The Eye with Which the Universe Beholds Itself

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This time, when he returns home he knows she will have left him for good. Her decision weighs on him still, even as the J-2 engine ceases its muted roaring and the force pressing him into his seat abruptly vanishes. She has threatened to leave him before, many times; and she came so very close when he returned from Mars. Somehow they have stayed together. The fight four nights ago was the worst for a long time—she’d been in the right and he’d known it, which only made him argue all the more fiercely. After Mars, she had told him never again would she sit at home worried and afraid, putting on a brave face for the press, living a lie that consumed her, that consumed her from within like acid—

But he could not refuse this mission.

Someone bumps his elbow, and his attention returns to the here and now. His hands have lifted from the arms of his seat, and he can no longer feel the pull of the Earth. To his left, the mission commander, Carl J Springer, ex-USN, stares fixedly at the control panel from within the polycarbonate bowl of his helmet. In the right-hand seat, the systems engineer, Anna Gibson, has a gloved hand up to a switch beside a line of three thumb-wheels. He should know the function of the switch, but his training was rushed and it has been a long time since he last flew in space. It is only when Gibson says, Gimbals off, that he remembers the panel’s purpose. He does not know this Apollo spacecraft as well as he once did; but it’s not like it really matters—

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