Page 62 of Commander’s Mate

She looked at me.

Then at the line where her name sat.

“No.”

Her fingers touched the edge of the slate.

“My name is there.”

“Yes.”

“Not number.”

“No.”

Her eyes filled.

I looked away because sometimes dignity meant not watching someone cry.

By evening we had forty-seven names.

By midnight, seventy-three.

For the first time since Earth became unreachable, I slept for almost four hours.

Not because I felt better.

Because there was work.

And work, I understood, was sometimes the first shape hope took when hope itself was too painful to hold.

The breakfast problem turned out not to be a breakfast problem.

It was six problems wearing the same gray paste.

By midday, I had a second slate.

Tivid had provided it after I promised not to call it a spreadsheet.

Apparently spreadsheets had another name in Uatu.

Apparently I did not care.

Nora helped me separate the refusals.

One woman could not digest the standard protein base.

Two refused anything containing flesh from land animals.

A Mavrin man thought the nutrient gel was medicine because the packaging resembled the tubes used in holding.

A teenager had been punished by having food withheld and now panicked when meals arrived late.

Another woman ate only if she could open the sealed package herself.

The crew had marked all six as REFUSING NUTRITION.

I stared at the category.