Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

‘Get back.’ Harry was gaining speed behind him. ‘We don’t need you getting in the way right now.’

‘You take the upper deck,’ Jesse yelled without slowing, as he dashed barefoot across the greenhouse, ‘I’ll go down.’

Jesse lunged through the hatch and onto the lower deck, landing so hard that the bones in his shins rattled, before running past the rooms in which she was unlikely to be hiding; the cargo bay and the equipment locker. The sound of the alarm squealing bored into his temples like a drill, and Jesse gritted his teeth in irritation. He wondered how it was possible for Juno to ignore such a racket. And then it occurred to him that wherever Juno was, she probably couldn’t hear the alarm. ‘Where?’ he said out loud over the noise.

He knew that Juno had found Astrid, earlier that day, crouched like a mouse in the warmth of the engine room. It seemed likely that the siren was less audible there, but Jesse could not picture Juno herself seeking out solitude amongst the dim light of Igor’s devices.

His watch said he had two and a half minutes left, and so he went back on himself around the lower deck. Back up to the middle deck, where the warning lights reflected manically off the walls in a way that made his head spin. As he ran he heard the pounding of Harry’s bare feet behind his.

Back into the greenhouse. At the opposite end, on the far side from the radiation shelter, was a tiny module called the Atlas. Jesse headed towards it in one last search for the missing crew member. When the hatch slid open, and he stepped in, Jesse found her. Juno was curled up on one of the chairs, and Earth was large in the window. It hung above them in a way that gave Jesse the unsettling sensation of falling. But for a moment his fear vanished, and he was transfixed. He could see the Antarctic, South Africa and the Southern Lights, iridescent curtains of red and green light rising like steam off the hot bubble of the atmosphere. He had never seen them before.

As the doors closed behind him, the sound of the alarm disappeared like water sucked out of a drain. Jesse leant over to wake Juno, but paused. Her frizzy hair wafted with static electricity, her sleeping face eerily lit by the Aurora Australis. Jesse remembered that he had seen her the night before the launch. Emerging like a shadow from a briar, wearing a thin bathrobe, which, in the dim light, made her look like a visitation. The soft edge of a breast delightfully visible. The cord of her robe cinched tightly around her waist. It was an image that lingered with him.

Jesse Solloway, she’d mouthed. It had been hard to miss the distant look of disappointment on her face. The same disappointment he’d seen in all the Betas’ eyes when Professor Stenton had introduced him, as if they’d hoped for someone else.

Me. I made it after all, he’d thought.

‘Juno!’ Harry yelled, throwing the hatch open behind them. Juno started awake, her eyes wide and vacant as a recent dreamer. The sound of the alarm crashed like a wave into the small capsule and Jesse realized, to his horror, that they had only thirty seconds. Harry grabbed Juno’s arm and half-dragged her out of her seat. ‘You’re hurting me,’ she cried. They stumbled over each other in their rush to get out. Twenty seconds. The other end of the greenhouse had never seemed so far away.

Jesse saw Astrid’s terrified face peer from behind the closing door. ‘Hurry!’ she screamed, the fear in her voice sharp as a blade. Jesse bounded towards her, but even as he did the door was sliding closed, the red ‘Lock’ light flashing. Astrid pushed her fingers through the gap in an attempt to keep it open. Jesse’s lungs were on fire. He thought he could make it, but he was a metre away when the door slammed closed and he heard the hiss of mechanics as the hatch locked. It bit Astrid’s finger as it shut and she let out a howl of pain, which, in a moment, was silenced.

Jesse slowed, panting. Harry and Juno were at his heels. He had never seen Harry look so terrified. Harry reached out to Juno as if to shield her, her thin body sliding into the hollow of his chest, but Jesse knew that the gesture would do little to protect her from the invisible storm of particles that were, even then, tearing through their bodies. He almost thought he could feel the burn, on his exposed skin, in his lungs. Feel his eyes growing cloudy with cataracts.

This is how it happens, he thought with numbed disbelief. He had escaped Earth only to die here, on the first night. He dropped to the ground, his knees no longer able to hold him.

There was another susurrus of locks and hydraulics and Jesse turned to find the door of the radiation shelter slide open once more, revealing a tearful Astrid, cradling her hand. Eliot threw up his arms as if to shield himself from an explosion. Igor strode out before the group.

‘What are you doing?’ Harry said.