Interstellar: The Official Movie Novelization Read Online Free PDF Page A

black.”
    * * *
    The storm was building itself on the horizon, a wall of dust churning toward them. Cooper always thought they looked more like tsunamis than storms, and this one more than most. The air was sharp with ozone, and already the wind was picking up as the dry, cold front that drove the storm shoved the warm evening air before it and away.
    The temperature had already dropped a few degrees. The hairs on his arms stood, as crooked lines of blue-white fire danced in the Stygian tempest like the demons of some ancient mythology, come to demand sacrifice.
    Maybe that’s next , Cooper thought. Burnt offerings to appease the dust, to ease the blight. Why stop at rejecting the last century-and-a-half of scientific achievement? Why not claw it all the way back to Babylon and Sumer?
    The game was over, that much was sure. Already people were streaming from the stadium, kerchiefs over their faces ready for when the dust hit.
    So much for the family evening out.
    “Come on, guys,” Cooper said.
    * * *
    Cooper had hoped to outrun the dust storm at first, but that hope was dimming along with the light from the sun. Donald and the kids were frantically stuffing rags into vents, cracks, and anyplace the insidious dust might enter the truck.
    He knew from experience it wouldn’t be enough.
    Through the rearview mirror he saw the monster advancing, watched buildings and roads vanish into it. The truck was beginning to jerk and rock.
    Then the wall hit them, and everything went dark. The wheel tried to wrench itself out of his hands as Cooper fought desperately to stay on the road—if he was even still on it. He couldn’t see more than a yard past his windshield, and the pavement was so cracked and eroded, it felt scarcely different from open ground under his tires. It would be easy to stray. Like Jansen, who had driven right into an old stream bed and been buried in a drift. Of course, Jansen never had much of a sense of direction in the best of times.
    “It’s a bad one,” Donald noticed.
    No shit , Cooper thought. The storm that had buried Jansen hadn’t been half as bad as this one. There couldn’t really be any doubt that they were getting worse as the years went on. Mother Nature reasserting her superiority with ever-increasing enthusiasm.
    “Mask up, guys,” Cooper said. Murph and Tom both obeyed immediately, pulling surgical masks out of the glove compartment and fitting them onto their faces.
    The truck shuddered as the storm moaned around them. Cooper navigated through the brief breaks in the darkness. Visibility could be measured in feet, and on two hands. Wind belted the truck, again and again.
    Cooper’s one advantage was that the land around his place was pretty flat—no hills to pull, no downslopes. If he felt anything like that, it would mean he was way off target, and he would know instantly to slam on the brakes and wait it out.
    In the end, it was mostly muscle memory that got them home. He’d made the trip from town so often that the distance and turns were furrowed into his brain. As they crept up to the farm, he finally had time to worry beyond the moment, to wonder what the damage would be this time, how many solar panels would need replacing, how many windows had been shattered. How much of the crop he was going to find flattened.
    How long it would take to get the freaking dust off the floor, out of their bedclothes, cups, saucers, pitchers…
    Underwear.
    He peered out to get a better look, the house coming and going from vision in the black blizzard.
    He jerked back as a sheet of metal slammed into the windshield. They waited a few moments to recover from the surprise, then Donald opened the passenger door, took Tom’s arm and the two of them started slogging, eyes closed, toward the house.
    Cooper took hold of Murph and dragged her out of the vehicle.
    Even with his eyes closed, the dust got in, and even with a mask on, some of it got to his lungs. And it was easy to get lost in one of