Page 73 of Project Hail Mary

Hmm. A robot. Why a robot? They had a living being there a few minutes ago—my boy Rocky. Why replace him with a robot?

Vacuum.

They probably took all the air out of the tunnel. They have a sample of my hull—they know it’s made of aluminum and roughly how thick it is. Maybe they aren’t sure if my ship can handle outside pressure. Or maybe their atmosphere reacts badly with aluminum.

So they keep the tunnel a vacuum, which means they have to do work with a robot.

I feel like Sherlock Holmes. All I saw was “nothing,” and I drew a bunch of conclusions! Conclusions that are wildly speculative and with nothing to prove them, but conclusions!

I could get another lamp—the lab has a few more. I could shine it in there to see what Robo-Rocky is doing. But I’ll know soon enough. And I don’t want to be in some other part of the ship if something interesting happens.

Just as I’m thinking that, something interesting happens.

Knock-knock-knock.

No, that’s not creepy at all. Being in a spaceship twelve light-years from home and having someone knock on the door is totally normal.

Okay, now Ineedanother lamp. I pinball down to the lab to grab another one, then back up to the control room. I cycle the airlock without bothering to put on the EVA suit. I turn the manual vent valves on both doors of the airlock to repressurize the tunnel. It works just like I expect. There’s still a good seal out there.

I open the outer door and float in, lamp in hand.

The hex wall is gone—it’s been replaced by a solid wall of clear material. And on the other side of that wall is Rocky.

He’s a spider. A big-assed spider.

I turn to flee. But my rational brain takes over.

“Easy…easy…they’re friendly,” I say to myself. I turn back and take in the scene.

Rocky is smaller than a human. He’s about the size of a Labrador. He has five legs radiating out from a central carapace-looking thing. The carapace, which is roughly a pentagon, is 18 inches across and half as thick. I don’t see eyes or a face anywhere.

Each leg has a joint in the middle—I’ll call it an elbow. Each leg (or should I say arm?) ends in a hand. So he’s got five hands. Each hand has those triangular fingers I got a good look at last time. Looks like all five hands are the same. I don’t see any “front” or “back” to him. He appears to be pentagonally symmetrical.

He wears clothing. The legs are bare, showing the rocklike skin, but there’s cloth on the carapace. Sort of like a shirt with five armholes. I don’t know what the shirt is made of but it looks thicker than typical human clothing. It’s a dull greenish-brown, and inconsistently shaded.

The top of the shirt has a large open hole. Like where the neck goes on a human’s T-shirt. That hole is smaller than the carapace. So he must have to put that shirt on by pulling it downward and sliding the arms through their respective holes. Again, like a human’s shirt.

But there’s no neck or head to go through that hole on top. Just a hard-looking rocky pentagon that sticks up a little bit from the crusty skin.

On his side of the tunnel, he has handles and latticework on the walls. He casually hangs on to a couple of bars with two of his hands. I guess when you have five hands, zero g isn’t that big a deal. Just allocate a hand or two for keeping in one place and use the other three to do stuff.

For me, the tunnel is kind of small. But for him it’s absolutely spacious.

He waves to me with a free arm. He knows one human greeting and by golly he plans to use it.

I wave back. He waves again. I shake my head. No more waving.

He pivots his “shoulders” to rotate his carapace back and forth. He “shook his head” inasmuch as he could. I wonder how we’re going to break out of this game of “Eridian See Eridian Do,” but he takes care of that for me.

He taps the clear wall three times with a finger, then keeps the finger extended. Is he…pointing?

I follow the line and wow, there’s stuff in the tunnel with me! They left me a present!

I can be forgiven for not noticing. Seeing an alien kind of distracted me from the small collection of objects on the tunnel wall.

“All right,” I say. “Let’s see what you left me.”

“?????,” says Rocky.