Page 28 of Project Hail Mary

Stratt craned her neck to watch me. “So what’s this you’re doing now?”

“It’s the atomic-emission spectroscope,” I said. “I told you about it earlier—it sends x-rays into a sample to excite the atoms, then watches the wavelengths that come back. Didn’t work at all when I tried it on the live Astrophage, but now that the magic light-stopping properties are gone, things should work like normal.”

The machine beeped.

“All right! Here we go! Time to find out what chemicals are in a life-form that doesn’t use water!” I read the LCD screen. It showed all the peaks and the elements they represented. I stared at the screen silently.

“Well?” Stratt said. “Well?!”

“Um. There’s carbon and nitrogen…but the vast majority of the sample is hydrogen and oxygen.” I sighed and plopped down in the chair next to the machine. “The ratio of hydrogen to oxygen is two to one.”

“What’s wrong?” she asked. “What does that mean?”

“It’s water. Astrophage is mostly water.”

Her mouth fell open. “How? How can something that exists on the surface of the sun have water?”

I shrugged. “Probably because it maintains its internal temperature at 96.415 degrees Celsius no matter what’s going on outside.”

“What does this all mean?” she asked.

I put my head in my hands. “It means every scientific paper I ever wrote is wrong.”

—

Well. That’s a kick in the pants.

But I wasn’t happy in that lab anyway. And they must have brought in smarter people than me, because here I am: at another star in a ship powered by Astrophage.

So why am I the one out here? All I did was prove that my lifelong belief was wrong.

I guess I’ll remember that part later. For now, I want to know what star that is. And why we built a ship to bring people here.

All important things, to be sure. But right now, there’s a whole area of the ship that I haven’t explored yet.

Storage.

Maybe I can find something other than a makeshift toga to wear.

I climb down the ladder to the lab, and then farther downward into the dormitory.

My friends are still there. Still dead. I try not to look at them.

I scan the floor for any hint of an access panel. Nothing. So I get down on my hands and knees and crawl around. Finally, I spot it—a very thin seam marking a square directly under my male crewmate’s bunk. I can’t even wedge my fingernail into the seam it’s so thin.

There were all manner of tools in the lab. I’m sure there’s a flathead screwdriver I could use to pry this open. Or…

“Hey computer! Open this access panel.”

“Specify aperture to open.”

I point to the panel. “This. This thing. Open it.”

“Specify aperture to open.”

“Uh…open aperture to supply room.”

“Unsealing supply room,” says the computer.