Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

Jesse looked at his untidy bed, at the draped pashminas he had used instead of curtains, the glittering dream catchers, the bamboo wind chimes that only ever sang in the morning when he leapt to his feet or when someone slammed the door. He decided, then, that if he was going to leave, he would take nothing with him.

Chapter 44 ELIOT

^{2 P.M.}

AFTER COMMANDER BOVARIN DISMISSED them from the kitchen, Eliot headed down to the lower deck to pack up the spacesuits the Beta would take with them on the shuttle back to Earth. Their spacewalk that morning seemed like a terribly long time ago, now.

Taking apart his spacesuit, Eliot considered, as he often did, what a marvel of engineering it was; eleven layers of material, ortho-fabric, aluminized mylar, neoprene and stainless steel. If Eliot alone possessed all the skills and equipment, it would take him around two and a half years to build himself one, and would cost him about £9 million.

The ripped and bloodied shell of Commander Sheppard’s old suit was slumped in the corridor outside, and it hurt Eliot to see it.

In the same way, during the spacewalk that morning, he had seen the damage that the service module had sustained with his own eyes. It had been torn like a limb, shot right through the middle by some speeding object, wires and severed piping spilling out like organs, condensation frozen in uneven bubbles of ice all over the blackened metal. The sight of it almost induced a sympathetic ache inside Eliot, and he guessed that Igor had felt the same way too.

The Damocles wasn’t just a machine; it was a work of art. When Eliot looked at diagrams of its engine he saw years of love, the dedication of dozens of minds, the loyal work of a thousand hands.

Igor had told them that they would have to return home, but as soon as Astrid had suggested his plan to the crew – dismantling the service module on the escape shuttle and rewiring it to the Damocles – Eliot was imagining it. How it could be done, which valves to switch, which wires to reroute.

It came as no surprise to him when, almost thirty minutes into his work, he heard someone coming down the hatch, stepping carefully. It was Astrid, still dressed in her flight suit, holding two of Igor’s manuals and a box of tools. When she spotted him she looked up and down the corridor just to make sure they were alone.

‘Hey,’ she said. ‘I need your help.’ She glanced over her shoulder again and then looked at the work that Eliot was doing. ‘Is Igor helping you with that?’

‘I don’t need his help,’ Eliot said. ‘He’s on the control deck.’

‘Good. I need to get into the escape shuttle.’

‘Right now?’ Eliot put down the helmet he was holding.

‘This can’t have been the plan, can it?’ Astrid asked. She looked more like Juno in the half-light. Her eyes were wet, her lashes pearly and sticking together. ‘For us to fail like this?’

‘I don’t know,’ Eliot said.

‘I feel like nothing good can ever happen to me if I let this dream go,’ Astrid said. ‘I don’t want to die like Tessa Dalton, just looking and looking at the stars. I dream about Terra-Two so vividly that this ship sometimes feels like the dream. I can feel the rain, on my face.’ She closed her eyes and Eliot thought he could see it too, the salty drops from Terran clouds rolling down her cheeks. ‘I’d rather die than let go.’

Eliot felt an inkling of it too. But for him it was about the machines. Inside Eliot, there were robots longing to be built, and the only thing more tragic than never using them was never building them. He thought about Igor’s machines, about the most spectacular one of all: the gravity-assist drive. Igor had sacrificed his life for his work, and if they left now it would amount to nothing. Eliot wanted to see how it felt to slingshot around the resplendent rings of Saturn, to soar through interstellar space.

‘My whole life has been about this mission.’ Astrid’s voice was low.

‘Mine too,’ he said.

‘So,’ she said, looking up at him, ‘will you help me to save it? I need to get into the escape shuttle, but Igor has locked me out. I need an engineer-authorized ID badge to get in. And you’re the only one who can help me.’ With his help, the plan could work. They didn’t have to leave Igor, Cai, Sheppard and Fae to die on the Damocles.

‘Don’t you want to see what it’s like?’ she asked. ‘If it was all worth it?’

Eliot said yes because, even after all that had happened, even after watching the crew on Orlando disappear, even after losing the girl he loved, this remained. He needed to know.

Chapter 45 JESSE

^{4 P.M.}