Chapter 28

Summary

• Three days have passed since the Taumoeba escape incident on the spaceship.
• The narrator tightly controls the fuel system to prevent contamination and finds no signs of Taumoeba in the fuel tanks.
• A Taumoeba alarm is devised using Astrophage as a detection method.
• The alarm hasn't been triggered, indicating no further Taumoeba contamination in the air.
• The narrator ponders the mystery of how Taumoeba escaped the farms, which are built to be secure.
• The Taumoeba farms are automated to maintain temperature as an indirect measure of Taumoeba population.
• All the containment farms show normal readings with no evidence of a leak.
• The narrator suspects the mini-farms could be leaking Taumoeba but finds no proof after thorough testing.
• Speculation arises that there might be a fundamental design flaw in the material—Eridian steel—of the farms.
• The narrator reluctantly considers the possibility that Rocky, an adept engineer from Erid, may have made a mistake.
• Experiments are conducted on the mini-farms and breeder farms using test slides to check for leaks.
• The narrator decides to sleep in the lab to stay close to the experiment and the alarm.
• Waking up from sleep, the narrator discovers clear slides, indicating that Taumoeba escaped from all breeder farms.
• Confusion ensues as to how Taumoeba could escape without leaving signs of a leak in the xenonite farms.
• The narrator questions how Taumoeba could last so long without food, then hypothesizes that Taumoeba might be navigating through xenonite at a molecular level.
• An experiment reveals that modified Taumoeba-82.5 has evolved the ability to permeate through xenonite.
• The narrator realizes that they inadvertently selected for Taumoeba capable of navigating through xenonite during their breeding process in an effort to make them resistant to nitrogen.
• Despite the setback, the narrator formulates a plan to use metal to create a new containment solution, reusing the old equipment.
• However, concern arises that the same Taumoeba strain is aboard Rocky's spaceship, posing a risk due to xenonite construction.