, as a test pilot he’d done some dangerous things. Been in a few bad crashes. They all had.
    But he wasn’t reckless. And he wasn’t sloppy. No one knew his aircrafts like he did. It was why he’d been chosen for this mission.
    He didn’t just hop into a jet prototype and push it to maximum acceleration. He’d been an aviator of skill and art and study—still was. Parsons could stuff it.
    If he weren’t relying on the man to recommend him for lead in the next mission, Kit would have told him that.
    The clack of the typewriter started up again. Kit hadn’t even been aware it had stopped.
    “Ignore him,” Carruthers said, never looking up. “He’s probably not getting laid on the regular. Binds him up like that, and then he takes it out on us.”
    Kit snorted. “Why don’t you put a girl in his closet, then?”
    “No girl deserves that,” Storch said with a laugh.
    Kit silently agreed as he buried his face back in the spec manual. No matter how he felt about Parsons, he did have to read this manual. Beer or no.
    And he’d have to check on Mrs. Smith at some point. Ask about her finger.  
    Just to be neighborly.

    Anne-Marie closed the back door and leaned against it. For two days she’d opened boxes, more boxes than she remembered packing. They’d multiplied on the way here, probably somewhere around Waco. Weird things were always happening in Waco.
    She’d made beds, put together bathrooms, and filled cabinets, but the house still didn’t feel right. She kept waiting for the alchemical thing to happen. The home-making thing.
    When she’d married Doug, she’d moved into his place the day after their honeymoon. She’d put down rugs, hung pictures, and set books on his previously bare shelves. But the space had remained foreign for weeks.
    Then one day she’d been out shopping and had thought, I can’t wait to go home . Doug’s house was her home.
    She’d thought she could make that happen instantly here, but it hadn’t.
    Even the kids felt it. They’d tried to be happy, but anxiety laced their words.
    “Look, Mom, room for all your pans!” Freddie had said, gesturing at the cabinets as