Greg Keyes - Interstellar

“I called it that because it felt like—like a person,” she went on. “Trying to tell me something…”

The dust was thinning as the wind dropped off.

A short one this time, thank God.

She started the engine.

“If there’s an answer here on Earth,” she said, “it’s back there, somehow. No one’s coming to save us.”

She pulled back onto the road, such as it was, and continued on.

“I have to find it,” she said.

She pulled past a pickup, stuffed almost comically with belongings and passengers. But there was nothing comical about the two kids in back, the dust smeared on their faces and clothes, the lost look in their eyes.

“We’re running out of time,” she said.

Cooper propped his feet up on the console of the Ranger, and watched through the windshield as CASE brought the lander down, its braking rockets flaring before it gently settled onto the ice. The lander wasn’t as sleek as the Rangers—it was a bit boxier, more plough horse than racehorse, handsome rather than beautiful.

TARS was out on the wing of the Ranger, making repairs.

“What about auxiliary oxygen scrubbers?” CASE asked via radio.

“They can stay,” Cooper said. “I’ll sleep most of the journey.” He smiled sardonically. “I saw it all on the way out here.”

In his mind, he was already on the way home, but in fact, there was a great deal to do before he could jet off. Anything he could live without—like the auxiliary scrubbers—would be left behind, for Brand, Romilly, and Mann to use in building humanity’s “future.”

Likewise, there was a lot of stuff that needed to be brought down from the Endurance —obvious things like the population bomb with its cargo of unborn, but also anything else they might possibly need. It would be an ongoing process—the Endurance had made her last voyage, and while fuel remained the crew would continue to cannibalize the ring-ship for parts, until they became capable of finding, extracting, and processing the natural resources of their new home.

It was only fair that he help them begin the process. After all the time he’d lost, another day or two wouldn’t make much difference.

He looked up as Romilly came through the airlock and released his helmet. It still came as a bit of a shock, seeing the age on him. And it served as a reminder of what he faced if he managed to return to Earth.

“I have a suggestion for your return journey,” Romilly said.

“What?” Cooper asked.

“Have one last crack at the black hole.”

Behind Romilly, TARS entered the ship.

“Gargantua’s an older, spinning black hole,” Romilly went on. “What we call a gentle singularity.”

“Gentle?” He remembered the force yanking them toward Miller’s world, the nearly two-mile-high tidal waves, the razor’s edge of naught that was Gargantua’s horizon.

“They’re hardly gentle,” Romilly qualified, “but their tidal gravity is quick enough that something crossing the horizon fast enough might survive… a probe, say.”

“What happens to it after it crosses?” Cooper asked.

“Beyond the event horizon is a complete mystery,” Romilly said. “Who’s to say there isn’t some way the probe can glimpse the singularity and relay the quantum data? If he’s equipped to transmit every form of energy that can pulse—X-ray, visible light, radio…”

“Just when did this probe become a ‘he?’” Cooper asked.

Romilly suddenly looked awkward.

“TARS is the obvious candidate,” he said, sheepishly. “I’ve already told him what to look for.”

“I’d need to take the old optical telescope from KIPP,” TARS said in his matter-of-fact way.

Cooper regarded TARS. If there was still any chance for plan A, didn’t they have to take it? But at what cost? Sure, TARS was a machine, but he was a person, too—in a way.

“You’d do this for us?” Cooper asked the machine.

“Before you get teary,” TARS said, “try to remember that as a robot I have to do anything you say, anyway.”

“Your cue light’s broken,” Cooper said, when no LED came on.

“I’m not joking,” TARS replied.

Only then did the light flash on.

Brand and Mann met him at the foot of the ladder.

“Ranger’s almost ready,” Cooper told them. “CASE is on his way back with another load.”

“I’ll start a final inventory,” Brand offered.

“Dr. Mann,” Romilly said, “I need TARS to remove and adapt some components from KIPP.”

Mann cocked his head and regarded the robot for a moment.

“He mustn’t disturb KIPP’s archival functions.”

“I’ll supervise,” Romilly assured him.

Mann still seemed reluctant, but then he nodded.

Cooper listened to the exchange a little impatiently. He had his own concerns. He didn’t feel as if he could leave until a couple of things had been dealt with. First and foremost they needed to establish the location of the colony Brand, Mann and the rest would found. He could bring that information back to Earth, in case they did manage to send another expedition. And it would also ease his mind to see the place, to know concretely that his friends—that the human race—had a new home.

“We need to pick out a site,” Cooper told Mann. “You don’t wanna have to move the module once we land it.”

“I’ll show you the probe sites,” Mann said, as a hard wind blustered across the frozen cloudscape.

“Will conditions hold?” Cooper asked, eyeing the sky.

“These squalls usually blow over,” Mann said. “You’ve got a long-range transmitter?”

Cooper checked the box plugged into the neck-ring of his spacesuit.

“Good to go,” he said.

Mann pointed at the thrust nozzle in his elbow joint.

“Charged?” he asked. Cooper double-checked and gave him a thumbs up.

Without further hesitation, they set off. After a few moments, the lander passed over them, with CASE at the controls. Cooper reached up and keyed his long-range transmitter.

“A little caution, CASE?” he said.

“Safety first, Cooper,” CASE shot back.

Cooper and Mann tracked on over the sculpted ice, the surface grinding beneath their boots.

Cooper had changed his mind about Mann’s world as he got to know it better. It was nothing like any place on Earth. Where they now walked, the clouds were no longer white, but rather a sort of charcoal color, as if they were frozen thunderheads. Of course, he knew that the color came from minerals frozen in the ice, and there were probably places on Earth with similar dirty snow. But nowhere on his home planet did any glacier rise into such strange configurations, spreading in the sky above, dropping off into blue darkness below, winding into formations like gigantic, frozen worms.

After a time they came to an edge, and a drop of about fifty feet.

“Just take it gently,” Mann said, stepping off the cliff. The jets at his elbows flared, slowing him so he landed with a light thump instead of a splat. A little less sure of himself, Cooper followed.

The lighter gravity made everything seem a little dreamlike, even in the heavy suit. Acceleration didn’t feel quite right, nor did the kick of his thrusters when he fired them. Evolution had built his brain for thirty-two feet per second per second, and that wasn’t how physics played here.

He landed in a massive canyon of ice. Beautiful, as Mann had said, but also daunting. It made him feel insignificant. Gazing at the wind-sculpted walls, he wondered how old the ice was, what forces other than wind had shaped it. What the unseen surface below was like. Mann said there was air present, and organics, but with this superstrata of frozen clouds it was going to be dark, wasn’t it? And cold, probably much colder than up above.