Temi Oh - Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

Poppy swanned towards the grinning girls, blowing kisses. She wasn’t allowed across the painted line that separated them, but she posed for pictures. Half of her fans were waving and shouting, a couple even clutching each other in tearful excitement.

‘Should really have parked closer to the entrance,’ Commander Sheppard said through gritted teeth to the driver. He was eyeing the crowd warily.

‘Let them look,’ the young man said.

Camera flashes exploded across Astrid’s retinas with dizzying quickness. Juno turned to her sister in joyful disbelief and asked, ‘Does it feel the same for you too? Like we’ll wake up from this any second? Like the way we felt when we made it into the Beta?’

‘I don’t know,’ Astrid said. But really, nothing in this whole adventure had ever felt more real than this moment, surrounded by people, the air electric with anticipation. The world was about to change, and she could feel the excitement sizzle in her stomach.

‘Astrid!’ someone shouted, and she turned to find a group of girls leaning against the barriers, their jumpers tied around their waists, patches of sweat blooming under their arms as they stood in the heat. Astrid distantly recognized their faces. She had seen them striding through the halls of Dalton in tight groups. They were a couple of years younger than her. They cheered when they caught her eye and bounced up and down on their heels. ‘Ast-rid! Ast-rid! Ast-rid!’ they yelled hysterically in a chant that caught on all around them, other people clapping as they picked it up: ‘Ast-rid! Ast-RID, Ast-RID…’ Her heart soared. There was nothing to be afraid of. She was loved.

‘Hey, look.’ Juno pointed up to the screen erected near the bleachers. Their own identical faces had just appeared on it, from a different angle. They looked bright as two bees in their flight suits and they were smiling.

After some time, Commander Sheppard ushered them away from the car and the crowd and into the shade of the mission control centre. Inside, Astrid’s heart was still throbbing and her ears buzzed in the relative hush of the building. Eliot was pale, and squeezing his hands so tightly into fists that his knuckles were turning white. ‘Are you okay?’ Astrid asked.

‘I will be in a minute,’ he said quietly. ‘You know I’ve always hated crowds.’ But he was just as tense during the press conference, sweat beading on his forehead as he stared in strained silence out at the reporters, even when a question was directed at him. Harry and Commander Sheppard charmed them all, though, and smoothly diverted attention away from Eliot. Just before closing, Harry leant into the microphone and said, ‘On behalf of myself and my crew I would like to say thank you to everyone on the ground for your hard work. It’s in our DNA to explore, and though it will be our feet touching Terra-Two, it’s the work of thousands of dedicated men and women here on the ground that made that possible.’ There was a round of happy applause and then the commander initiated a minute’s silence for Ara, and Astrid thought she saw Juno cry.

They came out to greet the people one final time. Astrid was glad to see that the weather forecast had been correct and during their brief period inside every cloud had blown away. The sun was high in the sky and sending limpid rays down onto the brass band. The noise of the trumpets and the rumble of the drums was still ringing in Astrid’s ears when she entered the suit-up room. They were handed over to the technicians, who helped them into their spacesuits.

Once she had pushed her hands into her stiff gloves and collected her helmet, Astrid trudged to one end of the room to join the others in a pose for the final crew photographs. The six of them wore dazed smiles, the bags under their eyes illuminated in the glare of the lights. The photographer rearranged them tentatively and placed Jesse where Ara always used to stand, by Eliot’s side. Jesse threw his hands up in awkward surrender. ‘You can take one with just you guys,’ he said, stepping back. ‘I don’t have to be in it.’ Into the stony silence, Commander Sheppard spoke. ‘It’s an honour to have you on the team,’ he said, patting the boy’s back.

They took a picture with the junior and senior crew together – Dr Golinsky, Igor and their commander – then countless others with flight directors, operational managers and even their old teachers. Astrid began fidgeting as her mouth started to hurt from smiling. Emotions were running high by that point, everyone’s eyes were glittering and it was difficult to tell whether they were saying ‘good luck’ or ‘goodbye.’

BY THE TIME THEY drove out to the shuttle they had been in their spacesuits so long they were all beginning to sweat. They were sitting opposite each other in the van, five facing five, but were mostly quiet. Only Harry, Igor and Commander Sheppard were comfortable enough to make cheerful banter. The others avoided each other’s eyes, each in their own private world of anticipation. The silence became more noticeable as they left mission control behind, along with the band and the cheering crowd and the screen that read T-minus 90 minutes, and made their way to the open stretch of land where the shuttle was chained to the Earth.

The Congreve was far bigger than Astrid remembered, the size of a cathedral. The orbiter, the small space where the crew would be strapped in, sat on top of propellant-filled towers which generated enough thrust to hurl them through the atmosphere. Astrid climbed out of the van at the foot of the giant, that hissed and thrummed, and from where she stood, could see steam curl off the steel surface like breath through parted lips.

Sixty metres above her the orbiter access was like the arm of a crane, and as they took the lift up to it Astrid felt the drop in her stomach. Yet she knew this thirty seconds of acceleration was nothing compared to the flight that awaited her on the other side of the shuttle’s hatch, where they would soar to twenty-six times the speed of sound in eight minutes.

The elevator door slid open to a sunlit bridge and they were greeted by the close-out crew – the white-suited technicians who approached the senior astronauts with hugs and the members of the Beta with handshakes. ‘Just follow the yellow-brick road,’ said one of the men with a number 2 printed on his back. He was pointing to the yellow and black chevrons painted on the narrow walkway that led to the white room, the small chamber in front of the hatch. The little space was packed with people and almost as soon as Astrid entered three of them descended on her, tugging at the straps on her spacesuit and re-attaching communication lines.

‘Hey. Jesse looked up from the small crowd in front of him and asked, ‘You don’t know how to…’ He was fiddling with the straps on his parachute, blushing with confusion. Astrid was about to lean over to help him when one of the suit technicians brushed her hands away and attached it herself. ‘You’re ready,’ she told him, and Jesse took a deep breath and headed into the shuttle. ‘See you on the other side,’ he said over his shoulder.

‘How does that feel?’ A man peered up at Astrid from behind his glasses, fastening the final strap on her suit. ‘Too tight?’

‘Not really,’ she told him, and then it was her turn to step through the hatch. It was a little circular door and climbing in was an inelegant process that required Astrid to get on all fours and then to roll onto her back, every movement a struggle in her heavy suit. She felt like a diver wearing a second skeleton, but it occurred to her, as the crew fumbled to strap her in, that these were the last people she would see on Earth, and she didn’t even know their names.

Once they finished, Astrid was tied down so tightly she could feel the pulse throbbing in her legs. Her ears were filled with the chatter of mission control. ‘As you know: I’ve done this a few times,’ Commander Sheppard said with a smile. ‘It’s over quickly. Your job is just to take it all in.’