Moon For Sale by Pollard Jeff

Author:Pollard, Jeff [Pollard, Jeff]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2015-02-10T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

Two Months Later

“You're not coming to the launch?” Kingsley asks Caroline from the doorway. Caroline is standing on a step-ladder, carefully painting elegant lines of white over a fresh coat of a soft pastel-yellow.

“I told you,” Caroline says without turning, unphased, continuing to paint with the fine-tipped brush, “that I wouldn't stand by and watch you die doing something stupid.”

“Going to space and racing powerboats are different,” Kingsley says.

“I didn't say they were the same.”

“But you said it's stupid,” K replies.

“I think going on one last supposed adventure, trying to remain young forever, assuming that once she arrives, your life will be over, that's stupid. It's childish. Fitting I suppose.”

“Why fitting?” K asks her back-side as she continues putting down paint in smooth arcs.

“Boy-Kingsley was so obsessed with seriousness, wanted so much to be an adult, that you now yearn for a boyhood.”

“That's not true,” Kingsley replies. “And I'd appreciate if you stopped psychoanalyzing me like I'm a god damn tragic figure. The only chance I've got to keep this company alive is to go up there myself, make sure Justin Bieber and that monkey, and Clooney, and Sergei Kuznetzov all work together and they actually make this movie. As weird as it sounds, this space company will fail if I don't go and produce a movie.”

“Good luck with that,” Caroline says distantly. “And the porn, good luck with the porn too.”

“Come on, zero-G Bieber porn? That's gotta be a hit. If that doesn't get people interested in space, I don't know what will.”

“The Kingsley I fell in love with had a saying,” Caroline pauses. “Great minds are captivated by ideas. Average minds keep up with current events. Small minds obsess about celebrities.”

“I didn't come up with that, that's an Eleanor Roosevelt quote.”

“There you go again, discussing people instead of ideas.”

“What are you saying?” K asks.

“That you used to sell space on its merits. We are star-stuff that has learned where it came from. We are a way for the universe to know itself. Only a hundred years ago, the thought of floating in a space station above the sky would have been totally incomprehensible to everyone, and now you can do it. You can live the impossible,” Caroline says, like she's narrating a trailer for an IMAX film about space. “But now you're focusing on Bieber, celebrities.”

“Well, when you're trying to sell something to people with small minds, you gotta speak their language.”

“Maybe that's your problem, you're trying to sell to the wrong people,” Caroline muses.

“You're wrong about that,” K says.

“You think small minds care about space?”

“Not that,” K replies. “A hundred years ago, most people had no idea of space stations or orbit. But it wouldn't have been totally incomprehensible to everyone. The Tsiolkovsky rocket equation is what we use to determine the delta-v of a rocket or a rocket stage. It's the single most important equation in all of rocketry and space travel: exhaust velocity times the natural log of the mass fraction tells you the change in velocity.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.