Parker's Folly Read Online Free Page A

wheelchair, which could easily move at faster than walking speeds.
    “We have to get a move on. I have it on good authority that word of our little project has leaked to the press,” TK was saying as he rounded the front of the raised platform, passing under the nose of what might have been mistaken for a dirigible at first glance. “Just got a call from some damn lady reporter who's on her way to interview me.”
    “And just how did the news media find out about the project?” asked the Captain. “We've managed to keep the curtain drawn tight for 18 months. It's hard to believe that now, with the ship almost ready, we've had a security breach.”
    Jack Sutton was a tall man, 6'2'' with intense brown eyes and sandy brown hair starting to go silver at the temples. A short, dark beard framed his jaw. Trim and erect, he was having trouble maintaining a dignified stride keeping pace with the speeding wheelchair. He does that on purpose, the Captain thought, slightly annoyed.
    “Who knows? One of the workers gone into town and got a snoot full,” snapped TK. “Can't stand a man—or a woman, for that matter—that can't hold his liquor. Or anyone can't keep their yap shut.”
    “I doubt it was any of our people, Sir,” Curtis interjected. She was designated the ship's first officer and was also responsible for site security. “I suspect it was someone from one of the supply deliveries. We started provisioning food and medical supplies this past week and plants for the hydroponics section yesterday.”
    Gretchen Curtis was not as tall as the Captain but she was certainly near six foot. Her roan red hair was pulled back in a tucked French braid, her trim figure projected a military bearing. A graduate of the US Naval Academy and former Lieutenant in the US Navy, the green-eyed first officer took her duties very seriously indeed—perhaps to the point of overcompensation. In the Navy she had felt the need to constantly prove herself as good or better than her male counterparts. It was a habit she had not dropped since becoming a civilian.
     “Damn outside contractors!” continued TK, “ain't none of them worth a shit.” TK was famous for his colorful language. Pushing 80, confined to a wheelchair and with billions in the bank he once told a Dallas society matron who criticized his vocabulary, “I don't give a rat's ass what you think, woman, and neither does anyone else!”
    Fact was, the only thing TK did care about was looming above him in the brightly lit vastness of the old airship hanger. The hangar itself was his primary reason for purchasing this particularly worthless piece of ranch land. The object of his affection was a long cigar shape, crafted from crystal and silver, who's curving flanks disappeared into the distance of the huge hanger.
    Looking vaguely like an unpainted submarine hull with the glass nose of a vintage bomber, TK Parker's spaceship was overwhelming at first sight. Gleaming metal with a number of rounded rectangular openings along its flanks, it looked like something out of a science fiction story or a Hollywood film. A number of viewing ports, some large, some small, dotted the ship's flanks along with several teardrop shaped metallic blisters. But it was the nose that drew an observer's eyes back.
    The bow of the ship was made of transparent panels that conformed to the curve of the ship's hull. Like on a vintage WWII B-29 bomber, the transparent sections continued back along the sides and top creating a greenhouse effect. Unlike the more or less rectangular glass panels of a B-29, the transparent sections forming this ship's nose were of seemingly random shapes, separated by curvacious silver strips where the panels adjoined. It was Superfortress meets Star Wars meets modern art.
    This was the ship Hollywood would have given Buck Rogers in the 1930s serials if they had the budget and better construction methods. One of the assembly workers called it an art-deco space sausage. In fact,