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Home was rigged for red. Not in honor of the revolution – although Sevastopol did most things with the revolution in mind – but for the sake of night vision. She and Andrey had applied some theatrical gel to the lights in the dacha, and that gave everything a very sanguine tone she could appreciate, like swimming in wine.
Speaking of… she fished a bottle out of the heavy crate they'd had shipped in. She'd wanted a cellar installed very much, but even her drinking wasn't enough to empty one during a single vacation, and she'd never leave part of her collection in a country retreat where it could be stolen. When she was in the mood for it, it was fun to play sommelier and pick out wines that matched a theme.
(Or sometimes she packed a crate full of vodka. Not every visit to the dacha was easy.)
Holding the bottle close to her breast, she navigated through the kitchen and then stepped outside into the chill night air. Andrey had complained about it, but that was just due to his Mediterranean sensibilities. Certainly not a matter of age.
Hop down a few steps and wade through the grass – Andrey promised he'd go at it with the scythe tomorrow, very masculine – toward the table and telescope that sat above the dark like islands. Andrey's flashlight was dancing this way and that, casting a beam of red light that flashed into splendor when it shone through the pair of glasses on their table. It was like some miniature cosmos that sprang into life on their table… much more accessible than the one up there, if smaller.
Well, more accessible for now. The raison d'être for their little trip was about to complete its own trip, bringing the cosmos a little closer to home. "How long do we have, darling?" She asked.
The flashlight shone on a glove, the cuff of his coat, and razor thin gap between them. (He was such a baby.) After a bit of shuffling about, Andrey had a verdict: "Five minutes!"
"It's midnight, then?" He'd heard about the timing of the impact on the radio. Five minutes after midnight.
"Happy September the fourteenth," he yawned. "Only three days until the anniversary of your recommissioning?"
"That's right."
"Forty four years later and you still drink like a teenager."
Sevastopol huffed. They agreed they wouldn't be having this conversation tonight. "Would you prefer if I just threw the champagne out? It's only a genuine import."
"Genuine?" Andrey gasped, "How could you…?"
"A woman can do incredible things when her only option is drinking that Sovetskoye Shampanskoye swill."
"Is critiquing government made wine…?"
"That 'wine' is almost revolution-worthy on its lonesome." Sevastopol growled.
"My Parisienne has such refined tastes."
"Flatter me some more, and you might just earn your glass of champagne back."
She didn't dilly dally, though. Any drink was made better when it was shared with Andrey, and she wanted both of them to have a glass of bubbly before the main event.
And yes, she knew it wouldn't really be that much of an event in the first place. The telescope wouldn't be able to spot the impact plume; only proper observatories would manage to observe the spray of debris Luna 2 kicked up. It was an excuse to come down to the dacha, to bring the telescope out, to drink champagne and breathe in that fall air, the earthy smell of rotting leaves contrasting against the great physics problem taking place above their heads.
To think she and Andrey had leaned over their radio just less than two years ago, listening for the giggling of Sputnik as it raced around the world! Soviet science was doing marvelous things. They'd beaten the Americans to the periphery of the moon earlier in the year… even if that initial try had been a miss. But Mechta – Dream – orbited the sun now, a communist Artificial Planet!
Andrey had turned his light to guide her pouring, like she wasn't a dab hand at that sort of thing, but the light did let her see what else they had on the table: a map of the Moon. The close side, at least. Rumor was that Luna 3 would take photographs and the Soviet Academy of Sciences would publish next year, but for now she and Andrey were limited to the same side of the Moon all of humanity had ever known. Andrey had marked the impact site: the Sea of Rains might be receiving its first actual rain. She was careful not to inundate any of those 'seas' with bubbly. It wasn't a cheap drink.
"Your glass, darling!"
Andrey took the offered glass, with a "Thank you," and Sevastopol poured a generous portion for herself. Bottled stars, hmm? She could see some resemblance.
"Do you have a toast in mind?"
Of course I do. To love!"
"… To love."
Their glasses clinked, and they drank. Oh, that was good. Her initial intent had been to quaff the drink and then make good on her toast by snatching a kiss, but perhaps it could wait a moment. Mankind's – and Communism's – first contact with another world wasn't a common occurrence, after all.
She knew not to expect something spectacular, a flash or a puff. They were just too far for what power the probe had. Going four times the speed of one of her shells when it hit the lunar surface didn't mean much when the probe wasn't packed to the gills with explosive. There was some though. By now, the charges must have gone off, fragmenting the pennants the craft had brought along into a spray of smaller pieces, each one proudly marked CCCP.
"Has it hit by now, Andrey?"
He checked his watch. "It has."
"Ura!" Sevastopol cheered, giddy for non-alcoholic reasons. "You've got the telescope pointed?"
"Yes, just don't jostle it–"
She set her glass down, leaned in, and looked through the telescope to see nothing particularly different about the Moon. She had as lovely a face as always, just how she looked when she and Andrey first met all those years ago. Somewhere, though, there was a little, human pockmark, a smattering of Soviet titanium under a cloud of sodium and Moon dust.
From what she remembered, she was looking at the right spot, but… "Can you check this for me, Andrey? I think it's off."
The poor man fell for her ruse, leaning down to just such a height where she could dart in and kiss him. He flailed, actually managing to knock the telescope off kilter, but he melted into it quickly enough, one of his hands coming to rest on the back of her neck, so he could hold her close.
Hey, Sevastopol had never believed in a separation of uppercase and lowercase 'r' romance. She could love the people and love Andrey especially.
(That night, among other things, she dreamt of that lunar atlas that was supposed to be coming, and a Sea of Wine to join the Seas of Fertility and Clouds and Crises.)