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Eventually, Ajax Handon finds himself crewed on an Astronomy Craft. Transiting the cold distance of interstellar space to the Altair System.

A craft lost out in the G Clouds. Far from Earth. A craft half machine, half living. A craft that manipulates space and time and distance.

And fate?

In the long cryo-sleep, he dreams.

Sometimes he’s on Mars with his father.

Mostly, he’s with her. In that warm place they long ago inhabited. When they were together. And in love.

That’s when she comes to him.

Whether dream or illusion or memory, he is never certain. It might be all three. Or something stuffed into his memories by the A.I. To ease the long time in the cryo-sleep. When the body is suspended, but the mind is anything but.

But as a dream, it seems real enough.

No matter.

---

He sits on an adirondack, hard and wooden. Painted blue. On a beach that meets a silver ocean under a Turmeric sky.

He eats slices of cooked cold bacon between stale crumbling biscuits she made only this morning.

The sun is hot.

He smells the salt air.

He takes a swig from a beer bottle.

He’s warm. Slightly drunk. The first time in a long time.

The sun bears down on his bare skin.

A mirage, she walks to him. Barefoot, coming steadily across the warm sand. Body tanned golden. Teal bikini. Sunglasses. ‘Mousy brown’ (she’d once told him) shoulder-length hair under a wide brimmed straw hat.

Now next to him, her smooth hand caresses his bare shoulder.

Come back to the house. For an afternoon nap.

He rises, met by her kiss.

She offers her hand.

He takes her hand in his.

She smiles. Come on.

---

A klaxon.

He opens his eyes.

His cryo tank, purged. The lid open.

He sits up.

Looks like we’re here.

Deep cold. Pours into the tank. Overruns him.

Something’s wrong.

He pulls off the array of sensors on his nude body.

He pushes himself up in the tank.

Stops. Not yet.

“Arlene.”

Nothing.

He finds the Interconnect. Presses the disk to his temple.

“Arlene.”

Commander. I’ve woken you early. Some of the crew have gone redline in stasis.

“What’s wrong?”

A brief pause.

He closes his eyes. Tries to pull back the memory (or is it a dream?).

He walks with her hand-in-hand to the vintage beach house. Up the ocean wind blasted worn staircase. She opens the ocean wind blasted worn door.

An afternoon thunderstorm announces but is still a ways away.

He stands behind her. Unties her bikini top.

She turns. Faces him.

He takes her hips in his hands. Pulls her warm body to him…

We are damaged, Commander. And have prematurely emerged from Owen Space. Primary power is failing.

He opens his eyes.

Sunset on the beach, and she’s nude next to him.

Then, she fades into oblivion.

“Where are we?”

Approximately one point nine eight six seven parsecs from the Altair System.

“And the damage?”

Near the forward auxiliary powerplant.

“How bad?”

Insufficient data to render exact information.

“Your best guess, Arlene.”

Bad enough for the crisis intelligence to take us out of our long jump. I hypothesize a catastrophic failure in the redundant power system. Radiation is flooding both B and C compartments. I’ve contained most of it, but I am blind without a feedback sensor loop. Estimate failure of primary power in forty-five point 7 minutes.

“Bring the first officer and chief engineer out of stasis. While we still have time.”

Understood and acknowledged. First Officer Lee is redline.

“Just the chief, then. And Pilot O’Neil. And turn on the heat.”

---

And they are young. Their bodies responsive. Their minds fresh.

The whole of the Universe is theirs.

They meet through happenstance. A roll of the Fate’s fickle dice. As he stands outside the theater’s entrance on a cold Paris, Texas, avenue in late winter, a hard storm just ending.

He sees her with a mutual friend.

Introductions.

Attraction.

Are you hungry? I know a place.

And later he finds himself with this woman in a 24-hour diner till the dawn twilight. They eat Swiss on Rye sandwiches and fried potatoes, and laugh over the menu’s mispelings.

He thinks this is a dream. But, then she speaks. And, as we all know, dialog in dreams is against the rules. So he holds onto that. And it makes it real.

And when he falls in love with her, he ignores the rules.

And ignores them ever more after she dies and leaves him.

But before and sometime later at the vintage beach house along the coast of the silver ocean under a Turmeric sky, they talk and drink wine into the early morning. Of their aspirations and hope and love. Of a life together. Of two people joined, making a new thing. A thing that is the best and worst of each of them.

Which is why we do this, is it not? I mean, if not for love and hope, then for what?

You’re too idealistic, she says. The world is not what you think it is.

And so their lover’s banter goes.

And now, an Astronomy craft is helplessly adrift in the void between two stars.

Commander, we are losing life support. Stasis is failing.

“Acknowledged.”

And for the first time, he’s conscious of his coming death. The cold overwhelms him. He’s unable to move.

Secondary power has failed. Bypassing to the batteries.

And he closes his eyes.

And is on that beach that meets a silver ocean under a Turmeric sky. And in the distance a vintage ocean-wind battered beach house.

And she is there. Barefoot on that warm sand.

And she offers her hand to him.

He takes her hand in his.

He takes his last breath.

She smiles. Come on.