2050

[The voice of a woman in her late 30s, the ambient sound of the interior of a space capsule around her]

That’s the Mare Orientale off to the right… which means I should be over the Apollo cluster right about…now. Yes, surely that’s it. Are those the craters, Anders’ and Homeward? Must be, though I can’t tell which is which… In any case, in a few minutes’ time I’ll see Earthrise, just as they did back in 1968.

[Pause]

Funny thing, though. That I should be seeing the Moon like this, up close, before I even catch my first glimpse of Earth. But maybe that’s how it should be after twenty years. This broken-up place of rocks and ridges, this cratered sandscape, it feels closer somehow to where I’ve come from. Like an old photo in negative of my red home. It’ll ease the transition back to the shock of a blue world.

[Pause]

Twenty years! Can that possibly be true? Yes, I’ve been longer on Mars than on Earth. That was the joke going round Gale Station, when I hit thirty-four and doubled my Earth years. I was now a hybrid, officially a ‘half-breed’. So what does that make me a few years on? My bones must be Martian now, through and through. And ready to be pulverised by the Earth’s core.

[Pause]

[Gloomily] Perhaps I’d be better off just orbiting this ghostly rock a few times, look my fill at Earth, then head back home. If I’m not ready to step on terra firma after nine months’ travel in space, I never will be. I’m here on a promise made to a woman who died fifteen years ago. We’d hardly spoken since I left, but still, when she went she took most of my Earth with her. I’ll barely know them down there, and they’ll barely know me. So why bother?

[Pause]

Because it’s 2050, in Earth years. Their year of reckoning. The year we’d know if humanity’d had it in it to take its hands from around its own throat. Purge the air of carbon, cleanse the seas of acid, avert the holocaust underfoot. Yes, I said, as I went with Dad – ‘fled’ with him, as she put it – whatever happens, Mum, I’ll be back on Earth for that date. I’ll be a witness for you, I’ll be your eyes. Thank God that’s all I promised her. No silly commitments to take an interest while I was gone. We had a world of our own to reckon with.

[Pause]

In the end, we turned off the comm channels. Or maybe we just forgot to turn them back on again, one ordinary Martian day, ten years ago. 2040, the year the Earth became dark to us. We switched off her sounds, turned away our scopes. We’d glance in her direction, with the naked eye, once or twice a day at most. There’ll be a case to answer down there, I’m sure. But we’d had enough. Of their orders, their requests, their briefings and debriefings, their daily checking-in on us and updates on themselves. We could tell from the curt cheeriness it was going badly for them. But what were we supposed to do? If they had their privations on a feverish Earth, we had ours on our frozen sand-world. If their air was on life support after that first Methane Event, our air was conjured out of nothing, and held under a bubble of glass. If their daily battle was with water, pounding rain in the north, flood tides gobbling up the south, ours was with dust, the elemental god of our world, for whom no human space is sacred. How could they understand that, nine billion of them, who barely understood their own planet? Better to take our own council, one hundred and fifty of us – [brief pause] give or take a soul – all of us experts in our own home.

[Pause]

That’s the Mendeleev crater, disappearing in the rear window. The Moon’s near side should come into view any moment now. Yes, that’s the bottom edge of the Mare Marginis – those little swirls of uncanny light, they make me think of the dust devils back on Mars! I suppose I am excited, despite everything, to see Earthrise. There’ll be changes, I know, after twenty years of heat, precipitation. Heavier cloud will obscure the blue that so dazzled me when…

[Pause]

…that can’t be. That’s not possible. Is there still dust from Mars on my window? No, of course not. But that can’t be. Is my course wrong? Did I turn back to my red planet somehow, by mistake? No, no, it’s the Moon beneath me, this must be Earth – oh, don’t let this be true, don’t! Across the whole horizon, orange gives way to red, red is streaked with black. Keep turning, Earth, keep turning! Show me this is only a part of you, only a piece of your horizon! Not over all of you, this glow of a dead planet!