The multi-leveled floors were crowded with crops, many new since the storm. There was not enough space to feed the crew entirely on farm food, but Hiroko disliked that fact and struggled against it, converting storage rooms as they emptied out. Dwarf strains of wheat, rice, soy, and barley grew in stacked trays; above the trays were hanging rows of hydroponic vegetables, and enormous clear jars of green and yellow algae, used to help regulate the gas exchange.

Some days Maya did nothing but watch the farm team work. Hiroko and her assistant Iwao were always tinkering at the endless project of maximizing the closure of their biological life-support system, and they had a crew of other regulars working on it: Raul, Rya, Gene, Evgenia, Andrea, Roger, Ellen, Bob, and Tasha. Success in the closure attempt was measured in K values, K representing closure itself. Thus for every substance they recycled,

K = I — e/E

where E was the rate of consumption in the system, e the rate of (incomplete) closure, and I a constant for which Hiroko, earlier in her career, had established a corrected value. The goal, K = I — 1, was unreachable, but asymptotically approaching it was the farm biologists’ favorite game, and more than that, critical to their eventual existence on Mars. So conversations about it could extend over days, spiraling off into complexities that no one really understood. In essence the farm team was already at their real work, which Maya envied. She was so sick of simulations!

Hiroko was an enigma to Maya. Aloof and serious, she always seemed absorbed in her work, and her team tended always to be around her, as if she was the queen of a realm that had nothing to do with the rest of the ship. Maya didn’t like that, but there was nothing she could do about it. And something in Hiroko’s attitude made it not so threatening; it was just a fact, the farm was a separate place, its crew a separate society.