Read Online Brown, Dale - Independent 01 by Silver Tower (v1.1) - Free Book Online Page B

powder blue NASA
flight suit. She put up her hair in her trademark ponytail, redid it twice to
kill time. It didn’t help. Still an hour and forty minutes until the taxi was
to arrive. Nothing on TV at three in the morning.
                Once again
her stomach started to gnaw at her.... To hell with waiting for the taxi. She
slipped on her black flying boots, left the room key on the bed, turned out the
lights and closed the door behind her.
                In the lobby
of the Vandenburg Air Force Base Visiting Officers Quarters, she had to cough
twice to get the clerk’s attention. “Can you call the base taxi and get me a
ride to the Shuttle Flight Center ?”
                The clerk
stared at her shuttle crewmember flight suit and did a double take—even with
one-a-month shuttle launches from Vandenburg, a shuttle crewperson was an
unusual sight. “Transportation is swamped on a launch day,” the clerk said.
“The Shuttle Flight Center will pick you up—”
                “At four a.m. I want... I have to go out there now.”
                The clerk
caught the hesitation in Ann’s voice, and her expression changed from bored to irritated . “I’ll check.”
                As the
clerk dialed a desk phone Ann wandered through the lobby and over to a wide,
floor-to-ceiling window facing the Pacific Ocean . Washed
clean by the night air and lingering Santa Ana winds, the predawn sky glistened with hundreds of stars. A tiny sliver of moon
was about to dip a horn into the cold water, and the big bright planet Jupiter
sparkled brilliantly.
                “Miss?” The clerk had to raise her voice to get Ann’s
attention. “Transportation says they can’t get out earlier than four-thirty.”
                “Never
mind,” Ann said, heading for the door. “I’ll walk.”
                “Walk? To the Shuttle Center ? That’s ten miles....” But Ann was already out the door....
                Ten blocks
later she had left the main base behind. Ahead was miles and miles of
emptiness—abandoned thirty-year-old wooden barracks, parking lots, crumbling
buildings and athletic fields giving way to occasional sand dunes and grassy meadows.
                As the
bright glow of civilization behind her melted away, the feeling was electric,
and she found her pace quickening. The ocean breeze was like an amphetamine. To
the west the stars appeared so bright and near they seemed to cast a reflection
off the gentle ocean waves. To the east the first faint outlines of the San
Rafael Mountains could just barely be made out.
                She found
herself now in a gentle, easy jog.... the butterflies, the nightmare, even the
grouchy desk clerk, all seemed part of some happy conspiracy to make her
experience this rush, this mysterious communion with earth and sky. Her boots
crunched on hard sand, and her cheeks stung from the cold breeze as she stepped
up her pace, the chill air seeming to flow into her veins and through her whole
body.
                This was
her place, all right. Free. Open. The thought of being cooped up, strapped in,
locked in place seemed scary, repugnant.
                She had
reached the top of the small rise, and abruptly found herself a few hundred
yards from a tall fence illuminated every fifty yards by powerful searchlights.
A concrete guard shack blocked the road in front of her. Air force security
guards with rifles and dogs patrolled the fence; the dogs were barking,
straining against their leashes, their super-sensitive noses picking up the
intruder.
                Three miles
beyond the twelve-foot-high fence stood a massive structure, brilliantly
illuminated and clearly visible in spite of its distance. It looked like a
skyscraper sitting in the middle of nowhere. A few hundred yards from the
building was a squat, ungainly shape dwarfed by the