Page 12 of Stars

Mark pulled out the CAPCOM chair for Sasha. “Roger,Zvezda. Sasha is plugging in now.”

Sasha pulled the headset on and powered on the mic. Wireless connectivity patched him in to the radio. Room speakers broadcast Joey, but only one member of Mission Control was allowed to talk to the ISS at a time. Nine times out of ten, that was CAPCOM. The other time, it was the flight surgeon, either in medical conference with an individual astronaut or dealing with a medical emergency. So far, the emergency calls had only ever been drills in all forty-plus years of the modern space age, from the dawn of the shuttle program.

“Zvezda, this is Andreyev, do you read me?”

“Dobryy vecher, kak dela?” Joey said.

Sasha chuckled. As Joey had worked his way through theZvezdamodule, he’d started picking up Russian phrases through Sasha’s translations. First, it was just the curses and bawdy jokes former cosmonauts had scrawled on the walls. And then there was the memorable morning he’d found a dust-covered bottle of vodka hidden in the panels and had tried to sound out the note taped to the label. Roscosmos engineers had roared with laughter over the radio, leaving Sasha—burning with mortification—to translate for the hundred or so NASA engineers crowded into the room. “It means,” he’d mumbled, “‘Save for alien… ladies.’”

“Khorosho, kak dela?” he answered.Doing well, how are you?

“Ya khorosho, blagodaryu vas!” Joey said. “Mmm, I’m getting good!” He flashed a beaming grin at the camera mounted inZvezda’shatch, winking at Mission Control.

Engineers around Mission Control laughed. A door opened and more astronauts filed in, Dan Hillerman among them. Sasha swallowed. “Yes, you are. Very good.”

Mark slipped away, disappearing from the CAPCOM platform. Sasha watched him thread his way through the crowd toward Dan. There were more people than usual in Mission Control for aZvezdamodule power-cycle test. He frowned.

“All right, Sasha, I’m your man. What system are we booting up today?”

“Roscosmos has us turning on ACS.” Attitude control systems. Sasha waited as Joey searched for the panel amid the thousands of switches and dials, wires and pipes. He’d been surprised the first time he’d seen the inside of the ISS, first in pictures and then in the mockup facility at JSC. Being inside the ISS was like taking a walk on a circuit board.

“Roger, Houston, ACS systems.” Espinoza read off the panel coordinates for the switches and then the Russian display names.

Sasha checked his position against the Roscosmos blueprints and checklist. “Affirmative,Zvezda.”

“Ready when you are, Houston.”

For five minutes, Sasha read out the instructions to power on the ACS, from locating the main power bus to opening the circuits, from checking the gyros and manually zeroing the scopes to getting ready to load up the navigational software on the absolutely ancient laptop still wired into the module’s mainframe. It was a tedious call-and-response, him reading the procedure, Joey locating the switch, repeating it back in Russian and English, and then Sasha giving him the go to flip the switch to powered on.

Sasha scrubbed his forehead. He was grateful every moment of every day to be at NASA, to be this close to space. But sometimes the duties were boring. He blinked, stifling a yawn as he scanned ahead in the checklist.

“Houston, it looks like I have a sticky note over this next switch.”

Sasha nodded, grabbing his pencil. He had to make note of every handwritten label in the module, every alteration, every modification the old cosmonauts had tacked up. “Go ahead,Zvezda.”

“All right, I’m going to spell out the Cyrillic for you. It’s not a word I’m familiar with. First, you’ve got thecletter. Then a space. Then that funny-looking giant capitalA? Then thehletter…”

Sasha frowned, his pencil scratching over the paper. Joey kept reciting Cyrillic letters. “Zvezda, could you repeat—”

Hands gripped his shoulders, squeezing hard, as Joey, in time with the entirety of Mission Control, shouted as one, “S dnem rozhden'ya!” They repeated in English, “Happy birthday!”

Applause rose, thundering through the room, engineers and astronauts standing from their stations and cheering. On the front screen, Joey clapped and waved, smiling as he floated through theZvezdamodule and waved a sheet of paper with his clumsy Russian scrawled across it:? ???? ????????!

Mark, behind him, gripped his shoulders again, leaning in and laughing. “Happy birthday, Sasha!”

“How did you know?” He eyed the group of astronauts surrounding him: Mark’s friends, people he’d only recently gotten to know. “I’ve never said anything.” He’d managed to escape the birthday pranks his first year. He’d thought he was in the clear.

“Surgeon let it slip.” Mark grinned. “It took a few cigars, but I was able to get your birthday out of the doc.”

All of Mission Control seemed to suddenly be there, smiling at Sasha and wishing him a happy birthday. Joey waved his goodbyes, powering down theZvezdamodule and camera and floating off. The whole thing had been a setup. Sasha had to laugh.

And then Dan stepped forward.

Sasha’s heart leaped into his throat, choking him. His eyes widened as the colors in the room sharpened. His cheeks warmed. He tried to look away. He couldn’t.

“Hey, Sasha.” Dan smiled, though it was tight on the edges. He held out his hand after a long moment. “Mark says you and I should talk. How about I buy you a beer for your birthday?”

Sasha’s gaze darted to Mark, standing behind Dan. Mark smiled softly and nodded. “I’d—I’d like that,” Sasha mumbled. “Yes. Please.” He shook Dan’s hand quickly, as if it burned him to touch. He looked away.