Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

‘Nonsense.’ Jesse had managed to loose it from its web and it tumbled down the smooth sides of the cup, which he covered quickly with a sheet of paper. ‘There’s nothing unnatural about it. You don’t have to be embarrassed about saying you’re just scared, you know. I read somewhere that arachnophobia may have an evolutionary advantage.’

‘Yeah, because people who run away from spiders live,’ Juno said. ‘Spiders are predatory. They eat their sexual partners. They strangle their prey with silk, vomit digestive fluids into them so that they liquify before they’re eaten.’

‘Spiders are just misunderstood. They’re survivors,’ Jesse said. ‘Found on every continent except Antarctica. They can establish a habitat basically anywhere. I mean – look at this.’ He gestured to the glass, and the spider at the bottom of it.

‘What are you going to do, name it?’ Poppy was edging towards the doorway.

‘Maybe,’ Jesse said. ‘Now I have a pet.’

‘Charming.’ Juno grimaced. ‘So long as you keep it away from me.’

Poppy backed out the door. In the silence that followed, Jesse returned to his work, wiping up the hot water he’d spilled on the counter. He was almost finished when Juno looked up. ‘Oh Jesse,’ she said. When he turned her face was full of concern. ‘You burned yourself.’

‘Yeah…’ Jesse looked down at the reddening patch on the back of his hand. It was only now beginning to sting.

‘You have to put it under hot water,’ Juno said, standing up. ‘I mean, cold water.’ She took his wrist and held his hand under the tap, examining it, the cool stream catching on the little hairs behind his fingers. The cold was a relief. So was her touch. Jesse noticed that her nails were chopped short, dotted with flecks of turquoise nail varnish. Her fingers were lightly calloused, and she ran her fingertips along the sensitive skin on the back of his hand. The constant ache of his loneliness felt like a fever that had only just broken. How wonderful, the nearness of Juno. She was like the other girls, busy and mysterious, but how many of them would have come to his aid like this?

He closed his eyes, hoping to hold onto this moment. But Juno let go suddenly. Jesse opened them again and noticed that she was peering at him quizzically. She stepped back. ‘It um… doesn’t look too bad.’

‘Thank you,’ Jesse said. Juno sat back down, brushing stray coils of her springy hair behind her small ears.

‘It’s my job,’ she said. ‘You know, Fae’s training me to be the ship’s medical officer.’

‘Oh, right, yeah.’ A flash of disappointment.

Juno looked back down at her notes, wielding a highlighter. ‘We’ve just covered first aid and minor injuries again.’

‘Right.’ Jesse held his hand under the tap for a few moments longer until the numbness began to prickle up his fingers. Juno was already far away, absorbed in her notes again, her pen locked between her lips.

By then, his coffee was the sort of lukewarm he liked, and he finished it in slow drags, leaning against the counter.

‘Hey.’ Juno looked up at him again. ‘Jess…’

‘Yeah?’

‘I forgot to tell you… thank you.’

‘For what?’

‘For saving my life that time. During the solar storm.’

Already that night felt like a year ago. While it had been terrifying at the time, Jesse could no longer remember it without a twinge of embarrassment. ‘Well,’ he told her, ‘you weren’t really going to die. None of us were.’

‘You didn’t know that,’ Juno said, ‘and you barely knew me at the time. You could have stayed in the radiation shelter, but you didn’t.’

‘Yeah…’ In retrospect, he probably should have. Flouting orders on his first day had by no means endeared him to their commander.

Jesse thought about the day ahead of him, another day of bracing himself against the coolness of the rest of the crew, against homesickness.

‘You know,’ he took his cup to the sink to rinse it, turning his back to her, ‘this is the most anyone’s spoken to me since I got here.’

‘Really?’

From the corner of his eye, he saw Juno flinch at his words.

‘I mean, I know what it is. It’s not like I don’t understand it. If I had a really good friend who I thought I’d spend my life with, and then some other guy comes in at the last minute and takes her place, I guess I wouldn’t be too fond of him either. But I… I thought it would have stopped by now. It’s been almost two months since the launch and I feel as if it’s getting worse.’

‘I don’t know.’ Juno leant back in her chair. ‘It’s not just you. None of them talk about Ara, either. Or what happened, or why it happened. Not since the launch. And I know we all think about it. You’re kind of a reminder.’

Jesse hung his mug on the rack and thought for a moment. The silence was growing heavy again.