Shades of Earth (Across the Universe 3)

The shuttle glides into motion. The stars dip out of view, and the planet fills the entire honeycombed-glass window. It feels as if my entire body is put on hold as I drink the image up with my eyes. It’s different, somehow, seeing the planet without the blackness of space around it. As if the colors will wrap around us and swallow us whole.

“Oh,” Amy breathes, barely audible as she grabs the armrest of her seat and pulls herself down. She wiggles back into the seat belt and straps herself in.

A monitor blinks on in front of her, showing three bright red dots over an outline of the shuttle. “These must be the rockets moving us,” she says. She touches the screen, and her fingertips glow red from the lights.

One of the lights blinks out—Amy gasps, snatching her hand away—and our view shifts again, lurching up just in time for us to see the home we’re leaving.

Godspeed.

It looks broken, crippled, with the shuttle missing from its underside.

Emotion clogs my throat. I—I didn’t expect this. I didn’t expect to look out the window of the shuttle as I left, and think of everything I was leaving behind, and wonder if it was worth it.

Godspeed. My whole life is . . . was on that ship. Everything. Every memory I have, every feeling I felt, every important thing about me came from within those battered steel walls.

And I’m abandoning it.

And over eight hundred people who are still inside.

A crazy thought fills my mind: I want to reach out, cancel the rockets, point the shuttle back to Godspeed. I don’t want to go. I don’t want to leave home.

But then the red dots on the monitor light up again, and the rockets burst with power, and the shuttle dips back toward the planet, and it doesn’t matter, it’s too late.

I can never go back to Godspeed.

The red lights on the monitor blink on and off as a series of bursts from the rockets align the shuttle into position. Between it and the weightlessness of no gravity, I’m disoriented—the only steady image in front of me is Centauri-Earth.

“It’s so weird,” Amy says. “It’s like we’re upside down, facing the planet, but it doesn’t feel like we’re upside down. ” She swipes her hand over her hair, futilely trying to smooth it down, but it just floats up again.

“Orbit break initiating,” the computer says.

All three of the big red lights blink on and stay on. The shuttle is pushed forward, straight toward the planet. I glance at Amy: her eyes are wide with fear, her fingers curled over the edge of the armrests of her chair. But I know—this is what she wants. Giving her Centauri-Earth is the only way I’ll ever be able to make her truly happy, to make up for the fact that my careless actions trapped her in the cage of Godspeed with the likes of Luthor and people who will never be able to accept her.

“Deorbit burn,” the computer announces.

“Ready?” Amy whispers.

“No,” I confess. I want to give Amy the planet, but I wish it wasn’t at the cost of the only home I’ve ever known.

The shuttle picks up speed, aiming at a downward angle toward the planet. All three red lights on the monitor in front of Amy glow brightly. A few smaller lights, scattered between the bigger one, blink on—more rockets are firing, increasing our thrust toward Centauri-Earth.

“Entry interface acquired,” the computer says.

The planet fills the window. Blue-green-white. I can just see the nose of the shuttle, a dull grayish-green that starts to glow red. Something bright silver sparkles in the corner of my eye, but as I turn my head to see it, the shuttle dips again. Flashes of orange and yellow and red flicker around the window.

I glance over at Amy. Her little gold cross floats around her neck. She snatches it with one hand, clutching it so tightly that her knuckles whiten. Her mouth moves silently, forming words I cannot hear.

Lights blink chaotically across the control panel—rockets are bursting on and off, making our descent veer into an angled zigzag, designed, I suspect, to slow us down. I occasionally catch glimpses of the planet, but for the most part the windows are blurred with orange and red—flames? Or just heat from the deorbital burn? I don’t know, I don’t know, and by all the stars, how did I ever think we could land a frexing shuttle by ourselves?

Something smashes into the side of the shuttle—or at least, it feels that way as the entire shuttle wobbles and veers suddenly off course. A dozen lights flick on and off, and the computer chirps, “Landing signal disrupted. Manual mode on. ”

“What’s going on?” Amy yells.

Red lights on the ceiling of the bridge flick on, casting a bloody glow around us. I look to Amy, and I can tell that she realizes the same thing I have: something’s wrong. “Ground impact in T minus fifteen minutes,” the computer says in a perfectly calm tone.

“Ground impact?” Amy parrots, her voice high and cracked. “We’re crashing!”

My heart stops as I realize she’s right. I grab the small steering wheel that juts out from under the control panel and do the only thing that makes sense—I jerk it back as hard as I can, hoping that somehow I can at least make it so we don’t hit the planet head-on. The horizon wobbles on our screen, and more lights flash on and off on the control panel.