"Sara Reinke - Tethers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reinke Sara)

Additional On-board:
Jerica Emmente


Mission :
Complete construction of terra-farming colony facility on Jupiter satellite,
X-1226


Funny , Kat thought, studying the stellar display, watching the computer
trace lines across the monitor, plotting and arranging course adjustments so
minute by the readings sheтАЩd almost question their necessity. Funny, it doesnтАЩt
feel like Easter.
But there it was, undeniable on the monitor displays. At least seven months
in cryostasis away on Earth, it was Easter Sunday. Back there, in Illinois, she
imagined her family would just now be settling in for the traditional Easter
feast. Her mother would be bringing out a turkey, steaming and probably too
dry, and the table would be laden with mashed potatoes, gravy, homemade
cornbread dressing, rolls and her sister AllisonтАЩs green-bean casserole.
The dressing will be too runny, Kat told herself. The gravy too lumpy, and
Jerica would just wrinkle her nose at it all anyway. And then weтАЩd have to sit
through an hour or so of Allison bitching about her job and how her ex doesnтАЩt
pay his child support, and snapping at her kids for picking at each other. Some
fun.
 Some fun, but she found herself missing it anyway. Easter had always been
a difficult time for her, full of unpleasant memories she didnтАЩt feel much like
thinking about, and she had somehow found a comfort and strange sort of
solace from being with her family. No matter how weird they could seem.
She pressed a couple of buttons on the terminal in front of her, locking in
the new coordinates the ship had plotted out. They were running late; a small
system glitch just prior to their coming out of cryostasis had left them a little
over a day behind schedule.
тАЬGood thing it happened then and not earlier,тАЭ Alex had remarked. тАЬOr
Christ only knows where we might have ended up. Uranus or something.тАЭ
SheтАЩd laughed. They all had, but none of them had really found it funny.
And theyтАЩd all been keeping a watchful, wary eye on the bridge since then,
making sure the system didnтАЩt decide to make another odd decision and send
them off-course again and out into space.
тАЬItтАЩs not like out here, you get lost, you stop in at the nearest DennyтАЩs and
ask for directions,тАЭ Alex had told her.
Kat agreed with him. The trip was already going to cost her five years, and
she knew sheтАЩd have to get used to the lonely, empty feeling deep down in the
pit of her belly that came with spending a holiday away from the familiar bustle
of her family, because there were a lot more ahead of her. She didnтАЩt feel like
getting lost in deep space and never finding her way back home.
Ordinarily, her crew would have rendezvoused with the one previously
stationed at the X-1226 terra-farming colony post, but because they were
running behind, the other crew had already launched from the moonтАЩs surface,
heading toward them and the stellar platform KatтАЩs crew had departed from
four days earlier.