Page 181 of Project Hail Mary

With the ships linked, I can’t have theHail Mary’s centrifuge going, which means we’re back to zero g. But now that we’re just breeding Taumoeba in tanks, I can live without my gravity-dependent lab equipment for now.

Over the weeks, we watched generation after generation of Taumoeba become more and more nitrogen-resistant. And now, today, we finally have Taumoeba-35: a strain of Taumoeba that can survive 3.5 percent nitrogen in a 0.02 atmosphere overall air pressure—the same situation found on Venus.

“You. Be happy now,”Rocky says from his workbench.

“I am, I am,” I say. “But we need to get to 8 percent so it can survive on Threeworld. Until then, we’re not done.”

“Yes yes yes. But this is moment. Important moment.”

“Yeah.” I smile.

He fiddles with some kind of new gadget. He’s always working on one thing or another.“Now you make exact Venus atmosphere in one tank and do detailed tests on Taumoeba-35, question?”

“No,” I say. “We’ll keep going until we get to Taumoeba-80. It should work on Venus and Threeworld. I’ll test everything then.”

“Understand.”

I turn to face his side of the room. The whole “watching me sleep” thing doesn’t creep me out anymore. If anything, it’s comforting. “What are you working on?”

The device is clamped to his workbench to keep it from drifting away. He works on it from many angles with many hands holding many tools. “This is Earth electricity unit.”

“You’re making a power converter?”

“Yes. Convert from Eridian prime-sequence electric amplitude to inefficient Earth direct-current system.”

“Prime sequence?”

“Would take long time to explain.”

I make a mental note to ask about it later. “Okay. What will you use that for?”

He puts down two tools and picks up three more.“If all plans work, we make good Taumoeba. I give you fuel. You go Earth and I go Erid. We say goodbye.”

“Yeah, I guess,” I mumble. I should be happier about surviving a suicide mission, returning home a hero, and saving my entire species. But saying goodbye to Rocky forever will be hard. I put it out of my mind.

“You have many portable thinking machines. I ask favor: You give one to me as gift, question?”

“A laptop? You want a laptop? Sure, I have a bunch of them.”

“Good good. And thinking machine have information, question? Science information from Earth, question?”

Ah, of course. I’m an advanced alien race with knowledge far beyond Eridian science. I think the laptops have terabyte drives. I could copy the entire contents of Wikipedia over to him.

“Yes. I can do that. But I don’t think a laptop will work in Eridian air. Too hot.”

He points to the device.“This is just one part of thinking-machine life-support system. System will give power, keep Earth temperature, Earth air inside. Many redundant backups. Make sure thinking machine not break. If break, no Eridian can fix.”

“Ah, I see. How will you read the output?”

“Camera inside convert from Earth light readout to Eridian texture readout. Like camera in control room. Before we leave, you explain written language tome.”

He certainly knows enough English to look up any words he doesn’t know. “Yeah, sure. Our written language is easy. Kind of easy. There are only twenty-six letters, but many strange ways to say them. Well, I guess there are actually fifty-two symbols because capital letters look different even though they’re pronounced the same. Oh, and then there’s punctuation…”

“Our scholars will solve. You just get me started.”

“Yes. I’ll do that,” I say. “I want a gift from you too: xenonite. Solid form and liquid pre-xenonite form. Earth scientists will want that.”

“Yes, I give.”