Page 173 of Project Hail Mary

“What’s your plan?” I jerked a thumb at the soldier. “Hold me at gunpoint for four years during the trip?”

“You’ll be in a coma during the trip.”

I tried to dart past Meknikov, but he stopped me with arms of iron. He wasn’t rough about it. He was just monumentally stronger than I was. He held me by the shoulders and faced me toward Stratt.

“This is crazy!” I yelled. “Yáo will never go for this! He specifically said he doesn’t want anyone on his ship against their will!”

“Yeah, that was a curveball. He is annoyingly honorable,” Stratt said.

She picked up a checklist that she’d written in Dutch. “First, you’re to be held in a cell for the next few days until the launch. You’ll have no communication with anyone. Right before launch, you’ll be given a very strong sedative to knock you out and we’ll load you into the Soyuz.”

“Don’t you think Yáo will be a little suspicious about that?”

“I’ll explain to Commander Yáo and Specialist Ilyukhina that, due to limited astronaut training, you were worried that you’d panic during the launch so you elected to be unconscious for it. Once aboard theHail Mary, Yáo and Ilyukhina will secure you into your medical bed and start your coma procedure. They’ll take care of all the pre-launch prep from there. You’ll wake up at Tau Ceti.”

The first seeds of panic started to grow. This lunacy might actually work. “No! You can’t do that! I won’t do it! This is insane!”

She rubbed her eyes. “Believe it or not, Dr. Grace, I kind of like you. I don’t respect you very much, but I do think you’re a fundamentally good man.”

“Easy for you to say when you’re not the one being murdered! You’remurderingme!” Tears rolled down my face. “I don’t want to die! Don’t send me off to die! Please!”

She looked pained. “I don’t like this any more than you do, Dr.Grace. If it’s any consolation, you’ll be hailed as a hero. If Earth survives this, there’ll be statues of you all over the place.”

“I won’t do it!” I choked on bile. “I’ll sabotage the mission! You kill me?! Fine! I’ll kill your mission! I’ll scuttle the ship!”

She shook her head. “No, you won’t. That’s a bluff. Like I said, you’re fundamentally a good man. When you wake up, you’ll be good and angry. I’m sure Yáo and Ilyukhina will be pretty mad about what I did to you too. But in the end, you three will be out there and you’ll do your job. Because humanity depends on it. I’m ninety-nine percent sure you’ll do the right thing.”

“Try me!” I screamed. “Go on! Try me! See what happens!”

“But I can’t rely on ninety-nine percent, can I?” She glanced at her paper again. “I always assumed the American CIA would have the best interrogation drugs. But did you know it’s actually the French? It’s true. Their DGSE has perfected a drug that causes retrograde amnesia that lasts for long periods of time. Not just hours or days, but weeks. They used it during various anti-terror operations. It can be handy for a suspect to forget he was ever interrogated.”

I stared at her in horror. My throat hurt from yelling.

“Your med bed will give you a nice dose of it before you wake up. You and your crewmates will just assume it’s a side effect of the coma. Yáo and Ilyukhina will explain the mission to you and you’ll roll right into getting to work. The French assure me the drug doesn’t erase trained skills, language, or anything like that. By the time your amnesia wears off, you guys might have already sent the beetles back. And if not, my guess is you’ll be too far invested in the project to give up.”

She nodded to Meknikov. He dragged me out the door and frog-walked me down the path.

I craned my neck back toward the door and screamed, “You can’t do this!”

“Just think of the kids, Grace,” she said from the doorway. “All those kids you’ll be saving. Think of them.”

Oh.

Okay.

I see how it is.

I’m not some intrepid explorer who nobly sacrificed his life to save Earth. I’m a terrified man who had to be literally dragged kicking and screaming onto the mission.

I’m a coward.

All that came to me in a flash. I sit on the stool and stare at the lab table. I went from nearly hysterical to…this. This is worse. I’m numb.

I’m a coward.

I’ve known for a while that I’m not the best hope for saving mankind. I’m just a guy with the genes to survive a coma. I made my peace with that a while ago.

But I didn’t know I was a coward.