by Laura Lam
Atalanta: They’re all settling in. It’ll be easier once we know the algae levels are stable.
She hesitated, then sent another message.
Atalanta: What’re the updates on Earth? V just gives us the highlights, including that one article that said the U.S. was offering us up as guinea pigs and didn’t expect us to survive. That was a cheery one.
She sipped her coffee as she waited for Evan’s reply. Valerie would be annoyed with Naomi asking Evan for news—that was beyond her remit. But her curiosity was high enough she thought it worth the risk.
Evan’s response took longer than usual. He was choosing his words just as carefully.
Earth: Officials are livid. Politicians have condemned you. The usual. Has she told you that they’re starting construction on another ship? Just announced: the Atalanta II. They won’t be able to launch for two years at the absolute soonest, but they’ll be following you.
They weren’t even creative enough to give it a new name. The coffee made her jittery. She perched on the chair, one leg drawn up to her chest, resting her chin on her knee.
Atalanta: Well. At least we’ll have a bit of time on Cavendish before they arrest us. That’s something. It was worth being a part of the resistance.
Whoever crewed the new ship would likely put the women’s skills to work once they arrived. The five of them were still valuable. But they’d be punished, one way or another, to set an example. Cavendish would become their prison.
The word “resistance” stared at her from the screen, worming its way into her mind. A tiny fraction of the spirulina she had on board was probably resistant. The crew of the Atalanta were only five women out of all of humanity, but they could still found a whole new place for humans to flourish. Sometimes you only need one tiny proportion of the population to enact change.
Earth: I’m sorry, for what it’s worth, though I know that’s an empty thing to say. How are you doing? I mean, no bullshit. Is outer space what you thought it’d be?
Naomi hated it when he tried to be nice.
Atalanta: I’m fine. Send through the stuff when you have it, and thanks for the help. I might have an idea of what could work. Goodnight.
She didn’t want him to keep talking. To risk him bringing up their last conversation on Earth and all the baggage that came with it. Plus her mind was buzzing. Resistance.
Mutations and evolution. She might not even need to bioengineer the algae. It might have already started solving the problem on its own. Life was stubborn.
His message snuck through just before she shut down the console.
Earth: Good night, Naomi.
She finished her cooling coffee, mindlessly scrolling through the various VR locations as she kept thinking. Her fingers paused on somewhere she’d been, interrupting the flow. She bit back a curse. It’d take her ages to pick up the edges of it again. She stared at the words: the Natural Bridges State Beach in Santa Cruz. She tapped it.
She’d camped there, her freshman year at Stanford, for a weekend trip called Living on the Edge for geo-sci class. The teacher and a few older students from Earth, Energy & Environmental Science acted as guides, taking them around local beaches to point out landforms and illustrate how the Earth had folded upon itself, the history fossilised in layers of rock. She’d known Evan had chosen Stanford too—with a delayed start after travelling the world on a gap year funded by Valerie—but she hadn’t expected him to show up as one of the guides, since he was only a sophomore. She’d been so successful at avoiding him those first few months.
They’d chosen a campsite near Natural Bridges, under the juniper trees, and everything smelled like sharp berries, badly barbecued veggie burgers, and smoke.
Evan had kept off to the side, watching everyone chatting around the fire. It was early in her freshman year, and Naomi hadn’t made much effort to get to know anyone. Evan, weirdly, was the most comforting option. At least he was familiar.
She had gone up to him and passed him a singed burger and held out her hand for his water bottle. He’d passed it to her, wordlessly. She’d sat next to him and unscrewed the metal cap, taking a swig.
“This is shit vodka,” she’d said, as she fought not to sputter.
“Yep,” he had agreed.
It’d been the first time they’d properly spent time together without Valerie’s imposing presence over them. To her surprise, they hadn’t devolved into their usual bickering. They’d snarked about professors, kept the conversation light, but something between them eased that night. She’d still found him a bit of an asshole. But he’d been an interesting asshole.
Naomi “walked” along the beach for a few minutes. The rock bridge was topped with the dark dots of birds, and the blue of the sky turned haze-orange at the horizon. The sound of waves and bird cries was convincing, but the white foam of the waves always stopped just before they reached her still shoed feet. No sand, no smell of salt or brine. Nothing but an echo of an echo.
She turned it off in disgust and went back to thinking about the power of a few resistant individuals.
CHAPTER EIGHT
8 Years Before Launch
Bay Area, California
When Naomi told Valerie she’d gotten the crushing voicemail, Valerie wouldn’t let her mope.
“I’ll be in northern California tomorrow,” she’d announced when Naomi answered her cell phone. “Come to the Hawthorne airfield at noon.” She’d hung up without saying goodbye.
Naomi had groaned and fallen back into the pillows. The next morning, she’d dutifully showered, brushed her teeth, and changed into actual clothes. She’d prided herself on her resilience, and she’d had her fair share of rejections. But this one? This one had hit deep.
She hadn’t cried when she listened to the message. She’d sat in the dark of her apartment and realised that for the first time in years, she didn’t have a plan. Everything she’d done up until this point had been with the hope of getting into NASA and it’d all unspooled in her hands.
When she’d gone to the interview in Houston, Naomi had been confident she was a reasonably clever person. Then she’d been thrown into a room with dozens of people just as smart, if not smarter, and discovered she wasn’t that exceptional. Everyone else was equally determined.
Over twenty-five thousand people had applied. She’d made it to the top 120, the first round of interviews, and into the top fifty for the second round. She’d been one of the youngest candidates there, at twenty-four up against plenty with more than a decade of experience on her. There were people with doctorates when the ink on Naomi’s master’s degree was barely dry.
Naomi hadn’t made the final cut. Others were better. That was that.
When the names were revealed, they were all men.
Valerie stood in the bright sun waiting for Naomi, brown curls tied back from the wind, eyes hidden by mirrored aviators, her transparent filter mask barely obscuring her nose and mouth. Valerie had gained her pilot’s license years ago and kept it up to date. She’d been Naomi’s instructor for some of her flight hours. Naomi had expected something large and loud, but when she saw the zero-G plane emblazoned with Hawthorne’s planet-and-star company logo parked on the runway, her mouth had dropped open.
“Seriously?”
“Seriously,” Valerie said. “Being CEO has its perks. Though I’m not going to fly it.”
Their pilot walked across the tarmac, face half-hidden by her own shades and mask, but Naomi still recognised her. Jerrie Hixon—pilot to the Ares mission to Mars, the firecracker who would rip any interviewer to shreds if they made some tired reference to her red hair in the context of the red planet.
“I’m not your Mars pin-up. And the planet isn’t even red! Not truly,” Naomi had watched Hixon exclaim on a morning talk show with some far-too-perky hosts. “Under the dust it’s green and caramel and sand and grey. Not red.” She wasn’t invited on talk shows much anymore. She didn’t play the game.
Hixon was out from Houston to vis
it the NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley for work, Valerie explained, and so she’d called in a favour. Later, Naomi would learn that Valerie was already courting Hixon for Project Atalanta. She’d spent over eight years gathering information on her proposed team before offering them jobs.
“No need to twist my arm to fly one of these on a day off,” Hixon said, grin splitting wide as she took in the gleaming craft. Civilians buying extortionate tickets for a ride on one of these was one of Valerie’s highest profit cash streams.
Naomi shook Hixon’s hand, but seeing the pilot didn’t help with her shame. Here was an inspiring woman with an illustrious career—she’d been to Mars, for Christ’s sake—and Naomi was the imposter who’d just been told she wasn’t good enough.
They climbed up the stairs and into the cockpit. Jerrie Hixon strapped herself into the pilot’s seat, working the controls with practised ease. With her flight cap, freckles, and devil-may-care grin, she reminded Naomi of old photos of Amelia Earhart. Valerie and Naomi lay down in the body of the plane. The floor was padded, the white walls smooth, and the only window was on the door.
The engines rumbled to life, so loud they drowned out Naomi’s thoughts. She was grateful for the distraction. Hixon raced the plane along the runway, gathering speed. Naomi loved the moment of flight when the wheels lifted off and you knew you were no longer Earthbound. If she were at the window, she’d watch the ground grow distant as they rose over the grids of houses, the swathes of freeway like grey ribbons, and Mt. Tamalpais would look like little more than an inexpertly moulded pile from a child’s sandbox. Hixon pushed up, up through the lower atmosphere, speeding to the upper stratosphere at a forty-five-degree angle.
Naomi should be proud she’d made it to the second round of interviews. Objectively, she knew this. She hadn’t lost her nerve during questions designed to poke at her weaknesses or show the cracks in her psychology. She’d proved her physical fitness—swimming, running long distances on the treadmill interspersed with all-out sprinting, the ever-present monitor tracking her heartbeat. She hadn’t panicked when they’d put her in the sensory deprivation chamber, floating in water the exact temperature of her skin, time ceasing to have any sense of meaning.
Naomi had thought she’d performed well in the tests. No, she knew she had.
But what do you do when your best isn’t good enough?
“Ready?” Valerie called.
Hixon reduced the thrust and lowered the nose of the airplane, creating the perfect parabolic arc relative to the centre of the Earth.
Naomi felt it—that first sense of her body lightening as Hixon brought them over the apex. The candidates that were chosen wouldn’t have a chance to go up in one of NASA’s vomit comets for ages yet. She’d beaten them to this. Sure, it was only because she’d grown up with one of the richest people in the world, but still. She’d take her victories where she could. Naomi’s back arced as she rose.
“I didn’t get into NASA my first time,” Hixon said, her voice amplified by the speakers. Naomi twisted, staring at the back of the pilot’s head. “I think that was my first heartbreak.”
Naomi darted a glance at Valerie, who kept her face very innocent. Naomi should have known Hixon was going to be a part of the pep talk.
The craft began its downward pitch. Hixon adjusted the controls, pulling the nose up at the bottom. Naomi floated back down to the ground, not gracefully, and Hixon immediately began another upward trajectory. Naomi swallowed down the nausea.
“What did you do?” Naomi called back as she rose again.
“Went backpacking around the Andes and yelled really loudly at the top of mountains. Startled the shit out of some llamas. I screamed until I lost my voice. Then I came back and got back to work.”
Naomi had to admit running away to mountains sounded very tempting.
Valerie floated closer to her.
“This is only the beginning,” Valerie said. “In two years, you try again. You’ll have more knowledge, more experience. Tomorrow, you’ll get back to it, find another way. You have so much at your fingertips to help make this happen.”
They entered another brief period of anti-gravity. Valerie’s hair was around her, her eyes unblinking and dark. “They did you a favour, saying no.”
Naomi’s head jerked back as they fell.
“You’ve had less rejection than most. I’m partially at fault for that, I’ll admit it. You work hard, but my money’s opened doors you never even realised were locked.”
That hurt. But Naomi knew it was the truth.
“This is your first big setback. How are you going to react to it? That’s what’ll show your mettle. Not the failure, but what you do next.”
Naomi’s shame twisted into something different. Here was a woman who had been told no over and over again. Who had been raised in abject poverty in a small, dusty little town in Texas.
Valerie had been knocked up at sixteen by the son of an oil tycoon. He’d stuck by her, much to the surprise of many, and Valerie had access to money that got her into university. Catherine Lovelace had been Valerie’s robotics teacher.
On the first day, Valerie had proclaimed in her white-trash drawl, six months pregnant, that she was going to make spaceships. A few people had exchanged incredulous looks. But Catherine had leaned forward and said, “Yes, you will.”
They fell again, and Valerie grabbed Naomi’s hand in a vice-like grip.
“Success will never be linear. Success is illusive, it’s a mirage. What you learn, what you do, how you react—that’s what matters. Are you actually sad about the decision, or are you angry that they turned you down?”
Naomi’s lips pressed together. She was angry. Yes, she’d been young, yes, others had more experience, but she had proved herself. “I’m mad at myself, and I’m mad at them. I want to prove them wrong.”
“Good. Don’t be afraid of your rage. It doesn’t have to be weakness. It’ll make you do anything. Get angry. Channel it.”
As they rose again, Valerie’s chin turned up in a silent dare.
Naomi rose and fell as gravity took and released its hold. She spread her arms wide, far above the ground, and promised she wouldn’t let failure define her. She would try again in two years. And again two years after that.
She’d try until they couldn’t say no.
CHAPTER NINE
46 Days After Launch
80 Days to Mars
203 Days to Cavendish
Naomi slept in too long and was late to her physical with Hart.
She cursed, jumping into her coveralls, chewing a couple of vanilla-ish nutriblocks on her way to the med bay, her stomach still protesting as she struggled to wake up. Her circadian rhythms had been hopeless since they’d taken off.
Naomi was the last of the women to submit to Hart’s pokes, prods, and ministrations. She’d delayed the inevitable. She made her way to the opposite side of the ring from her lab and sleeping quarters.
Hart called for her to come in when she knocked. She had a stylus stuck behind her ear and was frowning at something on her tablet. Naomi perched on the spare chair, crossing her ankles, shoulders hunched. The room was the same size as Naomi’s lab, and nearly as crowded. A covered autodoc centre in the corner looked eerily similar to the cryopods down in the Crypt. It’d run scans, perform minor procedures, and was their backup in case Hart herself became ill. She did some initial tests, looking in Naomi’s eyes with a light, down her throat, taking her pulse. More for the familiarity than anything else.
“Sorry I’m late. Overslept,” Naomi said.
“You seem nervous, Lovelace,” Hart said.
“I’m fine.”
“Nausea still troubling you?” Hart asked, eyeing her critically. “You’ve lost weight, and you were on the slim side to start with.”
“It comes and goes. Stress and boring chow don’t help.” She couldn’t quite meet Hart’s eyes.
“Here you go,” Hart said, passing her an empty cup.
Hart put it in the tray to the right of the autodoc, selecting a few commands on the screen. “So are you planning on telling me or will we let the machine do that for you?”
Naomi stood stiff, arms wrapped tight around her torso. She sucked in a breath. “I… I don’t know for sure.”
Hart gave her a look. “I’m not surprising you, though, am I?”
Naomi clicked her tongue against the back of her teeth, then shook her head. “How long have you suspected?”
Hart rested a hip against the glass of the autodoc. “About three weeks in, when you were still having trouble keeping food down. Plenty of other signs. That cramp in your foot at dinner two weeks ago. Stiffness in your lower back. Rather moody, too, no offense.”
Naomi grimaced. “Do the others know?”
“Hard to say with Lebedeva—can’t tell what she thinks about breakfast, much less anything else. But I don’t think so. Jerrie hasn’t said anything to me. Black? Another who knows.”
Naomi swallowed.
“Let’s see if we’re right, shall we?” Hart drew up the results. Naomi leaned forward.
Human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG): Present
“Shit.” Naomi exhaled the word. The cover of the autodoc slid open and she sat on the white, ergonomic cushions, her legs swinging. She hunched over her stomach.
“How long?” Hart asked.
“Sixty-one days.”
An arched brow. “That’s exact.”
“It’s easy enough to pinpoint.”
Hart snorted but, mercifully, didn’t press for more details. She could do the math. The night before they left for quarantine. “Eight weeks is more than early enough for a scan.”