The word slices through the chaos, and everyone stills to listen to Dad’s answer.
“Now. ”
48: ELDER
Amy grips my hand so tight that I lose the feeling in my fingers as Colonel Martin uses the voice amplifier to explain the situation to the crowd outside—that we weren’t the first humans to land on Centauri-Earth, that the others were killed by aliens who want to kill us too.
The sky is a cloudless blue, the air mild and calm, the trees vibrant—but no one sees this. They still see the dark gray smoke, they still hear the explosion. I watch my people’s faces carefully as Colonel Martin tells them that they’ll be relocated to the station. I can tell immediately that some of them—many of them—are happy to hear this. They want safety, and to them, living in space is safe. They cannot wait to go to the station. It won’t be Godspeed, but it’ll be better than this planet. At least to them.
But more of them balk at the idea. And that gives me courage.
“Once aid from Earth arrives,” Colonel Martin calls over the loudspeaker, “we will have some options. Those in the station will be able to board the next interstellar ship immediately. ”
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.