Thren Valis's Arc

Chapter 9 of 18

The steering worked, but Thren still had not flown high enough to know the real danger. Her ship could face a star. It could hold its aim. None of that mattered if the cold of space killed her colonies before she cleared orbit. She had grown every part of this hull from warm forest plants. She did not know if any of them could survive the vacuum. She had to test it, and she had to test it small. She would not risk the whole ship. Instead she built a sample. In her living greenhouse, she grew a patch of the ship's tissue side by side: leaf plates, a strand of fungal web, a few glowing beetles, a cutting of tuber. She sealed the patch inside a clear tank pod with translucent walls. Then she pumped the air out until the membrane trembled and the water inside pulled tight. She watched the pod like a mother. By morning the sample was dead. The beetles lay still. The leaf plates had cracked along every vein. The web had shriveled to gray thread. The cold and the empty pressure had pulled the tissue apart from the inside. Thren pressed her hands to the pod and made herself look. Her ship, flown as it was, would die before it left the sky. She did not stop. She had seen the cracks, and cracks told her where to armor. She walked the greenhouse rows until she reached two plants she had set aside. One grew soft white tufts in thick sheets, plush enough to trap heat. The other fused its leaves into hard overlapping plates, a natural shield already bound by living fiber. Sporis had solved this before her. The plant knew how to lock tissue against the outside. She grew a second sample. This time she wrapped the living patch in the soft white sheets for warmth. Over that she layered the hard shielding plates, pressing them until they overlapped like scales. She sealed the wrapped patch in a fresh pod and pumped the air out again. Then she waited through the night with her hands flat on the cold glass. At dawn the beetles moved. The leaf plates held whole. The web still ran pale and alive under the shield. The insulation had trapped the warmth. The bound plates had held the pressure. Her colonies had lived through the vacuum. Thren sat down hard on the greenhouse floor. She had her answer. The ship could be armored to survive the void. But the shielding was heavy, and the insulation was thick, and her pods already strained to lift the hull she had. Every plate she added was more weight to carry into orbit. She had kept her colonies alive. Now she had to lift them, and she did not yet know if her ship was strong enough to climb wearing armor.