“If we don’t pull the plug, we won’t make it to Mars,” Valerie finished. Her jaw jutted forward. Her features were sharp in the dim light of the bridge, as if they’d been sketched with charcoal.

“Are you sure?” Hart asked.

“I’ve run the numbers so many times,” Hixon said. “I can’t find another way. Even if we divert the chambers to the lowest setting, we’d go dark before Mars. And—” she squeezed her eyes shut—“the original glitch was a surge of power directly to the cryopods. I don’t know how to say it, but—”

“—they partially defrosted,” Hart finished.

Naomi kept her face very still.

“Yes,” Hixon said, wincing. “The inhabitants are almost certainly damaged. Irene, will you check them over?”

The inhabitants. Did Hixon realise she was already using distancing language?

Hart nodded. “Of course I will. But if the cells have crystallised… you can’t undo that.”

Naomi tried to order her thoughts into something like logic. Cole was in the storage bay. Either still asleep or already dead.

Like her, he’d sacrificed to be on this ship. He’d left behind his new wife, his son, knowing he wouldn’t see them for half a decade or more. He knew what he risked. That space was as unforgiving as the ocean.

And it wasn’t only him. She’d known every man in those chambers. Lee’s face, reverent, as he showed her the half-grown vat meat specimens in his lab. “It’s not that different, growing tissue compared to plants,” he’d told her. Twenty-odd years ago, Lee had made some of the early breakthroughs that had led to cloned organs that Valerie had almost turned into a thriving company before it’d been made illegal.

Josh Hines and his infuriatingly cheerful flirting. Devraj Chand standing proud as he presented his findings on life support systems to the team at NASA. Ryan Webb declaring her fit as a fiddle when she was a trainee.

All gone or soon to be.

Hixon’s face crumpled like one of her discarded calculations. Her eyes met Naomi’s in silent apology. Hixon had spent months in a tin can with Cole, following the same flight path they were on now. She probably knew things about Cole that Naomi had never discovered. Understanding passed between the two women—an instant of apology, of horrible finality.

Hart had disappeared, floating into the storage bay next door to inspect the cryopods and their readouts. Valerie went with her. The rest of them waited in the bridge, in silence. Lebedeva was twisting, round and round, her lips moving as she silently counted each turn in Russian.

“If they are undamaged… we can’t wake them up, can we?” Naomi asked the bridge.