Chapter 27

Chapter 27 — "Sterilize the Ship"

TL;DR: Grace discovers that the spare Astrophage tank Rocky gave him is contaminated with Taumoeba — and the only way to save the ship is to fill the entire interior with nitrogen and ride out the sterilization in his EVA suit.

Summary: A routine fuel check shows what Grace did not want to see: Taumoeba have escaped again, this time into the spare Astrophage tank Rocky transferred. Without that fuel, he doesn't reach Earth. He needs to kill every Taumoeba on board, including those already inside fuel-line plumbing. Nitrogen will do it. He suits up — full EVA suit, sealed, hours of life support — and floods every compartment of the Hail Mary with pure nitrogen. He spends days inside the suit, walking through corridors that would kill him in a breath, watching dishes go dark and tanks come back clean. When he finally vents and re-pressurizes with breathable air, the ship is sterile. The cost: he is exhausted, raw, and the EVA suit's reserves are nearly spent.

Key scenes:

• Grace finding a Taumoeba bloom in the spare tank — a small dish reading he doesn't want to read
• Grace donning full EVA inside his own ship — suit-up sequence, helmet seal
• Long quiet shots of him walking through familiar corridors transformed by nitrogen mist
• The all-clear: Grace breaking suit and gulping new air

Characters present: Ryland Grace, the AI/Computer

Locations / settings:

• The Hail Mary interior, suddenly hostile and cloudy with nitrogen

Visual motifs: a single white-suited figure walking corridors filled with cool blue-white nitrogen haze (a temporary palette shift away from gold), helmet HUD-glow as one of the only warm lights, a dim figure dwarfed by the ship's clean white architecture

Emotional tone: grimly resolved, isolated, courageous, exhausted

Confidence: high — the nitrogen-sterilization scene is one of the book's most cinematic sequences.