The sound of tyres crunching on the gravel woke her from her reverie. They had arrived. When Commander Sheppard opened the passenger door, a roar crested outside and rolled like thunder from the gathered crowd. The moment Astrid stepped out of the car a camera flash temporarily blinded her. She blinked the spots from her vision, looked around and was met with more people than she had ever seen in one place. A sea of sweaty faces and flailing arms that swept out as far as she could see. They were waving flags and jumping up against the barriers, brandishing phones and calling out for attention. Reporters were snapping cameras held in front of their faces like snouts.
Astrid turned around in wonder to find that there were more people nudging the barriers behind her. Many of them had camped out near to the mission control centre, sleepless but exultant, hoping to catch a glimpse of the astronauts before their feet left the ground. Off at the sides were hundreds of schoolchildren gathered in bleachers or spread out across the sun-scorched grass, craning their necks to see the countdown projected on the giant screen: T-minus 2.5 hours.
She felt as if she were standing on a football pitch during a game, disorientated by the solid wall of sound coming from the crowd. A few metres away, a group of young people were waving hand-painted signs that read, ‘Go Team GB 2012’ and ‘Another World, Another Chance’. One teenage girl was waving a sign that read ‘Harry is Hot’, the A and the O replaced with bubbly pink hearts. Astrid hid a smile and turned to call Poppy’s attention to it. Poppy had already slammed the car door shut behind her and turned her smiling face towards the crowd.
‘It’s Poppy,’ someone shrieked. ‘Over here!’ Poppy was the favourite – that had always been clear. She was winsome and relatable and the tabloids spun her and Harry’s story so they were cast as star-bound lovers. They played it up in front of the cameras; every now and then Poppy would slip her hand into his and the crowds would whoop. Ara had hated it. She thought that the only reason Poppy’s face adorned the covers of every magazine from Astronomer’s Weekly to Seventeen was because her skin was ivory. Her lightly freckled face was English and feminine, her eyes quietly clever and the colour of an overcast sky. Astrid herself had to admit she had felt a twinge of jealousy when Poppy was chosen to light up a screen in Piccadilly Circus, holding a chilled can of Pepsi to her painted lips.
Poppy swanned towards the grinning girls, blowing kisses. She wasn’t allowed across the painted line that separated them, but she posed for pictures. Half of her fans were waving and shouting, a couple even clutching each other in tearful excitement.
‘Should really have parked closer to the entrance,’ Commander Sheppard said through gritted teeth to the driver. He was eyeing the crowd warily.
‘Let them look,’ the young man said.
Camera flashes exploded across Astrid’s retinas with dizzying quickness. Juno turned to her sister in joyful disbelief and asked, ‘Does it feel the same for you too? Like we’ll wake up from this any second? Like the way we felt when we made it into the Beta?’
‘I don’t know,’ Astrid said. But really, nothing in this whole adventure had ever felt more real than this moment, surrounded by people, the air electric with anticipation. The world was about to change, and she could feel the excitement sizzle in her stomach.
‘Astrid!’ someone shouted, and she turned to find a group of girls leaning against the barriers, their jumpers tied around their waists, patches of sweat blooming under their arms as they stood in the heat. Astrid distantly recognized their faces. She had seen them striding through the halls of Dalton in tight groups. They were a couple of years younger than her. They cheered when they caught her eye and bounced up and down on their heels. ‘Ast-rid! Ast-rid! Ast-rid!’ they yelled hysterically in a chant that caught on all around them, other people clapping as they picked it up: ‘Ast-rid! Ast-RID, Ast-RID…’ Her heart soared. There was nothing to be afraid of. She was loved.
‘Hey, look.’ Juno pointed up to the screen erected near the bleachers. Their own identical faces had just appeared on it, from a different angle. They looked bright as two bees in their flight suits and they were smiling.
After some time, Commander Sheppard ushered them away from the car and the crowd and into the shade of the mission control centre. Inside, Astrid’s heart was still throbbing and her ears buzzed in the relative hush of the building. Eliot was pale, and squeezing his hands so tightly into fists that his knuckles were turning white. ‘Are you okay?’ Astrid asked.
‘I will be in a minute,’ he said quietly. ‘You know I’ve always hated crowds.’ But he was just as tense during the press conference, sweat beading on his forehead as he stared in strained silence out at the reporters, even when a question was directed at him. Harry and Commander Sheppard charmed them all, though, and smoothly diverted attention away from Eliot. Just before closing, Harry leant into the microphone and said, ‘On behalf of myself and my crew I would like to say thank you to everyone on the ground for your hard work. It’s in our DNA to explore, and though it will be our feet touching Terra-Two, it’s the work of thousands of dedicated men and women here on the ground that made that possible.’ There was a round of happy applause and then the commander initiated a minute’s silence for Ara, and Astrid thought she saw Juno cry.
They came out to greet the people one final time. Astrid was glad to see that the weather forecast had been correct and during their brief period inside every cloud had blown away. The sun was high in the sky and sending limpid rays down onto the brass band. The noise of the trumpets and the rumble of the drums was still ringing in Astrid’s ears when she entered the suit-up room. They were handed over to the technicians, who helped them into their spacesuits.
Once she had pushed her hands into her stiff gloves and collected her helmet, Astrid trudged to one end of the room to join the others in a pose for the final crew photographs. The six of them wore dazed smiles, the bags under their eyes illuminated in the glare of the lights. The photographer rearranged them tentatively and placed Jesse where Ara always used to stand, by Eliot’s side. Jesse threw his hands up in awkward surrender. ‘You can take one with just you guys,’ he said, stepping back. ‘I don’t have to be in it.’ Into the stony silence, Commander Sheppard spoke. ‘It’s an honour to have you on the team,’ he said, patting the boy’s back.
They took a picture with the junior and senior crew together – Dr Golinsky, Igor and their commander – then countless others with flight directors, operational managers and even their old teachers. Astrid began fidgeting as her mouth started to hurt from smiling. Emotions were running high by that point, everyone’s eyes were glittering and it was difficult to tell whether they were saying ‘good luck’ or ‘goodbye.’