Page 55 of Stars

“Roger,Freedom, roll program.”

Mark and Sasha flipped the ADI switches together, flipping the attitude direction indicator ball toFreedom’s local vertical, local horizon. Now that they weren’t straight up, now that they were slanting through the night sky and toward the sun over the horizon, they needed a different attitude control.

Training took over, washing through Sasha. The kaleidoscope of his mind sharpened, settled onto his instruments, his readouts. “Twelve thousand feet, Mach 1,” he called. “Twenty thousand feet.”

Freedomburned the sky, her vibrations punching through the sound barrier and stripping electrons from their orbits. Shock waves bounced off their hull, sounds like the end of the world—orFreedom’s imminent destruction—enveloping them. Sasha’s gaze darted from his instruments around the cockpit. His breaths were short and choppy, frantic, faster than even his beating heart.

“Throttle down,” Mark ordered. He was the picture of calm, the definition of cool.

The engines throttled down as the Earth’s atmospheric pressure fought against the massive speedsFreedomharnessed and Mark pulled back to keepFreedomfrom tearing herself apart.

“M-E-T one minute,” Sasha called. One minute from launch. “Fifty thousand feet. Approaching Mach 2!”

“Throttle up.” Mark’s voice was as level as it always was, like they were merely in the simulator and had just joked about going for burgers when this was all over.

Sasha’s heart seized as his seat yanked him left and right, harder, fiercer than moments before. His forehead bashed the side of his helmet. He blinked, his vision swimming. His chest weighed a hundred pounds as he breathed.

Outside the cockpit, the ground vanished beneath a pillowed layer of moon-soaked clouds. Mountains of strung silk rose around them, clouds taller than snow-capped Everest, their tips like unspooled thread tossed against a spilled-paint indigo sky. They were plunging into a blue as deep and wide and brilliant as Sergey’s eyes, the exact shade and hue Sasha saw when Sergey smiled at him or before they kissed. When Sergey whisperedI love youin Sasha’s ear as they made love.

“Freedom, prepare for SRB sep in 3… 2… 1…”

“Houston, SRB sep.” Mark reached for a covered switch on his panel as if he weren’t fighting against nearly three g’s of force, gravity's hand pushing him back into his seat.

Twin booms rose, followed by ascreechand awhoosh. SRB separation, the smaller solid-fuel rockets blew off the side of their core-stage engine, heading for their recovery positions in the Atlantic Ocean.

The cockpit stilled so suddenly, so completely, that Sasha whipped his head around and stared at Mark. His hands grasped his harness, bones almost tearing through his flesh, and then reached for his console. He cycled through systems readouts, checking everything.

Mark’s gloved hand landed on his arm. “Houston, one hundred fifty thousand feet. Mach 3. SRB sep complete. Main engines burning hot.”

“Roger,Freedom,” Houston radioed. “You’re looking good. Stand by for press to MECO.”

Press to MECO. Burn to main engine cutoff.Sasha let out a shaking breath as Mark let go of his arm.

Everything was nominal. Everything was going as planned. One hundred and fifty thousand feet high, and they had left behind the troposphere and plunged into the stratosphere and its lighter, smoother air. Earth was losing her hold on their rocket. They were soaring above spy bombers now, and there was barely any air to cling toFreedom.

“Freedom, you’re negative return.”

Sasha’s blood roared in his ears. If the worst were to happen, they couldn’t abort back to Earth. They’d gone too far. They’d have to abort to orbit and figure out how to return from space.

And space was rushing at them, full speed. The blue of Sergey’s eyes had surrounded Sasha, but now it smeared from the center of their cockpit windows and streaked past like water racing away.

Black darker than Sasha had ever seen filled their view as color fled: a primordial, primeval darkness. Darkness from before life began, before stars had formed, the space between life and death.

“M-E-T three minutes,” he choked out. “Three hundred thousand feet, Mach 6.”

They were escaping Earth. He could barely feel the g-forces anymore, could hardly feel the atmosphere’s fight against their engines. The farther they climbed, the easier it became, until he was reading out mission elapsed time and altitude and air speed indicators without trembling.

Freedombegan to level off, forming her low Earth orbital path just past three hundred thousand feet.

“M-E-T six minutes, 320,000 feet, Mach 15.”

“Ten seconds,” Mark said. He counted down, and at five, Sarah joined in. “Four… three… two… one. And that’s one hundred kilometers, Sasha. Welcome to space!”

On the display, 328,084 feet whipped by. One hundred kilometers of altitude, sixty-two miles high. The edge of space. The line Sasha had reached for his whole life, a tower he’d never been able to climb. The height of all his dreams. It melted behind them in a blur, the numbers wheeling onward.

“Congrats,” Sarah said over their headsets. “You’re officially an astronaut, Andreyev.”

He missed his next altitude reading, and Sarah smoothly took over. “M-E-T seven minutes, 350,000 feet, Mach 21.”