Seconds ticked by before Nadya spoke. “That is a very kind offer. You may leave now.”
“Well what the hell!” He was shocked, unbelieving. “Is that all you can say?”
“Just what do you expect me to say? Oh, thank you sir for your kind offer. When a man speaks as you do any woman should be swept off her feet happy to rush and say yes and look forward to a lifetime of darning socks and raising children. You are asking a lot.”
“Not of a woman. Not much at all. But maybe too much for a flying officer and test pilot….”
“Shut up!” Coretta shouted. “Before you say too much and go too far and can't get back. Listen to the doctor. Patrick, just because you love her — and neither of us doubts it — that doesn't mean that Nadya stops being what she is and forgets everything and is ready for the rose-covered cottage.”
“I know that — ”
“Maybe you know it — but you don't feel it. She is still the person she always was and you mustn't ever forget that. And you, Nadya, it's no crime to think like a woman, feel like a woman. Sensuality can be very, very good. Do you understand?”
Nadya nodded. Her voice was very quiet now, strained. “I really do not find it easy to talk about these things. It is perhaps my training. Romantic love has always been something in the cinema, not in the life of a test pilot or a cosmonaut. Perhaps I learned to play a role — but it is a role that works and whenever I step out of it I find that I can be hurt---”
“Are you talking about that time — you and I, in Texas?”
“Yes… I think lam.”
“Try to understand me. I suppose I was acting like an oversexed male chauvinist, arid I'm sorry. But I did mean it too, what I felt towards you, and I mean it now. Will you marry me, Nadya — “
“No.”
“Will you at least think about it — “
“Yes, of course, and more than that. When you are like this and trying to understand how I feel, then I want very much to be with you. Then I want to stay with you. Stay together, get married perhaps, perhaps not. But at least find out. Be patient with me, Patrick. It's not easy.”
“I will. If you'll be patient with me.” This time when he sought her hand in blindness he found it immediately. It was a beginning.
Coretta took one last look at them, lifted her hand in a little wave that they could not see, then slipped quietly out the door and closed it behind her.
“The Major, is he…” the MP said.
“Don't worry, Corporal. The Major is doing fine, just fine. He's safe and sound in there so you just let him be.”
Then she turned and walked briskly down the corridor and around the corner and was gone.
Above the hospital, above Cape Canaveral and the shrouding clouds, high above the atmosphere the sun shone as it always did. The solar storms raged across its surface and radiated their energy into space. Light streamed from the solar disc, light and radiation spread profligate in all directions. A small portion fell on the Earth, warmed it, made it habitable to man.
Ceaselessly, timelessly, the sun shone. One day, soon, another gleaming speck would soar through the thin atmosphere of Earth and into space, where it would spread its silvery net to capture more of that abundant energy before it disappeared in the eternal interstellar night.
Then — yet — another — spark —. -. -. - And — another — . -. -.