Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

The library was a cathedral of books, shelves of them stretching into dusty infinity. Juno gasped at the exquisitely detailed painting of the solar system on the vaulted ceiling. Space; black as crude oil and awash with stars.

Nine flight suits were folded on one of the tables. ‘Do you want us to get changed now?’ Ara asked the officer. But before the woman could reply her phone buzzed, and she pulled it out of her pocket in a reflex-quick action.

Sorry, I need to take this, she mouthed, and left the room.

‘What happens if Harry isn’t cleared to fly tomorrow?’ Noah asked, as Poppy sank down into one of the reading chairs.

‘They’ll find – whatshisname? – his replacement from the backup crew,’ Ara said.

‘But that probably won’t happen,’ Juno insisted. ‘They’ll infuse him with synthetic white blood cells and he’ll fight off any infection extra fast. He’ll be completely fine by tonight. Probably.’

They were silent for a while, gazing at the library’s oak door, waiting for it to open again. But after a few minutes, Juno gave in to her curiosity and began to wander around the library, examining the different publications while they waited for the public affairs officer to return. Heading down aisles of identically bound astronomical journals, she ran her hands along the sun-bleached spines of familiar volumes on engineering and space physiology. It was reminiscent of Dalton’s library, except that on top of almost every shelf were tiny models of defunct space shuttles, their hulls gathering dust.

‘That one’s Daedalus,’ Noah said, pointing to a model as he appeared at her elbow. The strange unmanned craft was unlike any other, surrounded by engine bells that looked like a bundle of silver billiard balls all around its outer hull. It was the interstellar spacecraft that confirmed the existence of Terra-Two and broadcast pictures of it back to Earth.

‘I know,’ she said and smiled at him, her breath condensing on the glass as she stared at the model.

‘You’ll never believe this. Come look,’ Poppy called. She was waving a shiny issue of Vanity Fair she’d found amongst the magazines piled on the rack.

‘What?’ everyone turned to her, gathered round.

‘We’re in it,’ Poppy said.

‘Stop waving it around and keep still,’ Ara said.

When Juno leant over her shoulder she caught sight of the headline: MEET THE BETA: THE YOUNG ASTRONAUTS ALREADY MAKING HISTORY. Their faces stared out from the cover.

‘I didn’t realize that came out this week,’ said Juno, her stomach sinking. Her sister was already flipping through a copy and Poppy handed her a spare.

Under the special issue’s title were the words 2012: TERRA-TWO COLONIZATION BEGINS. Juno flipped to the in-depth article. The text was spattered with their smiling faces, quotes in bold, pictures of Dalton Aerospace Academy captured in unfamiliar perspectives using a wide-angle lens. There was even a timeline of the selection process – the six and a half years it had taken to arrive at this point.

Harry’s quote in bold: ‘It’s great to fly the flag for Team GB.’ Juno stifled a laugh as she stared at his handsome face, blond hair thrown back from his high forehead. But as she flicked through the thin pages, more memories rose like bile. The long day they’d spent showing the reporter around the space centre, then posing for the photographer out near the launch site.

‘Why is Poppy always in the middle?’ Noah asked.

‘Poppy’s the cover girl,’ Astrid said, and nudged Poppy playfully.

The group photo was a two-page spread. The team posing against a black background that looked like the night sky but was actually a canvas sheet clipped to metal railings erected the previous day. Poppy and Harry were positioned in the centre – as always. Half-moons of digitally whitened teeth waxed inside their mouths. The stylists had twisted Poppy’s straight auburn hair into spectacular 1920s style pin-curls, only to discover that whenever she moved they fell out, which was when they would descend upon her again with hairspray and tongs. Harry was standing a little in front of his crewmates in a way that, on the page, made him appear unnaturally large. The photographer had to keep telling him to move back each time he stepped in front of Poppy or Ara, blocking their faces from view.

Eliot slumped in the margin of the photo. The make-up artists had managed to conceal the tangle of blue veins usually visible around his temples, although the photographer’s attempt to coax a smile from him had yielded only a pained grimace. Juno flipped to the next page to find that he wore the same twisted expression in another photograph, gazing up at an overcast sky, his pewter eyes giving off an aura of terrestrial melancholy.