Page 138 of Project Hail Mary

I grab a special winch Rocky designed and attach it to my suit’s tool belt.

“Be careful,”says Rocky.“You are friend now.”

“Thanks,” I say. “You are friend also.”

“Thank.”

I cycle the airlock and look outside.

—

This is a strange experience. Space is black. The planet is majestic below me. Everything looks like it should when in orbit. But there’s gravity.

A red glow from the planet peeks out around the edges of theHail Mary. I’m no dope—I oriented the ship to make sure it would shield me from the deadly heat bouncing up off the atmosphere.

The airlock door is “up.” I have to pull myself—and a hundred pounds of gear—up and through that opening. And I have to do it in 1.4 g.

It takes me a full five minutes. I grunt. I say a bunch of not-really-profane things, but I get it done. Soon I’m standing on top of my ship. One misstep and I’ll fall to my death. I wouldn’t have to wait long for it either. As soon as I fell below the ship, the engines would punch my ticket.

I attach a tether to the handrail at my feet. Will a zero-g tether save me if I fall? It’s not mountain-climbing gear. It wasn’t made for this. Better than nothing, I guess.

I walk along the hull toward the chain anchor point. It’s a large xenonite square that Rocky made. He explained in great detail how to adhere it to the hull. Looks like it did the job just fine. The chain is still attached.

I reach it and get down on my hands and knees. The gravity is absolutely brutal in this EVA suit. No part of this is how things are supposed to be.

I hook my (possibly worthless) tether to the nearest handrail and pull the winch from my tool belt.

The chain hangs away at a 30-degree angle and disappears into the planet below. It just goes so far away it’s too thin for me to perceive after a kilometer or so. But I know from Rocky’s readings it’s the full 10 kilometers down, with a sample container full of potential salvation for two entire planets full of people.

I wedge the winch between the chain and the anchor plate. The chain doesn’t budge—not even a millimeter. But that was expected. There’s just no way human muscle could move something that heavy.

I hook the winch to the anchor plate. The casing of the winch is xenonite, so the xenonite-to-xenonite connection should have plenty of strength for what comes next.

I smack the winch a couple of times just to make sure it’s properly seated. It is.

Then I press the activation button.

A gear pops out from the center of the winch, one cog catching a chain link through the center. The gear turns and drags the chain into the internal workings of the winch. Inside, it rotates the link 180 degrees, then slides it across its neighbor to release it.

When we made the chain, we did it with “trap” links that can connect without us having to seal each one. It’s extremely unlikely that random movement would separate the links. But the winch is deliberately designed to do just that.

Once the link is freed, the winch ejects it out the side and repeats the process for the next link.

“The winch works,” I say through my radio.

“Happy,”comes Rocky’s voice.

It’s simple, straightforward, elegant, and solves all the problems. The winch is powerful enough to lift the chain. It separates the links and lets them fall into the planet below. Having a long length of chain dangling down next to the one we’re pulling up would be a disaster. Imagine earbud wires getting tangled, then multiply that by 10 kilometers.

No, each link will take its own path to oblivion below and the rising chain will be unaffected.

“When winch get to link two hundred sixteen, you increase speed.”

“Yes.”

I have no idea how many links it’s done so far. But it’s plugging along nicely. Probably about two links per second. A safe, slow beginning. I watch for two minutes. That’s probably about right. “All good. At least two hundred sixteen links now.”

“Increase speed.”