There’s confusion over this, and Colonel Martin quickly clarifies. “Back to Earth. You will have the option to return to Earth.”
This is something else entirely. Many more of my people aren’t happy about this. If going to the station means they have to go on to Earth, they are far more reluctant to do that. At least this planet is theirs; Earth definitely is not.
I step outside the communication room to help control the crowd. As soon as I do, my people descend on me like birds of prey.
“They can’t make us go!” one of the former Shippers shouts in my face. “This planet is our home, and they can’t make us go!”
“It’s for our safety!” another man counters.
“And for our children,” says a nearby woman.
“Ain’t safe nowhere!” a Feeder shouts. “Might as well be here as there.”
“We can’t trust the FRX!”
“Sol-Earth don’t care about us!”
“But we can’t stay here!”
“Enough!” I shout as loudly as I can. I grab the voice amplifier from Colonel Martin. “No one is making you go!” I shout into it, and my voice is enough to drown out the crowd. “But if you want to go—the option is there.”
Someone yells from the center of the crowd, “What will you do?”
“Me?” I say into the voice amplifier. My words sound brittle coming from the gadget, and I wish—again—that the wi-coms still worked. Colonel Martin frowns at me. “I’m staying here.”
Cheers—and shouts of protest—break out over the crowd. They’re already dividing themselves between those that want to stay and those willing to go. I cannot help but feel triumphant at the number of those who don’t care about the danger, who are willing to fight to claim what’s theirs.
“Silence!” Colonel Martin shouts into the voice amplifier. The crowd settles—but they’re still muttering and worried. Colonel Martin switches to the radio at his shoulder, giving instructions to the military, then he goes inside the communication room to the control panel. I watch as he punches a series of buttons and dials. Outside, the ground rumbles, and the crowd screams, thinking this is another aftershock of the earlier explosion. Amy and her mother rush to the window of the building, the first time Amy’s left my side.
Outside, the asphalt runway shifts, opening like a hinged door on a pair of hydraulic lifts. A grinding sound leaks out from under it. I watch, open-mouthed and wide-eyed, as a humongous shuttle rises from the ground. It looks like an oversized fighter jet with a fat, pregnant belly under sleek wings. The bulbous underside of the shuttle opens up as it rolls forward onto the asphalt, exposing hundreds of human-sized vertical boxes. The panel closes, leaving only the shuttle and the runway.
Colonel Martin said it was an auto-shuttle, designed to use homing signals to fly straight up to the station and back to the compound here, but all I can think about is whether or not it can take a detour, to Godspeed, so I can save my people still trapped on the ship. From the size and shape of it, I think it must soar like an airplane until it reaches atmo, then shift its rockets down to reach orbit.
While Colonel Martin’s explanation of the situation and my words did little to make the crowd outside calm, the presence of the shuttle silences everyone.
Before, it was just words. But this is reality.
The auto-shuttle represents a parting of ways. Some will leave, and we’ll never see them again. They’ll go to Sol-Earth, a whole separate planet, and they will no longer be a part of our colony.
Colonel Martin strides forward. Using the military to take count, he organizes which of the “civilians” should enter the shuttle first. Pregnant women are instructed to leave and able-bodied men to stay, but families and friends don’t want to be divided. They hang back or refuse to separate, while others, more eager to go, take their place.
Sorting who will go and who will stay seems to take forever. Finally, people are sent to the shuttle. The small vertical boxes I noticed earlier are lined up in the belly of the auto-shuttle, each one designed to hold one person.
“They look like the automatic racks that dry cleaners use,” Amy says, a high-pitched, nervous giggle escaping her lips.
The first people get in. A small ledge sticks out in the center of each box, similar to a bicycle seat. Straps pull down over each person’s chest and waist, securing them to the box before a thin, transparent, plastic door seals them inside.
“See?” Colonel Martin calls to the group of nervous shipborns as he loads up the first round of Earthborn scientists into the auto-shuttle. “Nothing to be afraid of.”
After the first row of individual compartments is filled, the next one drops down automatically. My people move forward nervously, hesitant to trust another ship, one they don’t know.
Just as some of my people draw closer to the auto-shuttle, I notice how others slowly separate from the group, stepping back. Their eyes keep going to the left, past the trees and the lake, where the ruins are. Where their home is.
Hours go by as the shuttle’s loaded. Amy stands beside me, watching, an unreadable expression on her face. I touch her hand, but she jerks it away. A worrisome feeling I can’t name starts to gnaw at the inside of my stomach. She . . . she couldn’t be thinking about leaving me, could she?
When there are two spots left in the rockets, Colonel Martin stops taking volunteers.
There’s a roaring in my ears. Something’s wrong, but I can’t quite pinpoint it.
Colonel Martin walks over to the communication building, where Amy and her mother and I are standing.
Oh, no.
He holds his hand out to Amy’s mother. “It’s time,” he says.
She nods.
They both turn to Amy.
“It’s time to go,” they tell her.
And then I realize: they want to send Amy back.
49: AMY
I knew this was coming.
As soon as Dad started talking about who would stay and who would go, I knew what he expected of me.
They want me to go.