Interstellar

But it was still hard to watch from safety as someone else paid her bills.

* * *

As the engines pushed them forward, ever faster, the ship began to shudder.

Amelia tightened her harness and tried not to revisit what would happen if Cooper was even slightly wrong in his calculations. They were so close now that all she could see was a massive Stygian ocean wreathed in golden, glowing gas. It seemed impossible they were going to escape as they fell, faster and faster, that this ancient dead god would let them slip his greedy, immortal grasp. Nothing as frail and mortal as the Endurance stood a chance in the face of such cosmic hunger. Even if they made it past perigee—their nearest approach to the black hole—they would surely break up on the way out.

But she had to believe—had to believe that Cooper could pull it off.

* * *

And, so suddenly, they were there, at the bottom of their fall. At least she hoped it was the bottom.

“Maximum velocity achieved,” Case announced. “Prepare to fire escape thrusters.”

“Ready,” Tars said.

“Ready,” Cooper echoed.

Amelia couldn’t tear her eyes from the impossible horizon, the black-hearted monster that lay below them.

“Main engine ignition in three, two, one, mark,” Case intoned.

The hull thrummed as the main engines fired, adding to the inertia already whipping them around Gargantua, turning the black hole’s gravity against it in a demonstration of stellar jujitsu. But the giant wasn’t giving up without a fight. Endurance strained to its limits for freedom, like a four-wheel drive trying to climb out of a sandy hole with the wheels spinning and the slope sliding backward.

Inertia wasn’t enough. Nor were the main engines.

More thrust was needed.

“Lander One,” Case continued, “engines on my mark… three, two, one, mark—”

“Fire,” Tars said, and the lander’s engines engaged. The Endurance protested even more, her metal skeleton audibly straining as the small craft emptied it fuel reserves in one massive, maximum burn.

“Ranger Two, engines on my mark,” Case said. “Three, two, one, mark.”

“Fire,” she heard Cooper say.

Amelia saw the stars again as they pulled away from Gargantua, toward the grand spectacle of the night sky, so much brighter than that of the solar system. And somewhere out there—outshone by nebulae and pulsars and blaze of the stellar newborn—there was the faint red dot for which they were aiming.

Edmunds’ planet.

Unbelievably, the powered slingshot seemed to be working. The tipping point was still ahead, but they were approaching it.

“That little maneuver cost us fifty-one years,” Cooper reported.

“You don’t sound bad for a hundred and twenty,” Amelia responded, a little giddy with reaction.

“Lander One, prepare to detach on my mark,” Case said. “Three…”

She could see the lander, Tars at the controls, and her brief cheerfulness vanished as quickly as it had come. The lander’s fuel was spent, and now it was just dead weight. As was Tars.

Space required a certain parsimony of thought. Something was either useful, or it was dead weight, and if it was dead weight you dropped it. They had been shedding weight since the first stage booster detached while they were still in Earth’s atmosphere. Like Tars said, you had to leave something behind.

Was that how her father had felt about Earth, and the rest of the human race? Were they dead weight that had to be dropped, so that a handful could move on?

But Tars wasn’t dead weight.

Tars was Tars. He had a humor setting…

“Two one, mark,” Case said.

Through the cockpit window, she saw Tars moving.

“Detach,” he said.

And the lander dropped away.

“Goodbye, Tars,” she said.

“See you on the other side, Coop,” Tars said optimistically.

Amelia frowned. What was that supposed to mean? Something about the way had Tars said it…

The lander had spent its velocity and begun to fall toward the black hole.

“Case?” she heard Cooper say. “Nice reckless flying.”

“Learned from the master,” the robot replied. The Ranger’s engines sputtered and went out as it, too, exhausted its fuel.

“Ranger Two,” Case said, “prepare to detach.”

For an instant she thought she had misheard, but then she looked up at Cooper’s face and the faint apology written on it.

“No!” she shouted, grasping for the buckles of her harness.

“On my mark,” Case said.

Free of the restraint, she pushed herself to the window, staring at Cooper, pleading with her eyes.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

“Newton’s third law,” he said. “You have to leave something behind.”