Gwendy's Final Task by Stephen King & Richard Chizmar

Author:Stephen King & Richard Chizmar [King, Stephen and Chizmar, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction & Literature, Horror, Science Fiction & Fantasy
ISBN: 9781399705370
Google: dfVYEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Hachette UK
Published: 2022-05-31T11:20:37.118155+00:00

26

DAY 2 ON MANY Flags.

The crewmembers have started doing their various jobs, with the exception of Gareth Winston, who has no assigned job. There are many wonders to explore in Many Flags, but so far as Gwendy can tell, the billionaire has spent most of the day in his suite. Like Achilles, brooding in his tent, Gwendy thinks. She can relate, because she has spent a certain amount of brooding-time herself since Dr. Glen asked his question. Or rather detonated it in her face.

Unlike Gareth, Gwendy has been plenty occupied. She made a brief trip to the weather deck, checking out the various equipment there, and gaping at the earth below her, watching as darkness moved smoothly over North and South America (blue and violet buttons on the Button Box). She participated in a Health and Human Services committee meeting via Zoom. She talked about the importance of space exploration to a class of fifth graders in Boise who had won the videoconference with her in some kind of competition (or maybe it was a lottery). She thinks all those things went okay, but the pure hell of it is she can no longer be sure. She swallowed two Tylenol for a stress headache, but she knows it will take more than Tylenol to get her through what comes next.

They all knew or suspected, it seemed. Everyone onboard.

Knew what? Suspected what? Why, that Senator Gwendolyn Peterson had slipped a cog or maybe even two. Was a pack of fries short of a Happy Meal. A beer short of a six-pack. That the everlovin’ cheese had started to slip off her everlovin’ cracker. And because they were 260 miles above the earth, with a U.S. Senator in charge of some secret mission of A1A importance, Kathy and Dr. Glen had confronted her. They didn’t know what was in her steel box, but they did know that Gwendy was slated for a spacewalk on Day 7, and when she went out she would be in possession of a small rocket, six feet long and four feet in diameter. No more than a drone, really, only it was powered by a tiny nuclear engine that could keep it driving onward and outward for perhaps as long as 200 years. After that it would continue forever on pure inertia.

That nuclear power plant, although no bigger than a model train engine, was powerful. If the operator—Gwendy—fucked up the initiation sequence while she was floating around out there, it could either blow a hole in the MF station or possibly destabilize it, sending it either into deep space or plunging into Earth’s atmosphere, where it would burn up. Not that Gwendy would know; she’d be incinerated in the first two seconds.

Kathy had been as delicate as she could be. “I wouldn’t feel comfortable sending you out there, even with a buddy, if I felt you were suffering some mental debility.”

Dr. Glen was blunter, and she had to respect him for that. “Senator, do you suspect you

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