Read Online All That Outer Space Allows (Apollo Quartet Book 4) by Ian Sales - Free Book Online Page B

orange, gold and green paisley dress. Kristin had also dyed her hair a silvery blonde. “It’s very sophisticated, don’t you think, darling,” she told Suzanne, patting her abundant curls with one hand. “My man loves it, he says I look like a tri-dee star or something.”
    Kristin could afford to boast—not only was she beautiful and wore the loveliest clothes, but her husband wielded a lot of power in the spaceyard. It wasn’t that Suzanne felt grateful for Kristin’s friendship—she liked Kristin, and knew the sentiment was returned—but sometimes she couldn’t help feeling a little resentful at Kristin so frequently calling attention to her many advantages.
    They moved further into the room, greeting the other wives in their dresses of yellow and blue and red and other colors, and made their way to the table where the coffee and cakes were laid out. While Kristin poured them both drinks, Suzanne complained about her husband’s recent surliness.
    “He hardly speaks to me when he gets home,” she said. “One evening, he complained his steak knife wasn’t sharp enough and went to get another from the kitchen. He couldn’t find them and flew into a terrible rage. It was awful. And do you know where the steak knives were? In the first drawer he looked in!”
    “Men are always like that,” Kristin said knowingly. “We’ve been in our apartment for five years now, and my man still can’t find the electronic dishwasher.”
    “And if I ask him to fetch something of mine,” Suzanne continued, “like a pair of shoes or some jewellery, he can never find them—even if I give him exact directions!”
    Kristin nodded in agreement. She leaned in and lowered her voice conspiratorially. “They’re under stress, darling. It’s this project they’re working on,” she murmured. “Project Philadelphia it’s called.”
    “What’s that?” Suzanne knew nothing about her husband’s work. She was aware the spaceyard built ships for the navy, for the war against the Regulans; but that was all she knew.
    “I shouldn’t tell you this,” said Kristin, “but…” She placed her purse on the table, slipped a small bottle of whiskey from it and added a dash of liquor to her coffee. “They’re trying to make spaceships invisible. They’ve got a destroyer ship down in a special dock, and they’ve built all this weird equipment into it. It’s supposed to make the spaceship completely invisible. He says the theory all adds up, but no matter what they do everyone can still see the spaceship.”
    Kristin sipped her coffee, frowned, and added a few more drops of whiskey. “There’s even been a couple of ‘accidents’, something about a crewman getting phased into the decking or something.” She shuddered. “It all sounded very gruesome, darling.”
    By this time, several of the other women had gathered round them, and soon they all had whiskey in their coffees and had been told all Kristin knew about Project Philadelphia. Some of the other wives added details to Kristin’s account, learned from their own husbands.
    Of course, all this knowledge meant nothing. Suzanne couldn’t help her husband with his work, but at least she now understood the reason for his bad mood each evening. She even felt a little sympathetic. It must be difficult to work so hard on a project, only for it to repeatedly fail.
    After the social had ended, Suzanne waited in the room for her husband, but he didn’t appear. He had told her he would come and fetch her. After ten minutes, she went looking for him. She checked her porta-phone but he hadn’t called her, and although she briefly considered ringing him she didn’t want to seem impatient or demanding. So she left the room and headed for the club foyer. As she passed the archway leading into the main bar, she happened to glance through it.
    And there he was, standing at the bar with the spaceyard’s only female test pilot, Betty, who was still dressed in her flightsuit.
    Betty