The first challenge was finding the right place for her passenger’s new accomodations. Pylo honestly had to guess at their needs. She knew that they seemed a bit over cramped and stressed from their current lodgings, but would they respond poorly to TOO much space?

Handling instructions and conversations with them about their home suggested that no they would be fine with a substantially more space.

But there were limits on empty holds in Tunie, especially ones in the center line where there was the most protection from impact and short-light.

Sure they liked the drive baffling, but Pylo was pretty sure putting their accommodations so close to the drive would not be the best idea. Tunie’s baffles processed a lot of the light leakage but that wasn't going to handle all of it.

And Pylo had learned that apparently Flatlanders were surprisingly sensitive to most forms of light.

In the end Pylo settled on a deshɛ mid hull that was still sealed from a pressurised cargo contract a dozen trips back. It had about dæn times the space of the current living space the Aleph, Quarti and Omega currently had inside that little rickety canner monstrosity they were living in now.

After that Pylo had to scrounge together enough bio packaging to put a seal at each of the twist-locks.

But of course it turned out that there was not enough there for Pylo to put a cover seal on all of the larger entrances. So she had to go back through tunie on her rounds next shift to track down tape and bonding putty to lock up several of the entrances.

Then after that she had to figure out where they were going to get the prodigious amount of nitrogen that the flatlanders needed to ‘breath’.

She had used some spare leftovers stored in a bag from when Tunie had a bout of indigestion. That had been enough to satisfy the mix for the little ‘bubble’ her passengers moved around in right now.

But the new space was significantly bigger and Pylo didn't have enough nitrogen freely available to fill it to the necessary density.

Maybe she could get it from the food stores?

Either way, even before she did that there was also the problem of the interior.

So many dangerous looking things along the walls, particulates and shreds that might lacerate the poor fragile little flatlanders. Or get into their breathing apparatus and choke them? Or maybe slip into their cellular matrix and set something off?

She had started actually ‘reading’ some of the records that she had bought from the Terrans as a matter of course, information was cheap to store, easy to sell and often could end up obscenely valuable in the right place.

And apparently the terrans could get diseases where their cells stopped working together and went rogue!

And you could induce this to happen with exposure to light or the wrong kind of DUST?!

It made Pylo tremble up and down her body in horror and revulsion. How could anything live with so many poisons and failures? Sure she could get sick from a few things here and there around the reef. But it sounded like half the things on Tunie and a quarter of the stuff Pylo simply eat or washed herself with could turn a Flatlander into a tumorous blob of suffering and pain!

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

So she needed to flatlander proof the interior first!

Which is why she was going through one of the junk holds again.

It needed to be clean, preferably good at absorbing shock, have filtering/processing secondary features? Oh and Pylo needed enough of it to cover every single surface inside the hold she was prepping.

Hum there was just nothing that quite worked right. Like this one was pretty good but it definitely had ‘carcinogens’ in it.

And this one would have worked if she sprayed it, but it also crumpled into dust she was ‘pretty’ sure would choke the flatlanders the first time one of them breathed it. Or make them explode, she wasn't sure.

This one was great! It was springy and safe and would not do anything bad if a flatlander touched it. But after checking some notes on it Pylo realized it would immediately dissolve into plasma and toxic gas when she filled the chamber with the Terran Atmospheric Mix.

[https://i.imgur.com/CrcUXnS.png]

Augh!

Pylo just drifted through the junk piles for a while. It was so hard to prepare a properly safe room for passengers when they needed to be insulated from everything!

Insulated...

Of Course!

Pylo shoved off through the junk hold, moving and twisting through Tunie to another junk hold where she stored all the leftover shipping and packaging material that they had held onto in hopes someone would buy them.

There!

It was shock absorbant, had particulate and fluid filtering mechanisms, didn't break down into anything dangerous to flatlander biology. Light baffling and refraction for many wavelengths and even could help seal up any leaks if it was punctured!

It was perfect for making the chamber safe for her passengers.

But most important of all she had more of it then she even knew what to do with! Whoever had packed the extras for this one had been really paranoid about running out of packaging?

Or maybe the seller was just were trying to get rid of it for some reason?

Why did they have so much?

Pylo could not really remember. It probably was not all that important.

But what was important is there was more than enough to cover every scrap of surface inside of Tunie (not that she would, it would make Tunie rather sick to block off access to her ossiplast like that). So that meant there would be plenty for preparing her Passenger’s new space!

Even better it came in easily applied smearable jelly! Just needed two different layers of application, some time to wait for adhering and bonding. It even seemed like it would be a color the Passengers liked! Terrans liked the color blue right? She was sure they did!

She remembered that being in one of the things she read.

Now to get it applied.

And figure out how she was going to get enough Nitrogen.