Falling Star Read Online Free

Navy's inventory.  Although the Trieste had plumbed the deepest depths of the ocean in the Marianas Trench, it suffered from one very big problem.  It had no propulsion system, whatsoever.
    "No." responded McHugh.
    "NAVFAC doesn't want to commit the Trieste unless we can pinpoint the exact location.  The Trieste, after all is little more than an elevator - incapable of any lateral movement.  NAVFAC thinks there may be another system that might work better."
    McHugh continued, "I understand that Western Light's ocean research laboratory in Annapolis has a towed platform with cameras, lights and side scan sonar.  NAVFAC thinks that side scan sonar might be able to assist in finding the anomaly." 
    "I'm familiar with that system," said Mike.  "Western Light nicknamed it, 'Nematode,' after some microscopic marine parasite because the package is so small and has to be towed.  Didn't the Navy use something like the Nematode to find those H-Bombs off of Palmores, Spain?"
    "Yes, but not as sophisticated or proved to the depths that we need to go," responded McHugh.  "An old friend of mine, Ted Sevson, is the project manager.  I'll give him a call and tell him to expect you.  I'd like you to coordinate the use of the Western Light system.  Have you ever been to Annapolis?
    "A couple of times," responded Mike shifting uncomfortably in his seat.
    McHugh took notice.  His look prompted Mike to continue.
    "Annapolis was my girlfriend's home and I visited there several times while I was at the University of Virginia.  Her father was in the Coast Guard."
    "Good, maybe you can drop in to see her."
    "Can't sir, we are having some problems right now."
    "Oh," answered McHugh.  "Well, you got to keep those problems contained, son."
    "Yes, Sir," replied Mike as he noticeably flushed.  "You won't have to worry about that."
    "O.K. familiarize yourself with the Orion report, get a billet at the BOQ and let's talk tomorrow.  Welcome aboard."
    "Thank you, Sir."

     
     
    1967: Mike

    0930 Hours: Wednesday, August 24, 1967: Annapolis, Maryland

    "I fall to p-ieces -- Each time I see you ah-gain...." sang Patsy Cline on the car radio. 
    Tuned to the only country western station that came in clearly, Mike hummed along, reminiscing about his college days in Charlottesville, Virginia, as he drove along Route 50 to keep his appointment with Tom Sevson at the Western Light facility in Annapolis, Maryland.
    Born in China and brought up in urban Washington, D.C., one would not have thought that Mike would be hooked on country and western music.  However, his college years were spent in the piedmont of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Albemarle County, Virginia.
    Mike had grown up in Washington during the fifties when the capital was a steamy intersection of international sophistication and deep Southern prejudice.  It had been with great trepidation that Mike enrolled in that bastion of southern schools, the University of Virginia, on a NROTC scholarship, but he was destined for a big surprise.
    Mike found the University to be a far different place from the dirty, throbbing neighborhoods of non-diplomatic Washington in which he had grown up.  Growing up in Washington, D.C. had been painful.  Some of the slights had been obvious, like the rednecks that would not let Mike's family onto Calvert Beach, Maryland, during the Fifties.  The confusion of growing up in a white person's world had left an impression on the young Mike Liu.
    It wasn't right that someone could tell you that you could use this fountain or that, changing their decisions not so much from person to person but from time to time depending on how they felt.  Sometimes, the rednecks would say Chinese could use white facilities, other times they could not.  In some perverse way, the uncertainty was worse than the clear barriers that blacks had to endure in the same places.  Prejudices were delivered personally to Chinese, not impersonally through placards.  Racism was arbitrary