Page 51 of Stars

“Wave down to me?”

“I will. Every time. Wave up to me?”

“I will blow you a kiss every orbit.”

Sea spray misted Sasha’s face. Ocean salt mixed with the tears on his cheeks. Lightning and starlight sparkled off the rolling waves. “I wish you were here.”

“I nearly quit this damn job a dozen times and flew to you. I was afraid of your reaction.” Sergey chuckled softly. “You would never forgive me for abandoning my presidency.”

He wanted to be greedy, just once. Wanted to plead with Sergey to board his jet right now, take off and fly to him. He’d make it, he would, if he left immediately.

No. He closed his eyes and the ocean sprayed his face again, washing away the scorch of his tears. “I will see you in a week.”

“One week,” Sergey repeated. “Make sure you bring your ring. I can hardly propose to you without it.”

Sasha finally smiled. “It will never leave me. Not until you take it from my neck and put it where it belongs.”

“I love you.”

“I love you.”

He heard Sergey blow him a kiss over the phone, try to stifle a gasping inhale, the start of a choked sob, before the line cut out.

He raised his face to the sky, let the moonlight beat down on him. His tears fell like shooting stars, soaking the sand between sets of tumbling waves. It was his turn to leave his mark on the beach, his turn to whisper his goodbyes.

Launch pad 39A’s xenon lights carved up the sky. The SLS was a giant lit up in the darkness.

T minus twenty-seven hours until launch.

* * *

Night passed in sleepless oscillations,Sasha orbiting between ecstatic joy and soul-crushing fear and the cutting agony of separation. The culmination of his life’s longest dream had unfolded in 120 hours, and tomorrow he would break the sky and climb above the curve of the Earth, slip between the stars. He’d finally part the clouds, push higher than he’d ever managed before. He would taste starlight, feel his body cradled in weightlessness. He would leave behind everything on Earth—

At least, that had been the dream.

Now, leaving everything behind meant leaving Sergey, and he might as well take a saw to his heart, launch half into space and leave half behind. He was incomplete as a human being without either stars lighting up his soul or the touch of Sergey’s skin against his own.

What if he died tomorrow? Or on the mission? Was it true to sayI died doing what I loved, and it was worth it? Sergey’s fractured voice broke over his soul, waves of Sergey’s anguish already beating against his heart. He tasted the ocean on his lips and licked away his tears. Was it fair to risk their love like this? What if he were the one left behind? Would the next fifty years be livable, even knowing Sergey died chasing his dreams?

Would it be worth it to chase starlight if it meant he lost a lifetime with Sergey?

Sasha was still awake when the alarm call sounded midmorning. His bloodshot eyes were desert dry, parched as if tundra winds had blown over him all night long. He scrubbed his ghostly face until his cheeks were bruised Russian red under sun-shy skin.

There was no media parade for their launch. They nibbled on plain toast and sucked ice cubes while Colin Perth, Kennedy Space Center’s director of flight operations, and Marcia Lee, Kennedy’s launch control center flight director, briefed them on their launch countdown.

“Skies are clear over Canaveral for the next twenty-four hours. RTLS landing is a go,” Marcia said, briefing from her laptop to their mission tablets. A map of the Atlantic basin, the East Coast of the United States, and the west coasts of Europe and Africa stared back at them. Cloud systems were circled in the mid-Atlantic and scattered across the tropics. A US flag representing a navy carrier air group sat in the ocean between Jacksonville and North Carolina. “Atlantic abort splashdown locations look clear, with only two areas of clouds and scattered rain, but winds are under twelve knots. The navy is on hand for an immediate rescue in the case of a launch abort.”

Two flight surgeons arrived, giving them each one last check. Sasha kept his mouth shut and answered the doctor’s questions in nods or shakes of his head. This wasn’t Dr. Worrell or Dr. Voronov. He didn’t trust doctors on principle, and those two had only beaten through his defenses after a war of weary attrition.

He was pronounced fit to fly after the surgeon spent a worryingly long time listening to his heart. “I like to listen for a full cardiac cycle,” the surgeon said, smiling.

Sasha nearly slapped him.

“Second-to-last pit stop,” Mark told him before they left the beach. “Empty yourself with gravity as much as you can.” Sarah and Mark had already flown before, Mark countless times, Sarah to both the ISS and the Lunar Gateway. Sasha was the rookie who needed to be told what to do and when.

“And here,” he said, passing Sasha a half dozen barf bags and a cell phone charger. “Astronauts’ most often forgotten items.”

“A charger?”