Lily Brooks-Dalton - Good Morning, Midnight

She kept scanning, hoping the man in the Arctic would hear her, but their frequency had been empty for days now. There had been something about talking to him—something that thawed her, just a little, a softening of the part of her that had been icebound since the launch. Or maybe even before: since she realized she’d lost her family, that they’d never been hers to begin with. That tenuous connection with the man in the Arctic, across such an incredible distance, had reminded her that even the fleeting things were worth their weight in sadness. Even a few words could mean something. The receivers caught nothing but atmospheric disturbances and white noise. Eventually she shut it all down and floated back to Little Earth one last time.

The crew ate a subdued dinner together. No one was in the mood for talking. Sully went to bed early while Harper and Thebes went back to the ISS to run a landing simulation sequence. Tal and Ivanov played videogames together one last time. She turned out the light in her bunk and lay awake for a long time, thinking. On the other side of the curtain she heard her crewmates getting ready for bed: the opening and closing of the lavatory door, the whisper of curtains being drawn, the rustle of bedclothes. Thebes cleared his throat; Tal coughed; Ivanov wept quietly; Harper scribbled in his journal. It was easy to tell which sounds belonged to whom, and where they were in the centrifuge. She knew her crewmates and their home through and through—but not for much longer, she reminded herself.

In her dreams that night, she was floating above Earth, no spacesuit, no propulsion pack, just wearing her navy blue jumpsuit, the arms tied around the waist, her gray T-shirt tucked in. She looked over her shoulder at the space station and saw a crowd of faces watching her from the cupola, waving to her. Saying goodbye. She saw Devi there, smiling, her brown palm flat against the glass. She saw Lucy, sitting on Jack’s shoulders. She saw her mother, Jean. Everyone was happy for her, everyone wishing her well. Sully turned and dived toward Earth, speeding through the vacuum, her arms above her head, her toes pointed, ready to plow through the atmosphere like a diver piercing the water’s surface. Her body became warm, then hot, then suddenly she realized she was on fire, hurtling through the atmosphere like a comet streaming across the sky. She woke up before she hit the ground. Her mouth was dry, her neck ached. She looked at her clock. It was time.

THE FIVE CREWMEMBERS of Aether crowded around the entrance to the remaining Soyuz pod. They all hugged one another and lingered in the doorway a few minutes longer than necessary. Finally Tal announced they had better get going with the undocking sequence if they wanted to make their reentry window. He dropped down into the pod and began strapping himself in. Harper gave Thebes and Ivanov one last handshake and whispered something into each of their ears. Sully hesitated. She gave Ivanov a hug, the third one in the last five minutes, and he kissed her on both cheeks. Droplets of water floated between them—tears, she wasn’t sure whose. She turned to Thebes.

“Are you sure?” she whispered in his ear as he embraced her again.

“Positive,” he whispered back, and then gave her a gentle push into the pod.

“Safe travels, my friends,” Thebes said. Ivanov waved, and together they pulled the door shut.

Sully strapped herself into the remaining seat, on Harper’s left. They heard the seal being winched shut on the other side of the door, then nothing. Just the sounds of their own bodies: anxious breath and restless limbs. Tal began clicking on the pod’s systems. He took out the reentry sequence manual and tucked it between his legs while he adjusted the instruments. He took his time, until finally he decided everything was ready. Tal slid down his visor.

“Here we go,” Tal said. He pushed a button and Sully felt the Soyuz slip away from the docking port, a gentle release, ending one journey and beginning another. Tal fired up the engine for a short burn, to move them away from the space station and set them on a parallel orbit. Then he initiated a longer burn, to take them around the planet and distance themselves farther from the station, sinking lower and lower until finally they hit the atmosphere at a sloping angle. It all took place more slowly than Sully remembered, and she kept looking out the small window to make sure they were in fact moving. Finally Tal shed the orbital module and instrument panel components of the Soyuz. From within the descent pod they could feel the bolts exploding above and below them, sending the other pieces of the Soyuz spinning away. A few minutes later they began to pass through the denser layers of the atmosphere. Outside the window a molten stream of plasma covered the glass, and the heat darkened the window. Gravity took hold of them, slowly at first, then exerting a greater and greater force as they plummeted through the atmosphere. Sully began to worry that they wouldn’t make it—that the Soyuz had sat unused for too long, that the heat shield was faulty, that the parachute wouldn’t open. She wanted to make it so badly, wanted to see what came next. Without thinking she reached out and grabbed Harper’s arm. Tal was concentrating on keeping the descent pod on target, but Harper was watching her. He flipped open his visor and put his gloved hand over hers.

“Are you all right?” he asked. The first parachute opened and the violence of it jerked the little pod back and forth. After the silence of space, the sound of the wind shrieking around them was deafening. By then the pull of gravity had grown so strong she could barely nod. After a moment the turbulence evened out and the second parachute opened, a gentler tug and a smoother descent. She felt held, nestled in the cup of an immense cosmic palm as they plummeted toward the surface of the earth. The sound of the wind abated as they descended through the layers of the atmosphere, and the terror finally seeped from her muscles. She was ready to survive—to hit the ground and open the pod—and even though she had no idea what kind of world they were arriving in, she was ready to find out. The pod kept falling, and through the mostly blackened window she glimpsed a piece of sky, clear and blue. Even if this was the end, even if they had come all this way only to die now, that piece of sky made everything worth it. They were home. She looked over at Harper, who was still watching her, and in that second she loved him more than she would have thought was possible. A thousand doors, wide open now.

“Iris,” he said. No one had called her that in a long time, but she liked the way it sounded when he said it. “I’m glad you came.”

She closed her eyes and prepared for impact, hoping there would be time to hear him say it again. But even if there wasn’t—

“Me too.”

For Gordon Brooks

I’M GRATEFUL FOR my agent, Jen Gates, who listened to an outlandish, unformed idea and was excited by it, who was patient and supportive, and who did so much incredible work ensuring this book found the right home.

I’m grateful for Anna Pitoniak, who is that home, and who shaped this story with her intuition for what it could be, her understanding of what it was, and her meticulous attention to detail.

I’m grateful for each and every person at Random House and Zachary Shuster Harmsworth whose hands have touched this novel.

I’m grateful for my foreign publishers, in particular my UK editor, Kirsty Dunseath at Orion Books.