Catherine stayed quiet, then conceded. “All right. Yes. You’re right. I’ll do my best to stay focused on the present from now on.”
“Great. You’re not going to regret it, I promise you.”
Catherine left the office, hoping against hope that Dr. Darzi was right. But another part of her wondered how she was supposed to focus on the present when she was haunted by the gaping black hole that was her past. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she needed to remember what had happened to her after Mission Day 865. When had they landed on TRAPPIST-1f? What had happened then? Dr. Darzi wanted to know what she was afraid of. She was afraid that the hole in her memory starting on Day 865 would expand, one blank period of time, until there was nothing left of her.
Sagittarius I Mission
DAY 937
IN ORBIT ABOVE TRAPPIST-1F
The crew was crowded into the command module, watching as they passed over TRAPPIST-1f’s dark side. They didn’t get their first clear glimpse of their new home until they reached the terminator line that divided permanent day from night on the planet. Catherine guided them through their orbit, giving Claire Tomason, their mission specialist and resident scientist, time to do a full analysis of the surface conditions.
“Water!” Richie Almeida, their systems operator, spotted it first. “A lake. That’s a fucking lake! Are you seeing this?”
A large patch of blue winked at them from a valley, and there were other similar blue spots dotting the landscape.
“Scientists back home are going to lose their minds when they find out,” Ava said.
Tom craned his head over the communications panel he was manning, trying to spot something else new. “Doesn’t exactly look welcoming,” he muttered.
“What is your deal?” Richie nudged him in the shoulder. “It’s a new planet. You’re allowed to be excited!”
Tom pushed his hand away with a scowl.
Ever since New Year’s Day, when Catherine had crept out of his bed, Tom had been snappish with the rest of the crew.
At first, it had been awkward as hell. The ship was too small for her to avoid him completely. Two weeks after New Year’s, Tom approached her once more, trying to persuade her to come back. When she said no, he stopped talking to her altogether, unless absolutely required. He started spending most of his downtime alone in his cabin, rebuffing anyone who tried to draw him out.
She had hoped that maybe reaching their mission objective would help him come around, but it didn’t sound like it was working. Everyone else was happy, but he clearly was not.
They certainly all had reason to be happy. Finding water on the planet’s surface was exactly what they’d hoped for. Surface water greatly increased the chances that the planet could be habitable and, even more exciting, that there might already be life down there.
“That’s not all,” Israel Riley—Izzy to his friends—said, pointing out the porthole. “I’m seeing a lot of green out there.”
“Good eyes, Doc,” Claire said, nodding. “It looks like some sort of moss or lichen. It’s everywhere.” Claire was a geologist by specialty, but she’d spent time before the mission working with everyone from paleontologists to botanists to epidemiologists—even exobiologists, although that field remained mostly speculative without concrete data to study. As their only scientist, she’d needed a broader grasp of what they might encounter out here.
“Claire, what are those rock columns?” Catherine asked. Gray-blue pillars of what looked like extensions of the rocky ground stood scattered, clustered on both sides of the terminator line. It was hard to tell size from this distance, but Catherine would have guessed they were at least one and a half times as tall as she was, and the width of a large tree trunk.
“I… don’t know, actually. I’ve never seen any formations like that outside of a cave…” Claire’s excitement was palpable. “We’ll have to take a closer look!”
Sagittarius continued its orbit around the planet, passing into the dark side, where it was impossible to see what lay below.
“Catherine, ETA on landing?” Ava Gidzenko asked.
“We’ll reach the terminator line again in about twenty minutes,” Catherine said. “We’ll cross the light side one more time, then reach our landing coordinates. I’m plugged in and ready to go. We should be able to land on this pass.”
“Excellent.” Ava clapped her on the shoulder and smiled. “Okay, team. Prepare for landing. Let’s take a look at where we’re going to be living for a while.” She sat down in the commander’s seat and grinned back at the rest of the crew, who were strapping themselves in. “Then maybe we can go meet the neighbors.”
After nearly three years in space, everyone on board Sagittarius breathed a sigh of relief when Catherine touched them down on the surface of TRAPPIST-1f.
“Atmospheric analysis is almost done.” Claire looked up from her display. “It’s not far off from what we thought. Slightly higher CO2 concentration, humidity and atmospheric pressure comparable to Earth’s. We’ll be more comfortable if we use oxygen. Temperature outside right now is a balmy thirty-one degrees Celsius, winds are holding steady at forty kilometers per hour. It’s breezy out there, folks.”
“All right, everybody,” Ava said. “Get ready to go for a walk. We’ll maintain pressure discipline and quarantine measures until we’re sure nothing here is going to kill us.”
They drew straws, and Richie got to be the first to set foot on the unfamiliar world. “Damn,” he said, “I should have thought of something clever to say.”
“You’re not on live TV. When we get back, we’ll tell everyone you were brilliant.” Catherine tried to contain some of her exuberance, but this was it—this was the thing they’d trained so long for, and now, after over two and a half years, they were here.
When it was her turn, Catherine tried to focus on just how momentous this was as she stepped down onto the planet’s surface. It crunched beneath her feet like any rocky surface back home would. The landscape looked like a desert—and the heat only added to that impression—with hills and outcroppings and canyons in the distance. It looked like parts of Arizona except the sky had a reddish cast to it, and in that sky, the shapes of the other TRAPPIST-1 planets loomed, along with the system’s sun, TRAPPIST-1 itself. TRAPPIST-1 was smaller and cooler than Earth’s sun, but its seven planets were warmer due to their closer proximities and dense atmospheres.
Catherine had never imagined such a crowded sky. From Earth, planets looked like bright stars, visible only at night. The other TRAPPIST-1 planets loomed like boulders hanging overhead, some so massive they seemed like they might fall at any moment. Just looking up into that sky made her feel claustrophobic. The light was much dimmer than she’d expected, and wouldn’t change throughout the day. All the TRAPPIST-1 planets were tidally locked like Earth’s moon, each with a permanent dark and light side. Their landing area was in the space between, in permanent twilight.
Claire had been right about the winds—they were enough to make walking difficult. But on the other hand, the gravity was just over half the strength of Earth’s gravity, which gave them the buoyancy of walking through water. Ahead of her, Richie and Izzy were laughing and jumping into the air, seeing if they could reach the top of one of the rock pillars. It was surreal to see them putting NBA stars to shame, clearing more than a meter each time with ease. Tom and Claire watched, Tom with his arms folded across his chest. Claire smiled and said something to him, but he just turned away and walked back to the ship.