And why not? Astrophage can propel itself with light and has absurd energy-storage capability. It’s had God-knows-how-many billion years of evolution to get good at it. Just like a horse is more energy efficient than a truck, Astrophage is more energy efficient than a spaceship.

Okay, that explains why there’s a buttload of Astrophage on the ship. It’s fuel. But why put a diagram of the ship on this screen? That’s like putting a blueprint of a car on its gas gauge.

Interestingly, the diagram doesn’t really care about the rooms. It doesn’t even show what’s inside them—just a label for each one and that’s it. However, the diagram is very focused on the hull and the rear part of the ship.

I see red pipes leading from the fuel areas to the spin drives. Probably how fuel gets to the engines. But I also see the pipes all along the hull of the ship. And they cut across the Cable Faring area. So the Astrophage fuel is mostly in the fuel tank, but also kept in a shell all around the hull.

Why do that?

Oh, and there are temperature readings all over the place. I guess temperature is important because the readings are every few meters along the hull. And every single one of them reads 96.415°c.

Hey, I know that temperature. I know that exact temperature! What do I know it from? Come on, brain… come on…

96.415°c, read the display.

“Huh,” I said.

“What is it?” Stratt said immediately.

It was my second day in the lab. Stratt still insisted I be the only person to look at Astrophage—at least for the time being. She dropped her tablet on the table and came to the observation-room window. “Something new?”

“Kind of. The ambient temperature of an Astrophage is 96.415 degrees Celsius.”

“That’s pretty hot, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, almost the boiling point of water,” I said. “For anything living on Earth it would be deadly. But for a thing that’s comfortable near the sun, who knows?”

“So what’s significant about it?”

“I can’t get them hotter or colder.” I pointed to the experiment I’d set up in the fume hood. “I put some Astrophage in ice-cold water for an hour. When I pulled them out, they were 96.415 degrees Celsius. Then I put some in a lab furnace at one thousand degrees. Again, after I pulled them out: 96.415 degrees.”

Stratt paced next to the window. “Maybe they have extremely good insulation?”

“I thought of that, so I did another experiment. I took an extremely small droplet of water and put a few Astrophage in it. After a few hours, the whole droplet was 96.415 degrees. The Astrophage heated up the water, so that means heat energy can move out of it.”

“What conclusion can you draw?” she asked.

I tried to scratch my head, but the vinyl suit got in the way. “Well, we know they have a huge amount of energy stored inside. I’m guessing they use it to maintain body temperature. Same way you and I do.”