An American astronaut and a Soviet cosmonaut crash-land on Venus at the height of the Cold War, and the last thing either expects is a wedding. The indigenous Venusians mistake their tense, wary interaction for a illicit romance and perform an impromptu marriage ceremony, binding Captain Gordon Andrews and Major Sonya Mikhailovna together according to alien custom. Trapped on an alien world while their governments back home teeter toward nuclear confrontation, the two must decide whether to treat this absurd situation as a political liability, or risk something more dangerous: actually falling in love. Robert F. Young writes with the earnest, lyrical optimism of 1962, when the space race felt like humanity's best hope for bridging the Iron Curtain. The result is a genuinely sweet romance wrapped in a premise that sounds absurd but plays sincere. It endures not because its politics hold up, but because its heart does.
