I drove fast. Way too fast. I ran red lights. I cut people off. I never do any of that, but that day was different. That day was… I don’t even know.

I screeched into the lab parking lot and left my car parked at an odd angle.

Two U. S. Army soldiers were at the doors to the complex. Just as they had been the previous two days while I’d been working there. I stormed past them.

“Should we have stopped him?” I heard one ask the other. I didn’t care what the response was.

I stomped into the observation room. Stratt was there, of course, reading her tablet. She looked up and I caught a glimpse of genuine surprise on her face.

“Dr. Grace? What are you doing here?”

Past her, through the windows, I spotted four people in containment suits working in the lab.

“Who are they?” I said, pointing at the window. “And what are they doing in my lab?”

“Can’t say I like your tone—” she said.

“I don’t care.”

“And it’s not your lab. It’s my lab. Those technicians are collecting the Astrophage.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

She held her tablet under her arm. “Your dream is coming true. I’m dividing up the Astrophage and sending it to thirty different labs around the world. Everything from CERN to a CIA bioweapons facility.”

“The CIA has a biowea—?” I began. “Never mind. I want to do more work on this.”

She shook her head. “You’ve done your part. We thought it was anhydrous life. Turns out it wasn’t. You proved that. And since no alien exploded out of your chest, we can consider the guinea-pig phase over too. So you’re done.”

“No, I’m not done. There’s a lot more to learn.”

“Of course there is,” she said. “And I have thirty labs all eagerly waiting to get started on it.”

I stepped forward. “Leave some Astrophage here. Let me work it some more.”

She stepped forward as well. “No.”

“Why not?!”

“According to your notes, there were one hundred and seventy-four living Astrophage cells in the sample. And you killed one yesterday, so we’re down to a hundred and seventy-three.”

She pointed to her tablet. “Each of these labs—huge, national labs—will get five or six cells each. That’s it. We’re down to that level of scarcity. Those cells are the one hundred and seventy-three most important things on Earth right now. Our analysis of them will determine if humanity survives.”

She paused and spoke a little more softly. “I get it. You spent your whole life trying to prove that life doesn’t require water. Then, unbelievably, you get some actual extraterrestrial life and it turns out to need water. That’s rough. Shake it off and get back to your life. I’ve got it from here.”

“I’m still a microbiologist who spent his career working up theoretical models for alien life. I’m a useful resource with a skill set almost no one else has.”