Interstellar

It all might simply be moot, anyway—the Endurance might not be able to take them anywhere, given the damage she had suffered. And even if she could, what if Edmunds’ planet was no better than the others?

What if “they”—whoever the mysterious architects were—had been playing a cruel joke all along? Or, perhaps worse, hadn’t possessed any real concept of what human beings needed when it came to settling a new home?

If the average person were asked to find a new environment suitable for the chemosynthetic bacteria that lived around deep-sea thermal vents, would they know where to start? And would the difference between such bacteria and Homo sapiens be significant to beings who lived in five dimensions and spoke with gravity? Perhaps not. Some life from Earth would live just fine on either Miller’s planet or Mann’s.

Just not human life. And if they were wrong about two planets—no, strike that—eleven planets, counting those visited by Lazarus astronauts who had found their systems completely wanting—why shouldn’t they be wrong about all of them? If they really knew what they were doing, why couldn’t they have pointed humanity to the one right world for them?

But then she remembered the distorted image in the ship as they passed through the wormhole,—and she couldn’t bring herself to believe that there was any sort of deception involved. And she still had faith in Wolf, in his planet—believed everything she had said that day, trying to persuade Cooper and Romilly that their best course was the one that led to his world.

Edmunds’ planet was where they needed to be. They just had to get there. Which, to her, no longer seemed likely.

She waited for what Cooper had come to say.

* * *

He stopped within arm’s reach of her. They were both sealed in their spacesuits, yet it felt very—personal.

“The navigation mainframe’s destroyed,” he said, “And we don’t have enough life support to make it back to Earth.

“But…” he added, “We might scrape to Edmunds’ planet.”

So much had gone wrong that Amelia accepted his words with genuine caution. She tried to read his tone, his expression. She knew this had to be devastating for him, and the relief—no, happiness—that threatened to overwhelm her had to be kept in check. She couldn’t let him see it. Wolf might be alive, or he might be dead. But to know, to know for certain—there was freedom in that.

There was closure, which she desperately needed. If she was to move on with plan B—if that was to be the sum of her remaining life, she needed to know. And if she was wrong about Edmunds’ world—well then, they were done. One way or another, their journey would finally be over. For her, that would be closure of another sort.

As for Cooper, she knew in her heart that no possible outcome would bring him solace. That tinged her inner elation with sadness.

“What about fuel?” she asked, trying to stick to the practical aspects of the situation, to keep her emotions at bay.

“Not enough,” Cooper said. He smiled. “But I’ve got a plan. Let Gargantua suck us right to her horizon—then a powered slingshot around to launch us at Edmunds.” He explained it so easily that he might as well have been talking about taking a ride in a pickup truck. Sure, I’ll just spin the wheel around like this, and downshift ’er…

Yet she knew it wasn’t that easy.

“Manually?” Amelia questioned. Cooper had shown that he was a great pilot, but he was still only human. To slingshot around a black hole—without the mainframe? The tiniest mistake would see them dragged through Gargantua’s horizon and into its singularity.

“That’s what I’m here for,” Cooper said confidently. “I’ll take us just inside the critical orbit.” He said it like he expected her to believe him, and to her surprise, she realized she did. He could do it. And if he couldn’t—well, what the hell. They probably wouldn’t feel a thing, anyway.

“And the time slippage?” she asked softly.

His mouth turned in a melancholy little smile, and she saw traces of his grief.

“Neither of us can afford to worry about relativity right now,” he said, and she saw something else in his expression. A sort of tranquility, as if in his sorrow he had found some kind of peace.

“I’m sorry Cooper,” she said, and hardly thinking about it, she reached to embrace him. They were both in spacesuits, of course, so there was little physical sensation, but it still felt natural. They touched their faceplates together, and the moment seemed to linger.

THIRTY-TWO

Once again they fell toward the Gargantua’s yawning nothingness. In the remaining Ranger, Cooper sat sorting himself, preparing. He watched as Tars separated the lander from the battered Endurance.

He wished he’d had a few more moments with his children. Every second, gold in his hand.

* * *