On Aecor, it did not. We descended into the atmosphere without a hitch. The air allowed us through, and physics led the way from there. My body travelled through a spectrum of gravity – first nothing, then a fast crescendo of sluggish weight that transitioned into ever-increasing lightness. The change plateaued in an unfamiliar state, one that was lighter than Earth, but heavier than its moon. This was a gentle world, one that wouldn’t drag you down or trip you up. It was a small delight, that point-six-G. The gravitational equivalent of a sip of cold soda or a quick shoulder rub.
The Merian’s landing legs had barely finished deployment before Jack was undoing his safety restraints. ‘Dibs on shower,’ he said.
The rest of us groaned in protest. Showering is an utterly impossible activity in a weightless environment, unless you like the idea of floating in the middle of a spray of spherical blobs that go everywhere but where you want them to. We hadn’t been able to properly clean ourselves up since coming out of torpor, and we were all aching for a turn in the stall.
‘You don’t want a haircut before you shower?’ Elena asked, unbuckling her own restraints. Hair we could’ve addressed in microgravity, but then you have to use a vacuum cleaner. It’s so much easier when the clippings fall straight down.
Jack pointed at Elena in agreement. ‘Dibs on clippers.’
‘Okay,’ she said, heading down the ladder. ‘But first haircut means last out the hatch.’
‘Oh, that’s not fair,’ he said, following after.
I punched buttons. ‘All systems nominal, if anyone cares,’ I said. I wasn’t actually fussed in the slightest. If anything, I took it as sign of their trust in the Merian, which, by extension, was something of a compliment to my ability to keep an eye on her.
Chikondi flashed me a thumbs up as he descended the ladder. ‘I care.’
‘Thanks, Chikondi.’ I finished my landing sequence, and followed the others down the ladder. It’s always odd, being able to only move downward in a space I floated in minutes before.
Despite our collective grunge, there was a fizzy impatience in the air as we buzzed our heads and took turns in the compact shower. There was a whole moon waiting outside, but first, we had to bathe. If you want to see highly-trained astronauts devolve into twitchy five-year-olds, this is the time to witness it. Nobody wants to take a bath before they go out to play.
We gathered in the cargo hold after we’d finished putting ourselves together. Jack produced a six-sided die from his pocket and set it on a storage crate. ‘Who’s feeling lucky?’
Elena picked up the die and turned it between her fingers. ‘High or low?’
‘Low?’ Jack asked, looking around for our agreement. We all nodded. ‘Low. One is best.’
Elena rolled, and scoffed. Five.
Chikondi went next. Three.
Jack followed him. He laughed as the die came to rest. Another three. ‘Beard buds,’ he said to Chikondi, and gave him a high five.
‘You didn’t keep your beards,’ I said.
‘Thank God,’ Elena added.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ Jack said. ‘Beard buds are more of . . .’
‘A state of mind,’ Chikondi said.
‘A state of mind,’ Jack affirmed.
I rolled my eyes, then the die.
I stared.
Two.
I kept staring, even as Jack hooted and Chikondi clapped me on the back.
I’d be the first out the door.
If the OCA media archives are still around, you can find footage of Lawki 6’s launch party. The campus hall was decked to the nines, the tall ceiling under which I’d attended so many meetings almost unrecognisable behind its costume of banners and coloured lights. The place was packed, as was to be expected. In addition to the project teams and the project teams’ families, you’ll see the press, and the press’ families, and citizen supporters from all over the world.
If you watch the footage, you’ll see us, too: four people weaving our way through a sea of humanity, shaking hands and giving hugs and accepting gifts. You’ll see Elena, in her sharp suit and her cresting hair, the consummate professional, as effortlessly approachable in a throng of a thousand as if she’d been in a lecture hall of one hundred, or at a family dinner of ten. You’ll see Jack, a rakish grin on his face and his jacket rumpled just so, getting high on the OCA Oceania crowd going batshit for their Melbourne-raised hero. You’ll see Chikondi, handsome as a portrait and the most nervous I think he’s ever been in his life. He loves people, and I wouldn’t categorise him as shy, but he’s infinitely more comfortable in an audience than in the spotlight. That’s why you’ll see me at his side – the one in the blue dress, whispering stupid jokes in his ear to keep him smiling in a sea of cameras. I’m smiling, too – partly because his laughter fuelled my own, partly because this was not my first time at a PR circus, mainly because I was having a good time. A party is a party, and when it’s a party for you and the people you love best, it’s hard not to enjoy yourself.
If you watch closely, though, you might catch a moment when my face falls. I don’t know when in the evening it happened, but it’s the thing I remember most. That’s the moment when I saw my family in the crowd: my parents, my brother, my sister-in-law, my little nieces. I knew they’d been there, but I hadn’t expected to see them in the context of my public rounds on the floor. They cheered for me, my family. They cheered and called my name and jumped up and down. But I could see the pain in their eyes, too, a pain that matched the same I’d buried behind my practised smile.
A return to Earth is a key component of all the Lawki missions. OCA was vehemently opposed to putting people aboard a one-way flight. Our mission is to catalogue, not to colonise. Returning to the world you’d laboured to gather knowledge for is psychologically vital. You had to remember who you were doing the work for. You had to know the finite spacecraft that carried you would not be your final home. Without a restful full-circle ending awaiting you, an astronaut under duress might decide to cut the cord, to make a home on a world that was not theirs. Lawki 6 would return to Earth, our mission briefing unequivocally declared.
We’d just be doing so in eighty years.
We astronauts are taught to compartmentalise the realities of interstellar flight. The launch party is a public celebration; the family day that begins the following morning is a time of private grief. There is no schedule that day; our PR shepherd was not tapping his foot and checking his clock while holding a pack of tissues. The day belongs to you and yours.
I will not detail here what I did or said on family day, or repeat the words that still echo in my ears. That belongs to me alone. I’m not going to perform that part of myself for anyone. I won’t say, either, how it went for my crewmates (though we’ve unpacked that baggage among ourselves many, many times). I’ll explain family day for you in the most astronautical way I know how: a simple briefing.
You get in a car and you go to a place of your choosing. A park, maybe. A beach. A house rented for the occasion, complete with doors that lock and blinds that lower.
You hold everyone, as tightly as you can.
You tell them you love them.
You tell them you know.
You tell them goodbye.
You cry. A lot.