Interstellar, page 16
But Romilly never heard the rest.
TWENTY-NINE
Mann struggled across the ice, trying to get his story straight in his mind. He would have to lose his own long-range transmitter, claim Cooper had accidently disengaged it in the fall when Mann had tried to save him.
Should’ve dropped it down the hole, he realized, but he wasn’t going back there now.
He felt the shudder in the ice first, and then the sound and shock blew through him, frozen particles streaking past on the front of the concussion. At first he thought there had been some random shifting in the frozen masses and the ice had broken, but then he saw the black smoke churning from a nearby hilltop.
His hilltop. Where he’d lain so long in exile.
Where Kipp was.
He felt a fresh surge of terror. This was all spinning out of control.
“Dammit, Romilly,” he muttered. He’d warned him, hadn’t he? It wasn’t his fault.
He switched his radio back on. Brand’s voice greeted him.
“Come on, Cooper,” she was saying. “Just a couple more steps…”
Well that tears it, he thought. He had known he would have to deal with Cooper, but he’d hoped to have the others as companions in the mission. Desperately hoped. He didn’t want to be alone again. That was what had broken him, the solitude. If there was any thought that was intolerable, it was to be alone again.
But now he had no choice. There could be no mending this with Cooper. Romilly was certainly dead, and they would blame that on him, too.
Brand…
Still, he could hold onto the fact that this time it wouldn’t be forever. There was still Edmunds’ world, and plan B. He wouldn’t be alone for the rest of his life. Wolf might still be alive, and there was no need for him to know anything about this… unpleasantness. And whether he survived or not, there would be the children. He could take the isolation again, as long as he knew there would be an end to it.
And maybe—once he had some leverage over her—he might be able to salvage Brand. Somehow. No one had a greater stake in this mission than she did. So that it might succeed, she might be made to see the realities.
Before he could appeal to her sense of reason, however, her sense of mission, he had to have the upper hand. Had to hold all of the cards.
He hurried toward the Ranger.
* * *
“Brand, I’m sorry,” Cooper wheezed, as soon as the respirator was off of his face. “Mann lied—”
As he spoke, a look of comprehension swept across her face.
“Oh, no,” she gasped.
* * *
As Murph roared up to the house, Tom’s truck was nowhere to be seen.
That was as planned—he would be fighting the fire she had set, trying to salvage the crop.
“Keep watch,” she told Getty as she jerked the door open. Then she took off running toward the front door.
“Lois!” she called out as she hit the porch.
* * *
“There’s been an explosion,” Case informed them, as the lander rose and pivoted amid clouds of steam and frost.
“Where?” Brand asked.
“Dr. Mann’s compound,” he replied, as they leapt skyward.
Romilly, Cooper thought. Tars. Tars was with him.
What had Mann done to them?
* * *
Mann strapped into the Ranger, gave the systems a quick once-over, and then started the engines. As the ship shot into the air, he felt a sudden, unexpected exhilaration.
This planet had been his prison, and for most of the time he had believed it would be his tomb. It had made him do things he never thought himself capable of doing, and only now did he allow himself to understand how very much he despised it, the hold it had on him. It had been like a mirror held up to him, a mirror which showed him not his face, but his soul, and he hadn’t liked what it showed him.
Yet accepting the darkness in his character was better than dying there. He could live with everything he had done, and everything he was going to do, so long as he didn’t have to go back there. To that planet.
Which he didn’t. It was all over now. Despite the odds, he had escaped. Wherever death finally caught up with him, it would not be on that icy tomb.
It felt good. Like a new start.
But he had to reach the Endurance before the others.
* * *
There was nothing to be seen of Mann’s pod but billowing, oily black smoke, and Cooper knew Romilly was dead. Mann’s story about Kipp had been pure bullshit—Kipp had collected data proving the planet was uninhabitable, and Mann had shut him down. He must have also booby-trapped him, in case anyone started prying.
Mann was Professor Brand’s protégé, all right—a liar to the core. But the professor had justified his lies as necessary to save the human race—at least that was how he saw it. Mann had lied only to save himself. Cooper remembered Mann’s comments about how the professor had made himself a monster, made the “ultimate sacrifice,” to tell the world what it needed to be told.
Had Mann really been talking about himself? Was that how he justified all of this, in that diseased mind of his?
Romilly probably never felt a thing, Cooper thought. Thank God.
He and Brand watched the flames, both too sunken in despair to speak.
Suddenly something burst from the smoke. For a horrible moment he thought it was Romilly, burning to death, but then the figure resolved itself into the blocky machine that it was.
Tars.
Case turned the lander and opened the airlock. Tars leapt in with a dull whump. Then Case aimed the lander skyward. Only one thing mattered now, Cooper knew.
Who got to the Endurance first.
“Do you have a fix on the Ranger?” he asked Case.
“He’s pushing into orbit,” the robot replied.
“If he takes control of the ship, we’re dead,” Cooper said.
“He’d maroon us?” Brand asked. She seemed to be having trouble coming to terms with the recent behavior of NASA’s best and brightest.
He remembered the conversation they’d had, before going into hypersleep. It seemed like a very long time ago.
“Scientists, explorers,” she had said. “That’s what I love. Out there we face great odds. Death. But not evil.”
As if for some reason scientists and explorers were incapable of evil. Cortez? Haber, the guy who invented chemical warfare?
“Just what we bring with us then,” he had told her. Well, they had brought it.
The signs had been everywhere. Too bad he hadn’t taken his own comment to heart. If he had exercised even a commonsense amount of suspicion, Romilly would still be alive. And they wouldn’t be racing against hope.
“He is marooning us,” Cooper said.
* * *
Lois loved Tom, but she had already lost one child, and she knew her son Coop was sick, and would only get sicker. So Murph didn’t have a hard time convincing her what was best. Now she waited nervously as Lois gathered a few things for her and the boy.
Murph glanced up the stairs.
Would she ever come here again? It didn’t seem likely, however this turned out. She wasn’t sure she even wanted to come back. She remembered happy times here with her dad and brother, with Grandpa and—in her warmest, earliest memories—her mom.
The outside of the house had always looked worn, eroded away, its paint and wood stripped by relentless years of wind and dust. She remembered Grandpa—every day, twice a day, sweeping the porch, trying to keep the dust back. And it had worked—inside the house it had been safe. It had been home.
But now it seemed hollowed out. Maybe it had begun that night when she left her window open, inviting the dust into the house. Within a matter of days, her father had been gone, and nothing was ever right again.
Without Dad and Grandpa there, the house felt like someone she had once known well, but who was now in the last stages of Alzheimer’s. A box that looked familiar, but wasn’t, and never would be again.
And yet there was something she needed to do here. One last thing.
Without really thinking about it, she let her feet carry her up the stairs and through the doorway into her old room. She heard Lois and Coop, already outside with Getty, waiting, knowing that if Tom returned now, the whole plan was doomed.
But something, something told her she needed to be here, now—and not just for Lois and Coop.
“Come on, Murph!” she heard Getty shout. But the pull was like gravity.
She had to go.
* * *
As the lander roared toward the eternal night of space, Cooper moved up beside Case. His throat and nose still stung—for all he knew, the damage might be fatal. His lungs might be about to hemorrhage or whatever, and that would be that. For the moment, however, he was alive, and he was able, so it didn’t make sense dwelling on the worst.
All that mattered was stopping Mann.
He hit the transmitter.
“Dr. Mann?” he said. “Dr. Mann, please respond.”
There was no response. In a way, he was surprised. Mann seemed awfully fond of hearing himself talk, and almost psychotically desperate to justify himself. He must, Cooper guessed, have moved beyond the need for pretty speeches. He was concentrating on reaching the Endurance.
That was probably bad news—it meant that Mann had written them off. And he had too great a lead for them to catch up.
“He doesn’t know the docking procedure,” Case pointed out.
“The autopilot does,” Cooper replied, thinking about how screwed they were. There was simply no way to beat him there…
“Not since Tars disabled it,” Case said.
Cooper looked over to the airlock and the singed robot that occupied it. He felt a blaze of newfound respect.
“Nice,” he said. “What’s your trust setting?”
“Lower than yours, apparently,” Tars replied.
* * *
“Dr. Mann?” Cooper’s voice came again. Mann ignored him. What point would there be in answering him? Instead he studied the navigation panel.
“Dr. Mann, if you attempt docking—”
Mann switched off the receiver. What he didn’t need now was any sort of distraction. Not when he was this close.
* * *
Murph looked around her old room, the room that had once been her mother’s. The bookshelves that had spoken to her. Would they speak to her again? Was her ghost still here?
She waited, but the books remained in their places.
Murph spotted the box of her stuff. Cautiously, as if she feared it might contain a snake, she went to it and looked inside.
THIRTY
Mann breathed a sigh of relief as he came up on the Endurance. According to his instruments, he had a significant lead on the lander, giving him plenty of time to secure his position. He drew up to the larger ship, and then switched on the autopilot so it could finish the tricky business of docking.
“Auto-docking sequence withheld,” the computer said.
Mann blinked at the screen. Why on earth would the docking sequence be withheld?
“Override,” he told the machine.
“Unauthorized,” the computer answered.
Well, that was a problem. He didn’t know the sequence himself—he hadn’t been trained for this. But with the Ranger coming up behind, it didn’t look like he had a choice.
He had to do it manually.
* * *
As they climbed into orbit, Cooper could see Mann was in position to dock, but that wasn’t as easy as it might appear. The ring ship wasn’t spinning, but it was still moving in orbit, and Mann had to match that. Getting a general velocity match wasn’t a problem, but it couldn’t just be in the ball park.
He tried the transmitter again.
“Dr. Mann, do not attempt docking,” he said. “Dr. Mann?”
Static was his only reply.
* * *
Mann knew he had the closest thing he was going to get to a synchronic orbit, so he left the controls and went quickly to the airlock, which was fast lining up with a hatch on the Endurance. He began working the mechanical grapple, seeking to grip the other ship and keep the two airlocks aligned so they could be coupled.
It was working. The ships bumped together. He was starting a sigh of relief when the computer spoke up again.
“Imperfect contact,” it said. “Hatch lockout.”
Mann paused, thinking furiously.
How perfect does the latch need to be? he wondered. All it has to do is hold together for a few seconds. That was all the time it would take for him to cross. Then he could seal up from the other side. If he had to cut the Ranger loose—well, there was a spare, and another lander, as well. He might lose a little air in the process, sure, yet there would still be plenty, and he would be the only person on board.
He needed to get on board now. The lead he had built was quickly diminishing.
“Override,” he commanded.
“Hatch lockout disengaged,” the computer informed him.
Thank God. He was starting to think he was locked out of everything.
He drifted toward the airlock controls.
* * *
So close…
Cooper stared at the joined ships.
Looks like the sonofabitch did it, he thought.
“Is he locked on?” Cooper demanded, knowing Case had a running telemetry feed from the Endurance.
“Imperfectly,” Case replied.
Cooper grabbed the transmitter.
“Dr. Mann!” he yelped desperately. “Dr. Mann! Do not, repeat, do not open the hatch. If you—”
* * *
Mann looked at the grapples. They were opening and closing, trying to complete the seal, but he knew he didn’t have time to get it perfect. The lander was almost there, and if he lost the partial lock he already had, he might drift off and have to start over again, which would be a disaster. Cooper doubtless knew the docking sequence, and he had both robots at his disposal. He would dock easily, and then he would be in control.
That was not going to happen.
* * *
“What happens if he blows the hatch?” Cooper asked Case.
“Nothing good,” Case replied.
He considered the tableau. Would Mann go through with it?
Crap—of course he will, Cooper knew. Mann wasn’t really a pilot—Kipp had taken care of that. But whatever flight training the scientist had been through, it wouldn’t have included the skills needed for manual docking. There wouldn’t have been any call for it at any point during the Lazarus mission.
Cooper, on the other hand, had it drilled into him—over and over—that you never, ever open the locks without a perfect seal. Whatever his merits, Mann was—like the rest of them—a theory man. If he thought through the physics of opening the hatch, he probably wouldn’t take the chance—but he wasn’t thinking about that now. His only goal was to get onto the Endurance, and fast.
“Pull us back!” Cooper ordered.
Case hit the thrusters, and the Endurance began to dwindle in their windscreen.
Then there was silence. Cooper realized he was hardly breathing.
“Case,” Brand said, snapping out of it. “Relay my transmission to his onboard computer, and have it rebroadcast as emergency P.A.”
Finally, Cooper thought. Brand was back in the game. That was good, because he sure as hell needed her.
“Dr. Mann,” Brand said. “Do not open the in—”
* * *
Mann was reaching for the lever to release the inner hatch when Brand’s voice suddenly burst from the computer.
“—peat,” she said. “Do not open inner hatch!”
Startled, he moved over to the transmitter and switched it on.
“Brand,” he said, “I don’t know what Cooper’s told you, but I’m taking control of the Endurance, then we’ll talk about continuing the mission. This is not your survival, or Cooper’s—this is about mankind’s.”
He turned back and pulled the lever.
THIRTY-ONE
It all happened in silence, of course, and at distance, so to Cooper it seemed unreal. It was as if he was watching some of his model spaceships, suspended on fishing line in front of a star field.
First he saw a flare of flame and then a cloud puff from the spot where the two ships were joined, followed by a steady stream of white vapor. He didn’t need to ask what it was—it was air gushing out from both the Ranger and Endurance, crystallizing almost instantly in the vacuum of space.
The loss of air was a problem, but the secondary affect was a disaster. The air in both ships was pressurized at around twelve pounds per square inch, so it was jetting out with enough velocity to act like a steering rocket. As Cooper watched, aghast, the angle of the air stream began turning the wheel that was Endurance—ponderously at first, but with gathering speed, like a pinwheel firework on the Fourth of July. He watched the partially joined airlocks twist and shatter, and then the Ranger was ripped away, tearing itself apart in the process and rupturing one of the Endurance’s modules as it went. Venting more air to freeze in the void, adding more thrust to the ship’s spin.
As it spun, the ghostly hand of planetary gravity took over and the great ship began dropping ponderously toward the frozen planet below.
“Oh, my God,” Brand said.
Cooper got behind the controls and took the sticks, firing the thrusters. He dove beneath the crippled starship, dodging the debris from the Ranger.
“Cooper,” Case said, “there’s no point in using our fuel to—”
“Just analyze the Endurance’s spin,” he said, cutting Case short.
“What are you doing?” Brand asked.
“Docking,” Cooper replied.
He pushed the thrusters, trying to match the larger ship’s rotation.
“Endurance rotation sixty-seven, sixty-eight rotations per minute,” Case informed him.
“Get ready to match it on the retro thrusters,” Cooper said.
“It’s not possible,” Case argued.
“No,” Cooper said, grimly. “It’s necessary.”
