Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

‘Will it?’ Harry asked. ‘They chose us because they think we’re brave. Chose me to be the type of commander who can stare down death, leap in front of it to save my crew. Go down with the ship. Stay calm. But, I think… maybe I was so good at it because I still thought that all of this was a game.

‘Do you remember a question they used to ask us in the psych tests back at Dalton? There was this one they asked me once: “What would you die for?” I said something like “Great Britain” or “freedom”. But you know what this whole experience has taught me? If they asked me again, “What would you die for?” Willingly die for? I’d probably say “nothing at all”.’

Chapter 50 ELIOT

^16.02.13

TEMPERATURE: 2°C

O₂: 75.5% SEA LEVEL

WEEKS UNTIL RESCUE: 7

WHEN ELIOT AWOKE IT was the middle of the night, and the sound of his name echoed in the air like the final vibrations of a gong. His body ached with cold and the dark world had taken on a shimmery underwater quality.

He almost fell out of bed; his body was so clumsy and numb that he couldn’t feel his fingers or toes and his lips tingled. They’d been locked in the infirmary for a week by that point. Fae had sealed the door, but there wasn’t a door on this ship that Eliot could not open. He checked through the window to make sure there was no one in the corridor, then fumbled along the edge for the locking mechanism and twisted a paperclip in, a trick he’d performed before to save Astrid and Juno on the bridge. He pulled the latch and it slid right open to the corridor, lit in the deep blue of an artificial midnight.

‘Eliot.’ There it was again, a woman’s voice. He froze and looked around, expecting to find Fae standing behind him, but no one was in the corridor and the cabin doors of all the senior crew were closed.

‘Eliot!’ It was louder that time, with a shrill panicked edge. He looked around in alarm.

‘Who is it?’ he said to the empty corridor. But no reply came.

He climbed through the next hatch and emerged on the lower deck, where most of the lights were off and the hum and whirr of machinery was the loudest. Eliot swallowed, noticing that his forearms were quilled with goosebumps. The games room was empty. After Europa, none of them wanted to spend much time there anymore.

The sound of banging made him start. It was echoing up the long hall just as it had that day when Harry locked Jesse in the airlock. ‘Help!’ someone screamed.

It was coming from the opposite direction to the airlock, behind the door that led to the greenhouse. Eliot ran along the corridor, opened the hatch to the bridge and entered. It was dank as a cave, the sound of his footsteps echoing all around. Broken glass crunched under his feet.

Further ahead, someone was splashing in the reservoir – the deep pond where the ship’s water was stored. As he rushed there, he noticed the chemical smell of the agents they used to clean it. Someone was thrashing inside it, screaming ‘Help me!’, head surging up, then bobbing back under floes of blue ice that clinked against the sides of the pool.

Eliot whipped passed the trees and towards the water. ‘Astrid?’

Who in the Beta could not swim?

He didn’t have time to slow before he approached the reservoir, so he hit the water running. The ice on the surface was sharp against the soles of his feet, but that pain was nothing compared to the shock of the frozen water as it clamped like jaws around him.

It was only waist-deep, but the extreme cold tore through his body and his muscles seized. It was all he could do not to scream at the pain of it. Someone exploded to the surface again with a cry of horror, the water around her churned to foam from her panicked flailing.

Ara.

Her eyes were large and flashing silver with terror. He reached out his hand to grab her, buried his clumsy fingers into the folds of her vest, grabbed her waist and hauled her into his arms.

‘I’ve got you,’ he told her, pulling her close to him, pulling her head out of the water and wiping her long dark hair from her eyes. ‘I’ve got you.’

She couldn’t speak yet because she was coughing water up from her lungs.

‘You came from outside, didn’t you?’ Eliot glanced up at the vault of stars above the greenhouse. ‘I knew there was someone outside.’

What was better than the weight of her in his arms? Her fingers were thin, longer than he remembered. He had forgotten so many details. The jasmine smell of her, the baby hairs that haloed her forehead and dusted the backs of her cheekbones, the eczema on her slender wrists and around her ears. Her legs, the birthmark the shape of Peru high up on her inner thigh. He’d forgotten other things too, like how big and dark her eyes were, like singularities; they seemed to suck all the light out of the room. His panic turned, then, to elation. It was possible to save her. He had saved her.

Chapter 51 ELIOT

^12.05.12