The meeting room, a simple trailer the Russians had supplied, had a great view of the launch pad. I could see the Soyuz through the window. Old technology, to be sure, but easily the most reliable launch system ever made.

Stratt and I hadn’t spoken since the night of the explosion. She suddenly had to head up an ad-hoc disaster inquiry. It couldn’t wait until later—if the accident was caused by some procedure or equipment that was going to be on the mission, we needed to know. I wanted to be involved but she wouldn’t let me. Someone had to keep dealing with various minor Hail Mary issues being reported by the ESA team.

Stratt stared right at me. Dimitri fiddled with some papers—probably a design for a spin-drive improvement. Dr. Lokken, the fiery Norwegian who designed the centrifuge, drummed her fingers on the table. Dr. Lamai wore her lab coat as always. Her team had perfected a fully automated medical robot and she’d probably be in line for a Nobel Prize someday. If Earth lived that long. Even Steve Hatch, the crazy Canadian who invented the beetle probes, was present. He, at least, didn’t look awkward. He just typed away on a calculator. He didn’t have papers in front of him. Just the calculator.

Also present were Commander Yáo and Engineer Ilyukhina. Yáo looked dour as ever, and Ilyukhina had no drink in her hand.

“Am I late?” I asked.

“No, you’re just in time,” Stratt said. “Have a seat.”

I sat in the only empty chair.

“We think we know what happened at the research center,” Stratt began. “The whole building is gone, but all their records were electronic and stored on a server that handles all of Baikonur. Fortunately, that server is in the Ground Control Building. Also, DuBois—being DuBois—kept meticulous notes.”

She pulled out a paper. “According to his digital diary, his plan for yesterday was to test an extremely rare failure case that could happen in an Astrophage-powered generator.”

Ilyukhina shook her head. “Should have been me testing this. I am responsible for ship maintenance. DuBois should have asked me.”

“What was he testing, exactly?” I asked.

Lokken cleared her throat. “One month ago, JAXA discovered a possible failure state for the generator. It uses Astrophage to make heat, which in turn powers a small turbine with state-change material. Old, reliable technology. It runs on a tiny amount of Astrophage—just twenty individual cells at a time.”

“That seems pretty safe,” I said.

“It is. But if the moderator system on the generator’s pump fails, and there’s an unusually dense clump of Astrophage in the fuel line right at that moment, up to one nanogram of Astrophage could be put into the reaction chamber.”

“What would that do?”

“Nothing. Because the generator also controls the amount of IR light shined on the Astrophage. If the chamber temperature gets too high, the IR lights turn off to let Astrophage calm down. Safe backup system. But there is a possible edge case, extremely unlikely, that a short in this system could make the IR lights turn on at full power and bypass the temperature safety interlock entirely. DuBois wanted to test this very, very unlikely scenario.”