That all seems really weird. How could Taumoeba, from the planet Adrian, know how to carefully navigate its way through xenonite, a technological invention from the planet Erid? It does not make sense.

Life-forms don’t evolve traits for no reason. Taumoeba lives in the upper atmosphere. Why would it develop the ability to work its way through dense molecular structures? What evolutionary reason could there be to—

I drop my burrito.

I know the answer. I don’t want to admit it to myself. But I know the answer.

I go back to the lab and perform a nerve-wracking experiment. The experiment itself isn’t nerve-wracking. I’m just worried that the results will be what I expect.

I still have Rocky’s AstroTorch. It’s the only thing on the ship that can get hot enough to dissociate xenonite. There’s plenty of xenonite to be had throughout the ship, thanks to Rocky’s tunnel system. I cut into the dormitory divider wall. I can only cut a little bit at a time, then I have to wait for life support to cool things back down. The AstroTorch makes a lot of heat.

In the end, I have four rough circles, each a couple of inches across.

Yes, inches. When I’m stressed out, I revert to imperial units. It’s hard to be an American, okay?

I take them up to the lab and put together an experiment.

I smear some Astrophage on one of the circles and put another circle on top of it. Astrophage sandwich. Delicious, but only if you can get through the xenonite “bread.” I epoxy the two halves together. I make another identical sandwich.

And then I make another two similar sandwiches, but instead of xenonite, I use ordinary plastic discs that I cut from some mill stock.

Okay. Four hermetically sealed Astrophage samples—two with xenonite discs, two with plastic discs, all four of them sealed with epoxy.

I get two clear, sealable containers and set them up on the lab table. I put a xenonite sandwich and a plastic sandwich in each container.

In the sample cabinet, I have a few metal vials full of natural Taumoeba. The original stuff from Adrian, not the Taumoeba-82.5 version. I set the vial in one of the containers, open it up, and quickly seal the experiment. This is a very dangerous road to go down, but at least I know how to contain a Taumoeba outbreak if it happens. As long as I have nitrogen I’m okay.

I go to Breeder Tank One in the quarantine zone. I use a syringe to get the Taumoeba-infected air from the bin, then immediately flood the bin with nitrogen. I tape over the hole made by the syringe.

Back to the lab table, I close up the other container and use the syringe to inject the Taumoeba-82.5 in. Again, I seal that hole with tape.