‘And frankly,’ said Fae, ‘if it was only my decision I would have waited until a better time.’
‘A better time?’ Juno snorted. ‘What would be a good time to tell us our crewmate is dying? After the funeral?’ Everyone’s eyes flitted to the other end of the room, where Igor was perched on a stool near the breakfast counter.
Jesse stared at him, noticing, only then, the skeletal lines of his hands, the slight quiver in his thumbs. He broke the silence by asking, sheepishly, ‘How far along are you? Is it – I mean – stage…?’
‘Stage three,’ Igor said.
‘I don’t remember what that means,’ Poppy said, ‘Does that mean it’s too late for treatment? Radiation or chemotherapy? Our neighbour downstairs got breast cancer but they operated on her and she got better. That happens right? Cancer’s not an automatic death-sentence.’
‘True…’ Fae lowered her gaze.
Jesse remembered something he’d read in a textbook. ‘Survival rates with lung cancer are amongst the lowest of all cancers.’ He lay awake at nights imagining metastasis, little fingerlings of cancer burrowing into his chest like worms in the cool flesh of an apple. ‘Lung cancer is the most common cause of cancer-related deaths.’ By the time you had a cough, there was rarely anything anyone could do.
‘Would you shut up?’ said Harry, his knuckles white.
‘What Jesse says is true,’ said Igor. ‘It’s one of the reasons I have chosen not to seek treatment, and opted only for palliative care.’ There was a soft intake of breath across the table. Juno sat up suddenly, almost sending a cold mug of black coffee toppling.
‘But, I’m not dead yet!’ Igor continued, cheerfully. ‘For the most part my symptoms have not affected my ability to do my job. Just a cough, loss of appetite.’ He shrugged as if it was a small thing, as if none of them had noticed the yellow tinge of his anaemic skin. The way he leant heavily against the wall sometimes to catch his breath. ‘With pain control, I will make it to Saturn and launch the drive, and then…’
‘And then…?’ Astrid’s eyes were glassy and she was shaking.
‘And then my mission will be complete,’ said Igor. ‘It took the hard work and sacrifice of thousands of people to get you this far. I’m just honoured to be one of them.’
The statement made Jesse feel a little queasy. His stomach ached with pity.
‘How long have you known?’ Juno asked.
‘A long time now.’
‘There was concern amongst the leadership team,’ said Commander Sheppard, ‘and the psychological support team on the ground, that this news could negatively impact crew morale.’
‘That was undesirable considering the upcoming mission to Europa,’ Fae said. ‘So we decided to share the news after we passed by Saturn.’
Poppy stifled another sob, burying her face in the scuffed sleeve of her dressing gown.
‘But we found out,’ Juno said. ‘We found out because we’re not children. You can’t keep things like this from us. We’re teammates, crewmates. We have to trust each other. That’s what you always say, and now, once Igor is… once we’re past Saturn, the most qualified engineer on this ship will be Eliot. What happens if something goes wrong?’
‘We’ll still be receiving some messages from our highly competent team of engineers. They can provide additional support.’
‘Yeah, through email,’ Juno said. ‘What about when we lose contact with Ground completely?’
‘Commander Sheppard worked on several Mars missions as an engineer,’ Fae said.
‘Don’t you understand?’ Eliot’s voice was tight, his eyes glistening from behind his mop of black hair. ‘They don’t tell us anything. No one talks about anything, they just watch and stare and wait to see what we’ll do. There’s someone out there.’ He threw an arm out to indicate the darkness behind the window. ‘Someone is dying out there. We all know it, and no one is talking about it.’
Everyone glanced around in confusion.
‘Okay.’ Commander Sheppard held up his hands. ‘We need to calm down. We know this is difficult news to hear – everyone needs time to take it all in. I am cancelling tutorials today – everyone take the day to reflect, absorb this news and think about how we can support each other moving forward.’
Eliot let out a howl of frustration and kicked his chair over, causing Astrid to leap back in surprise. ‘That’s exactly what I mean,’ he said, before racing from the room, leaving the others in a shocked silence.
Fae exhaled heavily and put her head in her hands.
‘Don’t you think he’s been acting… erratically?’ Harry asked.
‘Leave him alone,’ said Cai. ‘He’s been through a lot.’
Solomon dropped a soggy teabag into the disposal and set his mug down firmly. He turned to address the Beta. ‘If you have any questions don’t hesitate to speak to any one of us about what’s happening and how you’re feeling. The senior crew have been aware of Igor’s prognosis since before we left Earth. We’re prepared and the mission to Terra-Two will continue uninterrupted.
‘I know this is very upsetting to consider, but the reason we have such high expectations of all of you is because this mission is actually about you and not us. None of us really wants to think about it, but the UKSA opted to begin this colonization mission with young people because Fae, Cai and I will also not live as long as the six of you. And some day in the future you will have to deal with all of us passing away. But you’ll be lucky to have each other to rely on.’
Jesse’s stomach twisted at the thought of it. Commander Sheppard folded his arms. ‘The best thing to do when you receive troubling news is to put your head down, work hard, focus on the future. And when you’re finished you’ll feel a lot better. I promise.’
IN THE FOLLOWING DAYS, Jesse watched as the news of Igor’s sickness affected the Beta members differently. Both Harry and Eliot seemed to become acutely aware of how much they still needed to learn from the senior crew. Harry spent sleepless nights on the control deck or on the simulator, practising manoeuvres again and again. Eliot took to furiously recording everything that Igor said during their tutorials, always interrogating his responses further: ‘But how will I know when there’s a problem with the injector…?’ Trailing off without adding what they were all thinking, How will I know when you’re gone?
Poppy volunteered to take over most of Igor’s chores in addition to her own. An act that endeared her to Juno who, in her spare time, requested every document in the ship’s database about cancer and could be found in the kitchen reading them. Jesse discovered her furiously underlining passages in The Emperor of All Maladies, her nails bitten to the quick.
‘Cancer is just a word,’ Astrid told them once over lunch.
‘Right, a word that describes a biological reality,’ Juno said.
Astrid rolled her eyes. ‘You think everything is so simple.’ Astrid was suddenly full of stories about people whose conditions defeated medical understanding but had recovered: the friend of a friend or the daughter of a pastor whose tumours disappeared, who defied death for decades in spite of a terminal diagnosis. She looked around the table and announced, ‘We will, all of us, make it to Terra-Two.’
Jesse threw himself into work, as their commander had suggested. Pruning the long weeds that curled around the spires in the greenhouse, documenting the new shoots that seemed to be sprouting curly heads overnight, everywhere, as if the garden had suddenly chosen to wake up. Jesse had been delighted to find that the fruits were finally growing. His heart leapt with excitement when he noticed the first head of a tomato bursting from a vine, and fat strawberries, still sour. It felt like springtime, everything lush and blossoming. Jesse and Cai had toiled over long vats of hydroponic liquids and the shallow trays of soil for almost a year and now here they were, coming to their reward. In only a few weeks they would have harvested enough crops for the crew to subsist almost solely on fruits and vegetables reared in the darkness of space and yet tasting deliciously of home. Jesse could not wait.