Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

‘When did you last get out of bed?’ Juno demanded. Poppy rolled on to her back like a creature washed onto the shore, her face tear-stained and swollen. She shrugged.

‘Can’t you see she’s—’ Astrid began.

‘—sick.’ Juno finished Astrid’s sentence for her. ‘I know. Everyone knows. You’re missing Earth. We’re all missing Earth. Ara died but you don’t see Eliot skipping chores, and she was basically his soulmate.’

‘Juno,’ Poppy said softly, her voice a rasp from weeping, ‘don’t you ever just wake up and want a different life?’

‘Of course I do. I could have been a contemporary dancer or some person who drives along windswept roads and takes pictures of rare cloud formations. Or I could have stayed in London with my parents, who love me, and gone to Imperial with Noah, who loves me, and become a scientist and discovered a cure for myasthenia gravis. Before the age of thirteen we decided to be astronauts, and here we are. You made a choice when you applied to Dalton, and when you agreed to be a Beta, and now is too late to quit. Think about it practically, Poppy. You don’t have a lot of options. Either you can lie in bed until your muscles waste, leaving our food to rot and waiting out the next two decades, or you can put your head down and work as hard as you can and do your best to make everyone’s life a little bit easier.’

‘I’m glad you think it’s so simple,’ Poppy said. ‘I wish we could all just will ourselves out of sadness.’

‘I only need you to will yourself out of bed. I’ll write a list of all the chores you’ve skipped. And you need to catch up this afternoon and for the rest of this week.’

‘Juno,’ Poppy hissed, a tight edge in her voice, ‘you’re not my mum. You’re not the commander. Stop thinking you can boss everyone around.’

‘I don’t want to have to get Commander Sheppard involved again,’ Juno said, already sensing she had played the wrong card and too early. Now she sounded like a whiny toddler, threatening to snitch.

‘Go away,’ Poppy said, rolling back into her duvet. ‘You can’t make me do anything.’ The words stung with unavoidable truth. Poppy was an adult, Juno’s crewmate, over whom she wielded no authority. Astrid turned to her sister with a sympathetic shrug of surrender as she stalked out.

LATER, JUNO SAT STIFFLY on one of the chairs in the crew module, grinding her teeth. She would not go to the kitchen and clear up Poppy’s mess, and yet the thought of leaving the food there to gather more mould – the thought of living with the smell for another hour – made her stomach turn.

Two months had passed since Poppy’s birthday. Sheppard and Fae had confronted Poppy about her behaviour. Each time, she would make an effort to work for a week or two, film her educational videos, but then her enthusiasm would lapse again. She’d complain of symptomless illness, retire to bed early, do the bare minimum so the rest of the crew would have to work hard to finish her chores or do the communications work that she had neglected.

The damage had already been done. Poppy’s behaviour was beginning to affect the other members of the crew. They were reluctant to come to meals, they complained far more about chores and grew sullen and argumentative at the slightest provocation.

Juno imagined the next year, and then the next twenty after that. Years of her crew members abandoning their duties, sunk low in the self-absorbed pit of their own despair and unwilling to help each other. What a hateful place their home could become if they thought only of themselves, of avoiding work, of ignoring justice.

Juno stood up.

When she imagined life on Terra-Two she pictured unity. Their little colony working joyfully to tame the land, to set up a base. There would be no arguments about chores because everyone would work to ease the others’ burden. There would be no fighting, there would be no more of the juvenile competition that had spread amongst the boys. But that needed to begin now. They had to train themselves to work together now, not two decades from now.

‘We need to start again,’ she said. Eliot, who had been nodding to music on his headphones, looked up quizzically.

‘We’re supposed to make things better,’ she said, heading towards the ladder. ‘We’re supposed to build a beautiful new world. No violence. No arguing. No selfishness.’

Juno rushed up to the kitchen and grabbed a bucket from the sink. She shovelled handfuls of ice into it from one of the storage units and then filled the rest with water. It was almost spilling over as she climbed back down to the crew module, her stomach burning with passion. ‘We need to do it right this time.’

Juno stormed into the girls’ cabin and heaved the contents of the bucket onto Poppy.

Poppy screamed, first a high shriek of shock and discomfort but then, as the burn of the cold set in and she wiped her eyes to see Juno’s stern face, a roar of fury.

‘You monster,’ she yelled, her eyes blazing. ‘This is why no one likes you.’