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He hurried to Breasha, everyone’s eyeballs boring holes into his back. She made him sign a receipt for the delivery, and his heart skipped when he saw the origination: Office of the President.

Sergey.

Breasha nodded to him once and turned away, done with him and her task. The security guards escorted her out, apologizing to Roxanne again for their interruption.

“Mr. Andreyev,” Roxanne called. “Is this something you need to take care of?”

“I—” Sasha stared at the pouch in his hands. He had no idea what was inside. “I was not expecting this—”

“Go,” Mark said. “It might be about the mission. I’ll catch you up after.”

The halls were a blur as Sasha raced out of Building 5 and across the street to the astronaut offices. He took the stairs two at a time until he got to his floor. He nearly barreled through the door before his badge opened the electronic lock, and a dozen heads whipped his way as he ran across the astronaut bullpen. Janice and Teddy, the administrative assistants for his pod of offices, shouted at him to watch it, and he almost took out the mail cart as he zigged down the hall.

Finally, he kicked shut his office door, his chest heaving, his breath coming hard and fast. His hands were shaking so much that he almost couldn’t spin the four-digit combination lock closing the pouch.

The day we met, Sergey had told him before he left Moscow.If I need to send you something secure, the code will be the day we met.

He yanked the lock off and threw it down. Reached in.

His hand closed around a single sheet of folded paper… and a square box.

The world fell away as he withdrew it. Black velvet, about two inches square. He lifted the lid.

A rocket blasted off inside him, the roar of the engines drowning out everything, even his own mind, the sound of his heart.

A titanium ring, a blue diamond suspended in a small gap in the band, lay on a black satin pillow.

The sheet of paper fell to the floor. Scrawled across the front, it read,Call me when you can, zvezda moya.

* * *

17

Kennedy Space Center

Cape Canaveral, Florida

Waves pounded a shell beach,Florida’s ocean breaking into foam that raced up toward Sasha’s toes. A hundred miles away, anvil thunderclouds darkened the sky and bolts of lightning streaked for open water. On the horizon, the sun burned on miles of empty sand and on the astronauts’ beach house nestled in the overgrown Florida scrub.

The beach house was a time capsule of the 1950s, the only surviving remnant of the United States government’s exercise of eminent domain over Cape Canaveral at the dawn of the space race. NASA had bulldozed nearly everything in the thousands of acres they had acquired, save for one isolated vacation home tucked into the dunes miles away from everything. Since the days of the Mercury astronauts, NASA had sent its prelaunch crews there for a last-night-on-Earth farewell retreat.

The little home was nothing special. It was small and flat roofed, wind and water warped over the decades, midcentury American design inside and out. A second-story deck on sandblasted stilts looked out over the beach, and, for seventy years, astronauts had grilled burgers and drunk beers there the night before their launch.

The best part was the view. Less than two miles away were launch pads 39A and 39B on a skinny peninsula jutting into the ocean. From this house, the crews of Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and the Space Shuttle had gazed on the rockets they were about to climb aboard. Now,Freedomwaited on top of the SLS rocket at pad 39A for Sasha and the rest of his crew. Floodlights illuminated the rust-orange core stage of the rocket beneath the gleaming whiteFreedomcrew capsule.

Sasha stared at the launch pads, the steel skeletons of the launch towers scaffolding the SLS.

On the deck, Mark and Lindsey, old hands at space launches, were holding hands as they drank their beers. When Sasha had last seen them, they’d been talking about their twins and upcoming school functions like there wasn’t a giant pause in their life starting tomorrow. Like Mark wasn’t about to ascend to the heavens and leave Earth behind.

Sarah and her husband Donny had walked the dunes, disappearing to the north toward the launch pads on a well-worn trail. A century of tears had been cried into the sands, had carved dune from ocean on the path the astronauts and their spouses walked.

What would tomorrow bring? Was this the last time they would see each other, the last time they’d feel sand under their feet, breathe salt air?

For two crews, it had been.ChallengerandColumbia. The astronauts’ last nights on Earth had been spent here, breathing the sea air and lounging on the deck. Watching the stars wink overhead as they looked at their launch pad and imagined their dreams coming true.

Saying goodbye was part of the mission. There were no guaranteed tomorrows. There was only today.

Sasha’s toes wiggled into the beach as foam tickled up his ankles. He was the only astronaut on their mission without his partner with him. Lindsey had pulled him aside as Mark grilled burgers for the five of them earlier. “I’m sorry Sergey couldn’t be here,” she’d said. “This all happened so fast and I know it’s hard for him to get away.” She’d squeezed his hand and held on. “I texted him. I told him if there’s anything he needs, anything at all, he shouldn’t hesitate to reach out. You remind him, okay?”