Music of the Spheres Read Online Free

had struggled with the most basic of daily
chores: cooking, dressing and personal grooming to name a few. She had hired an
assistant to help her the first year home, but that only reminded her how
helpless she was.
    Holoslate interfaces were based off haptic technology. It
was a perfect match for those who used Braille. After learning the system,
Justine was able to read any eBook, manual, or meshmail with the built-in
Braille application as easily as a sighted person.
    But adjusting to a world where she was blind wasn’t the
worst part; it was the boredom. She’d had nothing to do.
    So once she’d mastered the optical sensor technology, she
had pleaded with the officials at NASA to reassign her to the active duty roster.
    When they offered her an instructor’s position, she jumped
at the chance, knowing it was most likely the closest she would ever come again
to being in command, or tasting the exhilaration of space flight.
    There was a second reason she had so eagerly accepted an
instructor’s position. The feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment in
passing her knowledge on to the young trainees was something she had come to
love.
    She would never have a child of her own. Biologically, it
was still a possibility—there were women much older than her who had
children—but at this stage in her life, and with her own personal challenges,
she just couldn’t see herself making that decision. By the time he or she was a
teenager, Justine would be in her late sixties, and she couldn’t imagine that
she would have enough energy to keep up.
    The closest she had ever come to having a child was during
those short few months aboard the Quanta with Alex Manez. It had given
her a fleeting taste of motherhood, and for the first time her life, she had
understood the power of that instinct. To care for and impart her experiences
to those who would follow in her footsteps gave her as much of a sense of
completeness as she could ever have wanted.
    The years she spent as a flight instructor were some of the
best in the last decade.
    Now, however, that was all behind her.
    In the past two years, NASA and USA, Inc. had suffered a
great many setbacks—not to mention the loss of many lives on the Quanta experiments.
That had resulted in the sale of Quantum Resources to Canada Corp. and the
shoe-boxing of the entire Kinemet program. There were far too many problems
here on Earth to spend any more money on interstellar exploration; or at least,
that was the reason the directors at USA, Inc. had given for their decision to
sell.
    Many of NASA’s independent contractors had been released
from their contracts, and even many regular staff members had been offered
severance packages and early retirement.
    They had offered Justine a very generous sum, enough that
she could easily have weathered the troubled financial times in relative
comfort for many years to come. She had taken the settlement, and wondered what
to do with the rest of her life. For a time, she thought about returning to the
Lowell Observatory and completing her studies there, but the call of space was
too great for her to simply retire.
    With her background, she managed to secure a position with
Lunar Lines Ltd., who ran their space liners between Houston Spaceport and Luna
Base, as a public relations hostess.
    It was a one-week round trip, and Justine worked two flights
on, one flight off. The position was much more than being an attendant or a
tour guide; she was also responsible for the comfort and general safety of the
passengers, as well as their peace of mind. While travel to Luna Station and
the various space stations orbiting Earth was becoming more frequent, only a
fraction of the population had ever undertaken the trip, and for many of those
who took a liner it was the first time. They were understandably nervous flying
into the void of space.
    That morning was the beginning of another of Justine’s rotations,
and she always looked forward to this leg of the trip