Page 53 of Project Hail Mary

Okay, one thing at a time. What if this is another ship from Earth? One I don’t remember? Heck, it took me a few days to remember my name. Maybe Earth sent multiple ships with different designs? Like, for redundancy or to increase the odds that at least one of them works. Maybe that ship is thePraise Allahor theBlessings of Vishnuor something.

I look all around the control room. There are screens and controls for everything, but there’s nothing for a radio. The EVA panel has some radio controls, but that’s obviously just for talking to crewmates when they’re outside.

If they’d sent multiple ships, surely they would have had some radio system so we could talk to each other.

Also, that ship…it’s insane.

I cycle through the navigation console screens until I find the Radar panel. I’d noticed it earlier, but didn’t think much of it. I assume it’s there so I can get near asteroids or other objects and not collide with them.

After a few halting attempts, I manage to turn it on. It immediately spots the other ship and sounds an alarm. The shrill noise hurts my ears.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” I say. I frantically scan the panel until I see a button labeled “Mute Proximity Alert.” I press it and the noise stops.

I scan the rest of the screen. There’s a lot of data here, all in a window titled “BLIP-A.” I guess if there were multiple contacts I’d get multiple windows. Whatever. It’s all just raw numbers about the reading. Nothing useful like an isometricStar Trekscan or anything.

“Velocity” is zero. They have matched my velocity exactly. That can’t be a coincidence.

“Range” is 217 meters. I’m assuming that’s the distance to the closest part of the other ship. Or maybe the average. No, it would be the closest part. The point of this system is probably to avoid collisions.

Speaking of collisions—217 meters is a ridiculously small distance compared to the size of a solar system. There’s no way this is a coincidence. That ship positioned itself here on purpose because I’m here.

Another reading, “Angular width,” is 35.44 degrees. Okay, some basic math should handle this.

I bring up the Utility panel on the main screen and launch the calculator app. Something 217 meters away is occupying 35.44 degrees of the view. Presuming the radar can see in all 360 degrees (it would be a pretty cruddy radar if it couldn’t)…I type some numbers into the calculator to do an ARCTAN operation, and:

The ship is 139 meters long. Roughly.

I bring the Astrophage panel up on another screen. The little map there shows that theHail Maryis just 47 meters long. So yeah. The alien ship is three times the size of mine. There’s just no way Earth sent something that big.

And the shape. What is up with that shape? I turn my attention back to the Petrovascope (which is now just acting as a camera).

The center of the ship is diamond-shaped—a rhombus. Well, I guess it’s an octahedron, really. Looks like it has eight faces, each triangular. That part alone is about the size of my ship.

The diamond is connected by three thick rods (I don’t know what else to call them) to a wide trapezoidal base. That looks like it might be the rear. And in front of the diamond is a narrow stalk (just making up terms at this point) that has four flat panels attached parallel to the main ship axis. Maybe solar panels? The stalk continues forward to a pyramid-shaped nose cone. Nose pyramid, I guess.

Every part of the hull is flat. Even the “rods” have flat faces.

Why would anyone do that? Flat panels are a terrible idea. I don’t know anything about who made this, but presumably they need some kind of atmosphere inside, right? Huge, flat panels areawfulat that.

Maybe this is just aprobeand not an actual ship. Maybe there’s no atmosphere inside because there’s nothing alive inside. I might be looking at an alien artifact instead of a ship.

Still the most exciting moment in human history.

So it’s Astrophage-powered. That was the steady Petrova-frequency glow I saw earlier. Interesting that they have the same propulsion tech as we do. But considering it’s the best energy-storage medium possible, that’s not a surprise. When European mariners first came across Asian mariners, no one was surprised they both used sails.

But the “why.” That’s what gets me. Some entity aboard (either a computer or a crew) decided to come to my ship. How did they even know I was here?

Same way I saw them, I guess. The massive IR light coming off my engines. And since the rear of my ship was pointed at Tau Ceti, that means I was shining a 540-trillion-watt flashlight in their direction. Depending on where they were at the time, I might have appeared even brighter than Tau Ceti itself. At least, in the Petrova frequency.

So they can see the Petrova frequency. And so can I.

I flip through the Spin Drive console screens until I find one labeled “Manual Control.” When I select it, a warning dialog pops up:

MANUAL CONTROL IS RECOMMENDED ONLY FOR EMERGENCIES. ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO ENTER MANUAL CONTROL MODE?

I tap “Yes.”

It brings up another dialog.