Page 64 of Project Hail Mary

And I think it’s pretty obvious how I should respond.

I thoroughly searched the lab a few days ago. There’s an electronics kit in one of the drawers. The trick is remembering which one.

I don’t remember, of course. It takes me a while of searching and not-quite swearing while I do, but I eventually find it.

I don’t have any xenonite (that’s what I’m calling this weird alien compound, and no one can stop me). But I do have solder and a soldering iron. I break off a little piece of solder, melt one end, and stick it to the Tau Ceti sphere. It sticks pretty well, which is a relief. You never know with xenonite.

I check, double-check, and triple-check to make sure I correctly identify which one of the little stars in the model is Sol (Earth’s sun). I solder the other side of the wire to Sol.

I search the lab until I find some hard paraffin. With some poking, open flames, and mild swearing, I’m able to make a really poor approximation of the Petrova-line icon they sent me. I smush it onto Sol in the model. It looks all right. At least, good enough that they should get the idea.

I take a look. The sleek, thin lines of the xenonite whiskers are ruined by my crooked, blob-ended solder addition and crappy wax model. It’s like someone added a crayon drawing into the corner of a Da Vinci, but it will have to do.

I try to screw the top and bottom of the doohickey back together. They refuse to mate. I try again. It still doesn’t work. I remember that Eridians use left-handed threading in their screws. So I do what, to me, is an unscrewing motion. The two pieces connect perfectly.

Time to throw it back to them. Politely.

Except I can’t. Not with the ship spinning around like this. If I tried to step out of the airlock, I’d go flying off into space.

I grab the doohickey and climb up to the control room. I strap myself into the chair and order the ship to spin down.

Like last time, I feel the room tilt, though this time it tilts the other way. And again, I know it’s not actually tilting, it’s my perception of the lateral acceleration being applied, but whatever.

I feel the gravity decrease and the tilt of the room reduce until I’m back in zero g again. This time there’s no disorientation. I guess my lizard brain has made its peace with the fact that gravity comes and goes. The operation ends with a final “clunk” as the reoriented crew compartment seats into the rear half of the ship.

I get back in the EVA suit, grab the doohickey, and head out into space once again. I don’t need to work my way across the hull with tethers this time. I just clip my tether in the airlock.

TheBlip-Ahas stopped spinning—probably did it when theHail Marystopped. And it’s still 217 meters away.

I don’t have to be Joe Montana to make this pass. I just need to set the doohickey in motion toward theBlip-A.It’s over a hundred meters across. I should be able to hit it.

I give the doohickey a shove. It floats away from me at a reasonable speed. Maybe 2meters per second—roughly a jogging pace. This is communication of a sort too. I’m telling my new friends that I can handle slightly faster deliveries.

The doohickey floats off toward the Eridian ship and I head back into mine.

“Okay, guys,” I say. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend. If Astrophage is your enemy, I’m your friend.”

—

I watch the Telescope screen. Occasionally I look away. Sometimes I play Klondike solitaire on the Nav panel. But I never go more than a few seconds without checking the telescope. A thick pair of gloves, harvested from the lab earlier, tries to float away. I grab them and wedge them behind the pilot’s seat.

It’s been two hours and my alien friends haven’t had anything to say. Are they waiting for me to say something else? I just told them what star I was from. It’s their turn to say something, right?

Do they even have a concept of taking turns? Or is that a purely human thing?

What if Eridians have a life-span of 2 million years and waiting a century to reply is considered polite?

How am I going to get rid of this red 7 on the rightmost pile? I don’t have any black 8s in my deck and—

Movement!

I spin to the Telescope screen so fast my legs float out into the middle of the control room. There’s another cylinder coming my way. I guess the many-armed hull-robot thing threw it just a moment ago. I check the Radar screen. Blip-B is plugging along at over a meter per second. I only have a few minutes to suit up!

I get back into the EVA suit and cycle the airlock. Once I open the outer door, I spot the cylinder tumbling end-over-end. Might be the same one as before, might be new. And this time, it’s headed straight for the airlock. I guess they saw that’s where I exited and reentered the ship and decided to make things easier for me.

Very considerate of them.

They’re accurate too. A minute later, the cylinder floats right through the center of the open hatchway. I catch it. I wave to theBlip-Aand close the hatch. They probably don’t know what a wave is, but I felt compelled to do it.