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Cora sighed. She didn’t disagree. She had no real faith in the Primer, or the promise of Earth. She did think Earth was real, because people had to come from somewhere, but would any of them ever see it? Eh. Cora wasn’t buying what OCTA was selling, but also, in her eyes, it didn’t really matter, because they didn’t have any other options yet. Not good ones, anyway. “I’m with you on that, but—” She ran her hand through her hair, trying to find the words. “I mean, the name alone should tell you something, regardless of who came up with it.”

“Just because it’s dangerous—”

“It’s suicide.”

“Not half as many people die out there as the news says. They’re just trying to scare people away from doing it.”

“Bullshit.”

“How do you know?”

“Oh my god.” Cora rubbed her eyes. “You know I’m a pilot, right? You’re aware of this? You’re aware of what barge you’re sitting on right now?”

Twig glared. “Just because you’re a pilot doesn’t mean you know everything. And you don’t build spaceships anyway. You don’t even fly them. You just ride in them. You’re not actually a pilot, you’re an animal handler.”

Cora, who had gone to space every three weeks for the past six years and had spent six years prior to that in school learning how to do so, wondered if this was what it felt like when you were having a stroke. She propped her elbows on her knees, steepled her fingers, and rested her chin on her thumbs. “Twig. Listen to me. People die out there. Everybody who goes out there dies.”

“How do you know?” Twig challenged. “Where are you getting your intel, Ms. I-don’t-read-the-news?”

“I don’t need intel, I just understand what those people are doing. They’re taking centuries-old scrap, welding it together with more scrap, and trying to build viable launch vehicles with it. It’s maybe the worst idea I’ve ever heard.”

“So what if some people die trying to get up there?” Twig said. “People die down here every day, and nobody cares, and nothing changes. At least the people who go up are dying for something.”

“Dying in a different direction is still dying.”

“Well, what if some of them make it?”

“Okay. Then what? Where do they go?”

“The Mothership, obviously.”

“That is a long fucking way to go. We can’t do that with licensed craft yet. We can’t do that with rorquals.”

“A rorqual could fly that far real quick, if you let them.”

“Sure, but what are they gonna do, take one person at a time? We don’t have spacecraft like they have in the Primer. We can’t move that many people at once yet. You really think people who hack trash together can do what this entire colony hasn’t managed to do with all the stuff we have?”

“Yeah, because we have so much here,” Twig quipped.

Cora ticked things off on her fingers. “Tools, metal, oxygen, food—”

Twig gave her a sly smile. “The guy who gave that talk said rorquals can detect the ships that make it up, but pilots aren’t allowed to say.”

Cora barked a laugh. “No.”

Her sister peered at her. “Would you tell me?”

“Of course I would, dipshit. I’d have told you the minute it happened. I’d have told everybody. But Colibri has never picked up a ship flying out from Sucker’s Luck, and I’ve never heard of anyone who did.”

Twig looked a little disappointed at this, but not as discouraged as Cora would’ve liked. “Could they pick them up, if someone made it out there?”

“Sure. If Colibri can pick up the Mothership, she could absolutely feel some little trash craft zipping past.”

Twig’s eyes widened. “She can see the Mothership?”

“Well, she doesn’t see—” Cora began to clarify.

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Twig said impatiently. “But she can—”