Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

Temi Oh DO YOU DREAM OF TERRA-TWO?

This book is dedicated to my Grandmother

and my Grand Mother

And – lovingly, loyally, gratefully –

to Benedict Douglas-Scott

THE CREW OF THE DAMOCLES

Senior Astronauts

Commander Solomon Sheppard – Commander and Pilot

Igor Bovarin – Flight Engineer

Dr Margret ‘Maggie’ Millburrow – Flight Surgeon

Dr Cai Tsang – Botanist and Hydroponics Expert

The Beta

Harrison ‘Harry’ Bellgrave – Pilot/Commander-in-Training

Poppy Lane – Head of Communications/In-flight Correspondent

Juno Juma – Trainee Medical Officer

Astrid Juma – Junior Astrobiologist

Eliot Liston – Junior Flight Engineer

Ara Shah – Junior Botanist

Other

Jesse Solloway – First Alternate Beta

Dr Friederike ‘Fae’ Golinsky – Lead medical officer

PART ONE

‘We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for the journey and waved goodbye and “slipped the surly bonds of Earth” to “touch the face of God”.’

Peggy Noonan for Ronald Reagan

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It is just like Earth, Terra-Two. It has turned in silence for millennia on the same spiralled arm of the galaxy. It is enveloped in temperate air, oxygen, nitrogen, noble gases, dark oceans licking empty shores. It’s luxuriant with life. Trees burst from the dirt. Electric-blue fish slalom through coral reefs and the wind is heavy with spores that germinate in shadows. Wild, everything, the land and the flowers.

But there is nobody on it.

When we ask ‘Why?’, they say ‘Because we haven’t sent anyone yet’, although really they’re saying, ‘Because there is nobody else out there. Not on any of the worlds.’ We are the only thinking heads in the universe.

We were taught that, for a while, the universe existed and not one person knew. Stars exploded, nebulae collapsed, atoms crashed together and formed planets, then quiet oceans where single-celled organisms swallowed light and learned to flourish, then more complex life, plants, then creatures dragged their heavy bodies from primordial seas, shook off fins, feathers, opened eyes, but not one of them was capable of awe. Not one of them wondered at the lines on their palm and asked ‘How?’, or shouted at the stars as we did – for a time – searching for fellow travellers.

We know now that consciousness is rare. It’s wretched and magnificent and lonely. It allowed humans to conquer the empty moon, the mountains of Mars, then Europa, Callisto and the rings of Saturn.