‘Astrid and I always thought we were only half-suited to this mission. That she’s too naive and I’m too—’
‘Cold?’ Harry said.
‘Practical,’ Juno corrected.
‘Hopeful,’ Astrid said.
‘I wish I were hopeful,’ Juno said, her voice taut with longing. ‘I wish I woke up in the morning kicking the covers off my legs, just ecstatic about the sun rising. I’ve been fighting a lot of conflicting emotions.’ She paused and looked at her sister. ‘Devastated that you’re leaving and angry about the reason. But I’ve had a little while to think about it, and now I know that you gave up the thing that was most important to you to save my life. It’s because you love me.’
She turned to Jesse. ‘But then, I think about the world we’d be going back to. It’s bloodstained history. How could I give up my chance to start again? To be part of something new. Something we’ll try to make better. I’m excited to go,’ she said to him. ‘I still want to go,’
Then they all turned to Jesse, their future commander. He took a deep breath, and told them something that his father had liked to tell him and his sister. ‘There’s a story, a legend, that the Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton placed an advertisement in a newspaper, looking for men to accompany him on his expedition.’ He paused, looked round the table, at every one of his crewmates, his friends, his family. ‘The ad read: MEN WANTED for hazardous journey, small wages, and bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful, honour and recognition in case of success. Not everyone who read it would have applied for a position on the team, but the response was overwhelming. Perhaps because the triumph at the end would be all the sweeter because they’d know where they’d been. Perhaps because the men knew that nothing would be easy. Every day would hurt, but, when they came to the end of their mission, it would not be with regret but with rejoicing.’
Chapter 59
JUNO
26.02.13
TEMPERATURE: -27°C
O2: 58% SEA LEVEL
HOURS UNTIL RESCUE: 24
THE NIGHT BEFORE THE resupply shuttle arrived, Juno dreamed of Terra-Two for the first and only time. She dreamed of seeing it through the window of the Atlas module, as close up as Europa and then closer still when they swooped into low orbit over an alien sea. She saw Jesse’s face, the light in his eyes as he took them down on the lander, as he steered them flawlessly through the most dangerous point – entering the atmosphere.
The crew tumbled from the ship, shocked and uncalloused as newborns. Wobbling under a different gravity, learning again to walk, to focus their eyes on new horizons and on the violet sky.
Juno dreamt of erecting a flag they had painted, together. Everyone’s hands on it – Poppy’s, Jesse’s, Eliot’s and Fae’s – as they pushed it down into the sand. Giving their first gift to the land – a name, their country.
By the time they arrived, they had lived the journey so long that it was all they knew. Once they reached their destination, each of them flailed for a new purpose. The first night, Juno slept under the stars with Jesse, whose body she had come to learn by heart. She looked out at the sky and wondered if this had been worth everything she had given up for it. Could it ever be?
Now was the year to discover if her dreams of Terra-Two had been only dreams, and even as she beheld the twilit beauty of the planet, she realized that they had. Juno and her family had feasted, for two decades, on dreams alone. Now it was the time for the hard work.
They would face the first Terran winter unprepared. Welcome other expeditions as they descended from the sky, planted their own flags into the soil and fought in foreign tongues. An alien fever would wipe out two-thirds of the population and two members of the Beta. It would take generations to tame the land and even then – never completely. Their great-grandchildren would fell the ancient forests near the shoreline, build silicate towers and spill poison into the sea. They would remember, forget and remember again the lessons of their ancestors. But there would also be more to celebrate; Fae’s wedding to Moritz, their long-held love preserved over time and distance. Eliot would play the guitar and Poppy would gather up wildflowers from the meadows and Moritz would place a crown of them on Fae’s silver head. Juno’s Damocles Document would become the foundation of a new constitution. They would sing songs and write plays, myths would flourish, vivid tales of the voyage, the void, the sacrifice and the loss of the old home their children and their children’s children would never ache for. But they would still celebrate Landing Day with dance and fireworks. Once a year, they would cast their gaze up to the decommissioned Damocles as it twinkled in its graveyard orbit, making slow arcs across the sky.
When Juno opened her eyes, though, the dream was already forgotten. Nothing remained but a vague hope, and it gave her the strength to finally say goodbye to her sister. She was the one who helped to pull Astrid’s helmet over her head, and she watched as the hatch, at last, slammed shut. She bit back her tears for the time it took for the shuttle to disappear from the porthole, and then when she finally turned around and broke down, Poppy, Jesse, Fae and Eliot all opened their arms to hold her.
ASTRID
12.05.2013
WHEN ASTRID STEPPED OUT of the shuttle the final time, it was just like the day that she left. Except that, this time, the sun was blinding. There was a sour smell of fuel on the air, and the scent of grass and sea was an assault on her senses.
They were not heroes, today. They were victims. The world believed that they had been barely more than children, brainwashed and abused, then hurled into the void to die. An inquiry was being held into the human rights abuses at space academies, experts questioning the ethics of filling students full of facts and then sending them off to found nations.
Harry was awarded a medal for bravery, for piloting the crew from the Orlando back to the Damocles.
Astrid and Harry slept off the weakness in quarantine, curled up together some nights clumsy and quiet as newborns, because they weren’t used to facing the nights alone. One evening, Astrid woke to find Harry sitting on his bed opposite, sobbing. When he noticed her, he looked out the window and said softly, ‘In my dreams, I’m still up there.’
ASTRID DISCOVERED THAT SHE’D been wrong about home. She thought her heart had abandoned it forever.
Her father had come to pick her up from the space centre, embraced her with tears in his eyes and helped her into the car. She had returned with nothing, no bags or belongings. As they drove through the city, Astrid felt as if she was seeing everything for the first time.
When they stepped outside in front of her house, she realized that her home was different from any place her feet could ever find. She had thought that the sight of her own street would be the greatest disappointment after circling the rings of Jupiter. She couldn’t have known that the skin under her soles had never forgotten the feel of the cobbled path, the dandelions springing up between the stones. Her father’s rough hand in hers. The dull sweetness of apples turning pink on their tree.
Astrid hadn’t expected that when she blinked their front garden would be peopled with old ghosts; herself and Juno at five, six and nine making daisy chains with clumsy fingers or pressing their faces to the eyepiece of their father’s telescope, jostling for another look at Terra-Two.
Their teachers liked to tell them in astronomy class that the light from the stars took years to reach their eyes on Earth. That the most distant stars could have burned out billions of years ago, but still their light brightened the night sky. Cosmic proof for the existence of ghosts. Ara had asked, ‘What do they see, when they look back at us?’