Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

by Temi Oh

  ‘Someone will have to replace Maggie, too,’ Poppy reminded them. And it was true, they would need a flight surgeon in case they were sick and to perform all the medical examinations that had already become routine. Astrid wondered if the new person would also count down, five, four, three, two . . . before taking their blood, but sometimes stick the needle in on four or two so it came as a surprise and was over a few seconds sooner.

  ‘But who . . . ?’ Astrid asked. ‘It’s not like they can train someone up in a night.’ What Astrid really meant was who would have Ara’s magic eyes, or smell as sweet and welcoming as Maggie?

  ‘Someone from the backup crew, obviously.’

  It always made Astrid uneasy to think about the other six candidates who had almost made it. It was a reminder of how lucky she was, because the difference between herself and her Earthbound alternates probably had less to do with points in test scores and more with an alignment of stars.

  The door creaked open and they all turned, expecting to find Eliot striding in, returning for his breakfast. But instead Professor Stenton walked briskly in, and at the sight of her they all began to stand. ‘No, no, don’t stand up.’ She waved a hand dismissively. Dr Golinsky was in tow, and to Astrid, the two adults appeared just as tense as they had when she spied them earlier. ‘Finish your breakfast in five minutes. I expect to see you all— Where’s Eliot Liston?’

  ‘He wasn’t hungry, Professor,’ said Harry, who had climbed out of his seat anyway and straightened his back.

  ‘Well . . . I can imagine.’ She examined them all with her hawk-like eyes and then clapped her hands together and said, ‘Right, right. The cars are scheduled to leave in one hundred and twenty minutes. I need you dressed and ready to go in ninety. Just a note of reminder, they are bound to ask about the tragic accident in the press conference today. We’ve prepared some answers for you to read over in the cars but feel free to say that you are not prepared to comment if they ask anything too personal. It’s understandable – you’re all grieving. Before the launch we’ll have a minute of silence. But in the meantime, I expect to see you all in the council room in five minutes for an emergency meeting.’

  THE BETA TOOK THE lift up to the council room together, and by the time they arrived everyone was already there. The provost and Dalton’s other directors, along with the president of the British Interplanetary Society and some executives from the UKSA. Doctors, technicians and press officers too, maybe forty people in all. Astrid shuddered with something like stage fright as she and the rest of the crew entered and a silence fell over the assembled party.

  Commander Solomon stood in front of the projector screen, so the interlocking rings of the Off-World Colonization Programme strobed across his cheekbone. Next to him was the flight engineer, Igor Bovarin, but Maggie Millburrow was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘You can sit here.’ One of the directors indicated five seats that had been vacated for them at the front of the room, near the podium, which was draped in the Union Jack.

  Astrid felt as if she was attending a wake. Most of the people in the room were suited in black, eyes bloodshot and grief-stricken. Several of the governors patted her shoulder as she shuffled past towards her seat, and whispered consolations.

  The provost took the podium. ‘Thank you, thank you.’ She raised her hands to silence the room. ‘Lord Davidson—’ she nodded towards the president of the society. ‘It’s been a difficult night for us all. As I’m sure you know, Dr Millburrow has asked to step down from her post.’

  ‘You mean she’s been asked to step down,’ Harry muttered to Astrid.

  ‘But I’m relieved to say that Doctor Friederike Golinsky, our senior medical officer, has volunteered to take her place.’ A round of applause exploded across the room, and the five members of the Beta looked up to see a thin woman by the provost’s side. The woman Astrid had seen crying downstairs only half an hour ago.

  Although they had met Dr Golinsky many times before – overseeing medical examinations, or in the shadows during a meeting of the board of directors, her head down, drumming her long white fingers on the back of her clipboard – none of them knew very much about her. There were rumours that she used to be a ballerina but her career was cut short by an accident. She did indeed have a dancer’s body. She still possessed an epicene beauty; always tied her jet hair in a tight bun at the top of her head. Underneath her security pass, which hung from her neck on a lanyard, the cage of her chest was sheer as a cliff-face. She had always frightened them a little. Because she could often be heard reprimanding junior doctors in her thick German accent, and because a long puckered scar split her face from forehead to left cheek.

  Now she smiled and leant into the microphone, waiting for the clapping to die down before she said, ‘Thank you. Twenty years ago, when I moved to the UK, I would never have imagined that I would be chosen to play even a small part in this historic mission. And twenty days ago I would not have imagined that I would be chosen to board the shuttle to travel to Terra-Two. But I am greatly honoured.’ Another smattering of applause.

  ‘Now, we understand that the tragic loss of our crew member Ara Shah yesterday afternoon came as a terrible shock. But the purpose of the Off-World Colonization Programme was to send six young adults to Terra-Two in 2012 to establish a permanent human settlement.

  ‘Ara’s job on the ship was to assist our hydroponics expert Dr Cai Tsang – who is currently on the International Mars Base – in growing the crops that will come to be the astronauts’ primary food and oxygen source. It’s a vital role. And at this late stage, as many of you may have seen on the eight o’clock news, a member of the reserve crew will be taking her place.’

  When Astrid looked around, she saw that the faces of the other crew members were pale. Eliot’s head was in his hands. ‘Who is she . . . ?’ Poppy whispered, as they both struggled to remember who in the reserve crew had been assigned Ara’s job.

  ‘Please welcome . . .’ The provost stepped back a little from the microphone to make space. Astrid could feel the blood draining from her face. The crowd parted. For a minute some part of her thought that she would find Ara standing amongst them, smiling her playful smile and flicking the river water out of her long hair. Fooled you, she’d say with a laugh. This entire day, this nightmare, just an elaborate joke.

  A tall bronze-skinned boy stepped onto the podium dressed in a flight suit, and applause swept across the gathered crowd like rain. Cheers, whoops of relief. It was all going to be fine. The mission would go ahead. All of that work, all of their hopes, none of them wasted.

  Jesse Solloway – Astrid recognized him immediately. The misfit who never made the cut. They couldn’t have chosen anyone less likely than this young man, whose coal-black eyes were distant and dreamy, who braided broken shells and mantled leaves into his waist-length locks. Jesse had always radiated his own kind of lonely cool. Once, in a careers lesson, when asked what he wanted to be, he had said ‘deity’ and the class had tittered nervously. They only took it seriously a few months later, when he didn’t make the Beta and stopped coming to school. Rumours spread that he was going to die.

  ‘You,’ Juno said, her eyes wide.

  ‘Me,’ he said with a happy lazy smile, ‘I made it after all.’

  ASTRID

  13.05.12

  T-MINUS 4 HOURS

  FOUR HOURS BEFORE THE launch, Astrid found Harry standing by the window of the dormitory, staring at his reflection in the sun-silvered glass. He turned when he heard her feet on the linoleum outside. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘T-minus four hours,’ she said. ‘I thought you’d be down already.’

  ‘I’m coming in a minute,’ he said, turning back to the window. ‘Just practising my smile for the camera.’ When he raked his fingers through his hair a couple of blond strands stuck to the damp on his forehead. ‘You know, it’s the last they’ll see of us.’

  Cars were pulling up outside, and Astrid could hear the rumble of helicopters over
head. It was the kind of cool spring morning with air that is bracing and sweet and promises sunshine. A bright ridge of light peered over the roof and cast across the lawn. The Damocles – the magnificent ship that would take them to Terra-Two – winked overhead. If Astrid squinted she thought she could see it, about 660 kilometres above London. The shuttle they were about to enter would ferry them that short distance, out of Earth’s atmosphere, and to the spinning decks of the Damocles, their new home. From there, they would accelerate out of Earth’s orbit, past Mars and the moons of Jupiter, around Saturn and then out of the solar system.

  As Commander Sheppard ushered them into the cars, Astrid realized that the worst part of the wait had begun. The hours before the launch would be the longest as the seconds ticked down to take-off.

  When Astrid and her sister were younger, their father made frequent trips to South America and West Africa. A certain melancholy always came over the house in his absence. The kitchen table was joyless without his laughter. His study, just opposite the twins’ bedroom, was unlit and silent and still smelt of him even though a thin layer of dust had settled over his books. Astrid and Juno would come home to their mother stifling tears and wringing her hands over the sink. They were all holding their breath, waiting for his return. And all the while he crowded their dreams, trekking across open savanna, Bible in hand, or baptizing babies in the Niger. Proclaiming, Behold the lamb of God! in bustling marketplaces, the same way he did across their dining-room table.

  Astrid and her sister would count the sleeps until his plane touched down. As the day drew nearer she would have to dig her fists into her stomach to wrestle excited butterflies, but the afternoon his plane was scheduled to land, her excitement always curdled into a strange kind of dread. She didn’t know what she was afraid of: that he would come back with a different face, that he might have forgotten her name . . . that unsettling boundary where long-held dream meets incipient reality.

  Waiting in the crowded arrivals lounge next to WHSmith, flowers in hand, Astrid would scan the weather-beaten faces of every man who passed. That was always the longest wait, just before she spotted a dark searching face, brow furrowed, gaze straining over heads in that sweet moment before eyes meet eyes. A smile would break across his face, and when he bent low to hug her she would inhale the familiar scent of his aftershave, and the new faraway smell of dust on his dashiki. It was always impossible, then, to remember what she had been afraid of.

  It was the same that morning. As Astrid watched patches of blue break through the clouds she lifted up one of her hands to find that it was shaking. It occurred to her that they had been subjected to countless ‘launch simulations’ in preparation for this exact moment. The moment when her mind flailed into the future for some certainties she could hold onto.

  There were a couple. They had visited the launch site seven times, so she was familiar with the way the trees fanned out along the motorway until they reached flat, open grassland, streaked with the shadows of clouds. Soon they would turn off into slip roads until all she could see up ahead were dark armoured cars, travelling in the same direction – towards the unglamorous low-rise buildings near the site.

  Terminal Countdown Demonstration Tests – Maggie called them ‘dress rehearsals’. Astrid wondered if Dr Golinsky was the type of person to say something as whimsical. As the technicians helped her into her spacesuit would she remember lacing up the ribbons of ballet slippers with her own nimble fingers? Or would she be thinking about what lay ahead of her? Astrid knew that when she entered the shuttle they would strap her in lying on her back, so tightly that she would only be able to move her head. This time, the eyes of the world would be on her, and after the final countdown her body would begin to rock with the vibrations of the APU, the engine and the solid rocket boosters. The shuttle would be shaking so violently that she would not hear the final snap of shackles as it exploded off the launch pad and filled the eyes of every spectator with light. Everyone who watched from a distance would look up at the trail of smoke blazing against the sky and think about what a special thing it is to be human, to be able to build machines that could soar out of the grip of gravity.

  The sound of tyres crunching on the gravel woke her from her reverie. They had arrived. When Commander Sheppard opened the passenger door, a roar crested outside and rolled like thunder from the gathered crowd. The moment Astrid stepped out of the car a camera flash temporarily blinded her. She blinked the spots from her vision, looked around and was met with more people than she had ever seen in one place. A sea of sweaty faces and flailing arms that swept out as far as she could see. They were waving flags and jumping up against the barriers, brandishing phones and calling out for attention. Reporters were snapping cameras held in front of their faces like snouts.

  Astrid turned around in wonder to find that there were more people nudging the barriers behind her. Many of them had camped out near to the mission control centre, sleepless but exultant, hoping to catch a glimpse of the astronauts before their feet left the ground. Off at the sides were hundreds of schoolchildren gathered in bleachers or spread out across the sun-scorched grass, craning their necks to see the countdown projected on the giant screen: T-minus 2.5 hours.

  She felt as if she were standing on a football pitch during a game, disorientated by the solid wall of sound coming from the crowd. A few metres away, a group of young people were waving hand-painted signs that read, ‘Go Team GB 2012’ and ‘Another World, Another Chance’. One teenage girl was waving a sign that read ‘Harry is Hot’, the A and the O replaced with bubbly pink hearts. Astrid hid a smile and turned to call Poppy’s attention to it. Poppy had already slammed the car door shut behind her and turned her smiling face towards the crowd.

  ‘It’s Poppy,’ someone shrieked. ‘Over here!’ Poppy was the favourite – that had always been clear. She was winsome and relatable and the tabloids spun her and Harry’s story so they were cast as star-bound lovers. They played it up in front of the cameras; every now and then Poppy would slip her hand into his and the crowds would whoop. Ara had hated it. She thought that the only reason Poppy’s face adorned the covers of every magazine from Astronomer’s Weekly to Seventeen was because her skin was ivory. Her lightly freckled face was English and feminine, her eyes quietly clever and the colour of an overcast sky. Astrid herself had to admit she had felt a twinge of jealousy when Poppy was chosen to light up a screen in Piccadilly Circus, holding a chilled can of Pepsi to her painted lips.

  Poppy swanned towards the grinning girls, blowing kisses. She wasn’t allowed across the painted line that separated them, but she posed for pictures. Half of her fans were waving and shouting, a couple even clutching each other in tearful excitement.

  ‘Should really have parked closer to the entrance,’ Commander Sheppard said through gritted teeth to the driver. He was eyeing the crowd warily.

  ‘Let them look,’ the young man said.

  Camera flashes exploded across Astrid’s retinas with dizzying quickness. Juno turned to her sister in joyful disbelief and asked, ‘Does it feel the same for you too? Like we’ll wake up from this any second? Like the way we felt when we made it into the Beta?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Astrid said. But really, nothing in this whole adventure had ever felt more real than this moment, surrounded by people, the air electric with anticipation. The world was about to change, and she could feel the excitement sizzle in her stomach.

  ‘Astrid!’ someone shouted, and she turned to find a group of girls leaning against the barriers, their jumpers tied around their waists, patches of sweat blooming under their arms as they stood in the heat. Astrid distantly recognized their faces. She had seen them striding through the halls of Dalton in tight groups. They were a couple of years younger than her. They cheered when they caught her eye and bounced up and down on their heels. ‘Ast-rid! Ast-rid! Ast-rid!’ they yelled hysterically in a chant that caught on all around them, other people clapping as they picked it up: ‘Ast-rid! Ast-RID, Ast-RID
. . .’ Her heart soared. There was nothing to be afraid of. She was loved.

  ‘Hey, look.’ Juno pointed up to the screen erected near the bleachers. Their own identical faces had just appeared on it, from a different angle. They looked bright as two bees in their flight suits and they were smiling.

  After some time, Commander Sheppard ushered them away from the car and the crowd and into the shade of the mission control centre. Inside, Astrid’s heart was still throbbing and her ears buzzed in the relative hush of the building. Eliot was pale, and squeezing his hands so tightly into fists that his knuckles were turning white. ‘Are you okay?’ Astrid asked.

  ‘I will be in a minute,’ he said quietly. ‘You know I’ve always hated crowds.’ But he was just as tense during the press conference, sweat beading on his forehead as he stared in strained silence out at the reporters, even when a question was directed at him. Harry and Commander Sheppard charmed them all, though, and smoothly diverted attention away from Eliot. Just before closing, Harry leant into the microphone and said, ‘On behalf of myself and my crew I would like to say thank you to everyone on the ground for your hard work. It’s in our DNA to explore, and though it will be our feet touching Terra-Two, it’s the work of thousands of dedicated men and women here on the ground that made that possible.’ There was a round of happy applause and then the commander initiated a minute’s silence for Ara, and Astrid thought she saw Juno cry.

  They came out to greet the people one final time. Astrid was glad to see that the weather forecast had been correct and during their brief period inside every cloud had blown away. The sun was high in the sky and sending limpid rays down onto the brass band. The noise of the trumpets and the rumble of the drums was still ringing in Astrid’s ears when she entered the suit-up room. They were handed over to the technicians, who helped them into their spacesuits.

  Once she had pushed her hands into her stiff gloves and collected her helmet, Astrid trudged to one end of the room to join the others in a pose for the final crew photographs. The six of them wore dazed smiles, the bags under their eyes illuminated in the glare of the lights. The photographer rearranged them tentatively and placed Jesse where Ara always used to stand, by Eliot’s side. Jesse threw his hands up in awkward surrender. ‘You can take one with just you guys,’ he said, stepping back. ‘I don’t have to be in it.’ Into the stony silence, Commander Sheppard spoke. ‘It’s an honour to have you on the team,’ he said, patting the boy’s back.