They had a wake in the rec room. Hixon played ukulele—it was small enough she could justify bringing it among her personal items—and Lebedeva sang, her voice surprisingly good. Naomi wished she’d considered making vodka moonshine with some of the potatoes. She wanted that sharp bite, the burn against her tongue.

Twelve days later, the life support had stabilised. No more flickering lights, no more falling asleep wondering if they’d never wake up. Food supplies were steady. Now that the cryopods were dark, fuel efficiency had improved. They had slipped back into their routine, the rhythm of monotony. Yet the five women tiptoed through the ship, as though afraid to disturb ghosts on board, even if none of them were superstitious.

It was easier to distract herself with her algae and crops. Lebedeva was teaching the others to make Russian food with what they had—borscht with beets, carrots, and onions. Perogies with the potatoes and their dwindling supplies of powdered cheese and milk. Everything was sprinkled with copious amounts of dill, which tasted like liquorice to Naomi.

Beneath the shapeless coveralls, Naomi’s body changed, day by day. Her centre of gravity had shifted. Her stomach had always been flat, her body spare and muscular, and the new softness was strange. She’d press her fingers against the flesh that gave at her hips, her thighs, tracing the curve of her belly. She’d thought she’d hate it, from years of swallowing the message that women shouldn’t be too big or too much. She didn’t mind taking up a little extra space.

Each morning, she wondered if it would be the day she’d miscarry. If what was hidden inside her would uproot. It still clung on, and the window to make her decision was closing. Neither direction was clear-cut. She’d be arrested whenever the Atalanta II arrived. They might still utilise her skills, but that gave no promise of clemency. No promise that she’d be able to stay with her child and watch them grow up.

She imagined the child going from a nebulous thing, this bulbous foetus, to a person. To watch them grow, to see an echo of the child’s father in the tilt of their eyes or the curve of a lip. Or to see her own features embedded in another’s DNA.

It’d be a hard life for a child on Cavendish. And lonely. Children weren’t scheduled until the third wave, once infrastructure was established.

But her child could still grow up on Cavendish. A world without Earthen rules, at least for a little while.

Her fingers curled spirals across the skin of her stomach, and she knew she’d made her decision.

“Grow,” she whispered.