It's a pity I flew only once. A space flight is like a drug -

Host: The sky stretched infinite — a boundless ocean of black velvet studded with cold fire. Far below, Earth glowed blue and fragile, its clouds swirling like breath on glass. The world was asleep, unaware that somewhere beyond its reach, two souls sat under an open canopy of stars, speaking softly as if afraid to disturb the silence of eternity itself.

The setting wasn’t a spacecraft but an abandoned observatory on a remote hill. The air tasted of frost and dust, the faint metallic tang of machinery long unused. The great telescope loomed above them like a sleeping giant, its lens aimed forever upward, frozen in its devotion to the heavens.

Jack lay back on the cold concrete, his gray eyes reflecting starlight, his hands behind his head. Jeeny sat beside him, a wool shawl wrapped around her shoulders, her breath rising in soft clouds that faded into the darkness.

Between them lay a small radio playing faint cosmic static — the distant hum of nothingness, the sound of the universe thinking.

Jeeny: (quietly, almost reverently) “Gherman Titov once said, ‘It’s a pity I flew only once. A space flight is like a drug — once you experience it, you can’t think of anything else.’”

Jack: (his voice low, thoughtful) “Yeah… I’ve read that. The second man in space, right? The one who saw the Earth spin beneath him and realized he’d never really land again.”

Jeeny: (smiling faintly) “Even when he came back, he must’ve still been orbiting something.”

Host: A meteor flared briefly across the sky — a streak of white fire that vanished before her words did. The two sat in silence for a moment, letting the weight of the quote — and the stars — settle around them.

Jack: (softly) “You ever think about what that means? Not just for astronauts — but for anyone who’s touched something bigger than themselves?”

Jeeny: (nodding) “Yes. Once you’ve seen the infinite, even in a glimpse, everything else feels… smaller. Less real.”

Jack: (closing his eyes) “Addictive.”

Jeeny: (whispering) “Yeah. Because you start craving the impossible again.”

Host: The telescope creaked softly as the wind shifted through its metal frame. Somewhere far off, a lone owl called out, the sound hollow and ancient, like a question without an answer.

Jack: (after a pause) “You think that’s what art is? Or love? Just a kind of gravity that pulls you out of your orbit?”

Jeeny: (smiling to herself) “Or maybe both. Maybe love is the space flight — the first taste of forever — and art is how we keep trying to get back there.”

Jack: (turning his head to look at her) “And when we can’t?”

Jeeny: (her eyes still on the stars) “We write about it. Paint it. Sing it. Pretend we’re flying again.”

Host: The wind picked up, carrying with it the soft scent of cold earth and pine. Jeeny pulled the shawl tighter, her hair lifting in the breeze like black silk caught in gravity’s dream.

Jack: (quietly) “He called it a drug. Maybe because after touching infinity, you can’t go back to the ordinary. Once you’ve seen beauty from that height, you start mistaking survival for stagnation.”

Jeeny: (turning toward him) “Or maybe he meant something simpler. That the heart, once expanded by wonder, refuses to shrink again.”

Host: The sky above them spilled deeper into darkness, the stars sharper now, each one burning like a secret the universe refused to tell.

Jack: (half-smiling) “I think I understand him. Every person’s got their ‘space flight,’ don’t they? That one experience that ruins them for normal life. A love. A moment of creation. A glimpse of God. After that, everything feels like gravity again.”

Jeeny: (nodding, her eyes shining) “And yet, we still live in gravity. Still breathe. Still try.”

Jack: (bitterly) “Because we have no choice.”

Jeeny: (softly) “Because even gravity is mercy — it pulls us back when we’d rather drift forever.”

Host: The radio crackled, a faint burst of static, then silence. For a moment, they could almost hear the echo of a cosmonaut’s heartbeat from across time — that pulse of awe and despair mingled together.

Jeeny: (whispering) “Do you think he was happy, even for that one flight?”

Jack: (after a long pause) “He was alive in a way most people never get to be.”

Jeeny: (looking down at him) “But at what cost?”

Jack: (softly) “At the cost of everything else ever feeling enough.”

Host: The silence grew vast, stretching between them like the gulf between planets. The stars above burned steady, indifferent and eternal.

Jeeny: (after a while) “That’s the thing about awe, isn’t it? It demands surrender. You don’t come back the same.”

Jack: (his voice almost a whisper) “No one ever does.”

Host: The faint hum of the universe vibrated through the air, low and unending. Jack reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a small, tarnished compass. He turned it in his hand, the needle spinning aimlessly, unable to find north this far from the world.

Jeeny: (watching him) “Even your compass is lost tonight.”

Jack: (half-smiling) “Maybe it’s just reminding me that direction doesn’t matter when you’ve already left the map.”

Host: The stars reflected in her eyes, and for a moment, Jeeny looked infinite — not human, but something between light and memory.

Jeeny: (softly) “He flew once, Jack. Just once. And it was enough to haunt him forever.”

Jack: (nodding slowly) “Some journeys are like that. You don’t need a second to know you’ll never stop wanting one.”

Host: A meteor shower began — small bursts of silver and white streaking the sky like unkept promises, burning briefly, beautifully, then gone. The telescope stood motionless, as if in awe of the same truth that bound them there.

Jeeny: (barely audible) “So maybe that’s what heaven really is — not the place you reach, but the flight that gets you there.”

Jack: (closing his eyes) “Then I’ve already been there once.”

Host: The final meteor cut across the sky, its tail lingering a heartbeat longer before vanishing. The observatory fell silent again, but something in the air remained changed — charged, alive, infinite.

And as they sat beneath the universe’s endless ache, Gherman Titov’s words echoed through them — not as regret, but as revelation:

That to touch the infinite is to surrender the ordinary.
That a single moment of transcendence can eclipse a lifetime of contentment.
That some flights are not meant to be repeated,
because their purpose is to remind the soul what it was built for.

That awe, once tasted,
is a hunger that never leaves —
a quiet, eternal yearning
to rise again
beyond the pull of the world,
toward that silent, shining truth
where even failure feels like flight.

Host: The night held them, the stars watched without blinking,
and somewhere, deep in the hum of the universe,
a voice — perhaps his, perhaps all of ours — whispered:

“I flew once. And it was enough to ruin me beautifully.”