THEY GAVE US a half hour to recuperate, most of which I spent waiting for my turn in the bathroom. Our first class was at eleven, which meant we’d circled that track for at least three hours.
Showered, sore, and limping, I hobbled to class with my roommates, fuzzy-brained but ready for whatever else they might throw at me.
With only twenty-five of us still in the competition, we were all in class together. As I opened the door, my eyes swept over the remaining candidates. Before the race, a little under half of the contestants had been girls, and that ratio seemed to hold up afterward.
Emilio was already there, busy talking to a group of guys—that kid made friends faster than the speed of light—so I took a seat near the door with Mitsuko and Hanna. We were quiet, too tired to talk, which was fine by me.
No windows in the cinder-block walls, no decoration, only a desk and a digital display board at the head of the room.
Emilio, laughing, turned around and saw me. “Hey, Lola! What are you doing all the way over there?” He patted the empty desk beside him. “Come sit next to me so I can cheat off you.” The boys around him were smiling, too. Everyone was still basking in the glow of making the first cut.
I smiled tentatively, feeling an unfamiliar sense of camaraderie instead of typical annoyance that came from social interaction. I’d never had an invitation to sit next to someone before, so I slid out of my chair and into the one beside him. Mitsuko gave me a raised eyebrow, interest piqued. But Hanna didn’t seem to notice or care.
“You don’t even know my name, do you?”
“Of course I know your name, Cassandra Gupta. I remember everything.” He tapped his temple. “Perfect memory. But I’ve decided you look more like a Lola. No offense?”
“Nicknames are kind of Esteban’s thing,” said a smiling boy behind Emilio.
I was warming to Emilio. He’d apparently had enough chops to make it through that grueling run and he still managed to have a smile on his face afterward. And I’d never had anyone in my last eleven years of private school be as nice to me as he had been in the past twenty-four hours. “Nah. I like it.”
“Cool.” He winked. “Have you met Antony?”
The other guy had an open, friendly face and curly brown hair. He put out his hand for me to shake. “It’s actually Antonio—most people call me Anton, present company excluded. I had the good fortune to end up Esteban’s roommate.”
I smiled politely. “Good luck with that.” He laughed.
“Antony’s from Brazil,” Emilio said proudly. “So he speaks even better Spanish than me. Which, to be fair, isn’t too hard as I have, like, preschool-level Spanish.”
“We speak Portuguese in Brazil,” Anton said with a teasing grin, elbowing him. “Hombre.”
Emilio laughed, taking the hit to his ego without flinching. “I knew that.”
Just then, the guy sitting in front of Emilio turned in his chair, and I realized with a start that it was Luka. Clean, with his blond hair still a little wet from the shower, combed neatly just as it had been when I first met him.
Did he expect me to greet him because we’d met before? Awkwardly I opened and closed my mouth without making any sound. Luka cocked his head a little at me, his expression curious like a bird’s.
Just in time, a man in a blue polo came through the door. “Good morning, candidates,” he said with a genuine smile. Laugh lines crinkled around his bright, intelligent eyes. Rusty-red hair fell over his brow, and though he looked youthful, his skin looked prematurely aged from the sun. I’d guess midforties. “Welcome to your first class. I’m Logan Shaw, former NASA astronaut and mission specialist with ten days logged in space. I have degrees in aerospace and mechanical engineering, as well as astrophysics, so that’s mostly what we’re going to talk about in here. Since this is your first class, and you will be spending pretty much all your time together, why don’t we start by learning each other’s names?”
Everyone went around the room introducing themselves. The boys I’d noticed earlier were Deepak and Samir. The hijabi girl was Nasrin; the girl with the pixie cut was Katrina. There was a Boris, Mahdi, Pratima, Kendra, Sarnai, Marisol, and Giorgia. Names and people from all over the globe.
Shaw said, “Who knows the closest star to the sun?”
Everyone raised their hands. I smiled as he looked over at me and nodded. “Proxima Centauri,” I answered. Really, this was where we were starting? With the basics?
“Of course,” Shaw said. “And it is how far from Earth?”
“Approximately four light-years,” Anton said.
“Right again. So here’s a thought experiment for you. Say we want to get to the Alpha Centauri system. How would we do that?”
“Nuclear pulse propulsion,” Deepak said. “It’s been in theory since the first moon landing.”
Shaw nodded thoughtfully. “We could do that, if we had the inclination. But four light-years? Even with nuclear propulsion systems currently in design, that would take us . . .”
“Over three hundred years,” said Katrina.
“Problematic,” Shaw said with a smile. “Any other ideas?”
“Ion engines,” I said. “They generate smaller levels of thrust, but they can last for hundreds of years and accelerate almost indefinitely.”
“Good,” Shaw said, nodding. “A primitive version worked for the Deep Space 1 mission at the turn of the century. What else?”
The room was quiet, and then Emilio spoke. “What else is there? Short of breaking the laws that hold the universe together.”
“There’s antimatter catalyzation,” said Mitsuko.
“That never got out of its infancy,” Emilio argued. “Nobody wants to pay for it to be studied nowadays.”
Hanna joined in. “Even if we had technology like that, you’re still talking about a star so far away that light itself takes four years to reach it. What’s the point? Without faster-than-light travel, it’s impossible to get to another solar system within a human life span. And with FTL travel, if we ever circumvent the known laws of physics, you’re still asking an astronaut to leave Earth as they know it, maybe forever.”
She had a point. A depressing one.
The way Shaw watched the discussion, arms crossed and leaning against the desk with an amused look on his face, made me suspicious. I cut in. “Just because we don’t know about it yet doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”
Shaw smiled. “How right you are. Who here has heard of something called an Alcubierre drive?”
My heart skipped a beat. I raised my hand. Maybe half the other kids did the same, including Hanna. “It’s not a real thing,” Hanna said.
“It’s theoretical, true. For those who aren’t aware, an Alcubierre drive is a speculative engine that works off the principle of theory of relativity. Instead of breaking the laws of physics, it would only . . . bend them. This technology would allow a spaceship to contract and expand space-time in a small bubble around itself, allowing humans to approach relative speed of light, without the time loss of conventional faster-than-light theories. No one has ever built a full-scale model with conclusive, positive results. Until now.”
The room fell so quiet I wondered if I’d lost my hearing.
“Sir . . . are you saying that humans have developed faster-than-light travel?” Anton asked, a hush in his voice.
Shaw’s face was enigmatic. “No, I’m not saying that. But let’s labor under the presumption that we have, and discuss the possible ramifications of this technology. How would it work? How fast could it travel? What are the risks?”
The discussion continued for two more hours, leaping way beyond me, delving deeper into theoretical aerospace engineering and astrophysics than I’d ever learned about either in school or on my own. I perched on the edge of my seat, watching words fly like Ping-Pong balls, volleying whenever I could, soaking up as much knowledge as my mind could retain.
By the end, I felt dizzy. Shaw had effectively just told us that humanity had made the most significant space travel breakthrough in its history, and it hadn’t been made public. Why? Because it hadn’t been tested? Because it was dangerous?
We broke for lunch, heading to the cafeteria en masse. I silently made myself an avocado and hummus sandwich and sat at an empty table, mind still reeling from class, wanting time alone to think.
“Hey.”
I jumped. Hanna was leaning over the seat next to me. “Hey,” I answered, wary.
“What’d you think of class?” She was looking at me in that scientific way, unsmilingly curious, trying to examine my face for clues like I was a new species she didn’t understand.
I hadn’t gotten a good feel for Hanna yet. Unsure what she was looking for, I kept my answers curt. “Kind of out there, isn’t it? The Alcubierre drive stuff?”
“Yeah, wild.” She didn’t seem too interested in discussing it.
“I’ve never had a class like that. But at least they aren’t grading us.”
Hanna nodded slowly. Then she said, “You realize they are watching us all the time.”
I stopped chewing. “What?”
“There’s no grades because they don’t care how well you can regurgitate answers from the book. We’re in a controlled experiment. There are cameras in the halls and the classrooms. Maybe even in here.” She looked up and over her shoulder, leisurely, like one might expect from someone saying such paranoid things. “Haven’t you noticed? There are no windows, no natural daylight. No calendars to mark the days. The only clocks are the digital alarms in our rooms. We have no access to outside information, only what they tell us. The only entertainment is what we find for ourselves. We may be allowed to go outside—for now. But really? This is a simulation of a spaceship environment.”
The facts were there, but I wasn’t convinced it was all a conspiracy. “Maybe so. It doesn’t bother me as long as nobody’s watching me in the bathroom.”
Hanna finally decided to sit. Her tray held an apple and a turkey club. “Maybe try looking at the leaderboard over there, and see how you feel then.”
Somehow in the post-marathon haze I had forgotten. Our rankings were posted on the wall above the buffet table, as big as a basketball scoreboard.
Luka Kereselidze was first. Emilio, near the top at number seven. Mitsuko even higher at number five. I had to scan and scan to find my name: near the bottom, with Hanna.
Twenty-two. I ranked twenty-two out of twenty-five, and Hanna’s name was above mine.
I wanted to open up the floor and crawl underneath the linoleum.
Hanna was watching me, gauging my reaction. “We can help each other.”
Mitsuko had said the exact same thing this morning, but Hanna had shut her down. I leveled my gaze at her. “Why?”
“Because we’re better than they are.”
Not according to the board. I took a long, deep breath through my nose. Looked away from her. She was either nuts or a secret genius, maybe a little of both.
She kept trying. “It’s the first day. The only thing we’re being judged on right now is our performance in the race. If we help each other, we can get into those top two slots.”
I wasn’t sure I could trust her, but curiosity won out. “Help each other how?”
She scooted her chair closer. “Soon, they’re going to start tightening the screws. Increase discomfort. Increase stress. Whatever they can do to impair our ability to think rationally and work together. They want to know how we will react in close quarters with people we don’t like, in situations we can’t control. If we’re prepared—if we show that we have healthy methods for conflict resolution—we’ll stand out.” She dropped her voice low. “I’ll look out for you if you do the same for me.”
Honestly, I doubted Hanna could handle any additional pressure. Just because she knew what was coming didn’t mean she could handle it. That girl was already wound tight.
A hand clapped my shoulder from behind, and Mitsuko’s face descended between Hanna and me. Her voice was a stage whisper; her lips were painted shimmery coral pink and were too close to my ear. “Good idea. I’m in. Three musketeers! Woo-hoo!”
Michele Jeong, a fortysomething Korean American retired navy pilot with razor-sharp intelligence behind her black glasses and gray highlights in her short black hair, spent two hours leading us in troubleshooting scenarios of various problems with life support systems.
A half hour break, then two hours with a professor named Dominic Bolshakov, who was in impressive shape for a man in his late fifties, with ropy forearms, short gray hair, and age spots on his roughened hands. He taught us celestial navigation, how to calculate trajectories with nothing but our brains and the stars, and then ran us through flight simulators on our tablets.
The evening class turned out to be taught by Copeland. She wore the same blue polo and khakis as all the other instructors, but for class she’d put on makeup and big silver earrings.
Mitsuko spotted me as soon as I came in and patted the desk behind her, inviting me to sit. Wearily, I slipped into it. As she smiled and asked me how I was holding up so far, I felt, for the first time, like maybe I wasn’t alone. Like maybe I’d finally found a place where I belonged.
But I couldn’t afford to think like that. These people were my competition, not my friends.
Copeland’s opening line was ominous. “So you kids want to go to space?”
She then proceeded to describe all the ways in which previous space missions had proven fatal. I knew about them—I’d be stupid not to know—but even still, hearing exactly how the doomed crew of Columbia died from being flung violently around the inside of their damaged shuttle as it spun out of control sobered me. They were so close to home, but never made it. “The damage to the shuttle was only about the size of a dinner plate, and went unnoticed upon takeoff. But it was a fatal injury to the shuttle. At least one crew member was still alive and pushing buttons for up to thirty seconds after the first alarm sounded, but at that point, there was nothing anyone could do.”
Then we heard all about the second attempt to land a man on Mars—the Chinese three-person crew that launched on a two-year mission and lost contact within three months. “We still don’t know what happened to them,” Copeland said. “If the Chinese found anything in their investigation, they didn’t share it with us.”
After her lecture—during which no one said a word—she finally began outlining the ways we could maybe keep ourselves from dying. She explained the mechanisms in space suits, the new self-healing semi-gel insulation that allowed material to be so thin that it didn’t compromise mobility but kept us safe from radiation and even small tears in the fabric. She drew schematics of the current life support systems and told us to memorize them. We went over the basics of CPR and how to recognize the early signs of hypoxia. Then we were tested on them, verbally, until the end of class.
When I was twelve, right after I’d come home from space camp, I’d tried strapping myself to a tree branch to see if I could sleep like astronauts did. My dad found me hanging upside down from a few of his nicest belts, and told me that those methods worked better in weightlessness. I knew people had died in space, even recently. I also knew that we never would have gotten anywhere if we didn’t keep trying. I was willing to take the risk.
Most kids looked pale when we left. Me, I was prepared for discomfort. For risk. For no privacy. For claustrophobia. Whatever test or danger they could throw at me, I’d read about it and I’d probably practiced it.
“Wow,” Mitsuko said as we left, walking down the main hall to our next class. “That’s—wow. I’m going to have bad dreams.”
“Would you rather die from heart disease in your sixties after your uneventful life, having accomplished nothing worthy of history, or on your way to some distant planet that no human has ever seen before?”
Mitsuko’s dark eyes searched me appraisingly. She raised her eyebrows, nodded. “Point taken.”
Nothing was going to scare me away.
After class, Mitsuko headed back to our room, but I lingered in the hall. The last item on my schedule said “psychological interview.” It must have been near eleven at night, though I hadn’t seen a clock since before lunch. My eyelids stuck to my eyeballs, my brain was struggling to hold on to every detail of the lecture I’d just heard, and muscles that I didn’t even know existed in my body ached.
They’d designed it this way, of course. Scheduled the interview late, so that I’d be tired and maybe more likely to break my composure or say too much by accident.
Alone, I found my way down the hall perpendicular to our classrooms, full of unmarked doors. Not till the very end of the hall did I find the room number matching my schedule. Did they put this place as far away from the classrooms and dorms as possible on purpose? I could hear no other sounds, no people anywhere, and wondered if all the rooms I’d passed were simply empty.
The door was ajar, the light on inside, so I hesitantly walked in to find a room smaller than my dorm. There were two chairs facing each other.
A man sat in one of the chairs: maybe late twenties, tan skin, glossy black hair. Black silk vest over a deep-purple collared shirt, black square glasses, a five-days’-post-shave beard. He smiled and stood when I entered, shaking my hand.
He was a shrink, and everything I said would be dissected and scrutinized. I had to proceed with caution.
“Hello, Cassandra,” the shrink said as he sat back down. Then, almost as thoughtfully, added, “Cassandra. That was the name of a Greek prophet cursed to always speak the truth and never be believed. Such a fascinating story.” He smiled. What was he trying to do? Connect with me? I considered telling him the reason the prophet Cassandra was cursed by Apollo was because she refused to sleep with him—but I figured telling him his favorite Greek myth was problematic wasn’t going to do me any favors. “My name is Felix. Please, have a seat.”
The chair was metal and cold and dug into my thighs. It didn’t have arms, and I had nowhere comfortable to put my hands. So I crossed my arms over my chest, realized that it probably made me look standoffish, and decided I didn’t really care.
“So, Cassandra. How have you been adjusting to life in the program?”
“It’s fine,” I said. “About what I expected.”
That smile stayed fixed on his features, already beginning to annoy me. “Some of the candidates have trouble, you understand—with our rigorous standards. Bit of a shock to the system. These interviews are just a way to gauge your state of mind, make sure you’re coping well with the demands of the program. Especially with you being our youngest candidate. How are you feeling after your first day? Not unduly stressed? No interpersonal conflicts thus far?”
I bristled internally—why did he feel the need to bring up my age?—but knew it was in my best interest to play ball. “No more than anyone else. We all just met and we’re from different countries. There’re some cultural differences, maybe, but everyone is still on their best behavior. Probably why we’re getting along.”
“Good, good. Glad to hear it.” He made a tiny notation in his files and looked back up at me over his glasses. “Now that may change in the future. This program will put all of you under a good deal of stress. It’s important that you are able to continue working amicably with your fellow candidates. Do you foresee yourself having problems in that area?”
My muscles clenched reflexively, and I sat up a little straighter. Did he think I was antisocial? How much, exactly, did he know about me? “I’m getting along with everyone fine. And aside from the run this morning, I’ve been enjoying myself so far.”
“That’s good to hear. You go to a private high school, correct?”
I nodded.
“How did you fit in there? Have a lot of friends?”
How to answer that? “I’m in a lot of extracurricular activities.”
“Do you have trouble making friends?”
“I . . . wouldn’t say that. I mean, it’s a small school; there are a lot of cliques. It can be hard to break in. People tend to stick with . . .” What was I doing? I could have just lied and told him sure, I had loads of friends, I was perfectly well adjusted.
Redirect. “It’s not like that here, though. Everyone seems to mix pretty easily. You guys collected a diverse pool of candidates. It’s kind of nice, actually, not to stick out because of how I look, for once.” I adjusted my posture, well aware of what Felix would write in his chart about body language, trying to portray ease and confidence. “I prefer to stand out for my merits and achievements. That’s the only challenge I have being here. I want to stand out. But here, it’s actually hard to do.”
He nodded slowly, eyes still on my face, and I wondered if I’d passed the test or fallen for the bait. He wrote a little more and looked at me thoughtfully. “If you are selected, you’d be a pioneer in more ways than one. Not only would you be the youngest astronaut ever, but also an Indian American. I’m sure you must be familiar with Kalpana Chawla?”
“Of course. The first Indian woman in space. I had a poster of her in my room when I was little. But I’m only half-Indian.”
His gaze grew steely, the friendly expression going cold. I braced myself.
“Was your desire to become an astronaut influenced by women such as Kalpana? Did what happened to her—the fact that she died in the Columbia explosion in 2003—ever temper your desire?”
Was he trying to get a rise out of me, or was he genuinely asking if I was afraid to die in space? I shifted, consciously unclasping my arms and holding my hands in my lap. “I know space is dangerous. Maybe even more than most of the others here. But Kalpana knew it, too, and she was willing to take the risk.”
“But still,” Felix pressed, wearing that infuriatingly calm smile. “It must affect you.”
What was this guy trying to prove? Was he being obstinate on purpose? Frustrated, I lost a little of my composure. “Affect me how? You mean, does it scare me that a woman who looked a little like me died in space?” I started ticking off names on my fingers. “Kalpana Chawla, Sally Ride, Christa McAuliffe, Sunita Williams. All of those women mean something to me. I mean, they each had to pave their own way. Even when it was dangerous and scary and difficult, they did it anyway. It’s because of them that I can be here right now, because they fought to be taken seriously and treated equally. Some of them sacrificed their lives. Yes, Kalpana means something to me. But I am my own person, and I want to make my own legacy. If I was afraid when they were brave, I’m not honoring their memories, am I?” I was talking too fast, getting emotional, but my words came out like I was running downhill. “I’m not afraid. They did it. So can I.”
I clamped my mouth shut, suddenly aware of how fast my heart was beating. Calm down.
Felix had dropped that unreadable smile. He waited a moment to make sure I had finished. “It’s that simple, then?”
“It is to me.”
Felix scribbled something in his notes, and I mentally kicked myself. He was purposefully trying to push my buttons, to see how I’d react. And I’d certainly reacted.
But from what I could tell behind his beard and glasses, Felix looked relatively pleased.
For the next forty-five minutes, he grilled me about my high school performance, asked me about my friends, my classes, my extracurricular activities, my home life. Quick, like he was reading from a list. I lobbied answers back at him just as quickly, hoping to get through whatever personality worksheet he was apparently reading from. Then came a long pause while he studied his clipboard and looked back up. And I sensed the tenor of the conversation had shifted.
He studied me for a moment, his half smile and intense, unblinking gaze making me nervous. When he spoke again, his voice had a distinctly different tone than before. Lower, slower. “It’s very important to you to be the best, isn’t it? You have been, after all, consistently at the top of your class. And yet you had trouble naming even one long-term friendly relationship. Would you say that you often sacrifice interpersonal relationships for success?”
My breathing became constrained, from anger or trying to reign in my offense. I’d relaxed, thinking we were nearly finished, and he’d caught me off guard. “I don’t mold my identity to make others more comfortable. I’m just myself. I make goals and I go after them. If that puts people off, that’s on them, not me.”
He’d done it all deliberately, of course. All that poking around, trying to find soft spots. But I thought I’d handled it as well as could be expected.
When he finally let me go, I felt like a zapped battery. Like a sediment of buried emotions had been stirred up, making me doubt my own mind. And the back of my shirt was damp with sweat despite the heavily air-conditioned room.
I didn’t see anyone in the halls. Back in our room, Hanna was in bed, reading with a lamp on.
“Where’s Mitsuko?” I asked, stripping out of my day clothes. I’d never been modest, and Hanna wasn’t looking at me anyway. I didn’t care about anything but getting to sleep as soon as possible.
“Sending a message to her husband.”
I pulled a nightshirt over my head and went to the bathroom to brush my teeth. “I cannot believe she is married.”
Hanna put down her book. “It was a stupid thing to do.”
“What, getting married?” I poked out my head and asked around my toothbrush.
“If she wanted to go to space? Yes.”
“Why?”
Hanna cocked her head at me. “You always ask a lot of questions. Are you really so unintelligent that you need everything spelled out for you?”
I spat into the tiny sink, got into bed, and turned off the bedside lamp, so the only light in the room encircled Hanna’s pale head. “I’m a scientist; I’m naturally curious.”
Was that a smile on Hanna’s face? Oh, nope, not anymore. “No matter how smart someone is, no matter how qualified, if it comes down to two people with equal qualifications, they will lean toward choosing the candidate with less baggage tethering them to Earth. You and me? Nothing here is holding us back. I think we have that in common.”
I turned to look at her with one open eye. Something had changed in the air between us. Maybe that was what made me ask. “The other astronauts on the crew are probably married, at least some of them. Maybe even have kids. And it’s not like we’re orphans; we have families, too. Your parents don’t care that you’re here?”
To my surprise, she actually answered. “Oh, they care. One of my moms has wanted this for me forever. The other—she loves me but she doesn’t support me. She didn’t want me to come here.” Hanna picked her book back up. “Luckily it wasn’t up to her.”
It hadn’t been my mother’s choice, either. The only difference between me and Hanna was that Hanna hadn’t needed her parents’ permission.
“Two moms,” I said, fighting a yawn. “I had a hard enough time getting my one to let me go.”
“People who aren’t one hundred percent for you are against you,” Hanna said, eyes on her book. “It took me a long time to understand that.”
Hanna was clearly finished talking to me. I was relieved. One could take only so much concentrated Hanna at a time.