Read Online Velocity by Steve Worland - Free Book Online Page B

about his concussion, or the likely contusion on the back of his head from the Corona bottle, until she knows what’s going on. ‘What are you doing here?’
     
    He stares at her. ‘I - I needed to see you.’
     
    Hope. Maybe this whole thing is just an innocent misunderstanding. Maybe there’s been an emergency and he needed to find her but her phone has been turned off and he didn’t know Will’s number so he came to his home. It’s a long shot but it’s possible.
     
    ‘Why did you need to see me?’
     
    Judd looks at her and says nothing. He can’t tell her he thought she was having an affair with Will Thompkins but then he doesn’t need to. She works it out on her own. He sees it happen, watches the change, first in her eyes, then in her expression, as she processes the truth.
     
    She stands, turns and walks up the incline.
     
    ‘Rhonda —’
     
    ‘Don’t.’
     
    ‘But I —’
     
    ‘No.’ She doesn’t look back.
     
    **
     
     
     
    6
     
     
    They haven’t spoken since ‘the night of the quarters’. That’s what Judd’s been calling it. Rhonda moved out that evening and hadn’t answered a call or replied to a text or email in the three days since.
     
    Judd tilts the T-38 into a tight bank over the Indian River. He’d picked up this ‘B’ variant at Ellington Field in Houston and is minutes away from wheels down at Patrick Air Force Base, just a stone’s throw from Cape Canaveral. He looks left, to Kennedy Space Center, then launch pad 39A. On it stands Atlantis. The early-afternoon sun glints off the white solid rocket boosters, burnishes the rust-coloured external tank to a bright orange, illuminates the stubby shuttle.
     
    His eyes flick right, to the towering box that is the Vehicle Assembly Building, big enough to fit four Empire State Buildings inside. He remembers being in it on one particularly humid day, watching as Discovery was joined to its external tank two months before his flight. As impressive as the shuttle external tank mating ritual was, the spacecraft hoisted high by a crane then gently wedded to the ET, what he remembers most about that day were the clouds that formed on the VAB’s ceiling, then the light mist that wet his face as it rained inside the building. It was so big it formed its own weather system.
     
    The VAB is his destination today. It’s where he’ll see her again.
     
    Judd brings the T-38 down onto runway 2B at Patrick with a minimum of fuss. He parks the jet, completes the relevant paperwork then finds his silver BMW 2002 quietly rusting in the parking lot.
     
    The old Beemer is the car he drives in Florida. It’s seen better days, its forty-year-old body putting up a valiant if futile attempt to ward off the humid, salty air of the Cape. He’s more than happy to leave it in the Patrick car park for the extended periods he’s away because he can’t imagine anyone would want to steal it.
     
    He wheels the Beemer out of the car park, heads towards Kennedy Space Center and wonders what Rhonda’s expression will be when she sees him. He’s scheduled to work the White Room for Rhonda’s flight and tonight is their first Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test. It simulates the final hours of a countdown and serves as a rehearsal for launch day procedures, culminating in a simulated ignition of the shuttle’s main engines. During the evening the ground staff will also run a tanking test. That involves filling the external tank with liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen propellants and evaluating how all systems perform under cryoload. Even after decades of service the shuttle is still an experimental vehicle that is continually tested and assessed.
     
    The launch is tentatively scheduled for late next week if everything goes smoothly and the weather cooperates. Judd enjoys White Room duty because, even if he isn’t able to fly the shuttle, even if the damn thing scares him, he still wants to be close to it. Like Rhonda. He’s a little