Page 180 of Project Hail Mary

“Copy.”

Rocky and I each fall silent and stare at our respective screens. It took me a long time to notice the subtleties, but I can now tell when Rocky is paying attention to something specific. He tends to angle his carapace toward it and pivot ever so slightly back and forth. If I follow the line he’s pivoting on, that’s usually what he’s examining.

“Three…two…one…now!”

Right on cue, a few pixels on-screen blink white.

“Got it,” I say.

“I not notice.”

“It was dim. We must be far away. Hang on…” I switch to the Telescope screen and pan to where the flash came from. I sweep back and forth with small movements until I catch a slight discoloration in the blackness. Taulight reflecting off theBlip-A. “Yeah, we’re pretty far away.”

“Beetles have much fuel remaining. Is okay. Tell me angle change.”

I check the readouts at the bottom of the screen. All we have to do is align theHail Marywith the current telescope angle. “Rotate yaw plus 13.72 degrees. Rotate pitch minus 9.14 degrees.”

“Yaw plus one three mark seven two. Pitch minus nine mark one four.”He grabs the beetle controls from their holders and gets to work. By flicking on and off the beetles in sequence, he angles the ship toward theBlip-A.

I zero the telescope and zoom in to confirm. The difference between background space and the ship is so small as to be barely perceivable. But it’s there. “Angle correct.”

He focuses hard on his texture screen.“I no detect anything on-screen.”

“Light difference is very very small. Need human eyes to detect. Angle is good.”

“Understand. What is range, question?”

I switch to the Radar screen. Nothing. “Too far for my radar to see. At least ten thousand kilometers.”

“Accelerate to what velocity, question?”

“How about…three kilometers per second? Will get to theBlip-Ain an hour or so.”

“Three thousand meters per second. Standard acceleration rate is acceptable, question?”

“Yes. Fifteen meters per second per second.”

“Two hundred second thrust. Begin now.”

I brace for gravity.

We did it!

We actually did it!

I have Earth’s salvation in a little tank on the floor.

“Happy!”Rocky says.“Happy happy happy!”

I’m so giddy I might throw up. “Yes! But we’re not done yet.”

I strap myself into my bunk. A pillow tries to float away, but I snag it in time and wedge it under my head. I’m all wired up, but if I don’t go to sleep soon, Rocky will start hassling me. Sheesh—you almost ruin a missionone timeand all of a sudden you have an alien-enforced bedtime.

“Taumoeba-35!”Rocky says.“Took many many generations but finally success!”

It’s a weird feeling, scientific breakthroughs. There’s no Eureka moment. Just a slow, steady progression toward a goal. But man, when you get to that goal it feels good.

We linked the ships back up together weeks ago. Rocky was pretty stoked to have access to his much larger ship again. First thing he did was set up a tunnel directly from his portion of theHail Maryto theBlip-A. It meant another hole in my hull, but at this point I trust Rocky to do any engineering task. Heck, if he wanted to do open-heart surgery on me, I’d probably let him. The guy is amazing at this stuff.