Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

She must have screamed, or shouted, or something, because the next thing she knew the others were standing in the doorway in their pyjamas and jumpers, pale and shocked.

‘He’s dead?’ Jesse said. ‘Poppy—’ they could hear her feet coming up the hall, ‘—don’t look.’ But it was too late, and she let out a wail of despair.

Finally, Fae stepped forward and took charge, pulling the duvet covers up over Commander Sheppard’s head and ushering everyone out.

Juno found herself in Jesse’s arms, barely able to stand in the corridor, sobbing. ‘I’m sorry you had to see that,’ he said, softly, wiping a thumb across the tears in her eyes.

‘I feel like such an idiot,’ she said, swallowing, still shaking.

‘Why?’

‘I didn’t realize until it was too late. It took me by surprise. I keep thinking about what I said to him – I feel so stupid.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I don’t know, I just said the first thing that came into my head. That he was really good with us and really good at his job. I don’t know.’ She swallowed back another sob.

‘Those sound like good things.’ Jesse said. ‘Those were good, kind things to say.’

‘Really?’

‘You know something my mother once told me?’ he said. ‘She was thinking about what it’s like just before you’re born. Babies can hear their mother’s voices, they get distressed, they feel pain, even in their mother’s stomach. They turn towards the light, like all of us. The womb, though, is the only world they have ever known. They can see all of it, the beginning and the end, and of course, they think there is nothing else. Can’t even conceive of it.

‘So, being born, being dragged out into the cold, into the searing lights and all the noise, must feel like dying – like their whole world disappearing along with every single thing they ever knew. Maybe dying is like that too; none of us know what’s out there. But we’ve experienced something a little like it already. Being born was the best thing that ever happened to us. The world is bigger and more beautiful than we ever could have imagined and on the other side of it there were people we’d never met who already love us. They’ve been excited. They’ve been waiting.’

Chapter 48 ASTRID

^15.02.13

TEMPERATURE: 5°C

O₂: 79% SEA LEVEL

WEEKS UNTIL RESCUE: 7

THEY HAD ALLOWED HER to leave the infirmary only once, after the commander died. They held a memorial for him by the airlock, wrapped him in sheets and jettisoned his body into space. It was quick. No one wanted to talk much. ‘Plenus annis abiit, plenus honoribus,’ Poppy said. ‘He is gone from us, full of years and full of honours.’

Afterwards, they gathered in the kitchen, silently counting everything that they had lost. ‘What are we supposed to do now?’ Harry asked. Astrid had never seen him in such a state – unshaven and raking fingers through his greasy hair. ‘With this mission? With what’s left of our fucking lives?’

‘Don’t say that,’ Juno said. She and Jesse sat at the far end of the room, her head in his lap. As their situation grew more dire, the two of them had folded in on themselves, in the eternal conspiracy of lovers.

‘He’s right though,’ Eliot said, lingering by the window as if he was distracted by something outside. ‘You know they’re talking about suspending the Europa Project?’

‘Who?’ Astrid asked.

‘NASA.’ Poppy nodded in confirmation. ‘There were funding cuts after the 2008 recession. They never properly recovered and now, after this…’ She glanced out the window too, as if she could see the station there. ‘It’s pretty much guaranteed to happen.’

Astrid shuddered. ‘Do you think that the Off-World Colonization Project would be suspended if we fail?’

‘Maybe,’ Poppy said.

There had been dissenters in the UK even before their launch. Astrid remembered that a few talk show hosts and columnists had called space academies such as Dalton ‘a travesty’. Astrid had watched a video of a famous human rights activist on a politics programme saying, ‘These children are too young to give their consent. They’re trained from age thirteen, fourteen… brainwashed, essentially. We talk about radicalization, but it is happening right here in these schools.’

‘Crew.’ Igor entered the kitchen, looming large in the doorway, Fae behind him.

‘Commander Bovarin.’ Jesse looked up and nodded in acknowledgement.