“There might be a problem with propellant,” says Salvo. “Fin and I were only meant to fly here and back. After the various burns that we used to stop the Ragtime’s rotation, there won’t be enough fuel to take us back, even when you take into consideration that we will glide a lot of the way. Slowing down for re-entry takes fuel.”

“I’m kicking myself for that. Ragtime was unreliable. I had to use the shuttles to stop the spin.” Shell swallows. “Uncle Larry? Ideas?”

“Fuel from the Decisive to the Equivalence?” says Lawrence.

“In zero grav, at 7.67 kilometres per sec?” says Salvo. “You have very little solid propellant and depend mostly on ion thrust. It does not seem wise, Governor Biz.”

“It’ll make a pretty fireball,” says Joké. She seems amused at the prospect.

“Retrofit the Equivalence for ion thrust?” says Larry.

“In five days with unreliable bots and no specialist engineers? Plus, ion engines won’t work in atmosphere. You know that,” says Shell.

“What about the passengers?” asks Fin.

“What do you mean?” says Shell. “I’m open to all ideas.”

“These colony ships tend to be experts in something or the other, right? Why don’t we go through the manifest and find engineers and rocket scientists to figure out our refuelling problem and AI experts to fix Ragtime. We can wake them up.”

“Good idea, but you can’t just wake up and get to full functioning, Fin. It takes about two weeks. I repeat, we have five days. You’ve got muscle atrophy, biochemical changes, all kinds of adjustments the body has to make. Plus, they’re cooled down to keep metabolism down. When they wake up, they’ll use more oxygen and require more nutrients. Each additional person we wake reduces the survival time with no guarantee that they’ll give us the silver bullet we’re looking for.” She sighs. “We’re not going to be getting help from those quarters.”

“Do we have the humanpower and expertise to fit the Decisive with landing gear?” asks Lawrence.

“No,” says Shell.

“One way trip, then. I fly to Bloodroot, broadcast a mayday, then glide to the ground.”

“No,” says Shell. “Because when you say glide, you mean crash, and we’re not doing that. Everybody lives. I’m not losing any more, especially not you. Tell him, Joké.”

“He’s a grown-ass man. He can decide for himself if he wants to volunteer to go splat on the north face of a mountain on Bloodroot. Action Governor!”

Larry groans. “There’s a time and place, Joké…”

“Hey, tick-tock everybody. Why am I the only one panicking?” says Fin.

“We’re all panicking, rest assured. We’re astronauts. They trained us not to show it,” says Shell. “All right. Can we fix the backup antenna or build a new one?”

“I can run through options,” says Salvo.