“There are a couple of catches,” she said. “First off, we’d have to develop a completely automated monitoring and action system to take care of the coma patients. If it broke down, everyone would die. There’s more to it than just monitoring vitals and pushing the right drugs through an IV. It would have to physically move and clean the patients, deal with bedsores, diagnose and treat secondary issues like inflammation and infection around the various IV and probe entry points. Stuff like that.”

“Okay, but that seems like something the global medical community could work out for us,” I said. “Use your Stratt magic to boss them around or something.”

She took another sip. “That’s not the main problem. The main problem is this: On average, only one in every seven thousand humans has that genetic sequence.”

I sat back in my chair. “Whoa.”

“Yeah. We wouldn’t be able to send the most qualified people. We’d be sending the seven-thousandth most qualified people.”

“Three-thousand-five-hundredth most qualified people on average,” I said.

She rolled her eyes.

“Still,” I said. “One seven-thousandth of the world’s population is a million people. Think of it that way. You’d have a pool of one million people to look through for candidates. All you need are three.”

“Six,” she said. “We need a primary crew and a backup crew. Can’t have the mission fail because some guy gets hit by a car crossing the street the day before launch.”

“Okay, then six.”

“Yeah. Six people of astronaut caliber, who have the scientific skills necessary to work out what’s going on with Astrophage at Tau Ceti, and who are willing to go on a suicide mission.”

“Out of a population of a million,” I said. “A million.”

She fell silent and took another sip of gin.

I cleared my throat. “So you either take your chances with picking the best possible candidates and maybe they kill each other, or you take your chances on yet-to-be-developed medical technology to automatically care for a lower tier of talent.”

“More or less. Either way, it’s a terrible risk. It’s the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make.”

“Good thing you already made up your mind, then,” I said.

She raised an eyebrow. “Huh?”

“Sure,” I said. “You just wanted someone to tell you what you already know. If you leave the crew awake, there’s nothing you can do about the psychosis risk. But we’ve got years to perfect the automated-coma-bed technology.”

She scowled a bit but didn’t speak.

I softened my voice. “Besides. We’re already asking these people to die. We shouldn’t ask them to suffer emotional torment for four years too. Science and morality both give the same answer here, and you know it.”

She nodded, almost imperceptibly. Then, she downed the rest of her gin. “All right. You can go.” She slid her laptop over and began typing.