The girl looked at the flower, then at Chia Anme, and whispered, “You made this?”

Renn found her at dawn, cross-legged in the soil, her hands purple with cold and resin.

And it gave her an idea.

“You want to plant the gas?”

Renn was silent for a long time. Then he unslung his gas-sheet and handed it to her. “Then you’d better show me how to calibrate the valves. Because if this fails, we both suffocate.”

“I want to open the vent just a crack. Let the gas seep in slowly. The herba will catch it, transmute it, release oxygen back down the same pipe. A closed loop. Your miners get breathable air. My garden gets new soil.”