Page 146 of Stars

“I’m here.”

“How is your oxygen?”

The older suits had a main tank and a backup in the hulking backpack, with six hours of oxygen in each. He was almost through the first tank. “I have seven hours left. You?”

Mark hesitated. Through their helmets, Sasha saw his eyes slip closed. Saw the blood covering his face, the splatters on the inside of his helmet.

“My suit must not have been put away properly. My secondary tank is empty.”

“What?” Sasha grabbed Mark’s suit and pulled him closer until he could see the gauges on Mark’s control panel.Secondary Tank: 0%. Even worse, his main tank was down to one percent. “You only have twenty minutes of air left!”

“I know. Look, I want you to tell Lindsey—”

“Why didn’t you say something sooner?” Sasha shouted. His radio crackled, breaking apart.

“I’m dying!” Mark shouted back. “I’m fucking dying, Sasha! Just like Michaela, and Rafael, and fucking Phillipa! Ihaveit! But I don’t want to go out like they did! I want to go out like Sarah, on my own terms!”

His head ached, but still, Sasha did the math, counting the hours from Mark’s first bleed against the timeline they’d built of the sickness’s progression. “You still have hours. Almost a full day.”

“What is another day when I know what my end will be?”

“Because youdon’tknow!” Sasha snapped. “You don’t fucking know. You’re giving up! That is not you. That’s not the Commander Keating I’ve known for two years. That man never gave up, not once, not for anything! What the fuck are you doing now?”

Mark struggled, trying to push Sasha away from him. Sasha clung on with an iron grip, twisting Mark’s arm and immobilizing him in the suit.

“Where is this relentless optimism coming from?”Mark asked.“You, out of everyone, should have swan dived off the station at the first hint of trouble. Where’s your Russian fatalism? Where’s your despair? How areyoustill hanging on?” Mark’s voice rose until Sasha could feel his body shaking through his EMU suit.

If an astronaut were to face the worst, could they carry on and do what was needed?Dr. Worrell, weeks ago, had asked him if he could make the ultimate call. Like in theEclipsewith Gordon.Catastrophic mission failure. Sole survivor.

“You don’t know anything about Russians,” Sasha hissed.

He grabbed the emergency oxygen umbilical from his own backpack and slammed it into Mark’s O2intake. Mark thrashed and screamed, “Don’t fucking do it, Sasha! It’s a fucking death sentence!”

Sasha twisted open the valves on his backpack.

His oxygen flowed into Mark’s suit.

They were connected now, breathing the same air, recirculating and filtering their oxygen and carbon dioxide through Sasha’s backpack. Every breath Mark exhaled passed through Sasha’s suit.

“Why the fuck did you do that?” Mark wailed. “Sasha, why the fuck did you do that? You had a chance!” He brought his fist down on Sasha’s arm, beating him weakly.

The universe pinwheeled, a billion stars somersaulting around the earth, the perfect, ocean-blue planet the color of Sergey’s eyes. In minutes, they would be over Moscow, and he’d wave down to his love again. Somewhere, Sergey was waving back to him.Lyubov moya…

There were a hundred thousand moments in Sasha’s life when he could have given up. When he could have lain down and died, decided he wasn’t going to face the next day. He’d chased life with reckless abandon, teasing his own death. But when he’d faced it, when death had turned back for him, he’d seized life with both hands. Stumbling through the snow outside of Andreapol. Ejecting from his MiG and then fighting his way back to Sergey’s side.

Always and forever, his life led to Sergey. All his lives, all of his existence, every part of him desperate to reunite with the other half of his being.

His life would lead back to Sergey in every permutation of his existence, no matter what.

“Have you ever heard of Vladimir Komarov?”

“Who the fuck is that?”

“A Soviet cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin’s best friend.” Sasha shifted, releasing Mark’s arm and spinning him around until they were face-to-face again. He pushed their helmets together and stared into Mark’s bloodred eyes. “After Gagarin’s first spaceflight, Komarov was assigned toSoyuz 1. The spacecraft was not ready, but the government refused to push the launch date. They had to compete with the Americans. Komarov knew he would die on the flight.”

“Then why did he go?”

“Because Gagarin was his backup. If he’d refused to fly that mission, his best friend would have been in the cockpit. ‘He will die instead of me,’ Komarov said. ‘I won’t allow that.’ So he climbed into the broken spacecraft and launched on schedule.”