As they walked down the dimmed hallway, Naomi wondered if they were about to be told this was it. The end. No way to recalibrate the systems. They could fill the emergency shuttle with as much nutriblocks and water as it could carry and speed back to Earth and hope they made it in time. With a clench, Naomi realised that would mean leaving the backup crew behind.

But they might be too far gone for that to be an option. Valerie could be summoning them to ask if they wanted to die quickly or slowly.

Naomi kept one foot moving in front of the other. If they did have to take a shuttle, Naomi would have to take Hart up on her offer. A miscarriage or other complications on the Atalanta would be dangerous enough—on a tiny shuttle they’d be deadly. The choice would be taken away.

She took the rungs of the spokes one at a time until her feet floated and she gently rappelled towards the main craft of the ship.

To sacrifice this much to get this close and have to turn around… to never see Cavendish.

Valerie’s face was grim. She floated above the captain’s chair, reminding Naomi of the mermaid in the mural over the Catalina Casino. Naomi’s breath stayed even as she prepared herself. Lebedeva held on to one of the handholds near the window, staring out. Hixon had strapped herself into the pilot’s seat, staring intently at the plotted course to Mars on one screen, then swivelling to the readouts of the ship on the next. Hart and Naomi both found handholds. Naomi crossed her ankles.

“I’ll start with the good news. We found a solution,” Valerie said.

“And the bad?” Naomi asked.

Valerie tapped her teeth together three times—one of her few anxiety tells.

“The cryopods are leeching power,” Hixon began. Her pale fingers were fully smudged with blue. “Lockwood made an error in the calculations. Underestimated power requirements by the tiniest fraction of a per cent, but that’s enough.”

Naomi let that sink in. “Lockwood cut corners. First the cyanophage got through the contamination procedures, now this.” They were on a defective ship. Who knew how many other problems could crop up between now and Cavendish?

Naomi remembered a quote from Mercury 7 astronaut John Glenn, the first American man to orbit the Earth, when asked how he felt listening to the countdown for lift-off: “I felt exactly how you would feel if you were getting ready to launch and knew you were sitting on top of two million parts—all built by the lowest bidder on a government contract.”

Valerie nodded, simmering with rage.

“The chambers are becoming progressively less efficient,” Lebedeva said, her accent clipping the words. “Incremental, but we already see the effects.”

“So that means…” Naomi let the words trail off, unwilling to finish voicing what she already suspected.