Query: H.L. Durkin/ORIGINAL SIN 

(Adult Science Fiction - 77,236 words)

Dr. Johnny Rizzo was a 22-year employee of NASA’s Johnson Space Center, an expert in rocket propulsion technology with a PhD degree in physics from MIT. On a Friday in March, he became just another laid off worker in America. On the following Tuesday, he was one of the first employees of a new government spy agency: the Space Intelligence Network or SIN.

SIN, led by the mysterious Mr. Montgomery, was tasked with finding ways to leapfrog space technology and regain America’s leadership in space. Rizzo’s job was to contact extraterrestrials through the Institute For Alien Relocation. Rizzo believed in advanced civilizations in other galaxies and alien spaceships but was skeptical of finding an alien on Earth. Jim, an astronaut from the planet Glasnost, had been stranded on Earth for over seventy years. He was skeptical of the Institute for Alien Relocation but it was his only chance to get back home.

Jim meets Rizzo but refuses to discuss the technology of interstellar space travel. With three of six Chinese cargo ships already on Martian soil and the ten Chinese colonists expected to follow, the U.S. is desperate to win a media victory to offset China’s success. Jim becomes the key to a televised trip to Mars by Astronaut Clayton Cummings. A malfunction of the Mars Expeditionary Vehicle while in orbit has TV viewers on the edge of their seats for the 90-day trip home. The media victory is complete, but now the U.S. government is sitting atop an embarrassing secret: Jim has hijacked the Mars Expeditionary Vehicle and is headed home. Heads will roll and Rizzo’s could be one of them.