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Far from Home, by J.A. Taylor
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Title: Far from Home
Author: J.A. Taylor
Release Date: November 8, 2007 [EBook #23408]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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FAR FROM HOME
[Illustration]
BY J. A. TAYLOR
Illustrated by Emsh
"Far" is strictly a relative term. Half a world away from home is, sometimes, no distance at all!
Someone must have talked over the fence because the newshounds were clamoring on the trail within an hour after it happened.
The harassed Controller had lived in an aura of "Restricteds," "Classifieds" and "Top Secrets" for so long it had become a mental conditioning and automatically hedged over information that had been public property for years via the popular technical mags; but in time they pried from him an admittance that the Station Service Lift rocket A. J. "Able Jake" Four had indeed failed to rendezvous with Space Station One, due at 9:16 Greenwich that morning.
The initial take-off and ascent had gone to flight plan and the pilot, in the routine check-back after entering free flight had reported no motor or control faults. At this point, unfortunately, a fault in the tracking radar trans