“Not unless you know how to feed twice as many people on nutriblocks for an extra fifty-five days,” Lebedeva said from her spinning. “Or make them exhale less carbon dioxide so they do not upset the life support equilibrium. Or produce less waste that is difficult to expel. Or drink less water.”

Naomi knew this before she’d asked, but it was still a gut punch to hear it.

No way to send them back on the shuttle. This far out, if something went wrong they were meant to land on Mars to wait in the Atalanta for rescue. Even if they could spare the supplies, there wasn’t enough power to keep them cryofrozen until home. No way to keep the pods powered on the surface of Mars, either.

There was no lifeboat on this ship.

Hart floated back into the bridge, followed by Valerie. Naomi knew even before Hart shook her head. “It’s not looking good. The surge was big enough and there was enough brief defrosting that it’s almost certain the inhabitants are irrevocably damaged.”

Again, that word. As if they were inert things instead of humans who had lives as strange, complex, and messy as their own.

Cole was dead. The thought throbbed in her mind like a drumbeat.

“You say you’re almost certain?” Naomi asked.

“I am about ninety per cent. There’s a small chance the defrosting was minor enough that one or two of them are still viable.”

“We can’t feed an extra one or two, can we?” Valerie asked.

Naomi had done the math. They could feed an extra body—if it was an infant. Not a fully grown man, who with more height and weight would have higher calorie needs than any of the other women.

“And if we wake them up and discover all five of them survived?” Valerie continued. “If they realise that’s what’s happened, they could decide to take over the mission and kill us so they could survive.”

“They wouldn’t,” Naomi said.

“They might,” Valerie pressed. “They’d be torn up about it, sure. But if they thought it was the right thing? The only choice?”

Naomi closed her eyes, did some desperate mental math. “We could maybe feed one extra, if we all took reduced rations, but it would mean we would have no buffer if anything went wrong. One more malfunction and that’s it.”

“I don’t trust Lockwood enough for that, not now,” Valerie said. “Do you?”

“So what? We just let them all die, even if we could technically save one?” Hixon asked. “This is bullshit.”

Valerie’s eyes flashed. As second in command, Hixon shouldn’t publicly disagree with her.

“This is survival,” Lebedeva said. “Do not think they would give us the same courtesy.”