Yuki Tanaka brings life to Mars twice. The first time is six small potted plants she was never cleared to carry, lifted one by one out of a storage locker in the Ares science module and set under the light. The second time is her daughter.
She is the quietest of the four. On the approach she watches Mars from her own porthole and writes a single word in her notebook that the film never shows. In the descent she closes her eyes. On Sol 1 she kneels and lets a handful of red soil run through her glove, watching it fall, and the next day she is sifting that soil into a lab tray to see what it might grow. She opens the seed vault, plants the first seedling under violet grow lights, humming, and the inside of the dome becomes the only colour on the planet that is not red.
Months later she stops among the tomato vines with a hand on her stomach. Her pregnancy, the maternity uniform, the harvest of greens, the stars painted on a nursery wall, and a birth in a dust storm make up the heart of Track 8. She names her daughter Nova and hangs the placard on the crib herself. She teaches Nova to plant a seedling at six.
A century later a worn packet from her vault passes from Nova to Mira, and one of its seeds goes into wet Martian soil in the first rain. Generations after that, a vault of its descendants is loaded onto a starship.
