Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

ON THE MORNING OF the launch, Astrid opened her eyes to an empty dormitory, the beds abandoned, the cool sunlight pouring through the window. She was surprised that Maggie wasn’t there, as she usually was, to wake them. Most mornings Astrid leapt out of bed at first bell, and was brushing her teeth in the sink by the time Maggie poked her blonde head around the door to wake the other girls. Astrid sometimes suspected that Poppy and Ara feigned sleep just long enough to feel the back of Maggie’s hand brush the hair from their brows.

The night before, the doctors had given Astrid half a dose of valium to stop her from shaking. She had cried so much that, even after the tears dried up, her throat still contracted with rhythmic little hics. The pills had dragged her so deep down into sleep that she missed the first and second bell, but Maggie had not come in to wake her.

Across the dormitory, Ara’s crumpled duvet was bundled up as if she was hiding under it and if Astrid looked hard enough she could make herself see it rise and fall. She kept remembering that Ara was never coming back. Everything about her was still there: her socks scrunched by the foot of her bed, the air perfused with the smell of jasmine oil and incense, a smudged handprint on the window where she had thrown it open. She couldn’t stay in that room any longer; her eyes kept darting to the door in the vain expectation that Ara might burst through. So Astrid climbed out of bed, pulled on a cardigan and went to sit on the landing outside.

There was so little left to prove what had happened the day before. The bruises forming where her knees had smacked pavement, the soreness and exhaustion that follows a night spent crying, the ache of despair.

‘They’re at breakfast already,’ came a voice. Astrid looked up and was surprised to see Solomon Sheppard, their commander, in civilian clothing, moonfaced from sleep, his afro slightly misshapen.

‘Good morning, sir.’

‘No, don’t get up.’ He came up the stairs and stood on the landing in a way that cast a long shadow over her. ‘I was just out there.’ He gestured towards the courtyard.

‘Really, why?’

‘I was…’ He hesitated for a moment, ‘praying.’

‘Oh…’ Astrid looked down, suddenly embarrassed about asking such a private question. ‘I didn’t know you were a—’

‘Sometimes I am. Days like today.’ He paused, glanced away too and then said, ‘I hope you’re feeling better.’

‘Kind of… yesterday was… a nightmare…’ Astrid exhaled heavily, but then remembered herself. ‘I am feeling better, though. Ready for the mission. Of course.’

Sheppard was tall and thin, with skin darker than her father’s but not as deeply lined. Astrid had always liked the soft baritone of his voice, and the way he rarely smiled with his straight white teeth, as if he was keeping them a secret. He had been the youngest man – at twenty-six – to land on Mars, and for the first time it occurred to Astrid that perhaps he was still young. She had only been eleven back then, and so when she’d seen his face on the news he’d seemed astronomically old, just another adult, like her parents.

‘And today?’ he asked. ‘Underneath it. Don’t you feel just a little bit—’

‘Excited?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I always do. Before a launch. Especially the first couple of times. I’d be so excited I couldn’t sit still. As if I was a kid again and it was the night before my birthday.’ He laughed at himself.

‘I keep forgetting it’s real, actually. Then I remember and feel glad, but whenever I feel glad, I also feel guilty that I get to go and she…’ They fell silent. On her ankle was the friendship bracelet that Ara had woven for her one Christmas when she had no money for a ‘proper gift’. It used to have three tiny silver bells on it, so that ‘you can have music wherever you go’, Ara had laughed, and then rattled the bracelet on her own ankle, ‘and so you’ll always know where I am.’ Over time the bells had come loose and dropped off, each in turn. The pain of it was crushing and fresh every time Astrid thought about it. She’d thought they would all grow old together.

She only realized she was crying again when Solomon looked at her in alarm.

‘I’m sorry,’ Astrid said, her face burning with shame. She jumped up and tried to duck back into her room, but he put his hand on her shoulder and for just a moment they both froze in surprise.

‘Don’t be sorry,’ he said. A fresh wave of tears from Astrid. He did something she’d never seen him do before. He leant forward and hugged her. And, for half a minute, when Astrid buried her face into his shoulder, she forgot who he was. Her commander. Her once and future teacher. Forgot that she was still in her pyjamas, her feet bare, hair still in the fat cornrows she had tied them in the night before. She liked the way he smelt, distantly, of aftershave. Sandalwood and bergamot.

‘I should go,’ she said suddenly, leaping back.

‘Of course.’ He stepped away. Astrid turned and fled down the stairs.