Interstellar

As they boarded the Endurance, it became clear that it wasn’t as roomy as it looked from the outside. Part of this was because two-thirds of each of the modules was taken up by storage. The floors, the walls—almost every surface was composed of hatches of various sizes. On a deep-space vessel, there could be no wasted space—not even one the size of a matchbox.

Flipping switches and adjusting settings, Amelia, Doyle, and Romilly began powering up what would be their home for—well, who knew how long? She watched Tars activate Case, an articulated machine like himself, who made up the final member of their crew.

Doyle moved “up” to the cockpit and turned on the command console. Technically, there was no up or down at this point, but soon it would no longer be a technicality, as evinced by the ladder that led from the lower deck up to the command deck.

She watched as Doyle finished linking the on-board systems to the Ranger.

“Cooper, you should have control,” Doyle said.

“Talking fine,” Cooper replied. “Ready to spin?”

Doyle and Romilly strapped in. Amelia followed their lead and took a chair.

“All set,” she replied.

She felt nothing at first, but then the ship began to shake as Cooper fired the Ranger’s thrusters, angled perfectly to set the great wheel turning. As the spin picked up, weight began to return to Amelia’s body, pulling her feet toward the outer rim of the starship. It wasn’t gravity, exactly, but the manifestation of inertia often referred to as centrifugal force. Without it—without some semblance of weight— bad things happened to the human body over time, like bone loss and heart disease.

We’re going to need our bones and our hearts when we reach our destination, she thought.

Unfortunately, spin wasn’t a perfect substitute for gravity, because the inner ear wasn’t entirely fooled by it. It knew they were whirling around due to a little thing called the Coriolis effect.

On Earth the Coriolis effect was a big deal. It drove the climate, creating huge cells of air moving in circles—clockwise in the northern hemisphere, counter-clockwise in the southern. But the Earth was so huge, the human body didn’t notice the spin on a personal level. Yet on a whirling carnival ride it was easy to feel, often with upsetting results.

The Endurance lay somewhere in between those extremes, though leaning toward the carnival ride. Amelia felt it herself, especially when she moved toward the axis, but it didn’t really bother her.

Romilly, on the other hand, already was looking a little green.

“You okay, there?” she asked him.

“Yup.” He practically gurgled as he replied. “Just need a little time—”

“There should be a Dramamine in the hab pod,” she told him. He nodded gratefully, and moved gingerly in that direction.

FOURTEEN

“I miss you already, Amelia,” Professor Brand told his daughter, via the video link. “Be safe. Give my regards to Dr. Mann.”

“I will, Dad,” Amelia said.

“Things look good for your trajectory,” the professor continued. “We’re calculating two years to Saturn.”

“That’s a lot of Dramamine…” Romilly said. He didn’t seem to be getting along with the artificial gravity, yet Cooper hadn’t felt even a twinge of unpleasantness.

Two years, though, he thought. Murph would be twelve, and Tom seventeen. And then another two years back to Earth, so really fourteen and nineteen. Minimum. That was what he was going to miss, if their mission in the wormhole took zero time.

Which it would not.

Still, maybe it wouldn’t take all that long. In theory the trip through the wormhole would take a fraction of the time, relatively speaking. Maybe the closest planet would be the one to pan out. He might yet be home while Murph was still in her teens.

“Keep an eye on my family, sir,” Cooper told Professor Brand. “’Specially Murph. She’s a smart one.”

“We’ll be waiting when you get back,” the scientist promised. “A little older, a little wiser, but happy to see you.”

* * *

Cooper prepped the engines as Doyle ran a last series of diagnostics from the cockpit cabin of the Endurance. It was a little roomier than the one in the Ranger, set above the central cabin and reached by the rungs of a short ladder.

Brand and Romilly strapped in, and Tars and Case likewise secured themselves with metallic clanks.

Cooper gazed down at the Earth once more, Professor Brand’s last words still fresh in his mind.

“Do not go gentle into that good night…”

He checked with Doyle, who nodded an okay. Then, without any ceremony, he fired the thrusters, and the Endurance began its journey out of Earth’s orbit, and toward the stars.