Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

After the public affairs officer dismissed them, Astrid followed Ara down the corridors and into the Space Museum one floor down, with Eliot racing after them. They headed through the exhibitions, barely seeing them. A tour guide was leading a group of pensioners past an exhibit that featured Edwardian spacesuits. The three of them rushed past into the neighbouring hall, the one with the machine that simulated flight for small children.

‘Wait!’ Eliot shouted. ‘Slow down!’ But Ara wasn’t listening; she gathered speed, ducking around glass display cases. Astrid followed her as she rushed around the base of a decommissioned space shuttle, almost toppling visitors. So strange, to see these members of the public. Uniformed schoolchildren, pregnant women pushing prams.

‘Where are you going?’ Astrid shouted, taking care not to slip on the linoleum.

‘Somewhere great!’ Ara shouted over her shoulder. Astrid followed past the museum’s gift shop, up spiralling flights of stairs, their laughter crashing off the marble walls.

‘Come back,’ Eliot said, just before he disappeared behind another tour group.

Astrid chased Ara through a deserted fire exit and out into the blinding daylight. She didn’t realize that they’d escaped until they had.

‘This?’ she asked.

Ara stopped running and leant on her knees to catch her breath. As Astrid’s vision cleared, she gazed around. Ara had led her to the children’s playground at the back of the building. The wooden benches were still wet from the morning’s rain, the ice cream stall shuttered, play-horses sunk into the AstroTurf, heads reared as if drowning.

‘This,’ said Ara, and pointed past the low wall of the playground and beyond the road to the wind-whipped river. She said it as if she was giving it to Astrid. ‘We have an hour. Let’s go for a walk. Let’s take what we can.’

‘But…’ Astrid hesitated. ‘What about Eliot?’

‘He’ll find us.’

‘We should probably stay indoors.’ Astrid glanced back through the fire door at the darkened stairwell.

‘Astrid, don’t you want to do everything you never did before? Or at least one thing?’

Astrid’s arms were prickling with goosebumps.

She wanted to go.

She knew what she should do. She should go back into the building and wait for the other astronauts to arrive. She should rejoin her sister and Poppy and Eliot and plant her sapling…

‘Astrid?’

…and yet, she had only one life. And she was tormented by how lovely the sky was, with the sun spearing through the clouds, and the pavements glittering.

How would she explain it to the Astronaut Office when she returned? Or to herself an hour later? Or in the years that would follow? How would she explain the mistake she was about to make?

Ara vaulted the fence on the other side of the playground and strode into the road, forcing two drivers to swerve, both cursing out of their windows. Astrid had a second, as another car passed, to choose between staying or following. She glanced back at the Interplanetary Society. The unlit corridor was like a dark maw, leading to a life away from everyone she loved. And, for one wild minute, she didn’t want it at all.

She had sacrificed her whole childhood on the altar of diligence and obedience and hard work. So couldn’t she steal back this day? This one hour, and keep it for herself?

Astrid chose her friend. She darted in front of a red bus as the lights changed and raced after her.

They grabbed each other’s hands, hysterical with delight, marooned on a traffic island amongst the cars. This was the most they had seen of the world in over a week, and the sounds were an assault on her, the roar of tyres on tarmac like waves smashing rocks, her pulse a snare drum.

The green man lit up. Ara dashed across the road and into a throng of people.

‘We have an hour,’ Astrid reminded Ara as they ran.

The rain had stopped and the wet pavements sparkled in the sunlight. Astrid and Ara ran by the Thames, deliriously free. Months of sprinting across the grounds at Dalton meant that they were at their peak of physical fitness, barely out of breath as the white stuccoed houses flashed past, as Tate Britain appeared and then disappeared behind them. They headed into throngs of tourists in plastic-bag ponchos, photographing Big Ben, the Palace of Westminster, protesters gathered on Parliament Square.

They could see everything when they reached the bridge. The low buildings to their right, clustered around the British Interplanetary Society, then on their left was the London eye, the South Bank, the Shard like a broken tooth in the distance.

Amongst the crowd, a woman in harem pants was blowing giant bubbles with two sticks. Astrid watched as rainbows slid across them, and little children bounced with delight at the sight of their own warped reflections. The bubbles were so big that, when they burst, they made a splash on the ground.

‘Why do you think the bubbles are so interesting?’ Astrid asked.