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eBook Category: Science Fiction
eBook Description: The Astronaut Corps has been reduced to blowing up asteroids that might someday hit the Earth, and the last two astronauts will be replaced by robots after this mission. But as they approach an asteroid due for demolition, they spot something strange on the surface.

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: Analog, 1990
Fictionwise Release Date: February 2005

28 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [216 KB], eReader (PDB) [36 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [23 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [21 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [80 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [93 KB], hiebook (KML) [57 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [47 KB], iSilo (PDB) [19 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [24 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [52 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [34 KB]
Words: 6596
Reading time: 18-26 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

The captain of the spaceship Ronald McNair ran through the calculations again, but the results still were not encouraging. After eleven years in the Air Force and twenty-five in the Astronaut Corps, Marty Allen felt entitled to a decent pension, but the bureaucracy had other ideas. His last time back on Earth, the offensively officious young woman who ran the Benefits Department had only frowned and reminded him, "You should be grateful you people in the Astronaut Corps can retire at 57 with a pension. People here on the ground can get laid off with nothing."

He shut down the little portable computer, swearing under his breath at the politicians who had privatized the International Space Cooperative, and at the managerial bureaucrats who ran it from the ground. He looked away from the flatscreen display as it flipped between normal and reversed polarity, fading to its neutral gray off color. His machine was only five years old, but the McNair's main cabin showed its age. It had been built over 20 years earlier, in the Cooperative's last boomlet of activity, after an asteroid missed the earth by 40,000 miles in 2024. The Asteroid Hazards Commission's estimates of impact probabilities had stimulated vast infusions of cash from paranoid American, European, Japanese, and Russian groundlings. Marty had joined the Corps then, eager to escape the stagnation that disarmament had brought to the U.S. Air Force. He had had no idea that would be the last major investment in manned space flight.