In 1584, Giordano Bruno fell off a mule on a road to Paris. Half a millenia later, the mummyship started making strange noises. The ship shook and groaned like a whale having a nocturnal orgasm. We were a little scared. We were halfway to the Plonk Coordinates, which is an anomalous area that you can plonk into when bopping between Legrange points. Not a good place to break down. It felt like we were pulling a groin muscle in mid leap.
"What the fuck is that?"
"Language, Elder Barton," Elder Johnson reminded him. Elder Barton was the least mormon-like. Between the two, I'm glad I abducted him the most. He'll get the most improved zealot award when we have our annual banquet.
I called down to engineering, "Bill, what's going on? Sounds like we're going to split open like an edible gourd."
"No cause for alarm. The ship is growing a new hull. There's stress between the metal, the carbon nanotubes that the scarabs reinforced it with earlier, and newer organic material. If you haven't already noticed, the scarabs have been collecting every last dead flaking cell from your bodies. It's making a series of epithelial hulls, very thin, strong and squamous. It's secreting the new skin through a series of sphincters located across the ship. By massaging them, you could hasten the process. Just worm your way out to the crawl spaces. Now let me drown in my job, you ungrateful curs."
"Right, you heard what the man said," I said, taking command, feeling very captain-like. "Let's go out and help the ship give birth to a new hull out its ass."
"This is sounding strangely familiar," I exclaimed.
This didn't set too well with the Mormons. They stared glumly. To boost morale, Isis jumped out of her chair. "Righto! Stroke those bulkholes. Bugger the bulkhead. Or something like that."
"That's the esprit de corpse I was looking for." The fellers didn't look inspired. So I offered, "How about a cup of coffee first?"
"Oh no, that's against our religion. Just show us to the crawlspace."