Full Throttle

It was Kate’s turn to snort. “The temperature goes up a good twenty degrees Celsius whenever you two are in the same vicinity.”

Loftily, her roommate ignored the interruption. “From where we sit,” Jill said, including Cari in the general assessment, “your Captain Scott doesn’t look like he knows how to cool his jets.”

“First, he’s not my Captain Scott. Second, we conducted a little experiment a few moments ago, the nature of which is highly classified,” she added firmly when both women flashed interested looks. “Bottom line, the captain and I agreed to focus solely on Pegasus while on-site. As the three of us should be doing right now.”

Jill took the hint and stopped probing. An intensely private person herself, she hadn’t looked forward to sharing cramped quarters with two other women. After weeks with the gregarious Kate and friendly Caroline, she’d learned to open up a bit. Falling head over heels for the handsome doc assigned to the project had certainly aided in her metamorphosis.

“Speaking of Pegasus,” Cari said, patting the thick three-ring binder propped on her stomach. “Captain Westfall sent over a revised test plan while you were out, uh, experimenting with Dave Scott. Our air force flyboy starts simulator training tomorrow morning.”

“Yikes!” Kate’s feet hit the floor with a thud. “I’d better get to work. I want to input a different weather-sequence pattern into the simulator program. Talk to you guys later.”

Heading for her bedroom, she settled at the small desk wedged in a corner and flipped up the lid of a slim, titanium-cased notebook computer. The communications wizards assigned to the Pegasus project had rigged wireless high-speed satellite links for the PCs on-site. Kate could access the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency databases from just about anywhere in the compound.

The databases were treasure troves containing information collected over several centuries. Kate took pride in the fact that NOAA could trace its roots back to 1807, when President Thomas Jefferson created the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, the oldest scientific agency in the federal government. Congress got involved in 1890 when it created a Weather Bureau, the forerunner of the current National Weather Service. In 1970 President Nixon combined weather and coastal surveys, along with many other departments to create NOAA.