A/N

So, Heart of Darkness continues to be adapted across mediums, since Ad Astra is apparently based on the book. Course, the film won't be released for years (rendering this take obsolete), and I'm not sure how you can even adapt the Congo to a space trip (as in, how do you make the transition into the 'heart of darkness' and the various stops along the way?), but, well, it's a sci-fi flick IN SPAAACE! I can get behind that.

Up the River

"Marlowe, going to Neptune isn't going down the river. It's going up the river."

"The heck do rivers got to do with anything?"

"Well, since the Kurtz disappeared, people have started to call Neptune the heart of darkness."

"I suppose the ship name didn't help."

"Yeah, well, Walter Kurtz is long dead, bless his soul. Only you and a lot of other people at NASA seem to think otherwise."

Joseph Marlowe leant back in his seat and looked Administrator Sulsky in the eye. She tried to evade his gaze, but failed. She hadn't been the one who'd sent the Kurtz to Neptune fourteen years ago. That had been Administrator Pitt, and he'd only been a child at the time. But still, the disappearance of the Kurtz was a mystery to every space agency in the world, NASA included. He'd trained as an astronaut in the vain hope that someday, a second ship would be sent to the eighth planet of the solar system. The last planet, despite what some Pluto diehards claimed. The last planet where mankind had yet to tread and return.

"You have to understand, we all understand your desire to know what happened to your father," Sulsky said. "Him and everyone else on the ship. But Neptune's so far out there, it's got no value bar being a scientific curiosity."

"I know that."

"Do you?" she asked. "I mean, let me put it this way – last century, it took twelve years for the Voyager probes to reach Neptune. This century, it takes six. Even if we could travel at the speed of light, it would take over four hours to reach there."

"I could wait four hours."

"Well, when you prove Einstein wrong, let me know. In the meantime-"

"In the meantime," Marlowe said, "you get to tell me that it's unlikely NASA will approve the Conrad being commissioned, but you'll try to send it out there regardless. With me on it."

"And why would I do that?"

"Simple. Because it's a rescue mission. If stuff like Apollo 13 and Jupiter 2 taught us anything, it's that people love rescue missions, almost as much as they see flags being put on the surface of planets and moons."

"Moons, mostly," Sulsky murmured.

Marlowe didn't say anything.

Last century, namely a century that not even his father had been born in, people once had to contend themselves with a single flag on a single moon. When his father had been born, all that had happened was that same moon hosting many flags, and the start of lunar colonies baring those flags. By the time that he, Marlowe Copola had been born, flags had got as far as the moons of Saturn, as people sought to exploit the helium-3 of the gas giant to push ever further out into space. He'd been alive to see mankind reach Uranus itself.

"Fine," Sulsky said. "People love rescue missions. But even with cryo, by the time you, or anyone else reached Neptune, it would be twenty years since contact with the Kurtz was lost. We'd need the Conrad to bring a crew to Neptune, and bring either living or dead bodies back." She got to her feet and looked out the window over Independence Square. The sun was high and warm, made ever warmer by a planet that was slowly sizzling. Space exploration might be the key to saving mankind centuries from now, but whether it could save the Earth…well, Marlowe wouldn't be alive to tell. He could only hope so, that both Heaven and Earth could be saved, in order to avoid Hell.

"There's whispers, you know," Sulsky began. "About Neptune."

"Whispers?"

"Yes, whispers," she said. She looked at him. "The other space agencies, well, they're talking."

"About what? I thought space was big enough for all of us."

"It is big enough for all of us," Sulsky said. She looked at him. "But losing contact at Neptune, losing contact with the Kurtz…well…"

"Well what?"

"Like I said, it's a heart of darkness. And you know what happened in the book."

"No, not really. I never liked it much."

"Well, it didn't end well," she said. "Not for Kurtz, not for Marlow." She sighed. "Fate's got a sense of humour."

"But-"

"Fine," she said. "I'll put your request in." She smiled. "And hey, maybe it'll turn out alright. We were the first to the moon, the first to Mars, maybe we can be the first to Neptune as well."

Marlowe wanted to say that they'd already made it to Neptune. Bar returning, of course, but still…

Neptune was out there. His father was out there.

And he'd brave any kind of darkness to find him.