First Cosmic Velocity

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Nadya had been the twin who was supposed to die. But she lived, and it was her sister, the other Nadya, who’d departed. The Chief Designer placed his hand on this Nadya’s shoulder and squeezed. He meant it to comfort her, but it had also become a superstition of sorts. The first time, at least, he had meant to comfort her. Since then, it was for his own comfort. No launch had ever failed following the gesture. This calmed him in a way the vodka never could.

The bunker walls were bare concrete. The control panel, a patchwork of different metals, unmatched switches, knobs, and dials like a hundred varieties of flower, faced the wall opposite the door. A half-dozen engineers manned positions at the console, and as many as that stood behind them. The Chief Designer knew only a few by name.

Had Nadya lost weight? He remembered her being meatier, muscles sculpted. She still trained back then, he supposed. No need for that now. Perhaps he simply misremembered. This was only the fifth time his hand had so much as grazed Nadya over the years of the program, once for each launch. Hell, he even managed to touch his wife more often than that. His wife and son, how long since he had last seen them? He looked at the countdown clock.

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