Here Comes Earth: Emergence Read Online Free Page B

one team
member that frustrated Julie. One of the highest IQs on the squad (maybe the
entire team except for Anzio), but you’d never know it from being around him.
Mark made an art of never taking anything too seriously.
     
    He
was so easy-going, unpretentious and funny but his lack of seriousness could
presumably threaten the mission at some point she told herself. He was the
exact opposite from her and that was what made this so frustrating; Julie
hadn’t had a crush like this in… well, she couldn’t remember when.
     
    Not
that anything would ever come of it. She had long ago learned to put her career
first and she definitely knew how to keep men at bay – he would never know how
she felt and with time she knew these silly adolescent feelings would go away.
It wasn’t really convenient that the three of them spent so much time together,
but Anzio and Mark were becoming close friends and because she had a good
friendship with Anzio…

Chapter 5
     
    Dr. Mark Spencer
     
    Our
mission team totaled 144 people. The organizational chart included with my
mission brief was indecipherable (and where did they come up with the name
‘Broken Star’ anyway?) but it was subsequently explained to me that once we
reached wherever we were going there would be a core team that operated out of
a central location and the rest of us would bedivided
up into operational squads and sent out on whatever missions they assigned us.
The idea was we would all come together at regular intervals to share what we
learned. It all sounded very structured and military and TV-like and I knew it
would be a disaster. I’d noticed a name listed in my Mission Brief as Head of
the Scientific Mission, Dr. Derrick Helmer. The only way Helmer was going to
encourage information to pass from one team to another was through him; and
he’d only dole it out if there was some political advantage in it. From the
outside looking in it might look like a decent plan but the people being given
leadership roles made it feel to me like a formula for grandstanding and
political ambition; but then I think I must have been absent the day they asked
for opinions.
     
    The
good news is that my field team is made up of myself and my three breakfast
companions (Dr. Anzio Spelini, Dr. Toni Andretti, and Dr. Julie Schein) and two
other specialists (Dr. Tony Decker and Dr. David Cook) plus our squad leader
Captain Ito Hiromi. It turns out Julie was a Psychiatrist (it figures) and
Anzio was not only a well-known mathematician/physicist but also quite possibly
the brightest individual I’d ever met. It was actually Toni, our third
breakfast companion, that had made me feel so welcome that first morning. While
being a few years older than the rest of us she was vibrant and still on the
cute side of plump. She was also quite accomplished in gene mapping and DNA
sequencing. She had that quick smile and open friendliness that made her
everyone’s friend and it’s no surprise that we started calling her ‘Dr. Mom.’
     
    The
underground naval complex we lived and worked in (actually we were told it was
an Air Force complex being run by the Navy) was much, much larger than I had
first realized and that was a good thing because we were to be subjected to
three months of training and orientation before our journey would begin. It was
like an enormous underground city; complete with offices, conference rooms,
recreation and exercise facilities, dormitories, commissaries, sick bays,
clothing and personal supply stores (with very limited selections),
libraries, movie theaters, and even a giant underground park (with trees and
everything – it was incredible). There were machine shops and attorney offices
(we were all encouraged to make sure our personal business was in order and of
course someone had to pretend the gazillion forms we were required to sign were
merely routine). There were even private and semi-private dining rooms that I
somehow never received an invitation to. All