She’d had to come see them. Down in the Crypt, the light was dim, the main body of the ship cooler than the ring. Naomi shivered and made her way to the storage containers. She passed over the quiet robots, powered down and waiting for their moment once they arrived on Cavendish to help them build the settlement. Her mother’s inventions had provided the seed money that had turned Hawthorne into the multi-industry conglomerate it’d become. Naomi grabbed a spare LED lamp and then turned towards the cryopods.

They glowed blue in the darkness. Wrapping the cable of the lamp around her wrist, she moved closer.

Perhaps Valerie had also nixed the plans for the cryopods because she simply hadn’t wanted to admit the danger of this mission: that if one of them died, they needed someone else to replace them. It was why now the women were on board, training continued, all of them learning from the others. Naomi would take on medical training from Hart. Not long after they’d taken off, Hart had walked Naomi through all the medication in their stores. What they were, what each was for. The proper doses for local anaesthetic, morphine, antibiotics. Making sure Naomi knew how to prep syringes and find veins to take blood or IVs. She’d made Naomi take her own blood every day for a week, conducting different tests on the samples, until Naomi could stick a needle in her own vein without hesitation.

Hart was learning more about piloting from Hixon and engineering from Lebedeva, and Valerie was teaching Hixon more about robotics in return for gaps in her mathematical abilities. And so on. Just in case.

The pods were laid out like coffins paned with glass, the inhabitants within little more than murky shapes in the liquid nitrogen. The readings on the panels on the outside of their cold coffins glowed red against the blue.

Technically, the Atalanta crew were guilty of abduction in addition to their myriad other crimes. The news had leaked to Earth, Valerie said, and Cochran’s media bots were adding to the fury and fervour of reports on them just as he’d wished. They must be calling for the women’s heads. Hixon had started referring to their escape as grand theft spaceship, which had brought some half-hearted smiles.

The backup crew had been selected from a shortlisted lottery of NASA active astronauts. Naomi, Hart, or Hixon had worked with everyone chosen. Colleagues, bosses, friends, more. At least if they came with them to Cavendish and woke up, maybe it wouldn’t be as lonely.

Five men with similar skills and expertise. Unlucky enough not to be the main crew, which must have hurt their pride. What would they think if they knew that, compared to the five men stranded back on Earth, they were the lucky ones?