I check each farm’s readouts. Each one shows 96.415 degrees Celsius with a population estimate of 10 million Taumoeba. Exactly what they’re supposed to read.

“Hm,” I say.

The air pressure inside those farms is way lower than the nitrogen pressure surrounding them. If any of those farms had a leak, the nitrogen would get in and pretty soon the Taumoeba would all die. But they haven’t. And it’s been three days.

The breeder farms aren’t leaking. It must be the mini-farms. But how the heck does a microbe work its way through half a centimeter of Eridian steel? Rocky knows what he’s doing, and he knows all about Eridian steel. If it wasn’t good for holding microbes in place, he’d know. They don’t have Taumoeba on Erid, but they definitely have other microbes. This isn’t new to them.

All of this leads me to something I would normally consider impossible: Rocky made an engineering mistake.

He never makes mistakes. Not when it comes to creating things. He’s one of the most talented engineers on his entire planet! He couldn’t have messed up.

Could he?

I need definitive proof.

I make more Astrophage test slides. They’re super-handy for Taumoeba detection and easy to make.

I start with the bin containing the two mini-farms—the ones intended for George and Ringo. They certainly seem sealed. They’re just capsule-shaped pieces of metal. All sorts of stuff going on inside, but smooth Eridian steel on the outside.

I peel the duct tape off one corner of the box, pry up the lid, and throw an Astrophage slide in, then reseal everything. Experiment number one: Make sure I didn’t accidentally breed up some Super-Taumoeba that can live in pure nitrogen.

Another fun fact I’ve learned: Once Taumoeba get ahold of an Astrophage slide, it’ll be crystal clear in a couple of hours. So I wait a couple of hours and the slide is still black. Okay, good. No Super-Taumoeba.

I unseal the bin, open the lid, and let it air out for a minute. Then I reseal it. The nitrogen content in there will be nominal now. Way less than Taumoeba-82.5 needs to worry about. If there’s a leak in those mini-farms, the slide will tell the tale.

One hour, no results. Two hours, no results.

I take a sample of the air inside the bin just to be sure. The nitrogen level is nearly zero. So that’s not an issue.

I seal it up again and give it another hour. Nothing.

The mini-farms aren’t leaking. At least, the ones intended for George and Ringo aren’t. Maybe the leak was in one of the mini-farms I’ve already installed.

They’re just glued to the outsides of John and Paul. They’re not protected by the beetle’s hull or anything. I repeat the Taumoeba detection experiment with John and Paul’s bins.

I get the same result: no Taumoeba at all.

“Hm.”

Okay, time for the ultimate test. I remove John, Paul, and the two uninstalled mini-farms from quarantine. I set them on the lab table next to my Taumoeba alarm. I’m pretty sure they’re clean. But if they aren’t, I want to know right away.