Interstellar

Greg Keyes INTERSTELLAR THE OFFICIAL MOVIE NOVELIZATION

For Danielle Elizabeth Keyes and Alan Yin.

Best of luck on your own adventure.

PROLOGUE

First comes darkness, the constant hushed murmur of wind through brittle leaves. And then a woman’s voice, quavering pleasantly with age.

“Sure,” she says. “Sure, my dad was a farmer back then.”

Then the darkness is gone, and all is golden and green as the wind stirs the tassels of waist-high young corn, rattling the stalks as it picks up, as if somewhere a storm is sending notice.

“Like everybody else back then,” the woman continues. All at once she is visible against a dark background. The lines of laughter and grief etched into her face, the relief map of a long life.

“Of course,” she says, “he didn’t start that way.”

PART ONE

ONE

The controls jerked in his hands as if they were alive.

Outside the cockpit, white mist streaked by. He could see the nose of his craft, but nothing beyond it.

“Computer says you’re too tight.” The radio crackled in his ear, the static of shredding ions from the air threatening to overwhelm the signal.

“I got this,” he protested, despite the fact that his instruments were telling him impossible things.

“Crossing the straights,” control said. “Shutting it down. Shutting it all down.”

“No!” he said. “We need to power up—”

He was spinning like crazy now, black and red, black and red, and suddenly the controls ripped free of his hands, and he screamed…

* * *

Cooper sat up in the bed, drenched in sweat, and in his mind—still saturated in dream—he was still spinning, still blind in the mist. Panting, he felt the air rushing into and out of his lungs as he tried to control it, to take control of something…

“Dad? Dad!”

He turned at the familiar voice, and saw her, in the faint first light of dawn coming through his window. His daughter. The whirlwind of his nightmare faded, and there was only the familiar room, the scent of old wood and mothballs coming from his bedclothes.

“Sorry,” he murmured. “Go back to sleep.”

She just stood there, though. Murph, as stubborn as ever.

“I thought you were a ghost,” she said.

Cooper saw she was serious.

“There’s no ghost, Murph,” he mumbled.

“Grandpa says you can get ghosts,” she persisted.

“Grandpa’s a little too close to being one himself,” Cooper grunted. “Back to sleep.”

Murph still wasn’t ready to go. The early morning light picked up the red in her hair, and her green eyes were full of concern. And obstinacy.

“Were you dreaming about the crash?” she asked.

“Back to sleep, Murph,” he said, trying to be firm. Murph hesitated, then finally, reluctantly turned and shuffled back through the door.

Rubbing his eyes, Cooper turned to the window. Outside lay a vista of young corn, its leaves dark green, still only waist high. Dawn was painting the tops of the stalks a vivid red-gold. A gentle breeze sent ripples through it, and in his sleep-blurred vision he felt as if he were gazing upon a vast sea, stretching off to the horizon.

TWO

“Corn, sure,” the old lady says. “But dust. In your ears, your mouth.” We move from her to an old man’s face, his watery eyes searching through decades and distance for the road marks left behind him.

“Dust just everywhere,” he says, nodding. “Everywhere.”

* * *

Donald swept the dust from the farmhouse porch, knowing in the back of his mind that it was pointless, that in a matter of hours it would be covered again. Yet simply surrendering to it seemed even more pointless.

This porch—and the sturdy two-story farmhouse to which it was attached—had sheltered generations. It deserved care. Wind and dust had nearly gnawed through the last coat of white paint, and it wasn’t likely to get a new coat anytime soon. And it needed bigger repairs than that, work that he was too old to do and Cooper was too busy to see to.