Interstellar

He looked, although he already knew what it had to be. And it was—another wave.

They had been more than lucky to survive the first one. He didn’t place great odds on making it through two. Even if they did, they would be waterlogged again, and have to wait another couple of decades.

Now or never.

“How long for the engines?” he asked.

“A minute or two,” Case replied.

“We don’t have it,” Cooper snapped. He tried the engines again as the wave loomed over them. They coughed and blew out steam. But that was all.

He tried again.

Nothing.

And again.

“Helmets on!” he said, as the wave came upon them.

TWENTY

Cooper felt the ship lifting as the water began to climb. His mind ran desperately through the vessel’s systems, capabilities.

There had to be an answer…

Maybe there was.

“Blow our cabin oxygen through the main thrusters,” he told Case. “We’ll spark it.”

The robot didn’t waste any time. There was an immediate shriek of air leaving the cabin, sucked toward the engines.

Brand barely got her helmet on in time.

“Come on, now,” Cooper said, taking a run at the engines again. We’ve only got one more shot.

This time the engines blasted to life, blowing the Ranger clear of the wave and up toward the beckoning sky, but the wave wasn’t ready to give them up. He watched the wall of water, heart hammering. But then they really kicked in, and the craft brushed past the monstrous crest, and they were beyond it, free.

In his last glimpse of the surface, Cooper thought he saw Doyle’s lifeless body lying in the shallows, but then the wave eclipsed his view.

He turned the Ranger skyward and pushed.

* * *

When Romilly met them as they entered the ring module, his appearance hit Amelia almost like a physical shock. She thought she was prepared.

She was wrong.

His beard now had gray in it. Wrinkles had developed around his eyes, and there was a lost look in those eyes, as if he didn’t quite believe they were really there—as if he were seeing ghosts.

“Hello, Rom,” she said.

“I’ve waited years,” Romilly said.

“How many years?” Cooper asked, a little harshly.

Romilly looked thoughtful.

“By now it must be—”

“Twenty-three years…” Tars provided.

Cooper’s head dropped.

“…four months, eight days,” Tars finished.

Cooper turned away from them.

“Doyle?” Romilly asked.

Amelia found she couldn’t meet Romilly’s eyes, but she shook her head. Then she forced her gaze back up, and grasped his hands.

“I thought I was prepared,” she told him. “I knew all the theory.” She paused, gathered her words. “The reality is different.”

“And Miller?” Romilly asked.

“There’s nothing here for us,” she told him.

She studied his aged face. Then a thought struck her.

“Why didn’t you sleep?” she asked.

“I did, a couple of stretches,” he said. “But I stopped believing you were coming back, and something seems wrong about dreaming your life away.”

He smiled faintly.

“I learned what I could from studying the black hole,” he went on, “but I couldn’t send anything to your father. We’ve been receiving, but nothing gets out.”

Twenty-three years, she thought. That would make her father…

“Is he still alive?” she asked.

To her relief, Romilly nodded. She closed her eyes.

“We’ve got years of messages stored,” Romilly said.

Amelia opened her eyes and saw that Cooper was ahead of her, settling into the booth.

* * *

Cooper sat staring at the comm for what seemed a long time before he worked up the nerve to turn it on.

“Cooper,” he finally said.

“Messages span twenty-three years,” the automated voice announced.

“I know,” he whispered. “Just start at the beginning.” The screen came to life, and there was Tom, just as he had looked in the last message, still seventeen.

“Hi, Dad—” Tom began.

With trembling fingers, Cooper paused the playback and took a breath, trying to steel himself.

Then he let it run.

“I met another girl, Dad,” Tom said. “I really think this is the one.” He held up a picture of himself and a teenaged girl, dark hair, dark eyes—she was pretty.

“Murph stole Grandpa’s car,” he went on. “She crashed it. She’s okay, though. Your truck’s still running. Grandpa said she would steal that the next time. I said if she did it’d be the last thing she did…”

Cooper leaned back and just let it come, tears streaming down his face. And it kept coming for a long time, and he kept hoping that maybe, maybe Murph would appear. But she didn’t. It was always Tom or Donald. So he watched them age.

* * *

He wasn’t sure how long he had been sitting there, but Tom was talking again. He looked twenty-something now.

“I’ve got a surprise for you, Dad,” he said. “You’re a grandpa.”

He held up a tiny, squinty-eyed infant, tightly swaddled.