Star Oddity

Somewhere during our second year in space, we started talking about astrology. One might think that flying past countless stars each waking minute would make us wonder at our own heavenly correlations, but we were too busy being proper astronauts to think about anything except propulsion and coordinates.

National Geographic had run a special on us before we left, on New Year's Day, 2086. Star Light, Star Bright, Guide our Travelers Tonight, the headline read. It was not an overall hopeful piece, since most people assumed we would die. This fact alone split the population into those who admired our bravery, those who hated us because they were sure we were wasting the precious gift of our lives, and those who were bored enough to keep one eye on our story while the other went about their far more practical and productive lives.

In the special, Aaron Gamble, head physicist at NASA, explained the invention of our craft.

“Bowie is the first spaceship that has the ability to travel faster than the speed of light. Of course, we have been able to send satellites into space at 186,000 miles per second for nearly a decade now, but there has been no question of moving quicker than that, and no faintest rumor that a human being could survive the ride. Now, the question has an answer and the rumor is true right in front of us. Six of NASA’s courageous astronauts will climb aboard Bowie, and in approximately six years they will return with pictures of the stars. Maybe pictures of them on stars.”

After Dr. Gamble’s speech, they had cut to a picture of the six of us, standing in our space suits with a green screen behind us making it look like we were perched on the curve of a star. 

After seeing the picture, most people began to wonder if, rather than us surviving the stars, we would even survive each other. A more inharmonious arrangement of adventurers would be hard pressed to find. Our small group ranged from our pilot, Bear, who had been born on a peace commune in Idaho and never lost his long hair, beads, or impressive beard, even when he replaced his linen for a spacesuit and his yurt for a switchboard and white sterile bunk. 

Cassidy landed on the opposite end of the spectrum, raised by a neurosurgeon and astrophysicist. Bear often joked that she must have come from the womb with a severe bun and figures on the tip of her tongue. It took six months on a tiny ship together for her to disclose that she had an identical twin sister who had died in an airplane crash five years ago. Even Bear had held back on the jokes after that. 

Handsome Ryan, petite Kylie, and quiet Terrance were all cut from the same serious, scientific mold, and without them Bowie would not have made it past the second day of her voyage. 

In the National Geographic picture I was directly in the middle, and beaming, a stark comparison matched closest by Bear’s confident half smile. I looked as though I couldn’t stand a single day longer on the Earth, like my head was already in the galaxies above. The caption credited me as the youngest NASA astronaut; at only 25, I barely qualified for this trip, and it was only Dr. Gamble’s desire to have an astronaut for each predicted year of our voyage that granted me permission to join the crew. 

Not many lined up for our position, to say the least. My mother sobbed the day before she left, and my younger sister wore solemn black to watch us take off. As we burned up through the ozone, I imagined them below, assuming that the bright flare of our rockets would be the last sign of me forever. The thought exhilarated me, and I imagined that in six years, they wouldn’t recognize me, not due to the years elapsed, but the sheer disbelief at my survival. 

My excitement and optimism made me the least popular on the ship for almost the first full year. Cassidy couldn’t understand my joy at the exhilarating recklessness of our carefully planned journey. She was a scientist, and there had been no emotion in her decision, just the calculation that she was the most qualified for this, her position in life held higher than her life itself. I tried to become close with her, since we were both the insomniacs on board.

I would spend my sleepless nights staring at the footage of the untouched space we were flying through, like a yoyo set loose from its spool with disbelieving freedom. Cassidy on the other hand would spend her nights desperately calculating to determine that we were still on course, her knuckles white and her face illuminated by blue light. As she worked her brows would knit close and her mouth would form tighter and tighter slashes across the plain of her face. After six months and no star in sight, just the Hellish red of Mars burning on our cameras, she stopped her nightly calculations, and would just sit, looking straight ahead. 

I imagine that she was probably thinking about her sister, and imagining the way she died, the metal and heat and screams. I imagine she came to think she was destined to experience the same thing, that they came into the world together, and although they would leave separately, they would still go out in parallels 

When I couldn’t connect with Cassidy, I tried mousy and unfailingly polite Kylie. Her initial kindness wore off quickly, partially due to my own error. I thought we were getting close, our mornings tediously checking power levels in each of the many batteries keeping us going had helped us form a tentative bond, quickly broken when I disconnected the gravity as a practical joke.

This incident, however uncomfortable, did form my first and only companionship aboard the Bowie. Bear found my prank hilarious, and he started sitting next to me in the morning when we all ate our freeze dried breakfast.

After I finished my morning camera observation shift, I would sit in the cockpit with Bear and watch his hands fly across display screens in front of me, faster even than Cassidy’s nighttime calculations. It awed me that his hands, average sized and slightly hairy at the knuckles, held us all in them. Without him, we would be nothing more than stardust, which was ironic, since even with him we didn’t feel the slightest whisper of stardust on our bow until nearly thirteen months in. 

Bear wasn’t the most talkative person, but he enjoyed my presence, which was more I could say for any of my other companions. One afternoon, he admitted to me that he was having a hard time connecting to our shipmates as well.

“I’m not a scientist,” Bear had said, his flying hands suggesting otherwise, his doleful tone substantiating the claim. “I just like the idea of going places no one has been before.”

“In kindergarten,” I had replied, “I got in trouble because I pushed another kid off the slide because I wanted to be first. My teacher told my mom I would grow out of it, but clearly I haven’t.”

Bear had laughed, and my throat tightened with happiness. For the first time since being trapped in a tiny ship with five other human beings, I didn’t feel completely and despairingly alone.

That was the day we saw our first star. 

It had been stoic Terrance on camera observation, and his unprecedented shout had startled Bear so much his hand hit something on the panel that made the entire ship shudder, like it too was shocked. 

“Proxima centauri!” Terrence had shouted, and the words were God to us. Proxima centauri, the words we had thought every day since we first stepped foot on Bowie. The sign of our success that we had first hoped to see after two months, and then dreamed with growing desperation each day after we didn’t. Proxima centauri, the closest star to our home planet, a star that, just half a century before, would have taken us over six thousand years to reach. 

On the camera, which grew fogged by our breath as we clustered over Terrence, the cardinal star seemed tiny, just a speck in the endless blackness we had grown so accustomed to watching for countless days now. As we stared, we watched the star grow larger and larger, until the blackness was only a sliver as thin as the nearly forgotten moon, seen in the opening days of an Earthly month. Cassidy’s hand found my arm and squeezed painfully tight, and I heard Kylie start to cry as we passed by, and the eternal night of space swallowed us once again.  

Faintly, I heard Bear radioing NASA, I made out Dr. Gamble’s shout of delight, followed by Bear’s ever eloquent, “Fucking finally! I thought your ship was going to kill us before we saw a goddamn star.”

Ryan swept Kylie off her feet and Terrance kissed me on the mouth and Cassidy sat down in her bunk and sobbed. I was so happy, it felt like someone turned the gravity off in my chest, like my heart was bubbling into my throat. 

I don’t think any of us really realized how terrified we were before we saw Proxima centauri. I think that’s our brain’s way of protecting ourselves, that we can’t fully understand the terrifying nature of a situation until we are on the other side. 

Of course, we weren’t on the other side. We were a year into a mission and only just now reached a goal that we had been scheduled to meet at two months. Of course, in the moment that didn’t matter, all that did was that now we knew for sure that even if we never saw the blue of the ocean again, we had seen the unprecedented burn of a star. 

“And they say that we were monkeys,” Ryan had roared, and we all dissolved into laughter, because in that moment we felt like the furthest thing from monkeys, we felt like Gods.

The second star never came. Based on our calculations, after reaching Proxima Centauri, 4.2 light years from each, we should have come across Rigel Kentaurus only days later. 

Rigel never came. After ten months, Dr. Gamble stopped radioing every day, instead he would check in once a week, and it was clear that was only out of obligation. We were told that the news still ran hopeful segments on us, but everyone knew the mission had ended.

Based on the force of our initial propulsion, it would still be three years before we would slow down enough to descend again. We stopped camera observation. Instead we played cards and used our precious oxygen to smoke weed that Bear had secretly brought aboard, and turned the gravity off. Upside down, higher than the space we careened through, Bear accused me of being the kind of girl who might like astrology.

His nose touching mine, I wondered what he really wanted to say, if Ryan wasn’t floating two feet away and Cassidy clutching her bunk in annoyance, only halfway believing herself that she was dismayed at our behavior. 

“Absolutely not!” I shouted, then giggled because my voice was so loud. “We have literally seen a star, and it was most definitely nothing more than a hunk of rock.”

That was a lie and we all knew it. That star was the most beautiful thing we had all seen, and the only thing keeping us from true despair. It was the reason why one of us would still check the camera’s every night, frantically watch the footage from the day to see if we had missed something, never giving up completely. 

“I believe in astrology,” Kylie said, and pushed herself towards the gravity panel, planted her palm on it and sent us to the floor. “I am an Aquarious.”

“What the hell does that even mean,” Bear said, righting himself, and moving towards the cockpit. We were on autopilot, no longer afraid of running headlong into an errant constellation, but Bear still kept up the pretense of his job. 

“It means that I am emotional and sensitive and really honest,” she said, “And that I love the moon, I think.”

“Hold on,” I said, “You’re trying to convince me that we are who we are because of what star was a billion light years over our heads when we were born?”

“Yes,” she said firmly, “Why are we all doing this if we don’t believe in the stars?”

It got tense then, all of our minds instantly filled with the memory of Proximi burning through our cameras with a palpable hope. 

“I don’t believe in stars,” Terrance said, “I believe in science.”

“What the fuck,” Bear said, “Science isn’t going to save you, buddy.”

We all stared at Bear, who stood fierce and white faced in front of the control panel, every bit of him all self righteous and rage filled. 

“What are you talking about?” Kylie asked shakily, “We’re going to be fine, in three years we will be back on Earth, we have plenty of oxygen and food.”

Bear opened his mouth, and then stopped. He sat down heavily and spoke without opening his eyes. 

“I talked to Dr. Gamble. They aren’t picking up our signal anymore, they can’t find us on radar or satellites or anything. Even the radio signal is getting weaker.”

“Oh my god,” Cassidy put her head in her hands and I may have imagined it but I thought I heard her say, “Cammie,” under her breath, like she could feel her sister closer than ever. 

“I don’t understand,” I said, “We had a very specific course, how could this be happening? We saw that star-”

“That’s right, Leila, you don’t understand,” Bear’s voice was full of hostility, “None of you do. You all need to understand that we can’t put any more faith in Dr. Gamble, or NASA, or science or known fucking logic, because what has happened has completely disproved all of the above.”

“All that’s left is faith,” Kylie said, and I looked at her surprised, having expected she would surely be the first to break down. 

Bear put his head in his hands and I walked to the cameras, stared out and willed myself to see something, anything that faintest light that might signal a sign of our doubtful survival.

One by one we stood before the cameras in silent prayer, children believing if they wish hard enough, they can make the stars come out.

The next morning Ryan woke up obsessed with the constellation Orion. 

“Just a tiny insignificant ‘o’,” he kept saying, “That’s all that separates us.”

He told us that he needed to see the constellation, he sat in front of the cameras watching for it for weeks, and told us facts about the archer until we all begged him to stop. 

“Where does he go?” he kept asking, over and over. “Where does he go?”

One morning, I was sitting beside Ryan on camera observation, which we had begun again since we started to believe in the stars again. Suddenly, he leaned forward, a smile illuminating his face so wonderfully that he was almost too handsome to look at for too long.

“Look, Leila,” he whispered, “That’s where he went.” 

On the camera, Orion’s arms stretched out, his glittering belt too bright to look at, and impossible to look away from.

I stared, transfixed, the bravery in his shoulders, the loneliness and grandeur of his brilliance in all that nothingness. When I looked at Ryan, he was gone, and the constellation shattered before my eyes, a new star winking with sudden beauty before he became lost in the hunter’s sword.

Kylie was next, when our ship grew tangled with the great cosmic kite, she let out a great whoop of childlike laughter, and was gone, to fly with Boötes forever.

Cassidy started speaking to Cammie days before Gemini blinked into view, and at the last moment, I swore I saw a mirror reflection of my somber shipmate beside her, beaming more than Cassidy ever would, before Castor swelled and Pollux rejoiced, and our ship became lighter.

Terrance swore it wouldn’t happen to him, before science and geography once again was proven to be obsolete and he shouted that he saw Sagittarius, right there, and it was impossible, before his eyes widened in surprise and he was gone. 

It was just Bear and I then, and we didn’t know what to say. 

I asked anyway, “What do you think is happening to us?”

“I think we started to believe,” he said, “And now we are going home. I think maybe this was our mission all along.”

“We aren’t going home,” I said, confused, “We are so lost.”

“Do you feel lost?” He asked, and his eyes were so bright.

“No,” I said, “I feel like I am on the very last mile of a very long trip.”

“We found the stars,” Bear whispered, “But I think they have been here all along.”

I reached for him, but he was standing up, and on the camera the great Ursa bounded through a galactic forest, waiting patiently for her cub. 

I wasn’t alone for long. The radio signal had been long lost, and I didn’t know anything about how to pilot the ship, but I wasn’t afraid.

Three days later, I felt the warmth slip onto my face and skin, like I was on a white sand beach, or a summer meadow at noon. The ship split open and the sun was there, and I forgot I had ever been anything else. 

On Earth, the stars burned through into the day and they declared us lost and the Sun shone brighter than ever and declared that we had been found.