Polygraphene Hardening Obsequent Mass Expediator (or PHOME™) is the deep space recovery operative’s all-purpose problem-solver. Electrical fires, middle-of-the-night asteroid strike hull breaches, fatigued steel joists or disintegrating airlock doors–PHOME fixes them all in a flash.

Usually kept either pre-mixed or, for longer-term storage, in its stabler precursor form of two cocktails of chemicals, PHOME comes in consumable formats ranging from cannister cartridges for handheld PHOME throwers, to giant vats that can supply a network of PHOME hoses distributed throughout larger ships. It’s available in a variety of colours, but is most often seen in a bright pink. Craft like Thom’s REZQ vessel Angel Fish often have integral PHOME storage and distribution systems for both internal and external work. And certainly, one of various different types of portable, cartridge-fuelled PHOME throwers would be one of the essential tools that Thom brings with him on almost any REZQ job.

This cheap, useful, abundant chemical problem-solver brings its own different kind of cost, of course: it’s extremely neurotoxic whether inhaled or ingested, corrosive in its bonding properties, mutagenic, faintly radioactive, explosive if left to decay too long in its mixed state, has fumes that cause aggression in some creatures, and can react bizarrely and unpredictably when coming into contact with some substances (many of which are commonly found on spacecraft, such as Salient fuel waste). While the PHOME parent company has largely kept the information under wraps, long-term exposure can cause mutation, dementia, and several different forms of cancers.

And don’t, for the love of God, get it on you. It sets harder than Inconel 625. Get it in your eyes, and you’re gonna need new eyes. Probably a new skull.