“Yeah,” I said. “It’s an honor to meet you. What you’re doing is just… I can’t even comprehend the sacrifice you’re making. Or should I not talk about it? I don’t know. Maybe we don’t talk about it?”

He smiled. “It’s on my mind quite often. We don’t have to avoid the subject. Besides, you and I are birds of a feather, it would seem.”

I shrugged. “I guess so. I mean, you’re way more advanced than I am, but I do love cellular biology.”

“Well, yes, that too,” he said. “But I was talking about coma resistance. I hear you have the coma-resistance markers, just like me and the rest of the crew.”

“I do?”

He raised his eyebrow. “They didn’t tell you?”

“No!” I shot a look over to Stratt. She was busy talking to Embezzler Bob and Commander Yáo. “First I’m hearing of it.”

“That’s odd,” he said.

“Why wouldn’t she tell me?”

“You’re asking the wrong person, Dr. Grace. But my guess is they only told Stratt and she only told people who needed to know.”

“It’s my DNA,” I grumbled. “Someone should have told me.”

DuBois deftly changed the subject. “In any event: I am looking forward to learning all about the Astrophage life-cycle. Dr. Shapiro—my counterpart on the backup crew—is also very excited. We shall be a classroom of two, I suppose. Do you have any experience teaching?”

“Actually, yes,” I said. “A lot.”

“Excellent.”

I’m all smiles. It’s been three days since I found out I won’t die and I’m still all smiles.

Well, actually, I could still easily die. The trip home is long and dangerous. Just because I survived my coma on the way here, that doesn’t mean I’ll survive it on the way home. Maybe I can stay awake and just eat the feeding-tube slurry when my normal food runs out? I can do four years all alone, right? We were in comas to keep from killing one another. But solitary confinement is a whole different set of psychological damage. I should read up on it.

But not now. Right now I have to save Earth. My own survival is a problem for later. But it’s a problem, not a hopeless guarantee of death.

The light on the Centrifuge screen blinks green.

“Gravity at full,” I say with a smile.

We were back in zero g for a short time, but now I have the centrifuge going again. I had to “spin down” because I needed to use the engines. We can’t have centrifugal gravity and propulsion at the same time. Just imagine firing up the spin drives while the ship is in two pieces connected by a hundred meters of cable. It’s not a pleasant thought.