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Long Island, 1926. The jazz played until dawn every night, and the gin flowed like water, and the young men who had come home from Europe with medals and holes in their souls danced until their shoes fell off and then danced some more. James Calloway was one of those men, though his medal was hidden in a drawer and the holes in his soul were patched as carefully as he could manage.

He had been a pilot in the war, one of the first, when airplanes were wooden frames and canvas wings and the biggest danger was falling out of the sky. James had fallen twice and survived both times, which he attributed not to skill or courage but to the simple fact that death had not been ready for him yet. He was twenty-six, lean and dark-haired with a smile that women found attractive and a look in his eyes that men found unsettling.

The money had run out three months ago. James had arrived in America with nothing but a uniform that no longer fit and a pilot's license that was worth less than the paper it was printed on. The war was over, the pilots were obsolete, and the only people making money in aviation were the ones who sold planes to the government, which was a very small group of people indeed.

James found work as a stunt pilot, which meant flying at county fairs and exhibitions and occasionally trying tricks that had never been tried before and sometimes succeeding and sometimes not. He succeeded more often than not, which kept him fed and housed in a small apartment in Queens that smelled of stale cigarette smoke and ambition.

It was at an exhibition in Hempstead that he met the woman in the silver dress. She was sitting in the grandstand, watching him loop the loop for the seventh time, and when he pulled out of the final dive and waved to the crowd below, she was the only person who did not clap. She simply sat there, still as a statue, her silver dress catching the afternoon sun like a mirror.

Her name was Vivian St. Clair, and she was the daughter of a man who had made his fortune in steel and spent the rest of it trying to buy immortality. She lived in a house on the North Shore that had more rooms than a hotel and more servants than a palace, and she came to the airfield every Saturday, always alone, always dressed in silver, always watching James with an expression that he could not read.

After the exhibition, she found him in the hangar. He was sitting on a crate, eating a sandwich that the mechanic had thrown him, and she stood in the doorway and watched him for a moment before speaking.

"You fly like a man who wants something," she said.

James swallowed and wiped his mouth. "Everyone wants something, Miss."

"Not everyone wants it badly enough to fly a wooden box through the air at a hundred miles an hour." She stepped into the hangar and the smell of oil and gasoline seemed to change, to become something else—something silver and cold and distant. "I have a proposition for you."

James laughed. "I'm flattered, but I'm not exactly in the market for propositions."

"This is not that kind." She sat down on a crate opposite him and crossed her legs. "I have a project. It involves flying. Not stunts—real flying. Higher than you've ever gone. Farther than you've ever gone. The pay is substantial."

James studied her. She was beautiful in a way that made him uncomfortable, like looking at a mirror that showed you not your face but your soul. "What kind of project?"

"A solar reflector," she said. "In orbit around the earth. A giant mirror that reflects sunlight onto specific points on the ground. We need a pilot to test the launch vehicle."

James felt something stir inside him, something he had not felt since the war—something that was not excitement exactly but was close enough to make his hands shake. "Orbit?"

"Orbit," she confirmed.

"How much?" he asked.

"Five thousand dollars. Plus expenses."

James had not seen five thousand dollars in his life. He had seen it, sure—rich men passed it on the street, it changed hands in smoky rooms in Manhattan, it was the number at the center of every conversation about money. But he had never held it, never felt its weight in his palm.

"What's the catch?" he asked.

Vivian smiled, and for the first time, he saw the pain behind her eyes. "The catch is that you'll be flying into the sky and not coming back to the same world you left. The catch is that you'll see things from up there that will change you forever. And the catch is that I may be lying to you about some of it."

James thought about the wooden box he had been flying, and the county fairs, and the crowds that clapped when he survived and mourned when he didn't. He thought about the war, and the medals in his drawer, and the holes in his soul. He thought about the five thousand dollars.

"When do I start?" he asked.

The facility was in the desert, somewhere in Arizona that James could not find on a map. It was a collection of concrete buildings surrounded by miles of open desert, and the sky was so vast and blue that it made James feel small in a way that had nothing to do with fear.

Vivian was not the scientist or the engineer or the pilot. She was the money, James learned. Her father had invested in the project before he died, and she had inherited it along with the house on the North Shore and the silver dresses and the holes in her own soul that matched his.

"The reflector is nearly complete," she told him on their first evening at the facility. She was standing on the roof of the main building, looking up at the sky as if she could see the mirror already, hanging in its silent orbit above the earth. "It will be launched in three weeks. You'll fly it up in a modified version of the plane you flew at Hempstead. The engine has been upgraded, the wings reinforced, the fuel capacity tripled. You should be able to reach the necessary altitude."

"Altitude?" James said. "How high are we talking?"

Vivian looked at him, and her eyes were bright in the moonlight. "Higher than anyone has ever gone. Higher than Lindbergh. Higher than anyone. You'll be in the stratosphere, James. The air will be too thin to breathe. You'll need a suit and a mask and a tank of oxygen. But the view—" She paused. "The view will be the most beautiful thing you have ever seen."

James felt that stir inside him again, stronger this time. "And the mirror?"

"The mirror is three miles across," Vivian said. "It's positioned in a stable orbit about twenty thousand miles above the earth. From the ground, it's invisible. From your altitude, you'll see it clearly. It will look like a silver coin hanging in the sky."

"And what does it do?"

Vivian's expression shifted, just for a moment, and James saw something like shame cross her face. "That's what I may have lied about."

The launch took place on a Tuesday morning in late September. James sat in the cockpit of the modified plane, his heart pounding so hard he thought the people on the ground could hear it. Vivian was there, standing in the desert dust in her silver dress, watching him with an expression that he still could not read.

The takeoff was rough. The upgraded engine roared like a beast, and the reinforced wings shuddered under the strain, and James gripped the controls with white-knuckled hands and prayed to a God he had not prayed to since childhood. The ground fell away, and the sky deepened from blue to indigo to black, and the air grew thin and cold and difficult to breathe.

At twenty thousand feet, the world below became a map. The desert was a sea of brown and gold, the mountains were wrinkles in the earth's skin, and the ocean was a vast sheet of blue glass stretching to the horizon. At thirty thousand feet, the sky was so dark that the stars appeared in the daytime, and James felt something break open inside him, something he had been carrying since the war and had not known was there.

And then he saw it.

The mirror was there, hanging in the sky like a silver coin, catching the sunlight and reflecting it back toward the earth. It was bigger than James had imagined, impossibly big, and it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He flew around it in a slow circle, his hands trembling on the controls, his eyes wide behind his mask, and he felt the holes in his soul begin to fill with light.

Vivian's voice came through his earpiece, quiet and remote. "How is it, James?"

"It's—" James searched for a word, any word, that could describe the experience, and found none. "It's beautiful."

There was a pause. "I know," she said. "I've seen it from photographs. But photographs don't do it justice."

James flew around the mirror for an hour, taking notes and making sketches and trying to memorize every detail. When he finally turned back toward the earth, he felt a grief so intense it brought tears to his eyes—a grief for the world below, which suddenly seemed small and grey and meaningless compared to the silver wonder hanging in the sky above him.

The landing was rough, and the plane skidded across the desert runway and came to a stop with its nose in the sand, and James sat in the cockpit for a long time, staring up at the mirror through the cracked windshield, and neither he nor the mechanics who came running could tell whether he was laughing or crying.

In the weeks that followed, James made several more flights, each one taking him higher and farther than the last. He became addicted to the mirror, to the silver light, to the silence of the stratosphere where the only sound was his own breathing and the hum of the oxygen tank. He stopped going to parties in Manhattan. He stopped drinking gin. He stopped dreaming of the war altogether.

Vivian came to see him after the third flight. She found him in the hangar, sitting on a crate and staring at the sketches he had made of the mirror, and she stood in the doorway and watched him for a long moment.

"You've changed," she said.

"I have," James agreed. He looked up at her, and his eyes were bright and clear in a way they had not been since before the war. "You did this to me."

"I didn't do anything," Vivian said. "I just showed you the mirror."

"That's everything," James said. He held up one of the sketches. "Do you know what this is? This isn't just a mirror. It's a bridge. It's a connection between the earth and the sky, between the world we know and the world we've only dreamed of. And we're using it to—" He paused. "What are we using it for, Vivian? You said you might have lied to me. What am I really looking at up there?"

Vivian sat down beside him on the crate, and for the first time, James saw her not as a mystery but as a person—a person who was as lost and as searching as he was, wearing a silver dress to hide the fact that she was cold inside.

"The reflector is being used to illuminate casinos in Nevada," she said quietly. "And golf courses in Florida. And the estates of people like my father, who made their money off other people and now want more light to grow their flowers. It's a private luxury, James. A billion-dollar mirror in the sky, and it's being used to light up casino floors."

James felt something shift inside him, small and sharp as a piece of coal. He looked at his sketches, at the silver wonder he had fallen in love with, and he felt a grief so profound it took his breath away.

"Then why are you doing this?" he asked. "Why are you part of it?"

Vivian looked at him, and her eyes were bright with unshed tears. "Because I believed in it at first. I really did. I thought the mirror could be used for something good—something that would help people, not just rich people with their casinos and their golf courses. But the money is too deep, and the investors are too powerful, and I'm just a woman in a silver dress with a father's money and a mother's silence."

James thought about the war, and the wooden box he had flown through the sky, and the holes in his soul that the mirror had begun to fill. He thought about Vivian's silver dress, and her eyes, and the grief he saw behind them. He thought about the mirror, hanging in the sky, beautiful and wasted.

"I know what you're thinking," Vivian said. "You're thinking that you should fly away from this. That you should find another airfield, another exhibition, another crowd to wave at. And you could. But you won't, will you?"

James looked at his sketches. He looked at Vivian. He looked up at the sky, where the mirror was hanging, catching the sun's light and throwing it back at a world that did not deserve it.

"No," he said. "I won't."

Vivian smiled, and this time the smile reached her eyes. "Then what will you do?"

James stood up and walked to the edge of the hangar, where the desert stretched out before him like a sea of gold. He thought about flying, about the sky, about the mirror. He thought about the holes in his soul, and the light, and the long road ahead.

"I'm going to fly that mirror into the sun," he said.

Vivian stared at him. "What?"

"Into the sun," James repeated. "Not at it—into it. Using the mirror as a sail, catching the sunlight and pushing ourselves farther and farther until we reach the edge of the solar system. It's madness, I know. It's the kind of madness that got me through the war. But it's the only thing that makes sense now."

Vivian was silent for a long time. Then she said, "You're a fool, James Calloway."

"Maybe," James said. "But I'm a fool who can fly."

Vivian smiled again, and this time it was a real smile, the kind that reached her eyes and lit them up from the inside. "Then I'll help you," she said. "I'll use all the money my father left me. I'll use every penny. We'll build a ship that can reach the mirror, and we'll fly it into the sun, and we'll see what's on the other side."

James looked at her, and he saw not a woman in a silver dress but a partner, a fellow traveler, a person who was as lost and as searching as he was and had found, in the silver light of a mirror in the sky, a reason to keep going.

"Alright," he said. "Let's fly."

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