Page 20 of Stars

“Be that as it may, someone in Russia does not want to hear about this. Russia has always been a black hole of information. It was getting better in recent years, but this is like how it was under President Putin.”

“How can we help you?”

“We need to find out what is going on, Jack. Is this simply an overly aggressive local administration acting out of fear over a potential outbreak? Murdering two villages in a misguided attempt to stem a worse disaster? Or is it as I fear? Is this something far, far worse?So, I would like your help looking into this,” she said carefully. “My organization does not have the best relationship with Moscow, a legacy of President Puchkov’s predecessor. I’m not surprised we’re being stonewalled. You may not have any more luck than we do in Moscow. But you have contacts and access around the world that we do not. Is there any evidence of something similar happening somewhere else? Is this, perhaps, bioterrorism? Is anything known about this pathology?”

“Do you have your notes and your doctors’ reports? Any copies of the photos or records?”

“Ihave everything we sent to the administration in Sakha. I will send it to your office via courier. It will take a while. We’re isolated out here. And I will admit to a certain paranoia. I’m suspicious about sending this over the internet.”

“I understand completely. We’ll take a look when we get everything. And we’ll do what we can to help you.”

“Thank you, Jack.” Ethan could hear her smiling as she spoke. “You have always lived up to your reputation as a good man. This may be nothing. Ihopeit is nothing. But I need to know. And those villagers deserve justice. Something happened to them, something terrible.”

“We’ll find out what’s going on, and we’ll call you when we know more.”

Jack hung up and shared a long look with Ethan. “Looks like we have our next mission.”

* * *

6

Johnson Space Center

Houston, Texas

“Morning, Sash’.”Mark appeared in his office doorway on the top floor of Building 4 in his usual office attire of pressed khakis and a slim-fitting polo shirt. Everyone in America wore polo shirts, it seemed. Sasha couldn’t bring himself to do it. There was something undeniably American about the style. If Sasha wasn’t in his flight suit, he wore suit pants and pressed button-downs. In summer he rolled up the sleeves, his one concession to the unbearable temperatures.

He nodded to Mark as he flipped through a technical report on the Orion’s system avionics. Before flying one of the Orion spacecraft, he needed to know everything about her systems, inside and out, upside down and right side up. He needed to feel his soul merge with the machine when he strapped in to the cockpit, feel himself connect with every wire and switch as he grasped the control stick. “Dobroye utro,” he said.Good morning.

“I love it when you talk Russian at me.” Mark winked, crossing to Sasha’s desk. Every astronaut had an office in Building 4, a small square crammed with a desk and bookshelves. Mark had the plush corner office down the hall.

He dropped a folder on top of the avionics manual. “Just in. Thought you’d want to see it right away.”

Heart pounding, Sasha flipped open the manila folder.

A single sheet lay inside.

Astronaut Candidate Sasha Andreyev: Approved for Ascension into Astronaut Corps pending Flight Surgeon Final Sign-Off. All training courses satisfactorily completed.

A list of his two years of training modules and exercises followed, each personally signed off by Mark. At the bottom of the sheet, a blank line sat next to “Flight Surgeon Final Approval.”

“Why don’t you head on over to the Doc Shop,” Mark said, “and get that last line signed off? When you get back, we’ll make you an honest-to-God astronaut today.”

* * *

He almost ranto the Doc Shop, the offices that housed the flight surgeons and the medical facilities, the NASA-run hospital on the JSC campus. Normally, any military pilot would flee the flight surgeon, run screaming in the other direction.

Pilots liked doctors as much as they liked engine fires. When seen, always abort, always eject, always run. Nothing good ever came from flight surgeons. They were career killers. Any anomalous reading, any blip on a blood pressure cuff or funny noise heard when their stethoscope touched someone’s bare chest was enough to clip a pilot’s wings. Sasha avoided the flight surgeons like they were virulently contagious. He never volunteered to be a hamster for their experiments, either. No extra weekends donating blood for someone’s research project; no thank you. He’d once concealed pneumonia for ten days until he flew back to Moscow and had Dr. Voronov, his and Sergey’s personal Kremlin physician, take care of him instead.

He jogged up the steps and into the Doc Shop, passing the check-in desk and the hospital admin suite. Elevators were too slow. He pushed into the stairwell and took the steps three at a time, racing to the fifth floor. He managed to calm himself before bursting into the flight surgeons’ bullpen and heading to his doctor’s office.

“Sasha!” Dr. Worrell stood, long arms and legs unfolding like a grasshopper’s, his lean frame seemingly too big for the chair he’d risen from. He was inches taller than Sasha, no easy feat, but less than half his size, like a skeleton had put on skin and grown a buzz cut. He wore bow ties and jackets with leather patches on his elbows, and he was one of the friendliest people Sasha had ever met. He had spent two years trying to get to Sasha, working him over with small talk and smiles and effervescent Texan kindness during every one of their meetings, texts, and consults.

Sasha had kept his steel-hardened defenses firmly in place.

But for the first time, Sasha smiled back.

Dr. Worrell balked, visibly boggled. “A smile? Did you win the lottery?”