Apparently Fanfic knows Lera as Dora...
Day 4
Of Roses
(established Lera/Aleksei)
Lera rubbed at her head. The calibrations should have been fine. Everything had been calculated down to the last microsecond. But apparently they hadn't factored in how downright clumsy tools could be in zero gravity.
And now they would be late home.
She was on her own in the control room (well, not alone alone – the rest of the scientists and astronauts at ground control were there), interacting with the three astronauts who were up in the space station high above, fixing a panel on the side of the craft. Aleksei and Nowaguma were sailing around several thousand miles above her head, and here she was stuck on earth.
It wasn't the first time that one of them had been left behind because the shuttles could only take three people. After all, Aleksei had grown up to become one of the foremost astrophysicists and astronomers in the world, and Nowaguma knew more about putting a space ship together (and taking it apart) than most people knew about basic biology. They were perfect for a repair mission, along with the senior astronaut Sergei who was the mission leader. Her own mathematical expertise, which far outstripped anyone else's in the centre, was more useful on the ground, helping to guide the return craft back. Had it been a calibration issue, she would have been up there instead of Nowaguma.
But instead it was a panel that had been damaged in a minor collision with some space junk, and so she had taken her seat at her computer and quietly tracked the spaceship as it carried the man she had loved for most of her life into the total vacuum of space.
A sudden bleep alerted her to a message coming in from the space station. Hoping it wasn't an alarm, she opened it.
To her surprise, it was a private message, sent from the main computer straight to her station. It had to be from Aleksei - he was the only one who had worked out how to do that.
.
My dear Lera,
I am afraid that I won't be able to make it home in time for Valentine's Day like I said. Problems with the station have taken longer to repair than we expected – but you will know that already.
Nowaguma's strength is being put to good use. We fixed the last panel today, and you should get the video report very soon.
It is very quiet without you. I do wish you were here instead of Nowaguma sometimes, but that would never work. You never liked spacewalking.
So, as I can't make it for the day itself, I thought I would send you a gift. I cannot give you diamonds (I might be an astronaut, but I don't make THAT much money). So instead, I'm going to give you something better. I will give you the stars. Please accept this as a suitable gift – it is the only flower that is good enough for someone like you.
Right ascension: 2 hours, 21 minutes, 28.703 seconds
Declination: +39 degrees, 22 feet, 32.65 inches
Yours, until the stars burn out,
Aleksei
.
She took a deep breath. Whilst Aleksei wasn't fond of Valentine's Day as a concept (and neither was she, frankly), he was very much a romantic, and loved traditions. Since they had officially got together six years before, this would be the first Valentine's that he had missed.
She did miss him. It was daft, she knew, because of all the people in ground control she was the one who knew every second of every hour exactly where both the station and Aleksei himself were. It was just a little difficult to get to him.
"Ivan!" she called across to one of the technicians. "I'm going up to the observatory. Aleksei wants me to take a look at something." The older man nodded and took her seat as she stood, stretching the kinks out of her spine.
The telescope was already set up in the observatory. With hands only held steady by years of training, she typed in the co-ordinates. Not that she needed them – some long-lost memory was telling her that she knew what this 'gift' was.
The telescope focused on an area between Perseus and Andromeda, a faint patch of sky that had nothing remarkable in it that she could see. But then the telescope focused and zoomed in, further and further until she was staring into the depths of outer space.
The astronomer part of her brain quietly informed her that what she was seeing was the interaction of a pair of galaxies over three hundred million light years beyond the Milky Way. One of them - the smaller - was actively producing star matter, the other wasn't.
She clapped her hands over her mouth to muffle the cry. She had been right. She'd known the second that he'd told her that it was the only flower in the stars.
He had given her Arp 273.
He had given her the Rose Galaxies.
She had loved him for so long that sometimes she forgot just how much. But every now and then he did something, something like this that sliced her to the core. Of course she had known about Arp 273 – she'd studied the galaxies as part of her application to work at the space centre as their primary astronomic mathematician. But to have it given to her, even just the co-ordinates, took her breath away and reminded her of just what her boy meant to her. He was the frosty, cloudless night when she saw nothing but her footsteps and so many stars. He was the centre of her galaxy, and she was drawn irresistibly inwards towards whatever awaited her. She knew she could trust him with her life, as he trusted her with his. They had shared so much that sometimes she wasn't certain who she would be without him.
She drifted back down the steps of the observatory and took her place back from Ivan. For several long minutes she just sat there, staring at the numbers and unconsciously doing the sums to make sure both her boys were safe. Finally, she blinked and straightened up, opening the message from Aleksei again. The onboard computers would pick up a reply in the same way as they received instructions for the use of the more complex tools, just in case.
.
Dear Aleksei,
I know we haven't really talked about this, but:
Right ascension: 15 hours, 17 minutes,14.4 seconds
Declination: +21 degrees, 35 feet, 8 inches
?
All my love,
Lera
.
She wasn't brave enough to add anything else. She sent it before she could lose her nerve.
The response came back within seconds. Of course he would have known what it was. He was the one who had memorised whole sections of the sky in order to plot them by hand in the terrible week that their computers broke down. He knew what she had sent him. More importantly, he knew what she was asking.
She opened the message. It was a single word.
.
Yes.
.
She smiled. Sometimes, only a ring galaxy would do to propose to an astronomer.
The images for the star systems mentioned here are linked in my profile. For those who missed it, the link for yesterday's piece of music is now up as well.