"Which we will not be alive to read, unless we stick the landing," Markus pointed out, "so no more chatter from now on, please. Slava—" and he broke into a string of bad Russian meaning something like I trade places with you now . Vyacheslav responded in equally bad German. Both men were perfectly fluent in English. But they made a private joke of butchering each other’s languages, ostensibly as part of a project to preserve Old Earth’s linguistic heritage. Markus then added, "The rest of you, buckle up."