Free Rocket! An Ell Donsaii story #4) by Laurence Dahners Page A

this stuff washed off of him.”
    Gordon shrugged and said, “This way.” He stepped into the lead and Ell guided the sobbing Vic after him.
     
    When Ell got back to the farmhouse that night she found Steve waiting up. “Hey, you’re not on duty.”
    “No but Barrett called to let me know what happened. You’re a one woman calamity zone!”
    “Hey! I didn’t start anything! It was a drunk guy that apparently likes to get into fights!”
    “Drunk guy getting in a fight over a woman . You! You really should stay away from these situations!”
    “I didn’t do anything to get the guy started! He was plain spoilin’ for a fight!”
    Steve rolled his eyes. “Yeah, sorry, I know it wasn’t your fault. I just don’t want you getting hurt is all. You really shouldn’t be going to these kinds of wild parties. At least not looking so good. Pretty girls attract aggressive guys. ”
    Ell looked at him a moment, “Hey Steve. I know it’s a weird dichotomy, but, even though I’m your boss, I’m just a kid you know. I need to get out and live life a little don’t you think? That’s half the reason I’m taking that astronomy class—so I can spend some time with kids my age.”
    Steve looked up at the ceiling, then drew a long suffering sigh. “Yeah, yeah. I get it. I just don’t like it.”
    She grinned at him, “’night Dad.”
    Steve rolled his eyes, “I’m not your Dad,” he growled, “if I were, you’d be better behaved!”
    She blinked her eyes up at him, “Yes Daddy.”
    “Oh Hell, who am I kidding? You’d have me wrapped around your finger.”
     
     

Chapter Five
     
    Ell looked around the table at her D5R researchers. Another meeting, another set of frustrating results. “Roger, what about your idea to use nanotubes for an intermediate path to making our ports?”
    He shook his head dispiritedly, “We entangled some nanotubes but they have to be moved much slower than buckyballs if you don’t want to break the entanglement. It would slightly speed up the creation of a 10mm port from doing the whole thing with buckyballs. But each port would still take months. Sorry.”
    Ell tried not to let her disappointment show. “Any other ideas?” she asked with a perky tone.
    Stavos said, “We should go out.”
    Ell tilted her head, “Out?”
    “Yeah, socialize. Get to know each other away from here. Think about something else besides work.”
    Ell’s first thought was surprise that he thought of it as work, doing what you loved. Well, what she loved. Though she loved research, maybe the rest of the team did think of it as a job? She knew first hand that research was fun when you were getting results—not so much when results were few and far between. In fact, maybe she liked science, not slogging away at the research end of it. “Sounds good!” Ell tried to keep some sparkle in her voice. It frequently surprised her to be nineteen and have these older people looking to her for leadership, but she recognized that she was their leader, no matter how unexpected it may be. “What do you suggest?”
    “Sports bar, tomorrow night.”
    Ell looked around the table seeing ambivalence, or at best small amounts of enthusiasm, but she didn’t have any better ideas. “OK!” she said keeping an enthusiastic tone, “Tomorrow night. Ben to pick the bar, D5R to pick up the tab, fun to be had by all!”
     
    ***
     
    Washington D.C.—Critics of NASA are lining up to say “I told you so,” in regards to NASA’s decision to move quickly to the ill fated Vulcan 5 rockets. Steven Esklund has begun demanding that the “ancient” International Space Station be abandoned once the current astronauts have been safely rescued. “It has been up there far longer than its expected lifespan anyway. We have no business putting people up there into harms way to do things that can be done by robotic entities.”
    “The new PGR chips make remotely operated telepresence the obvious method to further space