“I know a lot of people are listening right now,” Vanessa says. “I know you all know that I’m breaking protocol. For anyone reviewing this later, the transcript will show that I am doing this alone: I’m making this decision. Joan isn’t. Jack isn’t. No one at NASA is.

“There is one person who can land this thing and potentially save any of the lives on board. And that’s me. So I will be deciding. And what I am choosing to do is to attempt to save the life of Lydia Danes. This decision has already been made. I will not consider any other arguments.”

Joan is crying now. Vanessa can hear her gasp. “Navigator—”

“Joan,” Vanessa says, her voice soft. “We do not know what is going to happen, okay? We don’t know what the next few hours hold. We do not know the aerodynamic effects of the warp in the payload doors. We do not know, for certain, what will happen on reentry. The shuttle has withstood plenty of things we didn’t believe it could. That’s my gamble right now. Because I will not tinker away back here when Lydia needs me to get her home. I won’t do that. So do not ask me again. We have less than a rev to get her home. If you take any more of my time, you threaten both of our lives even further.”

She waits.

“Roger that,” Joan says, finally.

Vanessa knows that it is not Joan making that call. She knows that in Mission Control, Jack looked at Joan, and nodded.

Still, Vanessa knows it killed Joan to say the words.

And that Joan did it for her.

Joan is sitting at her console in Mission Control and she cannot breathe. Her body has stopped taking in air as an involuntary process. Instead, every few seconds, she gasps and abruptly exhales. And then holds her breath again.

It’s been happening for the past half hour, as everyone in Mission Control has tried to figure out how to address the unprecedented insubordination of the only conscious astronaut aboard a damaged shuttle.

Jack and the rest of the team have resigned themselves to what Joan knew well before Vanessa said it.

“We have no choice but to support the premature deorbit,” Jack announced when Vanessa got into the airlock against orders. “And do what we can to ensure that Navigator survives reentry under the current conditions.”

Right now, there are teams of engineers trying to calculate to what percentage the shuttle can withstand reentry with the vague specs Vanessa has reported.

And Joan is sitting at her console, trying to catch her breath.

She has never experienced this in her body before.

But she’s also never sat in a chair and pretended she was only worried about losing a colleague when, really, her entire life was at stake.