Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

THERE HAD BEEN NO uncertainty in this arrival. No failed viva or imperfect test score, no lost tournament, not one moment during selection when Harry had questioned if he was talented enough, hard-working enough, deserving enough to make the Beta. He had never looked around at the others and asked, Why me? Why not? It had been his will to succeed, and so he had succeeded. The skill of his hands and the unwavering force of his determination had propelled him towards this moment. The afternoon after the launch, the first day on the ship.

Dinner that night tasted like triumph.

They had docked their shuttle with the Damocles at around 4 p.m. GMT and gathered five hours later in the kitchen for a celebratory meal. The lights in the corridors and common rooms were set to cycle through twelve hours of light and dark, so by the time Harry had showered and headed to the kitchen, the lamps were dim and tinted a dusky indigo. The door slid open. Harry saw that everyone was already gathered in their flight suits. Commander Sheppard at the head of the oval table, Fae and Igor either side of him.

Harry smiled at their commander. His nerves were still jangling from the flight earlier. The engine burn that took the Damocles from its orbit above London, around the globe and out on an interstellar trajectory that led first to Mars, where they would meet Cai, and finally to Terra-Two. Nothing had prepared him for the sight of the entire Earth unspooling below as they dived beneath its perimeter, beneath the jagged summits of mountain ranges, smothered in clouds, below desert and ocean, day then night then day again, faster and faster until they reached escape velocity. Harry had actually yelled in excitement as the Earth sped away, the black expanse of space enveloping them, stars brighter than they had ever been. And now in the kitchen, all of their faces were bathed in the azure glow of their planet, which hung like a pendulum in the window. Every time he glanced at it, it was smaller.

Juno was leafing through the week’s itinerary. Poppy sat on the counter kicking her heels up and chatting happily to Igor Bovarin in Russian.

‘Say hello.’ Poppy nodded at the camera Eliot was holding and then turned to Harry. Harry saw his own eyes reflected in the black lens.

‘You’re filming me?’ he asked, suddenly wary of his hair, which was still damp from his shower and dripping down the back of his flight suit. He ran his hands through it.

‘I will be,’ Eliot said.

‘I thought Poppy was in charge of comms,’ Harry said.

‘It’s a two-person job, Harry.’ Poppy rolled her eyes. ‘I can’t hold the camera and present.’

‘Right.’ Harry nodded at Eliot, who was standing close behind him.

Although he was not actively retching, Eliot still looked a little green, and Harry was sure he could smell the bitter scent of bile on his clothes. He noted the ambiguous brown stains around the collar of his uniform, emitting an odour that never failed to repulse. Harry had not vomited involuntarily his entire life, not after the Leavers’ Ball, when he and his friends finished off a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, not during simulated launches, not on the human centrifuge, where he and his classmates were whirled around its fifty-foot arm in order to experience 3, then 4g. The other astronaut candidates would pale with nausea and beg the technicians to stop, but Harry had always roared ‘more,’ the sensation of speed nothing but exhilarating.

Some people were born for this life.

Even now, the artificial gravity on the ship felt as familiar to him as the cockpit of a shuttle, and he took to it as if he had lived amongst the stars his entire life. Fazed by nothing; not the absolute blackness of space, nor the constant ambient noise of the ship, because he was surely right for this voyage. He took his place beside the other astronauts at the table.

‘You’re just in time.’ Commander Sheppard beamed. ‘We go live in ten minutes. Better get your camera face ready.’

The meal was rehydrated beef steak and green vegetables they had brought with them on the shuttle. It reminded Harry of Sunday lunches at Dalton, but he had eaten nothing all day and it was all he could do not to shovel the food into his mouth with grateful abandon. Halfway through the meal, Igor passed around little plastic cups of sparkling white wine and held one above his head to toast.