Page 69 of Project Hail Mary

“Ah.” Stratt nodded. “Tons of little spin drives. I like it. Keep up the good work.”

She headed to the stairwell.

I stared at Dimitri. “If you’d set off all two grams of that sample at once…”

He shrugged. “Fwoosh! We are vapor. All of us. Carrier too. Explosion would make small tsunami. But three hundred kilometers away from land, so is okay.”

He slapped me on the back. “And I would owe you drink in afterlife, yes?! Ha-ha-ha-ha!”

—

“Huh,” I say to myself. “So that’s how the spin drive works.”

I munch on my burrito.

So I guess I have a thousand of those (“A thousand and nine!” I hear Dimitri’s voice in my head). At least—that’s how many I started with. Some probably went kaput during the trip. There’s probably a panel on the Spin Drive console that’ll tell me the status of each little one.

The proximity alert interrupts my thoughts.

“Finally!”

I “drop” the burrito (it floats where I leave it) and launch myself up to the control room. The hatch from the dormitory to the lab doesn’t line up with the hatch from the lab to the control room, but there’s a diagonal line of travel that will send me through both if I do it just right.

I don’t get it right this time. I have to push off a lab wall en route. Still, I’m getting better at it.

I check the Radar panel and, sure enough, theBlip-Ais approaching! Not a cylinder this time. The whole ship is coming my way. Nice and slow. Maybe they’re going for a nonthreatening kind of approach? In any event, it’s almost here.

Looks like its hull has a new addition. In that diamond part that’s as big as the wholeHail Mary, there’s a cylindrical tube sticking straight up. The hull robot is sitting next to it, looking proud of itself. I may be anthropomorphizing a tad.

The tube looks like xenonite. Patchy gray and tan with grainlike lines running its length. Hard to tell from this angle, but it also looks to be hollow.

I think I know what comes next. If they follow the plan they indicated with the model, they’ll be putting the other end of it against my airlock.

How will they attach their tunnel? My airlock does have docking capability—probably for whatever ship brought me and my crewmates to theHail Mary—but I can’t expect Eridians to know the intricacies of a universal airlock.

TheBlip-Aedges ever closer. What if there’s a mistake? What if they miscalculate? What if they accidentally poke a hole in my hull? I’m all that stands between humanity and extinction. Will an alien math error doom my entire species?

I hustle to the airlock and pull on the EVA suit. I’m in there in record time. Better safe than sorry.

TheBlip-Ais so close now, the Telescope screen just shows a patch of mottled hull. I switch to the external cameras. My hull is littered with them. They’re all controlled from a window on the EVA panel. Always good to know where your astronaut is when giving them EVA instructions, I guess.

The tunnel is about 20 feet long. Or 7 meters. Man, being an American scientist sucks sometimes. You think in random, unpredictable units based on what situation you’re in.

The hull robot reaches out with some seriously telescoping arms. I had no idea it could do that. It extends well beyond the tunnel toward my airlock. Not creepy at all. Five ever-growing alien robot arms reaching for my front door. No cause for alarm.

Each arm’s three-fingered “hand” is holding…something. A curved bar with a flat plate attached on the ends. Like a coffee-mug handle. Three of the arms reach theHail Maryand stick the flat parts of their devices to the hull. Shortly after, the other two arms do the same. Then, all five retract, pulling theHail Marytoward the tunnel.

Okay. So those flat things are handles. How are they attached? Good question! My hull is smooth and made of nonmagnetic aluminum (why do I remember that all of a sudden?). The handles certainly aren’t connected by any mechanical means. Must be an adhesive.

And it all starts to make sense.

Of course they aren’t going to work out how the docking mechanism works. They’re going to glue one end of the tunnel to my ship. Why not? Much simpler.

My ship groans. It’s a 100,000-kilogram piece of equipment that was definitely not designed to be pulled along by its airlock. Will the hull put up with this?

I double-check the seals on my EVA suit.

The control room moves around me. It’s not fast—just a few centimeters per second. Hey, for small spaceship velocities I think in metric! Much better than “cubits per fortnight” or whatever.