Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

His nineteenth birthday was fast approaching, and his escape from death had been snatched from him at the final moment. ‘It was amazing that you made it so far in the first place,’ his mother reminded him and – after all – it was not a rejection. Jesse had been assigned to the backup crew. This meant that he had to forgo his final summer to train with the Beta. Only, after graduation the school was like a vacant fairground. Disconcerting, to live out his days in this place that was usually hectic with life. Only fourteen students remained, the crew and the backup crew. Practising with them was a miserable experience. In less than a year, they would all be in space. And Jesse’s job would be over. He felt like a shadow boxer, learning to maintain a shuttle that his feet would never touch. It had all been for nothing, he’d lie awake and consider. Forlorn insomniac nights as the summer vanished. Occasionally, though, Jesse allowed himself to imagine it, leaving Earth and the risk of dying young behind, his name echoing down the halls of history on everyone’s tongue. Neil Armstrong had served as backup commander on the Apollo 8 mission, he remembered. It could still happen. A member of the Beta could be taken ill or fail to comply with the UK Space Agency and he would be called upon. It could still happen, he whispered with clenched fists into the darkness. But then he would catch himself counting the number of days he had left to live, and the old dread would settle like frost.

Chapter 2 POPPY

^{JULY 2011}

^{T-MINUS 10 MONTHS TO LAUNCH}

THE DAY THE NEWS broke she was on her way home from school, and the sun was already setting on her mother’s street. The fences were razor-edged in the last of the light and Poppy savoured it as she walked, letting her fingers clatter along the chain-link. She usually found a reason to stay behind after term ended: something she had forgotten, a second drama rehearsal, Arabic Literature homework, an hour frittered away in her dorm after everyone packed up and left. But this time, there hadn’t been much to do. It was the final half-term before their class graduated, and the high point of the summer when the air was thick and wet as tar.

As always, Poppy had booked the long train home at the last minute, because it was always a miserable affair, leaving behind the sweet-smelling tree-lined avenues near Dalton and returning to her hometown on the outskirts of Liverpool. Part of an urban sprawl that had been condemned by the city’s mayor. She’d taken the coach a thousand times from Lime Street Station, and watched from the window as glass towers slumped down. It took about forty minutes for the bus to wind into ghost-streets of boarded-up shops, Victorian terraces destined to be demolished and post-WWII social housing screaming with spray-paint.

It was downhill from the urine-scented bus shelter to her mother’s flat. Poppy reprimanded herself if she ever turned up her nose at the cracked pavements that spewed dandelions and flattened cigarette butts. This was where she came from. The run-down townhouses carved into flats. Where she grew up.

And these people, the teenagers on children’s bikes who cat-called and whistled when she past, these were her people. For five years, she had believed that when Dalton ended – when she was no longer allowed to lounge in the ivied quad reading books – it was to these streets she would return. To hate this place would be to hate herself, her mother would remind her during every visit home. Her mother vetted Poppy’s speech for a new word or turn of phrase, and teased her mercilessly about it. ‘Ohhh, Mrs Dalton,’ she’d say with a curtsey. ‘Too good for us these days,’ and Poppy would blush and bite her tongue.

On Monday she had discovered that she had been chosen to go to space. In the quiet week after she found out, Poppy walked around in numbed surprise, certain a mistake had been made. It had been a dream to get into Dalton in the first place, to live and study amongst the neat, brilliant students who were unlike her in every way.