Star Dust
Authors: Emma Barry & Genevieve Turner
ONTENTS
Houston, 1962
Anne-Marie Smith wanted normal: a loving husband, two beautiful kids, and a well-kept house. But when she catches her husband cheating, she decides that normal isn’t worth it. Now in a new city with a new job, she’s trying to find her new normal—but she knows it doesn’t include the sexy playboy astronaut next door.
Commander Kit Campbell has a taste for fast: fast cars, fast planes, and even faster women. But no ride he’s ever taken will be as fast as the one he’s taking into orbit. He’s willing to put up with the prying adoration of an entire country if it will get him into space.
But Anne-Marie and Kit’s inconvenient attraction threatens both
normal
and
fast
. As the space race heats up, his ambitions and their connection collide and combustion threatens their plans… and their hearts.
To Richard. Everyone dreams of going to the moon, but you made it happen—E.B.
For B, who doesn’t even know he inspired this—G.T.
ROLOGUE
Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland
October 5, 1957
“Thinking about setting a new altitude record?”
Lieutenant Commander Christopher Campbell—Kit to everyone who didn’t call him Campbell—grinned as he unwrapped a stick of Juicy Fruit. “I was thinking about it,” he told the mechanic.
He was more than thinking about it—he was going to do it.
Wind whipped through the hangar, plastered his clothes against his body for a moment, and then calmed again.
“How is she today?” he asked.
She
was the X-15, a test plane designed to go as high as possible. More rocket than plane, really, with her long, cylindrical body and short stubby wings. She handled like a drunk pig, but she didn’t need the grace of a dancer. She only needed to take him to the edge of the atmosphere, where the blue of the sky bled into the black of space.
If she took him fifty miles up, he’d be the first man in space.
That was the record Kit was aiming for. One that could never be broken.
“She’s looking good,” the mechanic said, wiping his hands on a rag. “You ought to think about leaving some of those altitude records for the other pilots to grab.”
Fat chance of that. Aviators were the most competitive bastards out there. Always jockeying to see who flew the fastest, the highest, won the most dogfights. A test pilot didn’t step aside for others to go first—he raced them all to
be
the first.
Kit was first—at the moment—and he meant to stay there.
“Let’s get her ready,” he said. “See how high we can go today.” He had a good feeling, a sense that something momentous was about to be shattered.
He went to the locker room to put on his flight suit, clearing his mind of everything but his plane, the feel of the controls in his hand, the response of the X-15 to his motions—a flight like this required every bit of concentration.
He was reaching for his helmet, the oxygen tube snaking from it like an elephant’s trunk, when Lieutenant Commander Reynolds burst in.
“They’re calling muster.” Reynolds didn’t even enter the room, just hung on the doorframe, eyes wide. “Everything’s grounded today.” A little rushed, his words, but not really panicked.
Huh. Kit chewed his gum slowly. Something big must have happened.
“All right. I’m coming.”
As Reynolds dashed off, Kit’s heart began to pound. He peeled out of the flight suit, his hands steady, his skin cool even in humid Indian summer of Maryland.
When he reached the muster room, all of the Pax River test pilots had assembled, even the off-duty aviators.
Whatever it was, it was serious. Kit eased into a metal folding chair and glanced around, but there was nothing in the pilots’ faces to suggest they knew what was happening either.
Captain Watson paced the front of the room. A radio next to him was transmitting an odd pulse—a strange kind of chirping, like a robotic canary, about three pulses per second.
What the hell was that?
Kit wasn’t the only puzzled one, judging by the furrowed brows and pinched mouths, but the aviators’ postures were loosely alert. Like Kit, most of them had flown in Korea—it took more than a general muster and a weird radio signal to rattle them.
No point getting excited until the enemy was sighted. And Kit didn’t see one here.
Captain Watson paused and took a look around with his hands behind his back. “You’ve all been called here today because of that”—he gestured to the radio—“because of that noise.”
They all waited for him to go on. Kit chewed his Juicy Fruit, the taste almost gone now. But he still kept working at it, if only to keep himself steady.
“It’s an artificial satellite,” the captain said. “Transmitting from an Earth orbit.”
Every man in the room became a little more alert, a little brighter. An object orbiting Earth, a man-made thing touching space—the possibilities of it electrified all of them.
It looked like the Naval Research Facility had finally figured out how to keep their rockets from exploding on the pad.
Go Navy.
“It’s not ours,” Captain Watson finished heavily.
Their eager anticipation turned into chilled anxiety.
“The Soviets beat us?” Reynolds asked, channeling the incredulity of every man in the room.
“Are we scrambling fighters?” another man asked.
Jesus, a Soviet satellite, hovering overhead… Who knew what it might do? The enemy
was
here, just miles above them.
“No.” Captain Watson regained a touch of his composure. “The threat level is raised for the moment, but what can we do about a satellite? We can’t shoot it down.”
“Fuck,” Kit muttered under his breath. He knew better than most how futile such a thing would be. He’d imagined heading fifty miles up today—and that satellite was probably a hundred and fifty miles up.
A satellite launched into space, and America wasn’t the one who’d done it. What was next?
A man in orbit. That was next.
And then? Then the moon.
The Soviets could conquer space.
His jaw clenched tight, the Juicy Fruit clamped between his molars. He stared at the radio, chirping out that never-ending loop. It had been odd before he knew what it was, but now it was alien, unsettling. A warning that the Soviets had won.
At least this battle. There was still time to put a man in orbit. To put a man on the moon.
Kit had sworn to defend this country at home and abroad. The Soviets wanted to take this fight to space? Well, Kit was ready.
He’d been ready since he was a boy, really. Dreaming of the stars…
But this wasn’t a time for dreams. It was time to act. America was up to the task. They’d beat the Soviets—and Kit would be part of that effort.
He wasn’t sure how, but he would be.
Kit was going to the stars.
HAPTER
O
NE
Houston, Texas
January 1962
Anne-Marie Smith took in the crates strewn across the floor of her new dining room. She nudged the biggest one with her toe and the contents jingled. Well, she’d never liked the Crown Derby. If the past year and a half had taught her anything, it was that there was no use in crying over spilt milk, broken china, or shattered marriages.
She looked up at the movers, four large men who lifted everything as easily as dollhouse furniture—and dropped it just as easily too. “Can you put those”—she gestured at the crates—“over there, please? I’ll deal with them later. And move the table into the middle of the room?”
Doug had picked the china and the table, a huge mahogany thing with a dozen ornate chairs for entertaining all his legal partners and their wives. It was dark and Victorian and didn’t fit the new house—though of course neither did Doug.
When the movers had finished, she said, “Let’s talk about the sitting room.”
Here at least were things she’d chosen: a sleek couch and several chairs covered in a subtle floral pattern. They were crammed in front of the picture window that looked out over the woodsy front yard.
“Lake Glade is
the
neighborhood, darling. All the astronauts live there,” her mother had cooed as she’d explained the gift she’d bought Anne-Marie.
“It’s a house, Mom! A house I haven’t seen!” she’d snapped in response.
It was also a way out of Dallas. So she’d done what anyone would have: She’d taken it and moved her kids to Houston.
“I want the couch there,” she told the movers. “And those chairs and the drop-leaf table by the fireplace.”
“What about the television?”
There it was, though she specifically remembered giving different instructions. “I’m sorry, but it’s not going in this room. I want it in the den.”
One of them made a face. “Is that what your husband wants?”
She crossed her arms over her chest, purposefully shielding her left hand. “Yes.” She said it as if it weren’t a lie. Thank goodness Judge Harper had finally, agonizingly settled the question. All she felt about the divorce—all she wanted to feel anyway—was relief. But no one would let her, because genus
Divorcee
was too strange.