（外文电子版资料）(LIB) Robert Tine - The Astronauts Wife.docVIP

SCANNED BY PUDGE THE ASTRONAUT’S WIFE ROBERT TINE THE ASTRONAUT’S WIFE Copyright ? 1999 by New Line Productions, Inc. Cover artwork copyright ? 1999 by New Line Productions, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. ISBN: 0-312-97018-8 Printed in the United States of America St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition I August 1999 St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Prologue There were times when Jillian Armacost felt as if she didn’t have a life—not a real one. It was more that she and her husband were controlled by, and were wholly owned subsidiaries of, a government agency. In this case it was the one that one Americans seemed to love and trust above all others: the National Aeronautics and Space Administration— NASA—that crew-cut, square-jawed, can-do, Houston-we-have-a-problem organization. Of all the government offspring that Americans mistrusted, they mistrusted NASA the least. And it took a lot of work to win that trust. If NASA was an old-fashioned movie studio, then the astronauts were the stars, their wives the contract players. Each of them was bound by ironclad contracts—contracts that put the interest of NASA ahead of anything else. On the face of things, this was the case—at least, it was certainly the case with the astronauts themselves. They had worked hard to get to where they were, climbing the steep and slippery military ladder as fliers for the Marine Corps, the United States Navy, and the U.S. Air Force. To have achieved flight status for NASA put you at the top of the heap; it marked you as the best, not just in the armed forces of the United States of America, but as the best in the world. And this crop of fliers was said to be t