I roll my eyes. “All right, all right.”

He points back to my bunk. “Sleep.”

“Yes, Mom.”

“Sarcasm. You sleep. I watch.”

“This doesn’t seem like a good idea anymore,” I say into my radio.

“Do task,” Rocky replies mercilessly.

I slept well and woke up ready to face the day. I had a nice breakfast. I got some stretches in. Rocky presented me with a sealed, fully functional generator that will last basically forever. I installed it and got the ship’s power back on without a hitch.

Rocky and I chatted about the best way to use the beetles to get back to the Blip-A. Everything seemed like a good idea until just this moment.

I stand in the airlock, all suited up for an EVA, looking out onto the vast nothingness of space. Planet Adrian reflects its pale-green light at me, illuminating the ship. Then it drifts off out of view. I’m in darkness. But not for long. Because the planet shows up again in the top of my vision twelve seconds later.

The Hail Mary is still spinning. That’s kind of a problem.

The ship has little Astrophage-powered thrusters on the sides to spin up and spin down for the artificial gravity. They don’t work, of course. They’re full of Taumoeba poo just like everything else. So here I am on another EVA that has to deal with gravity. But instead of Adrian’s gravity, it’s centripetal force threatening to fling me off into the void.

One death is as good as another. So why is this worse than my little Adrian sampler adventure? Because this time I have to balance on the nose of the ship. One false move could lead to death.

When I got the sampler, I stayed close to the hull, kept well tethered, and had lots of handholds all around just in case I lost my footing.

But the beetles are stored in the nose of the ship.

The nose is oriented toward the other half of the ship, thanks to the way the centrifuge system works. That puts the beetles at the “top” of the crew compartment from the point of view of the centripetal gravity. I have to get up there, open the nose, and get the little ships out. All while hoping I don’t slip. There are no tether points at the nose. So I’ll have to clip on to a point lower down. Which means if I fall, I’ll have time to pick up a good head of steam before the tether goes taut. Will it hold? If not, the force of the centrifuge will fling me off into space and I’ll become Adrian’s newest moon.

I quadruple-check the tethers. I ran two of them, just for safety. They’re firmly anchored to a hard point in the airlock and also to my suit. They should be able to handle the force if I fall.

“Should.”

I step out, grab the top of the airlock, and pull myself upward. I’d never be able to do this with all my gear on at full gravity.