Page 106 of Project Hail Mary

He gestures all over his carapace and arms.“Everywhere. Tiny receptors on outer shell. All report back to brain. Like touch.”

So his whole body is a microphone. His brain must be doing some serious processing. It has to know the exact position of the body, sense the time difference between sound hitting different parts of it…man, that’s interesting. But hey, my brain gives me an entire 3-D model of my surroundings just from two eyeballs. Sensory input is really impressive across the board.

“I can’t hear as well as you,” I say. “Without light, I can’t understand the room. I can hear you talk, but no more.”

He points to the divider.“This is wall.”

“This is a special wall. Light passes through this wall.”

“Amaze. I give you many choices for wall when first build. You choose this because light pass through, question?”

It seems like so long ago—back when the divider was a mosaic of hexagons of different textures and colors. I’d picked the clear one, of course.

“Yes. I chose this because light passes through.”

“Amaze. I gave choices for different????of sound. Never thought of light.”

I glance at the laptop to check what that mystery word was. I almost never have to look at the laptop now. Still, once in a while there’s a chord I just don’t remember. The computer reports that word was “qualities.” Okay, I can’t fault myself for not knowing it. That one doesn’t come up very often.

“Just good luck,” I say.

“Good luck,”he agrees. He makes a few more adjustments to the device, puts his tools back in his bandolier, then says,“I am done.”

“What is it?”

“Device keeps me alive in small room.”He looks happy. I think. He’s holding his carapace just a little higher than usual.“Wait.”

He disappears back into his ship, leaving the device behind. He returns with several plates of transparent xenonite. Each plate is a pentagon about a centimeter thick and a foot across. I hate myself for thinking in hybrid units like that. But that’s what my brain came up with.

“I make room now,”he says.

He assembles the pentagons edge to edge, using some kind of thick liquid glue from a tube to hold them together. Soon, he has two halves of a dodecahedron assembled. He holds them toward me proudly and places them together. “Room.”

The “room” is a geodesic sphere made of pentagons. The total diameter is about a meter. Easily big enough to contain Rocky.

“What’s the purpose of that room?” I ask.

“Room and device keep me alive in you ship.”

I raise my eyebrows. “You’re coming into my ship?”

“Want to see human technology. Is allowed, question?”

“Yes! Allowed! What do you want to see?”

“Everything! Human science better than Eridian science.”He points to the laptop floating beside me.“Machine that think. Eridians no have that.”He points to my toolkit.“Many machines there Eridians no have.”

“Yes. Come look at anything you want!” I point to the small airlock drawer in the divider wall. “How will you get it through that?”

“You leave tunnel. I make new divider wall. Bigger airlock.”

He pulls the completed device—which I now realize is a life-support system—onto his carapace and straps it on. It covers the radiator slits at the top of his carapace.

“Is that blocking your radiator? Isn’t that dangerous?”

“No. This make hot air into cold air,”he says.

Air conditioning. Not what I think of when I see a species that lives comfortably at over 200 degrees Celsius. But we all have our tolerances.