"Hmm. What if it... Escapes, or something? Letting them hatch by themselves doesn't make them more powerful or angrier as far as you can tell?"

"No. Some puella magi deliberately let witches go on a bit and spawn a few familiars to ensure their grief seed supply and they're just, you know, witches. I mean, I sometimes let witches go, but that's because I'm a jaded time-traveler, I draw a distinction here."

"If you drop a witch on the moon, I'm never getting within a hundred thousand miles of it again. From what you've told me so far, they are not something I want in my life. But fine."

"I'm not picky about the site of the experiment. Put it on some Jovian moon that doesn't have the fuel you want."

"It'll take a week to get to Jupiter and back. Four days for Mars. Will it hold off hatching that long? And no, I'm being dramatic, leaving it on the moon isn't any worse than somewhere else. They're all over Earth already, after all."

"It varies how long they take to hatch. If I hold off the aliens it depends on the grief seed. I only have limited data - the experimental ingredients are tedious to come by, the process is finicky to control, and I took a while to be cavalier about letting witches exist."

"If it hatches on board my ship, can you immediately kill it?"

"Yeah."

"Then there's no risk in letting you on board for more than a day or two. I would have dropped you off after a visit to the moon, otherwise. Just know that I don't usually take passengers. You have much more sense than the last batch I tolerated."

"Thank you. I do try."

"Right. I'll program the reshaper for suit parts. Please feed it pencil-lumps until it beeps at you. Heh, I was supposed to have actually sold it to you, it was part of the original deal. So use it for something else if you want."

"I mean, I couldn't keep it, what I really wanted was access to it so I could concoct whatever popped into my head, and your assistance with the head-popping and the concoction are both very appreciated." She feeds it pencil.

Soon, the reshaper is fed rubber and small amounts of titanium and silver. "Titanium is an excellent structural component, and silver is a good substrate for electronics. From what I can tell, your planet mostly uses copper and silicon, but my tech works on different principles."

"Like, different underlying physics or just different engineering conventions? I think we use copper instead of, like, gold, because it's cheap."

"Different underlying physics." He starts to explain them. It could take a while.

Well, it's interesting, and she takes notes.

"I'll get you some parts and electronics tools, copy a bar of that purified silver and you can make your own electronics next reset. Oh, the shaper's done." He moves parts around and applies the joiner. The suit quickly takes shape. "I've got oxygen tanks in the airlock, you'll want to dip one of those too."

Dip!

"I could try to cram a full-size life support system into a pressure suit, but it would make me look like one of your planet's astronauts. Say, could you recommend me a local book? Fiction, don't care what genre. I try to read at least one from every dimension I visit."

"Mm - well, the generally agreed-upon greatest master of the English language was Shakespeare but I'm having trouble picking a single play."

"If I reminded you of a certain character that would be the obvious choice. Shall I pick randomly from a full list of his work, then?"

"Mmm, go with Midsummer Night's Dream - you don't remind me of any characters, it's just one of the better ones, there's a range."

"I'll be reading that, then. Scan's almost done, I really don't think there will be any fuel on what's left of Earth, but it's worth being thorough. You want me to warn you before I set out for the Moon? The trip there will take about five hours."