Orville: The

The Orville and the gutted Sagan were ejected from the nebula like a watermelon seed, tumbling end over end into clear space. The cloud, looking visibly offended, contracted into a tight, angry ball and zipped away at warp speed, probably to find a nice, bland asteroid to cleanse its palate.

“You can’t fight it,” Dr. Fen said. “You have to offend it. You need a flavor so vile, so fundamentally wrong, that it rejects us like a bad oyster.”

The Orville plunged into the amber haze. Inside, the cloud was less a digestive system and more a chaotic, slow-motion tornado of space debris and regret. They found the science vessel, the Sagan , its hull coated in a sticky, glowing goo. The Orville

Kelly blinked. “The what?”

Ed sighed. He looked at Kelly. “Remind me why I took this job?” The Orville and the gutted Sagan were ejected

Bortus looked at the bottle, then at the desperate faces around him. “You are asking me to weaponize… Pepto-Abysmal?”

Klytus sighed, wiping slime off his face. “My wife believes the cloud isn’t mindless. It’s a gourmand. It’s been selectively consuming celestial bodies for billions of years, developing a cosmic palate.” Fen said

A quick transport later, Ed, Kelly, Alara, and Isaac (the Kaylon whose expression of perpetual mild disdain never changed) stood in the Sagan ’s dripping cargo bay. They found two survivors: Dr. Aris Fen, a brilliant xenobiologist, and her husband, a nervous engineer named Klytus who was trying to re-route power through a gelatinous cube.

And then, the cloud spat them out.

Ed grabbed Dr. Fen by the shoulders. “How do we get it to spit us out?”

“It’s… eating,” said Chief of Security Alara Kitan, her brow furrowed. “It’s not attacking. It’s just really, really hungry.”