1.

Walt Zimmer watched the rocket go up on the hotel TV. Assembling the rifle was taking longer than usual. He probably should have waited to hit the mini-bar until after the assignment, but he never could resist a martini or two.

2.

A cheer went up in the control room as the last stage separated and the test capsule began its long coast to the designated E-point. Walt Zimmer let out a sigh and plunked his headset down on the desk. He went to fetch the snub-nose pistol he had stashed in a sub-basement bathroom.

3.

Walt had never seen anything more radiant than Maria walking toward him down the aisle. Her beauty burned like hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide meeting in a combustion chamber. He felt a little unsteady on his feet. Probably should have given that second drink a pass. But he'd needed it to steady his nerves.

Maria smiled at him and his heart leapt. A shot rang out. She fell.

4.

This party was swinging. Walt was on his third or fourth martini, and had danced with at least six chicks from the steno pool. Everyone was dressed to the absolute nines. It was the kind of night when a man couldn't help but get lucky. Rockets were going up all over. Walt had to stop himself from giggling.

Then some guy in a mummy getup came up from the stairwell, pulled the record off with a terrible screech, looked right at Walt, and shot himself in the head.

Walt threw up all over his rented tux and his hundred-dollar shoes.

5.

Walt checked the wind and adjusted his scope. As the Russians came out, he acquired the target and took the shot. The woman dropped and the rest scattered.

6.

The pistol was gone. Walt ran back outside. Yes, it was the right bathroom. He checked each stall, but none of the toilet tanks held anything but water. He found no tape residue or anything else to indicate that the gun had ever been in any of them. But he had hidden it there himself. He felt a chill creep down his spine.

The bathroom door creaked open. Walt jumped into a stall, slammed the door, and hopped up onto the toilet seat.

7.

It was toilet paper wrapped around the guy's head. Underneath that, though, that was when things started to get weird and Walt began to wonder if the bartender had mixed something other than gin and vermouth into his drinks.

The face beneath the toilet paper was blackened with powder burns, and there was part of it that Walt just couldn't look at, but the rest--the rest was his face. Everything was identical, except the hair, which this guy parted on the other side.

Walt ran a hand across his own hair again. He watched the doctor work. She was one of the girls he had danced with. Very pretty, kind of a Cubana look to her that Walt really dug. She'd laughed at him when he asked what she did all day in steno.

When the gun had gone off and Walt puked himself and most everybody else had run away, she had run right to the guy to help. Despite it being pretty obvious there was nothing anyone could do for him now.

Walt swallowed, walked up to where the doctor could see him. "Anything I can do, doc?" he asked.

She shot him an annoyed glance and was in the middle of saying "No--" when she stopped, backed away, and looked from him to the dead man and back again. "Díos mio," she said.

Cubana, no doubt.

8.

Walt could not remember much besides the shot and Maria falling and then someone yelling over and over about getting a doctor, even though anyone could tell she was dead before she hit the ground.

9.

Walt beat the ambulance to the body. As soon as the shot was made, he had stripped down to his scrubs, and dumped the suit, gloves and hat with the rifle. The only thing he'd kept was the shoes. He loved these shoes. Maybe they were a bit fancier than a doctor would wear to work--but then maybe the doctor kept a pair of hospital shoes in his locker. That was it. That was what he would say if anyone asked.

In the event, no one did. The Russkies seemed grateful for his help, the ones that weren't in shock or in tears. There was nothing to do. The target was dead, he would be able to confirm without question. The Reds' program was finished.

He even rode with the body to the hospital. It was something a real doctor would do, he thought.

10.

How long was this guy going to spend washing his hands? It seemed like hours already. Walt couldn't wait any longer. He'd just have to do it without the gun. He couldn't risk being recognized, though.

His gaze fell on the roll of toilet paper.

11.

Her name was Maria. Dr Maria Montez DeSanto. Her father had been a doctor in Cuba, before Fidel. She was an only child. She put one hand to her throat when she laughed. She smelled like gardenias. She knew his name. She had, she said, a thing for mathematicians.

The things you can learn riding with a dead body in an ambulance.

12.

He held her hand in the ambulance. He knew she couldn't feel it. Or anything. Ever again. He couldn't bear to look at her face, and he couldn't stop looking.

13.

When they got to the ER, he got the scare of his goddamn life. The doc there that took the body was a perfect double of the target. Had he hit the wrong woman somehow? He had no idea what the hell was going on. He got out of there as fast as he could.

14.

"I don't understand," Walt said. His bow tie hung askew, undone. The last martini had long washed out of his system. He shook, feeling wrung out as a dirty sponge.

There was Maria, lying in the morgue, with a neat hole in her forehead. Lying next to her was a woman who could have been her twin sister, with an identical neat hole in her forehead.

Then on the next gurney was a man who looked exactly like him, down to the haircut, except that a chunk of one side of his head was missing.

15.

The planning office was deserted. Perfect. Walt pulled the TP down a little so that he could see and padded over to the files. Locked, of course, but he had his duplicate key.

The top drawer came out too easily. Empty. And the next. And the next.

A lumpy interdepartmental memo envelope lay in the bottom drawer. He opened it and dumped the contents on one of the desks.

His gun.

A note, in his own handwriting, that read too late. The music and laughter of the launch party drifted in the open window. Walt let the paper slide out of his hands.

16.

"Affirmative, Canaveral. All systems reading green here," Walt said. His voice still sounded strange in the suit, despite the hundreds of hours of training. No more training now. He ran the checklists again, almost automatically. He imagined Maria, as she would have been, waving from the crowd as he had made the walk to the gantry. Too far away for him to see the tears in her eyes.

Of course, it hadn't happened that way. They had gotten to her long before the project was complete. Somehow, the bosses had finished without her. Used her plans, her notes. Her paper on the mathematics of multiverse translation would of course never be published. Top Secret.

The radio crackled. "Reading you, capsule alpha. Word here is go. Repeat, word is go." There was a pause. "Good luck, Walt. May God be with us all."

"Acknowledge, Canaveral. Word is go. Beginning spin up now."

Walt flipped the first switch. His capsule's gentle rotation brought Earth into view again. An Earth that would be at peace, soon. No Russkies, no Fidel, no A-bombs ready to drop on D.C. No Walt Zimmer, either. Well. It was worth it.

Another light went green. Walt flipped the next two switches. A vibration started, somewhere behind him in the spacecraft.

"Canaveral, the engine is lit. Repeat, the engine is lit."

"Acknowledged, capsule alpha. You may launch when ready."

Walt flipped the last switch.

17.

Walt loved these new southern lights. He could sit and watch them for hours, and how perfect was it that they were out tonight? He sipped his martini and touched the ring in his pocket. Maria would be back from the bathroom in a moment, and in a moment, their lives would truly begin.

A shot rang out.