I had not been in this room before, had only glimpsed it from the outside the one time I visited the bridge. There had been a ceremony or celebration of some sort; all of the chief science staff were invited. My mother had spent the hour talking to other engineers about an upcoming propulsion test, but my father, having no interest in their engineering chatter, had instead gazed at the massive screens that showed the view outside. We were passing Jupiter. The true view of the planet was from much farther away, but on the bridge screens it was magnified and glorious. Its red eye, endlessly whirling, had been as big as my father’s head. I was eight or nine, just old enough to feel a pang of embarrassment at the childlike wonder on his face, not old enough to keep from staring as well.

Baqir followed me into the officers’ room. It was so quiet I could hear him swallow as he considered his words. “They don’t look infected,” he said.

I nodded mutely, but how could we know for sure? The infected on the bridge had died sitting calmly at their stations.

“Look.” He pointed across the table. “Can we find out what they were doing?”

The tablet at the captain’s fingertips had a red light slowly pulsing on and off: it was still connected to the ship’s power. It was the heavy-duty kind my mother and her engineers had used in her workshop, shielded against temperature extremes and changing atmospheric conditions, made to withstand being bumped and knocked and tossed about. My mind was skipping, like a data transmission with corrupted bytes, and I thought: She brought it here. I thought: That’s hers. I thought: Why didn’t she come after me?

I thought: She promised. She promised to follow.

I pulled myself around the table and grabbed the tablet. Baqir was at my shoulder, while Ariana and Xiomara watched from the doorway. The only blood in this room was staining my mother’s jumpsuit; the tablet was clean. Still I was wary. Every time I looked at Ariana, I searched for the rippling motion beneath her skin, and I caught myself looking for it in Xiomara’s face as well, in Baqir’s, in my own bare hands. I turned the tablet on.

My mother’s face looked out at me. Her black hair was pulled back into a messy knot. There were smudges of exhaustion under her eyes. Her mouth was slightly open, drawing breath or forming a word. It was a frozen image from a log entry. There was a time and date stamp in one corner, a location signifier in the other: 12:35:19 01.04.393. HOUSE OF WISDOM, SPEC RESEARCH.

I keyed the entry to the beginning and played it. The image changed to one showing both Mum and Captain Ngahere. They were seated in the same chairs in which they had died. The captain spoke first.