But her concerns were so much larger than that. Why weren’t more people worried about the loss of Reimi? Why was no one panicking, running through the corridors screaming? Reimi was the ship’s only engineer, roboticist, and mechanic; she had the tri-fold job of attending to the Deucalion’s positronic brain, its mechanical heart, and the robotic crew that serviced it. Park felt a hard stone of fear, way down in her gut, when she thought of what could happen to the crew with Reimi out of commission. What if the ship suffered a catastrophic engine failure, a malfunction somewhere in its entrails, and they had no one on board who knew what to do?

The androids knew what to do, she thought then. That was what they were there for—to ensure that the Deucalion, their mothership, didn’t die, and every human passenger along with it. But they still didn’t come with the protocols to maintain themselves. That was what Reimi was for. And she was gone. And now Park was just thinking in circles, nauseating herself.

Suddenly Keller broke into her thoughts. “Lunchtime,” she said, standing decisively and blinking off her inlays, which she’d been using to compose the draft of some message to someone. “Come. Some food will do you good. Clear your mind.”

Somehow Park doubted that—she would not touch the ship’s bland, gluey food in front of others again, if she could help it—but she rose obediently and followed her mentor. She was still brooding when they entered the mess hall together: a strangely warm, salt-and-bleach-smelling room with a dispensary lining one wall and several round tables filling the center. They picked up their trays of rehydrated meatloaf and flash-thawed potatoes from the service android, Megex, then sat, as always, at a table by themselves.

Lunch was usually the time they observed mealtime behaviors together. Animals at the watering hole, Keller often whispered, in a British documentarian’s accent. Eating was a vulnerable activity; people tended to relax their guard. It was why Stalin had invited Churchill to so many dinners. You could tell a lot about personalities and group dynamics at lunch: who was in control, who was deferential. Who occupied the choicest spots and who slunk in alone.

Park was initially too preoccupied to give much thought to who was on display today, but Keller had apparently dismissed the topic of Reimi from her mind and was intent on carrying out her daily observations. She nudged Park with her elbow and said, softly, “Sagara’s sitting alone again.”

Park looked. Keller was right: there he was, sitting alone, a tense and silent presence in his black uniform. He had been the last one to join the crew—the ship had picked him up out of Corvus—and as a result, he had entered the community with its various cliques and groups already formed. Most of the other crewmembers steered well clear of him. Keller sympathized, but Park privately thought that it was Sagara’s severe—almost lethal—personality to blame.