Interstellar: The Official Movie Novelization

EPILOGUE

Amelia watched, weeping, as CASE excavated Wolf’s pod, buried beneath a massive rock fall. Only the robot and the desert witnessed her grief.

Her gaze wandered over the rest—the pale gray sand and wind-hewn rocks where Edmunds had spent his final days. He had been in cryosleep when it happened, waiting for a rescue that would come years too late.

Cooper waited anxiously, watching the hangar door as the last of the mechanics left and locked up. He waited a few minutes, then crept near.

A moment later the door opened, and he was grinning at TARS.

“Setting up camp…”

Amelia knelt in front of the little cross and hung Wolf’s name plate from it.

The first to die here, she thought, but not the last.

She reached up and broke the seal on her helmet. She removed it and felt the cool air on her face. She took a slow, deep breath.

“Alone in a strange galaxy…”

Cooper pointed at one of the Rangers. TARS moved over to it and began working the hatch mechanism while Cooper kept a nervous eye out.

Amelia took a second breath, and a third. Her nose felt very dry, and she smelled something like salt and crushed pine needles.

“Maybe, right now, she’s settling in for a long nap.”

TARS beside him, Cooper strapped into the pilot seat, studying the controls. The robot ran a sequence as the hangar door opened to the familiar star-fretted darkness of space.

Cooper grinned. Tomorrow, everyone’s in for a little surprise.

Still breathing, Amelia set her helmet aside and watched the unfamiliar, beautiful sunset.

“By the light of our new sun…”

She turned from the fading star and went back to camp. There was a lot to do, and she was the only one to do it. But she felt, somehow, it was going to be okay.

“In our new home.”