But these changes made James’s condition all the more conspicuous. He was getting better, but slowly. Very slowly. He still limped. His eye was healing—the bandage was now just a single strip of gauze—but his eyesight was largely unchanged.
It was most striking when we were all together in the galley. It didn’t happen that often, but every few days the whole group would end up in the same room, eating or drinking coffee under the dusty yellow lights. One day I walked into the room and everyone was sitting at the table. James, Amelia, and Simon were talking and laughing about a drill they’d done in Candidate Group. They’d had to crawl in their suits through a pitch-black module full of obstacles to find and fix an unidentified gas leak, and they’d failed three times. When they finally completed the challenge successfully their drill supervisor had chewed them out for how long it took them. It was only later they’d found out that no team had ever completed the drill successfully, even with unlimited tries.
I made myself coffee and stood at the counter. I had my mission binder with me and I half read, half listened. After a few minutes James stood up. You should go through the launch sequences, he said.
I sat and led the group through the plans in my binder and he made more coffee. After a while he began to shift his weight on his feet and brought two fingers to his eye. Amelia was talking; she was going through the plan for capture when Endurance reached Inquiry. But James saw me watching him. He let his hand drop from his eye, and he nodded as if to say, I’m okay. I stood up so he could sit back down at the table but he stayed where he was.
* * *
—
At night he was restless in the bed next to me, and sometimes I got up—afraid I was disturbing his sleep—and made my way through the blue-tinted corridors to my own bunk.
One early morning when I slept alone in my bunk, I woke to see him sitting at the foot of the bed. I sat up. The room was still dark; silt pattered at the porthole. What’s wrong?
Everything’s going well, he said. Endurance will be ready sooner than we thought.
I wrapped my arms around him. You’ll be ready too.
He touched his head to mine and the wild scent of his skin and hair mixed with the antiseptic smell of his dressed eye. You know I can’t go, he said.
You can.
He took my face in his hands and looked at me. June.
I’m not leaving on a two-year mission without you, I said and my voice cracked.
His fingers were warm and firm against my cheeks. Let’s say things we already know. The silt tapped harder outside. I’m not going. But you are.
52
Time sped up and I tried to slow it down. In my mind I made bargains with it, asked it, cajoled it. But it didn’t stop moving forward. I paid attention to the light outside the porthole, how it changed over the course of each day. Noticed how the woolly light in the morning turned brilliant at midday, attended to the moment when the jewel colors of twilight transformed into the murky, silt-covered shadows of night. I paid attention to my body, its weight and strength, its aches and pains, its hunger, thirst, and fatigue. I noticed my own shifting moods, how I felt different from one day to the next and from morning to afternoon to night.
About one thing I felt the same any time of day—the fuel cell. It was complete; a team of engineers took over to install the stacks inside Endurance. But a single cell still sat in the workshop—the prototype that had been built by James and me, destroyed, put back together by James, and then rebuilt again.
The day before the launch I stood at the table in the workshop. The cell’s open casing gleamed; its red and white connectors were vivid in the low light. I heard my uncle’s voice in my head: What does it do? I laid my hands on top of it, and in my mind I made it work. I slowed time down and watched its chemical reactions and electrical connections in slow motion; I sped time up and watched the effects of heat and cold and air pressure and vibration over the course of days, months, and years.
It wasn’t going to degrade with vibration like the original fuel cell had—the flexible internal components James and I had developed had solved that problem. There was always the possibility of factors we hadn’t accounted for, a difficulty we hadn’t foreseen. But the stacks that housed the cells were open and it would be possible for my crew to respond to unforeseen challenges, to adapt or modify the cell en route if we had to.
I sat there for a while, thinking, pushing my mind forward and backward in time, listening to the tap of silt outside and the click of the 3D printers inside. Then I walked to the airlock leading to the cargo bay and pulled on a suit. At the launch pad workers in suits gathered around the exterior of Endurance and its rocket, but the cabin was empty. The space was narrower now that it was packed with equipment but everything in it gleamed. I ran my hand over the control panel and remembered when my uncle had taken all of us—my aunt and cousin and me—to see Inquiry when it was being built. He went over the whole explorer with us, explaining every design choice and specification. John was quickly bored and went to go find the vending machine outside my uncle’s lab, and when we went into the cabin my aunt sat in one of the jump seats and only half attended to what my uncle said.
I remember the air smelled strongly of rubber sealant and the vents hummed softly. I moved around the cabin slowly and quietly. When my uncle opened up panels to show me the equipment inside, I pushed in close. I touched everything. I tried to memorize every detail.
* * *
—
On the morning of the launch I got up from the warmth of James’s bed and the air was cool against my bare skin. The room was filled with a soft gloom and the smell of salt and wool and sleep. I opened the airlock and then stood in the doorway looking at James. He was curled on his side with the covers wrapped around him, his hair a dark tangle on the pillow. His face was boyish, his forehead smooth and his cheeks pink. I tried to memorize the shapes of him. The hump of his back under the blanket, the straight lines of his chin and forehead and hands, and the circles of his hair.
I showered, dressed in my mission jumpsuit, and walked slowly back to my bunk. I felt the minutes before the launch fall away like snow, or silt. I slowed my steps even more because when I reached my bunk it would be time to go. Inside the room my suit was laid out on the bed, bright white against the gray blanket. Its patches were straight and its fabric smooth. James stood at the porthole looking at the growing pink light of dawn.
I checked your seals, he said.
He lifted the suit up and I stepped into it backward, and he held the neck ring straight so I wouldn’t scrape my face when I pushed my head through. Next he worked his hands into the sleeves of the suit to pull my arms out and tugged my body left and right as he secured the fabric tight across my stomach and chest, tying the closures at my ankles, elbows, and wrists.
He took his hands away and I put on my gloves, picked up my helmet. Inside my suit there seemed a great barrier between me and the room and the ordinary things in it. The uneven stack of books and papers on the floor near my feet, the soft covers on the bed, the round porthole with silt swirling outside it.
Then his hands were back, flat and firm and still on my shoulders. I flexed my fingers in my gloves. I put my helmet on, locked it, and listened to the pop and suck of its seal.
53
At minus sixty-five minutes I strap myself into my seat. I begin my prelaunch checklist and call off tasks as I complete them to Amelia and Simon and Rachel, who are close enough to touch. Their bodies are large in their suits, their heads small. The fuel and oxidizer turbo pumps begin to whine as I finish my list. There is a strong smell of rocket fuel, mixed with rubber sealant and recycled air. Minus five minutes is announced and I check my helmet’s seal. At one minute to launch the whine grows; I feel a shuddering vibration through my chest and jaw.
A roar comes from below us and the rocket sways. My breath is hot and loud inside my
helmet but my hands are steady as I flip a switch to check the flow of oxygen. The rocket supports fall away and the roar grows; a second passes, two seconds, and then—we leap into the air. My body slams against my seat; my visor fogs. The second-stage rockets fire and my chest presses hard against my restraints. We separate from the rocket, and as it falls away its reflection passes across my crew’s visors, briefly changing them from black to white. The air turns silent, cool. My body lightens in my seat, and things float by: dust, bits of fabric, small bolts.
The communications feed crackles and fizzes and I wait for a human voice on the other end of the line. Outside the porthole the Pink Planet isn’t visible; there is only an expanse of deep black and it seems to unfold, and unfold, dark and infinite. More dust floats by, hundreds of white pinpricks that match the explosion of stars outside.
The feed crackles on and on.
And on and on.
Then—a voice in my ear, soft and low, slightly tinny. It’s James’s voice; he is saying my name, June. With the sound the unfolding expanse collapses. Now it’s no more than the width of a thread. I say his name too and undo my restraints and let myself float free.
For Bennett and Sullivan
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Books have no life without readers and I’m deeply grateful for the incredible early readers of this novel: My agent Brettne Bloom, who knows how I feel about her, and my wonderful editor Andrea Walker. I am blessed with their intelligence and insight.
Thank you also to my longtime writing partners, Lindsey Lee Johnson, Kevinne Moran, and Rita Michelle Pogue. Nine years running, they are always right. Thanks to Danya Bush, who read more permutations of June and James than anyone else. And to my dad David Johnson, who read early drafts and lent his sharp editorial eye.
In preparation to write this novel I read a lot about living in space and am particularly indebted to two memoirs: Diary of a Cosmonaut: 211 Days in Space by Valentin Lebedev and Endurance: My Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery by Scott Kelly. I could not have written this book without Space Camp and the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, where I gained hands-on experience with the equipment and technology I describe in this book. A special thank you to Erin “Clover” Shay and the members of Pioneer Team.
Thank you also to: Everyone at Random House, most especially Emma Caruso, who is always behind the scenes getting things done. Everyone at Transworld, including my U.K. editor Jane Lawson and Alice Youell. Everyone at The Book Group, with extra gratitude to Hallie Schaeffer, who was a perceptive early reader. Jenny Meyer and Heidi Gall at Jenny Meyer Literary. Jason Richman and Nora Henrie at United Talent Agency.
Corporeal Writing, Lidia Yuknavitch, and Domi Shoemaker. Daniel Torday, Courtney Sullivan, Eowyn Ivey, and Danya Kukafka. Grass Roots Books and Music, The Book Bin, and the Corvallis Public Library. Everyone at Tried and True Coffee.
Perpetual gratitude to:
My husband, Kevin Day, who always supports me, and who helped me keep writing even in the midst of a pandemic. My children, Bennett and Sullivan. Our talented caregiver Camille Carrington. And of course my amazing mom, Jean Johnson.
BY KATE HOPE DAY
If, Then
In the Quick
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kate Hope Day is the author of If, Then. She holds a BA from Bryn Mawr College and a PhD in English from the University of Pittsburgh. She was an associate producer at HBO. She lives in Oregon with her husband and their two children.
katehopeday.com
Facebook.com/katehopeday
Twitter: @katehopeday
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