Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

Jesse didn’t want to think that it had anything to do with being pressed up against her body in the shower three weeks earlier at Poppy’s party. That it was something as simple as the fluttering of her heart and the smell of coffee beans and chocolate on her breath that had reminded him what a fine and foreign thing a girl was. So he mustered his self-control and banished the thought of her in order to focus on his chores.

He had a lot of work to do in the greenhouse, which was fine, because he enjoyed it. He loved the huge transparent dome and, beyond it, the conflagration of stars. After fitness checks and scheduled exercise sessions, Jesse spent his free time on his back, lounging under the fluorescent lights between the tall vats of algae and the soil that promised fruit.

A couple of weeks post-launch, he had swapped almost all of his on-ship chores for weeding and watering in the garden. The work was repetitive but it gave him time to think. His only company was Cai, who had a little lab set up in a corner of the greenhouse where he performed experiments and continued his research. He’d explained some of his research to Jesse early on: it involved studying the development of plants in below-Earth gravity. While the ship was provided with 100 per cent gravity by the dromes surrounding the hull, in the greenhouse it was only 60 per cent. Which took some getting used to. The effect made half the crew horribly spacesick and dizzy in the early days, but for Jesse it was magical, like he was walking in water. Fallen leaves drifted across the ground as if skimming over the settled surface of a pond, English ivy curled up around the cords of hanging lamps. Whenever he climbed the ladder and entered through the hatch, his stomach flipped as if in pleasant surprise.

The garden was growing every day. He liked to imagine it in two months, when the foliage would be splashed with the bright reds and blacks of tomatoes and berries. He liked to picture the faces of his crew when he presented them with baskets of runner beans, potatoes and apples, fresh vegetables and fruits that they had not eaten in months.

Most importantly, the greenhouse reminded him of Earth. Under the antiseptic smell of their fertilizer was the familiar scent of leaves and soil, and if he closed his eyes a little, the light from the 20 kilowatt xenon lamps nestled like silver coins of sunlight in his lashes.

‘What is it you’re meant to be doing exactly?’ Jesse was startled by Cai’s voice.

‘Errr…’ Jesse scrambled to his feet.

‘That grass is just beginning to grow. The last thing I need is you rolling over it like a puppy.’ Jesse climbed to his feet and dusted some of the soil off his trousers. ‘You’re supposed to be pouring fertilizer into the spires.’

‘Right, I was just about to—’

‘Get on with it. And keep off the grass.’

Cai skulked off, back to whichever corner of the greenhouse he had been lurking in, and Jesse picked up one of the buckets he’d left near the spire, his mind once again occupied with the task at hand.

Arguably, his job was the most important on the ship. While Harry might help pilot the Damocles and Eliot worked with Igor to keep it running, Jesse and Cai took care of the most important part of the ship’s life support system.

During shorter missions, a crew could survive on supplies shipped from Earth, but on a long-haul mission such as theirs, survival was only possible if they created a closed ecosystem – or as closed as possible. Nothing could go to waste and the most important aspect of that was the oxygen supply. Each time Jesse exhaled, he added to the partial pressure of CO₂, which was being constantly mopped up by the filters and dissolved into the carbonated water that bubbled through the spires in the greenhouse. The greenhouse was filled with these tall green columns, which were bunched together and ran from floor to ceiling like the interior of a cathedral. The light from the buzzing fluorescent lamps provided energy to their unicellular chlorella, an algae that mopped up the CO₂ and pumped out breathable air around the clock. When drained and dried, the algae was also an efficient source of protein, and was part of the reason that their macronutrient broth had a slightly green tinge.

Jesse was always careful to pull on a fresh pair of gloves whenever he poured the foul-smelling fertilizer into the bioreactor, so as to avoid contaminating their algae. But somehow, when he climbed down from the step ladder and tugged the rubber off his fingers, his skin was sometimes stained acid green and smelt like bleach.

He got through his supply of fertilizer quickly, and still there were two dozen more spires to go. More fertilizer needed to be mixed up from the stock solution, a task that Cai still didn’t trust Jesse to do himself. He was about to call out to the scientist when he spotted Juno on the grass.