Free Pillar to the Sky by William R. Forstchen Page A

freshmen and give a lecture. Write a book and try to sell the public that way? Doubt if that would work; you need a storyteller for that, not someone who juggles calculus problems in their head.”
    He instantly regretted saying that. He and many others had been pestering Erich for years to write his autobiography, to which the old man growled he was not ready for that final act of retirement before fading into the night.
    Again the icy stare, but this time Gary, filled with frustration, returned the gaze.
    “Why do you ask if we are free this next week?” Eva interjected, putting a calming hand on Gary’s shoulder. She had caught on, whereas Gary had not, that Erich must have something up his sleeve.
    Erich smiled. Almost from their first day together she had Erich wrapped around her finger, the way a father would feel toward a special daughter.
    “Actually, I am thinking about young Victoria out there. Her schedule?”
    “She doesn’t start college for a month,” Eva replied.
    “Excellent. There is room on the flight for her as well.”
    “Sir, I’m not sure I follow you on this,” Gary said.
    “Go home, pack your bags.” He paused to look at his old-fashioned wristwatch. “You’ve got four hours to get to BWI Airport. A friend of ours will have his corporate jet waiting for you.”
    Gary stirred from his morose mood.
    “Who?”
    “A friend of ours who has taken great interest in the events of today. He expected this debacle. The moment the hearings closed and it was clear that NASA would be forced to entirely drop this line of research, he was already in flight from Seattle.”
    “Seattle?” Gary said, and there was now a touch of recognition.
    “A friend who thinks it is time he stepped into this mad scheme of ours.”
    “Who, may I ask?” Gary whispered.
    Erich smiled and pointed behind his desk, where an old battered suitcase was on the floor.
    “Go home, pack bags for all three of you for a week, then come back here to pick me up.”
    “And do you mind if I tag along?” he added as he broke into a rather uncharacteristic grin.
    Eighteen Years Earlier
    “You are utterly impossible to work with,” Eva snapped, getting up so swiftly from her chair on the other side of the table that she knocked it over.
    “I need some fresh air,” she announced, and stalked out of the room.
    Gary yet again wondered if Dr. Rothenberg had teamed them together out of some perverted sense of humor, but as he watched her leave the room, he could not help himself. Intellectually he could barely stand to be with her for more than a few minutes, especially when forced to sit by the hour going over every tidbit of information they could dig out of the center’s archives or, worse yet, down at the Library of Congress, pulling up obscure Russian aerospace journals, which she read out loud to him on their drive back to Goddard. Her nationalistic pride demanded she first translate into Ukrainian, then into English, and often it would be so confusing, he could barely understand what she was saying.
    And yet, his attraction to her was evident to anyone watching the nuances of their interactions. Dates had been far and few between, and when he did get a date, either he was bored silly or within an hour it was obvious the girl could not wait for the evening to be over. Was there not a young woman out there who might enjoy sitting up late over cups of coffee, talking about dreams of space?
    It was still a time when, in spite of the rise of feminism, it was felt that “women just don’t go into math or the sciences.” What absolute idiocy: he’d die to meet such a young lady, and at both a professional and personal level wished the gender ratio were the same. As a grad student he had taught freshman-level math classes, the usual three-credit prerequisite course for all students no matter what their majors were. When he had a female student who was obviously gifted in the subject, he would appeal to her to continue in that