Page 137 of Project Hail Mary

“Ship no touch air,”Rocky says.“Why is ship hot, question?”

“It’s bouncing our IR back at us. And it’s so hot now it emits its own IR. We’re getting cooked.”

“You ship is Astrophage-cooled, question?”

“Yes. Astrophage cools ship.”

Astrophage conduits run all along the hull for just such an occasion. Well, not the occasion of “blasting a planet’s atmosphere with so much IR light the results can melt steel” but the general situations where heat builds up. Mostly from the sun or Tau Ceti heating the ship up and the heat having nowhere to go.

“Astrophage absorb heat. We safe.”

“Agree. We safe. And we ready. Drop probe!”

“Drop probe!”He slams his claw on the Drop button.

I hear the scrape and clink of the spools sliding off the hull one at a time and falling toward the planet below. Twenty spools in all, each one drops and unwinds before the next is released. Our best effort at keeping the chain from getting tangled.

“Spool Six away…”Rocky reports.

The Life Support panel blinks its warning again. I mute it again. Astrophage lives on stars. I’m sure a little reflected IR light won’t be too much heat for it to handle.

“Spool Twelve away…”Rocky says.“Sampler signal good. Sampler detecting air now.”

“Good!” I say.

“Good good,”he says.“Spool Eighteen away…air density increase…”

With the external cameras offline, I can’t see any of what’s going on. But Rocky’s readings are right in line with our plan. Right now, the chain is unfurling as it falls. Our angled engines keep us in the sky, but nothing keeps the chain from falling straight down.

“Spool Twenty away. All spools released. Air density of sampler is almost Astrophage breeding ground level…”

I watch Rocky with bated breath.

“Sampler has closed! Seal is airtight, heater is on! Success success success!”

“Success!” I yell.

It’s working! It’s actually working! We have a sample of Adrian air from the Astrophage breeding zone! If there are any predators, theyhaveto be there, right? I hope so.

“Step two now.” I sigh. This is not going to be fun.

I unhitch my restraints and climb out of the chair. Adrian’s 1.4 g’s of gravity pulls me down at a 30-degree angle. The whole room feels tilted because, actually, itistilted. This isn’t engine thrust I’m feeling. It’s gravity.

One point four g’s isn’t too bad. Everything’s a bit harder, but not unreasonably so. I climb into the Orlan EVA suit. This is going to be difficult, to say the least. I have to go outside and do an EVA whilecompletely under the effects of gravity.

Needless to say, absolutely no part of the EVA suit, the airlock, or my training was remotely designed for this possibility. Who would have thought I would have to tromp around on the ship in full gravity? More than full, in fact?

Yet however much gravity there may be, there’s still no air. Worst of all worlds. But there’s no other way. I have to get the sample.

Right now, the sampler hangs at the end of a 10-kilometer chain, which is just dangling in the air. There’s no easy way for us to get it back to the ship.

When planning this all out, my first thought was to thrust away from the planet, then collect the sampler when we’re back to zerog. Problem is, there’s literally no way to do that without vaporizing the sampler. Any path I try to take to get the ship out of Adrian’s gravity—or even into a stable orbit—will mean using the spin drives. They’d push the ship along, which would make the chain and sample lag behind us and into the IR blast behind the ship. And then the sampler, everything in it, and the chain all become individual, very hot atoms.

The next idea I had was to make a huge spool that could winch up the chain. But Rocky informed me he’d never be able to make a spool big enough and strong enough to bring up the entire 10-kilometer length.

Rocky had a pretty clever thought: The sampler could climb the chain when it was done. But after some experimenting he ditched the idea. He said the risks just weren’t worth it.

So we have…this other plan.