

Richard Hamilton was at the west end exteriors of the Space Station making his daily routine checks of the hardware components and the two cameras fitted near the MetoLab when he saw it happened. He was a lone astronaut who was stationed at the Base for an unspecified period for maintenance and monitoring of the station until a backup team arrived. The Base was stationed at 25 degrees north of Lestinate 2001E in the cluster of Stumacker star region. What he had seen at the farthest visible south west was a big dot of explosion. From day one at the Base, it was his favorite one and he nicknamed it as ‘Big Star’. During the days of depression he used to make long conversations with it. He could clearly see with his bare eyes that it was blazing like a hot fire ball and he knew that soon it would fall like a red apple from the tree. On the spur of the moment he remembered his childhood days in Virginia.

As a child his mother taught him the difference between a star, a meteor and a comet. She would explain that sighting a comet was always a bad omen which would bring along a bad luck. But a meteor was always considered a good sign from God, sent to fulfill your wish. She would always drag him out to the backyard whenever a star was seen flashing and falling down and order him “quickly, make a wish”. Most of the times he might not be able to wish anything before the star fell. Sometimes he would end up thinking of a strawberry ice cream or a chocolate flavored pudding but could not even visualize eating them.

He would always curse himself for missing the opportunity to make a real wish. Every time after sighting a falling star he would ask his mother what she wished. Invariably her wish would be the safe return of his father who had gone for serving in the Afghan borders. On some occasions she would also say that she wished for Richard’s future and she had always wanted to see him as an astronaut. She got her one wish granted before her death. Richard had become an astronaut and her other wish failed to materialize. His father never returned home from Afghan borders and was pronounced as a war hero missing in action.

This time, Richard did not want to miss the chance of making a sincere wish. As soon as the burning big star started plummeting downwards he thought of rejoining his wife Sherley Keth and his two year old buddy Nicholas back home in South California. He fought hard to control his tears burst and roll out from his eyes wetting the safety eye glasses worn as part of the space suit. Still he could see the falling star which soon became a meteor making a slight curve before plunging and fading out from his sight while he made his wish.

But Richard knew for sure that his wish could not turn out true even for the infinite number of chances, if given. As an astronaut it was elementary for him to know the difference between a star and a planet. He was quite aware that the fallen fire ball was not a star but the planet called earth.