Page 70 of A Million Suns (Across the Universe 2)

I can hear my heart beating in time with the alarm.

The more I think about not breathing, the more I want to breathe.

I tug on the tether, and my hands slip from it. The movement spins me off, away from the cord, jerking me around.

I have spent the whole time facing the ship, looking back at the path we have taken. But now I see behind me, toward where the ship is facing. And I realize why Godspeed seemed to glow. This . . . I never expected this. How did Orion keep this secret? How could anyone keep this secret? It’s—it’s everything—it’s—

There, hanging in the sky, right in front of me—

Is a planet.

38

AMY

I STARE OUT THE OPEN HATCH, MY EYES NOT ON THE STARS, but on the tether that ties Elder back to me.

I count down the seconds. The tether twitches. And I know:

Something’s wrong.

39

ELDER

I CAN’T BREATHE, BUT IT’S NOT BECAUSE OF THE LACK OF oxygen. It’s because everything about me—my lungs, my heart, my brain—stopped when I saw that blue and green and white orb floating in the sky.

In the distance, far larger than the millions of stars around me, I can see Centauri A and Centauri B, the two stars that make up the center of this solar system. They’re so bright and so big compared to the other stars that they melt in my eyes like blurry, glowing orbs of ice.

But I don’t stare at them.

I stare at the planet.

That—this—is Orion’s secret. It’s not that the ship isn’t working, that we’re never going to make it.

It’s that the ship has already arrived.

We’re already here! There—there—is the planet that will be our home!

It floats, so bright that it hurts my eyes. Giant green landmasses spread out across blue water, with swirls and wisps of clouds twirling over top. At the edge of the planet, where it turns away from the suns and starts to darken, I can see bright flashes of light—bursts of whiteness in the darkness—and I think: Is that lightning? In the center, where the light of the suns makes the planet seem to glow from within, I can see, very distinctly, a continent. A continent. On one edge, it’s cracked and broken like an egg, dark lines snaking deep into the landmass. Rivers. Lots of them. Maybe something too big to be rivers if I can see it from here. Fingers of land stretch out into the sea, and dots of islands are just out of their grasp. That area will be cool all the time, I think. Boats can go along the rivers, up and down. We can swim in the water.

Because already, I can see myself living there. Being there.

On a planet that looks up at a million suns every night, and at two every day.

I want to scream, shout with joy. But the air is so thin now.

Too thin.

I’ve spent too long looking at Orion’s secret.

The boop . . . boop . . . boop . . . fades away. There’s nothing to warn about now.

Because there’s no air left.

My sight is rimmed with black. My head pulses with my heartbeat, which sounds as loud to me as the alarm once did. I turn from the planet—my planet—and start pulling, hand over hand, against the tether, toward the hatch. The ship bobs in and out of my vision as my whole body jerks. I’m panicked now and fighting to stay awake. I try to suck in air, but there’s nothing there to suck. I’m drowning in nothing.

Closer.