By Katie Veitch
When my feet hit the new ground, I expected more. Light to shoot up, an overwhelming sense of purpose, maybe just a new smell. But my suit was so insulated I felt almost nothing. The planet didn’t change because I had arrived.
“Well?” the voice in my ear asked. “Well, what?” “How is it? What’s it like?”
I sighed a breath of synthetic oxygen. “Exactly as we thought. We’ve studied this place for twenty years.”
I knew what they meant. They expected more too. But we had been foolish to think so.
I took another step, another, another. I gathered information like I was trained to, observing how long it took the dust to fall or if it shifted in any breeze. I instinctively searched for a trickle of water. Then I stopped.
We were asking endless questions to get to one answer. Now that I was here, there was only one question that needed to be asked.
I lifted my gloved hand and ran the material along my helmet. I flicked off the safety, and readied my middle finger on the button.
“Dorothy, what are you doing?”
New air rushed in, light blinded me and I took a breath.