you keep your work station so clean, jerome.
i reviewed your flight plan. not one error in a hundred thousand keystrokes. phenomenal. it's right that someone like you is taking us to the belt. you have a substance test.
you're lucky to be getting out of this.
the launch window is only open until week's end. tragic though this event may be, it hasn't stopped the planets turning.
you'll have to excuse me, jerome. i have to meet with the authorities--naturally, we're co-operating in any way, although i won't tolerate a major disruption. i wish i was going with you, jerome.
often.
we have to be certain. once they're up, we can hardly turn the boat around.
what a relief.
irene will make it available to security.
--somewhere in the dust of gaspra is the key. back to the beginning of the book--the life we became. with the original building blocks who knows how far we can take "the godding".
i apologize, jerome.
would you care to look--in the telescope?
one look through there and you would know why i can't possibly allow you to disrupt operations any further.
right now, your presence is creating more of a threat. i don't think you have any concept of what we do here--how meticulous our preparations must be. we are about to send twelve people through 140 million miles of blackness to rendezvous with an object the size of a house and the color of coal. so it's rather critical to point them in the right direction. and we certainly don't need you looking over our shoulders. besides, i don't believe there is any evidence that the killer is amongst us. i don't see too many other dead bodies littering the place.
twelve have a mission within the week.
a little nausea. quite common.
i will not permit any further testing on the eve of a mission. we're already counting backwards.