Skylar and the Starlight Mission

The rocket shook like a giant waking up. Skylar gripped his seat straps. Beside him, his best friend Rafael pushed his glasses up his nose and grinned. "Junior Cadets Skylar and Rafael, ready for launch!" Commander Reyes said over the radio. Skylar's heart pounded.

He had trained for a whole year for the Starlight Mission, but now his hands were shaking. Rafael reached over and bumped his fist. "Hey. Remember what we prayed last night? 'Be strong and courageous. The Lord your God is with you wherever you go.' Even up there." Skylar took a deep breath.

"Even up there," he said. Ten... nine... eight... The engines roared, and the ground fell away.

Eight minutes later, the roaring stopped. Skylar's pencil floated up off the desk and spun in the air. "We're floating!" Rafael laughed, doing a slow somersault. Commander Reyes smiled. "Here's a secret, cadets.

We're not really floating. We're FALLING." Skylar frowned. "Falling? But we're not going down." "We're moving sideways so fast, about 28,000 kilometers an hour, that as we fall, the Earth curves away underneath us. We keep missing it.

That's what an orbit is." Skylar pressed his face to the window. Below him, Earth glowed blue and white and green, like a marble held up to the light. "Wow," he whispered. "God made all of that." Rafael floated up beside him. "And He made us to go see it."

Living in space was harder than it looked. Skylar tried to drink water and a wobbly silver ball of it floated away from his mouth. Rafael chased it with his lips and caught it. "Yes! I win!" Everyone had a job.

Rafael checked the air scrubbers that took carbon dioxide out of the cabin. Skylar was in charge of the water system, which recycled every drop, even sweat and breath, into clean drinking water. "Gross," said Rafael. "Smart," said Skylar. "Nothing gets wasted up here." At bedtime, they zipped into sleeping bags strapped to the wall so they wouldn't drift into the ceiling.

"Commander," Skylar asked, "what happens if one of us messes up our job?" She thought for a moment. "Then the rest of us help. That's why we're a crew, not a bunch of strangers."

Three days later, the Moon filled the whole window. It was gray and dusty and covered in craters, like a giant ball of rock that had been in a thousand fights. "No air, no wind, no rain," Commander Reyes said. "That's why the footprints the astronauts left in 1969 are still there today. Nothing ever blows them away." Rafael's eyes went wide.

"Still there? After all this time?" Skylar looked at the calm, quiet surface. "The Moon's gravity is only one-sixth of Earth's," he said, remembering his training. "If I jumped here, I could go six times higher." "Race you when we land," Rafael said. Skylar laughed.

But as they swung around the Moon toward deep space, he felt small. Very small. And somehow, that made him feel safe. Someone much bigger was in charge.

It happened fast. Rafael was floating past the navigation computer when his foot caught the emergency cable. He grabbed the wall to stop himself, but his elbow slammed the control panel. BEEP. BEEP.

BEEP. Red lights flashed. "NAVIGATION DATA ERASED," a voice said. Skylar's stomach dropped. The whole flight plan, every turn, every burn, was gone.

"I didn't mean to!" Rafael said. His face went pale. "Skylar, I'm so sorry!" Skylar felt hot anger rise up in his chest. "You're always goofing around! Now we're LOST in space because of you!" Rafael looked like he'd been punched.

He turned away and floated to the far corner of the cabin, wiping his eyes. Commander Reyes said nothing. She just looked at Skylar, and waited.

Skylar floated alone at the big window, still fuming. Outside, the Sun blazed, and millions of stars sparkled like spilled sugar. Commander Reyes drifted beside him. "See that sunlight?" she said. "It left the Sun eight minutes ago.

It traveled 150 million kilometers to reach you. And those stars? Some of that light started its trip before you were born. Before your grandparents were born." Skylar stared. "Light travels that far?" "Light travels far.

So does anger, if you let it." She let that sink in. "Every star out there is a sun, Skylar. God made billions of them. And He still forgave you every time you messed up. Do you think you could forgive one friend?" Skylar's throat felt tight.

He thought about Rafael's face. He thought about the fist bump at launch. "I need to go talk to him," he said.

Rafael was curled up by the storage lockers, holding a photo of his family. Skylar floated over and sat beside him, sort of. "Hey," Skylar said. "I said something really mean. It was an accident.

I'm sorry." Rafael sniffed. "I really did ruin everything." "No, you didn't. Because we're going to fix it. Together." Skylar pulled out his notebook. "You're the best at math on the whole crew.

And I memorized the star charts. If you do the numbers and I do the stars, we can rebuild the flight plan by hand." Rafael wiped his glasses. A small smile crept back. "Like the old sailors?" "Like the old sailors." For six hours they worked side by side. Rafael filled pages with calculations.

Skylar matched every star through the window. When they finished, Commander Reyes checked the numbers twice. "Cadets," she said slowly, "this is correct. You just saved the mission."

Their hand-drawn flight plan worked perfectly. First came Mars, rusty red and cold, with a volcano called Olympus Mons three times taller than Mount Everest. "The air there is so thin you'd need a suit just to breathe," Rafael said, reading from the screen. Then, after a long, long journey, came Jupiter. Nothing could have prepared them.

It was so huge that 1,300 Earths could fit inside it. Bands of orange, brown, and cream swirled across its face, and in the middle raged the Great Red Spot, a storm bigger than our whole planet that has been blowing for hundreds of years. Rafael grabbed Skylar's arm. "Bro. BRO." Skylar couldn't speak.

He just nodded. Some things are too big for words. Some things just make you want to say thank You.

The trip home took months, but the scariest part was the last ten minutes. "Re-entry," Commander Reyes said. "We'll hit the atmosphere at 40,000 kilometers an hour. The air in front of us will get so squeezed and hot that it will glow like fire. The heat shield will take it.

Trust it. And hold on." The capsule began to shake. Outside the window, orange and pink flames streamed past. It got louder. Hotter.

Skylar's whole body pressed hard into his seat, six times heavier than normal. He was terrified. He felt Rafael's gloved hand grab his. "Psalm 56:3," Rafael shouted over the roar. "When I am afraid, I put my trust in You!" Skylar squeezed back and shouted it too.

"When I am afraid, I put my trust in You!" Then the shaking stopped, three giant parachutes bloomed above them, and everything went quiet and calm.

SPLASH! The capsule bobbed gently in the blue ocean. When the hatch opened, sunlight and salty wind rushed in. Skylar had never smelled anything so good. On the recovery ship, a crowd cheered.

Skylar's mom cried. Rafael's dad lifted him right off the ground. That night, the two friends sat on the deck, looking up at the same stars they'd flown among. "You know what I figured out up there?" Skylar said. "Science tells us HOW it all works.

Rockets, orbits, light, planets. But it doesn't tell us WHY it's all so beautiful." Rafael looked up. "God does." "Yeah." Skylar bumped his fist. "And I figured out something else. The mission wasn't really about space." "What was it about?" Skylar grinned.

"Learning to be a good friend. Even when it's hard." Above them, a shooting star streaked across the sky, as if someone very big was saying, 'Well done.'