I FOUND AN available seat in one of the back rows. A burly man with a Hawaiian shirt sat down beside me, taking up more than his share of seat room. Blue lights flickered on in the aisles of the space shuttle, which started cruising toward the center of the solar system. The driver turned on the radio to one of those nostalgic stations that liked starting every other program with Bowie’s “Ziggy Stardust.” I closed my eyes, nodding on and off. I’m not sure how much time had passed, but when I woke up again I saw the dark side of Venus out the window, and realized it was too late for a change of heart. I leaned back, closed my eyes again, and tried to conjure the face of the girl I was on my way to see.

I’d met her three months earlier, in one of those tacky space parties on the Rings of Saturn. I always hated parties, let alone the kind with a space suit dress code, but the two Australians I used to hang with back then managed to drag me along with them. I didn’t even try dancing, just sat alone at the bar trying to sip their disgusting local beer through the straw attached to my helmet, getting more and more annoyed by the minute. I spotted her sitting two barstools away, flirting with the bartender, telling him she was from Israel. I mentioned that I was a fellow Israeli, and she said it was hard to miss. We got to talking about how even a 0.5 G-force turned the lamest dancer into a music video star. And how anyone who’s never visited Titan didn’t know what a crazy view meant, and how Israelis in space always insisted on walking around in sandals even when it was minus seven degrees outside.