Ren Keeps Accounts

Ren came to him at the third sleep cycle, when the hab was dim and the others were strapped into their bunks, and said, without preamble, that the problem was not who should stay. The problem, Ren said, was that everyone was treating it as a moral question when it was a logistics question. The person who stayed needed to be the person who could keep the others alive longest from a distance, manage the relay, talk the return crew through their own burns. That was Yusuf. Everyone in the room already knew it was Yusuf and nobody would say it because saying it felt like sentencing him. Ren had simply done the arithmetic of competence and arrived early. Yusuf looked at this small quiet person who had spent fourteen months being underestimated and felt something rearrange itself in his chest. You came here to tell me that, he said. No, said Ren. I came here to tell you I worked it out too, and I'm not going to let you go quietly.