Page 107 of Project Hail Mary

He seals the globe around himself with glue.“I test.”

He just floats there for a minute. Then, he says,“Works! Happy!”

“Great!” I say. “How does it work, though? Where does the heat go?”

“Easy,”he says. He taps one small part of the device.“Astrophage here. Astrophage take all heat hotter than ninety-six degrees.”

Ah, right. To humans, Astrophage is hot. To Eridians, it’s quite cold. And it’s the perfect air-conditioning medium. All Rocky has to do is run the air over some Astrophage-filled cooling fins or something.

“Clever,” I say.

“Thank. You leave now. I make large airlock for tunnel.”

“Yes yes yes!” I say.

I collect all my belongings in the tunnel, including the mattress clamped to the wall, and stuff them into the control room, then go into the control room myself and seal both airlock doors.

I spend the next hour tidying up. I wasn’t expecting company.

It’s been a few hours. But I just have to know. How does he modify the tunnel?

He needs massive atmospheric pressure to stay alive. My hull can’t handle that. And he can’t handle being in a vacuum. So how does he make modifications?

I hear clinks and clanks from the other side of the airlock. This time I’m going to find out!

I enter the airlock and look through the porthole. TheBlip-A’s hull robot has removed the old tunnel and is installing a new one.

Oh. Well. That’s anticlimactic.

The old tunnel drifts off into space—its use is at an end, apparently. The robot places the new tunnel in position and administers xenonite glue along the edge of theBlip-A’s hull.

How did Eridians pilot a ship that traveled near the speed of light without using computers? Dead reckoning? They’re pretty good at doing math in their heads. Maybe they never needed to invent computers. But still. No matter how good they are at math, there are limits.

The clunking stops. I peek out the window again. The tunnel has been fully installed.

It looks like the previous tunnel, except it has a much larger airlock section. Pretty much the entire divider wall is a cabinet large enough to hold Rocky with room to spare. It is not, however, large enough to hold me. I guess I won’t be visiting theBlip-Aanytime soon.

“Hmph,” I say. I try not to let it bother me, but come on.Hegets to see an alien spaceship. How comeIdon’t get to see one?

Rocky’s side of the tunnel no longer has the network of gripping bars. Instead, there is a metal stripe running along the long axis of the tunnel. It extends into the divider airlock and further into my side of the tunnel. It leads right up to my airlock door.

Opposite the metal stripe is what looks like a pipe. It’s made of the same drab xenonite browns and tans that the tunnel wall is made of. And it’s square. It also runs the long axis of the tunnel.

With awhoosh, Rocky’s side of the tunnel fills with fog. Then a secondwhooshfills my side. That’s what the pipe was for, I guess. Delivering the appropriate atmosphere to both sides. I’m glad Rocky has a supply of oxygen to work with.

TheBlip-Adoor opens, and Rocky emerges, encased in his geodesic ball. He wears something like overalls with a bandolier across the bottom of his carapace. The AC unit is on his back. Two of his hands hold metal blocks. The other three are free. One of them waves to me. I wave back.

The spaceball (what else should I call it?) floats into the airlock and then sticks to the metal plate.

“What?” I say. “How…”

Then I see it. The ball didn’t magically move. Those blocks Rocky is holding are magnets. Fairly powerful ones, I guess. And the metal strip is obviously magnetic. Probably iron. He rolls the ball along the metal line and into the divider airlock. He manipulates metal controls through the xenonite shell with his magnets. It’s mesmerizing to watch.

After some hissing and the sound of pumps, he repels a plate away, which opens up the door on my side of the airlock. From there, he rolls along the metal line to my door. I open it.

“Hello!”

“Hello!”