“Understand,” says Rocky.

I get to my feet and dust off my jumpsuit. “I need you to make me a test chamber. Clear xenonite with valves so I can let air in and out. Also, I need to be able to set temperature to minus 100 degrees Celsius, minus 50 degrees Celsius, or minus 82 degrees Celsius.”

I could use my own equipment, but why not take advantage of superior material and craftsmanship?

“Yes yes. I make now. We are team. We fix this. No be sad.” He skitters down the tunnel toward the dormitory.

I check my watch. “The main thrust ends in thirty-four minutes. After that’s done, let’s use the beetles to put ourselves in centrifuge mode.”

Rocky pauses. “Dangerous.”

“Yeah, I know. But we need gravity for the lab and I don’t want to wait eleven days. I want to make good use of time.”

“Beetles arranged for thrust, not rotation.”

It’s true. Our propulsion right now is, to say the least, rudimentary. We don’t have servos or gimbals to vector our thrust. We’re like a sixteenth-century nautical ship, but we’re using beetles for sails. Actually, scratch that. The nautical ship could at least control the angle of their sails. We’re more like a paddlewheel boat with a broken rudder.

It’s not all bad, though. We have some slight attitude control by deciding how much each engine thrusts. It’s how Rocky zeroed out our rotation before. “It’s worth the risk.”

He skitters back up the tunnel to face me. “Ship will rotate off-axis. No can unspool centrifuge cables. Would tangle.”

“We’ll create the needed rotation first, then shut off beetles, then unspool cables.”

He draws back. “If ship not unspooled, force is too much for human.”

That does present a problem. I want 1 g of gravity for the lab when the ship is fully unspooled in two halves. To get that much rotational inertia with the ship in one piece means spinning it very fast. Last time we did that, I passed out in the control room and Rocky almost died saving me.

“Okay…” I say. “How about this: I’ll lay down in the storage room under the dormitory. That’s the closest to the center of ship I can get. The force will be smallest there. I’ll be okay.”

“How you operate centrifuge controls from storage room, question?”

“I’ll… umm… I’ll bring the lab’s control screen down there with me. I’ll run data and power extension cables from the lab to the storage room. Yeah. That should work.”

“What if you unconscious and no can operate controls, question?”

“Then you cancel the rotation and I’ll wake up.”

He shimmies back and forth. “No like. Alternate plan: Wait eleven days. Get to my ship. Clean out you ship fuel tanks. Sterilize—make sure no Taumoeba. Refill with fuel from my ship. Then can use all functions of you ship again.”

I shake my head. “I don’t want to wait eleven days. I want to work now.”

“Why, question? Why no wait, question?”