Page 197 of Project Hail Mary

I still have Rocky’s AstroTorch. It’s the only thing on the ship that can get hot enough to dissociate xenonite. There’s plenty of xenonite to be had throughout the ship, thanks to Rocky’s tunnel system. I cut into the dormitory divider wall. I can only cut a little bit at a time, then I have to wait for life support to cool things back down. The AstroTorch makes alotof heat.

In the end, I have four rough circles, each a couple of inches across.

Yes,inches. When I’m stressed out, I revert to imperial units. It’s hard to be an American, okay?

I take them up to the lab and put together an experiment.

I smear some Astrophage on one of the circles and put another circle on top of it. Astrophage sandwich. Delicious, but only if you can get through the xenonite “bread.” I epoxy the two halves together. I make another identical sandwich.

And then I make another two similar sandwiches, but instead of xenonite, I use ordinary plastic discs that I cut from some mill stock.

Okay. Four hermetically sealed Astrophage samples—two with xenonite discs, two with plastic discs, all four of them sealed with epoxy.

I get two clear, sealable containers and set them up on the lab table. I put a xenonite sandwich and a plastic sandwich in each container.

In the sample cabinet, I have a few metal vials full of natural Taumoeba. The original stuff from Adrian, not the Taumoeba-82.5 version. I set the vial in one of the containers, open it up, and quickly seal the experiment. This is a very dangerous road to go down, but at least I know how to contain a Taumoeba outbreak if it happens. As long as I have nitrogen I’m okay.

I go to Breeder Tank One in the quarantine zone. I use a syringe to get the Taumoeba-infected air from the bin, then immediately flood the bin with nitrogen. I tape over the hole made by the syringe.

Back to the lab table, I close up the other container and use the syringe to inject the Taumoeba-82.5 in. Again, I seal that hole with tape.

I rest my chin in my hands and peer into the two boxes. “Okay, you sneaky little punks. Let’s see what you can do…”

It takes a couple of hours, but I finally see results. They’re exactly what I expected and the opposite of what I’d hoped.

I shake my head. “Dang it.”

The xenonite-covered Astrophage in the Taumoeba-82.5 experiment is gone. The plastic-covered Astrophage remains unchanged. Meanwhile in the other experiment, both Astrophage samples are unharmed.

What that means: The “control” samples (the plastic discs) prove Taumoeba can’t get through epoxy or plastic. But the xenonite samples tell a different story. Taumoeba-82.5 can work its way through xenonite, but natural Taumoeba can’t.

“I’m so stupid!” I smack myself on the head.

I thought I was oh so clever. All that time in the breeder tanks. Generation after generation of Taumoeba. I used evolution to my advantage, right? I made Taumoeba with nitrogen resistance! I’m so awesome! Let me know when I can pick up my Nobel Prize!

Ugh.

Yes, I made a strain of Taumoeba that could survive nitrogen. But evolution doesn’t care what I want. And it doesn’t do just one thing at a time. I bred up a bunch of Taumoeba that evolved to survive…in xenonite breeder tanks.

Sure, it has nitrogen resistance. But evolution has a sneaky way of working on a problem from every angle. So not only did they gain resistance to nitrogen, they figured out how to hide from nitrogen by sneaking into the xenonite itself! Why wouldn’t they?

Xenonite is a complicated chain of proteins and chemicals I have no hope of understanding. But I guess Taumoeba has a way to worm its way in. There’s a nitrogen apocalypse going on in the breeder farm. If you can get into the xenonite walls deep enough that the nitrogen can’t reach, you get to survive!

Taumoeba can’t get through ordinary plastic. It can’t get through epoxy resin. It can’t get through glass. It can’t get through metal. I’m not even sure if it could get through a ziplock bag. But thanks to me, Taumoeba-82.5 can get through xenonite.

I took a life-form I knew nothing about and used technology I didn’t understand to modify it. Ofcoursethere were unintended consequences. It was stupidly arrogant of me to assume I could predict everything.

I take a deep breath and let it out.

Okay, this isn’t the end of the world. In fact, it’s the opposite. This Taumoeba can permeate xenonite. No problem. I’ll store it in something else. It’s still nitrogen-resistant. It doesn’tneedxenonite to survive. I tested it thoroughly in my glass lab equipment back when we first isolated the strain. It’ll still do its thing on Venus and Threeworld. Everything’s fine.

I glance back at the breeder farms.

Yeah. Fine. I’ll make a big farm out of metal. It’s not hard. I have a mill and all the raw materials I need. And God knows I have time to spare. I’ll salvage the operational equipment from a farm Rocky made. Only the casing is xenonite. Everything else is metals and stuff. I don’t need to reinvent the wheel. I just need to put it on a different car.

“Yeah,” I reassure myself. “Yeah, this is okay.”

I just need to make a box that can maintain a Venusian atmosphere. All of the hard stuff is already done, thanks to Rocky.