“I’ve never been good at patriotism,” Hart said. “The U.S. was too big, too diffuse and diverse to really understand what it meant to be American. Was I proud of the good things we’d done? Sure. But I’m ashamed of a lot of other things. That we did. That we still do.”

“I used to be proud,” Hixon said, her mouth twisting as she stared at the remnants of her sweet potato. “In the military, I was honoured to have that flag stitched across my chest, representing my country. I was one idealistic little recruit, plucked right out of the cornfields.

“Took me too long to realise the country would rather I shut up, sit down. Don’t be too loud about who I loved. Move aside and make room for someone new. I already went to Mars—how selfish was I, to want to go up again?”

“They never said that to Cole,” Naomi said, thinking of him down there in the Crypt. Waiting to wake up. “They were constantly courting him to go back up.”

“Well, he’s straight, white, and has a dick.” Hixon folded her legs and rested her chin on her knees, watching the fireworks.

“He only got backup for this mission,” Naomi pointed out.

“Yeah. Guess they found Shane Legge shinier this time around. Cole still got on the ship officially over us.”

Naomi could say nothing to that. It was still strange to think of him down there. There and not there.

Valerie’s face had remained still throughout the conversation. “Forget America. Forget Earth,” she said. “We’ve got Cavendish.”

“We won’t for long.” A thought occurred to Naomi. “How does it even work, if we get there first? We’re not a sanctioned U.S. vessel anymore.”

“We can’t claim it,” Hart said. “I looked into it, out of curiosity. The Outer Space Treaty covers all celestial bodies, including the moon and exoplanets.”

“But,” Valerie cut in, “that means America can’t claim it either, much to their consternation.” Valerie poured herself more tea. “Cavendish is what space law called a res communis, or a thing belonging to all. Think of space like the high seas.” She popped a raspberry into her mouth. “No one needed to ask permission to move through it. So even if the Atalanta set down, and we plant a flag—whether American or one of our own making—officially, we would only have jurisdiction over ourselves and the ship. The ground underneath the base would still technically belong to all of humanity.”

“I like that,” Hixon said. “Don’t you? People owning or claiming land hasn’t exactly worked out well historically, has it?”

“America is still coming for us,” Lebedeva pointed out. “And we still stole American property.”