Free Star Dust by Emma Barry & Genevieve Turner Page A

them.
    “Sorry,” he said after some moments. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you.”
    “I shouldn’t have assumed that your life was perfect.” There was clear respect in her voice now, which was a step in the right, albeit chaste, direction.
    “It isn’t perfect at all.”
    “I know you can’t talk about specifics, but can you talk about any of it?”
    He pondered that. An aviator wasn’t meant to ever admit that anything might be wrong, that he might have doubts or fears. You got in that plane, did your duty, and always counted yourself lucky to do so. You were part of an elite brotherhood. No one dared complain about that.
    And the brotherhood of astronauts? Not even a hint of a hairline fracture could appear there. It all had to be smooth as butter. Perfection in every way.
    Anything less and he wasn’t getting into orbit. It was that simple.
    “This test...” He sighed. “It didn’t go as planned.”
    “Ah.” She pulled out another cigarette, and without thought he had the lighter out, the flame held up to the tip. As if he’d been lighting her cigarettes for her his entire life.
    Had her husband lit her cigarettes like that? A flick of the wrist and fingers, the simplest of motions really, but he felt as if so much more was contained within. At least when he did it for her.
    “I suppose with something like this,” she went on, “things don’t always go according to plan.”
    He shivered as if he were floating neck-high in the Atlantic. “No, they don’t. But you didn’t hear that from me.”
    “Mm.” She rearranged in the chair, and he found himself staring at the soles of her feet, illuminated by the light she’d left on at her house. They were dirty, perhaps from the walk over, and he found it endearing as hell. “I’m the Queen of Things Not Going to Plan. I certainly never thought I’d end up, well, here.”
    He doubted she meant an astronaut’s house. He hesitated before asking, “Are you... are you happy that you left him?” Perhaps she wouldn’t answer. Perhaps it was too intimate a question on their short acquaintance.  
    She took a meditative drag on her cigarette. “Happy? That’s tough. I don’t know about happy. Would I do it again?” She took another puff, the smoke curling from her nostrils to fade into the black of the sky. “Yes.” She ashed the cigarette with a quick, decisive flick. “Now it’s my turn. Why do you want to go to the stars so badly? Is it just for the thrill? The glory? To get on the cover of every magazine in the world?”
    He knew the line he should give, the one that ASD wanted him to give. It’s all for God and country. It’s to win this race to control the heavens in the name of freedom.
    “It’s because of a book,” he said instead.
    “Pardon?” As if it were shocking that he could even read.
    His cheeks warmed. “Well, several books, actually. Books about adventuring among the stars.” She said nothing. “Like A Princess of Mars . Stuff like that.”
    “You want to go to Mars?”
    “Yeah. I want to go see all of it. Suns, moons, planets, comets, novas, nebulae—wouldn’t it be amazing to just spend the rest of your life traveling to places no man’s ever seen?” He thought it would be. Always had.
    She tilted her face back toward the sky, and he knew she was looking at the Milky Way again. Him? Well, he was looking at her neck. “I suppose it would.”
    “Maybe someday that will be possible. But for now, I’ll be happy simply to orbit Earth.” A lie. He wanted more. He wanted the impossible.
    “Will you get the chance?”
    He was only the backup for this mission, and given the mishap on this training run, Parsons would probably like nothing more than to send Kit back to Pax River on the next transport. But he couldn’t admit that it was unlikely. Not to her. Not to himself.
    He looked up at the Milky Way, the two of them studying the pearly smear of it across the sky. Stars upon stars, all gathered together there,