Page 82 of Project Hail Mary

My guess is I’m a pretty high priority to him. So whatever he’s doing must be really important. After all, he’s got a ship to deal with. He probably needs to eat and sleep. Well, he has to eat, anyway—all biological organisms need to get energy somehow. I don’t know if Eridians sleep.

Come to think of it…sleep might not be such a bad idea. Out of the past forty-eight hours I’ve had a two-hour nap and nothing else. Rocky’s clock is still there, wedged between a grab bar and the divider wall. It’s ticking away as normal. It’s interesting that his clock only has five digits. By my math, it’ll roll over back tolllllevery five hours or so. Maybe that’s the length of an Eridian day?

Speculate later. Sleep is the priority. I set up a spreadsheet on my Excel laptop to convert from Rocky time to mine and vice versa. I want to sleep for eight hours. I enter the current time on Rocky’s clock, which is IlIVλ, and have the spreadsheet tell me what that clock will say eight hours from now. The answer: Iλ+VVλ.

I hurry back to the lab to pick up a bunch of Popsicle sticks and tape. Rocky can’t see ink, so I have to improvise.

I tape the sticks to the divider wall to let Rocky know when I’ll return: Iλ+VVλ. Fortunately, the symbols are mostly made of straight lines, so my little craft project should be good enough for him to read.

Interestingly, my return time has six digits. One more digit than Rocky’s clock shows. But I’m sure he’ll figure it out. If Rocky said “I’ll be back at thirty-seven o’clock,” I’d understand what he meant.

Before I hit the hay, I harvest a mini-camera from the lab’s vacuum chamber. It’s just a small wireless camera that talks to a portable LCD clipped to the chamber. I tape the camera up in the tunnel, pointed at the divider wall. I bring the readout screen with me to my bunk.

There. Now I have a baby-monitor setup in the tunnel. There’s no audio—the camera is for watching experiments, not chatting with people. But it’s better than nothing.

I tuck the bunk’s sheets and blankets in tight all around the oval mattress pad. I shimmy in between the tight bedding. This way I won’t just float around while I sleep.

My grand plans for communicating with Rocky will have to wait. I’m a little frustrated, but not for long. I conk out almost immediately.

Tap-tap-tap.

The sound barely penetrates my consciousness. It’s far away.

Tap-tap-tap.

I wake from a dreamless sleep. “Huh?”

Tap-tap-tap.

“Breakfast,” I mumble.

The mechanical arms reach into a compartment and pull out a packaged meal. It’s like Christmas every morning around here. I pull the top off and steam wafts out in all directions. There’s a breakfast burrito inside.

“Nice,” I say. “Coffee?”

“Preparing…”

I take a bite of the breakfast burrito. It’s good. All the food is good. I guess they figured if we’re going to die, we may as well eat good stuff.

“Coffee,” says the computer. A mechanical arm hands me a pouch with a pinch-straw in it. Like a Capri Sun for adults. Zero-g accommodations.

I let the burrito float nearby and take a sip of coffee. It’s delicious, of course. It even has just the right amount of cream and sugar. That’s a very personal preference that varies wildly from person to person.

Tap-tap-tap.

What is that, anyway?

I check the LCD screen taped near my bunk. Rocky is in the tunnel tapping on the divider wall.

“Computer! How long was I asleep?”

“Patient was unconscious for ten hours and seventeen minutes.”

“Oh crud!”

I wriggle out of my bedding and bounce up through the ship toward the control room. I carry the burrito and coffee with me because I’m starving.

I bounce into the tunnel. “Sorry! Sorry!”