Back to the Moon-ARC Read Online Free Page A

himself as he hurried out the door and down the hallway toward his office. Bill paid it no mind at all. He had more important things to deal with.
      
    Elsewhere, the now-docked Orion and Altair lunar-lander vehicles, thousands of miles away in space, separated from the EDS and began the remaining part of their journey toward the Moon.  
       

Chapter 3
    “Where’s Bill?” Astronaut Jim England was looking for his longtime friend. England was a tall, lanky man with a noticeable “hillbilly” accent that he seemed able to turn off and on at will depending upon the situation. Presently, his pronunciation of “Bill” would make listeners swear it was a two-syllable word. He’d known Stetson since their first flight to the International Space Station together back in the shuttle days and had immediately become a part of Stetson’s inner circle of close friends. England never seemed to meet anyone he didn’t like, and almost everyone responded to his warm personality by counting him as a friend.
    “Hi, Jim.” Stetson’s secretary looked up from her computer screen at the astronaut. She had been Stetson’s secretary, or, to be politically correct, his management support assistant, for almost five years. Married for over thirty years, with a grandchild on the way, Millie Lawford was cordial, worldly wise, and very good at her job.
    “How’re things?” England asked. “You look perplexed.”
    “Bill’s calendar.” She grunted as she tapped at her keyboard and then clicked her mouse several times. “It’s a frustrating experience that I’d say is more like herding cats while being overrun by mice than trying to actually schedule adult professionals in the same place at the same time.” She managed a smile for England.  
    “Ha.” Jim laughed out loud. “Try tuna and milk.”
    “He’s in the office. Shall I tell him you’re here?” She started to rise from her seat.
    “No, that’s okay,” Jim said. “I’ll go on in. Unless you think I shouldn’t?”
    “No, I’m sure it’s fine. Go on in.” She looked back at her screen, forgetting about Jim, and immediately frowned. “NASA just has too many meetings,” she half muttered to herself. “How the heck is he possibly supposed to be in all these places in one short ten-hour day?”
    “Good luck.” England shook his head. Taking her inattention to him as dismissal, he walked up to the closed simulated-wood-grain door to Bill Stetson’s all-too-government-issue office. He knocked on the door and reached to open it in one quick, fluid motion. If Stetson were doing something that he didn’t want anyone to see, then he would certainly be caught by surprise.  
    Fortunately, Stetson was simply sitting at his desk looking at his thirty-inch computer monitor with a mild grin upon his face. He looked up and motioned for Jim to join him on the other side of the desk.
    Stetson, though an astronaut and commander of the next flight to the Moon, the first flight “back to the Moon,” was still only a civil servant and subject to civil-service rules regarding office space and accoutrements. The simulated-wood-grain desk and generic cream-colored filing cabinets were the primary features of the room. On the walls were framed pictures of a shuttle launch, the International Space Station, Stetson floating in the U.S. Laboratory Module of the ISS, and many, many pictures of his wife and two children. In the family photos, there were none that didn’t have Stetson surrounded by the satellites that were his family. And in all of them, his wife and children wore great big smiles.  
    Jim rounded the corner of the desk and heard a voice talking from what sounded like a deep well. The audio was crackly. He knew what he was listening to an instant before he saw the screen and had his guess confirmed. From the speakers came “…forged man’s destiny of tomorrow. And, as we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall