Although they had met Dr Golinsky many times before – overseeing medical examinations, or in the shadows during a meeting of the board of directors, her head down, drumming her long white fingers on the back of her clipboard – none of them knew very much about her. There were rumours that she used to be a ballerina but her career was cut short by an accident. She did indeed have a dancer’s body. She still possessed an epicene beauty; always tied her jet hair in a tight bun at the top of her head. Underneath her security pass, which hung from her neck on a lanyard, the cage of her chest was sheer as a cliff-face. She had always frightened them a little. Because she could often be heard reprimanding junior doctors in her thick German accent, and because a long puckered scar split her face from forehead to left cheek.
Now she smiled and leant into the microphone, waiting for the clapping to die down before she said, ‘Thank you. Twenty years ago, when I moved to the UK, I would never have imagined that I would be chosen to play even a small part in this historic mission. And twenty days ago I would not have imagined that I would be chosen to board the shuttle to travel to Terra-Two. But I am greatly honoured.’ Another smattering of applause.
‘Now, we understand that the tragic loss of our crew member Ara Shah yesterday afternoon came as a terrible shock. But the purpose of the Off-World Colonization Programme was to send six young adults to Terra-Two in 2012 to establish a permanent human settlement.
‘Ara’s job on the ship was to assist our hydroponics expert Dr Cai Tsang – who is currently on the International Mars Base – in growing the crops that will come to be the astronauts’ primary food and oxygen source. It’s a vital role. And at this late stage, as many of you may have seen on the eight o’clock news, a member of the reserve crew will be taking her place.’
When Astrid looked around, she saw that the faces of the other crew members were pale. Eliot’s head was in his hands. ‘Who is she…?’ Poppy whispered, as they both struggled to remember who in the reserve crew had been assigned Ara’s job.
‘Please welcome…’ The provost stepped back a little from the microphone to make space. Astrid could feel the blood draining from her face. The crowd parted. For a minute some part of her thought that she would find Ara standing amongst them, smiling her playful smile and flicking the river water out of her long hair. Fooled you, she’d say with a laugh. This entire day, this nightmare, just an elaborate joke.
A tall bronze-skinned boy stepped onto the podium dressed in a flight suit, and applause swept across the gathered crowd like rain. Cheers, whoops of relief. It was all going to be fine. The mission would go ahead. All of that work, all of their hopes, none of them wasted.
Jesse Solloway – Astrid recognized him immediately. The misfit who never made the cut. They couldn’t have chosen anyone less likely than this young man, whose coal-black eyes were distant and dreamy, who braided broken shells and mantled leaves into his waist-length locks. Jesse had always radiated his own kind of lonely cool. Once, in a careers lesson, when asked what he wanted to be, he had said ‘deity’ and the class had tittered nervously. They only took it seriously a few months later, when he didn’t make the Beta and stopped coming to school. Rumours spread that he was going to die.
‘You,’ Juno said, her eyes wide.
‘Me,’ he said with a happy lazy smile, ‘I made it after all.’
Chapter 8
ASTRID
13.05.12
T-MINUS 4 HOURS
FOUR HOURS BEFORE THE launch, Astrid found Harry standing by the window of the dormitory, staring at his reflection in the sun-silvered glass. He turned when he heard her feet on the linoleum outside. ‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘T-minus four hours,’ she said. ‘I thought you’d be down already.’
‘I’m coming in a minute,’ he said, turning back to the window. ‘Just practising my smile for the camera.’ When he raked his fingers through his hair a couple of blond strands stuck to the damp on his forehead. ‘You know, it’s the last they’ll see of us.’
Cars were pulling up outside, and Astrid could hear the rumble of helicopters overhead. It was the kind of cool spring morning with air that is bracing and sweet and promises sunshine. A bright ridge of light peered over the roof and cast across the lawn. The Damocles – the magnificent ship that would take them to Terra-Two – winked overhead. If Astrid squinted she thought she could see it, about 660 kilometres above London. The shuttle they were about to enter would ferry them that short distance, out of Earth’s atmosphere, and to the spinning decks of the Damocles, their new home. From there, they would accelerate out of Earth’s orbit, past Mars and the moons of Jupiter, around Saturn and then out of the solar system.
As Commander Sheppard ushered them into the cars, Astrid realized that the worst part of the wait had begun. The hours before the launch would be the longest as the seconds ticked down to take-off.
When Astrid and her sister were younger, their father made frequent trips to South America and West Africa. A certain melancholy always came over the house in his absence. The kitchen table was joyless without his laughter. His study, just opposite the twins’ bedroom, was unlit and silent and still smelt of him even though a thin layer of dust had settled over his books. Astrid and Juno would come home to their mother stifling tears and wringing her hands over the sink. They were all holding their breath, waiting for his return. And all the while he crowded their dreams, trekking across open savanna, Bible in hand, or baptizing babies in the Niger. Proclaiming, Behold the lamb of God! in bustling marketplaces, the same way he did across their dining-room table.
Astrid and her sister would count the sleeps until his plane touched down. As the day drew nearer she would have to dig her fists into her stomach to wrestle excited butterflies, but the afternoon his plane was scheduled to land, her excitement always curdled into a strange kind of dread. She didn’t know what she was afraid of: that he would come back with a different face, that he might have forgotten her name… that unsettling boundary where long-held dream meets incipient reality.
Waiting in the crowded arrivals lounge next to WHSmith, flowers in hand, Astrid would scan the weather-beaten faces of every man who passed. That was always the longest wait, just before she spotted a dark searching face, brow furrowed, gaze straining over heads in that sweet moment before eyes meet eyes. A smile would break across his face, and when he bent low to hug her she would inhale the familiar scent of his aftershave, and the new faraway smell of dust on his dashiki. It was always impossible, then, to remember what she had been afraid of.
It was the same that morning. As Astrid watched patches of blue break through the clouds she lifted up one of her hands to find that it was shaking. It occurred to her that they had been subjected to countless ‘launch simulations’ in preparation for this exact moment. The moment when her mind flailed into the future for some certainties she could hold onto.
There were a couple. They had visited the launch site seven times, so she was familiar with the way the trees fanned out along the motorway until they reached flat, open grassland, streaked with the shadows of clouds. Soon they would turn off into slip roads until all she could see up ahead were dark armoured cars, travelling in the same direction – towards the unglamorous low-rise buildings near the site.
Terminal Countdown Demonstration Tests – Maggie called them ‘dress rehearsals’. Astrid wondered if Dr Golinsky was the type of person to say something as whimsical. As the technicians helped her into her spacesuit would she remember lacing up the ribbons of ballet slippers with her own nimble fingers? Or would she be thinking about what lay ahead of her? Astrid knew that when she entered the shuttle they would strap her in lying on her back, so tightly that she would only be able to move her head. This time, the eyes of the world would be on her, and after the final countdown her body would begin to rock with the vibrations of the APU, the engine and the solid rocket boosters. The shuttle would be shaking so violently that she would not hear the final snap of shackles as it exploded off the launch pad and filled the eyes of every spectator with light. Everyone who watched from a distance would look up at the trail of smoke blazing against the sky and think about what a special thing it is to be human, to be able to build machines that could soar out of the grip of gravity.