I put my hand to my chest in mock surprise. “Goodness me! DuBois appears to be black! I’m surprised you allowed it! Aren’t you afraid he’ll ruin the mission with talk of rap music and basketball?”

“Oh, shut up,” she said.

We watched the astronauts get surrounded by deck crew. They were absolutely starstruck—especially with Yáo.

“DuBois has three doctorates—physics, chemistry, and biology.” Stratt pointed to the American woman. “Over there is Annie Shapiro. She invented a new kind of DNA splicing that’s now called the Shapiro method.”

“Seriously?” I said. “The Annie Shapiro? She invented three entire enzymes from scratch to splice DNA using—”

“Yes, yes. Very smart lady.”

“She did it for her PhD thesis. Her thesis. Do you know how many people are on track for a Nobel Prize from research they did in grad school? Not many, I can tell you that much. And she’s your second choice for the science expert?”

“She’s the most talented DNA splicing specialist alive. But DuBois has strength in a huge variety of fields, and that’s more important. We don’t know what they’re going to encounter out there. We need someone with a broad knowledge base.”

“Amazing people,” I said. “Best of the best.”

“I’m glad you’re impressed. Because you’ll be training DuBois and Shapiro.”

“Me?” I asked. “I don’t know how to train astronauts!”

“NASA and Roscosmos will teach them the astronaut stuff,” she said. “You’re going to teach them science stuff.”

“Are you kidding? They’re way smarter than me. What would I teach them?”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” said Stratt. “You’re the world’s leading expert on Astrophage biology. You’re going to impart every single thing you know about it to both of them. Here comes the prime crew.”

Yáo, Ilyukhina, and DuBois walked over to Stratt.

Yáo bowed. He spoke with a very slight accent, but otherwise perfect English. “Ms.Stratt. It is an honor to finally meet you. Please accept my deepest gratitude for selecting me as the commander for this critical mission.”

“Nice to meet you too,” she said. “You were the most qualified. No thanks required.”

“Hello!” Ilyukhina lunged forward and hugged Stratt. “I’m here to die for Earth! Pretty awesome, yes?!”

I leaned to Dimitri. “Are all Russians crazy?”

“Yes,” he said with a smile. “It is the only way to be Russian and happy at the same time.”

“That’s… dark.”

“That’s Russian!”

DuBois shook Stratt’s hand and spoke so softly as to be almost inaudible. “Ms.Stratt. Thank you for this opportunity. I won’t let you down.”

I and the other science leads all shook hands with the three astronauts. It was a disorganized affair, more like a cocktail mixer than a formal meeting.

In the middle of it all, DuBois turned to me. “I believe you’re Ryland Grace?”