Nola’s parents led teams of scientists hunting for something- anything-that suggested we weren’t alone in the universe. We’d been on Planet Doom for a year, tunneling beneath the ice to the pitch-black oceans under the frozen crust. Four planet-sized failures will do that to you. But by the time we got to Planet Doom, people were a lot less optimistic than they’d been at the start of the Mission. Nola’s parents, the lead Mission scientists, did their best to keep everyone’s spirits up. We’ve been to five planets in 10 years and haven’t even found one lousy bacterium, let alone another sentient lifeform to talk to. That’s what it felt like when we started the Mission too. The Seager Mission made people feel like maybe, just maybe, our species could still do something beautiful. We built rockets that would take us beyond anything anyone had ever known. Somehow, though, we’d looked at the stars and found a way to get there. We hadn’t solved poverty or hunger or hatred or cruelty. We’d wrecked our planet and spent hundreds of years trying to wipe each other out in every way possible. The idea of traveling through space to look for other life forms-other beings who might even be like us-united people in a way that nothing else had. For almost 100 years, astronomers had been studying the stars, finding thousands of planets that might harbor life. Maybe it was.īut then scientists discovered the Mirzakhani Effect: a way to travel through space at speeds faster than light. Before I was born, people thought the world was ending.
The overcrowded cities, the famines, the wars. But all the kids on the Mission go to school, and we’ve all seen the pictures of the decaying planet we left behind. All I remember is color: the clear blue sky in summer, the pale green of my mom’s favorite tea, the dense red and gold and orange of the dahlias my dad grew. I was 5 years old when my parents left Earth. It started out as a way to bring people together in the face of impossible odds.
And the Seager Mission didn’t start out as a failure. Planet Doom’s real name is KEPLER-2099-BLG-395b. “I came out here to help you with one last patrol. “I know how much the Mission means-meant-to you. “I’m sorry, Yuki,” Nola said, breaking the silence. Your tears freeze to your cheeks before they fall. I wanted to cry, but crying out here hurts too much. She stopped, staring out across the jagged slabs of red-lit ice.įor a long minute we stared at each other. “I’m sick of the stupid Mission,” Nola muttered. “I mean, even if Mission Control would let me.” “I couldn’t leave my mom and dad,” I said. And if it doesn’t, they can come back to Earth too.” “If your parents’ store works out they could just send for you. I scanned the horizon now and then with my infrared binocs for the signs of alien life that every scientist in the Mission had long ago given up on finding. “I wish you could just come with us,” Nola said, interrupting my gloomy thoughts as we crunched across the ice.
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Outside the Perimeter you’d be dead in 30 seconds unless you wore a full survival suit. The Perimeter muffled the howling, lethal wind that sent constant whirling storms of ice particles across the frozen landscape. The sky was flushed red with hazy clouds of nitrogen. Beyond the Perimeter, Planet Doom’s single pale sun glittered in the distance like a cheap piece of jewelry. Perimeter patrol took place during the one hour of what passed for daylight on Planet Doom-not that anybody besides me bothered to patrol anymore. Like me, Nola was dressed in standard-issue outside wear: compfiber jumpsuit, mask covering the bottom half of her face to keep ice crystals from forming in her nose and throat, and a knit cap pulled tight over her puff of curly black hair. But in that moment, the Perimeter didn’t feel like a shelter. The Perimeter is a force field that keeps us colonists and Missioners safe, holding oxygen in and keeping the deadly cold out. It went flying, striking the silvery bubble of the Perimeter in a shower of sparks. Nola sighed, kicking at a chunk of ice with her antigrav boot. My family was staying behind, and I was never going to see my best friend again.
Nola and her parents and the entire Seager Mission were leaving tomorrow. We both knew that was a lie, but it was easier to pretend than to admit the truth. “When my parents save up enough money we can take a trip to Earth.” Even inside the Perimeter, Planet Doom’s temperature never got much above freezing. Her breath bloomed in the cold air like white roses.
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