Adrift on the Sea of Rains (Apollo Quartet) Read Online Free

almost Pavlovian the way Peterson responds to Kendall: his beard, his air of petulant intellectualism, his unfitness for the space programme, his very presence here. Every time the man opens his mouth, Peterson finds himself fighting a rising tide of anger. It is happening now.
    Like what? demands Peterson. You think there’s systems here we don’t need and you can just switch off? The air you breathe, the water you drink, the food you eat, the light you see by, the heat that stops you freezing to death—we need power for all of it. If we power down the monitoring equipment, maybe turn off a few lights, we’re going to save maybe a handful of watts, but that thing of yours out in the rille drinks goddamned kilowatts.
    I need more power, Kendall insists mulishly.
    Then you magic up some goddamned power, Peterson replies, and you use that.
    Although his watch is not over, Peterson pushes past the scientist and crosses to the hatch in the command centre’s floor. He steps onto the first rung of the ladder, grabs the coaming, and swings himself down into the suiting up area below. As he walks along the corridor towards his room, the noise of his slippers rip-rip-rip-ripping from the carpet fuels his rage. He stops as vertigo swoops through him and sets the corridor rolling. Putting a hand to the wall, and reassured by the touch of plastic against his palm, he sucks in a deep breath. Air fills his lungs and his panic begins to ebb. He feels thick-headed, his anger gone as swiftly as it came—but what remains is smothered, wrapped about by a blanket. He reaches up and drags a hand back along the side of his head, and the pressure of his palm against his skull, the friction of the heel of his hand, brings him back into himself.
    After he has slowed his breathing, Peterson continues on his way to his bunk. Passing the wardroom, he hears an abrupt clatter. He stops. The next scheduled meal-time is not for hours. They all decided long before to eat their rations in front of each other. Mutual suspicion is their best defence against temptation.
    Peterson slides open the door and steps into the room.
    There are two tables in the wardroom—one to the left and one to the right. Each table sits three to a side on benches. Behind each table are store cupboards and a microwave. Sitting to Peterson’s left, his back to the door, is First Lieutenant Ed Neubeck, USAF. He is bent over a metal bowl, a spoon halfway to his mouth. His shoulders are hunched; he does not move.
    Peterson stares at the back of Neubeck’s head, at his unkempt hair. The rage returns. It is not Neubeck’s stealing of food that angers him, it is that the man has let himself go. He is unshaven, and his hair has grown to his collar and is unwashed and uncombed.
    The hand holding the spoon begins to shake.
    What the hell is this? demands Peterson.
    Neubeck puts down his spoon. It strikes his bowl with a brittle clang. He says nothing.
    Stepping further into the wardroom, Peterson puts a hand to Neubeck’s shoulder and hauls back. The man turns boneless beneath his grip, seems to both fold and straighten.
    If you steal food then you don’t get to goddamn eat at meal-times, Peterson says.
    His hand is still on Neubeck’s shoulder, and he pulls it away as if he has inadvertently grabbed something unclean or dead. He feels an urgent need to wipe his palm but resists.
    I was hungry, Neubeck mumbles.
    Until this moment, Neubeck has seemed to orbit Peterson’s world rather than dwell within it. Their paths cross only at meal-times—and even then, the nine of them might as well be in separate rooms. They do not talk to each other; they do not meet each other’s gaze. Outside the wardroom, they are on different watches—and they do not rotate because they are comfortable with their watch partners.
    This is the first time he has taken a good look at Neubeck in weeks. Perhaps longer. He remembers the resentment he’d harboured when Neubeck was first assigned to Falcon