Chapter 13

Chapter 13 — "What Killed Rocky's Crew"

TL;DR: Eridians have no concept of radiation because their planet's magnetic field shields them — and the journey through deep space, unshielded, is what killed Rocky's twenty-two crewmates.

Summary: Rocky pushes Grace harder on the word he doesn't have. Through patient diagrams Grace explains the electromagnetic spectrum, ionizing radiation, and what it does to living tissue. Rocky is stunned: Erid sits inside a dense magnetic field and a thick ammonia atmosphere that together absorb everything dangerous, so Eridian biology never evolved any awareness of it. The Eridian engineers built a spacefaring ship without shielding, because they didn't know they needed any. Rocky becomes both grieved (his people died of something invisible) and grimly determined (he can fix it, now that he understands). They begin discussing radiation shielding designs together — the start of their professional partnership.

Key scenes:

• A whiteboard or scratch-pad sketch in the docking tube: the EM spectrum, with dangerous frequencies highlighted
• A diagram of Erid surrounded by a magnetic-field shell, contrasted with deep space
• Rocky's posture sagging as he absorbs the news — physically slumping his carapace
• The two engineers, on opposite sides of the hex-wall, beginning a joint shielding sketch

Characters present: Ryland Grace, Rocky

Locations / settings:

• The docking-tube hex-wall workbench
• Diagrammatic flashbacks/illustrations of Erid and deep space

Visual motifs: an EM-spectrum chart with the dangerous bands highlighted in gold, a stylized cutaway of Erid showing its magnetic shell as concentric arcs, two engineers leaning toward each other across the hex-wall, dim amber-orange light on Rocky's side and cool clinical white on Grace's

Emotional tone: revelatory, bereaved, focused, partnered

Confidence: high — the radiation revelation is consistent across all summaries.