Lights in the Deep by Brad R. Torgersen

the doors on the Gemini hanging open, we bobbed in the swells of the Med and enjoyed the miracle of warm, salty, fresh air, not a patch of land in sight. Compared to the Hornet, the Israeli Navy boat was a toy, but with IAF jets zooming overhead I felt curiously relaxed as the Israelis drew near and sent divers into the water. They brought a raft, which we happily fell into, and at once were barraged with questions by two frogsuited men speaking thickly-accented English.
    They had expected one Astronaut, which told me that they’d been briefed by NASA, insofar as the events I’d been willing to divulge. The fact that Raisa was so clearly a Russian and a woman was cause for much excitement, which continued all the way to the boat, all the way back to port, and all the way to a secured debriefing at an IAF lockdown facility in Tel Aviv, where my last glimpse of Raisa was as she was herded down a hallway opposite from me, each of us still in our space undergarments and exchanging worried but grateful glances.
    She waved stupidly, and I waved back, and then she was gone.
    Forty eight hours later, I was getting off a U.S. Air Force plane in California, greeted by a pack of NASA officials who towed similar packs of military personnel and reporters. I kept my trap shut on the way from the plane to the waiting motorcade, bulbs flashing and popping and questions being screamed. Based on what I was being asked, it didn’t seem as if the mission was being considered such a failure after all. Not in the press anyway, which is perhaps what mattered most. For all concerned.
    • • •
    Ten years and a lifetime later, I was still at NASA. Vic’s death was hard on everyone, especially his family, but nobody blamed Astronaut Malachi Washington. It was a miracle I’d come down at all, just myself in a damaged ship—and no, they hadn’t gotten word about Raisa, not from the Israelis and certainly not from me. Which was fine. So far as I was concerned, this was one of those things that had happened in space, and was best kept in space. I’d made it back, I’d kissed my wife and kids, and life had gone on its merry way, hallelujah.
    Nixon did get elected, and the USA did put men on the moon—before the Soviets, though they eventually got there too.
    With the USSR working on a moon base, NASA had to work on a moon base too.
    And with more flights going up from the Cape than ever before, there was plenty of work to go around. For all of us. So I stuck with it. Got on three flights. One of which culminated in my being able to spend a few days strolling around Mare Nectaris, as mission commander. Cheney and the kids and I were on TV a few times. I got to write and publish a book about my experience on Gemini 17, and dedicated it to Vic and used the royalties to help set up a memorial fund for Vic’s kids.
    The Kennedy clan never did unseat Nixon, though there was muffled, unsubstantiated talk about some kind of scandal involving tapes and a hotel.
    Cheney and I laughed pretty hard when Nixon’s successor—a Republican best known as a B movie actor—was elected in 1976. The old man was roundly hated by Jesse Jackson and the other Civil Rights crusaders from the Dr. King days. But Mr. Reagan seemed nice enough, and was all about celebrating the sacrifices of the veterans from the Vietnam and Cuban wars, many of whom had been my friends. So I thought well of Reagan. Especially after he assigned me as chief test pilot for his shuttle program that would be servicing the Skylab projects, One through Six.
    I was doing face time at one of NASA’s combined NATO goodwill junkets in Germany when I heard a familiar voice say, “Amerikanyetz.”
    I stopped dead in my tracks and turned around, my foam cup halfway to my mouth as she walked across the carpeted auditorium towards me. She was all business in those high heels, and a tinge of gray had touched her hair. But she smiled at me, an Israeli government group following her obediently; like a