Page 145 of Project Hail Mary

“Help!” I wheeze.

“Multiple injuries,” says the computer. “Excessive eye mucus. Blood around the mouth, second-degree burns. Breathing distress. Triage result: intubate.”

The mechanical arms, which thankfully don’t seem to have any problem with being upside down, grab me and something is shoved violently down my throat. I feel a poke on my good arm.

“IV fluids and sedation,” the computer reports.

And then I’m out like a light.

—

I wake up covered in medical equipment and pain.

There’s an oxygen mask on my face. My right arm has an IV and my left arm is bandaged from wrist to shoulder. It hurts like heck.

Everything else hurts too. Especially my eyes.

But at least I can see. That’s good.

“Computer,” I say with a raspy voice. “How long have I been asleep?”

“Unconsciousness lasted six hours, seventeen minutes.”

I take a deep breath. My lungs feel like they’re coated in tar. Probably phlegm or some other gunk. I look over to Rocky’s area. He’s right where I left him in the airlock.

How can I tell if an Eridian is dead? When Rocky sleeps all movement stops. But that’s also presumably what happens when an Eridian dies.

I spot a pulse-ox monitor on my right index finger.

“Compu—” I cough. “Computer: What is my blood oxygen content?”

“Ninety-one percent.”

“It’ll have to do.” I take the mask off and sit up in bed. My bandaged arm stings with every movement. I pull the various things off of my body.

I open and close my left hand. It’s working. The muscles are only a little bit sore.

I got hit with a quick blast of very hot, very high-pressure ammonia. Most likely, I have chemical burns in my lungs and on my eyes. And probably a physical burn on my arm. My left side took the brunt of the blast.

Twenty-nine atmospheres of pressure at 210 degrees Celsius (over 400 degrees Fahrenheit!). That must be what a grenade feels like. Side note: With no one manning the helm, it’s pure luck we didn’t crash into the planet.

The ship is either in a stable orbit or we escaped Adrian’s gravity entirely. I shake my head. It’s truly ridiculous how much power I have sitting in the fuel bay. To not even know if I’m still near aplanet…wow.

I’m lucky to be alive. There’s no other way to put it. Anything I do beyond that moment is a gift from the universe to me. I step off the bed and stand in front of the airlock. Gravity is still at one-half g and everything is still upside down.

What can I do for Rocky?

I sit on the floor opposite his body. I put my hand on the airlock wall. That feels too melodramatic, so I pull it back. Okay, I know the very basics of Eridian biology. That doesn’t make me a doctor.

I grab a tablet and swipe through various documents I’ve made. I don’t remember everything he told me, but at least I took copious notes.

When severely wounded, an Eridian body will shut down so it can try to work on everything at once. I hope Rocky’s little cells are doing their thing in there. And I hope they know how to fix damage done by: (1) dropping air pressure to one twenty-ninth what he evolved to live in, (2) being suddenly exposed to a bunch of oxygen, and (3) being almost 200 degrees colder than his body expects.

I shake off the worry and return to my notes.

“Ah, here!” I say.

There’s the information I need: Those capillaries in his carapace radiator are made of deoxidized metal alloys. The ambient circulatory system pumps his mercury-based blood through those vessels and air passes over them. In Erid’s oxygen-free atmosphere, this makes perfect sense. In ours, it makes a perfect tinderbox.