"I'm not certain radiation would do much to a mechanoid, but yes," Feroza said. "Humans would want to destroy the Petrolean ecosystem along with its inconvenient defenses, then come down and extract whatever was left."

"Alright," said Victor, "of course."

"Of course." Feroza's lips thinned. "So what happens if the attack does not only fail to succeed, but also further antagonizes the ecosystem?"

"Let them," said Victor. "Now that we know what's happening, we'll fight back. The only reason a Rocket-seed destroyed the orbital station was because they didn't see it coming. A real battle between humans and some ancient mutant robot ecosystem — "

Feroza made a ball with her hands and exploded it with a "Poosh!"

"Exactly," said Victor. "We'd win. We'd blow the damn moon to pieces!"

"No," said Feroza. "I meant 'poosh, we would cause the moon to sporulate.'"

And again his mental map lead him to a dead end. A cliff over a waterfall with sharp rocks at the bottom. Victor closed his eyes. "I don't know what 'sporulate' means."

"Imagine more than one rocket launching at the same time," said Feroza. "Imagine all of them launching all at once."

Obediently, horribly, Victor did imagine it. A puff of silver specks flying out from Titan like the seeds from a dandelion. But not drifting randomly on the winds of space. These Rocket-seeds would direct themselves toward orbital stations, ships, even groundside bases in the inner system. Human weapons might blow apart a rocket, but so what? Its payload of mechanoids would spread out through space, waiting until the little robots hit a metallic asteroid or something else digestible, like a space-craft. He imagined waves of factors overwhelming a trans-Jovian liner, an iron spider-crab clicking across a Martian dome.

"It would make sense in many ways," said Feroza. "Both scatter your genetic material and reduce your competition."

"We have to warn someone," said Victor. "Even if," it was physically impossible to say "if no rescue comes," his throat would not open to let the words through. They could not be true. "No matter what happens. If this place...sporulates, it could threaten people all over the solar system. Hell, what if one of those things falls on Earth?"

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Feroza looked thoughtful. "The mechanoids inside would probably die of oxidation."

"Well, alright, but what about the Jovian stations, or Mars or any of the other habitats? Not to mention uninhabited asteroids. These things could digest the solar system right out from under us! We have to get the word out so they can — "

"What?" said Feroza. "Put Petrolea in the autoclave and sterilize the place? Because that's what we do with competitors, don't we, stupid apes that we are. The second our precious patch of real estate is in danger, we drop all our enlightened talk of peaceful research and start clawing and biting."

"The enlightened thing to do," said Victor, trying to keep his voice low, "is to stop this threat to the lives of millions of people."

"Thousands of people at most, if we are still discussing the off-Earth population. And just how shall we stop Petrolea? By interfering with it more? This place was entirely quiescent until humans landed here, and it took us just two years to antagonize the ecosystem to the point of threatening our civilization. And now you want to pile even more folly and arrogance on top of that?"

"You're talking like you think humans will just leave Petrolea alone." Victor spread his hands and waved them, miming their boss back in Dubai: "Oh, we just lost an entire extraction facility and orbital station. I'm sure that that's nothing we should investigate!" He dropped back into his normal voice. "They will come to rescue us."

She grimaced at him. "That is not the topic I thought we were discussing."

"Oh no," said Victor, "because you won that argument didn't you? You think you can just stay here and heal the animals and hug the trees. And when you come back to the rustic hut, oh, it's Victor waiting for you with a pot of Petrolean stew and a big wet kiss."

Feroza snorted. "Who kissed whom? I didn't ask you to claim me as your jungle bride. I didn't ask you to follow me or — "

"Or save your life?"

"Victor, we've both saved each other's lives such a lot of times. Do you really want to keep a running tally of the debt?"

Victor couldn't think of a way to respond to that without sounding like an asshole, so he decided it was time to storm off.

Given their living situation, that wasn't easy. Victor had to spend a frosty five minutes strapping himself into his environment suit again. And crawling on his hands and knees through the airlock tube was humiliating.

But at least Feroza didn't see the Dragon knock him over.

Victor's helmet didn't even have a chance to warn him before the conical head caught him in the side and bowled him over. Victor flailed on his back like an overturned cockroach while the metallic face rushed toward him again. Headlights and stiff tactile antennae swept over him. Mouthparts unlatched themselves and reached out towards him. The feeding tube extended.

With a gurgle, the mother Dragon poured jet fuel over Victor's head.