When she left the infirmary, the monitors in the control room and service module indicated that the oxygen levels had fallen to 65 per cent that of sea level. Which meant they were now all suffering from some form of altitude sickness. Harry, Jesse and Juno all complained of headaches so bad that during their morning conferences they would lean over the table, barely able to see for the pain. A few of them had developed a dry cough and they all stood at the top of the ladder, dizzy and winded with exhaustion from the effort of pulling their own weight up. Astrid woke often in the middle of the night in a sudden horror that she had stopped breathing. Cold sweat freezing the damp cotton between her legs, feet numb with cold even under two pairs of socks.
Astrid heard that while she had been in confinement, the rest of the crew had been attempting to trudge through some semblance of routine, eating silent meals in the kitchen, watching films together in the crew module. Astrid could not help suspecting that whatever positive feelings any of her crewmates might once have harboured for her had well and truly eroded. She’d sentenced them to this fate. In tearful corridor conversations, Astrid overheard them saying as much. There had been no messages from the Russian expedition that was apparently coming to their rescue, but Astrid kept running up to the Atlas module to search the skies for a sight of their shuttle, with the desperate regularity of a sailor waiting for landfall. Each time, she found nothing but the void.
One horrible morning, Juno did not wake at the sound of the bell. She was still in her bed after breakfast and when Astrid went to find her and pulled her duvet down, she saw that the side of her face was wet with vomit, only the whites of her eyes visible, lips purple.
Astrid cried out, panic darkening her vision. Stabbing her fingers under her sister’s jaw, she detected a slow pulse. She scooped Juno into her arms, never mind the nail-varnish smell of her bile, and carried her to the infirmary. Juno was light as a bird, maybe seven stone or less, Astrid saw now, and it broke her heart. The hard edges of her pelvis pushed insistently above the band of her pyjamas. All this time, her sister had needed her help and Astrid had been too preoccupied to see it.
When she reached the infirmary, Fae looked down at Juno with a sad expression of inevitability, as if she was watching a vase topple from a great height, the predictable crack. She’d been waiting for this – knew it was only a matter of time before the low oxygen made one of them seriously sick.
She explained that it was likely Juno was suffering from high-altitude cerebral oedema, which occurs when a lack of oxygen causes swelling of the brain tissue. She tied an oxygen mask to Juno’s face and gave her a dose of a drug to ease the swelling, but Fae didn’t pull any punches when she gave Astrid the prognosis.
‘People die of this,’ she said, her voice grim. ‘I’ve seen it in healthy men and women who climb mountains. Young people. They get a headache and then as the air gets thinner they get sicker and sicker. Many fall into a coma and do not wake up. I’m not going to lie to you. She could be dead in hours.’
Astrid could barely think through the steel vice of her own headache. She stumbled down the halls of the ship, fighting tears. Everything her sister had said about her had been right. Astrid had made this selfish, reckless choice, sentenced everyone to this death. The realization made her sick with self-loathing.
For the first time in her life the foundations of her hope began to crumble. For the past few years Terra-Two had been so wondrously close, so certainly in her future. And, today, she saw it receding from her even as she clutched desperately and foolishly for it. She felt like Tessa Dalton, dying alone at the edge of that fountain, the cold creeping in, her mad eyes fixed on the distant star where the planet spun, still believing that if she could just grasp a little further she could get there eventually.
That had been over a century ago, and here was Astrid – fool that she was! – doing the same thing.
When she entered the control room, Igor was there. Astrid began to cry. ‘I’ve killed them all,’ she said. Igor looked at her silently. ‘My sister. All my friends. This is my fault, everything that’s happened.’
“ ‘Regretting the past is like chasing wind”,’ Igor said. ‘Something we say in Norilsk. This is the situation we are in now.’
Astrid looked at the old cosmonaut. Fae had given him an oxygen tank, with a cannula that ran under his nose. He was already only surviving with the use of one lung; the plummeting temperature and oxygen pressure was sure to kill him soon. Astrid could not help the uncharitable thought that they would run out of all their supplies of medical oxygen sooner with Igor using it. The sound of his breathing made her wince, the sticky sound of fluid filling lungs, the muscles in his neck straining every time he inhaled. He, of course, had always known he was never going to make it to Terra-Two.
‘How can you bear it?’ Astrid asked, tears streaming down her face. ‘Never going? How could Tessa?’
Igor looked at her as if she’d asked a foolish question, his eyes widened in surprise. ‘You don’t need to go there, to go there.’ Astrid looked at the old man quizzically. ‘This place, Terra-Two. This country that you dream of, that Tessa dreamt of. Perhaps you don’t need to touch the ground, to smell the air.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Perhaps that’s what this new religion of yours is all about. New Creationists. Perhaps this thing you feel, this hope, this belief, is the only thing that you need. It is – what’s the word? – transcendent.’
JUNO
WHENEVER SHE FELL ASLEEP time flew by.
The first night, she opened her eyes to see the solar system in miniature, the Earth cast in brass, spinning around the sun on spokes. It was Solomon Sheppard’s armillary sphere, and in her fever it looked as if the sun itself was shining. She was in his old bedroom. Then in the infirmary where he had died.
When she awoke next, she was in a plastic tent. A hyperbaric chamber. Juno knew that if she could just work up the energy to roll onto her side she would find a clock on the far wall and then she’d be able to anchor herself a little in time. She would talk herself into it, steel herself for the task, but she’d drift back to sleep before she managed it. Finally, she gave up trying to move her limbs or to lift her eyelids and she tried to guess the time by the sounds on the ship. The muffled thump of footsteps outside, the voices of the others in the kitchen, Fae rushing in and out of the room, taking her temperature, scribbling notes.
Once she managed to cry out Astrid’s name, her voice a pathetic rasp, and she felt a hand in hers, cool and firm.
‘I’m here,’ her sister would say, and Juno had never been so grateful.
‘What’s wrong with me?’ she asked.
‘The thing that’s wrong with all of us. We’re running out of air,’ Astrid said, and Juno felt a tear splash against her wrist.
The pain, which came and went, made her cry out and clutch at her head – she thought someone was forcing a screwdriver through her temples.
Juno drifted in and out of technicolour interstellar dreams. She thought about God. Once, in class, her French teacher had pointed to ‘le ciel’ and said, ‘You know, where they used to believe heaven was.’ Juno had asked in shock ‘Where do they think it is now?’ She’d been on the edge of her seat at this new revelation.
‘Where has it gone?’ she asked. ‘Where is it now?’
‘I’m here, Juno,’ said Astrid and Jesse, each holding a hand as she gasped in pain. This pain, it would grind the bones in her skull to salt.