CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

127 Days After Launch

4 Days to Mars

122 Days to Cavendish

Naomi couldn’t crack the encryption.

She tried until two hours before the rest of the crew was due to wake up. Eventually, she had to give up and catch some sleep, hoping she’d covered her tracks well enough. She slept through breakfast—when Hart tried to wake her up, Naomi pleaded pregnancy exhaustion. Valerie officially gave her the morning off the lab, and Naomi had a brief flare of guilt until she fell back into a deep, dreamless sleep.

She was groggy when she woke. She fell into her work, her hands on autopilot. Harvesting algae. Setting up a new crop. Checking the others. Tending to the plants. Transforming the algae harvested yesterday into more nutriblocks. She forced herself to eat three, still vaguely warm from the machine. She wanted to gag. She had been neglecting the gym and her exercises. Gravity on the ring would mitigate the worst effects of being in space so long, but she should still be staying active. She was, if anything, at an increased risk of losing bone mass compared to the others, the foetus only too happy to leech the calcium from her bones. Little parasite.

Hours passed, her mind whirring along. She’d try again tonight, but what if she couldn’t break encryption? There was only so much Evan could direct her with from here. She had a message from him she’d missed while she’d been sleeping.

Evan Kan: Long day today, back at work, so won’t be able to check as often. There’s another illness outbreak, over by where you did that internship for Argaine in undergrad—probably not crop infestation this time, perhaps tainted water. It’s spreading fast, so aiming to contain it today. This sort of thing is only going to become more common. Let me know if you found anything? Stay safe.

Flu vaccines were growing less protective every year, making each year of Evan’s work harder. Illnesses spread as quick as wildfire in the crowded areas teeming with refugees. Even in the more affluent areas, young professionals were crammed in close quarters, renting overpriced bunk beds with up to thirty people in a dorm. If anyone had a cold, it’d jump from bunk to bunk, through those flimsy blackout curtains that gave the illusion of privacy, and then spread to the overworked people’s offices. Sick pay was something technically available but never taken.

Earth would only grow hotter, more crowded. More dangerous.