The Art of Space Travel

by Nina Allan

  The book’s shiny yellow cover is torn in three places.

  The day Moolie drops the bombshell is a Tuesday. I don’t know why I remember that, but I do. I come in from work to find Moolie looking sheepish, the look she gets now when she’s lost something or broken something or forgotten who she is, just for the moment. I’ve learned it’s best not to question her when she gets like that because it makes her clam up, whereas if you leave her alone for a while she can’t resist sharing. So I pretend I haven’t noticed anything and we have supper as usual. Once we’ve finished eating, Moolie goes into the front room to watch TV and I go upstairs to do some stuff on my computer.

  After about half an hour, Moolie appears in the doorway. She’s holding The Art of Space Travel, clasping it to her chest with both arms as if she’s afraid it might try to get away from her. Then she dumps it down on my bed like a brick. It makes a soft, plump sound as it hits the duvet. A small puff of air comes up.

  “This belonged to your father,” Moolie says. “He left it here when he went.”

  “When he went where?” I say. I’m trying to keep my voice low and steady, as if we’re just having a normal conversation about nothing in particular.

  My heart is thumping like a road drill, like it wants to escape me. It’s almost painful, like the stitch in your side you get from running too far and too fast.

  “Your dad was an astronaut,” Moolie says. “He was part of the New Dawn mission.”

  My hands are shaking, just a bit, but I’m trying to ignore that. “Moolie,” I say to her. Moolie is what I called her when I was first learning to talk, apparently. It made her and Grandma Clarah laugh so much they never tried to correct me. Moolie’s actual name is Della—Della Starr. She was once one of the most highly qualified metallurgists in the British aerospace industry. “What on Earth are you talking about?”

  “He knew I was pregnant,” Moolie says. “He wanted to be involved—to be a father to you—but I said no. I didn’t want to be tied to him, or to anyone. Not then. I’ve never been able to make up my mind if I did the right thing or not.”

  She nods at me, as if she’s satisfied with herself for having said something clever, and then she leaves the room. I stay where I am, sitting at my desk and staring at the open doorway Moolie just walked out of, wondering if I should go after her and what I’m going to say to her if I do.

  When I finally go downstairs, I find Moolie back in the living room, curled up on the sofa, watching one of her soaps. When I ask her if she was telling the truth about my dad being an astronaut she looks at me as if she thinks I’ve gone insane.

  “Your father wasted his dreams, Emily,” she says. “He gave up too soon. That’s one of the reasons I told him to go. Life’s hard enough as it is. The last thing you want is to be tied to someone who’s always wishing he’d chosen a different path.”

  When a couple of days later I ask her again about The Art of Space Travel, she says she doesn’t have a clue where it came from. “It was here in the house when we moved in, I think,” she says. “I found it in the built-in wardrobe in your bedroom, covered in dust.”

  I’ve been through the book perhaps a thousand times, searching for a sign of my father—a name on the flyleaf, a careless note, scribbled comments in the margin, underlinings in the text, even. There’s nothing, though, not even a random inkblot. Aside from being yellowed and a bit musty-smelling, the pages are clean. There’s nothing to show who owned the book, who brought it to this house, that it was ever even opened before we had it.

  I want to find Dad. I tell myself it’s because Moolie is dying, that whoever the man is and whatever he’s done, he has a right to know the facts of his own life. I know it’s more than that, though, if I’m honest. I want to find him because I’m curious, because I’ve always been curious, and because I’m afraid that once Moolie is gone I’ll have nobody else.

  * * *

  Our house is on Sipson Lane, in the borough of Hillingdon. It was built in the 1970s, almost a hundred years ago now to the year. It’s a shoddy little place, one of a row of twenty-two identical boxes flung up to generate maximum profit for the developer with a minimum of outlay. It’s a wonder it’s lasted this long, actually. Some of the other houses in the row are in a terrible state—the metal window frames rusted and buckling, the lower floors patchy with mildew. The previous owner put in replacement windows and a new damp-proof course, so ours isn’t as bad as some. It’s dry inside, at least, and I used some of the extra cash from Benny to put up solar panels, which means we can afford to keep the central heating on all the time.

  Moolie’s like Clarah now—she can’t stand the cold.

  Sipson is a weird place. Five hundred years ago it was a tiny hamlet, surrounded by farmland. Since then it’s evolved into a scruffy housing estate less than half a mile from the end of the second runway at Heathrow Airport. Moolie bought the Sipson Lane house because it was cheap and because it was close to her job, and the best thing about it is that it’s close to my job too, now. It takes me less than half an hour to walk into work, which not only cuts down on expenses, it also means I can get home quickly if there’s an emergency.

  The traffic on the perimeter road is a constant nightmare. In the summer, the petrol and diesel fumes settle over the airport like a heavy tarpaulin, a yellowish blanket of chemical effluent that is like heat haze, only thicker, and a lot more smelly.

  When you walk home in the evenings, though, or on those very rare winter mornings when there’s still a hard frost, you could take the turning into Sipson Lane and mistake it for the entrance to another world: The quiet street, with its rustling plane trees, the long grass sprouting between the kerbstones at the side of the road. The drawn curtains of the houses, like gently closed eyelids, the soft glow behind. Someone riding past on a bicycle. The red pillar box opposite the Sipson Arms. You’d barely know the airport even existed.

  It’s like an oasis in time, if there is such a thing. If you stand still and listen to the sound of the blackbirds singing, high up in the dusty branches of those plane trees, you might almost imagine you’re in a universe where the Galaxy air crash never happened.

  They had planes flying in and out of here again within the hour, of course. The airport authorities, backed by the government, insisted the main damage was economic and mostly short term. They claimed the rumours of ground contamination and depleted uranium were just so much scaremongering, that the whole area within the emergency cordon had been repeatedly tested and repeatedly found safe.

  A decade on they say that even if the toxicity levels were a bit on the high side in the first year or so after the crash, they’re well within the accepted safety limits now.

  * * *

  The first question I have to ask myself is this: Is there any possibility at all that it’s true? What Moolie told me about my father and the New Dawn mission, I mean?

  My first instinct is to dismiss it as just another fraction of Moolie craziness. One of the features of Moolie’s illness is that it’s often hard to know whether she’s talking about stuff that really happened to her or stuff she’s dreamed or read about or seen on TV. Her mind can’t tell the difference now, or not all the time. Just seeing the Mars team on television might be enough to land her with a complete fantasy scenario, indistinguishable from her life as she’s actually lived it.

  But the thing is—and I can hardly believe I’m saying this—there is a very small chance that her story might turn out to be real. The dates fit, for a start. I was born in March 2047, just three months before the New Dawn was launched on its mission to Mars. And before you roll your eyes and say, Yes, but so were about three hundred thousand other kids, just consider this: Moolie did a lot of specialist placements early on in her career. One of them was in Hamburg, at the University of the European Space Programme, where she spent the better part of 2046 helping to run strength tests on prototypes of some of the equipment designed to be used aboard the New Dawn. Some of the Mars team were in resi
dency in Hamburg at around the same time, eight of them in all, five women and three men. Moolie would have come into direct contact with every one of them.

  I know, because I’ve looked up the details. I even have a file now, stuff I’ve found online and printed off. If you think that’s creepy, just try having an unknown dad who might have died in an exploding rocket and see how you get on. See how long it takes before you start a file on him.

  * * *

  Toby Soyinka was second communications officer aboard the New Dawn, the one who just happened to be outside the vehicle when the disaster occurred. His body was thrown clear of the wreckage, and was recovered three months later by an unmanned retrieval pod launched by the crew of the Hoffnung 3 space station. Toby’s body was shipped back to Earth at enormous expense, not so much for the sake of his family as to be subjected to a year-long post mortem.

  The mission scientists wanted to know if Toby was still alive when he floated free, and if so then for how long. Knowing that would tell them all kinds of things, apparently—important information about the last moments of the New Dawn and why she failed.

  According to the official reports, Toby Soyinka was killed in the primary explosion, the same as the rest of the crew. As you might expect, the conspiracy theorists went bonkers. Why would Soyinka be dead if his suit was undamaged? How come only a short section of the official post mortem has ever been released into the public sphere?

  There are people who claim that Toby was alive up there for at least three hours after the rocket exploded—depending on individual physiology, his suit’s oxygen tanks would have contained enough air for between three and four hours.

  Toby’s suit was also fitted with a radio communicator, but it was short-range only, suitable for talking with his colleagues back on board the New Dawn but not powerful enough to let him speak with Mission Control.

  Would he have wanted to, though, even if he could have? Knowing that he was going to die, and everyone on the ground knowing there was fuck all they could do about it?

  I mean, what could one side of that equation possibly have to say to the other?

  Well, I guess this is it, Tobes. Sorry, old chap. Hey, did anyone remember to send out for muffin

  I think about that, and I think of Toby Soyinka thinking about that, and after the terror what comes through to me most strongly is simple embarrassment.

  If it had been me in that floating spacesuit I reckon I’d have switched my radio off and waited in silence. Listed my favourite movies in order from one to a hundred and gazed out at the stars.

  At least Toby died knowing he’d done something extraordinary, that he’d seen sights few human beings will ever see.

  And Toby Soyinka is a hero now, don’t forget that. Perhaps that’s what the crew of the Second Wind are telling themselves, even now.

  In the movies when something goes wrong and one of the crew is left floating in space with no hope of rescue, the scene almost always ends with the doomed one taking off his or her helmet, making a quick and noble end of it rather than facing a slow and humiliating death by asphyxiation.

  Would anyone really have the guts to do that, though? I don’t think I would.

  Toby Soyinka was born in Nottingham. Toby’s dad was a civil engineer—he helped design the New Trent shopping village—and his mum was a dentist. Toby studied physics and IT at Nottingham Uni, then went on to do postgraduate work at the UESP in Hamburg, where he would have met Moolie. Most of the photos online show Toby at the age of twenty-eight, the same age he was when he died, and when he and the rest of the crew were all over the media. He looks skinny and hopeful and nervous, all at once. Sometimes when I look at pictures of Toby I can’t help thinking he seems out of his depth, as if he’s wondering what he signed up for exactly, although that’s probably just my imagination.

  Once, when I was browsing through some stuff about Toby online, Moolie came into the room and sneaked up behind me.

  “What are you looking at?” she said. I hadn’t heard her come in. I jumped a mile.

  “Nothing much,” I said. I hurried to close the window but it was too late, the photos of Toby were staring her in the face. I looked at her looking, curious to see what her reaction would be, but Moolie’s eyes slid over his features without even a single glimmer of recognition. He might have been a tree or a gatepost, for all the effect he had on her.

  Was she only pretending not to recognise him? I don’t think so. I always know when Moolie’s hiding something, even if I don’t know what it is she’s hiding.

  * * *

  I don’t believe that Toby Soyinka was my father. It would be too much like a tragic fairy tale, too pat.

  * * *

  “How’s your mum?” Benny says to me this morning.

  “She’s fine, Benny,” I reply. “She’s getting excited about the mission, same as you.” I grin at him and wink, firstly because I can never resist taking the piss out of Benny, just a little bit, and secondly because it’s true. Moolie has barely been out of the living room this past week. She has the television on all day and most of the night, permanently tuned to the twenty-four-hour news feed that’s supposed to be the official mouthpiece of the mission’s sponsors. The actual news content is pretty limited but since when has that ever been a deterrent in situations like this? They squeeze every last ounce of juice out of what they have—then they go back to playing the old documentaries, home video footage, endlessly repetitive Q&As with scientists and school friends.

  Moolie watches it all with equal attention, drinking it down like liquid nutrient through a straw. She doesn’t get to bed till gone three, some nights, and when I ask her if she’s had anything to eat she doesn’t remember. I make up batches of sandwiches and leave them in the fridge for her. Sometimes she scoffs the lot, sometimes I go down in the morning and find them untouched.

  She’s immersed in the Mars thing so deeply that sometimes it seems like Moolie herself is no longer there.

  What is it that fascinates her so much? When she first started watching I felt convinced it had to do with my father, that all the talk of the Second Wind was bringing back memories of what happened to the New Dawn. I’m less sure of that now—why should everything have to be about me and my father? Moolie is—was—a scientist, and the Mars mission is just about the most exciting scientific experiment to be launched in more than a decade, perhaps ever. Of course she’d be interested in it. You could argue that her obsession with the news feed is the best evidence I have that she is still herself.

  She seems so engaged, so invigorated, so happy that I don’t want to question it. I want her to stay like this for as long as she can.

  “Well, tell her I asked after her,” Benny says. I glance at him curiously, wondering if he’s serious. I’ve always found it strange, this spasmodic concern of his for a person he’s never met. At the same time, though, it’s just so Benny. It’s no wonder he’s never made it to the top. To make it to the top you need to be a heartless bastard, pretty much. On the heartless bastard scale, Benny Conway has never figured very high up.

  I nod briskly. “I will,” I say. I never feel comfortable talking with him about Moolie—it’s all too close to home. I’d rather stick to work, any day. “What’s on today?”

  Benny immediately looks shifty. A moment later I understand why. “There’s another news crew dropping by,” he says. “They want to do an interview. With you.”

  “With me? What the hell for? Oh, for God’s sake, Benny, what are they expecting me to say?”

  “You’re head of housekeeping at the Edison Star, Emily. That’s an important and responsible position. They just want to ask you what it’s been like, preparing for such an important occasion. There’s nothing for you to be anxious about, I promise you. They’ve said it shouldn’t take more than ten minutes, fifteen at the most.”

  “I’m not anxious, I’m pissed off,” I say. “You could at least have asked me first.” Benny looks hurt and just a little bit surprised. I kn
ow I’ve overstepped the mark and I wouldn’t normally be so rude but just for the moment I feel like killing him. It’s all right for Benny—he loves all this shit. Benny’s great with the press, actually, he’s what you might call a people person. Put him in front of a camera and he’s away.

  Me? I just want to be left alone to get on with my job. The idea of being on TV leaves me cold. There’s Moolie to be considered, too—seeing me up on the screen like that, it might warp her sense of reality more than ever.

  It’s done now, though, isn’t it? There’s not much sense in kicking off about it. Best to get the whole thing over and done with and then forget it.

  * * *

  I guess it’s mainly because of Benny that I’m still here. Working at the hotel, I mean. I certainly never planned on staying forever. It was supposed to be a holiday job, something to bring in some money while I went through college. I started out studying for a degree in natural sciences, following in Moolie’s footsteps, I suppose, which was madness. I failed my first-year exams twice. It should have been obvious to anyone that I wasn’t cut out for it.

  “You’re such a dreamer, Emily,” Moolie said to me once. “Head in the stars.” She cracked a kind of half-smile, then sighed. She was paying for extra tutorials for me at the time, trying to give me a better shot at the re-sits. It must have felt like flushing money down the toilet. When I told her I’d been offered a permanent job at the Edison Star and had decided to take it she gave me such an odd look, like I’d announced I was running away to join the circus or something. But she never questioned it or gave me a hard time, or tried to talk me out of it the way a lot of parents would have.

  It was a relief to her, most likely, that I’d finally found something I could do, that I was good at, even. It also meant I stayed close to home. First of all because it was convenient, and then later, with Moolie’s illness, because it became necessary. I’ve never regretted it. I regret some of the things that might have been, but the regret has always taken second place to the desire not to have things change. I don’t think it’s just because of Moolie, either. Sometimes I believe it’s the airport itself, and Sipson, both the kind of non-places that keep you addicted to transience, the restless half-life of the perpetual traveller who never goes anywhere.