“WE’VE DECIDED TO move up the selection,” Krieger said. “To today.”
Pierce and Krieger dropped that news on us before anyone had even finished breakfast. Four of us sat at a table together: Luka, me, Kendra, and Anton. Pratima and Boris hadn’t showed. Kicked out or left voluntarily, I’d never know.
“When you’re finished here, go back to your rooms and pack. We’ll call you when it’s time.” Pierce gave us each one last look. “Either way, you’ll be on a plane out of here by tonight.”
I packed my bag feeling robotic and distant from everything. With everyone else gone, it felt eerie to be in my room alone, to walk through an empty hallway.
They made us wait in a hall outside the auditorium where we’d convened the very first day. It was fitting—ending where we began.
I glanced at the faces beside me. Kendra, her stare burning holes into the opposite wall. Anton, tapping his toe. Luka was a marble statue, unreadable. Why should he worry? He was a shoo-in.
Not once had I been ranked number one. I’d been so sure of myself—so sure that I was the best of the best. Why wouldn’t I think that? I’d spent most of my life being number one. Selection into the top private high school in the city? Impressed the pants off that selection committee. First-chair violin, all-state orchestra? I threw myself into practice. I neglected social events, hobbies. I earned my place. A coveted internship at NASA? Please. My father may have put in a good word for me, but I hadn’t needed nepotism. I’d worked for it, for everything. And I’d always gotten what I wanted because of it.
But this was different.
Luka Kereselidze was the first and only obstacle I hadn’t been able to overcome. And I couldn’t even hate him for it. He could have turned out to be an ass, but he’d never said an unkind word to me. He’d been cool under pressure in the SLH. He’d been a good guy in the wilderness. He’d been almost, in a way, my friend. He’d earned my respect, at least.
I couldn’t hate him. Even if he was about to be crowned victor over me.
But then again, who knew? Luka hadn’t aced everything. He’d never gotten his brain-wave patterns right. He hadn’t really made friends the way Anton and I had. I’d saved his life in wilderness survival. And I’d clawed my way up from the bottom of the ranks. Some people liked underdogs.
But only one of us could be number one.
They called us individually onto the stage of the auditorium. Anton first. He was in there for maybe fifteen minutes, and then my name came over the loudspeaker.
I rose, my legs shaking. Even if I was wrong, and all my dreams were about to be smashed into smithereens, I would survive.
Probably.
I walked where they directed me, onto the stage, where our instructors sat behind a panel with the colonel, Ms. Krieger, and Felix. All eyes were on me.
Anton wasn’t there. They must have taken him out a side door.
I stood in front of the people who would decide my fate and choked down bile, hoping I wouldn’t throw up in front of them. I kept my eyes on the wood floor at my feet, concentrating on each breath. The house lights were on, casting harsh shadows on everyone’s expression.
I tried to find a sympathetic face on the panel. Ms. Krieger was incapable of frowning; I couldn’t trust her. Bolshakov looked severe and judgmental. Jeong had a nervous half smile on her face. Dr. Copeland was impassive, though her eyes were kind. Shaw gave me a reassuring smile.
“Cassandra Gupta.” The colonel spoke my voice like it was heavy, made of stone.
I didn’t know if I was supposed to speak. My gaze locked on his square, grizzled face.
“Your performance has been steadily improving since you got here. You began near the bottom of the pack, but quickly rose to the increasing challenges. Your classroom performance was impressive. Your physical endurance is commendable. Your dedication is to be praised. You showed good judgment in the face of stress, adequate social skills, and the best mental control we saw among the candidates. You are well rounded and impressively committed for being the youngest. However, you were not the strongest candidate overall.”
I felt my knees buckle.
The colonel met my eyes and seemed to smile without breaking his stony facade.
Ms. Krieger smiled brightly, like I wasn’t hearing the worst news I’d ever gotten in my life. “All is not lost, Cassie! We’ve chosen you as the alternate.” She seemed to hear how weak that sounded and overcompensated by pasting on an even broader smile. Her hand swept over the rest of the panel, gesturing to my instructors. “You already know your future crewmates: Logan Shaw, flight engineer; Dr. Harper Copeland, medical officer; Michele Jeong, copilot; and Dominic Bolshakov, who will be your crew commander. All of them are experienced astronauts. We had our crew help choose their newest member, and they all spoke highly of your abilities.”
I nodded. Plastered on a grateful smile.
“You’ll train with them for the next few months in preparation for launch. And then, we’ll see! Things happen, Cassie. You never know. You may yet go into space.”
Her cheerfulness grated. I was getting the consolation speech.
I’ll never go into space. I’ll train with them and study with them, and then they’ll go without me.
This was almost worse than not being chosen at all.
They were waiting for a response. My mouth was dry as gravel, but I murmured the expected response and hoped it didn’t sound like garbled nonsense.
My eyes scanned one last time over my teachers. Copeland didn’t show any emotion, but Shaw’s sad smile and misty eyes behind his glasses almost broke me, right there in front of everyone.
Shaw stood and offered me his hand to shake. I wasn’t aware of moving toward the panel, but somehow I found myself shaking hands with my instructors. “We’ll see you soon,” Shaw said. “Harper, Michele, and I are very proud of you.”
“Admirable performance,” Copeland said, her voice grave but approving.
“You did well,” Jeong said, her short black bob tucked neatly behind her ears. “Looking forward to working with you.”
I found myself looking into Dominic Bolshakov’s steel gaze, frozen. He said nothing, but nodded once, slow.
I was excused.
I walked off that stage as fast as I could on legs that felt like they belonged to someone else. Someone backstage led me into a room with a digital display board and a few chairs around a conference table and a sofa, like some kind of greenroom.
I pressed my forehead against the dusty floral wallpaper and closed my eyes.
Not the strongest candidate.
FAILURE. That’s what it meant. That’s what I was.
I wanted to punch something. But if I damaged my hand, I’d probably be disqualified from training. So I paced, uselessly. After all that? Everything that had happened, it had been for nothing. I’d let everyone down. I’d never get into space now.
There was a pillow on the couch. I snatched it up and hurled it at the door.
The door swung open, revealing Luka, just as the pillow hit the door frame beside his head. He looked at me quizzically.
“Of course it’s you,” I said, throwing up my hands. “Of course.”
“I suppose I am lucky it was only a pillow,” he said, coming inside and closing the door. There was a moment of silence as he regarded me. “If it’s any consolation, I am sorry.”
I grimaced. It wasn’t his fault he was perfect. “You don’t have to apologize. It’s just—second place. You’re going for sure. I’m just here in case you get the flu. Which you won’t. Because look at you.”
I collapsed into a chair and buried my face in my hands.
Luka knelt in front of me. Pried my hands off my face. His steady eyes bore into mine as my spine straightened at his nearness. “Why are you being so hard on yourself? They would not have picked you if they thought you could not do this. You and I are going to Florida together to train for a mission the likes of which has never been attempted before. That in itself is an honor.”
“You don’t understand,” I said, too angry to think about how weird it was that Luka was holding my hands in his. “This was my first and only chance, okay? They don’t do missions like this anymore. Maybe this is the last one they’ll ever do. Coming this close and not making it? Almost worse than not making it at all.” I ran out of steam, pulling my hands out of his to secure my ponytail, which had come loose. “And if the funding falls through, neither of us will be going.”
Luka didn’t waver. “The funding won’t fall through.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What do you know?”
The door opened again, and this time our instructors filed through. Surprised, both Luka and I stood. They seemed as confused as we were to see them.
Bringing up the rear were Pierce and Crane. The room was now full; we were all facing Pierce and Crane with matching expressions of expectant confusion.
I wavered on my feet, exhausted. So much had happened in the past couple of days, it felt like a lifetime. Luka shot me a sidelong glance, concerned. I ignored him.
The colonel cracked his knuckles, like he wasn’t happy with what he was about to say. “Due to what happened two days ago during the SLH simulation, it has been decided that in the interest of safety, our timetable will be moved up. I’ve been given permission to brief you all on the particulars of the mission we’re calling Project Adastra.” His gaze, for the first time, didn’t make me want to crawl into a hole. Then he turned and locked the door, trapping us all inside, and I suppressed a shiver. “You’re about to learn what few others in the world know. I suggest you all take a seat.”
I felt a spark of anticipation. Finally! We all obeyed, taking seats around the table, while Pierce and Crane remained near the door.
The colonel hit a few buttons on the table. The room’s lights dimmed and a field of stars glowed to life in the air above our heads. “As we all know, life on Earth is fragile. Climate change is dramatically altering our daily reality. The growing problem of human infertility could be another symptom of a planet that is losing its ability to support life. We aren’t sure when the tipping point will come. Some experts say it already has. If that’s the case, humanity needs to find alternative solutions if we want to survive.”
My muscles tightened in anticipation, urging him silently to get on with it. Nobody in this room needed anything spelled out to us.
He took a moment to survey the room. “Brace yourselves, everyone. Our goal on this mission is to send humans beyond our solar system.”
There was a collective, quiet intake of breath. I’d been expecting something like this, but nothing could have prepared me for actually hearing it.
Unprecedented was selling this short.
The general field of stars hovering over the center of the table organized itself into our Milky Way galaxy. We zoomed in to the familiar Sol system, to the blue marble of Earth. The stars became our own night sky, and we all looked up.
“Your destination is the star system of Kepler-186.” The screen zeroed in on a previously dark square of sky, and a dim sparkle of light magnified on the screen. We zoomed in, farther and farther, until a blurry white dot enlarged on the screen. “Kepler-186 is an M-class red dwarf star approximately four hundred and ninety light-years from Earth and believed to harbor at least five planets. One of the planets, designated Kepler-186f, has a mass similar to Earth’s and is within the star’s habitable zone. Ladies and gentlemen, the objective of Project Adastra is to discover the habitability of the planet 186f, and perhaps more importantly . . .” His voice slowed, as though unwilling to speak the words out loud. “. . . whether life already exists there.”
I couldn’t focus on the details of what he was saying because my mind couldn’t get away from the word impossible. The technology we had could only send us on a very long, very slow, one-way trip. Voyager 1 had taken fifty years to reach the outer edges of our solar system. My father hadn’t even been born when that thing was launched, and it was still just inching across interstellar space, in the dark places between stars.
The technology to take us five hundred light-years away simply didn’t exist.
Unless it did, and it had been kept secret until now.
The field of stars above was now a close-up of an unfamiliar star system—Kepler-186, the red dwarf, surrounded by five orbiting spheres. One in particular twinkled helpfully as it orbited the farthest from its sun. That was it. Kepler-186f. Our destination.
I felt, suddenly, how small I was. Could almost feel Earth beneath my feet spinning freely, untethered to anything but laws of physics. Vulnerable. Alone.
I felt us as we were, on a grand scale—Earth and the sun and all the planets rocketing through space together like a comet—and experienced a moment of vertigo.
“I know what you’re all thinking.” The colonel’s skin looked gray, his voice subdued. “Suffice to say, we are not knowingly sending you on a one-way trip. There is something else you need to know.”
Mr. Crane materialized from the darkness to the front of the room near the projector, and I jumped almost out of my skin. He stood beside Pierce and didn’t waste time with pleasantries. “On October eighteenth, 2024, SEE radio telescopes positioned in orbit around the moon picked up an unusual radio signal. Something unlike anything we’d ever received before. Its origin, we discovered, was Kepler-186.”
2024. The year before I was born. I noted it dully through a haze of disbelief.
The hologram blinked out, and instead a series of fractal patterns grew in repeating circular patterns, repeating and building into infinity. “This is the beginning of the message we received. A universal constant, the Fibonacci sequence—which, as all you know, is a numerical pattern repeated over and over again in nature, from the shapes of universes to the smallest seashells. This pattern was followed by another, and another. In case you had any doubts, you’re looking at the indisputable sign of an intelligent alien species trying to communicate with us.”
I heard someone gasp. I raised my eyebrows at Luka, shocked, but he was stoic. If he was surprised, he hid it well.
Mr. Crane plowed on without giving us time to adjust. “It took our best people years to decipher the entire message. Such an incredible amount of data.” Mr. Crane continued, as though he were commenting on the weather. “The first part of the message was just a hello—an intergalactic handshake, if you will. To show us that they are intelligent, and expected us to understand them. The second part was a mathematical designation of Kepler-186. Perhaps showing us their location. But the third part of the message was the truly amazing thing—and the reason why you are all here.”
The air around us was now inhabited by ghostly mechanical 3D shapes rotating like tiny planets. Right in front of my face hung a familiar capsule, shrunk down to the size of my hand. The Human Hibernation Module.
At Crane’s command, the hundreds of doll-size pieces zoomed around the room, assembling themselves in a complex dance until they became one completed structure: a three-dimensional model of an alien spacecraft, its white bones transparent like the skeleton of a bird. A long, thin ring structure encased a snub-nosed, spherical craft, all smooth edges like a toddler’s toy airplane. But elegant. Beautiful, even. I couldn’t take my eyes off it.
“This is the product of fifteen years decoding the radio message, and the combined work of the best engineers in the world,” Crane said. “A gift to humanity from a benevolent alien race. They have granted us the technology to travel faster than light. By showing us how to build a true Alcubierre drive-enabled spacecraft.”
There were no words, not from any of us. My universe had inverted on itself as though I’d been swallowed by a wormhole. I realized I was pressing a hand against my chest as if to keep my heart from jumping out, though surprisingly my pulse was calm.
“This is absurd,” Shaw said. The color had drained from his face. “This is ridiculous. You’re telling us we have a way to travel faster than light? And no one’s thought to mention this before now?
“Why did you think we were here, Logan?” Jeong’s voice was quiet, her eyes steely.
He sputtered, unable to answer. “How long are we supposed to be gone?”
“A year, perhaps two,” Crane said. “One year there, one year on your return. With this technology, there is no time dilation.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Our simulations have run this mission, Mr. Shaw, innumerable times. One year each way, plus or minus six months.”
Shaw’s face was still ashen. He swallowed, his throat bobbing, as he seemed to begin to accept it. “Good lord, that message took almost five hundred years to reach us—whoever or whatever sent it, they’re long gone now.”
“That’s a good point,” Copeland said.
“You misunderstand,” Crane replied, unruffled in the least. “The message did not come from Kepler-186. It, in fact, came to us from near one of Mars’s moons.”
“Oh my God,” I whispered before I could stop myself. They had been so close. Were they still there? Watching us? Had they landed on Earth?
“Can this be possible?” Jeong asked, her eyes creased with worry and awe.
“Here is one hypothesis,” Crane began. “The alien intelligence has sent probes, just as we have, to various places in the galaxy. With their superior technology it would not be out of the range of imagination that they could reach us here. Perhaps they discovered we may be intelligent, and have sent this message, and this ship, as a test. Perhaps it is an invitation to join them for an interspecies summit. You will find out when you arrive, I suppose.”
He let us marvel on that a little while.
“My company has built this ship. I’ve named it Odysseus, and I’m allowing NASA to use it. You were all chosen for this purpose. Not to be sacrificed—no, believe me, we intend to bring you all safely home long before I’m dead and buried.”
We all watched the spinning hologram in silence, absorbing the knowledge of what this meant. I tried to quell my racing heart. Not a death sentence. We’ll be coming home. I’ll see my family again.
Assuming everything went perfectly according to plan. Assuming this alien intelligence was, in fact, benevolent. Assuming all of our experimental technology functioned as it should.
Assuming.
The lights came back on.
Nobody looked especially happy. Rather, the faces of my instructors were full of concern. Doubt.
“Each of you has been training precisely for the task we have set before you. Each of you has been chosen for the special skill set and experience vital to this mission. Believe that I am not about to waste billions of my dollars and the last fifteen years of my life sending you unprepared into the unknown.” He leaned his knobby hands on the table. No wedding ring, I noticed. I realized I knew little to nothing about this man. “But it is your choice. Now that you know the truth in its entirety—will you stay?”
Silence, heavy. I felt it as though it were sitting on my chest.
Bolshakov had his hands pressed in front of him, eyes closed, as if in prayer. Finally, he broke the silence. “If all you say is true . . . how can any of us refuse?”
“You’re right,” Dr. Copeland agreed. “I can’t walk away from this now. Could any of you?” No one said anything. Then Jeong shook her head.
“No, indeed,” Luka said quietly beside me. He was looking down at this hands, lost in thought.
Shaw was staring straight ahead, as if he hadn’t heard. He spoke in a nervous murmur. “Five hundred light-years. Light-years. Five hundred light-years from Earth.”
There was another Earth out there, orbiting Kepler-186. A benevolent alien race. A world of things unknown and unknowable. Humanity’s hope for the future.
To discover something like that, I would do anything.
“I don’t want to leave.” I pushed strength into my voice, trying to differentiate myself from Luka. I had to remind myself I was still an alternate; he was still my competition.
“Have we heard anything from these”—Dr. Copeland cleared her throat, as though she couldn’t physically say the next word—“extraterrestrials since this transmission?”
“No,” Mr. Crane said. “Regardless, we have this technology and it is irrational not to use it. We have the means and the opportunity. We have a destination that is likely habitable. We’re going to find out who sent this transmission.”
“Why not send probes first?” Jeong asked again. “Why a crewed mission?” The unasked question: Why risk our lives for this?
“This transmission gave us a means to possibly send living humans to a planet that may be habitable. Who sent it? Why? A probe can’t ask those questions. And it may even be perceived as a threat, as a weapon.”
“It goes without saying,” Pierce broke in quietly, “that this information has not and will not be shared with the outside world. There will be no press, no media attention. All of you will be under strict monitoring and on communication restriction. The government is adamant that word of this mission not reach the general public. Under any circumstances.”
“If you are all in agreement to stay,” Crane said, “pack your bags. You’ll be flying to Florida in the morning.”
We were dismissed.
I walked out of that room a different person than when I’d entered. The universe had been irreparably altered. And we were the only ones who knew it.
Nothing, nothing would ever be the same again.
Luka walked beside me without a word. He had been quiet the entire presentation. Perhaps later I’d have time to talk to him about it, but for now I needed to absorb it on my own.
Technology that allowed us to traverse the universe. Physical evidence that intelligent life existed beyond Earth.
And we were going to meet them.
I had to prove I was more worthy of that honor than Luka.