Shades of Earth

“It’s so weird,” Amy says. “It’s like we’re upside down, facing the planet, but it doesn’t feel like we’re upside down.” She swipes her hand over her hair, futilely trying to smooth it down, but it just floats up again.

“Orbit break initiating,” the computer says.

All three of the big red lights blink on and stay on. The shuttle is pushed forward, straight toward the planet. I glance at Amy: her eyes are wide with fear, her fingers curled over the edge of the armrests of her chair. But I know—this is what she wants. Giving her Centauri-Earth is the only way I’ll ever be able to make her truly happy, to make up for the fact that my careless actions trapped her in the cage of Godspeed with the likes of Luthor and people who will never be able to accept her.

“Deorbit burn,” the computer announces.

“Ready?” Amy whispers.

“No,” I confess. I want to give Amy the planet, but I wish it wasn’t at the cost of the only home I’ve ever known.

The shuttle picks up speed, aiming at a downward angle toward the planet. All three red lights on the monitor in front of Amy glow brightly. A few smaller lights, scattered between the bigger one, blink on—more rockets are firing, increasing our thrust toward Centauri-Earth.

“Entry interface acquired,” the computer says.

The planet fills the window. Blue-green-white. I can just see the nose of the shuttle, a dull grayish-green that starts to glow red. Something bright silver sparkles in the corner of my eye, but as I turn my head to see it, the shuttle dips again. Flashes of orange and yellow and red flicker around the window.

I glance over at Amy. Her little gold cross floats around her neck. She snatches it with one hand, clutching it so tightly that her knuckles whiten. Her mouth moves silently, forming words I cannot hear.

Lights blink chaotically across the control panel—rockets are bursting on and off, making our descent veer into an angled zigzag, designed, I suspect, to slow us down. I occasionally catch glimpses of the planet, but for the most part the windows are blurred with orange and red—flames? Or just heat from the deorbital burn? I don’t know, I don’t know, and by all the stars, how did I ever think we could land a frexing shuttle by ourselves?

Something smashes into the side of the shuttle—or at least, it feels that way as the entire shuttle wobbles and veers suddenly off course. A dozen lights flick on and off, and the computer chirps, “Landing signal disrupted. Manual mode on.”

“What’s going on?” Amy yells.

Red lights on the ceiling of the bridge flick on, casting a bloody glow around us. I look to Amy, and I can tell that she realizes the same thing I have: something’s wrong. “Ground impact in T minus fifteen minutes,” the computer says in a perfectly calm tone.

“Ground impact?” Amy parrots, her voice high and cracked. “We’re crashing!”

My heart stops as I realize she’s right. I grab the small steering wheel that juts out from under the control panel and do the only thing that makes sense—I jerk it back as hard as I can, hoping that somehow I can at least make it so we don’t hit the planet head-on. The horizon wobbles on our screen, and more lights flash on and off on the control panel.

“Eighty kilometers above surface,” the computer says. “Active deceleration initiated.”

Several of the lights blink out, and the shuttle seems to drop—or maybe it’s just that gravity kicks back in, slamming us into our chairs fully. Amy screams, a short burst of sound that is nothing but vocalized terror.

Something—a rocket failing? a computer malfunction?—knocks the shuttle off course again. I can see features of the planet’s surface now: mountains and lakes and cliffs.

And we’re going to crash into them.

3: AMY

I’ve heard that when you’re in a life-or-death situation, like a car accident or a gunfight, all your senses shoot up to almost superhuman level, everything slows down, and you’re hyper-aware of what’s happening around you.

As the shuttle careens toward the earth, the exact opposite is true for me.

Everything silences, even the screams and shouts from the people on the other side of the metal door, the crashes that I pray aren’t bodies, the hissing of rockets, Elder’s cursing, my pounding heartbeat.

I feel nothing—not the seat belt biting into my flesh, not my clenching jaw, nothing. My whole body is numb.

Scent and taste disappear.

The only thing about my body that works is my eyes, and they are filled with the image before them. The ground seems to leap up at us as we hurtle toward it. Through the blurry image of the world below us, I see the outline of land—a continent. And at once, my heart lurches with the desire to know this world, to make it our home.

My eyes drink up the image of the planet—and my stomach sinks with the knowledge that this is a coastline I’ve never seen before. I could spin a globe of Earth around and still be able to recognize the way Spain and Portugal reach into the Atlantic, the curve of the Gulf of Mexico, the pointy end of India. But this continent—it dips and curves in ways I don’t recognize, swirls into an unknown sea, creating peninsulas in shapes I do not know, scattering out islands in a pattern I cannot connect.

And it’s not until I see this that I realize: this world may one day become our home, but it will never be the home I left behind.

“Frex, frex, frex!” Elder shouts, pulling so hard against the steering wheel that the veins on his neck pop out.

I swallow dryly—this is no time to be sentimental. “What should we do?” I shout back over the sound of beepings and alarms from the control panel.

“I don’t know; I don’t frexing know!”

A yellowish-brown cliff looms high, seemingly parallel to the shuttle, and it isn’t until we pass over it that I realize we aren’t going to crash into it.

“Ground impact in T minus five minutes, shuttle off course from initial landing sequence,” the computer says in a perfectly bland voice, and I wish it was a person so I could punch it.

“Are we going to crash?” I gasp, ripping my gaze from the image through the honeycombed glass window to face Elder.

Elder’s pale and his face is tight. He shakes his head, and I know he doesn’t mean, “No, we’re not going to crash.” He means, “I don’t know, we might.”

My eyes dart to a circular screen on the control panel—it shows a horizon line that dips and spins chaotically.

A lit button near me flashes, and I read the words engraved onto it: STABILIZER. That sounds good? I don’t know—but Elder’s straining to keep the ship steady, and it can’t hurt, and I don’t know if I should, but—I push it.

The horizon dips all the way down, then all the way up, jerking me around like some sort of sick combination of a roller coaster and the whirling teacup ride at Disney World. Indicator lights show us tiny rockets that are bursting at the bottom of the ship, making us even out until the entire shuttle steadies and slows.

“What the—” Elder starts, but he’s cut off when the rockets sputter, and we drop straight out of the sky.

I scream as we plummet toward the earth.

Elder slams his fist against one set of controls, then another. We’re dropping so quickly that the image outside the windows blurs and all I can see is murky colors smeared together.

The horizon dips again as Elder’s button-pushing works—and then fails—and we’re crashing down, down. Rockets flare, casting red-yellow streams of fire around us—

“Ground sensors feedback: suitable landing site,” the computer says over the sound of the alarms. “Initiate landing rockets, yes or no?”

The green Y and the red N light up again.

“Push it!” I shout as Elder slams his fist against the Y.

I can see streams of white-blue fire shooting out the front, and the shuttle jerks, then slows, the sudden movements leaving me breathless. And just like that, all my other senses kick in. Everything becomes real again. I taste copper in my mouth—I’ve bitten my lip so hard I’ve drawn blood—and I can already tell that I’ll bruise from the too-tight seat belt on my chest and around my hips. The noise from the other side of the door seems deafening, but I can pick out individual cries of pain and alarm from the 1,456 passengers in the cryo room.

And then we stop.

We haven’t landed—we’re hovering over the treetops—but we’re not moving forward anymore. We’re not crashing.

The shuttle isn’t completely stable, and I can hear a hiss-shh sound from under our feet: the rockets are shooting down straight into the ground, keeping us over the surface.

“Land shuttle? Please select yes or no,” the computer says evenly.

Elder and I exchange a glance. There is no meaning, no words behind the look—just one shared feeling. Relief.

Instead of reaching for the blinking green Y, he grabs my hand. His fingers slide between mine, and they’re slick with sweat, but his grip is firm and strong. No matter what happens, what awaits us on the other side—we’ll face it together. Elder pulls our joined hands toward the last button, and we push it.

The hiss-shh slowly fades as the shuttle sinks down and down toward the ground. I realize that somewhere in our mad descent, gravity’s returned, and everything feels heavy again, especially the seat belt strapping me down. I throw it off and race to the honeycombed glass windows. I can see that our landing has decimated the area—the trees nearest us are nothing but smoldering ash, and the ground is black and shiny, almost as if it has melted. Trees—trees! Real trees, real ground, a real world! Right here!

With a sudden lurch that nearly knocks me to the floor, the rockets cut out and we drop the last few feet to the surface of the planet.

“Well,” Elder says, staring out the window at the burning earth, “at least we didn’t die.”

“We didn’t die,” I repeat. I look up at his shining eyes. “We didn’t die!” Elder grabs my wrist, pulling me into his lap. I melt against the warmth and security of his arm, and our lips collide in a kiss full of all the fear and passion and hope this new world brings. We kiss as if it were our first kiss and our last, all at once. Our lips meet in desperation; our bodies wrap around each other with a sort of fervent fury that exists only in the joy of surviving the certainty of death.

I pull away, gasping for air. I look into Elder’s eyes . . . and for one brief moment, I see nothing but the boy who taught me about first kisses and second chances. But then the image shifts, and I don’t see him. I see Orion. I scramble up out of Elder’s lap, and even though I tell myself that Elder isn’t Orion, I can’t forget about the way Elder insisted Orion be on this shuttle with us, as if his crimes should be rewarded with a whole planet instead of only ice.

Elder reaches for me again as he tries to get up from his chair—but can’t. “Stupid seat belt,” he mutters, unfastening it.

I turn around.

The world is there, on the other side of the glass window.

The world.

Our world.