Galactic Adventures Read online

  ‘Are you ready?’ says Yada.

  ‘I think so,’ I say. ‘You?’

  ‘I’m one hundred per cent ready,’ she says. Then she takes a sharp breath. ‘Night rainbow.’ She points out over the runway to a white semi-circle in the sky. It looks exactly like a rainbow, but it’s night time, so it can’t be.

  ‘There’s no such thing as a night rainbow,’ I say.

  ‘Yes, there is – you’re looking at it!’ She laughs. ‘A rainbow at night.’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘Yes,’ Raf says. ‘I’ve read about them.’

  ‘But I thought you needed sun for a rainbow,’ I say.

  ‘No – just a big moon.’ Raf points behind us. We all look back and see that the moon is just off being full.

  ‘I think rain comes down, moonlight hits it and you get a night rainbow.’

  ‘What do you think it means?’ I say. ‘Does it mean anything?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Raf shrugs. ‘I think it means – good luck. Something magical.’

  ‘That’s good. We need it.’

  ‘I think it means it’s dinner time,’ says Scott.

  We sit and watch the rainbow for a while, until it disappears, then we go down and gather in Spirit for the last supper.

  Karl and I are back in our dorm later. Each kid has been given a separate room with their parents. I’m lying here. I can’t sleep. The moon shines bright through a high window.

  ‘You awake?’ I say.

  ‘Yep,’ Karl says.

  ‘Can I ask you something?’

  Pause. ‘Yep.’

  ‘You know Mum?’ It sounds stupid. He was married to her.

  Pause. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well . . .’

  I’ve wanted to ask him this for a long time but it never felt right. I asked him a few years ago, when I was little, but he went all weird and quiet and didn’t give me a proper answer. But, tonight, before I leave, I’ve got to know.

  ‘Do you think she left because of me? Me and Chris? Because we were annoying and naughty and stuff?’

  Silence.

  The longer it goes on the more I want to vacuum the words back up into my mouth.

  ‘Karl?’

  ‘I’m thinking.’

  I sit up in my capsule, listening, hoping the thinking will stop soon.

  ‘She needed to escape.’

  ‘Escape me?’

  ‘Escape everything. People. The situation. She never liked being stuck in one place. I didn’t want to go anywhere. But this week, now that I’m away from the place I wonder what I was so scared of.’

  I think about that for a minute. Why didn’t he just tell us this years ago?

  ‘But she didn’t hate me? Hate us?’ I ask.

  Karl cleared his throat. ‘No. She didn’t hate you. She pretty much was you. You’re the same kind of character. You both want to get out of here.’

  I sit there in the darkness. My face feels warm and good. I feel like he’s taken something heavy off my back. I want to ask him more questions. Hundreds more. But I really like what he’s said and I don’t want to blow it. Maybe I’ll ask him when I get back.

  25. The Dream

  4.00 am. 16 February. Launch Day.

  Me, Zarif, Rafaella, Yada, Scott, Chuck Palatnik, his co-pilot Andrew Hill and Madeleine walk across the tarmac toward the mothership Galactic 8, and our rocket plane, clinging to its back. We walk in slo-mo. (Not really. But if it was in a movie it’d definitely be slo-mo.)

  We’ve just said goodbye to our folks. I look back over my shoulder and Karl is standing there behind glass in the departure lounge. He points at me. The other parents are waving and blowing kisses and crying. None of the kids are, though. We’re on a mission and it’s like we have an invisible cord running between us all today. I even feel connected to Palatnik and Zarif. We all want the same thing. There’s no competition anymore. I imagine a tiny invisible cord running between me and Marv, too. He’s tucked inside my suit. This makes me smile. And grosses me out a bit. I like the guy, but being blood brothers with a rat isn’t right.

  I gaze up at Galactic 8. There is darkness all around, but the plane is lit from below. This makes it look even more impressive, more important. I should be scared out of my head, based on what happened right here almost a year ago.

  But, today, I have no fear. I don’t feel out of rhythm. I scan the tarmac for Robert White as we walk towards the plane. I look for any little sign that things might go wrong. But the kid isn’t here. I haven’t seen him since I returned to the spaceport. I still sometimes wonder if I ever really saw him.

  Today there is just one official photographer, one camera person. There will be no live coverage of the event. We have all signed an agreement not to reveal any details about the launch. There are no magazine deals. No selling pictures. Not a single protestor knows of it.

  Under cover of darkness, we stride out to the waiting plane. I can’t help feeling that the secrecy around this launch feels a lot like the kids’ launch nearly 50 years ago. What if this one turns out the same? What if kids were never meant to go into space?

  James Johnston is driven by in an electric buggy and delivered to the foot of the plane’s stairs. He speaks to technicians as soon as he’s on the tarmac. When we arrive he turns to us and shakes our hands.

  ‘Thank you,’ he says. ‘This shows great character, what you are doing. It’s what we wanted from the children that we selected. You are in very, very safe hands. This will be a wonderful, wonderful flight.’

  Johnston speaks to us for a few minutes longer before we hear a call of, ‘T minus one hour’. Time for all crew to board. This is the moment I backed out on the first launch. I look around for Robert White once more, out into the silent darkness of the desert. There’s no breeze, so the wind farm is quiet. There’s just the steady, regular chirp of insects hidden away in clumps of grass and cactus. But the kid isn’t here. Not today.

  Soon we’re locked and loaded and waiting for our tin can to be fired into the stratosphere.

  ‘T minus two minutes.’

  I look around. The rocket plane is clean, simple and white inside. It’s like first class on a plane. But better than first class. We sit in rounded, pod-like chairs that will shift position depending on the direction the plane is travelling. It’s to help absorb some of the G-force. We all have a monitor in front of us showing an image from the wing-mounted camera.

  I look across to a little fold-down seat for crew members. My heart gives an almighty thump. Robert White is sitting there. A small, strained, strangled sound escapes my throat.

  ‘What?’ Yada asks from the seat behind me.

  Tears spring into my eyes. ‘Nothing,’ I say, but she can tell it’s something.

  ‘T minus one minute,’ I hear through my headset.

  White is sitting there at the front of the cabin, unbuckled, chewing on a fingernail, looking back at me and the others.

  ‘Can you see the crew seat up there?’ I say slowly.

  ‘Yeah,’ says Yada.

  ‘And it’s empty, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she says, as though it’s a weird question.

  ‘Good.’

  I wait and I watch the kid. I wait for him to look at me and shake his head like he did last time, out on the tarmac. Why has he waited till now?

  I turn away and scrunch my eyes tight. Sweat stings my eyelids and I look back at the crew seat. White is still there. I know I must be hallucinating. He is just my fear. Otherwise, why can I see him when nobody else can?

  ‘T minus 30 seconds.’

  I want to scream. It’s like deciding you’re going on the world’s scariest roller-coaster, getting to the front of the line, being locked under the shoulder bars and then realising you�
��ve got a ghost sitting next to you and that maybe you didn’t really want to ride a ghost coaster. But it’s too late. And whether I can really see a weird dead kid or my mind is playing tricks on me, I’m going up. So is Marv.

  ‘Galactic 8 crew, are you ready and comfortable?’ says a voice from the control room.

  ‘Yes,’ replies a chorus of voices in lots of different accents.

  I stay quiet.

  ‘Your parents are watching you. They send their love and will see you back on earth in ten days’ time.’

  I look across and Robert White stares hard at me. This is where I could start flipping out. Even though it’d be embarrassing and they might not do it, I could ask to be taken off the flight.

  But I don’t. I just stare hard back at him. I don’t feel afraid of whatever he has to tell me. I’m not getting off this plane.

  A second later, he winks at me, in a funny way, with a little smile on his face and a wrinkled nose. I wipe the sweat from my eyes and, when I look back, the seat is empty.

  The plane jerks and starts slowly up the runway.

  I close my eyes and breathe in deeply. A wink’s good, right?

  The plane starts to pick up speed and I watch the monitor, showing the runway lights flicking by faster and faster.

  ‘Here we go, here we go, here we go—’ I say, waiting for the rush of energy from behind me. This is it. This is what all the training and pain and fear and agony and dreams have been about. This is our moment.

  ‘V1, rotate,’ says the mothership pilot in my headset and the plane lifts off the ground. We tilt back and the nose points steeply into the air. All I can do now is let go. There’s nothing I can think or do that can change anything.

  ‘We’re up. Very soon on our left you may be able to see the lights of Las Vegas, Nevada,’ the co-pilot says.

  I look out the window into the darkness. Away in the distance I can see the lights and I’m glad to be where I am. I don’t want to be on the ground or at home or anywhere else but here.

  ‘Galactic 8 is on track towards 18,000 metres where it will launch rocket plane and cargo on their journey to the Utopia space station. All on board temperatures and gauges are looking good. Godspeed to the first five kids in space.’

  We climb steadily for the next few minutes through 10,000 metres and 15,000. We’re higher now than Galactic 7 climbed and the chat in our headsets from mission control is positive. The plane is so loud. I watch that steadily blinking red light on my monitor, waiting for our spacecraft to detach from the mothership. I can see the altitude on my monitor. It hits 18,000 and I feel the dull clunk of our detachment.

  Our rocket plane drops rapidly and my stomach drops, too. Then it’s, ‘T minus 8 seconds till rocket engine engagement. And 8, 7, 6—’

  I breathe and wait and pray to feel that boost so that I can have my stomach back.

  ‘3, 2, 1—’

  The rocket engine kicks in and there is a roar ten times louder than the mothership. Then comes the rush, just like the centrifuge. Only this time I’m not swinging around a room. This is real. I can feel our spacecraft rising and we are shoved, hard, back into our seats.

  I grip the white, plastic edge of my pod and the plane staggers and jerks upward. The mothership take-off has been so smooth that I forget what Palatnik has told us about the second-stage rocket thrust.

  For a second, I feel like a mini-version of myself in one of my homemade rockets. I’m inside my own dream. I imagine my Mum watching me scream up into the atmosphere. Only she’s watching from a face made of millions of shiny stars above.

  ‘It’s going to get a little bumpier up here, kids, so hold on.’

  Immediately, the shaking gets worse. My vision judders up and down and I dig my nails even harder into the armrest. Imagine the worst kind of turbulence on a plane. It feels like our little can is going to be ripped right open. Just when I think the shaking and pressure on my body is becoming too much there’s a loud BANG! and the lights in the cabin pulse bright like a camera-flash and then go out.

  We are plunged into total darkness. There are screams and I scream, too. I can no longer hear the comforting voice of mission control or Palatnik in my headset. The line is dead. But the plane pushes ever upward, kids’ cries tearing through darkness.

  Seconds later the lights flick back on and the voices in my headset return.

  ‘Sorry folks, a technical problem but nothing for you to worry about.’

  I sigh heavily. Easy for that dude to say. He’s on the ground.

  But soon I forget about the lights. I forget about fear. I forget everything. We shoot upwards for the next minute before I hear the words I’ve been waiting my whole life to hear.

  ‘We’ve just passed through 100 kilometres above earth’s surface. First Kids, welcome to space. You may soon unbuckle your seatbelts and float around the cabin.’

  Hey,

  I hope you liked the story about Dash and his friends. This section of the book gives you some background on space travel. Read it and see if you think you’ve got the Right Stuff to go to space. As Dash found out, space school is hardcore, dangerous, competitive and you’ve got to bring your best game. You too could have the chance to go to space. Seriously.

  Civilians, meaning regular people, (well, regular millionaires) have already been buying themselves ten days on the International Space Station. Price tag? Between $20 million and $35 million. However, some visionaries are working hard to make a trip into space affordable for everyone!

  Space Monkeys

  ‘It is better to send monkey.’ This is what people at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre in Russia said in an article about rich space tourists.

  The Pioneers of Space Travel

  More than 500 people journeyed into space in the first fifty years of space travel (1961 to 2011). Some are fully fledged astronauts and household names but some are regular people, like you and me.

  Yuri Gagarin

  On 12 April 1961, the Soviet Union beat the USA in the race to send the first human into space. Gagarin went for a single spin around earth on the Vostok 1 mission travelling at speeds of up to 28,000 kilometres per hour! He landed safely, 108 minutes later, a hero to the world.

  Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins

  On 20 July 1969, Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the moon. Aldrin was the second. Meanwhile, Collins orbited the moon solo in the command module without ever setting foot on lunar surface. These three men inspired millions to dream of their own journey into space.

  Dennis Tito

  Tito was the world’s first paying space tourist and the 415th human in space. He made history by spending eight days on the International Space Station, orbiting the earth 128 times. Tito, an engineer, once worked for NASA but he went to space thanks to the Russian Federal Space Agency.

  Anousheh Ansari

  Ansari was the first female paying space tourist and the first Iranian in space. (The first female ever to go to space was Valentina Tereshkova in 1963, a cosmonaut from the former USSR.) Ansari spent her time onboard the International Space Station carrying out scientific experiments for the European Space Agency. Her family sponsored the Ansari X Prize, a US$10 million award to inspire non-government organisations to send a craft with a crew onboard into space. She likes to inspire young people to pursue their dreams, often quoting her hero, Gandhi, who said, ‘Be the change you want to see in the world.’

  Guy Laliberté

  Want to see a space circus? Laliberté, the billionaire founder of Cirque du Soleil, paid US$35 million for ten days on the International Space Station. He was the world’s seventh space tourist. Laliberté took nine clown noses with him for the crew and, while he was orbiting earth sixteen times a day, he hosted a circus with live Cirque du
Soleil performances happening simultaneously in fourteen countries. He created this space circus to raise awareness of One Drop, a foundation working to give everyone on earth access to clean water. Former US Vice President Al Gore and U2’s Bono were special guests at the earth-based performances, linking with Laliberté on the space station.

  The Innovators of Space Tourism

  Richard Branson

  Branson loves a challenge. He owns everything from airlines to radio stations, banks to phone companies, cola drinks to comics. Space is his new frontier. His company Virgin Galactic is offering five minutes of weightlessness in space for US$200,000. Passengers will travel at almost 4,000 kilometres per hour, soaring to the edge of the atmosphere, before floating around the plane’s cabin and staring back at our big, blue planet. Branson’s future plans include sending humans into orbit and maybe even building a space hotel. Nice.

  Space Adventures

  Space Adventures is the company that made space tourism a reality. They sent the first paying space tourists to the International Space Station in a deal with the Russian Federal Space Agency. Now they are offering Vomit Comet rides, sub-orbital spaceflights and even missions around the moon! Budding cosmonauts train for their flights at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre, Star City, Russia.

  Robert Bigelow

  Bigelow, an American motel tycoon, has successfully launched two inflatable space habitats, Genesis I and Genesis II. (Jumping castles in space.) In its first three years in orbit Genesis II orbited the earth more than 10,000 times. Bigelow ran a program called ‘Fly Your Stuff’ where every day people sent in items that Genesis II would carry into space. This included the first lychee in space.

  The Space Island Project

  The Space Island Project plans to build space hotels out of used space shuttle fuel tanks. Many businesses claim that they will be the first to offer holidays in a private orbital hotel but nobody has done it yet. The race is on, though, so don’t be surprised if, one day, you’re taking your kids to space for Christmas.