Yet he had to say something. So after a few moments of hemming and hawing, he tapped the control.
“Hey, guys,” he finally began. “I’m about to settle down for a long nap, so I figured I’d send you an update.” He looked again at the dwindling jewel of the planet, apparently spinning due to the Endurance’s rotation.
“The Earth looks amazing from here. You can’t see any of the dust. I hope you guys are doing great. This should get to you okay. Professor Brand said he’d make sure of it.” He paused, aching to say more, something that could wipe away his farewell to Murph, and make everything okay.
But he couldn’t come up with anything.
“Guess I’ll say goodnight,” he finished instead.
FIFTEEN
Donald sat on the porch looking out over the cornfields. Dust and heat made the horizon shimmer—which wasn’t unusual—but between there and him, something else was coming. In time he saw it was a pair of vehicles.
One of them was Cooper’s truck. He hoped…
Then he sighed as the door burst open, and Murph came running out. Of course she had seen them coming. The way she stayed at that window…
“Is it him?” she asked softly.
“I don’t think so, Murph,” he replied. He could have answered unconditionally, but chose not to. Coop had left her in tears. That had been the hard part for him, leaving his daughter while she was so upset. Yet Donald had known when his son-in-law had left that if he didn’t turn around in the first five minutes, he was never coming back. But he hadn’t, and he wasn’t. That Murph still hoped showed that she didn’t understand her father as well as Donald did.
He stood up to meet the truck as it pulled up to the house. A man with a decade or so more years than Donald stepped out. He had a look about him, and Donald guessed it was probably the Professor Brand fellow Coop had mentioned.
“You must be Donald,” the man said. Then he looked at the girl. “Hello, Murph.”
“Why’re you in my dad’s truck?” she demanded.
“He wanted me to bring it for your brother,” the man explained.
Murph didn’t reply, and after an awkward silence, the man reached for a briefcase.
“He sent you a message—”
But Murph wasn’t having any of that, Donald knew. She spun on her heel and bolted back into the house.
The man hesitated for a moment, then pulled out a disk. He held it out toward Donald, who took it.
“Pretty upset with him for leaving,” Donald explained. It was an understatement, but there was no point in being particular, not with these people, this guy.
“If you record messages,” the man said, “I’ll transmit them to Cooper.”
Donald nodded, looking up at the house, thinking that Murph would never do it. He’d bet the farm on it.
“Murph’s a bright spark,” the man said, following his gaze. “Maybe I could fan the flame.”
Donald looked at him, gauged the man’s expression, and saw that he was serious. He had something in mind. Then he thought about Murph, still in school, becoming angrier and more belligerent—until she got expelled.
And then what?
“She’s already making fools out of her teachers,” Donald said. “She should come make a fool out of you.”
The man grinned. Donald liked that.
He looked up into the sky.
“Where are they?” he asked.
“Heading toward Mars,” the man replied. “The next time we hear from Cooper, they’ll be coming up on Saturn.”
Donald nodded.
Godspeed, Coop, he thought. Hope you find what you’re looking for. I hope it’s worth it. Worth what you left.
Murph might see Cooper again. Donald was pretty sure he never would.
He sighed. He’d already done the father thing, hadn’t he? Put in his time?
He was tired.
Count your blessings, old man, he thought to himself. Some men never even live to see their grandchildren. There was so little left that had any value to him. Only Murph and Tom, really. What did he have to complain about?
He would rest when he was dead.
SIXTEEN
Mars had been an object of fascination from the earliest days of modern astronomy, in part because it seemed so Earthlike.
Whole civilizations had risen on the red planet—in the imaginations of Lowell, Wells, Weinbaum, Burroughs, and so many other famous authors. Those civilizations had all fallen when the first robotic landers reported the dull truth. If Mars had ever been a place habitable by human beings—or anything like them—it had been a very long time ago. And if there was life there now, it was hiding itself very, very well.
Which is why they had left it behind. Mars wasn’t going to be humanity’s new home, any more than the Moon was.
Saturn had held the attention and wonder of the world for centuries, as well, but while Mars had done so because it was so Earthlike, Saturn caught the eye because it was so incredibly weird. In movies, in fiction, if you wanted to make clear a planet was really alien, you put rings around it. It was huge, as well, with an atmosphere of mostly hydrogen and helium and clouds of ammonia crystals. No home for humanity there, either, but beauty in plenty, with those bands of ice glittering in the cold light of a distant sun.
Cooper checked his instruments. Dropping into orbit, the Endurance became newest of more than one hundred and fifty moons that circled the gas giant—and that wasn’t counting the trillions of ice gems that made up the rings.
Or the object of their mission.
He checked the controls again and then went to the comm booth.
Two years.
He wanted to see his kids.
“…but they said I can start advanced agriculture a year early,” Tom said, as Cooper sat in the comm booth. He was listening, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders.
It was weird watching him change. Several recordings had been sent, the first just after Cooper went into cryosleep, and the most recent just a few days ago. They were so far away from Earth now that it took around eighty-four minutes for light—or a radio wave—to make the trip, making real-time conversations impossible, since that would mean a lag of nearly three hours between, “Hi, how are you?” and, “I’m good, how about you?”
In space, distance was time, and time was distance.
Tom mostly talked about the farm. He’d had a little trouble with Boots taking him seriously, but Donald had helped him iron that out. He’d met a girl, but that only lasted a few months. Cooper wasn’t surprised—he remembered the girl, an only child and a bit of a spoiled princess. Not that people couldn’t change, but sometimes there was a whole lot of inertia to overcome if that was to happen.
Tom had managed to repurpose the drone, which was good, because soon after Cooper left, the farm had lost a third of its solar panels in a black blizzard that had lasted almost thirty hours straight. The good news—according to his son—was that the government considered the storm to be a turning point. From here on out, they claimed, the environment would get better.
He wasn’t sure he believed it, but hope was hope.
By the last message, there was a lot less boy in Tom and a lot more man. Donald had been right about him. He was doing fine. Better than fine—he was thriving on the responsibility. Making the farm his farm.
“Got to go, Dad,” his son finished up. “Hope you’re safe up there.” He shuffled aside and Donald appeared, a little more grey, looking a little more weary. Cooper felt a twinge of guilt at having left him to shoulder so much.