I’ve checked the news long enough to understand what’s set her off. Naomi will have turned off all incoming comms—the journalists are going to be circling and buzzing like flies.

They’ll dredge up all the old pain anyway, so perhaps that’s why she’s finally telling me what I want to know. Better than finding out via the news drones. She owes me that much.

I’ve gone to fetch a pen and paper—an anachronistic affectation, but writing longhand helps me think better, even if decoding my handwriting is a struggle. I’m scribbling my thoughts, trying to untangle them before I go back through.

Naomi had offered me the same silence as everyone else over the years. Given me answers so slantwise to the truth they might as well be lies. I might hear it all, tonight, but will it be worse than what I’ve imagined or managed to piece together over the years?

The night sky is so clear—spilled ink speckled with stars. Naomi always said no matter how dark the night is, you can never mistake a planetside sky for the true black of space.

I’ll start at the beginning, like she wants.

CHAPTER ONE

Launch

Michigan, USA, Earth

If it had been a normal launch, they would have made a spectacle of it all.

There would be picnic blankets laid out on the parched dirt, legs oily beneath smears of sunblock, faces shadowed by hats and hidden behind sunglasses. They’d lift their filter masks long enough to nibble at packed treats. Kids would suck down juice in silver pouches, pretending it was what the astronauts had in space. Adults would sip something stronger, enough to take the edge off and help the time pass on by.

Ten. Nine. Eight.

If this was a normal launch, the masses would be lined up along the flight path. Excited, fairground chatter would twine around the tinny music blasting from speakers. People would imagine what it must be like for the spacefarers clustered in the cockpit, their hearts in their throats as they waited. Family and friends would group four kilometres from the launch pad—as close as allowed—waving farewell even though their loved ones couldn’t see. Tears would weave salted tracks down their cheeks, and they’d be trying very hard not to remember the footage they’d seen of the Challenger shuttle, fine one moment and a fireball the next.

Seven. Six.

But this was not a normal launch.