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They say hunger is the greatest seasoning. When you’re starving, your brain rewards you handsomely for finally eating. Good job, it says, we get to not die for a while!
All right, genius brain: come up with something! …I’m hungry. You have failed me, brain.
All life needs is a chemical reaction that results in copies of the original catalyst. And you don’t need water for that!”
This star I’m looking at…it’s not the sun. I’m in a different solar system.
I take a breath. “One…two…thr—this isn’t working! I’m going to die!”
“I penetrated the outer cell membrane with a nanosyringe.” “You poked it with a stick?” “No!” I said. “Well. Yes. But it was a scientific poke with a very scientific stick.”
Besides, if I had a nickel for every time I wanted to smack a kid’s parents for not teaching them even the most basic things…well…I’d have enough nickels to put in a sock and smack those parents with it.
Light is a funny thing. Its wavelength defines what it can and can’t interact with. Anything smaller than the wavelength is functionally nonexistent to that photon. That’s why there’s a mesh over the window of a microwave. The holes in the mesh are too small for microwaves to pass through. But visible light, with a much shorter wavelength, can go through freely. So you get to watch your food cook without melting your face off.
Evolution can be insanely effective when you leave it alone for a few billion years.
When you get going near the speed of light, you experience time dilation. More time will have gone by on Earth than I have experienced since I left Earth.
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
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Human beings have a remarkable ability to accept the abnormal and make it normal.
Man, being an American scientist sucks sometimes. You think in random, unpredictable units based on what situation you’re in.
No one ever talks about the really hard parts of first contact with intelligent alien life: pronouns. I’m going to go with “he” for now, because it just seems rude to call a thinking being “it.”
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
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no space mission would be complete without redundancy.
Oh thank God. I can’t imagine explaining “sleep” to someone who had never heard of it. Hey, I’m going to fall unconscious and hallucinate for a while. By the way, I spend a third of my time doing this. And if I can’t do it for a while, I go insane and eventually die. No need for concern.
“No, no, no! You can’t just use ‘I’m saving the world’ as an excuse every time you’re a jerk.”
“Save the world and permanently lift Africa out of poverty while we’re at
You can’t get it hotter than 96.415 degrees. Not for long, anyway. And if it gets too cold, the Astrophage uses stored energy to heat back up to that temperature—just like any other warm-blooded life-form.”
“Humanity’s recklessness with our environment accidentally bought us an extra month of time by pre-heating the planet.”
A win is a win!
it took us a century of burning coal and oil on a global scale to even notice it was affecting the climate at all.”
Both of us are intensely interested in how the other’s body works.
If bees evolved to make hives that could walk, and the queen was as intelligent as a human, that life-form would be similar to an Eridian.
A thought occurs to him. He stops working on his device entirely. “You hear light from space, question? You hear stars, planets, asteroids, question?” “Yes.” “Amaze. What about sound, question? You can hear sound.”
“You are very heavy,” I say. I hope he doesn’t take that to mean Hey, fatty! Go on a diet! “My mass is one hundred sixty-eight kilograms,” he says. Rocky weighs over 300 pounds!
“You sleep alone, question?” “Yes.” “I also sleep alone many times. Sad sad sad.”
I’m going to throw up and cry!
“You ship has more science than my ship. Better science. I bring my things into you ship. Release tunnel. You make you ship spin for science. You and me science how to kill Astrophage together. Save Earth. Save Erid. This is good plan, question?”
Yes, good plan! Save Rocky! 🥹
“Are we done?” “Yes. Now detach tunnel.” I groan. “You made the tunnel. You detach it.” “How I detach tunnel, question? Me inside ball.” “Well, how do I do it? I don’t understand xenonite.” He made a turning motion with two of his arms. “Rotate tunnel.” “Okay, okay.” I grab my EVA suit. “I’ll do it. Jerk.” “No understand last word.” “Not important.” I climb into the suit and close the rear flap.
His voice drops an octave. “Fail fail fail. I am repair Eridian. I not science Eridian. Smart smart smart science Eridians died.”
But his voice remains low. “I try so many times. Fail so many times. Not good at science.”
“I am happy. You no die. Let’s save planets!”
Oh, and no science team would be complete without a gambling-addicted swindler, so Bob Redell was there too.
I put my hand to my chest in mock surprise. “Goodness me! DuBois appears to be black! I’m surprised you allowed it! Aren’t you afraid he’ll ruin the mission with talk of rap music and basketball?”
“Are all Russians crazy?” “Yes,” he said with a smile. “It is the only way to be Russian and happy at the same time.” “That’s…dark.” “That’s Russian!”
I hear you have the coma-resistance markers, just like me and the rest of the crew.” “I do?” He raised his eyebrow. “They didn’t tell you?”
Suspicious…
Rocky’s ship apparently has scads of Astrophage (I still don’t understand how he has so much extra fuel).
I don’t like this plot. What if he doesn’t have the fuel?
I want to spend the rest of my life studying Eridian biology! But I have to save humanity first. Stupid humanity. Getting in the way of my hobbies.
A food coma for Rocky is no small thing. This doesn’t look voluntary at all. This is a biologically enforced post-meal siesta.
“Amaze is wrong word,” he says. “Amaze is compliment. Better word is ♫♪♫♪.” “What’s that mean?” “It is when person not act normal. Danger to self.” “Ah,” I say, adding the new chord into my language database. “Crazy. My word for that is ‘crazy.’ ” “Crazy. Humans are crazy.” I shrug.
“Yes, you are correct,” DuBois said. “I will be setting out on a suicide mission in under a year. And if for some reason I am deemed unfit or unable, she will go on the suicide mission. We are aware of this, and we know this relationship can only end in death.” “We live in bleak times,” I said.
“You get.” “Ugh,” I groan. “EVAs are so much work!” “Lazy human. Go get!”
The distance to Tau Ceti will actually increase as you slow down relative to it—even if you’re still going toward it.
Do you believe in God? I know it’s a personal question. I do. And I think He was pretty awesome to make relativity a thing, don’t you? The faster you go, the less time you experience. It’s like He’s inviting us to explore the universe, you know?”
Science rule number 1: If something is changing unexpectedly, document it.
At least being stupid isn’t permanent. I’ll press on.
“I want a gun, please,” he said. “A Type-92 handgun.
“You seal sample and can no access sample, question?” “Yes.” “Usually you not stupid. Why stupid, question?”
“Adjust orbit while stupid. Good plan.” I snicker. “New word: ‘sarcasm.’ You say opposite of true meaning to make point. Sarcasm.”
Spread everyone out so there’s no single place to attack that would be effective. There was a grim logic to it.
