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story and looked into his piercing eyes, they fully believed the story.
    Greg Ballard entered his office and drawled, “Things are going very well. Too well, I think. Murphy and his law must’ve taken this month off.” Greg was Adam’s number-two man. He deflected a lot of tedious minutia from Adam and Adam knew it. He was trustworthy to the bone and was an excellent decision-maker.
    Adam had known him most of his adult life. He had worked for Adam at Area 51. When Adam moved to CORDEX to take took over the Storm Killer project he managed to convince Greg to join him. Once Adam understood the nature of Storm Killer he desperately wanted Greg’s participation because of his formal education background.
    Greg Ballard was another of those southern gentlemen of which Storm Killer seemed to have in abundance. His slow southern drawl was a counterpoint to Adam’s terse talking style. He had obtained several degrees before he was twenty-two. His last degree, a Masters in Engineering in Polymer and Fiber Science, came from Clemson. He was a member of Storm Killer’s Clemson Alumni group. They met regularly and watched the various closed-circuit sports events together to root for their alma mater.
    Adam began reviewing the daily status report with him.
    Greg reported that all the project’s defined tasks were completed and the station was ready for operational status. The final tweaking of Storm Killer’s optical and magnification panels was complete, as Adam had witnessed, and the station was now functioning at specified parameters. They noted the time at two hundred hours, ten minutes GMT and logged the completion entry on the project file. They electronically dated and signed the completion certificate, and emailed it to Earth Mission Control and to Brad Bolino, the new Storm Killer Director.
    Adam breathed an internal sigh of relief. Now that his part of the project was wrapping up, he could think about spending some quality vacation time with his beloved Arabian horses.

 
     
     
     
     
     
    9
Director Bolino
    Brad Bolino was a born and bred southern gentleman that would have been as comfortable in an antebellum southern mansion as he was in a twenty-first century technological wonder. He was an auburn-haired man of stocky build.
    Adam pulled his cell phone from his Velcro belt hook. The term ‘cell phone’ was almost a misnomer these days. These communications units, now called Personal Communication Devices, were actually phone, workstation, video camera, and many other devices rolled into a single pocket size unit. While the communications industry called them PCDs, the user community still held on to the archaic term of ‘cell phone’. These ‘cell phones’ were NASA-issued units that were slightly larger than the commercial devices. These had to have a large enough keypad so NASA personnel could manipulate the device to write emails and mission notes, or check engineering drawings and specs while dressed in the clumsy EVA suits with large gloves.
    Adam contacted Brad on his cell phone and announced to him that effective at four hundred hours GMT, Brad would assume his role and take over the administration and operation of the station. Brad, as pre-arranged with CORDEX, accepted the transfer of power and requested that Adam and Greg act as his number two and number three staff members for the next forty-five days.
    Ballard and Sands verbally accepted the new transition positions and emailed the voice files of their acceptances and congratulations to Brad. While they performed the last administrative duties in the log, Sands chatted with Bolino about current status of the station and systems. Ballard reported that Earth-side weather had reported that Hurricane Edna had risen to a category three storm and was approaching Puerto Rico. Landfall was expected in the next forty-eight hours. 
    This storm met all the criteria established by NASA and Washington. The criteria called for a storm that was ninety percent