Interstellar

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.