As Juno headed towards the infirmary, she noticed Jesse walking towards her. She still couldn’t look at him without her pulse thumping in her ears; without thinking of the afternoon in the greenhouse when he’d tried to kiss her. ‘Hey,’ he said, averting his gaze. The corridor was narrow and he had to stop and stand aside to let her pass. Juno nodded and dived into the infirmary, where Fae sat with her head in her hands. Juno had entered so quickly that it took a second for her to take in the scene; Fae hunched over her desk with the heels of her palms pressed into the hollows of her eyes. Music filled the room, Tchaikovsky pealing from the little speaker in the corner. Some nights, Juno walked past the infirmary and heard The Sleeping Beauty seeping under the door, and she imagined that when the crew were asleep, Fae emerged like a night-blooming flower, tearing off her lab coat to cabriole across the floor. But when Astrid had asked Fae over dinner if she ever kept up with her ballet and if she could teach them a few steps, Fae had said, ‘I never dance now’ with such miserable finality that all Juno’s whimsical imaginings evaporated.
She slammed the door shut behind her and said, ‘Doctor? I mean, Fae…’ Fae’s head flew up, she lunged towards the radio and jabbed the off button so the music cut out.
Wiping her eyes, she turned to Juno and asked, ‘What now?’
‘Um…’ Juno straightened her back and glanced again at her watch. ‘It’s time for our lesson?’ She noticed that none of their books had been set out, and the board had not been wiped clean after yesterday’s lesson on the endocrine system. Juno chewed her lip and looked around awkwardly. ‘Should I come back at a better time?’ And then she added – for courtesy’s sake, ‘Are you okay?’
‘Um…’ Fae’s voice was tight, ‘no.’
‘What is it?’ Juno asked. She was not sure which was better; the gift of comfort or the gift of privacy.
‘Do you care?’ Fae asked.
‘Of course…’ Juno said. ‘Of course I do.’
Fae exhaled heavily and then reached up to pull the pins out of her hair. In one swift movement, her hair spilled down her back like a stream of molten rock. She was thin as a prepubescent girl, with light little bones, but when she let her hair down the skin around her forehead sank, revealing the lines etched there. Under the V-neck of her jumper her grey skin puckered like crepe paper over the rungs of her sternum.
‘Who’s Moritz?’ Juno asked on an impulse. Fae turned to her, eyes narrowed as if she suspected a trick.
‘You don’t know?’ she said with a frown, then, more to herself, ‘Of course you don’t know.’ She rubbed her liver-spotted hands and said, ‘Moritz is my fiancé.’
Juno’s eyes were drawn to the ring on the doctor’s third finger. Art deco, with a pale topaz set in silver filigree. It glinted in the light, the clinical blue of the doctor’s eyes. Had she always worn it? Juno wondered how she had never noticed such an extravagant piece of jewellry.
‘Y-you’re engaged?’ Juno stammered. She could feel the colour rising in her cheeks. Why had she never asked?
‘Yes,’ Fae said. ‘It happened a week before the launch. Ten days, actually.’
‘Oh,’ said Juno, with dawning realization. ‘When Ara died you had to take Maggie’s place.’ Juno, too, had said goodbye to a boy she thought she might spend her life with, but Fae only had the space of an evening to say her goodbyes, to make her arrangements. Juno wondered if the doctor awoke every morning with regret for the life she chose.
‘Why did you agree to come?’ Juno asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Fae said. ‘I knew there would be a chance I might have to go. That was always the plan if Dr Millburrow couldn’t launch. But as time went on… you all loved Maggie so much… but it was the night before the launch and… I don’t know. There were so many people, so much pressure and they were all looking for someone to blame. I didn’t want it to be my fault if we failed. When we had come so far…’ She shrugged. Juno didn’t think she had ever heard Fae say so many words. ‘And we already knew that Moritz couldn’t join the UKSA. He’s not a dual citizen like me. So he joined the running to be part of the Vierzig and we thought—’
‘The Vierzig?’
‘Die Ersten Vierzig,’ Fae said, her accent curling around the words. ‘The First Forty.’
Juno recognized the translation, of course. A German-speaking group who were part of the European Space Agency. For a long time they had been tipped to launch first and to reach Terra before the British. Forty men and women, all post-docs and older than the Beta. Juno guessed that Fae had thought they might reach Terra-Two within a decade of each other and be reunited there. It was a romantic thought, a wedding on the shores of a new planet. ‘It could still happen,’ Juno said, and she could see it herself, for a second; Fae, aged but dressed in white, her hand in his, making promises that were swept up by the wind.
‘No,’ Fae said. ‘It won’t. He didn’t make it into the forty. It looked like he might but… I found out today, they released the list of the finalists and his name is not on it.’
Juno’s stomach twisted. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m really sorry.’
A few things made sense to Juno now: photographs she’d seen in the back of Fae’s binder, her frequent calls to Earth, the way she presided over the crew with a cold resentment as if they were children she’d never wanted. A swell of silent sympathy came over her, but she fought against it. ‘Maybe something good has come out of this. Surely it has,’ she said. ‘Not everyone made it onto the Damocles. Not everyone has this chance to make history.’
Fae’s shoulders began to shake with suppressed sobs. ‘Don’t you see,’ she said, ‘that it doesn’t matter?’
‘What doesn’t matter?’
‘We’re alone out here. You’re a child.’ The word grated on Juno, but she let it go. ‘I know, though. I know that our chances are slim.’
‘What are you talking about?’
Fae shook her head, drawn again into her own sorrow. She turned away and said to herself, ‘What am I doing here?’
‘Don’t say that.’ Juno’s voice was firmer. She’d had enough self-pity on this voyage. Everyone has their moment of despair.’
‘Moment?’ Fae stood up suddenly, and her chair tipped to the ground. Juno jumped backwards, buzzing with surprise.
‘My whole life is despair.’ Lunging forward, she threw an arm across the table and sent the books flying. Juno jumped back to avoid a glass paperweight, which shattered against the wall. ‘Why did I choose this?’ the doctor asked over the clattering of stationery at their feet. ‘This graveyard voyage. This suicide mission?’
Juno’s heart was pounding. She couldn’t tell if she should comfort Fae or abandon her. Her feet chose for her. She darted from the room, shaking with dread. She didn’t stop running until she reached the crew module and the sound of Fae’s wild sobs was no longer ringing in her ears.