Page 189 of Project Hail Mary

“Yeah, that’s time dilation for you. Weird stuff. But those are the correct values. I checked them four times. You’ll reach Erid in under three Earth years.”

“But Earth is almost same distance from Tau Ceti, and you will take four years, question?”

“I’llexperiencefour years, yes. Three years and nine months. Because time won’t be as compressed for me as it is for you.”

“You have explained before, but again…why, question?”

“Your ship accelerates faster than mine. You’ll be moving closer to the speed of light.”

He wiggles his carapace.“So complicated.”

I point toward his ship. “All the information about relativity is in the laptop. Have your scientists take a look.”

“Yes. They will be very pleased.”

“Not when they find out about quantum physics. Then they’ll be really annoyed.”

“Not understand.”

I laugh. “Don’t worry about it.”

We’re both quiet for a while.

“I guess this is it,” I say.

“It is time,”he says.“We go save homeworlds now.”

“Yeah.”

“You face is leaking.”

I wipe my eyes. “Human thing. Don’t worry about it.”

“Understand.”He pushes himself along to his airlock door. He opens it and pauses there.“Goodbye, friend Grace.”

I wave meekly. “Goodbye, friend Rocky.”

He disappears into his ship and closes the airlock door behind him. I return to theHail Mary. After a few minutes, theBlip-A’s hull robot detaches the tunnel.

We fly our ships nearly parallel but with a few degrees’ difference in course. This ensures neither of us vaporizes the other with the back blast from our Astrophage engines. Once we have a few thousand kilometers of separation, we can aim in any direction we want.

Hours later, I sit in the cockpit with my spin drives offline. I just want one last look. I watch the point of IR light with the Petrovascope. That’s Rocky, headed back to Erid.

“Godspeed, buddy,” I say.

I set course for Earth and fire up the spin drives.

I’m going home.

I sat in my cell, staring at the wall.

It wasn’t a dingy jail cell or anything. If anything, it looked kind of like a college dorm room. Painted brick walls, desk, chair, bed, en-suite bathroom, et cetera. But the door was steel and the windows were barred. I wasn’t going anywhere.

Why did the Baikonur launch facility have a jail cell handy? I don’t know. Ask the Russians.

That launch would be today. Soon, some muscular guards would come through that door along with a doctor. He’d inject me with something and that’d be the last time I’d see Earth.

Almost on cue, I heard the clink of the door being unlocked. A braver person might have seen that as an opportunity. Charge the door and maybe get past the guards. But I’d given up hope of escape long ago. What would I do? Run into the Kazakhstani desert and take my chances?