Under crushing centrifuge forces after the fuel-bay disaster, Ryland Grace avoids firing spin drives and instead manually spools out the centrifuge cables, increasing radius and cutting effective g. With the ship inverted, he rigs tethers to haul the unconscious Rocky up through the lab to the dormitory airlock.

Finding his airlock controls destroyed, Grace opens a relief valve to flood the airlock with Eridian atmosphere. Superheated, high-pressure ammonia blasts into his compartment, burning his eyes, lungs, and arm before he seals the door. The ship’s computer intubates and sedates him, and he wakes hours later injured but functional.

Grace deduces Rocky’s carapace radiator ignited when hot metal capillaries met oxygen, leaving soot and oxides that block heat transfer. He slowly rotates the crew compartment upright to prevent further harm and checks their Adrian sampler, then builds a low-pressure, CO2-rich chamber to house the breeding-layer sample, noting early changes on a cotton swab and setting up time-lapse imaging.

He verifies they remain in a decaying but stable orbit, runs diagnostics, and patches a cold microleak in a bulkhead with epoxy. Needing to clear Rocky’s radiator, he mills a steel box with a drill, camera, servos, battery, and a high-pressure pump, epoxies it over the xenonite airlock wall, and bores a hole into the Eridian side.

The seal holds under 29 atmospheres; the camera dies from heat, but Grace sweeps the invisible jet until Rocky’s vents belch black soot. After purging debris, he adds secondary and tertiary containment boxes. Exhausted and injured, he can only hope Rocky’s body completes the repair.