I put my hands on my hips. An awkward pose in the EVA suit and it causes me to float away from the wall, but it fit the situation. “Okay. Done with Fuel Bay Three.”

“You want xenonite patch for hole now, question?”

I float out of the fuel bay and into space. I pull on my tether to bring me back to the hull. “No, I’ll do all the cleaning first, then close them up in a separate EVA.”

I use the handholds to get to Fuel Bay Four, anchor myself in place, and fire up the Eridian AstroTorch.

Xenonite makes for some pretty darn good pressurized gas containers.

My fuel bays are all freshly cleaned and resealed. I gave them all about a hundred times as much nitrogen as it takes to kill any natural Taumoeba hanging around. And then I just let it stay there for a while. I’m taking no chances.

After a few days of sterilizing, it’s time for a test. Rocky gives me a few kilograms of Astrophage to work with. I remember when “a few kilograms of Astrophage” would have been a godsend to everyone on Stratt’s Vat. But now it’s just, “Oh hey. Here’s a few quadrillion Joules of energy. Let me know if you want more.”

I divide the Astrophage into seven roughly equal blobs, vent the nitrogen, and squirt one blob into each fuel bay. Then I wait a day.

During this time, Rocky is aboard his ship plugging away on a pumping system to transfer Astrophage from his fuel tanks to mine. I offer to help, but he very politely declines. What good could I do aboard the Blip-A anyway? My EVA suit can’t handle the environment in there, so Rocky would have to build me a whole tunnel system… it’s not worth it.

I really want it to be worth it. It’s an alien freakin’ spaceship! I want to see the inside! But yeah. Got to save humanity and stuff. That’s the priority.

I check the fuel bays. Any live Taumoeba will have found the Astrophage and snacked on it. So if the Astrophage is still there, the bay is sterile.

Long story short: Two of the seven bays weren’t sterile.

“Hey, Rocky!” I yell from the control room.

He’s aboard the Blip-A somewhere, but I know he can hear me. He can always hear me.

After a few seconds, the radio crackles to life. “What, question?”

“Two fuel bays still have Taumoeba.”

“Understand. Not good. But not bad. Other five are clean, question?”

I steady myself with a handhold in the control room. It’s easy to float off when you’re concentrating on conversation. “Yeah, the other five seem good.”

“How Taumoeba in bad two bays survive, question?”

“I probably didn’t clean them well enough. Some gunk remained and shielded live Taumoeba from the nitrogen. That’s my guess.”

“Plan, question?”

“I’m going back into those two, scraping them down some more, and I’ll sterilize them again. I’ll leave the other five sealed for now.”