Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

‘Don’t spoil it.’ Jesse pressed a finger to his lips.

Juno spooned a couple of ice cubes into her cup and listened to them clatter against the glass. She wasn’t sure what was wrong with her. Jesse’s proximity, next to her at the table, made her stomach twist with excitement. It was as if she’d never seen him before.

Everyone cheered, startling Juno out of her reverie. Igor had entered with two bottles of champagne. Solomon stood up at the head of the table. ‘I would just like to say that I could not have picked a better crew to spend Christmas with. Sure, there have been a few growing pains. But I feel really privileged to watch you all mature, so here’s to the first of many great Christmases.’ He raised his glass, and so did everyone else. They whooped and swallowed down the sweet cold wine. Juno thought that she could feel the bubbles rush straight to her head.

Then they tore through their presents at the same time, in a silence that was punctuated by shouts of surprise or gratitude. Juno’s was a heavy edition of Gray’s Anatomy. She gasped, running her fingers along the bent spine.

‘It’s second-hand,’ said Fae, apologetically. On the first page, Juno found a name written in exquisite handwriting, Fae Golinsky, and the date, thirty years ago. In the margin next to the contents page, she had practised writing her name again and again, with the title she’d studied for. ‘DOCTOR Friederike Golinsky’, ‘DOCTOR Friederike Golinsky’, she’d scribbled over and over, and Juno imagined a time she had been hunched over her books, Juno’s age, in medical school.

‘Thank you…’ she said in breathless surprise, and Fae’s lips tightened into something like a smile.

There were other lovely gifts too. Juno knew that Poppy had given Harry a scarf. Cai had given Jesse a couple of tiny paper bags of seeds. ‘You can have a plot, only a metre or two, I cleared one for you. You can grow whatever you like there,’ he’d said brusquely.

Astrid had given Solomon a dream catcher, a delicate, feathered thing she’d bought on holiday once. ‘Now you can dream of Terra as well,’ she told him, and he smiled graciously.

‘Off we go,’ Poppy called out at the end of the meal. Everyone piled out of the room and up the ladder to the greenhouse, where Cai had dimmed the halogen bulbs. The garden had begun to flourish, patches of once sterile ground now covered in bright-green plants, with leaves that seemed to float in the lower gravity. Vines curled up the glass spires, waxy leaves shivering as they passed. Wicker baskets hung along the paths, vivid and lush flowers spilling over the edges.

They followed Jesse and Cai to the centre of the greenhouse, past Cai’s office, to stand before the cleared patch of land where the tallest tree had been planted. A spruce tree. Jesse had covered it in fairy-lights and some of Poppy’s paper snowflakes. Juno looked around at the faces of the crew bathed in the soft light, everyone clutching their champagne and smiling.

At the top of the tree was no plastic star or gaudy angel. Jesse had painted over a bauble with the blue of seas and lime patches of land. Their gaze was drawn up the makeshift Christmas tree to the little replica of one Earth, or another, that floated above it.

Chapter 34 JESSE

^25.12.12

AFTER CHRISTMAS LUNCH JESSE, and the rest of the Beta gathered in the crew module to watch movies. They were halfway through the opening credits of an action film when Juno strode in and pressed the pause button on the monitor screen.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ she said. Harry groaned and folded his arms.

‘If you’re going to demand that we do chores today of all days —’

‘Nothing like that.’ Juno stepped in front of the screen so that her hair buzzed with static.

‘I’ve been thinking for a while, actually, about what we’re going to do when we land. You see, all the training that we’ve received has been focused on the technical aspect of our role as pioneers. Gathering data, finding water sources, building the settlement in preparation for the next set of astronauts. But it occurs to me now that there has been one gaping hole in our education.

‘What kind of society do we want to be? What will our name be? What will our flag look like? What kind of leadership model will we adhere to? Will we have a monarchy, a president? ’

‘A monarchy.’ Harry smiled. ‘I like the sound of that.’

‘King Harry?’ Poppy said, rolling her eyes. ‘Ruler of five people?’

‘It will only be five people at first. Then more will land, and we’ll tell them what’s what. If you’re good you can be a concubine.’

Juno did not look amused.

‘There are laws already. This debate has already been settled by the British Interplanetary Society and the government,’ Jesse said. ‘I mean, as far as I understand it, we’re sort of governed by British laws, conventions and acts of parliament. Like a colony. Like America was.’

‘Because that turned out so well,’ Juno said.