Star Dust (25 page)

“Am I still firing the retrorockets over California?” he asked.

“Yep.”

Which was coming up soon. Over a decade of training took over then, all his aviator instincts coming to the fore until he was nothing but chilled competence. He’d need every bit of his training and skill to survive this. But damn, did he wish he had a stick of Juicy Fruit just now.

“Better get the capsule into position then,” he said. “If I’m late, Parsons will have my head.”

Carruthers laughed, as Kit had meant him to do.

He got down to business, firing the thrusters and checking his shift in attitude via the instruments. Then double-checking using the horizon and the stars he could see.

“I’m in place,” he radioed.

“Just in time.”

It was Parsons now, the big man himself come on to help guide him home. It actually reassured Kit—for all his brusqueness, there was no one more invested in the success of the mission than Parsons. Except for maybe Kit himself.

The countdown began, the coast of California appearing outside his window.

“Five, four, three, two, one…”

Kit fired the retrorockets, the force of it shoving him and the capsule back toward the clasp of Earth’s gravity. The sense of weightlessness disappeared as the deceleration pushed him against the seat restraints.

Please let the heat shield hold.

The capsule began to oscillate, and he used the controls to hold it steady. If the capsule slipped out of this position, the heat shield might slip too. And then he was done.

Mission Control was squawking in his ear, but he ignored it for the time, concentrating on holding the capsule steady. He checked his attitude out of habit, although if the capsule was off by too much, there was nothing he could do.

The radio went dead.

He’d hit the ionization zone of silence. For the next five minutes, the radio would be useless. He’d known that this would happen, but it was still unnerving. He was completely cut off now, totally isolated. It made the potential loss of the heat shield—his potential death—that much more potent.

There was a skittering sound, as if little pebbles were bouncing along the skin of the capsule.

Then the heat pulse began.

Heat pulse
was too weak a name. It was a fireball, engulfing the capsule, heat and light streaming past the window.

The capsule had become a comet, trailing a tail of fire as it hurtled toward Earth. And Kit was right in the middle of it.

But the interior wasn’t hot. Not even warm. Which meant the heat shield should be holding.

He tried to look out the window to see if Texas was going by. But all he saw was the heat pulse, glowing orange. And bits of the heat shield flying by as they broke off. At least, he thought it was the heat shield. It was supposed to burn off in reentry, but was it burning off—or breaking up—too fast? He had no way to tell.

A bead of sweat dripped down his forehead and landed in the collar of his spacesuit. And he suddenly realized that it had become warm in the capsule. Almost unbearably so.

Did that mean the heat shield had come loose? He had no idea.

The capsule began to oscillate again and he checked his altitude. Time to deploy the drogue parachute. He hit the switch, and two seconds later the capsule jerked hard as the chute caught.

The oscillations stopped.

But the interior felt as if the temperature had gone up twenty degrees. His skin was slick with sweat, feeling as if it were blistering with the heat.

He was damned uncomfortable—but still alive. That was the thing to focus on.

Ten thousand feet. A massive jolt as the main parachute deployed, his seat restraints catching him hard and snapping his head back. Deceleration began in earnest, the pressure of it making it hard to swallow. And the heat. The capsule was turning into a sauna.

But his training held strong and he began to unhook what he could from his suit, preparing for a rapid egress if necessary. He was an aviator, and aviators didn’t panic. Even when they were looking death in the eyes.

But the heat shield must have held—he’d made it this far.
 

Now all he had to do was survive the ocean landing. It would be a terrible thing to drown on his way back from the stars. He almost laughed at the thought as he wiped the sweat from his forehead, his eyes stinging.

The capsule hit the ocean with a splash, just as it had in training. But this time, the explosive bolts on the door held.

He wasn’t going to drown. The heat shield had held. He was alive.

He was home.

He did laugh at the sheer fantasticalness of it all. He’d ridden a rocket, orbited Earth, and come back again. He and Anne-Marie would have a lot to talk about once he got back to Houston.

“Perseid Two, do you read? Perseid Two, do you read?”

The radio came back to life. Mission Control calling for him.

“Roger, I read you.” He had to laugh again, because the situation was still so… beyond anything. He’d been to the stars. And now he was back. He was only the second American to ever do so.
 
Only the fifth man in the entire history of human civilization to do so.

After that moment of mirth, he got back to work, flipping on the rescue beacon and going through his post-flight checklist.

“The destroyer is coming to get you,” Parsons said. He didn’t sound relieved. More like resigned, as if this success weighed on him.

Success made Kit feel light as a feather. As if he were still in zero G.

Kit heard the engines of the ship then, which seemed incredibly loud after the relative silence of his last twenty-four hours. The capsule swung as the hoist began to lift it, but it was more like the motion of a playground swing compared to the forces of the reentry. He felt as if he were on the world’s slowest elevator. Then a
clunk
that rattled him inside the capsule.

The ship’s deck. He was on the ship’s deck. He heard cheering, faintly.

And then a knock at the hatch.

He released the bolts, shoved the door open, and stepped back onto Earth. Or at least onto a man-made surface.

The entire crew was on the deck and in formation, waiting for him. The captain came forward and snapped off a salute. “Commander Campbell, welcome home.”

Kit returned the salute, then held out his hand. “Thank you, sir. It’s good to be back.”

And as soon as he could, he was going to find Anne-Marie and tell her that he was home for good.

A few hours later, they were out of deviled eggs. When Margie hung up from her check-up call she announced, “Well, he’s coming back.”

“Why?” Betty asked. “That’s only been what, three orbits?”

“Is everything okay?” Anne-Marie asked. She’d kept the fear at bay successfully most of the day, but now it was creeping up again, clogging her throat.

“Bill wouldn’t say why. Just that they’ve decided it’s time for him to come back.”

Anne-Marie wrapped her arms around her stomach. There wasn’t any reason to be concerned. Everything was going well. Maybe they had enough data? Margie didn’t seem worried. If she was going to do this—really try to be with Kit, to tell him she loved him, with everything that entailed—there would be other days like this. If not with him, then with Greg or Joe or Mitch.

“Well, good,” she said at last. “I was thinking he’d been gone too long.”

Frances laughed—a short, perfunctory bark—and slid her arm around Anne-Marie’s back. On the television, a soap opera was droning on. Someone had amnesia. Or maybe it was a secret baby. They were in a hospital.

Anne-Marie’s face was hot. Except where it was cold. And where it burned. Her skin was suddenly too tight on her hands. She wanted to itch and squirm. Except the only thing that could bring any relief was…

The phone rang. Margie answered, “Yes, Bill?” Several beats passed, and then she smiled. “They’ve got him.”

Anne-Marie buried her face in Frances’s neck for a minute. They had him. He was back. He was safe.

Margie kept talking, and Betty was clapping. Frances suggested opening some champagne. Anne-Marie just focused on the air moving in and out of her lungs.

He was coming home. He’d survived. Now they had to make things right.

The evening after his successful, historic orbit—and those were just a few of the words from the headlines—Anne-Marie could tell when Kit’s car arrived in the neighborhood. It might have been the honking. Or the cheering. Or maybe that Margie had called her when he left ASD with an estimate of his arrival time. Come to think, J. Edgar Hoover could probably save himself a lot of hassle by just putting Margie on the payroll.

Freddie and Lisa were sitting in the front room, looking out the window for him.

“He’s here!” Lisa shouted.

“Give him a second to get out of the car,” Anne-Marie called back.

She finished setting the table. She’d made beef Wellington, and those potatoes au gratin he liked, and a new creamed spinach recipe Margie had clipped from a catalog for her. And two kinds of pies, because she wasn’t sure if he preferred apple or chocolate chess. It was too much food—much too much—but she hadn’t known what else to do with all the energy zinging through her body. It was either cook or lift the house clean off its foundation. She’d gone with the food.

She was straightening the napkins for the third time when a quiet knock came at the back door.

“It’s Kit!” Freddie shouted. He bolted for it with Lisa at his heels.

Anne-Marie stayed in the dining room, fussing with her dress. She’d gone with purple—against the wishes of both Betty and Margie. It seemed more space-aged.

A moment later, Kit came into the dining room, a child dangling off each hand and Bucky running around them, barking.

Kit looked good. His chin boasted a layer of scruff. His clothes were wrinkled. But he was beautiful. And when he smiled at her, all eye-crinkles and joy, she knew he was hers.

“Hi,” she said—because she was incredibly articulate. When he didn’t say anything in response, she added, “You’re back.”

“I am. I, uh, got your note.” He pulled a crumpled piece of legal paper out of his pocket. She’d left it on his kitchen counter.

It wasn’t anything elaborate or particularly romantic:
Please come for dinner. A-M Smith
. She’d signed it because she didn’t think he’d know her handwriting, which was probably a sign she shouldn’t tell him she loved him. But she’d decided she was sort of a risk-taker. And besides, it was the truth.

“I haven’t changed or showered or anything,” Kit said. “I’m sorry.”

The words were offered with gut-deep conviction and applied to everything. A man who could apologize, hmm? Well, she’d take it.

“You’re forgiven. This time.”

He smiled back at her—not practiced and charming. Not the smile everyone else got. But a private, intimate, happy grin.

And on seeing it, and knowing that he understood her, it took every ounce of self-control Anne-Marie possessed not to throw herself at him. But the children were there and the man needed to eat. So she reached for her napkin and batted at her eyes.

Clearing her throat, she said, “Kids, give the man some room and take your seats. I, uh, made beef Wellington. For some reason, I couldn’t get a turkey.”

Kit took a step toward her until he filled her vision. Until she could smell him and feel his heat and almost taste him. “There is nothing in the Milky Way like your cooking. I made sure.”

He didn’t touch her, but he didn’t need to. They were fine, or they were going to be. Confessing that she loved him wouldn’t be easy, knowing when and how to tell the kids would be harder, dealing with the press would be awful, but Kit would always be there to catch her.

“You didn’t like space food?”

He laughed, and then sobered. “No, it turns out everything I want is right here.”

She took his plate and piled it high with food. She set it down in his place. “Good.”

The next twenty minutes were a crush of questions from Freddie and Lisa. Kit told them about seeing stars in the middle of the day, of the lights he could see on Earth from up above. He described how from space, the earth was blue and beautiful.