Which it would not.
Still, maybe it wouldn’t take all that long. In theory the trip through the wormhole would take a fraction of the time, relatively speaking. Maybe the closest planet would be the one to pan out. He might yet be home while Murph was still in her teens.
“Keep an eye on my family, sir,” Cooper told Professor Brand. “’Specially Murph. She’s a smart one.”
“We’ll be waiting when you get back,” the scientist promised. “A little older, a little wiser, but happy to see you.”
Cooper prepped the engines as Doyle ran a last series of diagnostics from the cockpit cabin of the Endurance. It was a little roomier than the one in the Ranger, set above the central cabin and reached by the rungs of a short ladder.
Brand and Romilly strapped in, and TARS and CASE likewise secured themselves with metallic clanks.
Cooper gazed down at the Earth once more, Professor Brand’s last words still fresh in his mind.
“Do not go gentle into that good night…”
He checked with Doyle, who nodded an okay. Then, without any ceremony, he fired the thrusters, and the Endurance began its journey out of Earth’s orbit, and toward the stars.
“Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Godspeed, Endurance.”
“So alone,” Cooper said, staring at the diminishing sphere of the Earth. They had all changed into their blue sleep outfits, and had begun setting up the cryo-beds—which looked way too much like fancy coffins for his taste. Brand came to stand next to him.
“We’ve got each other,” she told him. “Dr. Mann had it worse.”
“I meant them,” he said, pointing at Earth. “Look at that perfect planet. We’re not gonna find another one like her.”
“No,” Brand agreed. “This isn’t like looking for a new condo—the human race is going to be adrift, desperate for a rock to cling to while they catch their breaths. We have to find that rock. Our three prospects are at the edge of what might sustain human life.”
She held up her tablet and tapped a blurry image of a dark blue planet. The color made it feel promising almost immediately. Blue was what Earth looked like from way out. Blue could mean water. Of course, Neptune was also blue, and it had an atmosphere of hydrogen, helium, and trace methane—completely inimical to life as they knew it.
“Laura Miller’s first,” Brand said. “She started our biology program.”
The image switched to an even smaller image, faintly red. It reminded him of early photographs of Mars.
“And Wolf Edmunds is here,” she said. And the way she said it, the way his name came off her tongue—Cooper had never heard anything like that in her voice before. As if that red dot was the center of the universe. Suddenly he was curious.
“Who’s Edmunds?” he asked.
“Wolf’s a particle physicist,” she said, and this time he knew he heard it. And the way she smiled…
Interesting…
“None of them had family?” he asked, pressing from the side rather than the back. He didn’t have Brand entirely figured yet, but he’d seen enough to guess that head-on wasn’t the right way to come at her.
“No attachments,” she replied. “My father insisted. They knew the odds against ever seeing another human being. I’m hoping we surprise at least three of them.”
“Tell me about Dr. Mann,” he said.
A new world came up on screen, white and grainy.
“Remarkable,” she said. “The best of us. My father’s protégé. He inspired eleven people to follow him on the loneliest journey in human history.” A different sort of passion flared in her eyes, and he saw some of her father there. “Scientists, explorers,” she said. “That’s what I love. Out there we face great odds. Death. But not evil.”
“Nature can’t be evil?” Cooper said.
“Formidable,” Brand said. “Frightening—not evil. Is a tiger evil because it rips a gazelle to pieces?”
Cooper reflected on that. If you were the gazelle, he mused, it was a moot point what was going on in the tiger’s heart and soul—whether it was evil, or just staying alive. Plenty of human beings had justified immensely evil acts in the name of survival and the “natural order of things.”
“Just what we bring with us then,” he said. He didn’t want to get into a real argument, but stubbornly found himself unwilling to let the point slide past completely.
Apparently she noticed.
“This crew represents the best aspects of humanity,” Brand said, a little testily, but he let it go. Why start the trip with a pointless philosophical argument? They had to live with one another for a long time.
In fact, he realized, what they had—along with Romilly and Doyle—was a lot like a marriage. They had to make it work, and they didn’t have the recourse of separation or divorce if things started to get unpleasant. Friction had to be kept at a minimum.
“Even me?” Cooper asked, trying to lighten things back up.
Brand smiled.
“Hey, we agreed,” she said. “Ninety percent.” With that she went to her own cryo-bed. Cooper returned his gaze to the infinite space outside of the ship.
“Don’t stay up too late,” Brand instructed. “We can’t spare the resources.”
“Hey,” Cooper objected with mock chagrin. “I’ve been waiting a long time to be up here.”
“You are literally wasting your breath,” she said. She got into the bed and lay down. The lid slid shut over her, encasing her in a plastic sheath. Liquid began filling in around the plastic, where it would freeze into a shield that would help protect her from the two years’ worth of radiation that would sleet through the hull as she slept.
Sweet dreams, he wished her, and wondered if one did in fact dream in cryo-sleep.
Cooper turned away and went to join TARS.
“Show me the trajectory again,” he told the machine. A diagram appeared on the screen.
“Eight months to Mars,” TARS said, “just like the last time we talked about it. Then counter-orbital slingshot around—”
Cooper saw Brand’s bed darken, then begin withdrawing into the deck.
“TARS,” he interrupted, speaking in a whisper. After all, he’d seen the trajectory so often he could draw it blindfolded. He didn’t need a bedtime review. But there was something about the… social situation on board, and a bit of pertinent information he needed to figure out.
Purely for sociological reasons.
“TARS,” he began, “was Dr. Brand—”
“Why are you whispering?” TARS asked. “You can’t wake them.”
He had been whispering, hadn’t he? Why? He knew TARS was right.
Was he embarrassed?
Nah, he decided. Just being considerate. And this might be important.
Later.
“Were Dr. Brand and Edmunds… close?” he asked carefully.
“I wouldn’t know,” TARS replied.
“Is that ninety percent, or ten percent ‘wouldn’t know?’” Cooper pursued.
“I also have a discretion setting,” the robot informed him.
“So I gather,” Cooper replied. He stood up. “But not a poker face.”
With that he dragged himself reluctantly to the comm station. Everyone else had recorded their goodbyes, but he still didn’t know what he was going to say, how he was going to say it. And probably, he had to admit, that was because there was no right thing to say.