It was considered another example of Captain Ngahere’s heroism, that even at the end of everything, she had thought to ensure House of Wisdom would remain safely in orbit, to protect Earth and the Moon and the orbital stations, everything that might be endangered should the ship tumble into a long, slow free fall. The bridge was where she had made those last, desperate choices, and where she had died. She had not died alone.

“What the fuck,” Baqir said. His words, though not spoken loudly, broke into the quiet like the crack of a whip. “What the fuck.”

There were at least twenty bodies on the bridge. More than we had seen gathered in any one place since my father’s garden. They were not scattered around, torn by violence, or huddling together in fear, but sitting at their stations. Strapped neatly into their chairs. Hands resting on terminals. Eyes open, all staring toward the screen before them.

They were as shriveled and dry as all the other corpses we had found, but there was no sign that they had been fighting or fleeing or cowering. There were no indications they had been aware of the fate that was to overtake them.

“It looks like they died flying the ship,” Xiomara said.

Baqir added, “They don’t look wounded.”

Not at first glance. Not in comparison to the savage, deadly wounds we had seen elsewhere. But as I looked over the dead, looked beyond the eerie strangeness of how orderly they were at their final stations, I noticed smaller details. Sleeves pushed up and forearms raked with scratches. Collars torn open. A dried line of blood from one ear, another from a nose. Small, thin fingers stained reddish-brown, now resting on a control panel. I stared at those hands for several seconds before I realized what I was seeing.

She wasn’t a member of the bridge crew. She was a child.

The wrinkles of her dried-up face were misleading. I knew her. Her name was Jessamyn. She had been twelve years old when she died; we had shared lessons and tutors for years. I had never liked her, and she had not liked me, but there had been nobody else our age aboard the ship. We had endured each other’s presence as something less than friends, but more than strangers or classmates. She hated living in space. She wanted to care for the megafauna of Earth, the elephants and giraffes and tigers brought back from the brink of extinction following the Collapse, and there was no place for animals aboard a spaceship.

She had died sitting at the navigation terminal. Beside her was a man I recognized as one of the ship’s food scientists. I couldn’t remember his name. He had worked with my father sometimes, tweaking breeds of tomato and spinach, arguing over the viability of carrots. He had no more business being on the bridge than Jessamyn.