Project Hail Mary

by Andy Weir

I’m wearing a breathing mask. It’s tight to my face and connected to a hose that goes behind my head. Can I get up? No. But I can move my head a little. I look down at my body. I’m naked and connected to more tubes than I can count. There’s one in each arm, one in each leg, one in my “gentlemen’s equipment,” and two that disappear under my thigh. I’m guessing one of them is up where the sun doesn’t shine. That can’t be good.

“Full-body motion detected,” the computer says. “What’s your name?” “Pfft, seriously?” I ask. “Incorrect. Attempt number two: What’s your name?” I open my mouth to answer. “Uh…” “Incorrect. Attempt number three: What’s your name?” Only now does it occur to me: I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what I do. I don’t remember anything at all. “Um,” I say. “Incorrect.” A wave of fatigue grips me. It’s kind of pleasant, actually. The computer must have sedated me through the IV line. “…waaaait…” I mumble. The robot arms lay me gently back down to the bed.

I finally make it to the ladder. I stumble forward and grab one of the rungs. I’m just so weak. How am I going to climb a 10-foot ladder? Ten-foot ladder. I think in imperial units. That’s a clue. I’m probably an American. Or English. Or maybe Canadian. Canadians use feet and inches for short distances. I ask myself: How far is it from L.A. to New York? My gut answer: 3,000 miles. A Canadian would have used kilometers. So I’m English or American. Or I’m from Liberia. I know Liberia uses imperial units but I don’t know my own name. That’s irritating.

“Okay, interesting. But hardly worth three whiskeys before dinner.” She pursed her lips. “That’s what I thought. But they’re saying that value is increasing. And the rate of the increase is increasing. It’s some sort of exponential loss that they caught very, very early thanks to their probe’s incredibly sensitive instruments.” I leaned back in the booth. “I don’t know, Marissa. Spotting an exponential progression that early seems really unlikely. But okay, let’s say the JAXA scientists are right. Where’s the energy going?” “The Petrova line.” “Huh?” “JAXA took a good long look at the Petrova line and they say it’s getting brighter at the same rate that the sun is getting dimmer. Somehow or another, whatever it is, the Petrova line is stealing energy from the sun.”

The x-axis was labeled “time” and the y-axis was labeled “luminosity loss.” The line was exponential, for sure. “This can’t be right,” I said. “It’s right,” she said. “The sun’s output will drop a full percent over the next nine years. In twenty years that figure will be five percent. This is bad. It’s really bad.” I stared at the graph. “That would mean an ice age. Like…right away. Instant ice age.” “Yeah, at the very least. And crop failures, mass starvation…I don’t even know what else.”

I dropped my fork right into my spaghetti. Is this actually alien life? Am I really that lucky?! To be alive when humanity first discovers extraterrestrial life?! Wow! I mean—the Petrova problem is still terrifying but…wow! Aliens! This could be aliens! I couldn’t wait to talk about this with the kids tomorrow—

I have kids? This is a single man’s apartment with a single man eating a single man’s meal. I don’t see anything feminine at all. There’s nothing to suggest a woman in my life. Am I divorced? Gay? Either way, there’s no sign that children live here. No toys, no pictures of kids on the wall or mantel, nothing. And the place is way too clean. Kids make a mess of everything. Especially when they start chewing gum. They all go through a gum phase—at least, a lot of them do—and they leave it everywhere. How do I know that? I like kids. Huh. Just a feeling. But I like them. They’re cool. They’re fun to hang out with. So I’m a single man in my thirties, who lives alone in a small apartment, I don’t have any kids, but I like kids a lot. I don’t like where this is going… A teacher! I’m a schoolteacher! I remember it now! Oh, thank God. I’m a teacher.

Soon, the classroom was empty, and only the echoing sounds of children in the hallway suggested any evidence of life. I collected their homework assignments from my desk and slipped them into my valise. Sixth period was over. Time to hit the teachers’ lounge for a cup of coffee. Maybe I’d correct some papers before I headed home. Anything to avoid the parking lot. A fleet of helicopter moms would be descending on the school to pick up their children. And if one of them saw me, they always had some complaint or suggestion. I can’t fault someone for loving their kids, and God knows we could do with more parents being engaged in their kids’ educations, but there’s a limit.

She flipped a few pages. “You spent years combating the assumption that life requires liquid water. You have an entire section here called ‘The Goldilocks Zone Is for Idiots.’ You call out dozens of eminent scientists by name and berate them for believing a temperature range is a requirement.” “Yeah, but—” “Your doctorate is in molecular biology, correct? Don’t most scientists agree that liquid water is necessary for life to evolve?” “They’re wrong!” I crossed my arms. “There’s nothing magical about hydrogen and oxygen! They’re required for Earth life, sure. But another planet could have completely different conditions. All life needs is a chemical reaction that results in copies of the original catalyst. And you don’t need water for that!”

turned and walked out the door. “You’re lying, insane, or a combination of the two. I have to get going now.” “This is not optional,” she said to my back. “Seems optional to me!” I waved goodbye. Yeah. It wasn’t optional. When I got back to my apartment, before I even got to my front door, four well-dressed men surrounded me. They showed me their FBI badges and hustled me into one of three black SUVs parked in the complex parking lot. After a twenty-minute drive where they refused to answer any of my questions or even speak to me at all, they parked and showed me into a generic-looking business-park building.

“Scientists all over the world will be looking at them, but I want you to be the first.” “Why?” “It lives on or near the surface of the sun. Does that sound like a water-based life-form to you?” She was right. Water simply can’t exist at those temperatures. After about 3,000 degrees Celsius, the hydrogen and oxygen atoms can’t stay bound to each other anymore. The surface of the sun was 5,500 degrees Celsius.

Hmm…11,872 kilometers per second. Velocity is relative. It doesn’t make any sense unless you are comparing two objects. A car on the freeway might be going 70 miles per hour compared to the ground, but compared to the car next to it, it’s moving almost 0. So what is that “measured velocity” measuring the velocity of? I think I know. I’m in a spaceship, right? I have to be. So that value is probably my velocity. But compared to what? Judging by the big ol’ picture of the sun over the text, I’m guessing it’s the sun. So I’m going 11,872 kilometers per second with respect to the sun. I catch a flicker from the text below. Did something change? ANGULAR ANOMALY: RELATIVE MOTION ERROR PREDICTED VELOCITY: 11,422 KPS MEASURED VELOCITY: 11,871 KPS STATUS: AUTO-CORRECTING TRAJECTORY. NO ACTION REQUIRED.

It’s a mission crest. I’ve seen enough NASA documentaries to know one when I see one. The circular crest has an outer ring of blue with white text. The text reads HAIL MARY across the top and EARTH across the bottom. The name and “port of call” for this vessel. I didn’t think the ship came from somewhere other than Earth, but okay. Anyway, I guess I finally know the name of this ship I’m on. I’m aboard the Hail Mary. Not sure what to do with that information.

I grabbed the air hose with my gloved hand and gestured to Stratt with it. “Is this really necessary?” She pressed the intercom button. “There’s a very good chance the sample in that cylinder is an alien life-form. We’re not taking any chances.” “Wait…you’re not taking any chances. But I am!” “It’s not like that.” “How is it not like that?” She paused. “Okay, it’s exactly like that.”

But then I noticed they only emit light when they’re moving. And boy, do they emit a lot of it. I mean, not a lot from our point of view, but for a tiny single-celled organism it’s a ton.” “And how is that relevant?” “I did some back-of-the napkin math. And I’m pretty sure that light is how they move around.” Stratt raised an eyebrow. “I don’t follow.” “Believe it or not, light has momentum,” I said. “It exerts a force. If you were out in space and you turned on a flashlight, you’d get a teeny, tiny amount of thrust from it.”

Astrophage! The word alone makes all my muscles clinch up. A chilling terror that hits like a lead weight. That’s the name. The thing that threatens all life on Earth. Astrophage. I glance at the monitor with my zoomed-in image of the sun. The sunspots have moved noticeably. Okay, it’s a real-time image. Good to know.

“One guy alone in a lab? That’s not how science works,” I said. “There should be hundreds of people all over the world working on this.” “You’re not alone in that thought,” she said. “I’ve had three different heads of state call me today.” “Then let other scientists in on it!” “No.” “Why not?” She looked away for a moment, then back through the window at me. “Astrophage is an alien microbe. What if it can infect humans? What if it’s deadly? What if hazmat suits and neoprene gloves aren’t enough protection?” I gasped. “Wait a minute! Am I a guinea pig? I’m a guinea pig!”

I scowled. “This isn’t some cheesy movie, Stratt. Pathogens evolve slowly over time to attack specific hosts. Astrophage has never even been on Earth before. There’s just no way it can ‘infect’ humans. Besides, it’s been a couple of days and I’m not dead. So send it out to the real scientists.” “You are a real scientist. And you’re making progress as fast as anyone else would. There’s no point in me risking other lives while you’re getting it done on your own.” “Are you kidding?” I said. “With a couple hundred minds working on this, we’d make a lot more progress on—” “Also, most deadly diseases have a minimum of least three days of incubation time.” “Ah, there it is.”

They were opaque to every wavelength of light I threw at them. Visible, infrared, ultraviolet, x-ray, microwaves…I even put a few Astrophage in a radiation-containment vessel and exposed it to the gamma rays emitted by Cesium-137 (this lab has everything). I called it the “Bruce Banner Test.” Felt good about that name. Anyway, even gamma couldn’t penetrate the little bastards. Which is like shooting a .50-caliber round at a sheet of paper and having it bounce off. It just doesn’t make any sense.

Electromagnetic spectrum.

They’re called nanosyringes, but they’re actually about 50 nanometers wide. Still, the needle was tiny compared to the hulking 10-micron Astrophage—only about one two-thousandth the width. I poked an Astrophage with the needle and what happened next was nothing I could have expected. First off, the needle penetrated. No doubt on that front. For all its resistance to light and heat, apparently, Astrophage was no better at dealing with sharp things than any other cell. The instant I poked a hole in it, the whole cell became translucent. No longer a featureless black dot, but a cell with organelles and everything else a microbiologist like me wants to see. Just like that. It was like flicking a switch.

“Yes, I’m sorry, but a lot of livestock will die. And it’s worse than that. On land, crops will fail. The food we eat will become scarce. When that happens, the social order often breaks down and—” I stopped myself there. These were kids. Why was I going this far? “How—” Abby began. I’d never seen her at a loss for words. “How long before this happens?” “Climatologists think it’ll happen within the next thirty years,” I said. Just like that, all the kids relaxed. “Thirty years?” Trang laughed. “That’s forever!” “It’s not that long…” I said. But to a bunch of twelve- and thirteen-year-olds, thirty years may as well be a million.

There’s no way I have a radio transmitter powerful enough to broadcast several light-years. I don’t know if that would even be possible to build. So instead, I have these little “beetle” ships with 5 terabytes of information each. They’ll fly back to Earth and broadcast their data. There’s four of them for redundancy. I’m probably supposed to put copies of my findings in each one and send them all home. If at least one survives the journey, Earth is saved. I’m on a suicide mission. John, Paul, George, and Ringo get to go home, but my long and winding road ends here. I must have known all this when I volunteered. But to my amnesia-riddled brain this is new information. I’m going to die out here. And I’m going to die alone.

A Belgian research team was able to prove that Astrophage reacts to magnetic fields, but only sometimes. Other times, it seems to ignore magnetic fields entirely, no matter how powerful. Still, the Belgians were able to (very inconsistently) steer Astrophage around by putting it in a magnetic field and changing the field’s orientation. Was that useful? No idea. At this point the world was just collecting data. A researcher in Paraguay showed that ants will get disoriented when they’re within a few centimeters of Astrophage. Was that useful? Okay, that one probably wasn’t useful. But it was interesting. Most notably, a group in Perth sacrificed one of their Astrophage and did a detailed analysis on all the organelles inside. They found DNA and mitochondria. In any other situation, this would have been the most important discovery of the century. Alien life—indisputably alien—had DNA and mitochondria! And…grumble…a bunch of water…

Next thing I knew, I was on the flight deck looking like an idiot. They gave me earmuffs and a coat and shuffled me over to a helipad. A navy chopper was waiting for me. “Will this trip…end? Like…ever?!” I asked. They ignored me and got me strapped in. The chopper took off immediately. This time, the flight wasn’t nearly so long. Just an hour or so. “This should be interesting,” said the pilot. It was the only thing he’d said the whole flight. We descended and the landing gear deployed. Below us was another aircraft carrier. I squinted at it. Something looked different. What was it…oh, right. It had a big Chinese flag flying over it. “Is that a Chinese aircraft carrier?!” I asked. “Yes, sir.” “Are we, a U.S. Navy helicopter, going to land on that Chinese aircraft carrier?” “Yes, sir.” “I see.”

I picked up the paper. “Okay, so what am I looking at?” “Luminosity readings. Normalized across thousands of amateur-generated data sets and corrected for known weather and visibility conditions. Supercomputers were involved. The point is this: Our sun is not the only star that’s getting dimmer.” “Really?” I said. “Ohhh! That makes perfect sense! Astrophage can travel at 0.92 times the speed of light. If it can go dormant and stay alive long enough, it could infect nearby stars. It spores! Just like mold! It spreads from star to star.” “That’s our theory, yes,” said Stratt. “This data goes back decades. It’s not deeply reliable but the trends are there. The NSA back-calculated that—” “Wait. NSA? The U.S. National Security Agency?” “They have some of the best supercomputers in the world. I needed their supercomputers and engineers to try all kinds of scenarios and propagation models for how Astrophage could get around in the galaxy. Back to the point: These local stars have been dimming for decades. And the rate of dimming increases exponentially—just like we’re seeing with the sun.”

I peered at the chart. “Huh. WISE 0855–0714 also infected Wolf 359, Lalande 21185, and Ross 128.” “Yes, every star eventually infects all of its neighbors. Judging from our data, we think Astrophage has a maximum range of just under eight light-years. Any star within that range of an infected star will eventually be infected.” I looked at the data. “Why eight light-years? Why not more? Or less?” “Our best guess is the Astrophage can only survive so long without a star and it can coast about eight light-years in that time.”

Mass conversion. As the great Albert Einstein once said: E = mc2. There’s an absurd amount of energy in mass. A modern nuclear plant can power an entire city for a year with the energy stored in just one kilogram of Uranium. Yes. That’s it. The entire output of a nuclear reactor for a year comes from a single kilogram of mass. Astrophage can, apparently, do this in either direction. It takes heat energy and somehow turns it into mass. Then when it wants the energy back, it turns that mass back into energy—in the form of Petrova-frequency light. And it uses that to propel itself along in space. So not only is it a perfect energy-storage medium, it’s a perfect spaceship engine. Evolution can be insanely effective when you leave it alone for a few billion years.

Oh, right. Relativity. I have no idea how much time it took. Or, rather, I have no idea how much time I experienced. 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. Relativity is weird.

I closed the folder. The Cyrillic writing was nonsense to me. But my guess was Stratt could read it. She always seemed to know whatever language was being used. She rested her chin on her hands. “Getting to Mars with 1970s technology would mean using a Hohmann transfer trajectory, which means the crew would have to spend just over eight months aboard a ship. So the Soviets tested out what happens when you put people together in a cramped, isolated environment for several months.” “And?” “After seventy-one days, the men inside were getting in fistfights every day. They stopped the experiment on day ninety-four because one of the subjects tried to stab another one to death with broken glass.”

I must have practiced a lot. Maybe in a neutral-buoyancy tank or something. But it comes as second nature to me. I exit the airlock and clamp one of my tethers to a rail on the outside hull. Always have two tethers. And always have at least one attached. That way you’re never at risk of floating away from the ship. The Orlan-MKS2 is possibly the best EVA suit ever made, but it doesn’t have a SAFER unit like NASA’s EMU suit. At least with a SAFER unit you have minimal thrust capability to return to the ship if you fall adrift.

Though I had managed to breed up almost six grams of Astrophage so far. When all was said and done, the aircraft carrier’s reactor just couldn’t generate enough heat to speed up the reaction any further. Stratt kept vaguely saying they were going to provide a heat source capable of keeping up, but nothing had come of it yet.

Volcanic?

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.

Of all the things I teach my students, numerical bases are the hardest to make them truly understand. There’s nothing special about the number 10. We have ten unique digits because we have ten fingers. Simple as that. Rockies have three fingers per hand and I guess they only like to use two hands when counting (they probably keep the other three feet/hands on the ground to stay steady). So they have six fingers to work with. “I like you, Rocky! You’re a genius!” And he is! With this simple act, Rocky showed me: How Eridian numbers work (base six) How Eridian numbers are written (ℓ, I, V, λ,+, V) How Eridians read information (left to right) How long an Eridian second is I hold up a finger and rush back into the ship to get my stopwatch. I come back and time Rocky’s clock. I start the timer just as the third rotor changes state. The right rotor continues clicking over every two seconds or so, and every six steps, the next rotor advances one. This is going to take a while, but I want as accurate a count as possible. It takes around a minute and a half for the third rotor to move just one step. I can expect to be at this for ten minutes or so. But I plan to watch the whole time.

How did he see me out in space? No air in space. So no sound. Wait. No. That’s a dumb question. He’s not a caveman wandering around in space. He’s an advanced interstellar traveler. He has technology. He probably has cameras and radar and stuff that translate data into something he can understand. No different from my Petrovascope. I can’t see IR light, but it can and then it shows it to me on a monitor with light frequencies I can see.

She held up a second piece of paper. “And to streamline situations like this, I also have a preemptive pardon from the president of the United States for any and all crimes I am accused of within U.S. jurisdictions.”

“Wow,” I said. “I know New Zealand is pretty cool but—” “And it was going to be a New Zealand–owned company that charged for the power,” Redell said. “There it is.” He leaned forward. “Africa needs infrastructure. To do that, they need power. And they have nine million square kilometers of useless land that gets some of the most intense continuous sunlight on Earth. The Sahara Desert is just sitting there, waiting to give them everything they need. All we needed to do was build the damn power plants!” He flopped back in his chair. “But every local government wanted a piece of the pie. Graft, bribes, payoffs, you name it. You think I embezzled a lot? Shit, that’s nothing compared to what I had to pay in bribes just to build a solar plant in the middle of fucking nowhere.”

“Where were you when the accident happened?” Stratt said. He paused. “Where were you?” she repeated. “I was in Monaco. On a vacation.” “You’d been there for three months on that vacation. Gambling away your embezzled money.” “I…have a gambling problem,” he said. “I admit that. I mean, it was gambling debt that made me embezzle in the first place. It’s a sickness.” “And what if you had been doing your job instead of going on a bender for three months? What if you’d been there the day the accident happened? Would the accident still have happened?” His expression was answer enough. “Okay,” Stratt said. “Now we’re past the excuses and bullshit. You’re not going to convince me you’re an innocent scapegoat. And now you know that. So let’s move on: Tell me about blackpanels.”

“Sure. Solar particles are just hydrogen atoms emitted by the sun. Sometimes a magnetic storm on the sun can cause it to spit out a whole bunch of them. Other times it’s relatively quiet. And lately, the Astrophage infection has been robbing so much energy from the sun that magnetic storms are less common.”

“Now, tell me about GCRs.” “Those are trickier,” I said. “It stands for—” “Galactic cosmic rays,” she said. “And they’re not cosmic rays, right?” “Right. They’re just hydrogen ions—protons. But they’re going a lot faster. They’re going near the speed of light.” “Why are they called cosmic rays if they’re not even electromagnetic emissions?” “People used to think they were. The name stuck.”

“Do they come from some common source?” “No, they’re omnidirectional. They’re made by supernovas, which have happened all over the place. We’re just kind of constantly awash with GCRs in all directions. And they’re a huge problem for space travel. But not anymore!”

“We’re part of the ecology, Ms. Stratt. We’re not outside it. The plants we eat, the animals we ranch, the air we breathe—it’s all part of the tapestry. It’s all connected. As the biomes collapse, it’ll have a direct impact on humanity.” “Okay, then: numbers,” Stratt said. “I want numbers. Tangible things, not vague predictions.” He scowled at her. “Okay. Nineteen years.” “Nineteen years?” “You wanted a number,” he said. “There’s a number. Nineteen years.” “Okay, what’s nineteen years?” “That’s my estimate for when half the people currently alive will be dead. Nineteen years from now.”

The silence that followed was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. Even Stratt was taken aback. Lokken and I looked to each other. I don’t know why but we did. Dimitri’s mouth fell agape. “Half?” Stratt said. “Three point five billion people? Dead?” “Yes,” he said. “Is that tangible enough for you?” “How can you possibly know that?” she said. He pursed his lips. “And just like that another climate denier is born. See how easy it is? All I have to do is tell you something you don’t want to hear.” “Don’t patronize me, Dr. Leclerc. Just answer my questions.” He crossed his arms. “We’re already seeing major weather-pattern disruptions.” Lokken cleared her throat. “I heard there were tornadoes in Europe?” “Yes,” he said. “And they’re happening more and more often. European languages didn’t even have a word for tornado until Spanish conquistadors saw them in North America. Now they’re happening in Italy, Spain, and Greece.”

“Get back to the three and a half billion dead people,” Stratt said. “Sure,” he said. “The math of famine is actually pretty easy. Take all the calories the world creates with farming and agriculture per day, and divide by about fifteen hundred. The human population cannot be greater than that number. Not for long, anyway.” He fiddled with a pen on the table. “I’ve run the best models I have. Crops are going to fail. The global staple crops are wheat, barley, millet, potatoes, soy, and most important: rice. All of them are pretty sensitive about temperature ranges. If your rice paddy freezes over, the rice dies. If your potato farm floods, the potatoes die. And if your wheat farm experiences ten times normal humidity, it gets fungal parasites and dies.”

Planets get magnetic fields if the conditions are right. You have to have a molten-iron core, you have to be in the magnetic field of a star, and you have to be spinning. If all three of these things are true, you get a magnetic field. Earth has one—that’s why compasses work. Erid has all of those features on steroids. They are larger than Earth, with a larger iron core. They are close to their star, so they have a much stronger magnetic field powering their own field, and they spin extremely fast. All told, Erid’s magnetic field is at least twenty-five times as strong as Earth’s. Plus, their atmosphere is extremely thick. Twenty-nine times as thick. You know what strong magnetic fields and thick atmospheres are really good at? Radiation protection.

All life on Earth evolved to deal with radiation. Our DNA has error-correction built in because we’re constantly bombarded with radiation from the sun and from space in general. Our magnetic field and atmosphere protect us somewhat, but not 100 percent. For Erid, it’s 100 percent. Radiation just doesn’t get to the ground. Light doesn’t even get to the ground—that’s why they never evolved eyes. The surface is pitch-dark. How does a biosphere exist in total darkness? I haven’t asked Rocky how that works yet, but there is plenty of life deep in Earth’s oceans where the sun doesn’t shine. So it’s definitely doable. Eridians are extremely susceptible to radiation, and they never even knew it existed.

The next conversation took another hour and added a few dozen more words to the vocabulary. Eridians invented space travel quite a while ago. And with their unparalleled materials technology (xenonite) they actually made a space elevator. Basically a cable leading from Erid’s equator up to the synchronous orbit with a counterweight. They literally take elevators to get into orbit. We could do that on Earth if we knew how to make xenonite. Thing is, they never left orbit. There was no reason to. Erid has no moon. Planets that close to a star rarely do. The gravitation tidal forces tend to rip would-be moons out of orbit. Rocky and his crew were the first Eridians to leave orbit at all. So they never found out that Erid’s magnetic field, which extends well beyond its synchronous orbit, had been protecting them all that time.

“The sea will melt it for us, but yes. Thing is, Antarctica used to be a jungle. For millions of years it was as lush as Africa. But continental drift and natural climate change froze it over. All those plants died and decomposed. The gases from that decomposition—most notably methane—got trapped in the ice.” “And methane’s a pretty powerful greenhouse gas,” I said. He nodded. “Far more powerful than carbon dioxide.” He checked his tablet again. “Two minutes!” he called out. “All ships: Condition Red,” Stratt radioed. “Repeat: Condition Red.” He turned back to me. “So here I am. Environmental activist. Climatologist. Antiwar crusader.” He looked out to sea. “And I’m ordering a nuclear strike on Antarctica. Two hundred and forty-one nuclear weapons, courtesy of the United States, buried fifty meters deep along a fissure at three-kilometer intervals. All going off at the same time.” I nodded slowly. “They tell me the radiation will be minimal,” he said. “Yeah. If it’s any consolation, they’re fusion bombs.” I pulled my jacket tighter. “There’s a small fission reaction with uranium and stuff that sets off the much larger fusion reaction. And the big explosion is just hydrogen and helium. No radiation from that.”

“Sure, sure,” I said. “I mean. It shouldn’t be a problem. You’re the primary science position and Annie’s the alternate. There’s no scenario where you would both be on the mission. But…I mean…your relationship…” “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. He folded his hands in front of him. “Dr. Shapiro and I do not see it that way. We are enjoying very active sexual encounters.” “Yeah, okay, I don’t need to know—” “No need for condoms either. She is on birth control and we have both had extremely thorough medical examinations as part of the program.” I typed on my computer, hoping he’d change the subject.

I cleared my throat. “Yes. Today I’ll be talking about the Astrophage’s Krebs cycle. It’s identical to what we find in Earth mitochondria, but with one additional step—” Annie held up her hand. “Oh, sorry. One more thing—” She turned to DuBois. “Martin, we have about fifteen minutes of personal time after this lesson and before our next training exercise. Want to meet up in the bathroom down the hall and have sex?” “I find that agreeable,” said DuBois. “Thank you, Dr. Shapiro.” “Okay, cool.” They both looked to me, ready for their lesson. I waited a few seconds to make sure there was no more oversharing, but they seemed content. “Okay, so the Krebs cycle in Astrophage has a variant—wait. Do you call her Dr. Shapiro while having sex?” “Of course. That’s her name.” “I kind of like it,” she said. “I’m sorry I asked,” I said. “Now, the Krebs cycle…”

The familiar black dots of Astrophage are all over the sample. But so are translucent cells, smaller bacteria-looking things, and larger amoeba-like things. There are thin things, fat things, spiral things…too many to count. Too many different kinds of things to count. It’s like looking at all the life in a drop of lake water! “Wow!” I say. “Life! There’s a whole bunch of life in here! Not just Astrophage. A bunch of different species!” Rocky literally bounces off the tunnel walls. “Amaze! Amaze amaze amaze!” “Adrian isn’t just a planet,” I say. “Adrian is a planet with life, like Earth or Erid! That explains where the methane comes from. Life makes methane!” Rocky freezes. Then he shoots bolt-upright. I’ve never seen him raise his carapace so high. “Life is also reason for population discrepancy! Life is reason!” “What?” I say. He’s more excited than I’ve ever seen him. “How? I don’t understand.” He taps the tunnel wall with his claw, pointing at my microscope. “Some life on Adrian EATS Astrophage! Population in balance. Natural order. This explains all things!” “Oh my God!” I gasp. My heart just about beats out of my chest. “Astrophage has a predator!”