free sheet. He took each step with precision and grace and savored the light of the moon above him until he finally came to his son's side.
Ives knelt down and picked his sleeping son up in his arms. He took extra soft and short steps now. The boy's soft snore filled his right ear drum and he could only think that he wished he had a recorder so he could take that noise with him wherever he went. Into the hall way, two doors to the left. His son's room was dark, save for the dim light radiating from the ceiling. Holding the boy in one of his arms he peeled back the blue comforter and softly placed his boy into a cocoon of cool sheets. Ives looked up now and admired the glow in the dark stars that he and his wife had glued to the child's ceiling. The soft light fell over him and only barely betrayed the decorations in his room. A planetarium sat on the dresser. It was a B in his science class, only because of the stubborn boy's inclusion of Pluto. A rocket ship hung from the ceiling on thin wires. Ives tried his best to take a mental photograph as he shut the door behind him.
Ives followed the pattering sound of the shower to the bathroom. Hot steam escaped the room as he opened the door. Ives walked through it only for his vision to be obscured by his fogged glasses. He took his thick rimmed, military grade glasses from his face and sat them on the counter space by the sink. Though his blurred vision, he saw his wife's wedding ring sitting beside his glasses. Picking it up, he felt the inscription he had engraved on the inside of the band. He sighed as he rubbed over the inscription and sat on the lid of the toilet.
“Is it too late for second thoughts?” Ives asked, resting the back of his head against the tank.
“Yeah,” said a lovely voice over the pattering water fall. “But, it's not too late for fourth or fifth thoughts.”
“Seriously. This is all sinking in right now,” Ives said, placing the ring back onto the counter. He took his glasses and wiped the fog off of them as his wife turned off the water. “I'm not going to see you or Evan for a long time. It's gonna kill me Julie.”
“If that massive spinning thing and the powdered ice cream didn't kill you,” Julie said as she emerged from the shower. Her stringy black hair was dripping water down her back. She covered pudgy belly and her birthing scar with a towel. “Then a year or so without me and Evan will be a piece of cake. And not powdered cake. The actual good kind.”
“I'm just going to miss you guys, that's all.” Ives wiped the remaining fog from his glasses again.
Julie revealed her face, flipping the towel over her head forming a terry cloth turban on her head. “Whenever you start to miss us, honey, just remember that we are all looking at the same stars.”
Ives grabbed Julie's wedding ring from the counter and got down on one knee. The tile below made his knee damp. “ Julie Vazquez, will you marry me?” He said. From this angle, he could see up her towel, but he still looked her in her shining eyes. Through the fog they were beacons of gems.
“Again and again and again,” Julie said smiling.
Ives slid the ring on his wives finger again. He got up and held her against him. Julie's towel fell and Ives could feel the residual moisture of the shower soak through his shirt.
“One for the road?” Wallace said, holding out a beer. He sat on a plush hotel bed. Almost as comfortable to him as the springy one he had back home. “It's better than Tang,” he said as he took a sip of his own beer. He felt it pour through his body, loosening his tense muscles. It felt as if his shoulders were lighter.
“You know we aren't supposed to have stuff like that before the mission,” another man said as he dug about his duffel bag.
“It's just one, James. It's not like we're driving. Come on, I already opened it. Waste not, want not” Wallace said. Finally the other man turned around holding a toothbrush and a small tube of toothpaste.
“Alright, you're right,” he said taking the bottle. James leaned against the dresser and took a large gulp. “I guess it's the little things I'll miss.”
“I'm gonna miss everything,” Wallace said. “Mom and dad are doing pretty bad. I just hope they are here when we get back.”
“Everything is gonna be cool,” James said as he finished his beer. He figured drinking it all at once would heighten the effect. “We go, we come back, and we'll settle back into our lives.”
“I get it,” Wallace said. “But I have my doubts. By the way, why are we stuck in one hotel room and Ives is resting it up at home?”
“They said it was a 'team building exercise.' I just think they are too cheap to spring for three rooms. And Ives, he lives close enough to the base. Why would you want to rob him of one last night with his family?”
“Fair enough,” Wallace said finishing his beer. “I'm gonna get some rest.”
“Yeah,” James said as he walked to the hotel bathroom. “We're gonna need it.”
James went to the industrial themed bathroom to brush his teeth. From the room, he could hear the clanking of glass bottles and then the sound of glass shattering against the floor. The roaring of the electric toothbrush in his skull sequestered the sound of Wallace cursing in the other room.
The three men all sat in a clinical office now. It was cold. Colder in this office than it may have been in the deepest corner of infinite space. Although the three men all had their differing reservations, they wanted to be on this mission. And it all came down to this. One germ too many, one slight defect that day and it was gone. The mission would be postponed and you would be on the proverbial bench. Ives wiped his eyes. Not wearing his glasses, he missed the barrier between the open air and his pupils, but it had to be this way. James was called first and came out with a large smile. He showed off those perfect white teeth he had worked so hard for. Wallace next. He came and went with the same perturbed face, so Ives could only assume it went well. Ives was next. He sat on the thin paper the doctor had stretched across a table. The doctor pinched and prodded. Every new miniscule test summoned another low mumble from the doctor. Finally the eye test. Ives had terrible sight. Terrible, without his glasses, that is. But Ives was not keen on taking chances. Luckily, he had made a particularly irresponsible friend in the medical department who clued him in on the tests he would have to endure. Using that information, Ives spent the majority of his home time practicing. After the eye test, the doctor mumbled something again.
Ives left the doctor's office with a smile.
James, Wallace, and Ives now sat in the rocket together.
“Three planets, three maps. That's all we need,” James said. “Wallace, you are the best cartographer since the age of exploration. With you, shit, we should be home in a few months.”
“I'm no Marco Polo,” Wallace said. “But I'm gonna try my best. Everything is gonna be cool,” he said as he glanced across Ives at James as best as he could.
“We can get through this easy,” Ives said. “All they need are basic maps of these three planets. Hell, if you wanted to, you could just ad lib parts of it.”
“Uh, Catalina we can hear you, over,” a voice said from the mounted speaker above hem.
“I figured as much,” Ives said.
“Don't worry,” James said. “We're going up here once and only once. That's it.”
There was other chatter amongst the men, but it was insignificant small talk. Each man could feel the heartbeat of the other two pounding and resonating through the seats. Ten minutes prior to blast off, they all remained silent. Only periodic reports from mission control filled the dense air. The only window the men could see out of exposed the clear blue sky. An endless azure horizon with no evidence of the outside world. Wallace and Ives slightly hoped that without a reminder of the world through the thick steel hull, the Earth would stop spinning.
Blast off. Up to the stars they go.
Wallace did not care for the the turbulence of the take off. Though he was a man of science himself, he did not put any stock of thought in the miracles of propulsion that brought over the horizon. Like a newborn baby, he did not even fully remember how he got here. All W
allace knew was that he was here now, floating about the interior of the Catalina. He drifted to the front window of the ship and looked out. Beyond the infinite horizon he saw the stars staring back. Sitting like a marble in a mud puddle was his baby blue Earth.
“Up and down,” Wallace said to the planet. The hot air of his voice fogged the window. “After this, I'll have more than enough money to help mom and dad.”
“We're all up here for a reason,” Ives said, unbuckling himself from his seat. “We all got a reason to get back down, too.” Wallace turned to see Ives digging around his pockets. From a slip in his khaki jumpsuit, he pulled a pair of thick rimmed, military grade eye glasses. Wallace and Ives laughed.
“What's so funny?” The God voice of mission control said over clear airwaves.
“You look so small from up here,” Ives said. He winked at Wallace, who smiled, nodded, and turned back to staring.
James was entering information into the front console below Wallace. Occasionally, he would swipe the hanging cloth of Wallace's dangling jumpsuit away. “We got one thing to do and we got to do it three times. We can get it done a whole lot quicker without all of this laughing. Mission control where to first?”
“Wonderful attitude, Captain James,” the voice said overhead. All three men turned to face the mounted speaker. “As you know