Temi Oh - Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

‘No I heard it was cancer and a car accident.’ Poppy lowered her voice. ‘He’s lost literally everyone he loves.’

There was a moment of silence and then Juno took a sharp breath, as if she’d suddenly recalled a dream. ‘Someone new is coming. To replace Ara.’

‘Are you sure?’ Astrid asked.

‘Well, they’ve got to replace her, haven’t they?’

‘Do they?’

‘I guess…’ She sounded less sure. ‘I mean, someone’s got to take her position, you know, do the job she was meant to do… hydroponics. We’ll need to grow food still.’

‘Someone will have to replace Maggie, too,’ Poppy reminded them. And it was true, they would need a flight surgeon in case they were sick and to perform all the medical examinations that had already become routine. Astrid wondered if the new person would also count down, five, four, three, two … before taking their blood, but sometimes stick the needle in on four or two so it came as a surprise and was over a few seconds sooner.

‘But who…?’ Astrid asked. ‘It’s not like they can train someone up in a night.’ What Astrid really meant was who would have Ara’s magic eyes, or smell as sweet and welcoming as Maggie?

‘Someone from the backup crew, obviously.’

It always made Astrid uneasy to think about the other six candidates who had almost made it. It was a reminder of how lucky she was, because the difference between herself and her Earthbound alternates probably had less to do with points in test scores and more with an alignment of stars.

The door creaked open and they all turned, expecting to find Eliot striding in, returning for his breakfast. But instead Professor Stenton walked briskly in, and at the sight of her they all began to stand. ‘No, no, don’t stand up.’ She waved a hand dismissively. Dr Golinsky was in tow, and to Astrid, the two adults appeared just as tense as they had when she spied them earlier. ‘Finish your breakfast in five minutes. I expect to see you all— Where’s Eliot Liston?’

‘He wasn’t hungry, Professor,’ said Harry, who had climbed out of his seat anyway and straightened his back.

‘Well… I can imagine.’ She examined them all with her hawk-like eyes and then clapped her hands together and said, ‘Right, right. The cars are scheduled to leave in one hundred and twenty minutes. I need you dressed and ready to go in ninety. Just a note of reminder, they are bound to ask about the tragic accident in the press conference today. We’ve prepared some answers for you to read over in the cars but feel free to say that you are not prepared to comment if they ask anything too personal. It’s understandable – you’re all grieving. Before the launch we’ll have a minute of silence. But in the meantime, I expect to see you all in the council room in five minutes for an emergency meeting.’

THE BETA TOOK THE lift up to the council room together, and by the time they arrived everyone was already there. The provost and Dalton’s other directors, along with the president of the British Interplanetary Society and some executives from the UKSA. Doctors, technicians and press officers too, maybe forty people in all. Astrid shuddered with something like stage fright as she and the rest of the crew entered and a silence fell over the assembled party.

Commander Solomon stood in front of the projector screen, so the interlocking rings of the Off-World Colonization Programme strobed across his cheekbone. Next to him was the flight engineer, Igor Bovarin, but Maggie Millburrow was nowhere to be seen.

‘You can sit here.’ One of the directors indicated five seats that had been vacated for them at the front of the room, near the podium, which was draped in the Union Jack.

Astrid felt as if she was attending a wake. Most of the people in the room were suited in black, eyes bloodshot and grief-stricken. Several of the governors patted her shoulder as she shuffled past towards her seat, and whispered consolations.

The provost took the podium. ‘Thank you, thank you.’ She raised her hands to silence the room. ‘Lord Davidson—’ she nodded towards the president of the society. ‘It’s been a difficult night for us all. As I’m sure you know, Dr Millburrow has asked to step down from her post.’

‘You mean she’s been asked to step down,’ Harry muttered to Astrid.

‘But I’m relieved to say that Doctor Friederike Golinsky, our senior medical officer, has volunteered to take her place.’ A round of applause exploded across the room, and the five members of the Beta looked up to see a thin woman by the provost’s side. The woman Astrid had seen crying downstairs only half an hour ago.

Although they had met Dr Golinsky many times before – overseeing medical examinations, or in the shadows during a meeting of the board of directors, her head down, drumming her long white fingers on the back of her clipboard – none of them knew very much about her. There were rumours that she used to be a ballerina but her career was cut short by an accident. She did indeed have a dancer’s body. She still possessed an epicene beauty; always tied her jet hair in a tight bun at the top of her head. Underneath her security pass, which hung from her neck on a lanyard, the cage of her chest was sheer as a cliff-face. She had always frightened them a little. Because she could often be heard reprimanding junior doctors in her thick German accent, and because a long puckered scar split her face from forehead to left cheek.

Now she smiled and leant into the microphone, waiting for the clapping to die down before she said, ‘Thank you. Twenty years ago, when I moved to the UK, I would never have imagined that I would be chosen to play even a small part in this historic mission. And twenty days ago I would not have imagined that I would be chosen to board the shuttle to travel to Terra-Two. But I am greatly honoured.’ Another smattering of applause.

‘Now, we understand that the tragic loss of our crew member Ara Shah yesterday afternoon came as a terrible shock. But the purpose of the Off-World Colonization Programme was to send six young adults to Terra-Two in 2012 to establish a permanent human settlement.

‘Ara’s job on the ship was to assist our hydroponics expert Dr Cai Tsang – who is currently on the International Mars Base – in growing the crops that will come to be the astronauts’ primary food and oxygen source. It’s a vital role. And at this late stage, as many of you may have seen on the eight o’clock news, a member of the reserve crew will be taking her place.’

When Astrid looked around, she saw that the faces of the other crew members were pale. Eliot’s head was in his hands. ‘Who is she…?’ Poppy whispered, as they both struggled to remember who in the reserve crew had been assigned Ara’s job.

‘Please welcome…’ The provost stepped back a little from the microphone to make space. Astrid could feel the blood draining from her face. The crowd parted. For a minute some part of her thought that she would find Ara standing amongst them, smiling her playful smile and flicking the river water out of her long hair. Fooled you , she’d say with a laugh. This entire day, this nightmare, just an elaborate joke.

A tall bronze-skinned boy stepped onto the podium dressed in a flight suit, and applause swept across the gathered crowd like rain. Cheers, whoops of relief. It was all going to be fine. The mission would go ahead. All of that work, all of their hopes, none of them wasted.

Jesse Solloway – Astrid recognized him immediately. The misfit who never made the cut. They couldn’t have chosen anyone less likely than this young man, whose coal-black eyes were distant and dreamy, who braided broken shells and mantled leaves into his waist-length locks. Jesse had always radiated his own kind of lonely cool. Once, in a careers lesson, when asked what he wanted to be, he had said ‘deity’ and the class had tittered nervously. They only took it seriously a few months later, when he didn’t make the Beta and stopped coming to school. Rumours spread that he was going to die.