You are Lieutenant Sam Puckett

What with having your best friend working in the same corporation, your life becomes a little brighter, when you didn't even know it was beginning to dim. As the months turn into years, you are invited to more movie premiers, become the god mother of a red headed baby named Samantha, who was born with teeth ("How fitting," the father had said.) As part of NASA's goal of establishing a permanent human base on the moon, you and the colonel fly more missions to the lunar surface, in which you haul parts up like a freight train, complete with a team of techs who can put it together.

After you have gone to the moon three more times (becoming the second half of the most experienced pilot-team in the current NASA program) you have helped build a runway for commercial shuttles to land, since the uneven surface of the moon was the only thing resorting NASA back to using rockets and lunar-landing modules, which were damned hard to learn to fly.

You love the shuttle, it is like coming home to sit in the cockpit again behind some two thousand switches and gauges. After the runway, you haul up parts to build a small station that can support life for one week; it will eventually be expanded to a much larger facility that can support life indefinitely, but NASA isn't quiet there yet. Over the course of these exciting years, a new trio has formed in your base home of Houston, Texas.

You and Jack's casual, unofficial dates had quickly morphed to include a third wheel, and now serve as the daily ritual where all three of you unwind after a long day of hard work. The two men have become close, even saying aloud that they are brothers. You believe that; he looks up to the famous astronaut, and his type is the sort the colonel loves to hate. They are big brother and little brother, right down to the half nelsons and advice on dating.

When the colonel successfully teaches the nub to pick up a waitress, you give in to the persistent invitations to grab a beer with the newest rookie, who is part of your next mission. The colonel advises against you using the kid, "It'll cause issues that may interfere with the mission later."

Not for the first time, you let Jack know just how mean you can be when provoked. You tell him to mind his own damn business, you can date whoever you want to date, you aren't using anyone. He leaves you alone after that, and doesn't help the doctor score anymore chicks, though he doesn't seem to need any more help.

A pattern emerges. Whenever the nub meets someone knew, you have a beer with another rookie, but spend so much time talking about pork chops that no special mood can fall on the evening; just a little trick you learned early on to keep them from coming back for more.

Due to simple rotations and fairness, your number of days in space are limited. The colonel hits his limit before you, since he has flown in space a handful of times more than you. He is grounded, but with his tremendous experience in space-flight, he is given Flight Control, the head macho on all of your next flights. The tech doctor also gets a promotion when the colonel names him Cap-Com on your last flight.

Ever since you walked on the moon, there has been an influx of women joining the astronaut core, and now you are making history one more time as the senior pilot on the first all-female crew flying to the moon. It makes you feel good about your last flight. You were afraid it would be so routine that it would have been over and done with before anyone cared, before you can take in the stars one last time.

It is a routine mission; you are simply taking supplies up to the moon base like you have done every three months since it was able to sustain life. The girls of your crew are great fun, all of them once tomboys like you "now determinedly carving out a niche for themselves in a man's world, all the while managing to look fabulous," as one reporter says at the press conference the day before launch.

The room laughs and a small spatter of applause verifies this comment. You and the other girls shake your heads humbly and laugh, but your eyes catch his lopsided smile as he claps loudest, his eyes on you. You lean forward to speak into the microphone, thanking the reporter for the compliment and asking everyone to look past it and take you all as serious scientists.

Yeah. You just asked the world to take you as a serious scientist.

You are in a surreal state throughout the rest of the conference. Since when did you care how people saw you? Since when did you want to be considered part of the NASA team, and not just a monkey-trained pilot with a pretty face? Since people started calling you pretty, a small voice says. When you were the only woman, they over looked you, they knew better than to single you out for being a woman. Now with no men, they are taking notice of how feminine you actually are, and that makes you uncomfortable. You never have liked it when people carry on about your genetic gifts—that was always your sister's topic of choice.

When the conference is over, you get to bed early and wake before your alarm. You can't help experiencing everything with melancholy as you go through flight-prep for the last time, and board the rocket for the last time. You're mind keeps bringing up your first flight, the excitement, the anticipation, the altercation in the program when he had appeared to share it with you. You sort of wish he was there to share this with you, and the colonel too; you want your last flight to be as fun as your first.

"We're all go for launch, Aries." tower says.

"Roger that." You say. The count down. The roar, the shake, the blast. The momentum. You are among the stars for the last time. Tears prick the back of your eyelids but you hold it together. Then Cap-Com's voice crackles to life in your ear. The standard relays, all is in working order, they need conformation. Then the voice, to you always just another part of the computer, is suddenly not just a voice as you put a face with it. His face. His voice, asking you, "How are those stars, Aries?"

You look out of your tiny windshield at the naked stars and free, wide-open space that you know and love so well, and you realize that he is experiencing this with you, in a small way at least.

You are Cap-Com Houston

In such a routine flight, with such an experienced pilot, there seems to be more time--between relaying Flight-Commander's standard comments, questions, and answers—for you to chit-chat over the com-link. This is your first time as Cap-Com, so you want to be one hundred percent professional, but you also know that this is her last flight, and you wish to God you could have been up there with her, especially after you see the look on her face as gravity drops away.

You can see the tender expression thanks to the camera docked to the "dashboard" of the rocket. It is there to forge a stronger sense of connection between mission control and the flight; you can see them on the screen like movie-stars, and they can see all one hundred of you, like a little aunt farm on a tiny screen amongst their gauges; mission control has no one face, just the one voice.

"How are those stars, Aries?" you can't help but ask her watering eyes on the big screen. The members of flight deck glance from their monitors at you, and you roll your lips as you glance back at the flight commander, who's expression is a little too understanding for your comfort. He doesn't reprimand you for the premature chit-chat, but allows your question to stand as the request for status update, which she knows to give next.

The mission runs as smoothly as any of the ones you have worked in mission control while the colonel has been in command. She is less talkative over the link as she has become since her partner was permanently grounded. You know she is trying to savor every last moment in space.

The mission is half over. Aries has reached the moon, everyone else gets to go down to the surface, she remains alone in the ship, keeping it in orbit, reminding you all that she is first and foremost a pilot—all of that moon walk stuff was a publicity stunt. Give her a ship to operate and she is happy.

As all astronauts say, it is the first and last fifty miles of any flight that need to be worried about, everything else is almost too easy. Without her entertaining antics between the technical stuff, you actually feel yourself becoming bored, and wishing more than ever that you were up there with her. You can't tell her this. Not with everyone listening, not when you haven't the slightest idea of how it will be taken.

If you hadn't been on her first flight, you wouldn't have seen it. You wouldn't know today that she has a heart, because ever after that she has kept it as well hidden as when you were kids—until now, her last flight, you can see it again.

Man are you an idiot.

You let yourself believe that she never changed, and that whatever softness you witnessed on the space station had been a dream, a fluke. Boy, did you screwed this up. Like always. You can blame it on not having a father figure all you want, but it doesn't change the fact that the only thing keeping you from what may be all you've ever wanted, is your cowardice.

The second she started to harden her shell you started to blind yourself. Better that, than face the truth and have the shit kicked out of you by love. As kids, you feared her because she could beat you up; it was only natural you should fear her as an adult when she could break you into a lot more pieces than the movie-star did.

So you let her down, you sabotaged your chance with her, you protected yourself from experiencing uncharted territory. You were the teen-aged girl, dumping before you can be dumped, before anything actually happened.

Watching her float on the big screen as she silently contemplates the universe outside of her window, you take your first real step in life. Not like her, who has been hopping, skipping, and jumping through life's obstacles as easily as the ones at her old academy, you finally get it in gear, and go off the road of least resistance. You make the decision to love her.