I grasped three times for the ladder before catching it, frustrated by the clumsy gloves of the emergency space suit.

“Good,” Dag said. “Don’t let go again.”

“Is she okay?” Malachi said. The concern in his voice made my heart squeeze. The close call with the security drones had shaken him. He was too delicate for this mission. I had known it since we chose him, although we never truly had a choice. Nobody else in the family had Malachi’s skill with computers. The Councils had been fools to reject him time and time again.

I hadn’t meant to frighten him. I had only wanted to know what it felt like to let go. There is no up and down in space, no gravity to preference one direction over another. Dag was several rungs ahead of me, his feet over my head—then suddenly he was below me, and I was toppling headfirst toward the gray ship, disoriented by a wave of vertigo so strong it was like a physical blow.

I gripped the ladder with both hands. Squeezed my eyes closed. Opened them again, and Dag was at the hatch.

“Can you open it?” I asked.

“The airlock has power,” Dag said. “Physical seal only.”

I swallowed. My throat was dry. The suit’s medical monitor expressed mild concern about my heart rate and respiration. “Let’s go in.”

Dag turned the wheel to disengage the hatch and pulled it open. The chamber beyond was dark but for a cluster of small blinking lights on an interior panel. Dag pulled himself inside. He moved cautiously but gracefully, aiming his helmet light in every direction. Years had passed since Dag was forced out of SPEC, but he had never lost his easy way of moving in space. Seeing that gave me a sharp pang of jealousy.

“Clear,” he said.

Dag moved aside to let me enter, then closed the hatch behind us. I went to the interior control panel and tapped to wake it up. I felt a moment’s confusion at the letters and numbers that filled the screen.

LCK 0 kPa 0 O2 0 N2 120 K

INT 83 kPa 21 O2 79 N2 263 K

I took a breath. I had prepared for this. Dag and Boudicca and others in the family with space experience had spent months drilling the rest of us, grueling lessons and practices followed by tests in which the slightest wrong answer was punishable by a withheld meal or a public condemnation. I did not get many answers wrong. The consequences were bad, as was the disappointment in Adam’s eyes, but what I feared most was the thought that I might not be ready when the time came.

“This interior is pressurized,” I said. “It’s cold, but it’s got air. Eighty-twenty mixture.”