Page 108 of Project Hail Mary

“So…do I carry you around? Is that the plan?”

“Yes. Carry. Thank.”

I gingerly grab the ball, worried it might be hot. But it isn’t. Among other things, xenonite is an excellent insulator. I pull him through and into the ship.

Rocky isheavy. Much heavier than I thought he would be. If there were gravity, I probably wouldn’t be able to lift him at all. As it is, he has a lot of inertia. It takes a lot of oomph to pull him along. It’s like pushing a motorcycle in neutral. Seriously—he’s as heavy as a motorcycle.

I shouldn’t be surprised. He told me all about his biology and how it uses metals. Heck, his blood is mercury. Of course he’s heavy.

“You are very heavy,” I say. I hope he doesn’t take that to meanHey, fatty! Go on a diet!

“My mass is one hundred sixty-eight kilograms,”he says.

Rocky weighs over 300 pounds!

“Wow,” I say. “You weigh a lot more than me.”

“What is you mass, question?”

“Maybe eighty kilograms.”

“Humans have very small mass!”he says.

“I’m mostly water,” I say. “Anyway. This is the control room. I operate the ship from here.”

“Understand.”

I push him ahead of me down the tunnel to the lab. He skitters around within his ball. He tends to shift around when he’s looking at something new. I think it helps him get a better “view” of things with his sonar. Kind of like a dog tilting its head to get more information about a sound.

“This is my lab,” I say. “All the science happens here.”

“Good good good room!”he squeals. His voice is a full octave higher than normal.“Want to understand all!”

“I’ll answer any questions you have,” I say.

“Later. More rooms!”

“More rooms!” I say dramatically.

I push him along into the dormitory. I give us a very slow velocity so he can take it all in from the center of the room. “I sleep here. Well, I used to. Then you made me sleep in the tunnel.”

“You sleep alone, question?”

“Yes.”

“I also sleep alone many times. Sad sad sad.”

He just doesn’t get it. A fear of sleeping alone is probably hardwired in his brain. Interesting…that might have been the beginning of their pack instinct. And a pack instinct is required for a species to become intelligent. That weird (to me) sleep pattern could be the reason I’m talking to Rocky right now!

Yeah, that was unscientific. There are probably a thousand things that led to them being sapient and stuff. The sleep thing is likely just one part of it. But hey, I’m a scientist. I have to come up with theories!

I open a panel to the storage area and push his ball partially inside. “This is a small room for storage.”

“Understand.”

I pull him back out. “That’s all the rooms. My ship is much smaller than yours.”

“You ship has much science!”he says.“Show me things in science room, question?”