“Yes. Now detach tunnel.”

I groan. “You made the tunnel. You detach it.”

“How I detach tunnel, question? Me inside ball.”

“Well, how do I do it? I don’t understand xenonite.”

He made a turning motion with two of his arms. “Rotate tunnel.”

“Okay, okay.” I grab my EVA suit. “I’ll do it. Jerk.”

“No understand last word.”

“Not important.” I climb into the suit and close the rear flap.

Rocky is surprisingly adept at doing things with a couple of magnets from inside a ball.

Each of his duffels has a metal pad on it. He’s able to climb along the pile and rearrange it as needed. Occasionally, a bag he’s using for purchase comes loose and he floats off. When that happens, he calls me and I put him back.

I hang on to my bunk and watch him do his thing. “Okay, step one. Astrophage sampling.”

“Yes yes.” He holds two hands in front of him and moves one around the other. “Planet move around Tau. Astrophage go there from Tau. Same at Eridani. Astrophage make more Astrophage with carbon dioxide there.”

“Yes,” I say. “Did you get a sample?”

“No. My ship had device for this. But device broke.”

“You couldn’t fix it?”

“Device not malfunction. Device broke. Fell off ship during trip. Device gone.”

“Oh! Wow. Why did it break off?”

He wiggles his carapace. “Not know. Many things break. My people make ship very hurry. No time to make sure all things work good.”

Deadline-induced quality issues: a problem all over the galaxy.

“I tried to make replacement. Failed. Tried. Failed. Tried. Failed. I put ship in path of Astrophage. Maybe some get stuck on hull. But robot on hull no can find any. Astrophage very small.”

His carapace slumps down. His elbows are above the level of his breathing holes. Sometimes he dips his carapace when sad, but I’ve never seen him dip it this far.

His voice drops an octave. “Fail fail fail. I am repair Eridian. I not science Eridian. Smart smart smart science Eridians died.”

“Hey… don’t think of it like that…” I say.

“No understand.”

“Uh…” I pull myself over to his pile of bags. “You’re alive. And you’re here. And you haven’t given up.”

But his voice remains low. “I try so many times. Fail so many times. Not good at science.”

“I am,” I say. “I’m a science human. You’re good at making and fixing things. Together we’ll figure this out.”

He raises his carapace a bit. “Yes. Together. You have device to sample Astrophage, question?”

The External Collection Unit. I remember it from my first day in the control room. I didn’t think about it much at the time, but that’s got to be it. “Yes. I have a device for this.”